Luhan tossed and turned that night, ignoring his phone completely. It had pinged several times and from the time, he knew it was probably Mei, asking him how his practice went and if he’d had dinner. It had become sort of routine between them.

Part of him – a huge part of him, if he were being honest – wanted to just grab the phone and get his dose of Mei’s cuteness. How could a person be so freaking cute that it bled into their text messages, was beyond him but there you had it. Mei’s texts, just like everything else she did was so cute, it gave him a toothache.

Any time he thought about her – basically all the time – he felt like he did before playing a match: excited and nervous at the same time. And when he made her laugh, over text or otherwise, he felt the same sense of accomplishment that he did after scoring a goal for his team. It made him want to cheer and celebrate and…

Okay, yeah, he was crushing. No, Baekhyun had been right – again. He was infatuated, completely bewitched, by everything that was Mei. From her long hair to her gorgeous smile and pretty eyes and prettier laugh and cute drawings.

‘UGH!’ he whined, burying his face into the pillow. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t do crushes. People crushed on him, not the other way around. He was sorely unprepared to deal with this kind of thing.

In another world, where confettisions didn’t happen, it might’ve been okay. But in his world, it meant that there was the imminent danger of him exploding all over Mei if his feelings got too much.

The way he was feeling right now, he was probably right at the edge, ready to explode the next time she smiled at him. His tummy roiled in agreement and he groaned again.

And he’d thought he’d graduate without experiencing his first confettision. Truth be told, he’d been content about it, though his friends tried to convince him otherwise.

‘It’s unhealthy,’ Lay had asserted, ‘to never experience that sort of emotion. That’s like never getting wet dreams. It’s stunting your emotional development.’

Luhan had vehemently disagreed. There had been cases about people who never experienced confettisions.

‘Almost all of those individuals had trouble forming social relationships in the first place,’ had been Lay’s counter-argument.

Looked like Lay had been right after all. He knew he was reluctant to let people get close, particularly if they showed any romantic inclinations. With Mei, with her lack of confetti outbursts, he’d forgotten to stay on guard. And look where that led him.

At least Lay would be happy to know his emotional development wasn’t stunted anymore.

Sighing, he glanced at his phone again. It had blinked once again and he was sure… well, okay, he hoped it was Mei. Gosh, he was so in over his head.

With a groan, he gave in and grabbed the phone.

His heart fluttered when Mei’s name popped up, his conversation with her longer than any other threads in his list. Her latest message made him smile at her concern.

Is everything okay? You’ve been very quiet. I hope everything’s fine. Text me when you can. See you.

She’d added a cute emoji at the end. He glanced at the previous texts, smile getting wider.

He stared at the phone for a moment, thinking. It wasn’t like he could turn off his crush on Mei. And the confettision will happen only if his feelings got too much. If he confessed to her first, it wouldn’t be a problem. And if he did end up exploding…

He’d cross that bridge when he reached it.

Decided, he texted back.

………………………………………….

Oh Sehun is rather nice, you know.

Mei texted Minyoung, lounging back. She’d resorted to the Sehun-attack as a last resort against her friend’s constant efforts to convince her that she was re-crushing on Luhan.

She wasn’t and Minyoung was just getting on her nerves. In fact, she’d decided she’d ignore Luhan the next time he texted just to prove it to Minyoung.

Only, he hadn’t sent her any texts at all, not after school.

By now, they’d fallen into an established routine where he texted her all the way home from practice and she’d tell him about her own day. Mostly, it was just complaints about how Sehun didn’t talk even though he practically walked her home every day or how MInyoung still claimed to fear him, despite ogling him secretly from behind her books.

But sometimes she’d tell him that she was having difficulty with something and he’d suddenly turn into the proper senior and guide her. She thought it was very sweet of him.

And no, that was not how her love story with Luhan began, no matter what Minyoung said.

So, it had concerned her when he hadn’t sent her anything and after waiting a couple of hours – what, she liked to talking to him, he was easy to talk to – she’d fired off a concerned text. Thanks to Minyoung, she’d been conscious about how she phrased her words so they couldn’t be misinterpreted as anything other than friendly concern but that’d ended up sounding quite curt