Chapter 6

Unexpected Love

Luhan came by my room to pick me up on the way to the call at 6:55 on the dot. He decided that it was better to be late than early, and better to be on time than late. After Kris’s unwarranted, unpredictable and slightly impulsive kiss, my head felt like it was above the clouds. How had I been kissed (almost kissed, at least) by two idols within the course of 24 hours? What kind of drugs was I on? I was the most average, mainstream girl. Hell, I was below average. The world seemed to have me - I had all the right cards now. 

In the three hours I had between the kiss and the call, I had snuck out of the hotel and gone to the mall to do some shopping. All of my clothes were dirty now and I had no means of washing them, plus I felt extremely under dressed living with four of the most famous Chinese celebrities in the world. So, I had raided TJ Maxx and H&M for their best clothes before returning to the hotel discreetly, praying that Mingsan and Zhongrui hadn’t seen me. 

When Luhan knocked on my door, I gave my hair one last brush and went out to join him in the hallway. He looked me down and gave me a warm smile. “You’re feeling better, then?”

I was wearing a white shirt with Japanese characters written on it in black and gray jeans with my trusty old Vans. I grinned back at him and nodded, momentarily forgetting about Kris and Tao. Luhan seemed to make everything easier to deal with when he was around me.

When we were in the elevator, Luhan hit the button that went to the thirtieth floor and then turned to me. “For the call,” he began. “I think it’s better for you to stay quiet, unless you're directly addressed. You weren’t involved in any of it, so they shouldn’t care too much, but don’t… piss them off, I guess.”

That made sense. “Do you think they’ll mind that I’m there?” I asked.

He sighed. “Honestly, I can’t answer that. I don’t know. If worst comes to worse we’ll tell them that you’re our new manager or something like that.”

“Aight,” I replied simply. I had been filled with a new spark of confidence; between Kris kissing me, Tao protecting me, Luhan tucking me in, and Yixing being friendly as ever, I felt more worthy for love than I had ever felt before. Screw Arianna. She wasn’t  a world famous singer, dancer, model, or rapper, now was she?

We arrived on the thirtieth floor and the elevator doors slid open to reveal golden letters engraved on the wall across from us. “BUSINESS SECTOR”, they wrote out. Luhan and I walked down the hall and turned a corner. Tao, Yixing and Kris came into view, leaning against the wall next to a door. As soon as I came into sight, Tao and Kris turned to stare at me, Tao smiling and Kris frowning.

I tried to avoid eye contact with Kris and made my way straight to Tao instead. “Thank you for coming,” he said. A bruise had formed on his cheek and I could tell he had just added ointment to it. 

All four of them were wearing the same concept outfit as Kris had been; hoodies, jeans, basketball shoes, all in different varieties, definitely coordinated. Yixing also had an EXO jean jacket on top of his hoodie, as if it was a symbol of peace. He was visibly the most anxious of the group, twiddling his thumbs and nervously walking over to Luhan once we arrived.

“Are we ready? It’s 59, we should go in,” Yixing said. “By the way, we should speak English. We all know it fairly well and they don’t all know Chinese, nor do we know Korean very well, so… it’s like a bridge.”

Luhan nodded quietly, but Kris and Tao looked much more disturbed by this idea. I could almost see them remembering all the time they had been pushed to learn Korean, a completely exotic language to them. All the same, they followed Luhan and Yixing when they went into the room.

It resembled a small movie theater. Mingsan and Zhongrui were in the two back corners of the room, closest to the door. There were five chairs set up in the middle of the room, and a stool at the front with a computer on it. The projector overhead reflected onto the wall across from the door, showing us as we walked in and, on a larger screen, a group of boys frowning at us. The five of us walked in and sat in the order that we had been standing in the hallway; unfortunately for me, that meant I was sandwiched with Tao to my left, in the middle of the group, and Kris to my right, at the end. Kris looked at me pointedly for a few seconds before turning to face the projection.

"Yixing, Luhan, Tao, Kris,” the boy on the far left of the screen began. “Long time no see, you guys.”

“Hi, Xiumin,” Luhan replied calmly. “It has been a while. It’s been a long time, man.” All the boys on the screen nodded at this. Xiumin and the boy next to him, who I could only assume was Chen, even smiled at us.

Then the one in the middle leaned forward. His face was set in stone and he looked cold. “So, we all know what we’re here to discuss.”

Yixing finally spoke. “Suho, come on. Let’s be serious about this. Everyone here put a lot of effort and work into all of those songs, even if they aren’t in the group anymore... Why does it matter if we use the old ones? We’re giving them more popularity, and you’ll end up getting paid for it anyway.”

The boy sat back again. "Yixing. I thought you were on our side.”

“I’m not on anyone’s side,” Yixing replied. “I’m only doing the best thing for all of us.”

“How is this the best for all of us?” one of them snapped. His hair was longer. “If you only sing the Chinese versions, it only benefits EXO M!”

“It increases your popularity, Chanyeol! They’ll look up the song on the web and guess which version comes up first, thanks to SM and their publicity experts?” Tao said, putting air quotes around the word ‘experts’. Clearly, he was already ticked. “The EXO K version!”

“Calm down,” Luhan and Chen said at the same time. They exchanged a quick smile. Next to me, I felt both Kris and Tao’s muscles tense up slightly. They were getting angry. I discreetly placed my hand on the side of Tao’s leg. He sighed and sat back a little bit. Kris saw out of the corner of his eye and only seemed to get angrier. I sighed - we were barely a minute into the call.

The boy sitting next to Suho said something in Korean, and the whole group nodded. “DO wants to know what you’ll do for us if we let you perform our songs.” He said it with his voice dripping with malice.

“Yeah,” one of them piped up. He seemed even more attractive than the other ones. “We own the copyright, as the group, so you’ll have to return the favor.”

“You don’t own the copyright, Kai,” Kris finally spoke up, his voice low and controlled. “We do. We were the ones who sang and danced and rapped for the Chinese versions of all of those songs.” 

Kai opened his mouth as if to say something else, and Chanyeol pursed his lips, but one of the other Korean boys held his hand up. This shut them all up. He reminded me of Kris right away; he demanded attention and respect when he spoke. 

“Regardless of who owns the copyright, I think we should help each other out. You guys are gaining your publicity from performing the songs you made while you were with us. That’s fine, I mean let’s be honest; if it wasn’t for us, you wouldn’t be popular in the first place. You wouldn’t be idols. So if we use you to gain publicity for ourselves, it will be even.”

“We don’t owe you , though, Baekhyun,” Tao began.

“Tao,” Yixing interrupted. “This isn’t a bad idea. It'll do good things for us too. You know how much the fans want to see us reunited?”

“No,” Kris, Tao, and Luhan all said at the same time. 

“I’m sorry,” Luhan said, his voice a little louder than it had been before. “But after the they all put us through, I’m never performing with them again. Kris will never perform with them again. And I’m going to make sure that Tao absolutely never performs with them again, on God.”

“Sorry. What exactly did we do?” the final boy asked.

Yixing, Luhan, Tao, and Kris all dropped their jaws at the same time, unable even to reply to such a stupid question.

“You’re insane, Sehun,” Chen muttered, laughing.

“What do you mean, ‘what did we do’?” Xiumin asked incredulously, voicing what we were all thinking. “Chen and I watched you make fun of them for everything from their language to their music to their personality!”

“It was always a joke though, we never meant it in a hurtful way! Did that warrant them to drop everything and leave us anyway? They signed a ten year contract. It’s a team effort, and they could have talked to us before abandoning ship,” Suho argued back. Baekhyun, Chanyeol, DO, Kai, and Sehun all nodded.

After a moment of silence, Kris spoke in his low voice. There was a pinch of warning in it. “Do you remember that one day,” he began, “it was raining, of course, cause we were in Seoul, at the studio. We were working on the dance for Growl, so it must have been 2012 or 2013. I remember it like the back of my hand, because… It was Tao. Yep, it was Tao, and Baekhyun, I think, kept whispering something in Korean that we couldn’t understand while we were practicing the EXO M portion of the dance. Finally, I was fed up and I turned back to Chen… ‘What is he saying?’ I asked him. Do you remember what it was, Chen?”

Chen nodded slowly. “He was telling Sehun that Tao would never be as good as Sehun was.” Tao exhaled just barely, and I saw his eyes grow darker, if that was possible. I quickly switched to holding his hand.

“Yea, that was it,” Kris continued. “Undermining and corrupting two of our younger brothers. And during our break, I remember I pulled you aside, Baekhyun. I also grabbed Suho, our lovely, fair, unbiased leader. I know the exact words that I said to you two. I said, very clearly, in English, mind you, which we could all speak and understand perfectly well… I said, ‘If you keep pushing us around, it will not be long before we get out of here’.”

Silence fell again. I felt an overwhelming gush of pride towards Kris, which I quickly tried to suppress once memories of the kiss came rushing back. My cheeks turned slightly pink. 

“What happened to the whole ‘we are one’ motto? We let our fans down once, you guys. You let our fans down once. Let’s not do that again.”

Luhan spoke next. “You don’t realize how hard it was for us. Being forced into a place most of us had never been before, being forced to speak a language we had never learned before, eat food we never ate, living with people we had nothing in common with, and being ridiculed for all of it, whether it was jokingly or not. Kris and I were lucky, cause we’re older; it affected us less than it affected Tao and Yixing. I’m surprised Yixing is even still with you guys.”

“And regretting it more by the second,” Yixing cut in. It was the first time I had seen him angry. He shot Suho a glare.

Chen raised his eyebrows at Yixing. “Watch your mouth, Yixing. We don’t want to lose you.” Yixing bit his lip to keep himself from saying something he would surely regret later on.

The silence that ensued was very long and very tense. At last, Xiumin spoke. “So, what are we going to do?”

“If you don’t stop using our songs,” Suho said, articulating every word clearly, “And if you don’t agree to pay us back in some form, we will push charges for the copyright.”

“Press,” I corrected before I could stop myself.

Every single eye turned to me. , I thought. Stupid move, Luna.

“Excuse me?” Suho asked snottily, taken aback.

I cleared my throat. “It’s press charges, not push charges.”

Kris and Tao both smiled at me at the exact same time, and I cleared my throat again, apologizing.

“Ha,” Chanyeol said. “The uncultured white girl has the balls to talk. Who even is she?”

My mouth hung open for a split second, and then before I could stop it, my mouth ran away from me. “I’m their manager, I’ll be looking forward to negotiating with you guys later on. And don’t you called me uncultured, Cahnyok. I speak three languages fluently, which is clearly more than any of y’all. I have been to 12 different countries across the globe, in four different continents. I can play five instruments, and fit in with any crowd of people, from aristocrats to gangsters. I have seen places rougher than you could imagine, and I have seen people richer than you can imagine. So you should watch who you call uncultured, hot stuff.”

Silence.

Then, another small apology from me.

Tao and Kris’s smiles widened even more, and even Luhan allowed a slight smirk. Xiumin quickly got the conversation back on topic, but Chanyeol and Suho kept their eyes on me as Tao put his arm around my shoulders, radiating pride. Kris’s smile disappeared instantaneously.

“How would we use them to gain publicity?” Xiumin asked. 

Kai spoke up again. “We could reunite. Come back as friends.”

“Not in a million years,” Luhan replied calmly.

“We could make our beef public, then.”

“That would break our fans’ hearts,” Yixing said. 

“Dance battle,” Sehun piped up. “Or a sing off.”

Kris and Tao exchanged a look and then looked over at Luhan and Yixing. I could almost see them thinking; that might work. Kris clearly had a large American fanbase, and between Luhan and Tao, we would have the largest Chinese fanbase as well. Yixing might even bring over a few devoted Korean fans.

“That might work,” Tao said, speaking as the leader of the group.

“On one condition, though,” Suho spoke. “We get Yixing.”

“No.” Luhan, Kris, and Tao spoke at the same time.

“He’s part of EXO,” Sehun said. “We get him. He’s the only Ching Chong that we managed to keep.”

As soon as he said it, he knew he had screwed up. Suho, Baekhyun, DO, and Chanyeol all turned to stare at him with “WTF” expressions on their faces. Kai, on the other hand, let out a laugh before managing a straight face. Chen put his head in his hands and Xiumin visibly flinched.

Instantaneously, Yixing, Luhan, Tao and Kris were on their feet, with pure rage on their faces. I followed them hastily. Xiumin had also rose to his feet, clearly upset. Yixing was the first to speak. “Nope. I quit. You guys have been putting us under and letting it go for too long. Lu’s right, I should’ve quit with Kris. Screw you all. I’ll be pressing to invalidate my contract from SM.”

He was the first to storm out, presumably to find his lawyers.

Luhan was right behind him as soon as he addressed Chen. “Chen, WeChat me to set up a date and time for the battle.” Then he left running to find Yixing.

“Y’all done screwed up,” Tao said. “操你.” After the curse, he walked up to the laptop and hung up on them before leaving the room.

I turned to follow him, but Kris grabbed my hand. I turned to face him and there was a type of warning in his face. “Don’t. Please, trust me.”

Without hesitation, I pulled my hand away and ran after Tao.

He had already made it halfway down the hall. I grabbed his hand, but he shook it off like I had done to Kris. I tried again, but it was the same outcome. “Tao,” I said. He ignored me. Then, louder, “TAO!”

“Screw OFF!” He replied. It was crazy how fast his mood changed. He turned and pinned me to the wall, his arms on either side of me, blocking me from moving. There were little fires lit in his normally tame eyes. “Why did you go and say something? It wasn’t your place to do that! You’re so stupid, just because you’re dating an idol doesn’tmean you can act like an entitled brat who owns the world! You aren’t! You’re normal and below average, dating me doesn’t make you special!” he hissed.

It stung.

It pierced me everywhere, like Arianna’s comments had, but a thousand times deeper. I was stunned into silence for a few seconds. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kris coming down the hall, followed by Zhongrui and Mingsan a little further back. He began to run as he came closer.

“Take it back,” I said, my throat dry. Then, with more sadness, “Take it back.

Tao just stayed there. I watched as the anger slowly drained from his eyes, quietly counting down from three. By the time I had hit one, he still hadn’t said anything, so I pushed him away with all the force in my body and sprinted down the hall.

“What did you do?” I heard Kris cry at Tao as I turned the corner. Then I heard Tao call my name and thumping footsteps behind me.

I didn’t listen. I didn’t stop. Tears were b in my eyes and I couldn’t think straight; I could only feel betrayal. He had played me. Kris had been right; he was nothing but a narcissist. I ran past the elevator and threw open the door to the stairs, aware that the footsteps were gaining on me. I passed Yixing and Luhan, talking hushedly on the forty fifth floor. I ran over twenty flights of stairs before flinging myself down the hallway to my room and fumbling with my card to open the door. I shut it and backed away to squat down in the far corner of my room, next to the window, but not before someone managed to slip in.

Tao began to knock rapidly on the door. “I’m sorry, Luna, please let me in! I didn’t mean it, Luna, please, I can explain… I’ll make it up to you…”

I heard someone approach me and I looked up cautiously, though part of me already knew who it was. I tried hiding the tears, snot, and faint glimmer of sweat by covering my face with my hands and I heard him kneel down in front of me. I whispered for him to go away.

“Luna, let me in, come on, I need to talk to you… I -”

It all faded away as Luhan gently cupped his hands over my ears. I shut my eyes and tried to drift away from the harsh reality that I was in.

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baekisschan #1
sounds interesting