His hands plugged in his coat’s pockets he walks straight to his destination; a well-known café from the countless premises of Seoul’s downtown. A perfect spot for young people to hang out. On his way he ignores the crowd passing him and the giant advertisement posters of EXO and other groups. It’s all the same, a mundane situation. However, it is the EXO’s pictures and videos that stand out the most in the sea of all those commercials and lights. It’s a common sight with nothing special meaning to it. He arrives at the café, his friend Jimin already sitting there staring into his mobile.

Minseok walks towards his friend and greets him while sitting down. They ordered their drinks, for Minseok it was a coffee of course while his friend from university decides on a diet coke. The young waitress took their orders happily. When she turns around walking back to the kitchen, both men’s gazes lingered a little longer on her body than they should.

Minseok sights heavily, leaning completely back in his chair and letting his arms idly hang at his sides.

“Why is this master thesis sooo exhausting?”

“Because it’s your master’s degree?”  Jimin answered nonchalantly, receiving a groan in response. “But hey, at least you’ll make a big party at the end just like for your bachelor’s degree back then, right?” He tried to cheer up his friend.

“We did that? Hmm…” the cat eyed man thinks for a moment.  “I guess I can vaguely remember something, but really not well. I can only remember the photos you showed me.”  The waitress approaches the friends and gives them their ordered drinks. Jimin takes the chance to further order a piece of apple pie. Said friend then addresses himself again to the aspiring master degree owner.

“Ah, right yeah. It really that you had this car accident in March back then.” Minseok shrugs indifferently and sips on his coffee.

“It’s not like anything special happened before it anyway.”

“Not anything you can remember, that is.” Jimin counters teasingly.

“From the day of my accident, which was end of March to be precise, I only forgot like 3 months or so. So I highly doubt that something special would have happened in those stressful days and I guess photos or text messaged would’ve helped me at that. And on top of that I still have you Jiminie.” Minseok winks while Jimin only watched his friend with the straw in his mouth and his head resting lazily on his hands. “You just have to be my memory then, so if anything happened just tell me.” He finishes and takes another sip.

Jimin straightens himself and shouted enthusiastically “You missed EXO’s promotions!!” while he flailed his arms around. Minseok couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped his lips.

Contrary to his extreme EXO-Fan-Friend Jimin, Minseok never had any connection or points of contact with them. Of course, he was bound to know about them, considering his friend being such a huge fan who talks about them almost all the time and also because they have risen to be very popular world stars. He never paid much attention to them though, but respected them. They were only humans after all as well.

“I know you love them but for me it isn’t that much of a big deal to have ‘missed’ it, so don’t worry.” He reassured his friend.

“Speaking of EXO anyway, let me just quickly ask the waitress to turn on the TV louder. They are currently being interviewed as it seems!”

Minseok crosses his legs, once again sipping on his coffee and looks calmly into the screen, while Jimin was already in his fanboy-mode.

Interviwer:  “The topic of your recent song is about a guy who is in love. So your fans want to know if you have already fallen in love or if you’re still free to have. “

*The mic gets tossed around, because nobody wants to answer, so they start laughing awkwardly*

Chanyeol: “As for me, I will take anyone as long as she’s one of our fans. I love you all ~” *the other members nod in agreement*

Chen: “I mean it’s not like we have time for that anyway...?” he said bluntly. *the members have their usual cheerful faces*

Baekhyun in his usual loud and vivid voice: “Well as for me, my mind is already occupied by one special person” He stares into the camera, his eyes playing with it while he continues sing-song and acting all cute. With wide eyes he speaks into the camera “And I want to meet this person again! And when the person I’m talking about sees this, they’ll know exactly that I mean them! So I’d like you to contact me. So just call at our agency ~ <3” He winked and with a peace sign in his hand.

The other members started chuckling and their interview continued.

“Aaaah, such a publicity act!” Jimin sighed.

“I guess it’s their job…” Minseok answered and wanted to take one last sip of his coffee only to find his cup being already empty. Giving space for the question in his mind if this guy ‘Baekhyun’ will be successful with his search.

One didn’t have to say something like this twice to the EXO-Ls for them to actually call at SME or rather show up there in masses, claiming to be the one Baekhyun is looking for.

The contact department and the receptionists hated Baekhyun for his quite spontaneous quest, but being the adorable puppy like boy they couldn’t be angry with him for too long.

At first, so basically directly after the interview, Baekhyun got quite an earful for being so inconsiderate and not agree on what to say in advance, However the production and marketing team notices quite early, that his act wasn’t so bad after all, because EXO was gaining even more attention due to his request to the fans.

In their dorm Baekhyun sat on the couch, a pillow on his lap as he was playing games with Chanyeol. Kyungsoo sat next to them and ate a bowl of cereal and asked the older from the beagle-line:

“Say Baekhyun, you really think he’ll be contacting you?”

“I don’t know, but I highly hope for it!” he gleams with a wide smile, looking shortly to Kyungsoo and then again on the screen. Chanyeol added in:

“It would be really great to meet him! I mean he is kinda responsible for the Baekhyun we have now. So I’d also like to meet him one day!”

“See?” Baekhyun teased. Luhan came from behind and ruffled the brat’s hair at that comment. “We’ll see. But your friend is my friend, so I’d love to get to know him as well.” And Luhan walked away towards Tao, already saying something in Chinese.

“I should really start learning some more Chinese…” Baekhyun mumbled to himself. “Why though?” Kyungsoo asked. “Like I wanna see their faces and then they couldn’t rant about me behind my back.” He narrows his eyes and an overdramatic expression decorates his face. “And maybe, just very maybe, because I want to learn my friend’s language…” now pulling a sulky face.
The two younger boys could only smile at that. Their comrade really is a good one.

2 Weeks have passed, the official ending of the activity period, decided by the SME marketing team. Total number of calls received: 15.000 Number of Email inquiries: 35.000 and approximate fans at the counters: 5.000.

Result: mission failed.

A/N:

I include many details which are essential to the story: I looked up EXO's debut date and stated exactly when Minseok had his accident, so that he would forget everything around EXO's debut und the promotion time. Hence he forgot about his encounter with Baekhyun due to his amnesia. If you remember the diary from last chapter: he forgot about that as well and someone stored it somehwere else.

In later chapters and throughout the story there are hints to the end and why things evolve the way they do. So keep your eyes open ;)

Even though this chapter is more Minseok centric, Baekhyun will get just the same amount of screentime. The POVs will always alternate within the chapters.

In this story Jimin is Minseok's best friend, but he won't make many appearances.