"How far do you think we'll get before he explodes?" Chen grinned. The kid had finally finished his latest Pokémon quest and had joined Lay and Luhan for dinner sans the DS. The three of them had been discussing the recent turn of events and had just created a list of Kris's uncharacteristic behaviour.

"Pretty far, if my theory's is correct," Lay replied. "The usual Kris would have went ballistic over every single thing on this list. So the fact that he hasn't means that something big is stopping him." Something infinitely worse than the antics of his team members, which for the past few days, had been fairly tame. Well, that was about to change.

Luhan put up a hand."So what's our plan?"

Feeling like a general at a military tactic meeting, Lay tapped his pencil against the notepad. "Here's what we'll target: skin, sleep and style."

*****

"Argghhhh!!"

Lay sat up on his bed, rubbing his eyes. It was just after eight but for once, he didn't mind waking up early. Judging from his ear-piercing shout, Kris had just discovered their bathroom switch-a-roo.  

"What's going on?" Lay asked as he entered the bathroom. It took a Herculian effort not to smile at the sight of their esteemed leader with white construction glue slathered all over his livid face.

"Nothing," Kris muttered darkly. "Guess the moisturizer expired or something." Rather than shower Lay with threats and insults, he turned and began scrubbing roughly at the sticky liquid.

Maybe it was time to provoke him, just a little. "What's that smell? It's almost like...vinegar." It was, in fact vinegar, which the three of them had pilfered from D.O.'s kitchen and dumped into Kris's favourite triple-nutrition fortifying shampoo.

Kris ran a hand self-consciously through his hair. "Uh, I don't know what you're talking about."

Thankfully, Chen chose that moment to join their little bathroom party. "Ugh. It smells disgusting in here." He sniffed the air, standing on his toes as he reached Kris. "Yep, it's definitely you. Better put on some deodorant if you don't want to scare away your own fans."

Still muttering, Kris stalked out without a backward glance. Lay grinned at Chen and held out a hand for a high-five. 

*****

"Have you seen my bag?" Kris asked.

"You mean your man-purse?" Chen quipped. Kris shrugged, looking more harried than annoyed. He had on a wrinkled cardigan tucked into baggy harem pants and looked nothing like the impeccably dressed runway model that he usually tried to impersonate. Lay was impressed that he had scrounged up a semi-decent outfit after the three of them 'accidentally' put his favourite clothes in the washing machine.

"Oh I'm sure it'll turn up," Lay answered before turning back to his laptop and pointedly ignoring him. The old Kris would have ordered them all to search high and low for the thing, but their leader merely ran a hand through his hair in frustration.

"You can borrow mine," Tao piped up. The kid was too nice for his own good, but then again, the Gucci bag he was so eager to lend pretty much belonged to Kris anyway (it had come out of his paycheque, after all). "Duizhang, are you honestly going out dressed like that?"

Lay kicked Tao beneath the table, hoping to distract him from his fashionista tendencies. Unfortunately, Tao continued to blabber on about colour palettes as he ushered Kris to his room.

It was such a shame that the stalker fan girls lurking outside couldn't snap a picture of Kris in his embarassing get-up. Lay would probably die happy if a fashion terrorist photo of their esteemed leader wounded up on the Internet (for eternity).  

*****

That evening, Kris returned looking as if he had been dragged through hell.

"I'm going to bed," he announced as soon as he removed his shoes. Lay nodded, trying his hardest to look sympathetic rather than gleeful. As soon as Kris closed his bedroom door, he turned to Luhan.

"How many alarms did you hide?" he whispered.

Luhan grinned back. "Eight."

"Until when?"

"One for every hour until 5 a.m."

Lay snickered. They had an early practice the next day, which meant Kris would get less than two hours of continuous beauty sleep.

At exactly ten o'clock, the buzzer went off. They held their breaths as they stood outside Kris's room, ears pressed to the door. Beneath the incessant ringing, they could hear thuds and muttered curses as Kris searched for the well-concealed alarm clocks. An hour later, they repeated the process and tried not to laugh as Kris began swearing loudly in English. Judging by the loud thump and subsequent howl of pain, their leader had taken his anger out on the poor chair

"I think he's given up," Luhan mused. It was a quarter past midnight and the third alarm had fallen silent after running its course.

Lay shrugged. "All the better. I highly doubt he's going to get any sleep tonight which means our work here is done."