D.O was pacing back and forth around the house, occasionally looking out the window at Kairi's house. He chewed on his thumbnail nervously. "Where could she be? It's already 1 in the morning.." he muttered to himself.

D.O felt worried about Kairi ever since the incident at the SM building. He felt utterly ashamed at the treatment that s were giving her. He knew she did nothing wrong, yet they constantly mistreat her. So he waited for her to return back to her house ever since he came back to his, but she never came home.

"Aish, this girl. Where could she be?" he scolded her quietly. He began to become more worried by the second. "She couldn't have been kidnapped or something, right?" His large eyes grew larger at the idea. He shook the thought away. "No, no. You're just being paranoid, Kyungsoo."

Sehun groggily walked downstairs and rubbed his eyes. He was heading towards the kitchen to get water when he saw D.O and jumped in fright. "God, hyung!" he spat out in anger. "Why are you awake right now?"

"Oh, no reason," D.O said, trying to shoo him away. He knew that Sehun hated Kairi the most, so he had no reason to explain himself to the younger.

"Uhm, okay then," said Sehun, rolling his eyes and going into the kitchen. He came back out and sipped his water. "Go sleep."

"No, I'm doing something." D.O looked out the window again.

"What are you looking at?" Sehun asked, annoyed that was being so vague. He walked over to the window and looked outside. "There's nothing there."

"Exactly..." D.O mumbled under his breath.

"What?" Sehun jerked his head towards the elder when he heard him say something.

"Nothing."

"Hyung, just go sleep."

"No."

Sehun's right eye twitched a bit and sighed in annoyance. "You're obviously being weird and not doing anything other than look at nothing out the window! This is a sign for you to knock out."

"Well, that's none of your business what I'm doing, so go back to bed, Sehun-ah," D.O said sternly, not wanting to be bothered anymore. His patience was running thin.

"JUST TELL ME WHY-"

"FINE!" D.O yelled back. "If you must know, I'm waiting for Kairi to come back home."

Sehun gave him the dirtiest look that he had ever seen. "Why?"

"Because I'm worried about her," D.O sighed in exasperation. He was too tired to argue with Sehun about her.

"Uhm, since when did you care about that ?"

"She's not a !" D.O snapped out of nowhere, leaving Sehun stunned that he could react that way towards him.

"H-Hyung, what's with you?"

D.O sighed. "Look. I'm tired of you fighting with Kairi consistently. She's a nice person if you treat her with respect."

Sehun scoffed. "Yeah right."

D.O narrowed his eyes at the younger. "Why exactly do you hate her so much? She's done nothing wrong to you."

"Uhm, do you not see this?" Sehun pointed at his nose. "She injured my nose!"

"You injured her wrist!" D.O retorted.

"Well, she started it!" Sehun argued childishly.

"You hated her way before your nose got broken-"

"-It's not broken, it's bruised-"

"-so why on earth do you hate her?"

"Do you really wanna know why?" Sehun's eyes blazed in fire. "Because I don't trust her!"

D.O Sighed. "She hasn't done anything shady, what are you sayi-"

"No! Don't you think that it's a little suspicious that she got assigned to us?"

D.O gave him an odd look. "What? No."

"Well, think about it! No one wanted to work with us, and yet she accepts the job?"

"You're forgetting the fact that she actually declined the deal the first time."

"Yeah! But then Soo Man-ssi bribed her with money! That's a little bit shady, isn't it?" Sehun crossed his arms. "And we have no idea who she is! She was his personal assistant? Where did she even come from? Why would Soo Man-ssi put this amateur here to help us?"

"You're thinking way too deep about this."

"Don't you understand what I'm saying?! She came out of nowhere, and we have to expect her to help us? Bull! I don't trust anything she does!"

"And how do you expect to get us back on track, hm?" D.O snapped. "Do you have any other choices? Because believe it or not, whether she has the skills or not, whether she has shady reasons on why she's helping us, she became our only hope in saving us," D.O whispered. "No one else wanted to help, but she did! We can't do it alone!"

"But what if she screws us over?! What if-"

"SO WHAT? We're already ruined, so what's the harm in trying everything we can in trying to get back up?"

D.O sighed in exasperation. "Look, I'm tired of talking about this with you. Go to bed."

Sehun glared at D.O with much contempt. "Fine," he hissed. He stomped his way back upstairs and felt the need to punch a wall.

He whispered to himself, "You may not believe me, and the others may not believe me, but I will never trust that thing."




The team left Busan early in the morning and returned to Seoul before noon. Kairi tried her hardest to try to draw designs in the car, but she lost all of her motivation to work.

Kairi sighed and shoved her sketchbook back into her bag. *Maybe if I listen to the song, it'd help me.* She rummaged through the inside of her bag but realized that what she was looking for was not there. *Oh, shoot. I forgot to pick up the CD from the producer,* she suddenly remembered. She groaned. *Freaking EXO boys and their ability to piss me off.*

She grabbed her notepad and wrote, Can you drop me off at the SM building? I forgot to do some stuff from yesterday.

Jaejun glanced at the notepad and nodded. "Sure. Will you take long? I can wait for you and then bring you back home."

Kairi shook her head and declined. It's okay.

"Alright," Jaejun said as he made a turn to change the area of destination.

They reached the SM building, and Kairi was about to exit the car when Jaejun stopped her. "Wait!" She looked at him in confusion. "You wore that outfit yesterday. Girl, that's ratchet. You need to change." She merely rolled her eyes at him and was about to leave the car when he stopped her again. "NO! I am NOT letting you in there with yesterday's clothes! Go into my trunk and grab my sweatshirt."

Kairi groaned as she went into Jaejun's trunk and grabbed a worn-out college sweater. She took off her blazer and shoved it into her back, putting on the sweater. She looked down, and it looked like she wasn't wearing any pants with her shorts covered by the sweater. She rolled her hair up in a messy bun and closed the trunk.

Jaejun whistled as he eyed her up and down. "Damn, girl. Stop seducing me," he said, resulting in an eye roll from her. He eyed her heels and clucked his tongue. "How can woman stand heels? I will never understand."

Aren't you a woman though?

"…..do you want to die?"

Kairi waved to Jaejun and entered the building. Everyone inside immediately looked at her and whispered to each other. Apparently to them, Kairi looked gaudy. She ignored them and entered the elevator.

She got to the floor of the producer and entered the recording room, finding another man inside. He looked at her strangely and asked, "May I help you?"

She quickly got out her notepad and wrote, I'm EXO's designer, and I was supposed to pick up a CD from their producer yesterday but forgot.

Seeing that Kairi was working for EXO, the man's face grew dark. "Ah, you're working for those boys." Kairi was a bit flustered at the animosity the man used when he talked about EXO, but then she remembered that he was probably the producer of one of those "idiot idols" that Kris blasted on TV. "Well, sorry. I don't know where that CD is."

Kairi frowned and thanked him in a bow. She was about to turn to leave when EXO's producer came inside. "Oh!" He pointed at her in surprise. "It's you again! Hello!" She bowed to him and wrote that she needed the CD she forgot to pick up yesterday. "Ah! I was waiting for you yesterday, but you didn't come." She bowed her head apologetically and took the CD case that he handed to her. "Thanks for stopping by!"

Kairi bowed to him and walked out of the room. But before closing the door completely, she heard the other man ask the producer, "Why would you keep producing for those little s?"

"I don't know. Maybe because I made sure that their release song is gonna be ty and embarrass them further?" The two men laughed at the idea.

Kairi stood there, frozen. *Wow, I can't believe them! How could he?!* Her fists clenched in fury, and she felt like she was about to burst. *What kind of a person would do this to them? That's beyond cruel.*

Kairi was about to burst into the room again and give them a piece of her mind when she heard her name being called. "Kairi?"

She turned around and saw a very sweaty Luhan standing in the hallway with her. He jogged over to her and smiled. "Hey! What are you doing here?" He noticed her tense jaw and angry expression and slowly frowned. "Is there something wrong?"

Kairi looked up at him and chewed on her inner cheek. *Should I tell him that their producer is trying to screw them over?* She looked at his innocent face and frowned even deeper. *I can't break their hopes right now. Not when we're so close to their first performance.* She shook her head, mouthing, "No."

Luhan looked at her suspiciously. He knew that there was something wrong, but he didn't want to dig further into it. "I see… so what are you doing here?"

Kairi wrote, I was just collecting the CD with your song, so I can continue drawing the designs for your concept.

Luhan's mouth shaped into an "O". "I see. Well, are you doing anything after? 'Cause we can hang out or something."

Kairi looked at his sweatiness. Aren't you training or something?

He shook his head. "No, I'm done. I was about to go change clothes, and then I ran into you." He smiled charmingly, which actually calmed Kairi a bit from her anger. "So?"

Sorry, after this, I was going to pick up some fabric for your outfits and then go home.

Luhan pouted. "Can I come?"

Kairi looked at him in surprise. Do you want to..? It'll be kind of boring for you.

Luhan waved her statement away. "No, it's fine. Afterwards, I can buy food."

Kairi frowned. You don't have to.

"Well, I want to. And plus, we're friends, right?"

Kairi stared at the man with slightly wide eyes. *He considers me as a friend?*

Luhan chuckled at her expression. "Don't look at me like that. I'm not like most of the other members who absolutely hate you." He tilted his head to the side and looked at her endearingly. "You're a good person. If the others can't see it, I can."

Kairi looked at him, bewildered. She had never had someone think that way about her in such a short amount of time since Jaejun and Jiki. She didn't know what to think at the moment. She always thought the EXO members were arrogant little jerks, except for a few members, but she didn't ever think that one of them would consider her as a friend.

Luhan laughed again and patted her head. "You're so cute."

Kairi immediately scowled and hit his hand away, which resulted in a long-drawn hiss when she realized that she hit him with her injured arm. Her wrist throbbed in pain, and she gently massaged it with her other arm.

Luhan noticed her pain and went closer to her in concern. "Are you okay?" Kairi looked up at him and nodded, shooing him away. Luhan frowned but let it go. "So shall we go?"

Kairi stared at him for a long while, and Luhan thought she was going to reject him, but she did the tiniest shrug that he had ever seen. He smiled in happiness and clapped his hands. "Yay! Let's go!"

Luhan skipped ahead of Kairi and was about to enter the elevator when he hear her clear behind him. He turned around to see her giving him a look and handing him her notepad. Go change. You stink. He looked down at himself and saw that he was still wearing a sweat-soaked t-shirt and sweatpants.

"Oh, yeah." 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wowowowowowow. So I thought the last chapter would be easy to understand, but I guess some of you guys are confused? jfnkwejnhyti6ctyvgnnf it's my fault for making it confusing. So here's the breakdown of the ending of the last chapter: Kairi goes back to this mansion because someone she misses lives in there (I mentioned briefly in a previous chapter that she used to be rich ohoho), but she would not go inside and say hi because she left her old life behind (part of her mysterious ways that won't be revealed soon). The old woman sees her and thinks that's her granddaughter (I thought it would be obvious that the two are indeed related... I mean... it's too much of a coincidence. Haha I know it's a fanfic, but I want it to be somewhat realistic.). The butler believes Kairi's dead (WHY? I won't reveal that just yet hehe). She's just a mysterious person, man. 

Why did I choose to bring in Kairi's family? Well, a subplot away from the general plot of the fanfic (her helping EXO get back onto their feet) is about Kairi's life and past (which includes her family), and considering that I'm on chapter 40 so far, I thought it'd be okay to formally introduce one of them in. I mean, this story still has a long way to go, so I thought I'd cut some slack and give you a giant hint about Kairi. (Although it won't give you much about her hehe, but hey. The imagination is powerful, you can think of many things of what happened to her)

I hope I cleared the air about some things D: I'll try to simplify some things when I introduce stuff like that. 

I didn't add them in this chapter because it was only an introduction of them. They're not heavily important to the actual plot. They'll show up again though, don't worry hehe :D

School's starting soon for me, and so I'm not gonna be able to update as much anymore D: sorry, guys. Junior year is painful, and I still haven't taken my SAT's yet (cue nervous laughter) I'll try as much as I can to write, so I can scrap by a chapter. But continue being excited about future updates ^-^

Sorry you had to read through that long A/N hehe ~