Elena walked slowly through the streets, her head filled with thoughts of her date. It had been so much fun and, most importantly, they were going to meet again! She walked aimlessly, lost in blissful thoughts.

“Elena-ssi!” The sudden shout brought Elena out of her stupor and she turned to see Jiwoo and Min-ji running up to her.

“What are you guys still doing here?” She asked, surprised to see her friends.

“Like we could just leave you there for real!” Jiwoo replied.

“Yeah. What happened? Why did you suddenly decide he wasn’t a creep? Come on, date details!” Min-ji demanded and Elena laughed, preparing herself to tell her friends everything. And then she remembered that she couldn’t. They couldn’t know who he was. Suddenly she was at a loss for words.

“You know he could totally have been a creep even if he was hot,” Jiwoo scolded her, saving Elena from thinking up an excuse.

“It wasn’t… I mean, yeah I know but… we really connected, you know?” Her friends giggled.

“Oh we saw,” Min-ji said with a grin, “We hung around in nearby shops for a while, then when we looked through the window after an hour you were chatting to him with a super dreamy look on your face!”

Elena blushed. Had she really stared at him like that?

“So, what does he look like? He must have been hot, yes?” Jiwoo asked excitedly, dragging Elena and Min-ji towards a small square with benches.

“He was… wonderful.” With that Elena began telling her friends everything she could about the date. She told them about his beautiful dark eyes and his adorable smile, she described their conversations and did her best to explain the deep connection she had felt with Zitao. When she told them they had exchanged phone numbers and would hopefully be meeting again her two friends giggled and grinned and all three of them were happy.

“I still find it amazing that he has the same name as Exo’s Tao. I mean, what a coincidence, right!” Min-ji commented at last.

“Y… yeah.” Elena laughed nervously, hoping her friend’s wouldn’t notice her avoidance of the subject. “Anyways, it’s getting late! We should head home, there’s that project for Jae Won seonsaeng-nim’s class tomorrow.”

“Ah, I forgot about that!” Min-ji complained as the three of them began walking towards the train station and Elena breathed a sigh of relief. Subject avoided successfully, for now.

***

After the business at the studio Tao got scolded once more for being late.

“I understand that this was your first date and it’s good that you have a girl you like but you really must be more careful, Zitao. You have a job and it’s important for you to show up on time. Not just for you but also for the other members, we all had to wait for you.”

“I’m sorry, manager.” Tao bowed, apologizing once more. He had arrived almost 20 minutes late, something he had never done before, and felt horrible about it. And yet... he couldn’t help thinking all this scolding was worth it for the extra time with Elena. He shouldn’t think like that, he knew. As an idol a lot of people looked up to him and he had to do his very best for his fans. Being late wasn’t an option. He had never felt this way before, feeling like something else might be more important than his job. It scared him a little.

“I’ll be more careful next time, I promise it won’t happen again.” He finished, bowing again.

As his manager shook his head and walked off Kris came up to him with a smirk. “So, there’ll be a next time?”

“Well, we exchanged numbers. And she said she wanted to meet again.” Tao realised he was smiling even as a blush forced its way onto his cheeks.

Kris put an arm around his shoulders. “Good going, buddy. Told you you could do it.”

The two of them joined the other members on their way to the cars and Tao found that Kris wasn’t the only one interested in his date.

“So what was she like, your panda hat girl?” Chen asked once they came over.

“Yeah, how did the date go?” Baekhyun added and Chanyeol nodded.

“Did you have problems talking?” Xiumin wondered.

“No, she speaks Korean so we could talk a lot. She’s an exchange student here, majoring in Korean.” Tao smiled at the memory of their chat, relished in every detail he had learned about her.

“That’s great!” Luhan said as he patted Tao’s shoulder. “So, how did it go?”

“This little player got her number,” Kris told them, which earned Tao some cheers and ‘good job’ comments.

“And she’s an Exo fan like you thought?” Lay asked.

“Yeah, she said we’re her favourite band. But she didn’t freak out or anything, she just… accepted it.” Blushing once more Tao told them about her reaction and how happy it made him. He might have ranted a bit about how nice it had been to talk to her but the others just smiled, letting him go on.

“Now you just have to plan the second date.”

“Yeah, gotta make it super awesome since you like her this much.”

“We’ll help you brainstorm for good date ideas.”

“How about…”

Tao beamed gratefully at his friends, his brothers, his family. He really didn’t know what he would do without them. At that very moment, his life felt perfect.

***

The following Monday, for the second time, Elena kept staring at the doors of the bus, waiting for Zitao to appear. All Sunday she had waited eagerly for Monday to arrive, wanting nothing more than to see him again. She hadn’t dared text him; a mixture of shyness, not knowing what to say and not wanting to seem clingy keeping her from the phone. He hadn’t texted either and so she had simply waited.

When she got on the bus that morning she even sat on the outer of the two seats in the hopes of keeping the inner one free for him, a thing she never did because she found it rude, especially during morning rush hour. So far it had worked, despite a couple of guys standing close by no one had taken the seat.

Then there he was. Large hood and a cap pulled down over his eyes plus a scarf over the lower part of his face, it couldn’t be anyone else. Elena tried to stop herself from grinning and failed. Tao smiled as well when he saw her, in fact he beamed once she moved to the inner seat and offered him a seat next to her.

“Good morning.” He greeted her, pulling the scarf down a little so she could see his face better.

“Morning.”

There was silence for a while, the two of them glancing at each other, both unsure how to start a conversation yet both unable to contain their smiles.

Eventually Tao asked; “Did you have a nice weekend?”

“I did!” Elena replied hastily, glad to have the silence broken, “I mean, I guess I did. I just worked on a project for school. Not really interesting. I guess I didn’t do much.” She trailed off, realising how boring her Sunday had really been.

“What kind of a project was it?” Elena was amazed, Tao sounded genuinely interested.

“Um, it was a short essay on a book we read. It’s for my literature class.” Elena explained a bit about the book and, despite feeling like she was just rambling about her boring paper, Tao listened intentively to every word. Finally she ended it with; “Anyways, what did you do?”

“Me? Oh, well, I spent most of the day practicing for…” Tao stopped, realising he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about the new stuff they were working on, “... for stuff.” He finished lamely, feeling silly.

“You must be busy with that a lot.” Elena said, not in the least bit disheartened by his reply.

“Yeah, we have to work hard. But it’s fun though, I like it. I get restless with too much free time on my hands, I end up not knowing what to do.”

“Ah, I know that feeling! Like when I’m on holiday from school I sometimes feel like all the days just blur and I’m not really accomplishing anything.”

“Exactly!” Tao smiled, happy that she understood his feeling.

Just then two girls came onto the bus, teenagers in school uniforms. They were chatting loudly as they got on but as the bus took off again one of them gasped and, to Elena’s horror, stared directly at Tao. She realised that, as they had talked, Tao had pulled his scarf even lower and his cap had lifted up a bit when he nodded, revealing more of his face. He might not have been recognisable except to someone who knew his face and looked directly at him from the front, but that was what she feared had just happened.

Then a shrill voice said: “Ohmigawrsh! Isn’t that EXO’s Tao?”

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

a/n: Apologies once more for taking so long. This time I have a list of excuses (feel free to ignore them, I just thought you guys should know):
a) my laptop got a virus and it took them over 2 weeks to fix it
b) midterms happened
c) There was a bit of a family crisis... if you go into my exo oneshot collection and look at the Lay - Nothing I can do chapter you'll see what I mean x.x

Anyways, I just want to say thank you so much for reading this story, it means a lot to me. Also: even if it takes me a long time to update I'm not giving up on this story, I'll reach the end of it eventually. Hopefully you'll stick around for that and enjoy it ^^