Liar, Liar

“Sora! You don’t have to carry that.” Baekhyun swooped in, taking the cooler from my hands without giving me a chance to complain. I knew they were all men here, but if they didn't know, girls could lift stuff up too. “Luhan’s in that van.” He pointed with his chin. “You can go ahead and sit.”

“I…” I scanned the whole area that used to be our campsite, seeing that there were still things to put away. “Okay, thank you,” I gave in anyway and numbly spun around to head to the van.

A little tiny bit of myself attempted spacing myself from Luhan in order for my brain to recuperate and tell me how I should act after the... incident. Was I supposed to give an answer? Did he even want one? He hadn't asked. He just told me how he felt. How was I supposed to act, because Luhan made the whole thing look easy and acted like he did before—as if he hadn’t just told me something huge and mind-shattering. As if he hadn’t just dropped an atomic bomb on me.

I stood by the door of the van that Kris was going to drive and saw Yixing, Minseok, Jongdae, Tao and Luhan all squeezed in and ready to head back to the villa after our one-day camping trip. Luhan was looking over something Yixing was showing in his iPod, but he immediately straightened and shoved Yixing to the side to make room for me to sit beside him.

When I sat, there was tension between the closed space of Luhan’s thigh against mine that I felt up until the van was already on the road a few minutes later. I became aware of every little motion I was doing. Even moving to scratch an itch seemed like a bad idea. Breathing became manual.

Tao was waving around his Cheesestring. “Look guys, it’s a boy.” He peeled his Cheesestring to look like a little man with spiky hair and uneven arms. Tao practically shoved it in front of Jongdae’s face. “He looks like you.”

Jongdae stared with an impassive expression. “Tao stop.”

“Wait, now you have no arm.” Tao peeled off one side of the Cheesestring that resembled his person’s arm and popped it in his mouth.

“Tao—”

He ate another piece. “Aha, now half your face is gone. It looks like Luhan now.” Tao proceeded to make his person dance in front of Luhan’s line of vision.

Luhan responded by taking the snack while ripping it off Tao’s hands cruelly and shoving everything in his mouth. Minseok was the first one to burst into fits of laughter from either the shock that had been written all over Tao’s face or how Luhan was cringing from chewing so much cheese at the same time.

“Why did you do that?!” Tao stomped his foot.

“That’s why you don’t be annoying,” Luhan spoke after swallowing.

The upset younger one crossed his arms and refused to look at any of us as he turned toward the window. He was mumbling what sounded like angry Chinese to himself.

I didn’t realize I had been watching Luhan the whole time until he looked at me and asked shyly, “What?”

Saving myself from unnecessary embarrassment, I quickly thought of something. “You didn’t even share some cheese with me?”

“I’ll get you a whole pack of it one day. They come in groups of forty now the last time I saw them in a grocery store,” Luhan explained. When he fidgeted with his seatbelt, he brushed against my arm.

“Forty?”

“Mmhm.” Luhan reached out and took my right hand in his and placed it on his lap. He drew circles on my knuckles with his thumb.

Rather than scowl at him like I intended for capturing my hand, I ended up biting a grin back. “What are you doing?” Our voices were low, barely disturbing Yixing who decided to sleep with his headphones on.

“Holding your hand,” he said matter-of-factly. “You’re my fiancée right now, so you can’t complain.”

“Who says I can’t complain? I’ll complain right now.”

Luhan narrowed his eyes. “If you do, I’ll shut you up with a kiss.”

I laughed at his weak challenge knowing fully that he wouldn’t do something so rash. “I dare you.”

“Can you two stop being giggly and all gross there?” Tao whined nudging Luhan’s knee with his shoe. “Get a room.”

“You’re just mad because Luhan ate your Cheesestring,” Minseok pointed out, making Tao deny it with a scream that made Kris swivel the car in shock for a second.

As soon as Junmyeon pushed open the front door to the villa after unlocking it with a handy card, the others couldn’t help but push around him in a stampede to get inside, causing Junmyeon to stumble into circles.

Chanyeol stood in the middle of the living room with his arms wide open. “Home sweet home!”

“We don’t even live here!” Sehun pointed out to which he received a playful pounding from Chanyeol with his fists.

I looked back at the vans to where we still kept the tents and other things we brought to the camp and figured that we should have unloaded the car, but then realized we would be leaving Jeju in a few days. It was best to just leave everything there to save for the hustle of packing again.

Our few weeks in Jeju were almost over, I sadly realized.

“Hey! World War Z is on!” Kyungsoo who had first seized the remote to the TV pointed at it. Through the screen, Brad Pitt’s character had just recovered from a plane crash.

A few of the boys wrestled each other for a seat on the couch while others turned their attention away from it and found something entertaining to do elsewhere. I happened to be unwillingly one of the movie-watchers after Luhan leaded me to the couch with his hands on both my shoulders.

“He injects himself with this thing when he gets trapped with a zombie. And the zombie ignores him and he found the cure. The end,” Kris blurted.

“Whaaat?”

“Way to spoil it for everyone!”

“Get out of here!” Minseok threw a possibly sweaty sock at Kris’ face, making him gag in disgust.

I was stuffed into the space between Luhan and Sehun with the movie still on-going on screen despite Kris’ act of douche-baggery and saying aloud spoilers. Chanyeol was situated on the middle of the couch with a bowl of popcorn on his lap to which anyone would lean toward to grab some of the snack.

Feeling a tap on my left shoulder, I turned my head to stare at Sehun questioningly. His eyes were glued to the screen, seemingly oblivious and it wasn’t until I heard Luhan’s quiet chuckle that I realized he tapped me on the opposite shoulder on purpose.

“What kind of a prank was that?” I jabbed Luhan’s ribs with my elbow. “How old are you?”  

“How old are you to still fall for that?” Luhan stuck his tongue out at me.

I leaned to the side to reach into the bowl of popcorn across Sehun. “At least I— Oh, sorry.” I didn’t grab more popcorn, but rather Chanyeol’s finger that was submerged between the kernels at the same time mine were.

Chanyeol’s face scrunched into his booming laugh. “You can eat my finger if you want,” he whispered, though it didn’t really help because Sehun was frowning in annoyance between us.

I lit up dramatically like seeing gifts under the tree during Christmas. “Can I really?”

“Go ahead.” Chanyeol pointed his finger at my mouth while I held it open expectantly. I snapped my jaw close just as he pulled away. He was laughing until he accidentally bumped into Kyungsoo beside him.

“You guys, shhh.” Sehun took his time exchanging a glare between us.

“Yeah Sora, shh!” Luhan slipped an arm around my shoulders and brought me down on him until my head was resting underneath his jaw in an embrace.

“What are you doing?” I half-heartedly protested, squirming.