Deer Luhan

Good luck weaning Baekhyun off Game of Thrones.  I think he’s addicted.  Prepare for the withdrawal symptoms when he has to go cold turkey between finishing the current three seasons and waiting for the fourth season to start airing next April.

Leigh

I left the coffee shop at around lunchtime, absolutely star-struck, with Changmin’s and Yunho’s laughter ringing in my ears and two signed albums tucked under my arm.  Back at the dorm, I put in a couple of hours on the Chinese flashcards – my vocabulary was now up to nearly four thousand words, which I was quite proud of and also quite surprised had survived the amount of sustained cramming I’d been doing (I probably owed a lot to having left my enormous French vocab list for A-level to the last minute, or I would not have been capable of squeezing that many words into my head, though having a photographic memory helped: crude as it was, I treated the Chinese characters as a bunch of pictures and everything was instantly easier).

Everything was dandy until I received a phone call from Baekhyun summoning me to the hospital.  I had absolutely no intention of going, and I told him so, because the last thing I wanted was yet another discussion about the not-date.

“I’ll castrate Sehun if you don’t come,” he’d warned me.  “I’ve found a curved implement to do it with.”

“Have you been watching Game of Thrones?” I asked him with suspicion.

“In the game of Baekhyun’s Pleasure, you come or you die,” he’d replied superciliously, and hung up.

Exasperated, I tried calling back (he didn’t answer), and then gathered my stuff together to make the familiar trip to the hospital.

Chanyeol, Kai and D.O. were sitting around Baekhyun’s bed when I arrived.

“Ah!  Le Englishborn has deigned us with her presence!” Baekhyun exclaimed jovially as I entered.  I winced at yet another pun with my name – this time with his horrific French accent – and dumped my bag on the floor with a heavy sigh.

“No, there are no dragons, not even Kris, and I don’t have an army of the Unsullied, and I only came because you threatened to do unspeakable things to my friend.”

“We need to take the Game of Thrones box set away,” I heard Kai muttering to D.O.  “It’s only going to get worse.”

“And also,” I said, “what curved implement?”

Baekhyun grinned wickedly and held up a pair of nail scissors.

I shook my head in disbelief.  “I’m so done with you.”

“Be seated,” he told me, and Chanyeol shoved a seat into the back of my knees so that I had no choice in the matter.  “You’ve been a cruel, cruel girl, and as Hand of prettiness to the Boy King Sehun, I have convened this Small Council to institute a new policy in Exoplanet.  You are hereby to refer to all of us as oppa.”

I just gazed at him, nonplussed and trying to make sense of the archaic Korean he was spouting.  I’d watched the odd drama in Korean, but never a historical one.  They’d never really been my thing because it felt a little like trying to sit through Shakespeare marathons with only cameo appearances from the comedies.

Chanyeol produced a gat from under the bed and popped it on Baekhyun’s head, as if it would enable me to understand him better.  Baekhyun sighed and reached for a piece of paper on the bedside table, tucking it into his pocket.

“I thought I wouldn’t have to use this,” he said, reverting to contemporary speech, and I saw that the piece of paper was a printout of the Hand’s pin.  “You said Game of Thrones was your favourite book and TV series.”

I glanced from him to the others, totally baffled.

“I told you so,” Kai said to D.O.

“I…” I returned my gaze to Baekhyun, “I… don’t understand.”

He held up an imperious finger, as if I’d been trying to launch a long, rambling complaint.

“Last night.  Sehun.  Did he or did he not ask you to call him oppa?”

I frowned.

“How do you even know?”

Kai held up his camera with a smirk.  “We have proof on video, babe.”

“What Kai and Baekhyun mean,” D.O. cut in, “is that they have incriminating pictures on Sehun, and Kai and I overheard your entire conversation in the park, but Kai’s camera was too dead to film it and neither of our phones could pick it up properly from a healthy stalking distance, so we cornered him last night with Chanyeol’s help and blackmailed him into repeating it.”

Incredulous, I shook my head again.  “You guys are unbelievable.”

“Enough of that,” snapped Baekhyun.  “And you, Leigh.  Did you or did you not evade the proposal and not do so?”

Proposal?  Was he aware of the connotations of the language he was using?  Then again, I reminded myself, looking at him, this was Baekhyun, and yes, he was definitely aware of his word choice.  Slumping back in the chair, I exhaled wearily.  “Well, yes, for practical reasons.  One of which has now been proven to me by you setting Kai and D.O. on my tail: anybody could overhear, and if it’s the wrong person, it could be a disaster.”

Baekhyun dropped his hand and his imperious persona.  “Wait, how did you know it was me?”

“Changmin from TVXQ has a whole bunch of texts from you lot that he showed me.”

“D*mn.”

Chanyeol let out a low chuckle.

“Anyway,” said Baekhyun, removing the printed-out Hand’s pin and the gat, “we decided to make it easier for you to call Sehun oppa when you’re around him by allowing you to call all of us oppa, too.  We’re all older than you.  Now, repeat after me: Baekhyun oppa!  Get well soon!”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.  Really, it was sweet that they thought we were close enough to do that, but their motivations were far from innocent.

“Why?” I demanded.

“Come on,” said Chanyeol.  “Just get it over and done with.  He’s not going to let any of us leave until you do.”

“Chanyeol, really?”

“Hey,” said Baekhyun as the door opened.  “That’s Chanyeol oppa to you.”

“Chanyeol oppa to who?” asked Suho, looking at us all in bewilderment.  “Baekhyun, why did you ask Chen and Lay to quarantine Sehun in the dorm?  They locked him in the airing cupboard and all three of them are refusing to breathe a word about it beyond it being your idea.”

“That’s Baekhyun oppa to you,” D.O. covered smoothly.  “We’re playing inverse ge