Deer Luhan,

On second thoughts, I think I’d like the HunHan teasing back.

Leigh

After the New Year’s Day scare, life in the dorm got back to normal.  Tao was challenged over his name for answering Kris’ phone and not referring to himself as Huang Zi Tao (apparently the challenge was legitimate even if it was for a nickname) and Chen made sure not to say anything stupid when I was around alcohol.

On the morning of the third, the day before a large fan meet to be held a city over, five of us woke up missing half a right eyebrow.

Kris was the first to notice it as, for once, he was the first up.

“Who is this blasted eyebrow plucker?!” was the tone for our alarms that morning as doors slammed open and we blearily sat up, looking at each other.

“Luhan,” Lay said, significantly more awake than I was as Kris tore out of our room and into Xiumin’s.  “Part of your eyebrow’s disappeared.”

“Huh?”  I stopped rubbing my face and patted the upper edge of my eye sockets.  Sure enough, rather than the outer half of my eyebrow, there was a faint dusting of bristle.  I frowned and looked over at him.  “Wait – yours has too!”

“Ree Lee?”  Lay patted his forehead, just as I had done.  “Huh.  So it has.”

He seemed unfazed by it, and my coffee-deprived brain just managed to figure out from that and Kris’ angry whirlwind tour of the rooms that it must be fairly normal to wake up without eyebrows intact.

We were called into the living room for a meeting shortly afterwards.  Kris was prepared with small mirrors and eyebrow pencils – this had evidently happened often enough for it to be a regular drill.

“So who’s missing eyebrows this time?” he asked with a sigh.  All of us raised a hand except Tao, who let out a sigh, close to tears.

“For the last time, gege, it wasn’t me!”

“Tao, you’re the only one without missing eyebrows!  Who else would it be?

“I don’t know!” he wailed.  “I just know it wasn’t me!”

“He has a point,” Lay said as he handed me a mug of coffee from Xiumin.  “Last time Luhan was the one without missing eyebrows and he said it wasn’t him either.  And the time before that, it was Chen and he said it wasn’t him as well.”

I had to hide my smirk behind my mug of coffee.  It was beginning to sound like a prank one of my cousins had pulled at boarding school, in which all but one of his year had woken up with a pink streak in their hair (all against school regulations, of course), and my cousin had included himself among the victims so he didn’t get caught.  He’d chosen the teacher’s favourite as the unaffected one, though, with the result that the man was reluctant to punish anybody and they’d all wandered around school with semi-permanent pink hair for a couple of weeks.  From what I could see, it obviously wasn’t Tao or Kris, and I knew I hadn’t done it, so it had to be one of the other three.  My instinctive reaction was Chen, and so, apparently, was everybody else’s.

“Are you kidding?” he demanded, gesturing to his face.  “I don’t even have long enough hair to cover it!  Why would I do that to myself?”

“Oh, the eyebrow stripper’s struck again, has he?” Luhan said with evident amusement when I rang him after lunch.

“Yeah.”  I exhaled wearily and traced patterns on the floor of the gym with my hand.  Lay was dancing next door with Chen and Xiumin, so I didn’t want to disturb them, but it was safer up here than it was in the dorm.  “Everybody except Tao looks like an absolute tool.  It’s kind of funny, but it’s frustrating at the same time and Chen won’t admit it’s him.”

“Oh, it’s not,” Luhan told me.  “It’s Lay.  I caught him last time he did it, so he promised to leave me alone that time in return for me not telling the others.  It’s hilarious how berserk Kris goes.”

I couldn’t help a small chuckle.  “I wouldn’t have pegged Lay for a prankster.”

“Leigh, are you absolutely sure you’re living in the EXO-M dorm, or are you just blind?  Everybody pulls pranks on each other.  People always assume it’s just Chen who’s the joker, but it’s not.”

Remembering Xiumin mucking in with the hair dye and fake tan, I had to concede Luhan was right.

“Tao and Kris, though…” I said.

“Kris was the one who invented the challenge game.  We reckon he only goes ballistic because he knows it’s much funnier if we get a rise out of him when we do stuff.  Tao’s the only semi-serious one of us.  He mucks in with the fun and games, but for some reason he never tries pulling pranks.”

“Do you prank people?” I asked him.

“Of course.  It’s great fun.”

I was going to have to think of some fun stuff to do.  But more importantly—

“Luhan, how’s all this stuff with your aunt and dad going?”

“Well, my dad’s able to eat solid food again and keeps griping about being bed-ridden,” Luhan said, “and it looks like my aunt’s being held somewhere in Hebei Province, from the ransom notes we’ve been getting.”

“Ransom notes?”

“Yeah.  I got the third one this morning.”  His voice was beginning to sound a little strained.  “It’s making me worry.  They attached some fingernail clippings this time.  Last time, it was a lock of hair.  I’ve sent the nail clippings for a DNA check, but I’m really scared that next time it’s going to be a f-finger or something.”

“Oh, Luhan.”  I wished I could reach out and give him a hug through the phone.  He sounded like he really needed it right then.

I heard him sniff.  “I’ll be okay.  She’ll be okay.  I’ve got men on it, and we’re going to go survey the area we think she’s in over the weekend.  Then I just have to make up my mind about whether we fork out the cash or try to rescue her.  My dad wants to go for the rescue because he doesn’t trust them to actually release her, but he’s not well enough to do anything, so I have to make all the important decisions.  And I don’t know if I can.  What if something goes wrong?”

I didn’t envy him.  I really didn’t.

“I’m so sorry, Luhan,” I told him.  “I’m sure everything will turn out fine.  If there’s anything I can do to help— someone’s coming, gotta go!” I interrupted myself as the door creaked open.  There was a tremulous sigh before he hung up, and when Chen emerged from the room, I thanked my instincts in not hanging on to the call.

“Hey, Luhan,” Chen said, sounding a little short of breath.  His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat.  “I’m just going to grab some water – then do you want to sing?”

No, not really, I told myself, but I knew I couldn’t really avoid it.

Bless him, Chen put my less than stellar vocals down to my throat not being fully recovered, which, in fairness, it probably wasn’t.

“Some nasty bug you got, Lu-ge,” he commented.  “I’m glad none of the rest of us caught it.  Do you wanna go over Miracles again or shall we call it a day?”

I really, really wanted to call it a day, but I still had to prepare for the eventuality that Luhan wouldn’t be able to return after the weekend, and we had a TV appearance on the Monday and three more after.

“Let’s go again,” I mumbled, thanking D.O. with all my might for his amazing crash course in singing when we’d been back in Korea.  It was odd to think that I’d only been in China for six days.  It already felt like years.

Chen sat back down at the piano and I scrunched up my noise, trying to remember the Chinese lyrics.

We stopped after the first verse as it was all we’d have to perform on shows (I was supposed to take over Baekhyun’s lin