Happy birthday, Hunniehxoxo, and happy early birthday to Sharodz101!  This update is actually a few hours early because I am going to need my sleep.

<< Rewind: 3 <<

In the end, it was Suho who put through the call to Leigh’s parents, though he did request Kai’s presence for moral support and on the off chance they felt more comfortable speaking in English, which Suho didn’t feel he could do.  Given the horror stories he’d heard about Leigh’s mother and the ultimate reason why she’d ended up in Korea, Suho had been braced for a shouting match and the need to use his politest, most soothing Korean, so he was thoroughly taken aback when he got through to the girl’s father, who calmly asked for precise details of the injuries and then hung up after a polite thank you, noting that the call was going to be expensive and that they shouldn’t prolong it.

“I think Leigh said her father was a surgeon,” Tao explained when Suho returned to the others with Kai, completely baffled.  “He’s probably operated on people in similar conditions.”

“I thought he was an eye surgeon?” Chen chipped in.

“Yes, but this is his daughter,” Suho pointed out.  “Where’s Kris?”

“Then he’s probably in shock or didn’t want to break down over the phone to strangers,” Chen said.  “And Kris hyung is dealing with the manager and the media.”

Suho looked at his watch.  “What, already?”

“Yeah.  Some of them dropped by at the crack of dawn hoping for scoops and updates on the gunman and riots and stuff and one of them recognised Lay when he went outside for fresh air, so of course the paparazzi appeared after that,” Luhan explained with a yawn, rubbing one of his eyes.  “Lay didn’t want a huge fuss about the girls, particularly in case anything comes out about Leigh, and everybody was going crazy thinking one of us was injured or dying because of the riots, so he told them he was here because D.O. was admitted for pneumonia, and Kris figured it would be a good idea to let our manager know before he finds out through press articles.  He practically went schiz.  Don’t know how he got here so fast.”  He yawned again.  “By the way, does anybody want food?  I’m kind of hungry.”

“I don’t think I can stomach anything,” Sehun said in a low voice.

Everybody was taken by surprise.  It was only the second time he’d spoken since arriving at the hospital, the first being when he’d requested personal space.

“Sehun, you need to eat,” Tao admonished quietly.

Suho looked the maknae up and down.  “You also need to get your injuries checked out.”

Sehun gave him a bleak look and mutely refused to go to the cafeteria with them.

The girls who had only been chloroformed were discharged that afternoon.  Sehun had again refused to eat with complete obstinacy, and Lay and Luhan had barely touched their food, but the manager still managed to completely misread the gloomy atmosphere surrounding the boys and insisted it would be good PR to go and visit each of them individually to wish them well and commend them for their bravery.  Even Chen was struggling to put on a smile, but the mood took a decided turn for the worse when they entered the ward DoNotReply was in, where three or four media crews were reporting the safe return of the missing girls, and Kim Bongcha sprang out of bed to attack Luhan with a hug, squealing, “Oppa, thank you for saving me!”

Luhan and the others were initially too shocked to respond, but Lay stormed out in an uncharacteristic display of temper as the manager demanded “what do you mean, saved her?” and the photographers closed in.  Baekhyun followed him.

By the time Luhan managed to pry Kim Bongcha off him, she had found enough Mandarin to explain “him me saviour bad guys”.  This was unfortunately correctly interpreted, and in the ensuing chaos, DoNotReply almost blew Luhan’s patience when she suddenly prodded him in the chest and said: “Oppa, should you be up and about, though?  You’ve just had two major surgeries very close to each other and it’s not healthy.”

If he had understood exactly what she was referring to, Luhan probably would have hit something, PR or not.  Kris started making excuses to get them out of the ward as quickly as possible, and the manager rounded on them almost at once, demanding explanations for exactly what had been going on behind his back and whether or not D.O. really had pneumonia or something more serious.  Suho gave him a very vague response which only angered him further and asked him to deal with the media.

“I don’t think we should tell him about Leigh,” he said in a low voice as the manager stalked off.  “We don’t want anybody else finding out.  It’ll only put him in an even worse mood and I also don’t think any of us are in a psychological condition to receive a proper dressing down, particularly Sehun because he’s probably going to get a dating speech.”  He couldn’t help a glance at the boy as he spoke.  Sehun was still practically catatonic.

Yi joined them mid-afternoon to help talk to all the concerned parents and guardians of the now-rescued girls.  He was much more serious than usual, informing the parents that he had to take statements from all the girls and talking to them about legal processes and whatnot.  Two of the girls had to be kept in the hospital for surveillance as their conditions were bad, and once all the parents and other girls had left with instructions to turn up at the police station the next day, Yi told the boys grimly that not everything had been cleared up. 

“We don’t know what happened to the boss,” he said.  “We think we’ve got most of the rest because there was a gun battle just after we pulled Mr Lu’s mother out, but we couldn’t find him anywhere.  He seems to have escaped.  There’s a manhunt for him.”  He paused.  “We think we got all the mafia at the apartment block, though.  They’re not going to be hard to put awa