Deer Luhan,

Permission to take Lay with me when I leave?  He’s a total sweetheart.

Leigh

If Lay ever invites you to spend the afternoon with him, accept, whether or not you’re posing as his fellow group-mate.  He’s one of the sweetest guys I’ve ever met, and he has a way of making you feel good about yourself, no matter what Luhan’s absence and loose ends might throw at you.  Not really hard to see why he was marketed as a healing unicorn.  He’s a unique little narwhal, is Lay, and given the chance, I’d say he could probably even cheer up the Grumpy Cat.

I actually thoroughly enjoyed the day out.  Lunch was great (I paid – I felt totally vindicated in using Luhan’s card for the first time), and we spent a pleasant few hours wandering around Seoul, chatting in Korean and greeting people who recognised us.  It was the first time I’d been out without being pretty much stalked by fans, and I have to say it made a change.  We even nearly forgot about buying food for the dorm.

All in all, I was in a relaxed and rather cheerful mood when we got back, only to find ourselves actually blocked from getting into the building through the main entrance by a huge horde of hormonal teenagers (even getting in around the fire escape at the back proved difficult), but my happiness didn’t deteriorate until the manager met us in the stairwell.

“Ah, Luhan,” he said in a tone that I instinctively took to be trouble.  “I was just about to ring you.  How’s the translation for Stay coming along?  We’ve put it up as the fun performance at the start on the seventeenth.  Kai said you two wouldn’t be able to have a decent dance routine polished in time, so we’ll save that one for another occasion.”

It took me a couple of moments to organise my thoughts.

“But Stay’s not going to be ready either—” I tried as Lay slipped in through the door.

The manager clapped me on the back and laughed.  “Rubbish!  It was looking great just before we left on tour.  The bridge needs the choreography to be a bit more bombastic, but that won’t take long to fix.  And besides, you and Kai doing a duet dance isn’t as fair to the others as taking six of you and singing a song you wrote.  I know you’re nervous about it, Luhan, but you’ve got to look at your image too.  You’ve been getting a lot of criticisms lately for not dancing as well as usual, but performing a song you wrote yourself will restore your credibility.  Hell, we could even release it as a single or something if it goes down well.  The fans are going to love it.  But we’re in Korea, so it’d go down better and it would be a better image for you if it’s done in Korean rather than Chinese.  Makes you look more talented and dedicated towards the fans.  Make sure to run the translation past us by tomorrow afternoon.  We won’t be able to record it, but it’s enough time to prepare to sing it live if you only use three singers.”  He ruffled my hair and left before I could object.

Angrily brushing my hair back into position with my hand, I stomped into the dorm.

The EXO members were all huddled round the sofa.  Chanyeol was sitting there with his laptop and an uncharacteristically serious expression.  Baekhyun and D.O. were sitting beside him and Chen was on the floor by their feet, busily engaged in tying all their shoelaces together.  Tao had perched himself on the sofa’s armchair and was peering over at the computer screen.  Kai, freshly showered and with only a towel around his waist, had his arms braced against the sofa back as he stood by Suho and Kris, who were conversing in low voices as they cast glances at the computer.  Sehun was trying to involve himself in the conversation and Lay was staring into space.  Xiumin looked up as the door shut and scowled.

“But we can’t keep his head injury quiet anymore!” Suho was insisting.  “Everybody on the internet is suddenly a self-proclaimed PTSD expert because the whole of Korea knows Luhan hit his head!”

“Hyung—”

“I didn’t say to keep it quiet,” Kris retorted, “I said we shouldn’t make a fuss—”

“Hyung!”

“—About taking him to hospital – shut up, Sehun, we’re trying to have a serious discussion here.  And all the international fans know Luhan hit his head too.  Have you seen it trending on Twitter?  #ohdeergetwellsoonLuhan?”

“Hyung!” Sehun bellowed, making everybody jump.  “Luhan doesn’t want to go to hospital or he would already have been and he’s in the room right now, so why don’t you discuss it with him?”

Everybody swivelled around to stare at me.  There was a long silence.

Eventually, I raised a hand and waved.  “Hi, guys.”

Kris was the first to react, raising a hand in reply.  “Yo, Luhan.  You’ve made headlines.”

Suho jabbed a finger at the computer screen.  “How did they find out?  I thought we agreed to keep your head injury secret so there wouldn’t be a huge hullabaloo about it.”

I frowned.  I’d ended up telling Suho and the others about hitting my head when Baekhyun had got really annoyed about my mistakes in rehearsal before the end-of-tour concert.  Sehun and I had concluded it was the best explanation for me being antisocial (I still didn’t know them or how well I was supposed to get on with most of them at that point), dazed (which I wasn’t, as it hadn’t been a hard hit) and forgetting the choreography (which I hadn’t known in the first place).  I hadn’t mentioned it to anybody outside EXO, though, and they’d all agreed not to as well.  Once I’d ‘lost’ my voice, it had been decided that being ill would be enough of a cover for not performing at full capacity, although Kai had been extremely impressed at how much I’d picked up in such a short time.  As far as I could remember, his exact words had been “your brain must have been