Very, very belated happy birthday to Aryahegde.  I am so sorry.  Life kind of got on top of me and then I cut my eye and then it was Christmas.  But better late than never, right?

<< Rewind: 4 <<

It turned out Changmin had been the evil mastermind behind everything.

“So I was wondering,” said Kyuhyun, flicking apple seeds at Minho after Jonghyun from CNBlue, the fourth member of Kyuline, had left the building, “which EXO member do you think would be happiest about performing in drag with us?  We need a full compliment of one person from each major boy group.”

“Luhan?” suggested Minho, spitting cherry pips at the mirror and barely noticing the apple seeds.  Changmin and Kyuhyun both spluttered.

“He doesn’t count.”

“Yeah, he’ll probably just send his double anyway.”

“But he’d look amazing in a dress!”

Changmin and Kyuhyun just exchanged glances.

“Minho, baby—” began Changmin.

“You are but a mere sapling.  You wouldn’t understand,” concluded Kyuhyun patronisingly.

“ you both,” retorted Minho.  “Why am I friends with you?”

“Because we buy you food.”  Changmin grinned at him.

“No, he buys you food,” Minho corrected Changmin, pointing to Kyuhyun.

“I used to be rich,” Kyuhyun lamented.

“I used to have space in my fridge,” Minho muttered.

“And I used to starve,” said Changmin dispassionately.  “Maybe we should ask Suho to dress up in drag.  I bet we could convince him.”

The practice room door slammed open and Chen stormed over to the hi-fi, apparently not noticing that they were there.  A sudden blast of heavy rock music hit the room so loudly the windows shook.

“I used to have eardrums!” Kyuhyun bellowed over the grungy guitar, but Changmin was already on his feet, screaming “duet, duet!” with a beer bottle poised as a pretend microphone.  Minho only took about three seconds more before he silenced the machine permanently with a flying kick that would have required censoring for tough love on TV.

The kick had unfortunately caught Chen first and the boy sat up in the wreckage, looking bewildered.

“What the heck was that for?” Minho demanded him.

Changmin and Kyuhyun exchanged glances again.

“Dude,” said Kyuhyun.  “He should be the one asking you that.”

“Yeah,” agreed Changmin.  “You just broke my favourite song.”

“You can’t break a song—” Minho began hotly.

“Sehun’s being an idiot!”  Chen threw his hands up in the air.  “We gave him ing weeks to propose – well, Leigh did because she was the one who ended up in hospital doing nothing – and he didn’t say a thing!  I don’t know if he’s an idiot or has no balls, because Leigh certainly has more than any normal female.  Maybe she has his, for all I know.”

“Whoa.”  Minho looked at him.  “Sehun’s planning on getting married?  Isn’t he, what, nineteen, twenty?  He’s still pretty much a baby.”

“No, that’s Xiumin.”

Everybody looked at Kyuhyun, who cleared his throat.  “Well, Xiumin looks like he’s still in this teens.”

“There’s about a twelve year difference minimum between a teenager and a baby,” said Changmin sagely, popping open another can of beer, “and if you make that mistake in your love life, you will be jailed.”

Looking disturbed, Kyuhyun turned back to Chen.  “So if Sehun’s preparing to pop the question, when did they start dating?  Leigh has told me nothing of this.”

“Neither,” Changmin butted in, “and I’m her favourite celebrity, so this is odd.”

“Sehun is Leigh’s favourite celebrity, and I never want to go through that amount of second hand ual frustration again in my life,” Chen argued.

“Who’s Leigh?” put in Minho.

“Think Luhan but female,” the other three responded together.

“What the ?”

“I thought my brains were going to explode when I found out,” Chen agreed.

“Seriously, though.”  Minho looked from one to the other.  “Sehun’s crushing on a female version of Luhan?  What is this, some screwed up hetero version of the HunHan ship?  How did Suho respond to it?  Isn’t long-haired Luhan his type?”

“Good thing nobody gave Luhan Taemin’s Sherlock hair extensions,” said Changmin.  “God knows what would have happened.  He probably would have jumped the poor guy.”

“Unfortunately, my hair extensions aren’t aphrodisiacs.”

Everybody jumped.  Taemin had appeared among them, sitting crosslegged on the floor and munching on pizza.  “Ooh, beer.”

“You’re underage!” Minho yelled, pulling it away from him.

“I’m nearly twenty-one.”

“You’re underage in America!”

Taemin just looked at him and took a sip out of Changmin’s beer instead.  “I was thinking about lending Luhan my hair extensions so he can do that drag stage with you guys.  He’d out-pretty you all.”

“What if Sehun can’t tell the difference between Luhan and his girlfriend, though?” Minho fretted.

Taemin crammed the rest of the pizza into his mouth, interested.  “Whoa, Sehun has game?  When did he start playing?”

“He didn’t,” groaned Chen.  “He at asking people out.”

“Wait, so they aren’t even dating?” demanded Changmin.  “This is despicable.  We should cut him from the Evil-Maknae-in-Training list.”

“Who is Sehun failing to date?” asked Taemin.

“Female Luhan,” the other four responded in unison.

Taemin shot to his feet.  “What the hell?  Luhan had a change?”

Minho whacked him in the back of the knee, making Taemin buckle.  “Of course not, idiot.  Luhan is manly, remember?  So manly.”  He simpered, cooing the last two words in English.

“Oh my God.”  Changmin looked like he’d had an epiphany.  “Oh my God.”

“I know, I know.  It was a pretty good impression.”  Minho bowed.

“No,” said Kyuhyun in English.  “Luhan’s manly.”

Taemin and Minho both looked at the pair like they’d gone nuts.  Chen, though, hiccupped and suddenly started snickering.

“I feel like we’re missing out on the joke,” said Minho.

“Luhan’s manly,” repeated Changmin, almost choking with laughter.  “Literally.  He’s man Leigh.”

“Hyung, you’re drunk,” said Taemin bluntly.  “Do you start speaking in Spanish when you’re high?”

“What?”  Kyuhyun stared at him while Chen and Changmin dissolved in hysterics, Chen hitting the floor with his fist.

“Well, he’s drunk and he’s attempting to speak in English,” said Taemin.  “I heard him attempting to speak to Zhou Mi in Mandarin once when he was concussed, so it’s clearly a language thing when he’s out of his mind.”

“He was speaking to Zhou Mi in Mandarin because he was trying to learn some phrases to say to Chinese fans,” Minho pointed out.  “He just happened to have hit his head not long before.”

Taemin shrugged.  “Same difference.  It still looks like he’s possessed, however he messed his head up.”

“Oh my God.”  Chen wiped tears away from his eyes.  “Leigh would approve.  Leigh would approve so much.  No, wait, her dad would approve.  He was the one who named her.”

“But who is Leigh?” demanded Taemin.

“Girl Luhan,” grinned Kyuhyun mischievously.

“You’ve already said that and it makes no se—”

“And Luhan is man Leigh!”

“I give up,” said Taemin, nicking Changmin’s beer.  “I think I’m going to put in a call to the men in white coats.”

Once he had left the room, Minho turned to the cackling trio.  “I know you think this whole girl Luhan thing is hysterical, but where in God’s name did he find a female double of himself?  If that’s what you’re talking about.”

For some reason, it only made them laugh harder.

“Dear lord in heaven,” breathed Kyuhyun two weeks later when Chen told him they’d discovered they actually had no way to contact Leigh not that long after she arrived back in the UK.  “Sehun didn’t just miss the boat on this one.  He missed the ing tortoise-drawn