***

Alright, you can do this. Just, focus. Ignore all the sounds around you and keep your goal in mind! 

A pair of deep brown eyes blinked in awe when they caught sight of a blue bird in the trees, flitting by happily as it sang its beautiful song. He smiled at the bird as he followed the creature with his eyes, adam’s apple bobbing up and down in laughter as the bird flew circles over him, seducing him with its song. 

“Hello, blue birdie,” he greeted, the animal chirping in delight at the hello. “Where are you going?” he asked as the bird started flying away. He laughed to himself and started to follow, when he suddenly realized what he was doing and firmly shook his head. 

“No. Focus!” he spoke to himself sternly, readjusting the backpack he was carrying, though he made sure that his plushie, a white rabbit wearing a green hat with a red star, was still inside it and that it could breathe through the opening. 

Lay smiled as he patted the rabbit on the head before looking around the forest again. All of his brothers and Jae had individually gone into the forest to look for Easter eggs. The person with the most eggs would be declared the winner. Despite his easy-going nature, Lay had a competitive streak and did enjoy a good game to play. He was determined to try and win this, too, except that there was one problem; he wasn’t really good at finding things that were missing. 

Let’s face it; amongst the pack, he was always the one that lost his belongings or forgot where he had put them. If it weren’t for his other members reminding him and helping him, he wouldn’t know what to do to with himself. That’s why this time he wanted to prove to them that he could find stuff as well. Just to make a point. 

It was a shame, therefore, that he hadn’t been able to locate a single egg, and that his mind was constantly distracted by all the beautiful things he saw around him. Lay was more astute than people often gave him credit for. He was rather slow to respond at times, but what people didn’t know was that it was because he was already thinking one step ahead of them and was then forced to take a step back to react. 

He didn’t mind if they laughed. He just liked seeing the smiles on their faces. 

“Easter egg,” he started to sing out, looking beneath bushes and near tree roots. “Easter egg, where are you?” 

Lay felt his ears twitching when he heard the breaking of branches nearby. His senses heightened as he sniffed the air. “Uh-oh,” he reached into his backpack to grab his toy bunny. “Double trouble,” he whispered to the plushie, recognizing the faint scent of hortensia and orange blossoms. 

Lay peeked behind the safety of a tree at Chanyeol and Baekhyun running past. Luckily they hadn’t noticed him, but Lay could see them and pouted to himself when he noticed how many eggs they already found. 

“Yah, yah, yah! You’re not supposed to boil them! They’re already boiled, babo!” Baekhyun yelled in his loud voice at a laughing Chanyeol. 

“What does it matter to you what I do with it? It’s my egg!” Chanyeol replied. 

“Excuse you? It’s my egg, thank you very much! I was the one who found it!” Baekhyun protested. 

Lay chuckled to himself as he watched the two of them argue and he relaxed once they passed him. They’d probably make fun of him once they saw that he still hadn’t found an egg yet, and he was still determined to prove to everyone that he was capable of finding things. 

“Alright, Tokki Tuzi,” he directed himself to the smirking toy in his hands. “Help me out, okay?” he struck a silent deal with the toy as he continued his search. It was a search filled with distractions, of which Lay was very well aware of, but he couldn’t help but stop to admire a beautiful flower, or to check up on a small squirrel that seemed to have hurt its foot. He nearly forgotten why he was in the forest until he accidentally dropped Tokki Tuzi. 

“Oh! Sorry,” he apologized to the plushie, brushing off the dirt quickly and cradling the toy in his arms. He checked the ground where the bunny had fallen and tilted his head to the side. “Huh?” Lay bent down and blinked in surprise as he whipped out a colorfully painted egg from the tall grass. 

“Wow!” he exclaimed happily, looking at the bunny and the Easter egg. “Thank you! I knew it would be useful bringing you along!” he chuckled, holding the egg carefully in his hand. Lay didn’t even care if he wouldn’t find another one. This was all the proof he needed to show the others that he was very much capable of finding lost things. 

Feeling cheerful, he carefully put Tokki Tuzi in his backpack again, head sticking out so that the toy could breathe and walked towards the direction he had seen Chanyeol and Baekhyun walk to. Each of them had their own basket waiting for them at the safe zone. Once he put the egg in his basket, no one could touch it. 

However, as he approached the safe zone, he caught sight of Sehun and Tao quarreling with each other and he decided to lay low a moment to observe. 

“Hun-ah! I’m your hyung, you know!” Tao said to an unfazed Sehun, holding a bunch of eggs in his hands. 

“So? By that reasoning, you shouldn’t even be whining!” Sehun replied coolly. 

“Oh, come on! I haven’t found one egg and you got three! Just give me one, okay?” Tao pleaded, looking genuinely upset. Sehun, being the brat he was, rolled his eyes and clacked his tongue. 

“I thought you said you were a hyung? Why are you acting like such a baby? You know the rules of the game, you have to find your own eggs, you can’t have any of mine!” 

“But the others will make fun of me! You’ve seen how they can get towards Lay-ge, too! I don’t want that…” Tao sulked and Lay blinked. It was true that the others awfully about not being able to find things, but he could handle that. Tao, on the other hand was sensitive. He could imagine that the kid didn’t want to be teased so much. 

“Yeah? Well, too bad!” Sehun persisted, dropping the eggs in his basket with Tao staring at him in disbelief. 

“I can’t believe you did that!” Tao exclaimed. “You want to see me cry while the others tease me and with Jae-noona watching?!” he nearly yelled as though Sehun had just plunged a knife in his back. 

“Will you relax? There’s fifteen minutes left! You can find one lousy egg in fifteen minutes,” Sehun brushed off, dragging the whining, dramatic Tao along with him. 

Lay quietly walked towards the safe zone, processing the conversation between the maknaes, though he knew that his mind was already made up. With a gentle smile, he stood in front of Tao’s basket and carefully placed his egg inside of it. 

“It’s okay,” he said as though he could hear Tokki Tuzi protesting against his actions. “We’ll know the truth. Besides, there’s fifteen minutes left. It’s a nice day, so fifteen minutes of relaxing will be fine,” Lay decided, taking off his backpack and leaning against a nearby tree. 

He felt a pleasant drowsiness taking over, with the sun on his face and the gentle breeze; Lay could feel his mind drifting off to the place where dreams came from- but was rudely awakened when the pack had arrived at the safe zone. 

“Yah, what are you doing there, you lazy bum? Gave up so soon?” Luhan called out at him, dropping two eggs in his basket. 

“Oh, Lay-hyungie, didn’t you even try?” Chen asked, a huge smirk on his face as he checked out Lay’s basket. “Yah! See? You didn’t try, did you?”

Lay was bewildered for a moment before a smile dimpled his cheek. He rubbed the back of his neck and nodded shyly. “Guess Easter bunny-nim didn’t go easy on me this year, either,” he commented, his eyes subtly gliding over towards a pleasantly surprised Tao who pointed happily at the egg in his basket. Sehun frowned and counted his own eggs as though he was afraid that Tao had secretly stolen one from him. 

“How is that possible, Lay-hyung? Look, even the baby panda has one egg!” Baekhyun half-scolded him, but Lay only shrugged, smile still on his face. 

“Okay, okay, leave him alone, it’s not his fault that searching for eggs isn’t his-,”

“So help me Buddha, if you finish that sentence with the word ‘style’, I’m throwing my eggs at your face,” Suho warned at a confounded Kris. 

“Cup of tea,” the duizhang finished instead, a defiant look on his face. 

“This is no fun, though! Now Lay-hyung gets punished again this year,” Chanyeol muttered, looking at Lay’s empty basket. At this, Lay got up to his feet, adjusting his clothes. 

“It’s okay, I don’t mind. What’s the punishment this year?” Lay asked, taking it like a man. 

“Wait,” D.O. called out, looking around. “Where’s Jae?” he questioned and this brought a tense silence to drop down amongst the group. 

Lay looked around himself, sniffed the air in hopes to get a whiff of jasmine somewhere- but there was nothing. 

“I haven’t seen her since we started,” Xiumin said quietly, walking towards her basket. “She doesn’t have any eggs either,” he told them. 

“You don’t think she’s lost, do you?” Kai asked, trying to keep his tone flat and bored, but it was obvious that he was worried. 

“I’ll try to call her,” said Suho, grabbing his phone to dial her number. Lay had already grabbed his backpack, ready to head into the woods to go look for her, just in case. He hadn’t seen Jae during the egg hunt either, but he didn’t think that she would get lost. She was a wolf, too, after all, but perhaps it was different for female wolves? Lay wouldn’t know of course. He wondered if Tokki Tuzi was able to find people, too. A childish thought perhaps, but the toy did help him find his first egg… 

“She’s not answering,” Suho said, on the verge of another mental breakdown. 

“Okay, calm down,” Kris started. “She’s probably wandering the woods trying to get back to the safe zone. She can’t be far off. Let’s split up to go look for her.”

The brothers nodded, ready to leave. 

“Lay, why don’t you come with me?” Kris suddenly proposed, but this made the young man frown. 

“Why, gege?” he asked, though he had a feeling he knew what he was going to say.

“Well, don’t take this the wrong way, but one person getting missing is enough, you know?” Kris winced a little, afraid that he might hurt the younger teen’s feelings. 

Lay looked around at his brothers faces, though none of them really met his gaze. He frowned. 

“Yah,” he started, trying not to sulk. “Just because I can’t find eggs doesn’t mean that I can’t go looking for Jae-yah, you know!” he said, making sure to stand his ground somewhat. “And I know the roads of the forest better than any of you,” he reminded them, and it wasn’t a lie. Lay spent a lot of his free time walking around in the woods just to see if his healing abilities were required. He never got lost in the woods- well, in truth, he got lost often, but he simply reasoned that getting lost was exactly how new roads were discovered. 

“We know that Lay-,” Suho tried to soothe, but Lay didn’t want to hear it. 

“I’m going to look for Jae-yah- on my own,” he decided stubbornly, holding onto the straps of his backpack. “I’ll bet I’ll be the first one to find her!” he added because he was a bit annoyed that his brothers had such a lack of trust in him. 

“Lay-ah,” Luhan tried to soothe, but Lay had already turned around to walk back into the forest. The brothers looked at him walking away, the little toy bunny smirking judgmentally at them.