Deer Luhan, With Love

9

“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 messed up by that hit.  You’re passable as Luhan on an off-day for all the hard choreography, but God help you for the easy stuff.”

“Maybe somebody overheard me and Lay talking about it when we were out?”  I shrugged and dropped the plastic bags I was carrying on the ground.  Lay snapped out of JPG mode at the mention of his name.  “And we got food, by the way.”

“And what’s this about your memory loss?” Suho demanded.  “You said you were just a bit concussed and confused about the steps, not that you’ve forgotten the best part of last year and some of us, too!”

Baekhyun twisted around, looking hurt.  “Really?  You forgot who some of us were?”

I scratched the back of my neck, unsure of how to reply to that.  Chanyeol tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the computer screen.

“It says so here, Baek.  Look.”

Baekhyun spared the screen a brief glance before returning his attention to me.  “Who did you forget?”

I opened and closed my mouth a few times, wondering if I could reply without hurting anybody, except perhaps Xiumin, because he looked like he didn’t care.  Fortunately, Lay, sensing a delicate situation and my awkwardness towards it, stepped in.

“Does that matter?” he asked.  “He remembers who we all are now.”

It didn’t stop Suho from looking concerned.  “You really should go to the doctor, Luhan—”