Deer Luhan, With Love

26

“Hey, why are you shunting all the blame to me?”

“Maybe because it’s your fault this isn’t organised?” Xiumin suggested.  “It was your idea to go out.”

“Hey, I’m Canadian!  You can’t expect me not to celebrate a national holiday!”

His appeal to nationality had a sudden lump springing to my throat and I shakily handed the phone to Xiumin before I could drop it.  Kris was kind of right: we could no more expect him not to go out for New Year’s than somebody could expect me not to watch the fireworks from the rooftop of my house as the years changed over.  It was going to be the first time in my life that I wasn’t seeing them, and an abrupt rush of homesickness hit me.  At least in Korea for Christmas I’d been able to speak to people, and I’d had a conversation with my family and with Abbie and I’d even seen Ryan and eaten turkey.  Plus I was Korean, so celebrating a Korean Christmas really wasn't that far removed.  But this time, things were that much more alien, and it was going to be much harder to join in the fun and games when I couldn’t even say anything.

“You all right, Luhan?” Xiumin asked me.

Pulling myself together, I gave him a wan smile and nodded.  He didn’t look convinced.

“Luhan,” said Lay, “they need proof it’s you, like a credit card or passport or registered diner number or something—”

Registered diner number?  I pulled out Luhan’s Chinese credit card and gave it to Lay so that he could read the details over the phone.

“Can we get going?” Tao spoke up, shuffling from leg to leg and hunching his shoulders against the cold.

“Well,” said Lay, handing me back the credit card, “we’re due dinner at quarter to nine.  Remember that super snazzy place LuLu took us to when we finished Mama promotions?”

That was all it took for Chen’s jaw to drop open and him to start drooling.

“Oh my God, Luhan, marry me.  That scorpion dish I had then was the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life.”

It was extremely difficult not to shoot him a disgusted look.  I had enough trouble understanding snails and frogs legs, and I’d actually eaten both (though I will maintain until my dying day that the frogs were just like intensely flavoured sea-reared chicken and not frogs), but scorpion?  Was he insane?

“Uh, Chen,” said Lay, “since it looks like your affections lie more with the scorpion than with Luhan, shouldn’t you be looking for one of them to ask down the aisle?”  He blinked innocently a couple of times and everybody burst out laughing, Chen included.  I gave a small smile, undecided as to whether or not Lay was naively serious about that question or whether his poker face was even better than Sehun’s.  And to be honest, the image of a scorpion in a bridal dress was as funny as it was disturbing.

“Luhan, how are these three?” Xiumin asked, waving Luhan’s phone under my nose.  “I know you like this one—” he pointed to the top one, “—and I suppose we can introduce the others to our secret hideout once they’re drunk enough not to remember the way there.  And the other one’s just round the corner from there, right?”  He winked at me.

Xiumin, you are a god among men, I thought at him, and I nodded without even looking.  If Xiumin recognised them, that hopefully meant I wouldn’t have to lead the way.

The others cheered as Xiumin read off the name of the first one and Tao finally tugged his hands out of his pockets as he moved away from where he’d been sheltering in the doorway.