in another world, I think I'd miss you if we never met (4/?)
very long a/n: sorry for the delay, guys! among other rl things, I've been completely distracted lately by the loveliness that is paperlegends (big bang for merlin fandom) and the number of stories getting posted now that september is here. (I would babble here about how great I think merlin/arthur is, but I would be going horribly off-topic.)
just so that everyone's clear though: sadly, I don't predict future chapters coming out at any faster a pace. ): part of the reason for this is, like I've mentioned in the chapter 1 a/n, the point of my posting up this story isn't so that I can finish up what I didn't manage to write last year - the logic was more along the lines "I have pieces of a story, I might as well post them up since they're no good sitting on my computer". unfortunately, I failed to remember that while I was writing this last year, instead of writing in a chronological order, I skipped over what I mentally labeled "connecting bits" and just wrote the more interesting stuff-happens scenes instead. so you can see why my plan to just dump everything I have so far isn't going to work out. instead, I'm actually trying to write in the majority of the necessary events between "big scenes" as I'm posting, and taking into account my travel plans/writing-speed lately, this usually ends up taking forever.
the point of this very-long a/n isn't to annoy you all, but rather, to let you guys know what's happening so that hopefully no one's surprised/disappointed when updates on this slow down even more. I'm still going to try my best to write what I can, of course, but just wanted to keep everyone updated. ♥ (thank you all for the lovely reviews, btw - they're the best encouragement I can ask for. <3)
without any further ado:
in another world, I think I'd miss you if we never met (4/?)
super junior m: zhou mi, kyumi
pg-13, 2530 words in chapter 4
one day, zhou mi wakes up in a world where he was never part of super junior m.
-- previous.
When Zhou Mi went to bed, he was in his room in the SJM dorms, lulled to sleep by Donghae's quiet snores the next bed over.
When he woke up, he found himself in a strange room.
It was strange in that it looked nothing like the room he shared with Donghae, and yet there was something oddly familiar about his surroundings. His first thought was, predictably, I must be dreaming, because what else could is possibly be? And yet he knew he’d always been more prone to dreams where everything was frustratingly vague. This time, the details of his surrounding were far too clear. He could feel the fabric of the clothing he was wearing against his skin and the stretch of the socks he’d forgotten to take off the night before around his feet, and as the minutes ticked by, it was all starting to feel too terrifyingly real to be a dream.
He stood up in one swift moment, determined to figure out what was going on.
The room he was in was cramped and sparsely furnished. There was a small desk pushed up right next to the bed he was in, spanning most of the length of the room. Books were neatly stacked up on it (Advanced Composition and Music Theory among other titles he could see) next to a silver laptop and a worn-looking wallet. Sitting on the side closer to the bed was a cell phone - an old model he doesn’t recognize - and a pair of reading glasses. A backpack was propped against the door, and on the floor by the bed sat a pair of outrageously yellow cow slippers.
A pair of extremely familiar-looking slippers. In fact, if he wasn’t mistaken, they looked exactly like the pair his friend had given him as a joke on his twentieth birthday.
Pushing down the odd sense of déjà vu, he turned to the other side of the room. A tiny bookshelf was in the corner, CDs and textbooks crammed into any free space. On top of the shelf was an array of photo frames. Zhou Mi squinted at the blurry figures for a second before moving closer.
As the faces came into focus, Zhou Mi froze.
His parents and grandparents smiled back at him.
What the hell was going on. The initial panic he’d tried to quell came back with a vengeance, and in a flurry of movement, he grabbed the cell phone from the desk, flipping it open and once again ignoring the sense that something was disturbingly familiar. Without any conscious thought, his fingers pressed the series of digits corresponding to Kyuhyun’s number and were hovering on the “call” button when Zhou Mi stopped. Swallowing hard, he deliberately erased the digits he’d just entered before typing in Han Geng’s number instead.
Hello, you’ve reached Han Geng. I’m sorry, but I can’t take your call right now -
Siwon was next, followed by Ryeowook, Donghae, even Henry, Each number yielded either a voice message or endless ringing.
Where was everyone? As far as Zhou Mi could remember, they had individual photoshoots that morning and not an interview - so even if one person was busy, someone else should have been able to pick up. With no other choice, Zhou Mi swallowed his growing confusion and hesitantly dialed Kyuhyun’s number again.
It rang once, twice, three times before someone picked up.
“Yeoboseyeo?” came the familiar voice, slightly tinny through the earpiece, and Zhou Mi felt the relief flood through him.
“Kui Xian,” he breathed, not quite able to keep his voice from shaking. “It’s me. Zhou Mi.”
He knew it was an unnecessary statement on his part even as he said it, because there was no way Kyuhyun wouldn’t be able to recognize his voice, but there was some odd sort of reassurance in establishing his own identity.
A pause. “Zhou Mi?”
There was something odd about the inflection of his name on Kyuhyun’s lips, but Zhou Mi disregarded it, heart still pounding as he continued, words tumbling out of his mouth like a tidal wave. “Thank god, Kui Xian, I’m so glad you’re there. I… don’t know what’s going on, but something’s wrong - I know I went to sleep in my own bed last night but I woke up a few minutes ago, I don’t know where I am or how I got here and -” He made himself pause, taking in a deep breath. He thought he could make out the faint sound of Kyuhyun’s breathing. “Are the other members there with you right now? I tried calling, but no one was picking up. Where’s Geng?”
There was no immediate reply, and Zhou Mi wondered if the call had been cut of. “Kui Xian? Hello? Are you still there?”
“Um, hi,” came Kyuhyun’s voice after another beat, slightly hesitant. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” He sounded puzzled, and his voice was off somehow - polite, Zhou Mi realized suddenly, the way Kyuhyun was when he ran into reporters or SM Entertainment executives or strangers. Zhou Mi hadn’t heard it directed at him since the days when they’d first met.
“Kui Xian? Why are you taking like that?” The panic was back. “Stop joking around, okay? I’m being serious here. Is there anyone else with you right now?”
There was another long silence.
“I’m sorry, but I have no idea who I’m talking to. Who are you?”
Zhou Mi dropped the phone.
~
He realized soon enough that no, he wasn't in some stranger's room where the stranger in question had randomly decided to put up photos of Zhou Mi's family members. The roomfelt familiar because it was familiar - it was the exact replica of the tiny apartment he used to live in when he’d first moved to Beijing from Wuhan, before Korea and SM Entertainment. Except he wasn’t sure “replica” was the right word to use - that implied a reproduction or a copy, whereas Zhou Mi had the most unsettling feeling that he actually was in his old apartment. A look out the kitchen windows had proven him correct: the locksmith’s tiny stand was exactly where he remembered it to be, across the street and next to the noodle house run by the middle-aged lady who used to give him extras whenever he’d eaten there.
It almost felt like he’d somehow stepped back five years in time, except the towering skyscrapers a block down from the noodle house certainly wasn’t something he remembered being there before. And skyscrapers certainly didn’t build themselves overnight.
Zhou Mi had no idea what on earth was going on. Either Kyuhyun was playing some practical joke of epic proportions on him - which seemed a little too farfetched, all things considered - or something was seriously wrong.
Running back into the room he’d woken up in, he plugged in the cable by the desk and turned on the laptop.
~
Super Junior M debuted on April 8th, 2009 as Super Junior's third subgroup. There were six members: Han Geng, Siwon, Ryeowook, Donghae, Kyuhyun, and Henry. They were the first international group to have members of both Chinese and Korean descent, and although there was controversy in the beginning regarding Henry being a new member, the other members had been quick to show their support. Before long, Henry's charm and talent had won everyone over. The group had rapidly risen to popularity and had gone home with most of Asia's newcomer awards that year. They'd just released their first mini-album a few months back, and their fanbase was as strong as ever.
It had taken Zhou Mi a quick trip to baidu to learn all this. The next few hours had been spent visiting fansites for every scrap of detailed information he could find.
He’d tried to visit his own baidu page, along with that Qmi site he’d always affectionately followed in his free time, but both had only led to messages stating that the pages he was looking for could not be found.
It was this more than anything else that convinced Zhou Mi that something was wrong. No one would have been capable of pulling off a prank this elaborate - no one would have gone this far.
But what exactly had gone wrong? Zhou Mi mentally recounted his facts. When he’d gone to bed last night, everything had been fine. He’d fallen asleep in his own bed in the right room in the right dorm - and had woken up this morning to discover that not only was he halfway across the city, Kyuhyun (and possibly the entire world) apparently had no recollection of him.
He sat back down on the bed, breath coming out in a heavy whoosh as he stared at his hands. No matter how he thought about this, the entire situation just made no sense. People didn’t just miraculously teleport around the city. Boybands didn’t just forget they had another member.
There seemed to be no logical course of action (and of course not, Zhou Mi thought half hysterically - why would it ever occur to him to prepare for a situation like this?) but even so. He needed some kind of confirmation that he wasn’t just going crazy.
He had to be sure.
~
Super Junior M lived in an apartment near the outskirts of Beijing, away from the busiest streets and central tourist spots. It gave them some semblance of privacy, at least. It had never really bothered the members that they were farther away from the heart of the city - it wasn't like any of them could go out anyway - but for Zhou Mi, who now had to take public transportation all the way there, it took the better half of the morning.
By the time he’d woven through the crowd of fangirls camped near the building and punched in the access code to unlock the front door (that seemed to have stayed the same, at least), it was already nearing eleven o’clock. Zhou Mi was on his way to the elevator when he was stopped by the security guard.
For a second, his heart leapt - he recognizes me, he thought, a sudden hope flaring in his chest - but that quickly died as he realized that in all the times Super Junior M had lived here, not once had the guard actually approached them, opting to sit in his makeshift “office” and smile his greetings.
His fears were confirmed when the guard looked at him, no flicker of recognition in his eyes. “Who are you, and how did you get in,” the man asked gruffly, his stern expression brooking no room for excuses. Zhou Mi had always thought the security guard was rather unsuited for his job with his kindly appearance and rounder figure, but with the image he was presented with now, he could see why the man had been hired.
“I’m here to visit Super Junior M,” Zhou Mi said, stuttering out the first thought that crossed his mind and internally berating himself for not having thought up a more plausible explanation earlier.
The guard looked at him carefully. “Do they know you’re coming?”
“Um. I don’t think they do, but Kyuhyun gave me the access code a while ago. I was going to call but I forgot.” Zhou Mi tried to look convincingly sheepish while his mind raced to doublecheck that the information he was spewing out made sense.
“And you’re … Kyuhyun’s friend?”
Zhou Mi was about to nod when something warning bells went off in his head, and he caught himself just in time. Super Junior M could hardly leave the dorms, with fangirls hounding them at every opportunity. It made no sense to say he was Kyuhyun’s friend, simply because Kyuhyun hadn’t had time to make friends in Beijing. “Oh no,” he said quickly, realizing from the narrowing of the guard’s eyes that he’d taken longer than he should have in replying. “I’m Han Geng’s friend - I met the rest of the members through him.”
The guard scrutinized him for a moment longer before finally letting him go. Making his way into the elevator, Zhou Mi gave a large exhale of relief before pressing the button to close the door.
A soft ding signaled that he’d reached the tenth floor. Zhou Mi took a left turn, heartbeat quickening as he approached the familiar-looking door at the end of the hall. As he lifted a hand to knock, he suddenly realized that it was highly unlike that anyone would even be in the dorms at this time.
A few knocks indicated that his guess had been correct.
Throat dry, he turned to the high-security keypad installed on the side of the door. Praying that the room code too had stayed the same, he punched in the familiar 12-digit number and turned the handle with baited breath.
The lock opened with a soft click.
At first glance, things were more or less as Zhou Mi remembered it, with minor changes here and there. The photo he’d hung up by the living room was no longer there, as were the half-finished lyrics he’d left stacked on the coffee table, but Donghae’s shoes were still littered hazardously by the doorway and the fridge remained covered in Ryeowook’s colorful post-it notes. Video game consoles were precariously placed onto a chair, and Zhou Mi found himself moving them onto the table automatically - Kyuhyun would never let them hear the end of it if someone accidentally sat on them.
He was looking through the individual rooms, noting the way roomates had changed when the sound of keys in the lock froze him in his steps. The sound of familiar chattering and laughter was unmistakable. For a second, Zhou Mi wondered if it would be a good idea to try and actually hide. Frantically looking around the rooms and coming up with either behind the couch or in one of the closets, he shook his head - the former would be too obvious, and he would never be able to sneak out of the dorms unnoticed if he went with the latter. Taking a deep breath, he waited instead.
And then the next moment, the door opened and six boys spilled into the room, still talking, the sounds of Chinese and Korean mixing into one big jumble. Zhou Mi stood there, feeling as if his limbs had been paralyzed as he took in Han Geng and Siwon and Henry and Ryeowook and Kyuhyun, whose arm was thrown casually around Donghae’s shoulder.
As if feeling his gaze, Kyuhyun suddenly looked up. His eyes widened momentarily in surprise as he took in the sight of Zhou Mi standing in the middle of the living room before narrowing. “Hyung,” he said loudly, voice cutting across the talking and grabbing everyone's attention. Any sign of the amusement that had been in his expression just seconds ago had disappeared. “I think we have a visitor.”
-- tbc.
just so that everyone's clear though: sadly, I don't predict future chapters coming out at any faster a pace. ): part of the reason for this is, like I've mentioned in the chapter 1 a/n, the point of my posting up this story isn't so that I can finish up what I didn't manage to write last year - the logic was more along the lines "I have pieces of a story, I might as well post them up since they're no good sitting on my computer". unfortunately, I failed to remember that while I was writing this last year, instead of writing in a chronological order, I skipped over what I mentally labeled "connecting bits" and just wrote the more interesting stuff-happens scenes instead. so you can see why my plan to just dump everything I have so far isn't going to work out. instead, I'm actually trying to write in the majority of the necessary events between "big scenes" as I'm posting, and taking into account my travel plans/writing-speed lately, this usually ends up taking forever.
the point of this very-long a/n isn't to annoy you all, but rather, to let you guys know what's happening so that hopefully no one's surprised/disappointed when updates on this slow down even more. I'm still going to try my best to write what I can, of course, but just wanted to keep everyone updated. ♥ (thank you all for the lovely reviews, btw - they're the best encouragement I can ask for. <3)
without any further ado:
in another world, I think I'd miss you if we never met (4/?)
super junior m: zhou mi, kyumi
pg-13, 2530 words in chapter 4
one day, zhou mi wakes up in a world where he was never part of super junior m.
-- previous.
When Zhou Mi went to bed, he was in his room in the SJM dorms, lulled to sleep by Donghae's quiet snores the next bed over.
When he woke up, he found himself in a strange room.
It was strange in that it looked nothing like the room he shared with Donghae, and yet there was something oddly familiar about his surroundings. His first thought was, predictably, I must be dreaming, because what else could is possibly be? And yet he knew he’d always been more prone to dreams where everything was frustratingly vague. This time, the details of his surrounding were far too clear. He could feel the fabric of the clothing he was wearing against his skin and the stretch of the socks he’d forgotten to take off the night before around his feet, and as the minutes ticked by, it was all starting to feel too terrifyingly real to be a dream.
He stood up in one swift moment, determined to figure out what was going on.
The room he was in was cramped and sparsely furnished. There was a small desk pushed up right next to the bed he was in, spanning most of the length of the room. Books were neatly stacked up on it (Advanced Composition and Music Theory among other titles he could see) next to a silver laptop and a worn-looking wallet. Sitting on the side closer to the bed was a cell phone - an old model he doesn’t recognize - and a pair of reading glasses. A backpack was propped against the door, and on the floor by the bed sat a pair of outrageously yellow cow slippers.
A pair of extremely familiar-looking slippers. In fact, if he wasn’t mistaken, they looked exactly like the pair his friend had given him as a joke on his twentieth birthday.
Pushing down the odd sense of déjà vu, he turned to the other side of the room. A tiny bookshelf was in the corner, CDs and textbooks crammed into any free space. On top of the shelf was an array of photo frames. Zhou Mi squinted at the blurry figures for a second before moving closer.
As the faces came into focus, Zhou Mi froze.
His parents and grandparents smiled back at him.
What the hell was going on. The initial panic he’d tried to quell came back with a vengeance, and in a flurry of movement, he grabbed the cell phone from the desk, flipping it open and once again ignoring the sense that something was disturbingly familiar. Without any conscious thought, his fingers pressed the series of digits corresponding to Kyuhyun’s number and were hovering on the “call” button when Zhou Mi stopped. Swallowing hard, he deliberately erased the digits he’d just entered before typing in Han Geng’s number instead.
Hello, you’ve reached Han Geng. I’m sorry, but I can’t take your call right now -
Siwon was next, followed by Ryeowook, Donghae, even Henry, Each number yielded either a voice message or endless ringing.
Where was everyone? As far as Zhou Mi could remember, they had individual photoshoots that morning and not an interview - so even if one person was busy, someone else should have been able to pick up. With no other choice, Zhou Mi swallowed his growing confusion and hesitantly dialed Kyuhyun’s number again.
It rang once, twice, three times before someone picked up.
“Yeoboseyeo?” came the familiar voice, slightly tinny through the earpiece, and Zhou Mi felt the relief flood through him.
“Kui Xian,” he breathed, not quite able to keep his voice from shaking. “It’s me. Zhou Mi.”
He knew it was an unnecessary statement on his part even as he said it, because there was no way Kyuhyun wouldn’t be able to recognize his voice, but there was some odd sort of reassurance in establishing his own identity.
A pause. “Zhou Mi?”
There was something odd about the inflection of his name on Kyuhyun’s lips, but Zhou Mi disregarded it, heart still pounding as he continued, words tumbling out of his mouth like a tidal wave. “Thank god, Kui Xian, I’m so glad you’re there. I… don’t know what’s going on, but something’s wrong - I know I went to sleep in my own bed last night but I woke up a few minutes ago, I don’t know where I am or how I got here and -” He made himself pause, taking in a deep breath. He thought he could make out the faint sound of Kyuhyun’s breathing. “Are the other members there with you right now? I tried calling, but no one was picking up. Where’s Geng?”
There was no immediate reply, and Zhou Mi wondered if the call had been cut of. “Kui Xian? Hello? Are you still there?”
“Um, hi,” came Kyuhyun’s voice after another beat, slightly hesitant. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” He sounded puzzled, and his voice was off somehow - polite, Zhou Mi realized suddenly, the way Kyuhyun was when he ran into reporters or SM Entertainment executives or strangers. Zhou Mi hadn’t heard it directed at him since the days when they’d first met.
“Kui Xian? Why are you taking like that?” The panic was back. “Stop joking around, okay? I’m being serious here. Is there anyone else with you right now?”
There was another long silence.
“I’m sorry, but I have no idea who I’m talking to. Who are you?”
Zhou Mi dropped the phone.
~
He realized soon enough that no, he wasn't in some stranger's room where the stranger in question had randomly decided to put up photos of Zhou Mi's family members. The roomfelt familiar because it was familiar - it was the exact replica of the tiny apartment he used to live in when he’d first moved to Beijing from Wuhan, before Korea and SM Entertainment. Except he wasn’t sure “replica” was the right word to use - that implied a reproduction or a copy, whereas Zhou Mi had the most unsettling feeling that he actually was in his old apartment. A look out the kitchen windows had proven him correct: the locksmith’s tiny stand was exactly where he remembered it to be, across the street and next to the noodle house run by the middle-aged lady who used to give him extras whenever he’d eaten there.
It almost felt like he’d somehow stepped back five years in time, except the towering skyscrapers a block down from the noodle house certainly wasn’t something he remembered being there before. And skyscrapers certainly didn’t build themselves overnight.
Zhou Mi had no idea what on earth was going on. Either Kyuhyun was playing some practical joke of epic proportions on him - which seemed a little too farfetched, all things considered - or something was seriously wrong.
Running back into the room he’d woken up in, he plugged in the cable by the desk and turned on the laptop.
~
Super Junior M debuted on April 8th, 2009 as Super Junior's third subgroup. There were six members: Han Geng, Siwon, Ryeowook, Donghae, Kyuhyun, and Henry. They were the first international group to have members of both Chinese and Korean descent, and although there was controversy in the beginning regarding Henry being a new member, the other members had been quick to show their support. Before long, Henry's charm and talent had won everyone over. The group had rapidly risen to popularity and had gone home with most of Asia's newcomer awards that year. They'd just released their first mini-album a few months back, and their fanbase was as strong as ever.
It had taken Zhou Mi a quick trip to baidu to learn all this. The next few hours had been spent visiting fansites for every scrap of detailed information he could find.
He’d tried to visit his own baidu page, along with that Qmi site he’d always affectionately followed in his free time, but both had only led to messages stating that the pages he was looking for could not be found.
It was this more than anything else that convinced Zhou Mi that something was wrong. No one would have been capable of pulling off a prank this elaborate - no one would have gone this far.
But what exactly had gone wrong? Zhou Mi mentally recounted his facts. When he’d gone to bed last night, everything had been fine. He’d fallen asleep in his own bed in the right room in the right dorm - and had woken up this morning to discover that not only was he halfway across the city, Kyuhyun (and possibly the entire world) apparently had no recollection of him.
He sat back down on the bed, breath coming out in a heavy whoosh as he stared at his hands. No matter how he thought about this, the entire situation just made no sense. People didn’t just miraculously teleport around the city. Boybands didn’t just forget they had another member.
There seemed to be no logical course of action (and of course not, Zhou Mi thought half hysterically - why would it ever occur to him to prepare for a situation like this?) but even so. He needed some kind of confirmation that he wasn’t just going crazy.
He had to be sure.
~
Super Junior M lived in an apartment near the outskirts of Beijing, away from the busiest streets and central tourist spots. It gave them some semblance of privacy, at least. It had never really bothered the members that they were farther away from the heart of the city - it wasn't like any of them could go out anyway - but for Zhou Mi, who now had to take public transportation all the way there, it took the better half of the morning.
By the time he’d woven through the crowd of fangirls camped near the building and punched in the access code to unlock the front door (that seemed to have stayed the same, at least), it was already nearing eleven o’clock. Zhou Mi was on his way to the elevator when he was stopped by the security guard.
For a second, his heart leapt - he recognizes me, he thought, a sudden hope flaring in his chest - but that quickly died as he realized that in all the times Super Junior M had lived here, not once had the guard actually approached them, opting to sit in his makeshift “office” and smile his greetings.
His fears were confirmed when the guard looked at him, no flicker of recognition in his eyes. “Who are you, and how did you get in,” the man asked gruffly, his stern expression brooking no room for excuses. Zhou Mi had always thought the security guard was rather unsuited for his job with his kindly appearance and rounder figure, but with the image he was presented with now, he could see why the man had been hired.
“I’m here to visit Super Junior M,” Zhou Mi said, stuttering out the first thought that crossed his mind and internally berating himself for not having thought up a more plausible explanation earlier.
The guard looked at him carefully. “Do they know you’re coming?”
“Um. I don’t think they do, but Kyuhyun gave me the access code a while ago. I was going to call but I forgot.” Zhou Mi tried to look convincingly sheepish while his mind raced to doublecheck that the information he was spewing out made sense.
“And you’re … Kyuhyun’s friend?”
Zhou Mi was about to nod when something warning bells went off in his head, and he caught himself just in time. Super Junior M could hardly leave the dorms, with fangirls hounding them at every opportunity. It made no sense to say he was Kyuhyun’s friend, simply because Kyuhyun hadn’t had time to make friends in Beijing. “Oh no,” he said quickly, realizing from the narrowing of the guard’s eyes that he’d taken longer than he should have in replying. “I’m Han Geng’s friend - I met the rest of the members through him.”
The guard scrutinized him for a moment longer before finally letting him go. Making his way into the elevator, Zhou Mi gave a large exhale of relief before pressing the button to close the door.
A soft ding signaled that he’d reached the tenth floor. Zhou Mi took a left turn, heartbeat quickening as he approached the familiar-looking door at the end of the hall. As he lifted a hand to knock, he suddenly realized that it was highly unlike that anyone would even be in the dorms at this time.
A few knocks indicated that his guess had been correct.
Throat dry, he turned to the high-security keypad installed on the side of the door. Praying that the room code too had stayed the same, he punched in the familiar 12-digit number and turned the handle with baited breath.
The lock opened with a soft click.
At first glance, things were more or less as Zhou Mi remembered it, with minor changes here and there. The photo he’d hung up by the living room was no longer there, as were the half-finished lyrics he’d left stacked on the coffee table, but Donghae’s shoes were still littered hazardously by the doorway and the fridge remained covered in Ryeowook’s colorful post-it notes. Video game consoles were precariously placed onto a chair, and Zhou Mi found himself moving them onto the table automatically - Kyuhyun would never let them hear the end of it if someone accidentally sat on them.
He was looking through the individual rooms, noting the way roomates had changed when the sound of keys in the lock froze him in his steps. The sound of familiar chattering and laughter was unmistakable. For a second, Zhou Mi wondered if it would be a good idea to try and actually hide. Frantically looking around the rooms and coming up with either behind the couch or in one of the closets, he shook his head - the former would be too obvious, and he would never be able to sneak out of the dorms unnoticed if he went with the latter. Taking a deep breath, he waited instead.
And then the next moment, the door opened and six boys spilled into the room, still talking, the sounds of Chinese and Korean mixing into one big jumble. Zhou Mi stood there, feeling as if his limbs had been paralyzed as he took in Han Geng and Siwon and Henry and Ryeowook and Kyuhyun, whose arm was thrown casually around Donghae’s shoulder.
As if feeling his gaze, Kyuhyun suddenly looked up. His eyes widened momentarily in surprise as he took in the sight of Zhou Mi standing in the middle of the living room before narrowing. “Hyung,” he said loudly, voice cutting across the talking and grabbing everyone's attention. Any sign of the amusement that had been in his expression just seconds ago had disappeared. “I think we have a visitor.”
-- tbc.