Fic: The Vampire's Bride (3/?)
Title: The Vampire's Bride (3/?)
Pairing: Hankyung/Ryeowook
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Nope, don't own 'em
Summary: The heartwarming love story of fail!vampire Ryeowook and the local intellectualist, Mr. Beijing Fried Rice. As told by DBSK.
Ryeowook's Memoir of Macabre Memories: House of Horrors: Chapter 1 - The Chainsaw Massacre:
"Welcome to hell."
Ryeowook, a young adult in his early twenties, fresh out of the graveyard, having turned into an undead mystical being of the night only a week ago, blinked. And screamed as the red-haired hockey mask-wearing chainsaw-wielding psycopath galloped toward him and fell facefirst at Ryeowook's feet, where he proceeded to flail and shriek for a few minutes, then take the chainsaw and begin hacking at one of Ryeowook's poor defenseless suitcases.
It took Yesung the rest of the night to convince him that no, his new uncle Heechul wasn't a crazy serial killer wanted in fifty different countries for committing murder with a blunt, rusty, and unsterialized chainsaw.
Despite the reassurings, however, Ryeowook slept with one eye open for the rest of the trip.
*
Ryeowook, upon recalling the horrifying incident, took one look at the smirk on Heechul's face and flew at Yesung, wailing with fear. Yesung apparantly remembered too, for he screeched something incomprehensible and waved his stick; immediately Ryeowook began rising - up, up, and away -
Until Yesung's short attention span wavered and down through the air Ryeowook plummetted.
Ryeowook was tempted to scream "Murder!" as he freefell from six stories up, but he managed to stay calm enough to bite back the cry, because giving off the impression that he was a weakling who couldn't take a broken leg or two wasn't high on his priority list.
Which, as it turned out, he didn’t have to worry about, because he did a perfect faceplant on the cold, hard cement.
"What was that?"
Ryeowook lifted his head, slowly, painfully, and looked around him. He caught sight of pair of denim-clad legs. They were really long. Ryeowook marveled, wishing he had such long legs. Wait, actually, they weren't that long. No, they were, but...not at the same time. Ryeowook shook his head, felt his brain rattle inside his skull, crossed his eyes, then uncrossed them.
"Are you okay?" A hand - absuredly large - reached into Ryeowook's line of vision. Ryeowook started to get mad; why was everything about this guy so big? Thoughts danced across his mind, so poisonously envious that he was surprised he wasn't turning green.
"Er..."
Whatever evil spirit had taken over Ryeowook's body suddenly evaporated, leaving him drained and exhausted, but his head strangely clear. It was the strangest sensation - like the time Kangin had made him test out some bad wine and he had ended up drunker than a drunk donkey.
A strangled snort came from the front of him. He turned to see who had emitted it and briefly locked eyes with a slight man about Ryeowook's age with russet hair and fragile eyes, ones a person would usually see belonging to the main character of a shoujo manga. His face was narrow and rather pale. He looked like a wimp. Ryeowook was deliriously delighted that for once he wasn't the one who looked the most sissy compared to someone else.
The guy was staring at Ryeowook with a big, fascinated gummy grin. "I'm Eunhyuk. You're weird." He sneezed thunderously six times, sniffing spasmodically between each sneeze. The lids of his watery eyes turned puffy and inflamed. He snorted, spat a glob of phlegm that landed just short of Ryeowook's shoe, and wiped his runny nose with a bony wrist. Ryeowook opened his mouth to point out that he was being rude just as a crushing weight landed on him and slammed his face back into the cement.
"Oops, sorry about that." The pressure lifted and Ryeowook was dragged by the collar of his shirt into a sitting position. Ryeowook whimpered when Heechul's grinning face swam into view. "Wasn't that fun?" Heechul crowed, elbowing Ryeowook in the side.
Ryeowook coughed painfully. "Yes, fun. Very."
Eunhyuk sidled up to Heechul and attempted to forcibly remove Heechul's elbow from its comfortable perch on Ryeowook's ribs. Heechul jerked his elbow free from Eunhyuk's clutching fingers in startled affront. "Unhand me, you butt!" he cried out furiously, former reflexive glare heightening into the glare of when one faces their worst enemy times three.
"Yah, it's a Lee! Kill it!"
"Ow, stoppit!" Eunhyuk wailed, shielding himself from Heechul's barrage of rocks, grass, worms; bascially whatever could be used as a projectile.
Just then Yesung and co. arrived.
"Relax, hyung," Kyuhyun said calmly. "It's not Donghae. It's only Eunhyuk. He's not going to call you the ugly alien stepsister of Sacagawea. Calm down."
"Yes, yes," Sungmin squeaked, struggling to escape the cage of Kyuhyun's arms. "So stop trying to kill my brother!"
"I don't care! He's a Lee! Off with his head!" shouted Heechul, giving Eunhyuk a nasty thump on the nose which propelled the unfortunate being right off his feet and into a nearby tree.
"Wait, but you don't have a problem with Sungmin," Ryeowook pointed out, confused. "Isn't he a Lee too?"
"Does Sungmin look like he can kidnap someone in his present form?" demanded Heechul.
"What do you mean by that?" Yesung asked suspiciously.
"Kibum's missing."
"AND YOU DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING UNTIL NOW?!" Yesung cried, clutching Heechul's shoulders so hard his fingernails left crescent-shaped pockmarks in the fair skin.
"BECAUSE I THOUGHT HE WOULD COME BACK AFTER HALF A YEAR!" Heechul screamed back, slapping Yesung's hands away.
Sungmin shook his head pityingly. "It's kind of sad how you people didn't notice your younger brother is missing. For a whole six months."
"Shocking." Kyuhyun agreed.
"You two stay out of it," Heechul and Yesung snarled in unison. Kyuhyun silently grabbed Sungmin and slunk away, muttering an hasty excuse that Ryeowook didn't quite catch, but what he did hear convinced Ryeowook that he was either going deaf or the Pink Duo was just plain crazy, because why they needed copius amounts of bleach and hair from the butt of a rabid warthog was beyond him.
Heechul and Yesung glanced at each other, agreed to some unspoken exchange, and bolted in opposite directions. "I'll get the car," Yesung shouted to Heechul as he raced to the garage, "you get the tools we need to convince them to return Kibum."
Ryeowook gagged convulsively as he was left to choke on their dust.
*
"Eh? You want to help?"
"It's always been my dream to be a humble servant of the prestegious Kim family," Eunhyuk declared with ardor on the porch as they waited for the bad-tempered foul-mouthed uncle of Ryeowook's that they both had a deadly fear of to step outside and give them a nasty look for loitering about in an illegal fashion.
"Then it'd be in your best interest to help Uncle Heechul prepare for the incoming bloodshed," Ryeowook advised avuncularly, feeling particularly wise in the presence of someone who seemed so much more helpless than himself. "Maybe he'll be more leniant on your punishment for existing if you're of some use to him." Eunhyuk paled, shuddered delicately, and graciously declined, proclaiming that even the sight of weapons made him puke. They lapsed into an awkward silence.
Ryeowook soon grew bored waiting. "What does your family look like?" he asked abruptly. Eunhyuk fidgeted for a moment, looking as though he was internally debating with himself about something, brightened like the favored side just won the argument, and beckoned Ryeowook forward conspiratorially.
"Don't laugh, okay?" With that he pulled out a battered photo and thrust it into Ryeowook's hands, like he was too embarrassed to be seen with it. Ryeowook studied the photo curiously - the sickly boy staring dreamily off into space was obviously Eunhyuk, and the pink-haired boy, face screwed up in fierce concentration as he tried to button his pink dress shirt, must've been Sungmin, but he didn't recognize the sparkly-eyed maniacally grinning boy making kissy faces at the camera.
"That's Donghae there," Eunhyuk supplied helpfully. "Hyper. Loves fish. Could be compared to a puppy. Very strange." He rubbed his neck sheepishly and snatched the photo back. "I have another brother, but he's not in the picture. His name's Shindong. He's weird too."
Ryeowook laughed shakily.
Another awkward silence.
Finally, when the tension was getting close to unbearable, Yesung pulled up the car from the garage and Heechul came back out with a pistol strapped to one thigh and a wicked butcher knife to the other. True to his word, Eunhyuk took one look at the deadly arsenal and vomited all over the passenger seat, hiding in the car trunk in shame. Heechul then called Eunhyuk a stupid monkey and, after making a huge fuss about not wanting to sit in the car because it stunk of 'Lee puke,' tied himself to the roof of the car, despite Yesung's incessant pleading. In digust Yesung got into the driver's seat, and offered Ryeowook the shotgun. Ryeowook eyed the yellow-greenish stain on the leather and politely declined, instead opting to jog along the car.
It was only half a mile to the Lees, although it took much longer due to various complications. About two minutes into the drive the engine broke down, so Heechul told Eunhyuk that it was up to him and his skinny arms to push the vehicle and its occupants up a steep hill to the nearest auto repair shop, or he'll scalp him and send his head to his family as a souvenir. Yesung didn't object. (Apparantly he was sulking over getting his new car soiled by vomit.) Ryeowook wanted to help, but one glare from Heechul's left eyeball (Ryeowook was on the left side of the car) silenced him, and he merely gave Eunhyuk a sympathetic pat on the back before escaping the silent wrath of Heechul's blood-shot eyeball.
When they made it to the top, Eunhyuk collapsed from what looked like a cardiac arrest, so Heechul ordered Ryeowook to find the mechanic that ran the joint. Ryeowook ran into the shack-like shop and came out dragging an skinny young man with squarish spectacles propped up on his razor-thin nose, magnifying huge, innocent eyes. To Ryeowook's horrified dismay, Leeteuk (the guy's name) turned out to be a con man and, when he fixed the engine, promptly asked for half of Ryeowook's life-savings, threatening to sue if he didn't fork it over. Ryeowook grudgingly paid the price, stuffed Eunhyuk's unconscious body back into the trunk, pushed the (still) sulking Yesung into the passenger seat - right onto 'The Spot,' and floored it, leaving the autoshop with a fixed engine, revenge in his heart, and a considerably lighter wallet.
Twenty minutes later they arrived at the elaborate Lee estate. From what Ryeowook could see that wasn't hidden by the darkness, it appeared quite beautiful, with silver columns and elaborate gardens. Heechul told Ryeowook to quit gawking, drool was leaking from his mouth. They huddled together and tried to come up with a way to convince the Lees to let them have Kibum back. Heechul suggested they bomb them with nuclear weapons; everyone else gave him long looks and pretended like they didn't hear anything. They finally settled on Eunhyuk's idea - skulk around the yard until the Lees eventually broke down and agreed to return Kibum. Ryeowook tried to point out that stalking was illegal and was immediately mobbed by his uncles.
At first everything was uneventful. Then, an hour before dawn, a small black cat with chubby cheeks came up to Eunhyuk, studied him pompously, and peed on his shoe. Eunhyuk freaked out and had some sort of epileptic fit, no doubt thinking of deadly diseases that could be transmitted from cat urine, screamed and dived into a thornbush to escape the 'mad beast' and Heechul screamed and fired three bullets at Eunhyuk's retreating rear end. Inside the house, a man screamed and startled bats swarmed out of the attic window. Eunhyuk and Heechul galloped back to the car and they sped off down the street like escaped convicts from hell.
In their haste, Ryeowook was left, forgotten. Not wanting to be seen, he had no choice but to wrap his arms about the smooth gray trunk of a nearby tree in an awkward embrace and start climbing. He clawed upward maladroitly with loud grunts and wheezes, slipping and almost breaking his neck every time he paused for breath, and by the time he pulled himself high enough to hook a leg over a branch he had suffered a total of twenty near panic attacks and his pants were so ripped and torn that only his bare necessities were obscured from total nudity waist down. Tentatively Ryeowook leaned back against the trunk, let out a sigh of relief, brushed the bits of bark from his rumpled hair, and fixed his gaze on the scene below.
The front door slammed open and out marched who could only be Donghae wearing only his sleeping attire consisting of a faded fish-patterned nightgown and magenta boxer shorts, and what appeared to be a heat-seeking guided missile launcher swinging at his side. He let out a gut-wrenching, bloodcurdling war cry, which would've frozen the blood in Ryeowook's veins had it not cracked spectacularly right in the middle, which made him sound like a cross between a wailing banshee and a constipated orangutan with bronchitis. Donghae either didn't notice, or didn't care, because at that moment he started dancing like a lunatic, whacking the bushes with the machine until the trigger got caught on the vines. Then a missile shot from the launcher and tore straight through brick, steel, and wood into the house.
Ryeowook watched from the tree as another male, dwarfing Donghae by both height and width, stalked onto the lawn and screamed something in Donghae's ear. Then he stood back and clubbed Donghae over the head with the missile launcher. Donghae stopped his loony dance and meekly followed the other back inside.
"That was Shindong," Yesung whispered, dangling from the tree branch to Ryeowook's right. "He's the eldest Lee. Except not really, because his last name's Shin but his great-grandmother married into the family and then divorced, or something. Wicked rapper and dancer. Bit odd though."
Ryeowook stared at him in disbelief. Bit odd? The whole family was demented!
"Now if you'll excuse me," Yesung said, shinnying down the tree trunk, "I'm going to bargain for Kibum. You go try and find Heechul and that little monkey friend of yours."
Ryeowook saluted and fell backwards off the branch.
*
Later on Ryeowook met up with Eunhyuk, who said Heechul had kicked him out of the car and nearly run him over, though thankfully he got near blinded by the rising sun and ended up in a ditch.
"Uncle Heechul's in a ditch?" Ryeowook demanded. "Is he alright? Is he hurt?"
Eunhyuk gulped nervously. "Ah, about that-" He broke off when skeletal fingers curled around his neck and a ghastly severed head, blood dripping from the severed stump, tangled strands of hair writhing like the snakes, dangled in front of him.
Eunhyuk screamed, vomited in the gutter, and passed out.
Ryeowook felt like passing out right with him.
"What's with him?" Heechul asked, reattaching his head to his neck. There was a sickening squelch as tendon and bone fused together again. Ryeowook turned pea-green and nearly hurled.
"AH! NO THROW-UP IN FRONT MY HOUSE!"
Ryeowook turned around and screamed. It seemed like he was doing a lot of that lately - screaming, that is.
A tall foreign-looking weirdo was beaming at him, face shoved only a couple centimeters from Ryeowook's. He had a big nose and shiny shoes.
"My. Name. Is. Zhou Mi," he said in broken Korean, gesticulating wildly. "I live here." From what Ryeowook could see, 'here' consisted of a run-down straw shack with weeds strangling the doorpost. "You be new to Heilongjiang Province? Wanna be my friend? Yay, I make new friend! You..." He paused.
"Ryeowook," Ryeowook offered weakly.
"Liu...wu," Zhou Mi tried, completely butchering the sounds. He frowned, shook his head ferociously, and pointed at Ryeowook, saying, "No Liuwu. You be Li Xu. I call you Li Xu, you Li Xu, yes?"
The newly dubbed Li Xu wondered how in the world 'Ryeowook' translated to 'Li Xu,' but decided to not say anything, because he'd heard that demented people were especially dangerous when riled.
Just then the same chubby-cheeked black cat that peed on Eunhyuk's shoe announced its arrival by hacking a hairball on Zhou Mi's shiny shoes. Zhou Mi grabbed the cat by the nape and lifted it in the air, scolding it ('his' name was Henry) in a strange language that made him sound completely bonkers. Henry responded by rubbing his head against Zhou Mi's hand, purring louder than a rusty motor.
Ryeowook watched them with the feeling one would experience while watching a train crash in slow motion.
"Zhou Mi." The sigh came from a tall, black-haired gentleman. He was tanned - but not heavily so - with a dancer's body, long and lean, and was dressed in a crisp black suit that seemed rather out of place in the rural area.
"Han Geng-ge!" Zhou Mi cried happily, throwing poor Henry in the air and proceeding to gabber at the stranger in the same foreign-sounding language he had used with Henry.
"Hannie!" Heechul cried at the same time, flinging himself passionately at the newcomer, who neatly sidestepped and caught Henry in the same breath. Heechul was not deterred. "That's what I love about you, Hankyung," Heechul said, batting his eyelashes flirtatiously. "You feisty beast. Along with that ass of yours. Rawr."
Ryeowook was glad Eunhyuk was still out cold, because if he heard what Heechul just said he would've vomited a lake and drowned in his own puke. Ryeowook was feeling a little queasy himself.
Hankyung chuckled like he was used to this behavior. His chuckle sounded soothing. Ryeowook noticed that, despite the slightly larger-than-average nose, he was kind of hot. He flushed and poked his fingertips together, internally scolding himself for thinking like a hormonal high-school girl.
Coming back to the present, Ryeowook was greeted with the sight of Heechul kicking dirt on the convulsing body of Zhou Mi while at the same time struggling to strangle Henry and for his efforts getting rewarded with clawed knuckles and broken fingernails.
According to Hankyung, who had witnessed the whole thing but made no attempt to stop it since it was a regular occuring, Zhou Mi had stuffed Henry down Heechul's shirt and Heechul had shrieked and Zhou Mi had been giggling nonstop until Heechul shrieked and knocked him head over heels with a solid crack on the skull that made him stop giggling and sent him writhing on the ground with a dent in his head that made his head look like a disfigured watermelon and a mild concussion that reduced him to babbling like an idiot.
"Oh, your Korean is really good," Ryeowook observed.
Hankyung smiled, making Ryeowook's inner fangirl squeal with joy. "Thank you," he said, words emphasized with a slightly musical accent. Ryeowook's inner fangirl melted from the hotness.
"Can you show me around sometime?" Ryeowook asked. "I mean, I would have one of my uncles do it, but they're..." He nodded jerkily at Heechul, who had succeeded in flinging Henry off and was now gleefully jumping up and down on Zhou Mi's stomach.
Hankyung's next words made him freeze: "It's a date then."
*
Pairing: Hankyung/Ryeowook
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Nope, don't own 'em
Summary: The heartwarming love story of fail!vampire Ryeowook and the local intellectualist, Mr. Beijing Fried Rice. As told by DBSK.
Ryeowook's Memoir of Macabre Memories: House of Horrors: Chapter 1 - The Chainsaw Massacre:
"Welcome to hell."
Ryeowook, a young adult in his early twenties, fresh out of the graveyard, having turned into an undead mystical being of the night only a week ago, blinked. And screamed as the red-haired hockey mask-wearing chainsaw-wielding psycopath galloped toward him and fell facefirst at Ryeowook's feet, where he proceeded to flail and shriek for a few minutes, then take the chainsaw and begin hacking at one of Ryeowook's poor defenseless suitcases.
It took Yesung the rest of the night to convince him that no, his new uncle Heechul wasn't a crazy serial killer wanted in fifty different countries for committing murder with a blunt, rusty, and unsterialized chainsaw.
Despite the reassurings, however, Ryeowook slept with one eye open for the rest of the trip.
*
Ryeowook, upon recalling the horrifying incident, took one look at the smirk on Heechul's face and flew at Yesung, wailing with fear. Yesung apparantly remembered too, for he screeched something incomprehensible and waved his stick; immediately Ryeowook began rising - up, up, and away -
Until Yesung's short attention span wavered and down through the air Ryeowook plummetted.
Ryeowook was tempted to scream "Murder!" as he freefell from six stories up, but he managed to stay calm enough to bite back the cry, because giving off the impression that he was a weakling who couldn't take a broken leg or two wasn't high on his priority list.
Which, as it turned out, he didn’t have to worry about, because he did a perfect faceplant on the cold, hard cement.
"What was that?"
Ryeowook lifted his head, slowly, painfully, and looked around him. He caught sight of pair of denim-clad legs. They were really long. Ryeowook marveled, wishing he had such long legs. Wait, actually, they weren't that long. No, they were, but...not at the same time. Ryeowook shook his head, felt his brain rattle inside his skull, crossed his eyes, then uncrossed them.
"Are you okay?" A hand - absuredly large - reached into Ryeowook's line of vision. Ryeowook started to get mad; why was everything about this guy so big? Thoughts danced across his mind, so poisonously envious that he was surprised he wasn't turning green.
"Er..."
Whatever evil spirit had taken over Ryeowook's body suddenly evaporated, leaving him drained and exhausted, but his head strangely clear. It was the strangest sensation - like the time Kangin had made him test out some bad wine and he had ended up drunker than a drunk donkey.
A strangled snort came from the front of him. He turned to see who had emitted it and briefly locked eyes with a slight man about Ryeowook's age with russet hair and fragile eyes, ones a person would usually see belonging to the main character of a shoujo manga. His face was narrow and rather pale. He looked like a wimp. Ryeowook was deliriously delighted that for once he wasn't the one who looked the most sissy compared to someone else.
The guy was staring at Ryeowook with a big, fascinated gummy grin. "I'm Eunhyuk. You're weird." He sneezed thunderously six times, sniffing spasmodically between each sneeze. The lids of his watery eyes turned puffy and inflamed. He snorted, spat a glob of phlegm that landed just short of Ryeowook's shoe, and wiped his runny nose with a bony wrist. Ryeowook opened his mouth to point out that he was being rude just as a crushing weight landed on him and slammed his face back into the cement.
"Oops, sorry about that." The pressure lifted and Ryeowook was dragged by the collar of his shirt into a sitting position. Ryeowook whimpered when Heechul's grinning face swam into view. "Wasn't that fun?" Heechul crowed, elbowing Ryeowook in the side.
Ryeowook coughed painfully. "Yes, fun. Very."
Eunhyuk sidled up to Heechul and attempted to forcibly remove Heechul's elbow from its comfortable perch on Ryeowook's ribs. Heechul jerked his elbow free from Eunhyuk's clutching fingers in startled affront. "Unhand me, you butt!" he cried out furiously, former reflexive glare heightening into the glare of when one faces their worst enemy times three.
"Yah, it's a Lee! Kill it!"
"Ow, stoppit!" Eunhyuk wailed, shielding himself from Heechul's barrage of rocks, grass, worms; bascially whatever could be used as a projectile.
Just then Yesung and co. arrived.
"Relax, hyung," Kyuhyun said calmly. "It's not Donghae. It's only Eunhyuk. He's not going to call you the ugly alien stepsister of Sacagawea. Calm down."
"Yes, yes," Sungmin squeaked, struggling to escape the cage of Kyuhyun's arms. "So stop trying to kill my brother!"
"I don't care! He's a Lee! Off with his head!" shouted Heechul, giving Eunhyuk a nasty thump on the nose which propelled the unfortunate being right off his feet and into a nearby tree.
"Wait, but you don't have a problem with Sungmin," Ryeowook pointed out, confused. "Isn't he a Lee too?"
"Does Sungmin look like he can kidnap someone in his present form?" demanded Heechul.
"What do you mean by that?" Yesung asked suspiciously.
"Kibum's missing."
"AND YOU DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING UNTIL NOW?!" Yesung cried, clutching Heechul's shoulders so hard his fingernails left crescent-shaped pockmarks in the fair skin.
"BECAUSE I THOUGHT HE WOULD COME BACK AFTER HALF A YEAR!" Heechul screamed back, slapping Yesung's hands away.
Sungmin shook his head pityingly. "It's kind of sad how you people didn't notice your younger brother is missing. For a whole six months."
"Shocking." Kyuhyun agreed.
"You two stay out of it," Heechul and Yesung snarled in unison. Kyuhyun silently grabbed Sungmin and slunk away, muttering an hasty excuse that Ryeowook didn't quite catch, but what he did hear convinced Ryeowook that he was either going deaf or the Pink Duo was just plain crazy, because why they needed copius amounts of bleach and hair from the butt of a rabid warthog was beyond him.
Heechul and Yesung glanced at each other, agreed to some unspoken exchange, and bolted in opposite directions. "I'll get the car," Yesung shouted to Heechul as he raced to the garage, "you get the tools we need to convince them to return Kibum."
Ryeowook gagged convulsively as he was left to choke on their dust.
*
"Eh? You want to help?"
"It's always been my dream to be a humble servant of the prestegious Kim family," Eunhyuk declared with ardor on the porch as they waited for the bad-tempered foul-mouthed uncle of Ryeowook's that they both had a deadly fear of to step outside and give them a nasty look for loitering about in an illegal fashion.
"Then it'd be in your best interest to help Uncle Heechul prepare for the incoming bloodshed," Ryeowook advised avuncularly, feeling particularly wise in the presence of someone who seemed so much more helpless than himself. "Maybe he'll be more leniant on your punishment for existing if you're of some use to him." Eunhyuk paled, shuddered delicately, and graciously declined, proclaiming that even the sight of weapons made him puke. They lapsed into an awkward silence.
Ryeowook soon grew bored waiting. "What does your family look like?" he asked abruptly. Eunhyuk fidgeted for a moment, looking as though he was internally debating with himself about something, brightened like the favored side just won the argument, and beckoned Ryeowook forward conspiratorially.
"Don't laugh, okay?" With that he pulled out a battered photo and thrust it into Ryeowook's hands, like he was too embarrassed to be seen with it. Ryeowook studied the photo curiously - the sickly boy staring dreamily off into space was obviously Eunhyuk, and the pink-haired boy, face screwed up in fierce concentration as he tried to button his pink dress shirt, must've been Sungmin, but he didn't recognize the sparkly-eyed maniacally grinning boy making kissy faces at the camera.
"That's Donghae there," Eunhyuk supplied helpfully. "Hyper. Loves fish. Could be compared to a puppy. Very strange." He rubbed his neck sheepishly and snatched the photo back. "I have another brother, but he's not in the picture. His name's Shindong. He's weird too."
Ryeowook laughed shakily.
Another awkward silence.
Finally, when the tension was getting close to unbearable, Yesung pulled up the car from the garage and Heechul came back out with a pistol strapped to one thigh and a wicked butcher knife to the other. True to his word, Eunhyuk took one look at the deadly arsenal and vomited all over the passenger seat, hiding in the car trunk in shame. Heechul then called Eunhyuk a stupid monkey and, after making a huge fuss about not wanting to sit in the car because it stunk of 'Lee puke,' tied himself to the roof of the car, despite Yesung's incessant pleading. In digust Yesung got into the driver's seat, and offered Ryeowook the shotgun. Ryeowook eyed the yellow-greenish stain on the leather and politely declined, instead opting to jog along the car.
It was only half a mile to the Lees, although it took much longer due to various complications. About two minutes into the drive the engine broke down, so Heechul told Eunhyuk that it was up to him and his skinny arms to push the vehicle and its occupants up a steep hill to the nearest auto repair shop, or he'll scalp him and send his head to his family as a souvenir. Yesung didn't object. (Apparantly he was sulking over getting his new car soiled by vomit.) Ryeowook wanted to help, but one glare from Heechul's left eyeball (Ryeowook was on the left side of the car) silenced him, and he merely gave Eunhyuk a sympathetic pat on the back before escaping the silent wrath of Heechul's blood-shot eyeball.
When they made it to the top, Eunhyuk collapsed from what looked like a cardiac arrest, so Heechul ordered Ryeowook to find the mechanic that ran the joint. Ryeowook ran into the shack-like shop and came out dragging an skinny young man with squarish spectacles propped up on his razor-thin nose, magnifying huge, innocent eyes. To Ryeowook's horrified dismay, Leeteuk (the guy's name) turned out to be a con man and, when he fixed the engine, promptly asked for half of Ryeowook's life-savings, threatening to sue if he didn't fork it over. Ryeowook grudgingly paid the price, stuffed Eunhyuk's unconscious body back into the trunk, pushed the (still) sulking Yesung into the passenger seat - right onto 'The Spot,' and floored it, leaving the autoshop with a fixed engine, revenge in his heart, and a considerably lighter wallet.
Twenty minutes later they arrived at the elaborate Lee estate. From what Ryeowook could see that wasn't hidden by the darkness, it appeared quite beautiful, with silver columns and elaborate gardens. Heechul told Ryeowook to quit gawking, drool was leaking from his mouth. They huddled together and tried to come up with a way to convince the Lees to let them have Kibum back. Heechul suggested they bomb them with nuclear weapons; everyone else gave him long looks and pretended like they didn't hear anything. They finally settled on Eunhyuk's idea - skulk around the yard until the Lees eventually broke down and agreed to return Kibum. Ryeowook tried to point out that stalking was illegal and was immediately mobbed by his uncles.
At first everything was uneventful. Then, an hour before dawn, a small black cat with chubby cheeks came up to Eunhyuk, studied him pompously, and peed on his shoe. Eunhyuk freaked out and had some sort of epileptic fit, no doubt thinking of deadly diseases that could be transmitted from cat urine, screamed and dived into a thornbush to escape the 'mad beast' and Heechul screamed and fired three bullets at Eunhyuk's retreating rear end. Inside the house, a man screamed and startled bats swarmed out of the attic window. Eunhyuk and Heechul galloped back to the car and they sped off down the street like escaped convicts from hell.
In their haste, Ryeowook was left, forgotten. Not wanting to be seen, he had no choice but to wrap his arms about the smooth gray trunk of a nearby tree in an awkward embrace and start climbing. He clawed upward maladroitly with loud grunts and wheezes, slipping and almost breaking his neck every time he paused for breath, and by the time he pulled himself high enough to hook a leg over a branch he had suffered a total of twenty near panic attacks and his pants were so ripped and torn that only his bare necessities were obscured from total nudity waist down. Tentatively Ryeowook leaned back against the trunk, let out a sigh of relief, brushed the bits of bark from his rumpled hair, and fixed his gaze on the scene below.
The front door slammed open and out marched who could only be Donghae wearing only his sleeping attire consisting of a faded fish-patterned nightgown and magenta boxer shorts, and what appeared to be a heat-seeking guided missile launcher swinging at his side. He let out a gut-wrenching, bloodcurdling war cry, which would've frozen the blood in Ryeowook's veins had it not cracked spectacularly right in the middle, which made him sound like a cross between a wailing banshee and a constipated orangutan with bronchitis. Donghae either didn't notice, or didn't care, because at that moment he started dancing like a lunatic, whacking the bushes with the machine until the trigger got caught on the vines. Then a missile shot from the launcher and tore straight through brick, steel, and wood into the house.
Ryeowook watched from the tree as another male, dwarfing Donghae by both height and width, stalked onto the lawn and screamed something in Donghae's ear. Then he stood back and clubbed Donghae over the head with the missile launcher. Donghae stopped his loony dance and meekly followed the other back inside.
"That was Shindong," Yesung whispered, dangling from the tree branch to Ryeowook's right. "He's the eldest Lee. Except not really, because his last name's Shin but his great-grandmother married into the family and then divorced, or something. Wicked rapper and dancer. Bit odd though."
Ryeowook stared at him in disbelief. Bit odd? The whole family was demented!
"Now if you'll excuse me," Yesung said, shinnying down the tree trunk, "I'm going to bargain for Kibum. You go try and find Heechul and that little monkey friend of yours."
Ryeowook saluted and fell backwards off the branch.
*
Later on Ryeowook met up with Eunhyuk, who said Heechul had kicked him out of the car and nearly run him over, though thankfully he got near blinded by the rising sun and ended up in a ditch.
"Uncle Heechul's in a ditch?" Ryeowook demanded. "Is he alright? Is he hurt?"
Eunhyuk gulped nervously. "Ah, about that-" He broke off when skeletal fingers curled around his neck and a ghastly severed head, blood dripping from the severed stump, tangled strands of hair writhing like the snakes, dangled in front of him.
Eunhyuk screamed, vomited in the gutter, and passed out.
Ryeowook felt like passing out right with him.
"What's with him?" Heechul asked, reattaching his head to his neck. There was a sickening squelch as tendon and bone fused together again. Ryeowook turned pea-green and nearly hurled.
"AH! NO THROW-UP IN FRONT MY HOUSE!"
Ryeowook turned around and screamed. It seemed like he was doing a lot of that lately - screaming, that is.
A tall foreign-looking weirdo was beaming at him, face shoved only a couple centimeters from Ryeowook's. He had a big nose and shiny shoes.
"My. Name. Is. Zhou Mi," he said in broken Korean, gesticulating wildly. "I live here." From what Ryeowook could see, 'here' consisted of a run-down straw shack with weeds strangling the doorpost. "You be new to Heilongjiang Province? Wanna be my friend? Yay, I make new friend! You..." He paused.
"Ryeowook," Ryeowook offered weakly.
"Liu...wu," Zhou Mi tried, completely butchering the sounds. He frowned, shook his head ferociously, and pointed at Ryeowook, saying, "No Liuwu. You be Li Xu. I call you Li Xu, you Li Xu, yes?"
The newly dubbed Li Xu wondered how in the world 'Ryeowook' translated to 'Li Xu,' but decided to not say anything, because he'd heard that demented people were especially dangerous when riled.
Just then the same chubby-cheeked black cat that peed on Eunhyuk's shoe announced its arrival by hacking a hairball on Zhou Mi's shiny shoes. Zhou Mi grabbed the cat by the nape and lifted it in the air, scolding it ('his' name was Henry) in a strange language that made him sound completely bonkers. Henry responded by rubbing his head against Zhou Mi's hand, purring louder than a rusty motor.
Ryeowook watched them with the feeling one would experience while watching a train crash in slow motion.
"Zhou Mi." The sigh came from a tall, black-haired gentleman. He was tanned - but not heavily so - with a dancer's body, long and lean, and was dressed in a crisp black suit that seemed rather out of place in the rural area.
"Han Geng-ge!" Zhou Mi cried happily, throwing poor Henry in the air and proceeding to gabber at the stranger in the same foreign-sounding language he had used with Henry.
"Hannie!" Heechul cried at the same time, flinging himself passionately at the newcomer, who neatly sidestepped and caught Henry in the same breath. Heechul was not deterred. "That's what I love about you, Hankyung," Heechul said, batting his eyelashes flirtatiously. "You feisty beast. Along with that ass of yours. Rawr."
Ryeowook was glad Eunhyuk was still out cold, because if he heard what Heechul just said he would've vomited a lake and drowned in his own puke. Ryeowook was feeling a little queasy himself.
Hankyung chuckled like he was used to this behavior. His chuckle sounded soothing. Ryeowook noticed that, despite the slightly larger-than-average nose, he was kind of hot. He flushed and poked his fingertips together, internally scolding himself for thinking like a hormonal high-school girl.
Coming back to the present, Ryeowook was greeted with the sight of Heechul kicking dirt on the convulsing body of Zhou Mi while at the same time struggling to strangle Henry and for his efforts getting rewarded with clawed knuckles and broken fingernails.
According to Hankyung, who had witnessed the whole thing but made no attempt to stop it since it was a regular occuring, Zhou Mi had stuffed Henry down Heechul's shirt and Heechul had shrieked and Zhou Mi had been giggling nonstop until Heechul shrieked and knocked him head over heels with a solid crack on the skull that made him stop giggling and sent him writhing on the ground with a dent in his head that made his head look like a disfigured watermelon and a mild concussion that reduced him to babbling like an idiot.
"Oh, your Korean is really good," Ryeowook observed.
Hankyung smiled, making Ryeowook's inner fangirl squeal with joy. "Thank you," he said, words emphasized with a slightly musical accent. Ryeowook's inner fangirl melted from the hotness.
"Can you show me around sometime?" Ryeowook asked. "I mean, I would have one of my uncles do it, but they're..." He nodded jerkily at Heechul, who had succeeded in flinging Henry off and was now gleefully jumping up and down on Zhou Mi's stomach.
Hankyung's next words made him freeze: "It's a date then."
*