Chapter 21

A Chapter by thunderdiamond

For the next two weeks sailed by. I was working hard to prepare and Jen was working hard to prepare the Exo members for their English interview. They were travelling to New York for it around the same time we had our shows. Every night I would return to the dorms and find a member of Exo or two in the living room with Jen speaking English like their lives depended on it. Occasionally I would find Minho or Jinki, Kibum or Jonghyun was there too and they would all pretend they were not practicing along with them as I walked in.

For now, my feelings of jealousy towards anyone had completely disappeared. I didn’t even worry when one night I walked in and Baekhyun was there alone with her. She seemed to have made good friends with all of them, especially Chanyeol who was there a lot.

I was feeling content with life even though I was exhausted a lot of the time and on the days I did have free we would spend them sleeping or whatever else we could think of doing in the bed all day.

The day before the first show I had to leave her all day as we would be busy with the run through all day and she was being brought out later on that evening to stay with us in the hotel nearby.

‘Will you be ok?’ I asked her at the door of the dorm room with my bag in my hand stroking her cheek.

‘I’ll be fine Taemin, they will call me when they want me to get in the car and I’ll see you tonight at the hotel. Don’t worry. Besides Chanyeol is coming over to keep me company for a while.’

She hadn’t mentioned this before. I raised an eyebrow slightly ‘Chanyeol?’ I asked.

He huffed ‘Taemin don’t worry ok. They’ve got the day to prepare before leaving tomorrow, he just wants to extra English practice, besides, it’s like having a friend you know.’ She shrugged. It hit me then that she wasn’t just helping them to be nice, but she must feel a little lonely waiting for me all day.

‘Ok’ I said kissing her forehead and pulling her into a hug. ‘Just keep in touch with me ok?’

‘OK!’ she huffed back, ‘Now go or you’ll get me in trouble for making you late’ she giggled as I left the building.

It was a long day of going through the stage and making sure we knew all the cues.

We finally had a break late in the afternoon just enough time to grab some food and relax for a while.

I had just finished eating when my phone rang in my pocket, I took it out looking at the name on it. Jen. Without hesitation, I answered.

‘Hey’ I answered brightly.

No reply, I could hear something but she was definitely not speaking. I thought the phone must have unlocked and call me by mistake when I was about to hang up then I heard her voice, crying.

Why was she crying?

I heard a voice, ‘Ignore them, don’t let it bother you.’ It was the unmistakable deep voice of Chanyeol.

‘Jen?’ I called into the phone to try and get her attention.

‘Just so hard, I didn’t expect them to hate me like that’ Jens voice. What was she talking about?

‘JEN!’ I said louder into the phone, causing Jonghyun to look up from his chair at me.

‘Jealous. They don’t understand western people. Don’t cry come on’ Chanyeol again.

I listened as intently as I could to try and work out what the hell was going on. Before I had chance to catch any more of the conversation though the phone went dead.

I stared at the phone for a second in shock. I didn’t know what to do about what I just heard. Why was she crying, who was Chanyeol talking about? Why didn’t I know what was going on?

‘What’s wrong?’ Asked Jonghyun sitting up to look at me.

‘I don’t know’ I frowned, did I call her back?

‘Something happened, you’re looking at that phone like someone died.’ Jonghyun frowned back sleepily.

‘It’s Jen’ I said

‘I figured out that from you screaming her name’ Jonghyun curtly replied.

I frowned at him. ‘It sounded like she called me by mistake, she wasn’t speaking to me, she sounded like she was crying.’

‘Crying? Did you hear anything else?’ Jonghyun asked.

‘Chanyeol was saying something about someone being jealous and to ignore them’ I mumbled.

‘Do you think I should call her back?’ I asked.

He shrugged at me. ‘Maybe yeah, it doesn’t sound like a good situation.’

I picked up my phone ready to call her back when we were called back out to the stage.

‘Damn it’ I muttered.