+ eleven

Before returning to the dorm building for dinner with his mates, he went into the luxury apartments across the street and expertly found his way to the exact floor and door he was looking for. Apartment 512, the one that belonged to one of EXO's main hairstylists Yeo Nari. Chanyeol was friends with her because she was a nice young woman and was very talented in what she did, despite being only twenty years old.

She had been hired by SM entertainment nearly two years prior, when she was only eighteen, after seemingly surging out of nowhere. Other than her name, most of the people she worked with didn't know who she was or her background. The only ones who really knew were Kyungsoo because she had deposited so much trust in him when they first became friends, and the manager who was in charge of hiring staff because it was rumored that he knew her family.

Of the people who didn't know her well within the agency, it was rumored that she was a very wealthy daughter of a political family in Korea. Her family was from and resided in Incheon--according to the rumors--and she had run away from home at eighteen to pursue her dream of being a hairstylist. Her parents, as the stories went, wanted her to marry into a rich family and become a house wife, but Yeo Nari didn't yet want that life for herself. It was then that she moved to Seoul to request work at one of her father's friend's workplaces, SM Entertainment. Her talent had easily gotten her a job and she had been placed in the stylist team for one of the agency's upcoming groups which was EXO.

Nari had practically been raised with them from their debut to the present.

The other boys in the group were close to her and even considered her a friend. Chanyeol thought that if he were to ask her to take Narda back--as a favor between friends--that Nari would do it.

He knocked on her front door and waited for Nari to answer it. Soon a young woman opened the door to the apartment, surprised to see Chanyeol standing there in the hall. The other boys hardly ever visited her outside of work hours--or even at all--because they didn't want the agency to suspect that she might have a relationship with one of them.

"Hello, Chanyeol oppa." She greeted him with a polite, yet confused smile. Stepping to the side, she added the invitation, "Come in."

He walked inside her apartment slowly and she closed the door behind him, hurrying to walk ahead to lead him to one of the living room couches. He sat down on one of the couches and she took the one to the left of it. From the moment he entered the house, a strong aroma of food filled his senses and his stomach growled as he realized that he was hungry. But it was nothing like he had smelled before. It smelled foreign, but it smelled delicious.

"Were you about to have dinner?" He asked her curiously.

She gave a shake of her head and heaved a sigh. "My flat mate--well, ex flat mate--made it for me as a welcoming present. But I don't know what to do with all that food. It just doesn't seem right for me to eat it since we had a little falling out." She explained with another sigh, gesturing towards the kitchen where there were a bunch of items and ingredients for dinner ready on the table.

Chanyeol raised an eyebrow at her with surprise. "And still you had the heart to kick her out when she had that nice gesture for you? So cold, Nari-yah."

Nari protested, yet she wasn't sure how Chanyeol even knew about her flat mate. Or how he had found out that she had kicked her out of the apartment. Even less did she know why he was there to see her, but she figured it had everything to do with Narda Gutierrez Lozano. "Baekhyun complained to me about her when we were in China, and I didn't want her causing any trouble if she was going to live in my apartment."

The young man sitting on the couch scoffed. He knew it had to have been Baekhyun's doing, since he was still very salty about the fact that he had been fooled so easily by a fan. Chanyeol thought it was taking him much too long to get over it. "Baekhyun is overreacting because he can't stand that he was fooled so easily. That girl was totally harmless, I can assure you that. She only wanted a speck of his attention. Look, Nari-yah, I came here precisely to talk about her. You should let her come back."

"How do you know her?" Nari eyed him with suspicion.

He nodded like it was nothing other-worldly, "I've talked to her a few times."

"Well, she's already gone." The young woman gave a shrug of her shoulders. She spoke in a very nonchalant manner, yet deep in the back of her mind she would have been lying if she said she didn't feel remorse. All it took were her own regretful thoughts and Chanyeol's words to make her cave in. Nari wasn't a bad person, and Chanyeol knew it. With a sigh, the hair stylist said, "But I can call her later tonight after dinner and ask if she'll want to come back."

Satisfied with that answer, Chanyeol now decided to change the subject to something more lighthearted. Food, that is. He gestured to the kitchen where the warm aroma of food was radiating. "If you need someone to help you finish that food, I'll be glad to do it." He said with a grin. He could already feel his mouth watering and his stomach craving whatever food was waiting in the kitchen.

"She made so much that you'd think she was gonna feed an army, rather than two people." Nari informed him with a small laugh. Narda had never cooked in Nari's kitchen before. Nari was the one who mostly cooked dinner with Narda as her assistant, and then Narda would clear the plates as had been their agreement. She didn't know that Narda in charge of cooking would make mountains of food. As an idea came to her mind, she asked the older boy, "Oppa, can you help me get everything on a little cart so we can wheel it across the street and share with everyone?"

Chanyeol got back on his feet and rushed to the kitchen while Nari went to her closet and got out a foldable table utility cart from her closet. The two placed everything on top of the cart after making sure to cover it properly. Then they wheeled it across the street to the SM Town dorm building where the other boys were waiting on Chanyeol before they could start to have dinner.

-

The two wheeled the small cart into the lounge room where the other eleven boys were making conversation with each other to pass the time. Some of them were even on the television playing video games while they waited, and Yixing was sat by himself on one of the couches with his eyes trained on his phone as he had been the last several months. Everyone suspected that he had a secret girlfriend and were planning an intervention, in which they would corner him one day and ask him about it. They had started to suspect when they noticed the way he would often sneak away from them to be alone, and how he was always glued to his phone with a goofy smile on his face.

But that wasn't planned for another few days. They were going to let him be for a while.

All looked up when they heard the door open and Kyungsoo practically jumped out of his seat, rushing to Nari and Chanyeol to help them push the cart close to the table. He quickly took over to let her rest and he and Chanyeol placed the food on the table.

"Did you make this?" Kyungsoo asked Nari with suprise in his widened eyes.

The food was displayed in various platters and containers. The biggest one was about the size of a cake, and it contained four different kinds of meat inside. Another had toppings like cilantro and onion in it. There were containers for salsas of different varieties and then the last container was filled with tortillas. Narda had prepared tacos for dinner.

She shook her head truthfully. "I can't take the credit for this wonderful meal. My flat mate Narda made it." Remembering what her flat mate said in the apartment, Nari informed them, "She said it was the flavors of her country."

At the mention of Narda, Baekhyun froze in his seat at the same time that Chanyeol's eyes darted in his direction to check for a reaction. Everyone else thought nothing of the name. They had watched the trivia contest a few days prior where there was a foreign girl they had been cheering for, but they remembered her as Guti Lozz. She had only said her first name once, and none of them remembered it anymore. The rest of the trivia contest, she had been referred to by her nickname.

Stuffing his cellphone into his pocket, Yixing asked the hairstylist. "Where is she? She should have dinner with us."

Nari bit down on her lip. "We had a few differences and I kicked her out of the apartment." Her dark eyes glanced for a second at Baekhyun who had been the one to convince Nari to talk to Narda. It was a quick glance that she quickly tore away from him and then looked at the food on the table in front of her. Kyungsoo had disappeared for a moment to fetch a chair for her from one of the lounge rooms in the upper floors. He soon returned and placed a chair for her--right next to his. After what felt like a long pause, Nari added, "But she's not a bad person, I was just overreacting and I kind of feel bad about it now." At the mention of the word overreacting Chanyeol was the one who looked at Baekhyun now. "I'm going to ask her to come back as soon as possible."

-

♥ 39 likes

gutilozz: one thing to smile about: at least i didn't have to sleep on a park bench. #hobolife #thankUSTEDforthat #insider

comments...

dancebiadance: lol wait. wut??

gutilozz: @dancebiadance long story. i'll just text u about it bc its really awkward.

exoriana: i can totally see u claiming a park bench as ur own aha xD

gutilozz: @exoriana not funny oriana, im in a serious crisis D:

gutilozz: @dancebiadance @exoriana wait. go on skype, i'll just start a group video chat.

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She hurried to get her laptop from her luggage and returned to the hotel bed where she opened it and clicked on the skype desktop app. There, she scrolled through her contacts until she found the people she was looking for. Bianey Gutierrez Lozano and Oriana Plasencia Zavala. Narda clicked on the group video chat option and waited for them to accept her request.

Within minutes one of the girls appeared on her screen, and then the other. One of them was her eighteen year old sister Bianey, and the other was one of her two best friends Oriana. 

"What happened to you now?" Bianey asked with a mock annoyed roll of her eyes. Though truth be told, she was worried about her sister when she said she was in a crisis, especially when she was so far from home and they couldn't exactly do anything to help her.

Narda threw her head back, eyes trained on the ceiling as she let out a dramatic groan. "Baekhyun hates me, and I got kicked out of my apartment, so I'm staying in a hotel until I can find somewhere else to live. But Baekhyun hates me and that really hurts, you know? He's been such a little shit to me."

"Wait." Her sister stopped her, confused. "Who the hell is Bacon?" 

Bianey wasn't very much into kpop. All she knew was that her sister liked a band called EXO and that they had--as Bianey once put it--like a hundred members. Bianey was always more interested in the latest fashion trends and the newest brands of make-up to buy. She was the exact definition of what it was to be a girly girl. She had always spent time with their mother, while Narda spent most of her time with her father and brother.

"My boyfriend who doesn't know we're dating yet." Narda explained to her sister, matter-of-factly.

"Oh." Bianey recalled and corrected her sister. "You mean the guy you took that teaching job in Korea for?"

The conversation finally sinking in after a few minutes, Oriana squealed loudly, making the two sisters flinch in surprise. "Are you saying that you actually met Byun fucking Baekhyun? How the hell did you manage that? How was it? Did you faint? Wait. What about Junmyeon? Is he as much of a daddy in person as he is in the interviews and variety shows?" Her lips were racing a hundred miles per hour with questions for her friend who was currently living in Korea.

"I never met Junmyeon." Narda told her, biting down on her lip as she continued to explain. "I only met Baekhyun and Chanyeol-"

"And you say it so calmly!" Oriana yelled with excitement. Just thinking about it made her grin like an idiot. "If I had Junmyeon in front of me right this moment, I wouldn't hesitate to pounce on that."

Narda crinkled up her nose at her friend's words. "I mean, you say that now. But really, when you meet them, you don't even know what to do or say. I personally killed everything when I made him think he ran me over with his car. So now he's not very fond of me." She was perfectly aware that it had been her fault and that he had every right to be upset at her.

"I'm so lost." Bianey piped up.

The names were all a foreign jumble to her.

With a sigh, Narda said to them, "I know this conversation was brief, but I have to go. I wake up early to go to work in the morning, and then I need to start working on next week's lesson plan."

"Take care." Oriana waved into her camera.

"I'm going to let mom and dad know." Bianey informed her.

"No!" Narda shot her a look. "They can't know about this. They'll think I can't take care of myself. They're capable of coming all the way to Korea just to save me."

Bianey rolled her eyes. "Fine. But let me know how that all turns out so I won't be over here worried."

"Promise." Narda raised her left hand as she swore she would do what her sister asked. "Goodnight." She said to both girls and then clicked end call.

-

this chapter turned out way longer than i intended it to. about four hundred words too long. haha. but i hope you like it, and i hope you give it s nice vote. im back to the constant updates because i'll be starting school on monday and since the first weeks are always the hardest, i may or may not be able to update with consistency.

thank you sll for reading and supporting my stories. it genuinely means so much to me. 

i hope you all have an amazing weekend!

-clary xx