Alex was sitting in his hotel room in silence.
The past five days had made something very, very clear to both of them. The reversal had begun.
Daehyun still didn't have conscious control over most of his body, but he could now do tiny actions like open his eyes and move his fingers a little. However, it was only a matter of time before he would be completely in control. Every day he could do a little bit more than the day before. This meant that 1) Alex could no longer wake up at half ten because Daehyun always opened his eyes at half seven and 2) it was becoming a lot more difficult to pay for things with Daehyun's credit card.
The more control that Daehyun regained, the more it made their actions seem bizarre. One moment Alex would be reaching out for something, and the next Daehyun would be stopping his hand from moving.
"What do you think is going to happen? Is my consciousness going to be stuck in your mind just like yours is stuck in mine now?" Alex asked.
"I don't know. I was hoping that you'd just go back to your own body and leave me alone for good."
"That would be best. I can't imagine what it's like being stuck in someone else's body and not being able to do anything."
"Tell me about it."
Alex sighed and hugged his pillow, collapsing onto the bed. Everything was so uncertain now. He was finally making some headway with Eunri, but he had no idea how things were going to proceed from henceforth. In an ideal situation, he would wake up one morning to find himself back in his own body as the handsome Alex Yang and then he could finally go after Eunri as himself. In the less than ideal situation, he would still be stuck in Daehyun's body, except he would no longer have any control. He would be a parasite in Daehyun's mind. He knew what would happen in that scenario—Daehyun would be on the first flight back to Seoul.
A knock came at the door.
Alex walked over and opened it to find Eunri and Miyeon standing there. He couldn't help but smile when he noticed that Eunri was still wearing the teardrop shaped necklace that he had bought for her the other day.
"Hi Daehyun!" Miyeon greeted enthusiastically. Eunri simply stood beside her with a shy smile.
"Good morning ladies," Alex said, his eyes only on Eunri.
Miyeon nudged Eunri, and the latter said, "Umm so... we're heading to London tomorrow and, we were thinking..." She tilted her head and looked at her best friend, a little reluctant to continue.
"We were thinking if you might want to join us!" Miyeon finished the sentence with a flourish.
Alex was surprised. He wasn't expecting to be invited along. All this while he had been sneakily following Eunri as she made her way from city to city, but this time it was actually an open invitation! For a moment he thought he could hear angels singing from the heavens.
"Daehyun's probably busy. He has to work," Eunri quickly said. "I'm sorry, Daehyun, it was just one of Miyeon's crazy ideas. You don't have to take it seriously."
"Not at all!" Alex replied. "London sounds great! In fact, I actually have some clients over there so I could meet them while we're there. It'll be like killing two birds with one stone." He would have liked to be grinning from ear to ear right now, but Daehyun was restricting his facial movements so he couldn't.
"Well that's settled then! We'll all go to London tomorrow. I can't wait to go shopping at Oxford street!" Miyeon squealed.
Alex was so thrilled at the idea that he didn't realise that for once, Daehyun didn't say no.
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Oxford Street, London. Bustling on a Monday afternoon.
As they squeezed their way through the crowds, Miyeon whined, "Why's it so crowded on a Monday! Don't these people have to work?"
Eunri smiled. "Most of them look like tourists like us."
Alex was having a fantastic time. It was his first time in London and everything was new and exciting for him. Daehyun on the other hand, was bored out of his wits. Alex didn't know that when he lied to Eunri about having to meet clients in London, it turned out that lie was actually true. Daehyun did have a number of clients in the city and he could technically meet up with them to discuss more about their investment plans while he was here. In fact, he had been to London so many times before that it was pretty much his second home.
Since it was his second home, naturally he would have a house here. It made more sense to buy his own place instead of staying in Four Seasons all the time, considering he flew here pretty often. His place in London was a three-storey terrace down in South Kensington, and that was where they were all staying for now. Miyeon's jaw had dropped to the ground when she saw the house, and he could tell that Eunri was also suitably impressed. Alex, as usual, ran about the house like an excited kid and had to be restrained when necessary just so the girls didn't think Lee Daehyun was crazy for running around his own house as though it was his first time seeing everything.
"Remember the appointment with the client at 3pm," Daehyun reminded.
"I got it, I got it. You don't have to remind me every ten minutes," Alex grumbled.
"Ah!"
Ahead of them, Eunri stumbled and fell onto the pavement, having been accidentally shoved by one of the many faceless people on the street. She tried to get back up on her feet, but a piercing pain from her right ankle made her collapse back down again the minute she tried putting pressure on it.
Alex rushed over. "I think you might have sprained it," he said. He placed his fingers round her ankle gingerly, and she winced the minute he exerted the slightest bit of pressure.
"What are we going to do?" Miyeon squealed, a look of dismay spreading across her face. With her ankle sprained, there was pretty much no way Eunri could continue shopping with them.
As if she read her best friend's mind, Eunri quickly said, "You guys go ahead. I'll just find somewhere to sit down and wait for you."
"She needs to get that iced and compressed immediately, or else it's going to swell really bad."
Alex shook his head and said, "We need to get you home so that you can get that ankle iced and compressed, if not it will just swell up to the size of a balloon by tomorrow." He turned to Miyeon. "I'll take her back, you carry on with the shopping."
"Daehyun, it's okay, I can just sit somewhere."
"No, I'm taking you back now," Alex replied firmly. He helped her to her feet and they waved goodbye to Miyeon, parting ways.
Once they were back at Daehyun's South Kensington home, Alex settled Eunri down on the sofa and immediately rushed to search for ice.
"Where do you keep your ice?"
"Top shelf of the freezer. There's plastic bags in the second drawer below the sink so you can put the ice in one of them. First aid box is in the bottom drawer, I've got some bandages in there. You'll need to bandage Eunri's ankle after it's been iced so that it gets compressed nicely."
Alex nodded and followed the directions accordingly. Everything was exactly where Daehyun said it would be. He carried everything back out to the living room where Eunri was waiting. Under Daehyun's directions, Alex carefully iced her sprained ankle for a good fifteen minutes or so before he rolled out the bandage and wrapped it up nice and tight. When he was finally done, he couldn't help but admire his handiwork for a couple of seconds. It was the first time he had done something like this, so he was rather impressed that he had done a decent job by simply following Daehyun's instructions.
When he looked up, he realised that Eunri was looking right at him.
"Thank you..." she said softly. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, taking on the pink tinge of cherry blossoms.
Alex smiled. He liked it when Eunri was being shy, because her cheeks would always go pink and her voice would suddenly become little more than a whisper. He always thought it was cute.
"...Daehyun."
All of a sudden, Alex's burst of happiness was replaced by a sinking feeling in the pits of his stomach as he remembered something. He remembered the first time he had seen that look on Eunri's face.
That was five years ago.
It had been by the beach in Gyeongju when he had confessed that he liked her for the first time. She had blushed in the exact same way and her voice suddenly went quiet, when she said she liked him too. That was a day he would never forget.
Right now he wished he didn't remember it, because it reminded him of one frightening possibility—one that he was not prepared to entertain.
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