Last Flight Home

003: Shanghai

Searching for Eunri was like searching for a needle in a haystack. Alex had no idea where to begin, so he spent his hours running around the streets of Shanghai like a headless chicken. For all he knew, she might already have left Shanghai. By the day of Daehyun's meeting, he was nearing despair.

That morning, Daehyun woke up first. Actually he always woke up first. Daehyun had an innate body clock that would wake him up punctually at half seven every morning.

"Wake up. It's half seven."

Alex swatted at his ear and continued snoring.

"Wake up! You need to get ready for the meeting. It's at nine!" Daehyun screamed.

The loudness of his voice booming in Alex's head made the latter jump out of bed in alarm. He tumbled onto the carpeted floor, bringing his duvet along with him.

"Shit, what's going on? Is the hotel on fire?" Alex yelped.

"It's seven-freaking-thirty you need to wash up and get ready for the meeting," Daehyun replied tersely.

"It's only seven-thirty... There's still plenty of time," Alex mumbled as he glanced up at the clock on the bedside table. Then he picked himself up and fell right back into bed.

"Get your lazy ass out of bed right now! You need to prep yourself for the meeting!" Daehyun screeched, this time at twice the volume. Alex jumped out of bed again. Now he was fully awake.

"Take it easy! Do you know what it's like to have someone shouting from inside your head? I swear you're going to give me a stroke," Alex muttered in annoyance. It had been three days of sharing a body with Daehyun and it was already starting to wear him thin. Daehyun was the most naggy person he had ever encountered, always yabbering incessantly about what he should be doing and shouldn't be doing, how he should be arranging his shoes, how he should be folding his clothes, how he should always brush his teeth first before he washed his face. The guy had issues.

Alex dragged his feet to the bathroom and did as he was told. He put on the navy blue shirt and white tie with white trousers as Daehyun instructed and looked himself once over in the mirror. It really wasn't his style, but he had to admit that Lee Daehyun looked good in formal wear.

The meeting was at the Bank of China's headquarters in Shanghai, and everyone in the meeting room looked too solemn and serious for their own good. Alex had no idea what this meeting was about, but since Daehyun was around to tell him what to say and do, he just followed orders like a puppet on strings. When Daehyun said click the next slide he clicked the next slide, and then he basically repeated everything that Daehyun said to him to the robots in suits that he was presenting to. They seemed suitably impressed by Daehyun's presentation—not that Alex really cared.

After the presentation, he loosened his tie and walked back down to the lobby.

"That wasn't all that bad," Daehyun said.

"Of course. I'm Alex Yang! Were you expecting me to screw it up?" Alex scoffed, puffing up his chest with pride. Daehyun had this high-and-mighty attitude that needed some changing. He had clearly done extremely well in the meeting—all the investors said so themselves—yet Daehyun was trying to make it sound like it was barely passable.

"Perhaps," was Daehyun's one-word reply.

Alex was so engrossed in trying to think of a way to sock it back to Daehyun for being an annoying prick that he wasn't paying attention to where he was going. He crashed headfirst into someone who was entering the building and knocked the poor soul's documents and bank book onto the floor.