#artificialkpopnet

Changing out of his uniform was the best part of his day, though most days were spent entirely in that uniform. At least this one was more comfortable than the one he'd had for the last few years. High school did have some perks. It also came with more classes, harder curriculum and the added stress of worrying about college and career. 

Not that he really had to worry about a career. He was an only child and as long as he wasn't a blithering idiot, he would inherit his family's business, The Ganghan Company. 

And he wasn't a blithering idiot. 

But, Kyungsoo didn't like school. In fact, he hated it. Tests, studying, and group projects where everyone was graded together. Kyungsoo was at the top of his class, but it wasn’t because he was particularly smart or liked to learn. It was what his parents expected of him. The long hours, constant studying, and after-hours cram school were all for his parents’ benefit. 

It was a good thing that he happened to learn quickly. It never took him long to master a subject. 

Kyungsoo dragged his books and journals out of his bag and set up his desk. There was a system, book to the left, journal to the right, pens and highlighters to the right of that. There had to be organization.

Kyungsoo popped on his headphones, turned up the music (Chanyeol's remix of American R&B songs) and began to study. There was a paper due soon and a round of exams that followed. He would likely be studying late into the night, which he hated since sleep was his one true love.

Once his groove was set, it would take a disaster to bring him out of it. Nothing short of an earthquake, or a tornado ripping the roof off could pull him from his concentration. Except his mom staring at him like a stalker from his bedroom door. He ripped the set off his ears in a frenzy.

"Jeez mom, could you announce yourself? You scared the crap out of me." 

"I did. Your music was just too loud for you to hear it," she chided.

His mother approached with a tray loaded with spaghetti and bread sticks.

"Whaa, what is this for?" It was one of his favorite dishes, but it was rarely made in the house. He was lucky his parents allowed him to try whatever he wanted when they ate at restaurants, but at home, it was strictly traditional.

"It’s been a while," she sat it on the space he had cleared off, "and you have been working so hard lately." 

"Got tests coming up," he said between bites.

"There is something I wanted to ask you though, completely unrelated to the food." 

"Mmm," Kyungsoo only gave half his attention. Nari’s spaghetti was too good to not savor every bite.

"Lee Jae-Eun is going to the same academy as you now."

He grunted, "Who… oh… you mean Auntie Joo Hyuns’ daughter?"

"Yes."

"Ehh,” he shrugged, “What about her?"

She sighed, “well… her mother is afraid there are some girls that pick on her. I was hoping you could keep an eye out for me?" 

"Mom… no! That's creepy." Kyungsoo moped.

"Oh, really Kyungsoo! I'm not talking about stalking her. Just keep an eye out. Her brothers are older, one has already been sent to the states and the other doesn’t see her during school hours. If you see something just let me know. Or maybe stand up for her." 

"I don't get involved in other peoples’ problems, Mom." 

"Well that's a lie if I ever heard one. Do you think I didn't know that you hid Park Chanyeol in this room for two weeks last year when he fought with his father? Why do you think there was extra food on your dinner plate?" She scolded.

"Uhh… but he's my best friend." Kyungsoo's voice cracked. He hated it when that happened.

"You have eight best friends, and you would help any one of them. This is my one and only best friend’s daughter. She's practically family. Please help me out this once." His mother pushed.

She had a point. Their families ran in the same circles, they attended the same parties… only neither of them were particularly social. There was only one time they had met that he could remember, when they were 6 or 7. He had just wanted to read his books, and Jae-Eun just wanted to draw in them. Kyungsoo hid any time their moms were together. He had so little interaction with her he couldn’t even remember what she looked like.

Only the fact his mother had let slip that she wanted them or marry. Jae-Eun was the girl they intended to be his wife.  

Kyungsoo sighed, he should have known it was no use to say no, he could never deny his mother. "Alright, I'll keep an eye out and if I see anything, I will let you know. But that's it." 

His mother wrapped her arms around Kyungsoo's shoulders, squeezing tightly.

"Thank you, my sweet boy." 

Kyungsoo shrugged her off. Ugg, feelings! Why did his mom have to hug so much?

"Okay, okay! Don't get so worked up about it." 

She snatched her hands away. "Right, you're a high schooler now. Too cool for mom." 

His mothers’ attempt to be understanding elicited a groan from Kyungsoo. 

"I’ve got to study." A feeling of guilt washed over him for brushing her off, but he just didn't like to be touched. He sighed in relief when she left his room.

Kyungsoo put his headphones back on and read as he finished his dinner.

**** 

He didn't keep an eye out. 

As a matter of fact, Kyungsoo completely forgot about the conversation. Tests and papers filled his time, friends took up what was left. It wasn't that he didn't think it was important. He did, but Kyungsoo's mom had just asked at the wrong time. There were too many coals in his fire.

Two weeks passed. The girl didn't even cross his mind. He aced his test and got a perfect score on his essay. He should be skating easy right now, but his super, awesome best friend, Byun Baekhyun nominated him as class leader at the beginning of the year and somehow, he won. Being class leader came with certain responsibilities, like running errands for the teacher.

It was pushing into his lunch time, and that was an unforgivable offence. Stupid responsibilities, stupid Baek and his stupid volunteering, making Kyungsoo be social when all he wanted was to keep his head down and get through this.

He took the south stairs, it was rarely used and popped out conveniently near the teachers’ offices. Getting this done and making it to lunch was top priority. This was one of those times when lunch would be the only break he had for the day, unfortunately luck was not on his side.

Between the second and third floors, a group of girls had another one cornered. Kyungsoo slowed, it would be better to take another route, he didn't want to get involved in someone else's mess.

It was that moment, as he turned away, he remembered what his mother asked. Kyungsoo swiveled on his heels and crept further down the stairs. Han Bora and her cronies circled the girl, her face hidden from him. 

"You think you are so much better than everyone else. Just because your parents are rich you turn your nose up at everyone," Bora mocked.

"That makes no sense, your parents are rich too or you wouldn't be in this school. Not that it seems to be helping you much," the girl replied.

Bora huffed, "this girl… yah, Lee Jae-Eun… I'm your senior in this school. You think you can talk to me like that?" 

Kyungsoo's eyes widened. So, Lee Jae-Eun WAS being bullied, and he had to come upon it today of all days.

"You have to give respect to earn respect." Jae-Eun said simply, holding her books to her chest.

Bora's best friend Choi Min-Ji flung her hand, smacking the books out of Jae-Eun's arms. Jae-Eun stumbled backward in surprise and another girl shoved her back to Bora.

"I should teach you a lesson. Knock some sense into you."

Jae-Eun held her head high, "Will that make you feel better about yourself?"

"Hey…" Bora yelled. Then she swung.

The slap bounced through the empty halls.

It echoed in Kyungsoo's head. Long, dark, hair flew in a fan as Jae-Eun's head spun from the force. It made Kyungsoo's stomach turn. He considered stepping in but Jae-Eun straightened, raising her head to Bora in defiance.

"Maybe you should try that again, you're still ugly inside."  

What the hell? Why would she provoke Bora further? The girl wasn't one to be intimidated nor was she forgiving. Jae-Eun would only make it harder for herself. He had attended school with Han Bora for most of his life. Last year, while she was in high school and he was still in middle, was the most peaceful year he had experienced. 

Another slap rang out across the halls and Kyungsoo's stomach dropped to the floor. He should do something. At least help her escape.

Before he could come to his senses, the folder flew out of his grasp, raining paper down the stairwell. His hands held tight to the rail as he faked his feet out from under him and stumbled down the remaining steps. 

"Sorry… sorry, excuse me," he clumsily reached for his papers and Jae-Eun's books as Bora and her minions laughed.

Kyungsoo straightened the papers in the folder, keeping his head low. He would be embarrassed if someone walked up on him being bullied, the girl probably didn't want to be seen.

A stray paper appeared in his gaze. His eyes lifted, and met hers, Lee Jae-Eun. She knelt directly in front of him. Wide eyes were on his, both cheeks an apple red. 

He couldn't turn away. She looked different from the picture his mother had recently shown him, her school picture from the year before. The round face had thinned out, making her appear older, her eyes seemed more exotic, lips fuller. His tongue darted out nervously to moisten his own.

She wiggled the paper in front of him. Kyungsoo blinked, dropping his gaze again, taking the paper she offered.

"Thanks," he whispered.

"Mmm," she acknowledged him, pivoting to gather her books. Taking advantage of the girls’ amusement, Jae-Eun slipped past them and scurried down the stairs. 

His heart pounded. What the hell had just happened? Why had he just stared at her like an idiot? Damn, he was an idiot. She had escaped, and he was surrounded by girls.

"Hey, Do Kyungsoo, do you like her or something?" Bora laughed.

He didn't even know her, but he sure as hell was impressed so far. If she were to be his future wife, he couldn't find it in him to be mad. 

And he protected what was his.

"Han Bora," he faced her, his deep voice steady and solid, "Don't mess with her again. This is the only time I'll ask." 

Laughter rang out among the girls again. 

"Or what? You don't scare me, the school doesn't scare me, my parents don't even scare me!" 

Maybe not, but he could guess what did.

"Choi Min-Ji, your parents work at Ganghan, don't they? Kim Young-Ah, yours too? And Bora, your dads’ even a Chairman for Ganghan. I've seen all three of you at Ganghan company parties. MY companies’ parties."

Kyungsoo wasn't familiar with using intimidation, but somehow, he felt he could pull it off. Astigmatism caused him to squint and look angry most of the time. His voice wasn't even cracking, it was low and smooth and felt a little dangerous. If they kept messing with Jae-Eun, he would be.

"It would be a shame if they were to suddenly find themselves out of a job, connections gone with no prospects. That life you're so used to, this fancy school you think you run all a distant memory. You’d lose that nice, big house and be sent to a public school. You’d actually have to do your classwork; daddy wouldn’t have the money to pay off your teachers then." He glanced at the other three girls who followed her around. "I bet I could find where your parents work as well. Ganghan reach is quite extensive."

Bora huffed, "you couldn't… you wouldn't."

"I can and will if I hear you mess with her again."

The girls fell deadly quiet. The fear in their eyes told Kyungsoo he had made an impact. He could get used to that.

"Why would you defend her? What is she to you?" Bora shook her head in disbelief. 

Kyungsoo stuck his hand in his pocket and started down the stairs, "She's family." 

You hadn’t quite figured out a plan of action in the off-chance that a casual run-in turned into a drunken hookup and subsequent morning-after love confession with whimpering apologies from both sides, but what you knew for certain was that you weren’t about to fall again.

You wouldn’t let yourself be put into the position to be hurt again. If you had to keep him at arm’s length to make that happen then that’s simply what you would do. The softness you saw in his eyes when he looked at you; the hurt you could read like a graphic novel on his oversized features could poke and prod at you all it wanted; you would not waver. You had survived the last six months, what was a few more minutes with him close enough to hold; close enough to touch; close enough for the warmth of his lips to leave a lingering tingle?

You took your time answering his question. It was a heavy one — Were you scared of him? — your tongue felt too dry when you finally coaxed some motion from it.

His eyes glanced down at your lips when you spoke.

“I would say,” you inhaled with the words as you searched through your vocabulary for the right one and midway through the exhale you continued, “I’m smarter now.”

Your answer sent him moving. His eyes fell from your face and his hand lifted to tap fingertips in an absent-minded drift over his furrowed eyebrows and he blinked fast with the harsh lighting from your bathroom vanity reflecting a flickering wetness in his eyes.

“I think I’m just going to focus on being more careful with myself from now on.” And with my heart — but, you held the word back.

“Because you’re scared of me,” he spoke again, repeating the same words as before only this time his hand fell over his eyes as he closed out the world for a moment. It wasn't a question this time. Your response had solidified in his mind the real reason for your reluctance for closeness. The real reason why you were so desperate now to get him out of your home. Kyungsoo could feel it and he was reeling as he took a step back.

His shoulder hit a door frame and he was out of places to go. This bathroom was tiny, just as the rest of your apartment was tiny and you listened to the sounds of the water from the shower behind you, running down the drain. There was a very slight mist in the air from the steam the hot water produced. It was hardly enough to fog the mirror even. Kyungsoo’s reflection looked clear enough for you to easily make out the pained lines on his face that his hands rubbed over. You could see the tremble in those hands and when he dropped them, his head sagged forward.

“I’ll,” he swallowed roughly and the words were interrupted by the breath he pulled, “fix it. I can fix this, please...if you—”

There was a war inside your chest. You hated the admission. You hated this truth.

Yes. You were scared.

“—if you just let me try—”

You were terrified. You were so frightened that he would reach out and rip the last bits of your heart out that you wanted nothing more to do with it. You wanted him to leave. You wanted the temptation of the warmth and kindness in his eyes to vanish so you wouldn't have to resist him any longer. How much longer could you possibly say no to him before the single syllable changed to ‘well… maybe.’

Kyungsoo’s focus was on you again and you caught a flash of movement in his posture. A shift of his balance that made him surge forward. It was minimal in depth yet when he moved you moved; only your legs carried you in the opposite direction. Away from his advancement. You stepped back as he stepped forward and he noticed it.

And he stopped.

Your ears were humming. The thick steam that poured from the shower clouded your peripheral vision and Kyungsoo lifted both of his hands to cover of his nose and his mouth as he gasped once softly and shook his head in a shallow rocking motion.

“You,” the hands muffled his words, “don't want me here. You don't want me close to you at all.” He sounded close to tears to finally know this ugly truth about you.

No. No, this was vulgar. This beautiful human before you should not feel such pain; you could feel the shards of your heart scraping and clawing inside of your rib cage and it begged and it pleaded for some way to comfort him but your mind would win with its common sense and timer that ticked down the minutes until this whole ordeal was over, the knowledge that he would leave and take with him every last chance you had at a love so painful and all-consuming — your rationality held on fast and you stood stubbornly on your own two feet, curled into yourself with arms wrapped tightly around your stomach to keep your insides from spilling out all over the floor. You had to try your hardest to keep yourself together right now. You were the only one you could count on for this.

“Kyungsoo,” you spoke over the sound of the running water and your heart and your mind were at war, “I just... I can’t.”

“You can’t what? You can’t be with me? You can’t forgive me? You can’t be in the same room as me?”

You felt like your voice had been snatched away and you hated this look on his face. It crushed you. It destroyed you. How had you gone from so determined... to this?

He still had your heart and all of the power of such an absolute ownership. But you had what was left of your pride and it would have to do.

The steam was beginning to thin now. The hot water was gone and nothing at all had been accomplished with it. What a waste.

So much time had passed that you were certain a few more minutes here and he would miss his second flight. The consequences of this were beginning to stack; mounted up high as each moment brought with it more and more real-life dangers. Greater than just the damage to your silly little heart.

“Kyungsoo, your flight.” You whispered it like the filthy word it was and you felt like a coward or calling upon such an excuse.

“I’ll go,” he said with his eyes wide and trained down at the floor below his legs. It was trance-like, the way he responded. “I’ll go because you want me to go, but I’m still going to fix this.”

When he looked up into your face you could see the clarity of the room written all over his face. And he was looking into your eyes with a different look; different than before. It was brazen and it was oddly strong. A new aura you hadn’t seen all morning was bursting through his big brown eyes and he aimed them in your direction.

“Look, I made a mistake. That was me...my faults, my insecurities— I’m the one that fucked this up. You said that you’re smarter now but there wasn’t anything dumb about falling in love and honestly when I thought that I’d never see you again...it fucking killed me.” He held you in his gaze as he spoke to you, legs no longer standing within the doorway of your bathroom. He had already taken several steps away from you the moment he noticed you flinch away from him.

“And I know you haven’t said it yet—” he was leaving as promised but your heart held onto him and pulled hard. It had no effect. His feet kept on retreating and he was leaving now. Just as you had wanted. Right?

“—but I know you still love me. You’re hiding it — trying to be strong or ..or stubborn—” His vision sharpened and he lost some of his gumption on the word stubborn when the mention of such a bratty word made your lips pull into a frown and you did not fight the urge to roll your eyes. As if this was mere stubbornness. As if a broken heart could be labeled with such a word. Stubborn was something a petulant child was. You had been nearly destroyed. You were trying to live now.

“—or whatever it is but it’s still there, I know it. You still love me too...you just have to remember it.”

As if you could ever forget. You were biting down on your bottom lip with such a force that it was beginning to feel sore between your teeth. Your arms were crossed over your chest so tightly your muscles felt the strain and he wasn’t waiting for any more of a response from you. He was leaving. You held him in your sights until he simply was not there anymore.

“I’ll see you in Japan.” He called out from the living room and you felt the forceful exhale of the breath you had been holding send your body downward as your legs sank and your used up body leaned against the bathroom wall.

The soft click of your front door closing was the final sound to come from outside of your bathroom and you took a full five minutes of existing in your own skin before you pulled your bones back up with your own muscles and pulled the T-shirt roughly from your body.

You leaped into the ice-cold stream of running water and your lungs gasped as the freezing cold inundated your every cell. You sputtered and you shook and withstood the shock of it until your persistence began to pay off and you could feel your body becoming numb to it. Growing used to the pain until you hardly even noticed it anymore. It was an excellent metaphor for your existence up until this point in Korea and if you could take this, then you might just be able to withstand whatever other bullshit was coming next.

Your rescheduled flight to Osaka was easy enough to arrange and by the time the wheels touched down on the runway you were beginning to feel the strong clutches of that morning’s hangover headache finally beginning to fade.

The headache medicine you picked up with the emergency contraceptive pills at the pharmacy on the way to the airport helped ease you into your recovery and with a little food in your belly, you actually began to feel like you might just live to see another day.

You didn’t usually travel alone on work assignments. Perhaps this slip of your memory had one benefit; your flight was peaceful. Not that you wanted extra time to sit and stew inside your own head particularly, but at least you didn’t have to converse with anyone in a language that took just enough effort to become exhausting after a while.

It was probably because you lived here now, in Korea, but lately, you’d been feeling more and more fatigued with the language. Not the translating itself, that was fine and only sporadically demanding, but spending day after day talking to so many people had begun to make you feel rather worn down. It hadn’t been like this before moving here and you attributed it to the change in your job. More responsibilities, more stress — that sorta thing.

Your mind wandered in the taxi to the hotel and you recalled the phone calls in the beginning. The long video calls with Kyungsoo in which you’d go on for what felt like hours about your day. The days when you came to visit him and you’d spend entire nights up late with him just talking and talking about anything and everything you could both think to talk about. The last thing you had longed for was peace and quiet. You craved his words and he pulled yours from your own lips with open-ended questions an insatiable need to know everything you possibly had to share with him. You’d never grown tired of it. Not like now.

It had to be the move. It had to be the full and total immersion in a new country and the demands of your new job.

When you arrived at the hotel you keyed a quick text to the manager in charge of on-location staff assignments and you were instructed on your reporting location to begin your preparations for the fan meeting. There were scripts to go over for final approval, teams of staff members who approached you for small tasks and larger tasks, and all at once you were back into it. There was a rush. This felt hectic just like it had felt with EXO in Europe last year and you felt at times that a single translator on staff might not be enough for all of the work. If only you could split your body into two and handle two of the tasks at once then perhaps you could sign off on these interview questions while simultaneously monitoring the group chats of which you had multiple notifications flashing; all of them needed your attention.

Time was moving too fast and you limped along trying to catch up with the rush of work your late arrival had piled upon you. You’d had to pee for the better part of an hour and you couldn't even think about sitting down to eat something. There was simply so much work and not enough time. There was equipment to wear; an earpiece and mic that would feed your voice into the ears of select staff and group members for you to provide real-time translations as the show progressed.

The hosts spoke and you spoke, usually reading along from the already pre-approved script of questions and commentary, but careful to pay close attention for ad-libs and changes and when it came time for you to translate for the members as they addressed the audience, the sensation of hearing your own voice echoing throughout the entire arena to raucous applause and screams was about as surreal as it could get.  

Your performance was far from perfect. You stumbled on a few words and especially upon hearing the sound of your own voice over that crowd, you could feel the pressure mounting inside of your chest. Your mind blanked on a few words and you had to scramble while still trying to sound as professional as possible to find another way to say things. The whole experience left you feeling hot in the face and flustered as hell and you have never been so happy to witness the final reluctant goodbyes at the end of an event in your whole life.

The members waved their hands and blew their kisses and the fans in the crowd screamed and cried and you felt like you might just collapse from the genuine relief that it was actually finally over.

You had done it. It was done. Bumbles and mistakes had been made. There was nothing you could do about that now. It was over. You pulled the wiring from around your neck, removing the earpiece carefully as you unplugged yourself and handed off the equipment to the member of staff who was collecting mics to carefully catalog and place into rightful locations and you honestly could feel a cold sweat all over your skin. Your hands were shaking and you felt just a little nauseated. You needed some downtime. You still had to pee but also you needed to sit in complete silence in a bathroom stall and not have to say another word to another human being for at least a few minutes. An hour was out of the question; your phone was already vibrating with message notifications.  

You left your phone inside your back pocket and made your way toward the bathrooms. It could wait. Whatever it was could wait for five minutes.

You found the bathrooms and your bladder was screaming as you pushed through the stall door, quickly pulled down your jeans and heard the sound before you felt the rectangle piece of technology that you had very thoughtlessly left in your back pocket vanish with a clunk and splash combination.

Shit.

Fuck.

Shit and Fuck!

You stood in a flash and turned to look inside the toilet bowl; every single wasted wish and hope you had used up from the falling stars and blown out birthday candles mocking you as you spun to look. Please, please, please no, not your phone. Not in the toilet, not the 3-year-old treasure you held closest to your heart that was so full of your entire life you never even considered going through the trouble of replacing it. It was an older model. Definitely not waterproof and there it sat at the bottom of the toilet bowl. Tiny bubbles were rising from the corner and you leaped into action.

Fuck hygiene, this was an emergency. You reached into the water and pulled it out and it dripped and dripped as the water drained from the inside pouring back into the toilet bowl. You scrambled for some paper. For anything to dry it, anything to save this and it was so blank and so black and so dead looking and it was still dripping.  

You pressed the buttons on the side. You pressed the home button, you held buttons down, you shook out the rest of the water from somewhere inside the bottom speaker and the toilet paper stuck to your fingers when you tried to blot and dry as much as possible.

Your messages. Your photos. Your whole life.

The phone had soaked up that water like a sponge and you could feel the stress from the day mounting over your head because you still had to pee, goddammit!

You stared down at the phone, sitting motionless on a pile of wet paper and even the relief of emptying your bladder could not have any sort of significant impact on you now.

You had the pictures with him in there.

There was an entire folder dedicated to him. Dated pictures that documented every single visit, every single dish you both made together, every single gift exchanged. Super secret folders with passwords to protect them with pictures you both took together. A kiss on the cheek, a sweet smile on his face. A giggle when his eyes disappeared completely. The video you snuck while he slept one night and you were elated to capture the sound of your name mumbled in his sleep.

All gone.

You sat on the toilet in silence. This wasn’t the kind of silence you craved a few minutes ago. And yet you were bathed in it now. With filthy feeling hands and a useless and broken phone and a useless and broken heart inside your chest and your emotions mounting the longer you sat here remembering everything that had been on that phone.

It was gone and he was gone too.

The burning began in your eyes and it only lasted a second before you felt the tears cresting and spilling down your cheeks. Your nose stuffed up almost instantly and you felt consumed by loss.

At least you were alone. Your lungs trembled and stuttered and you breathed through your mouth as the tears fell endlessly down your face and you cried. You cried for the memories, you cried for the love and for the disappointment of it all. You cried for yourself and you cried for Kyungsoo and you cried and you cried alone in this bathroom in an event venue in Osaka, Japan when you really should have been finding some sort of solution to this.

Maybe you could save it. Maybe you could open it up and dry it with a hotel blow dryer, or maybe you could find a kitchen and find some rice to soak it in overnight, you had heard once that that was the way to fix wet phones.

You couldn't just cry about this. You had to get up and out of here and do something to fix this. Weren’t there people who could fix these things? Cell phone repair shops who dealt with water damage and data recovery who would go into your phone and find your super secret photos of your super celebrity idol boyfriend and you locked in a fucking selfie kiss and possibly take that photo and spread it all over the internet and cause a career-ending scandal?

Fuck.

Still, you were up and out of the stall. Still, you were washing your hands and shaking every last drop of water from out of your phone as you attempted to somehow cleanse the outside of it with paper towels because of disgusting toilet water and all the potential bio-contaminants that involved.

You were thinking of e-coli and botulism and Ebola and any number of other things that could possibly attach to your face if ever you held this thing up to your ear once more.

You wrapped it in the paper towels and held it just a little more carefully away from you as you moved and a quick glance in the mirror told you that while it did look like you had been crying, your makeup had been waterproof and your face had an after-crying glow that honestly didn’t look too bad. At worst you looked a bit drunk maybe.

You vacated the bathroom in search of some solution.

What you found was a dressing room with the letters EXO on them and you knew you would encounter plenty of staff members inside to at least help you brainstorm your next move. Perhaps they had a stash of staff phones they could let you use for the rest of this assignment so you could log in to the messenger program and continue your work duties.

On the other side of the door was a flurry of movement and activity. Staff worked to de-wardrobe, label, and organize items and bodies were moving in all directions as people did their jobs quickly so they could be done with it and finally get to close out this day’s schedule properly.

A pair of eyes caught your own and having finished changing his clothes he looked up from his seated position on a sofa in the center of the room with a genuine double take at your state.

Had you really looked that upset? You were probably a damn mess. You could feel the remnants of your emotions sitting at the back of your throat and Sehun stood up and took strides in your direction with a question on his eyebrows.

“Hey...you okay?” his head dropped close to your level and you shook your head back and forth as you held your hands out to show him your dead phone carefully wrapped in several brown paper towels from the bathroom.

It hadn’t occurred to you that he wouldn't know what you were showing him. Something hidden inside paper towels. He reached forward, ready to receive your terrible offering and you pulled it back quickly, not wanting him to catch a public toilet disease by touching this thing with his bare hands.

“I dropped my phone in the toilet.” You spoke through gritted teeth but you could hear the whining complaint on your own voice.

Saying it though, out loud, with your own mouth was so much worse than the incredulous repetition you had been replaying in disbelief inside your head.

Sehun snorted instantly and his hand flew up to cover his mouth and he didn't try that hard to hide the laughter that was very obviously shaking his shoulders.

“Oh...my god,” he whispered with a dramatic pause between the words for emphasis and you groaned and stomped your foot that he would dare laugh at you in your time of complete and utter disaster.

“Sehun,” you whispered harshly but it was no use reprimanding him because he had already covered his face with his open palms and he openly laughed so much harder when you scolded him.

“I’m sorry,” he said between big gasps for air, “It’s just...the way you’re holding it seemed like you found a dead bird or something.”

“Oh shit, are you really crying?” His laughter quieted down when your lips frowned down into the saddest pout at your terrible, terrible luck and you were about to leave this useless man in search of someone else — anyone else who could actually help you when a second face appeared beside the, now concerned, Oh Sehun.  

His face was equally concerned to see you sniffling and wiping stray tears from below your eyes and you were trying your best to control this. The more attention your quiet sniffles garnered, the more you wanted to turn and run out of the room.

The wide eyes of the man standing beside Sehun turned on him and you flinched when a hand reached up and roughly smacked the taller man on the shoulder.

“What the hell did you do?” Junmyeon, the leader of the group was hissing angrily at Sehun and you lifted your phone up quickly to protest. But more faces were appearing beside Sehun and Junmyeon now and there was a bit of a circle gathering. Oh god, you were a spectacle.

“I’m sorry for whatever happened, but sometimes our Sehun, he seems very mad or angry but really,” Junmyeon addressed you with a nervous smile on his lips and reached his own hand up to wave over the length of his own face, “he has a sleepy bitch face. That is just his face.”

Sehun’s expression had shifted at being blamed for this and he lifted his head to toss it back in annoyance. A loud sigh vacated his lungs and he rolled his eyes hard.

“Resting, Junmyeon. It’s a resting bitch face. God, how many times...”

“Sehun didn’t do anything. I’ve...dropped—” you lifted the phone toward the center of the circle of faces that had gathered. The commotion was already set into motion and Minseok had joined in the investigation of what exactly Sehun had or hadn’t done to make you cry.

Only Minseok had noticed that you held something in your hands and your words were out of your lips just after he had grabbed the brown paper towel wrapped phone from your hands.

“—my phone in the toilet.” The paper towels had fallen open enough for Minseok’s hand to grip around your phone briefly and it took him a good three seconds to register what you had actually said. The motion must have shaken some more drops of water from the inside.

“Oh my god, it’s wet. Why is this wet? Why is my hand wet right now?” His voice had risen by octaves and he quickly opened his hand to send the phone falling back down where it missed your hands holding the paper towels and clattered down onto the floor between everyone’s legs.

Heads looked down.

“I dropped it in the toilet,” you whispered with your voice thick with shame and your face felt like you’d been lounging in the fire pits of hell.

Minseok was green. He was waving his hands up and down rapidly and making gagging sounds and you frowned down at the now cracked phone screen of your dead phone.

“Why is Minseok freaking out?” Jongdae had arrived at the circle and stood beside Manager Lee and Manager Park who both looked down at the device with matching disinterested expressions on their faces.

“Put it in some rice,” Jongin chimed in from the sofa he seemed to be glued to, “I’ve dropped lots of phones in water. You put them in rice and they wake back up.”

“Where is she going to get rice right now?” Sehun asked Jongin who rolled his eyes as he looked up from his phone screen for a moment.

“Uhh...this is Japan, Sehun. She can just, like, go outside and get some rice on the street,” and as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, he held his hands out like a game show hostess showing off the fancy prizes up for grabs. “We are in Japan.”

“Did you pee on it?” Chanyeol’s baritone chimed in and you shook your head vehemently with your eyes as wide as could be. He gasped softly and he leaned in closer to you. “Was it the other one?” Chanyeol held up his fingers in a V shape, quietly asking about the other bodily function that might have happened with the phone inside the toilet and you wanted to just die.

You wished for a hole to climb into. Everyone was talking at once. This was a terrible situation that was becoming worse with each new witness who arrived to gawk.

“Toilet water on his hands,” Junmyeon responded to Jongdae’s question and the later wrinkled his nose in disgust, “She dropped her phone in the toilet and Minseok picked it up...got it on his hands. He’s going to be washing for hours tonight.”

Jongdae clicked his tongue and shook his head back and forth.

You crouched down on your ankles to grasp the phone within the paper towels again and cradled it between your parted knees with great care; as if all of the damage that could come to the device hadn’t already occurred.

“It looks kinda old, maybe it was time to replace it.” Sehun offered as he joined you down on the floor where you sunk down to sulk.

“It had everything on it, Sehun. My whole life. Pictures, videos...work. I have so much work I still need to do and I need my phone to do it. How will I get through the fanmeeting tomorrow without a phone? Do you know how much work gets done while I’m on the move?”

“Maybe you can use a replacement for now and we can take that one to get fixed when we get back to Seoul...Hmm?” Junmyeon was speaking down to you like you were an upset child he tried to pacify. He bent in half at the waist to join the pow-wow on the floor and you looked around to see that most of the half-interested parties to witness the spectacle had lost interest by now and wandered away. Minseok had disappeared quickly and you were certain that the running water you could hear coming from the dressing room bathroom was him scrubbing his hands.  

“Does anyone have a spare phone on them? Baekhyun you have two phones right?” Junmyeon was asking the room and several faces looked away as soon as the question was raised.

Baekhyun, who had been sitting on a nearby sofa with his head tossed back in half nap, half exhausted coma lifted his head for a moment.

“Why is this an our problem and not a her problem?” Junmyeon stood and leaned in Baekhyun’s direction with his jaw clenched and his face pink.

“Because she’s the one that Sehun li— knows. Sehun knows, h-his friend. She is his friend so she’s our friend. Why are you like this?”

“I need my phones,” Baekhyun said dismissively, closing his eyes up tight as his head fell back into place to rest against the back of the sofa.

A hand appeared. A hand holding a phone, and you stared down at that hand that held the phone out for you to take. The owner of the hand spoke and you jumped at the low voice that coated your eardrums and your heart and your entire existence in warmth.

“Here,” he said and the phone in his hand illuminated with the movement.

“I have two. Use this one for now.” Kyungsoo spoke beside you and you looked at the phone he presented you with. The phone he offered was the kind of familiar that singed your skin and prickled your memory and you could feel the protest on your tongue long before you followed his arm up to his shoulder to look into that calculated and blank look on his face that he kept controlled as he interacted with you in front of the others.

“Oh good. This will work for now. So you can get your work done, right?” Junmyeon was smiling wide at the obvious display of teamwork before him — a valuable member of the group taking care of another member so they could get their job done, for the good of everybody involved, for the good of EXO (We Are One)  — you could see the relief and pride written all over Junmyeon’s face as he looked at Kyungsoo.

“K-Kyungsoo, I don’t think—”

“It already has the apps we use. You can just log in and see all of your messages and emails and everything. You won’t be able to get a replacement phone by tonight and tomorrow will be too busy. Just use it.”

He was waiting for you to take it.

Sehun, Junmyeon, Jongdae, Chanyeol, and Jongin all waited for you to take it. Even Baekhyun from the sofa peeled an eyelid open to watch you take it.

Manager Lee clapped his hands once and the members' heads turned to listen as he announced 15 minutes before the vans left for the hotel and people were on the move again rushing to pack up belongings and finish last minute activities and you reluctantly reached for the phone that Kyungsoo still held in his hands.

He watched your face carefully as you gripped it and there was a slow motion blink of his eyes that made a wave of heat travel through your chest.

He stood on his legs and reached down to grab your hand and pull you into a standing position and then he leaned close to whisper into your ear, careful to drop your hand from his as soon as you were in an upright position.

“Password’s your birthday.”

He pivoted on his feet, leaving you here in the center of the dressing room with his own personal phone, the one he’d used to call you with late at night when you dated him. The one he’d texted you with and video called you with and the one who’s screen he’d kissed many times when he couldn’t kiss you in person because of the distance.

The one he’d used to break up with you.

“Kyungsoo,” you called toward his retreating back and he spun to look at you with raised eyebrows behind his round glasses. “I’ll give it back as soon as we get to Seoul.”

He shrugged his shoulders, “Keep it as long as you need it,” he said with a concealed smile inside his eyes.

“I won’t look at anything in it either,” you said much quieter this time and with just a bit of sarcastic notes in your voice.

“You can look at all of it,” he said and the smile in his eyes was gone, “You already have the password for everything.”

Your looming work deadlines overshadowed your sense of danger. It didn’t mean you couldn’t feel it, but you honestly didn’t have much of a choice. Kyungsoo was the only person in the entire room to offer you a solution that wasn’t soak the phone in rice and pray and he had already left for whatever task he had been in the middle of when you had barged your crisis-having, weeping self into his dressing room.

So you turned to the phone — Kyungsoo’s phone — tried your best not to be too annoyed by the all of the unread messages and waiting texts and missed call notifications you saw all over the damn thing (what was wrong with him?) and you logged him out to log yourself in where you needed to be.

The messages had piled up. Had you really been offline for a whole hour directly after a high profile event in your target language where you were required to vet a huge amount of official statements and articles that represented the company, the group, and the brand of EXO? You were glued to the phone for the entire ride back to the hotel and paused only for a moment to search for your room key so you could get to your laptop and finally close out the last of your tasks from today’s fan meeting. You had planned on showering and having a quick in-room dinner before final script approvals for tomorrow’s event.

Your self-control was impressive if you didn’t say so yourself. Although being so busy that you didn’t even have time to go to the bathroom without taking your laptop with you probably helped fuel the self-control.

Kyungsoo’s phone — it had its own tempting little voice that called to you from the coffee table — had been left completely and surprisingly unexplored by the time you signed off on the final script translations and you’d watched it sitting there out of the corner of your eye as you grabbed the remote control and flipped on the tv. The phone lit up a few times as non-urgent group chat messages arrived for you and then a longer buzz sounded out. And it didn’t quit.

Oh shit, it was ringing. Kyungsoo’s phone was ringing. You looked at the screen and read the word Mom on the illuminated screen and that single word sent a wave of tension through your body that started at your head and landed somewhere deep inside your belly.

You shouldn’t answer it, right? Your hands were on the phone and your grip was faltering on the second ring.

What would you even say to her?

You did suppose that you could simply explain how you, a vetted S.M. employee, had his phone for the time being and her son was unavailable but you’d be sure to let him know she called.

That was the professional thing to do. It was the kind thing to do also. It was your fault that he didn’t get to speak with his mother right now after the schedule had been completed for the night and he would have had enough time for a talk with his mom. You knew how busy he was and how rarely he got to actually connect with her. Your guilt multiplied the longer the phone rang.

The call had rung it’s third and fourth ring and you watched as the phone went silent in your hands. The screen went black and after a few seconds of staring at the blackness, the phone buzzed again briefly indicating that she had left a voicemail.

What if it was something important?

What if something was wrong?

You no longer hesitated. A trek through his contacts brought up a sparse list. Mom, Dad, a couple of managers and some of his actor friends. Slithering by down the list was his dog sitter Sunny— as pretty a thing as she was annoying (ugh), and your frustrations magnified upon the realization that he did not have his work phone number saved in this phone. But then again, why would he? What reason in the world would he have to call himself?

What he did have saved was your name with a little red emoji heart trailing behind it.

You glared at the heart and the heart glared back at you.

And then your fingers were moving.

It was that damn heart. How could he still have that damn heart?

You jumped to his text messages and scrolled through the chains searching for the color red. It was far down on the list but it was there. The final messages exchanged with each other weren’t angry. They weren’t bitter or harsh. You scrolled and you scrolled and you saw kindness. You saw sweetness and splashes of love. Like a relic frozen in time — the unearthed bones of a pair of lovers — buried alive and in their final moment, their last breath was a kiss.

You hadn’t been able to delete them either.

You closed out of the text messages. You were already in this deep. Hadn’t he given you permission to look anyway? There wasn’t even a ceremonial pause in your movements where you second guessed yourself. How far had you fallen now?

His photo gallery was organized in folders and honestly, it was mostly pictures of food. Very few personal pictures despite the careful labeling system he used for his photos. You honestly felt disappointed. Your gallery had been full of pictures. Personal pictures and pictures of places you’d traveled for work. The really personal ones though...the pictures that stabbed and burned when you looked with your weakest moments to blame; those were in hidden folders with passwords for extra security.

He…would not have done the same, would he? His phone was a bit different than yours, but your snooping had unearthed what you were certain was a hidden folder within his photo gallery. A little trip through the phone settings and you were prompted for a passcode. It was four digits this time; different than the six-digit passcode to unlock the phone and you typed in the month and date of your birthday.

It did not work.

You tried once more with the same numbers; perhaps you had entered it wrong.

It still would not open and you sighed out in frustration that he would trick you like this. He said you had his permission to look and he said you had all of the passwords to get in, and yet you sat here now, trying every single four-digit number combination that you could think of feeling like a damn fool and a little bit like a bumbling novice phone hacker without a single bit of savvy to get the hacking job done.

Your frustrations mounted when the phone alerted you that after whatever number of failed log-in attempts you would now be required to wait 30 seconds before trying again and you tossed it angrily down on the table in front of you.

You had tried your birthday, his birthday, your birth year, his birth year, some bastardization of both of your birthdays combined, the last four digits of your phone number, even the last four digits of your passport number, which he had absolutely no way of knowing in the first place; you still tried it and came up completely empty as you stared at the stupid numbers on that phone counting down for your chance to stoop to even lower levels than you had already stooped.

This number couldn’t have to do with you. There was no way you were meant to view the pictures in this secret photo album of his. You really should just give up. What if there wasn’t even anything inside the folder? What if this was some elaborate Kyungsoo-esque prank designed to tempt and then torment you when you couldn't crack it?

You regretted taking the stupid phone from him in the first place.

Your timer was done and you felt like a trapped animal, unable to free yourself from the snare you were caught in simply because you were unwilling to let go of the tasty treat you held on to. If only you put it down, you would be able to remove your hand from the trap and get up and just walk away.

Now you were convinced that the passcode had nothing to do with you, you still aimlessly cycled through dates you remembered. Landing somewhere around the date the European tour began last year, the first time you saw him in person, the day you were running late to the introductory meeting and he claimed you as his own personal translator, refusing to allow you to leave with any member of EXO unless it was him, that date...the day you first sat down to eat with him in Paris.

Paris was first. Paris was the start; the romantic city you both explored together before even having shared a first kiss. The date of the start of the tour did not work to unlock the folder but your heart seemed to tingle as you sat up straighter and thought to try something new. What if it wasn’t a date?

It was a long shot; 7274 using the numbers on a telephone keypad would spell out the word for Paris in Korean. Pari when romanized.

You tried it and jumped to attention when the password was correct. 7274...Paris. His secret password was Paris.

The message on the phone informed you that all hidden folders would now be unlocked and viewable and your hands were trembling as you returned to the spot you had been so disappointed to find filled with only pictures of food before.

And...oh.

Oh — Do Kyungsoo, you frustrating, beautiful, stubborn man.

The change in content was staggering. You could hardly move your hands to scroll with how they trembled and shook from what you saw in the thumbnails.

He had plenty to hide. He had more than you had in your phone. It was like a shrine.

Pictures of you; your own smiling face, your silly faces, your sleepy eyes, your pouted and puckered lips, images captured in person, images saved from your facebook, screenshots from your Instagram (which you did not even realize he followed), pictures of you alone, pictures of you with your friends, pictures of you with his dogs during your visits. Pictures you hadn’t realized he was taking, but he must have taken them because there you were, asleep on his couch with a furry black poodle curled up high around your neck and a second grey poodle curled behind your knees. It was all here. He hadn’t deleted a single thing since meeting you and he seemed to compulsively save them just as you did.

More shocking than the old pictures were the newer ones. The picture of you with a forced smile as you posed with friends a week before moving to Korea. It was here too.

Apparently, you weren’t the only one who kept up to date even after the break-up. You weren’t the only one who did not understand the meaning of letting go.

Do Kyungsoo was in love with you. You knew this already, but the evidence of his feelings was so obvious — it was obscene.

If he was going to be this way; if he was going to refuse to let you go, then why had he done that? Why had he done this to the both of you if he was just going to have his stupid heart broken like this?

You had to close it down when you got to the screenshots he had saved from your chats. He had circled things you said, put in little finger drawn hearts around the words, or hand-drawn short commentary like so cute or pretty and saved them that way. Why?

Why.

Damn it.

Your heart was beating too hard. You stared ahead at the tv playing in your room, completely unaware of what kind of program might be playing. You were technically looking at it, but nothing registered.

It came back to you like a flood; the reason why you had ventured into his phone to begin with.

Why you hadn’t just gone to the messaging app to begin with instead of searching through his contacts was glaring evidence of your idiocy.

You found his name from the EXO members & staff group chat and opened the direct message chat window beside his name.

‘Your mom called.’

A minute passed before you saw the number beside the message change and you knew he’d read it.

Another minute passed before you saw the three dots appear beside his name that told you he was responding and your heart was in your throat by the time his one-word answer arrived for you.

‘Oh?’

… Really, Do Kyungsoo? It definitely had not lived up to the anticipation. You wanted to scream and flail about the familiarity of this feeling.

‘I didn’t answer but she left you a message. I did not listen to it.’

You could feel your own awkwardness as you offered up too much information when he hadn’t even asked for any of this. Yet his frustratingly short reply grated on you and you wondered how he ever got to any of his schedules on time or at all if this was how he communicated with people.

‘You didn’t answer?? :/ What am I even paying you for?’

He was joking. You were burning alive and he was playing with the flames.

You did not respond. You couldn’t open up that type of communication with him. Playing and joking with each other was definitely in the Don’t column of your Do and Don’ts of Do Kyungsoo.

Your adherence so far had been spectacularly bad; what with the sleeping with him last night and snooping through his private picture gallery that had felt like reading a diary. You didn’t need to add the fuzzy feelings that inflated your chest with warm air when he said something that made you laugh.

‘You can listen yourself. Room 228’

You’d expected him to knock on your hotel door after a few minutes of travel time. What you did not expect was an emoji response [o.O!] and literally seconds later the sound of a knock coming from somewhere else within your room; from a direction opposite of the door of your hotel room.

You’d never had reason to, or paid much attention to the inner door of your hotel suite. It was the kind of door that had double doors, with locks on both sides that you knew could be used to access an adjoining hotel room.

You stood up from your sofa and the disbelief had reached new levels because, literally, what the fuck.

‘That better not be you.’

‘!!!,’ Was all he said in response and he knocked again; three quick knocks to mirror the three exclamation points he sent you.

You unlocked the door and pulled it open slowly and Kyungsoo stood on the other side wearing his usual black on black on black with sock-covered feet and his black hair laid flat over his forehead and black round rimmed glasses on his face.

His expression was one of genuine surprise and the combination of his wide eyes and parted lips behind those glasses was almost enough to make you close the door just as soon as you had opened it up.

You pushed it a bit, in fact, and you felt the tiniest bit of resistance on the other side. He had already moved into the gap and you must be squishing him.

“Wait, why are you closing it?” He complained from the other side but there was a bit of brevity on his voice as he did it.

“I changed my mind,” you said, “you can’t come in with those glasses on.”

“Ahh...this again,” he murmured and you pulled the door open to peek around the edge.

“You’re wearing them to disarm me.” You were pouting. You were being irrational. You were very, very tired from the very long day and he was watching you with his big round eyes and with that adorable expression on his face and you would rather slam this door shut with every ounce of strength in your body than let him inside here with those glasses on his face. Were they new? God, they were nice.

“I’m wearing them to see you,” he countered and you scoffed, knowing better.

“I just want to call my mom.” His tone drifted into lower, more sincere waters. “She’s been sick lately and...and she stayed up late to call me tonight after the schedule. She’ll be worried.”

You gave up instantly; dropped your hands from the door and letting it swing open wide with a step back. You were being unfair to him and to his mom and he had done you a huge favor after all. He’d saved your ass really, the amount of work you were able to get done tonight because of his help would make tomorrow downright bearable.

“Sorry, sorry. I’m just...really tired,” you were retreating back into your room, toward the sofa where you had left his phone and he followed quietly behind, reaching down for the familiar, now shared device. “I hope nothing bad happened,” you whispered as he held the phone up to his ear to listen to her message.

His face was blank as he did it and he focused ahead on the opposite wall where the clock told him it was well after one in the morning and everybody in this room probably should be asleep instead of doing whatever it was they were doing right now.

He was moving; swiping on the screen and holding the phone up to his ear and you heard the voice on the other end of the phone answer before he began speaking to his mom.

You did not want to pry. You did not think you had the right to, but he was sitting here in your hotel room talking to his mom about something that was going on with one of the dogs. You heard the word for veterinarian and a dreadful feeling was growing in your belly. Was one of the babies sick? Had the youthfully beautiful Sunny finally neglected them to the point of illness and would soon be replaced with some sweet but friendly old man who was passionate about poodles and did not use every opportunity to touch the poodle’s owner liberally and flirtatiously to a soundtrack of forced laughter as over-the-top as a faked orgasm? [You hated her laugh about as much as you hated her face.]

You had been lost in your own thoughts by the time you came-to and realized that Kyungsoo had already disconnected the call and was just watching you standing here with your arms tightly crossed over your chest and your jaw clenched down so hard it ached around your earlobes.

“You okay?” He said once your realization shifted to him and away from the darkness of your own thoughts.

Okay? You hardly knew the meaning of the word anymore.

“Are the puppies okay?”

He was looking down at his phone as if something caught his attention on it, but he glanced up once at your question.

“Yeah, they’re just getting shots tomorrow. I said that on the phone. Your Korean’s getting rusty, baby. Should we work on it?”

Baby? How dare he. He had a look on his face. There was almost a fiery glare in the depths of his eyes and it was very late. You were very tired. He was very tiring. You should not have let him in wearing those glasses.

“I was trying not to listen.”  

“You can listen,” he said before holding up the phone in his hand which was open to the unlocked gallery of images which had once been so shocking to discover and already looked so damn familiar to see in his hands. “You can know it all,” he added quietly with his eyes back down on the phone again and his ears bright pink with the truth on the table for everyone to see.

“Kyungsoo,” you began. You felt worn down. He should sleep and so should you. In your respective hotel rooms of course.

“Why did you cry? What did you lose on your phone that made you cry so hard?”

You did not continue with where you were headed; to tell him it was time to sleep and so you could both rest enough for tomorrow's work. Instead, you found your words lost somewhere along the pathway to your lips.

“You can talk to me, you know. I’m still Kyungsoo. I’m still the same person.”

You bit down hard on your lip. It was a dangerous topic to approach this late at night. Especially with this person.

“Was it us? Was it our pictures that you lost? You didn’t save them anywhere at all? Was that why you cried?”

His prodding was soft and gentle, begging you to unfold and show what you hid inside of yourself. You had to look away from the softness you saw in his eyes and the urge to answer the many questions he had asked you burned in the back of your throat.

You had to speak. You needed it said like you needed oxygen.

“It’s like...like it never even happened now. At least before, I had something concrete that I could go back and see with my own two eyes. At least with that, it seemed like maybe it was real. We were really happy once.”

With each new word you spoke the room grew darker and colder and the thickness in your throat was coating your vocal cords. You spoke through it, but it was evident and obvious. You weren’t looking at him. You could not. You felt the burning return to your closed eyes and wetness built up and threatened the riverbanks and the well-being of the towns folks nearby.

And where it grew cold and where it grew dark came a warmth that encased around your bones.

You could smell him before you could feel him; strong and enveloping you entirely within his arms.

Kyungsoo had stood, closed the distance between your bodies and he was hugging you. His arms wrapped completely; his hands flat against your back did not rub in comforting circles, he was still and he was strong and he held on firmly and when you pulled much needed oxygen into your lungs you smelled the fragrance of the skin on his neck where your head had naturally tucked in. It felt like a dream.

His voice, this make-believe voice that narrated into your ear; using the voice of the man you loved.

“We can take more pictures. We can start again. Please, don't cry. We’ll make more memories together. We can do it again...right this time. I really loved you and you really loved me — that was real.”

He spoke with so much conviction, you longed to believe the fairy tales he told — all sorts of stories and your heart begged for you to believe them all. “It was real then and it will be real again. I promise you...I promise.”

“Hoseok! Just stop talking for about two minutes, please?” you pleaded.

“Fine. I’ll stop talking but I want to know what’s going on," he said while smiling, you could see his pearly white teeth shining.

“I want to make you feel special since you are always sweet and caring to me," you finally admitted to him.

“Oh,” he said while peeking from behind the blindfold to look you in the eyes before finishing his sentence, “Babe if I knew that’s what you wanted to happen then I wouldn’t have stalled this long.”

You nodded your head and moved the blindfold up over his eyes and simply saying, “Don’t move that blindfold and no touching me or yourself.”

He nodded his head in agreement and sat back and waited for something to happen next.

You took slow and uninterrupted steps towards the man that was sitting in front of you with a smirk plastered on his face and his cock tightly pressed against the fabric of his sweatpants. Leaning down, you placed a lenient peck behind his earlobe which made Hoseok moan unwillingly. His breathing was once slow and steady, has now quickened once he felt your hands unwaveringly slide down his chest and stopping at the elastic of his pants.

“What do you want me to do?” you spoke as a few of your fingers slipped between his warm skin and elastic band. Your fingers traversed across his subtle v-line and sparse stubble.

“Can we cut the teasing already?” Hoseok questioned as your entire hand sneaked into his boxers. Your hand wrapped around the base of his now fully erected cock. Hoseok let out a docile whimper once your hand tightened its grip which caused him to lunged forward out of surprise.

Deciding to ignore his question, you slid your hand up towards the head of his cock. You tilted your head to one side as your free hand tugged at his sweatpants to signal that you wanted them off. Before you had the chance to remove your hand perfectly, you watched as Hoseok swiftly stood up and slid his pants and boxers down to his ankles. His dick jumped with excitement but you were prolonging what he actually wanted just so you both of dote on this moment.

As you walked to the side of Hoseok, your fingernails grazed his clothed upper body. You crouched next to his bare bottom half and were met with his leaking cock. Without a single warning, you pushed your tongue out to lick a strip from the shaft to his sensitive and pounding head. You focused all your attention on the slit of his dick as your hand eagerly massaged his tensed balls.

Curse word after curse word fell from the blindfolded man’s mouth as you continuously teased him. He was losing all control since he couldn’t touch you nor himself so his hands found the nearest object, which was the footboard of the bed and he grabbed tightly as he waited for whatever was next to come.

Standing up from your previous position, you removed your panties and straddled Hoseok legs. The heavy breathing and begging filled the motionless room. There was a long pause before Hoseok spoke up again, “Please ___, I need your wet lips around my throbbing cock.” there was a pause before he whispered, yet this time he was closer to you than he was before, “I need to feel your walls grip my cock as I fiercely slide myself into you. Isn’t that what you want?”

Hearing his hoarse words against your back made you feel weak but you tried to pull through and ignore all signs that told you to cave into him. You placed your hands on the armrests as you slowly settled your wet lips against Hoseok’s fiery cock. Your eyes fluttered shut as you felt his dick rub against your clit and slowly make its way towards your entrance. The chance of you submitting to Hoseok and giving him what he wanted was slowly dwindling.

“I’ve obeyed your rules of no touching,” Hoseok mumbled close to your ear as his breath hit the back of your neck. “What would you do if I were to touch you here?” he smirked as he tested the water by allowing his hand to roam your thighs and stopping short from your inviting pussy.

You gulped as you watched Hoseok's hand inert and rub constant circles against your tepid skin.

“I’m supposed to be a good boy while you do things to me, right? But am I still a good boy if I break a rule and do this?” Hoseok tantalized as his right hand grabbed the base of his soaked cock and rubbed the head of his dick against your entrance.

“H-hoseok,” you tried to protest but you weren’t potent enough.

“What is it baby girl? You want to ride my hard cock and cover it in your juice?” Hoseok sneered as his hands sat on your hips waiting for you to sit all the way down.

To his surprise, you stood all the way up and turned around to give him a quick peck. Removing the blindfold from his eyes, you deeply looked him in the eyes and grinned. “Maybe next time babe. Looks like you weren’t a good boy tonight and decided to disobeyed my only rule,”

The room fell silent as you turned around and started to step away from the blindfolded man. Without a warning, you were startled by Hoseok’s arms wrapping around your waist.

It’s been six blocks and your boyfriend is still dragging you along for god knows how many more blocks on this Saturday evening. The click of your heels quickly hitting the sidewalk echoes throughout the neighborhood.

You and Hyungwon had planned a dinner together; a romantic dinner for two in the five-star restaurant that’s just opened. However, it was unknowingly cut short after your boyfriend managed to follow to the bathroom and told you to come with him.

Now, it has been exactly ten minutes and he’s still pulling you alongside him down a neighborhood that may or may not seem familiar.

Your legs try to keep up with his much longer and faster limbs but the struggle to keep up continues.

“Excuse me, but what are you doing?” You ask out of frustration.

He looks back at you once, and the look in his eyes are dark, sending an all too familiar chill down your spine. 

As the two of you turn another corner, you realize he has taken you through your own neighborhood. The familiar houses, trees and streets come into view through the moonlit night. Confused, you wonder why your boyfriend has decided to take you out if he was going to make you walk back home not even an hour later.

“Hyungwon,” you start, “would you kindly tell me where you’re taking me exactly? And why we rushed out of dinner so damn fast?”

Your boyfriend simply shushes you, pulling you along towards him, “Just keep up, Y/N, would you?”

Patience wearing thin, you finally stop in your tracks, tugging back your arm, causing Hyungwon to stop and turn around. Your glare says it all, so with a sigh, he closes the space between the two of you. His hand tilts your chin up while his thumb lightly rubs against your bottom lip.

“I’m taking you back to your place,” he confesses and your glare turns into a look of confusion. He pulled you out of this new restaurant that he suggested for the night just to bring you back home forty-five minutes later? Is he serious?

Hyungwon continues, “I need to rip that dress off of you right now.” His voice is deep with a hint of determination, “and let my hands touch every part of you.”

You begin to smirk at the realization that Hyungwon, your tall, extravagantly handsome boyfriend is simply feeling little hot and needy for you. And with that, your hand reaches up to cup the back of his neck, pulling him towards you so you can plant your mouth right on the sensitive spot on his neck. While you’re humming into his neck, you push your hips into his, eliciting a rough groan to escape his lips.

The vibrations of his groan tickle your lips and his hand grabs your hand that’s holding his neck so that he can remove you.

“Y/N, behave. I need to get you home, okay?” Yep, he is horny alright.

This will be fun.

You don’t even try to hide the smile on your face as you turn him around and start walking. Now it’s you who is doing the dragging, moving down a few more blocks before finally reaching your home.

Walking up to your door, you reach into your purse, scrambling to find your keys. As you desperately try to find them, Hyungwon is standing behind you, his hands wrapping around your waist pulling you into him. He’s pushing your hair to the side so his lips can finally kiss your neck.

After what feels like an eternity you’re unlocking your door and your boyfriend pushes you inside. You both start to remove your jackets and shoes, hands desperately roaming over each other’s bodies.

Both of you are already panting out of pure desperation for skin-to-skin contact. You reach for your boyfriend’s shirt but he grabs your hands and pushes you against your front door.

“Remember what I said, Y/N?” He plants his lips on yours, bruising your lips as he roughly kisses you.

His kisses are the best. Hyungwon pours out his whole heart in the way that he kisses. You can taste the love mixed with lust and it tastes so delicious.

His lips leave yours, as he moves to attack the side of your neck. You wrap a leg around him, trying to pull him closer to you as your back is still pressed against the door. “Babe, please. I need you.” You gasp out at him.

“Shh. I know you do, baby girl. I’ll give you everything I have tonight. Okay?” He assures you.

You push your back away from the door, leaning into him and he takes the opportunity to unzip your dress. As you step out of your dress, he’s running his nose down your neck, the scent of your perfume stinging his nose. It’s his absolute favorite scent. Your boyfriend traces a line above your collarbone before his lips find purchase on your shoulder.

For being in such a rush to get you home, Hyungwon was being awfully slow and sensual now. Lust driving your senses, you hastily unbuckle his belt and he shoves his pants and underwear down, you pull off your underwear as well.

Your hands reach down to grab his hardened member, stroking it a few times, earning you a couple of raspy groans from your sultry boyfriend. He loves the feeling of your cool fingers wrapped around him.

As you continue to pump his length, he rests his forehead on your head already panting from the sweet relief of your touch where he needed it most. You treat him so well and he loves it. Hyungwon pulls your leg up to his side and you respond by bringing your other leg up, wrapping both legs around him.

Hyungwon has you pushed up against your front door, his voice deep and in your ear, as he tells you to hold on tight. He slowly slides himself into you, the feeling of his hardened member sliding into your walls is exhilarating. He begins to move at a fast pace and the look on his face tells you he is in heaven. This is what he’s been waiting for.

Your boyfriend breathes into your neck, your hands wrapped tight around him as you hear his moans turn into soft euphoric whimpers. He’s pumping into you at an unbelievable pace, hitting every spot of ecstasy in you and your moans are music to his ears, encouraging him to continue.

He stills for a moment, looking in your eyes, “wrap your legs tight around me, baby.” You comply to his instruction, tightening your legs around him.

With him still inside of you, he peels you away from the door and carries you to your dining room table. He lays you down on your deep brown wood table. You hiss at the cool feeling of the table on your back. Goosebumps on your skin, your boyfriend takes in your bare body laid out for him. He smiles down at you, kissing your lips as he hums in satisfaction at your taste; his sweet appetizer.

His lips then move down to kiss your breast, taking your nipple into his mouth, letting his tongue tend to the sensitive nub. You rake your fingers through his soft hair as your boyfriend slowly makes his way down your body, paying attention to every detail, preparing himself for his sweet meal.

The sensations of your boyfriend’s touch are overwhelmingly pleasurable. 

You arch your back off the table the moment you feel Hyungwon’s tongue lick a stripe up your folds. You run your hands through your own hair trying to control your breathing as you feel his tongue lap up your juices. 

His tongue works effortlessly on your core, making you feel so good. You try to stay still, but your hips move with every motion of his tongue on your lower lips. His eyes flicker up to catch a glimpse of how beautiful you look at this moment as he has you sprawled out on your own table. His tongue continues to play with your folds, switching from his nose teasing your clit to his lips sucking on the little bundle of nerves between your legs.  

“Agh, you-you feel so good.” You gasp out, fluttering your eyes at the pleasure. Your chest and cheeks redden as you feel his perfect lips mend with your core. Your fingers tangle in his hair as the vibrations of his humming adds to the pleasure.

You begin to run your other hand down your body, feeling your skin under your fingers as you twitch at Hyungwon’s touch. When your hand reaches his hand that’s holding your hips down, you interlock your fingers with his.

White knuckles and soft, slow grinds on your boyfriend’s face as he devours your pleasures with his tongue. The scene is so perfect, you hope it never ends.

Soon enough, the coil in the pit of your stomach begins to tighten and your body is beginning to twitch at the pleasure.

He drove you right to the edge of your high before removing his lips from your core entirely, leaving you gasping for air at the denial of completion. You nearly scream your boyfriend’s name as he stopped just before letting you cum. 

He giggles at your reaction, grabbing your legs and pulling you down the table until your hips reached his own. “Are you ready, baby?”

“God, yes. Hyungwon, please.” You pleaded.

He leans over and kisses your neck, driving your hazy mind back to the edge as he slides himself into you. His pace quickly picks up, moving smoothely to fuck you right to the edge of ecstasy.

“Y/N, you feel so good,” his voice is shaky as he continues, “I just needed to fuck you the moment I saw you in that tight dress.”

“Then fuck me, baby.” You tease him, using your legs to push him deeper into you.

He smirks at your response as he grabs one of your legs and places it on his shoulder. The new angle has his member hitting you in a new spot and it’s totally riveting. Your hands reach down to grasp the edge of the table, trying to hold yourself from sliding up.

He leans forward a few inches, stretching your leg further up as his hips buck into yours. Sweat forms on your forehead, while your moans are caught in your throat. 

Your boyfriend continues to fuck you until that burning coil in your stomach returns. Now, your breathing quickens as you scream out Hyungwon’s name along with a few obscenities. He brings you to that high you’ve been waiting for, and you’re coming over his member.

Hyungwon continues to fuck you, his hips moving faster as the feeling of your walls clenching around him tightens. His merciless movements inside of you as he fucks you on your table had worn you out, but you continued to clench your walls and moved your hips as best as you could to drive your boyfriend to his own high.

“Come for me, baby. Please, please, please, I need your cum inside of me, Hyungwon,” you breathlessly tell your boyfriend. You continue to encourage him, praising him on how good he’s making you feel on your dinner table, pushing him closer. Your words helped him find his edge as his hips suddenly stilled in you, pushing himself deep into your warm core. He lets out a few deep groans of pleasure as his shaking body drops our leg from his shoulder, letting it hang off the table. Your boyfriend rests his body over yours, breathless and worn out.

You hummed to your boyfriend as you helped him catch his breath, running your fingers through his dampened hair.

“Best dinner ever, baby.” You whisper in his ear, once he’s caught his breath.

“Mmm, you’re definitely my favorite five-star restaurant, Y/N.” He jokes, winking at you.

You laugh, rolling your eyes, “You’re a goof. You couldn’t even last a whole hour at the restaurant.”

“I bet I can last a whole hour for something else.” 

You look at your boyfriend, raising an eyebrow in disbelief. 

“Oh? You think you’re ready for round two, huh?” You ask teasingly. You can clearly see how tired he is and there was no way he was up for more, you thought.

He stood up, grabbing your hand and gently pulling you up from the table. Your shaky knees wobbling as you struggle to catch your balance. Maybe you’re the one who isn’t ready for round two. 

“You have no idea what’s coming, babe.” Hyungwon teases, before picking you up in his arms and carrying you to your bedroom. 

Chills of excitement run down your spine as you anticipate another round.

Jae didn’t know if she had been a distraction for Kyungsoo, just something to do until Mi-Sun decided she was ready to play with him again. Or he could be using her to make Mi-Sun jealous. Whatever the reason it was, he had taken Jae-Eun for a fool.

And she had fallen for it whole-heartedly. The sad eyes, pretty promises out of pretty lips, smiles and secret, stolen glances. She had fallen hard for all of it. Jae-Eun believed every word until she saw him knelt at Mi-Sun’s side just like the day they had gotten married. The progress she thought they had made over the last year was a lie. He never intended to move on. Everything she thought she knew was wrong.

The ears fell harder. It hurt, everything hurt. She thought she would eventually get past it. But right now, she needed to grieve.

But she had messed up so much worse than anyone knew. In her grief she neglected herself. Didn’t pay attention to her body. At first there was a lack of appetite, which could be contributed to her emotions. Jae had spent most of that time asleep, so it had been easy to ignore the hunger pain. Then she got sick, unable to keep anything down even when she tried. Her head began to pound uncontrollably, no position, level of darkness, lack of sound or scent would deter the pain.

Jongdae was at work, and Jae-Eun was lucky that his ex-girlfriend Soo-Young had shown up when she did. Jae-Eun had barely made it to open the door before she fainted from the pain. Soo-Young rushed her to the hospital where Dae had met them. She had been so severely dehydrated that any longer and Jae would have gone into shock.

Jae was pissed off at herself for not recognizing the symptoms.

“Eonni,” Soo-Young’s voice brought her out of the thoughts, “You should drink. The tea is still warm, and you don’t want to get sick again.”

Sniffling, Jae-Eun sat up, wiping away her tears and taking the mug of tea.

“Thank you,” she told Soo-Young before bringing the mug to her lips, letting the warm liquid flow down her throat.

The moment it hit her stomach it turned, she heaved and Jongdae produced the trash can he kept close to them. He moved strands of loose hair as she retched into the can, emptying the limited contents of her stomach.

Jae-Eun repeated the process a couple more times before the tea finally settled and she could hold it down. The taste left in her mouth made her feel nauseous, so she excused her self to the bathroom to brush her teeth and rinse. It would likely prompt even more nausea, but she had to try.

When she returned Jongdae pulled her in to his arms.

“Jae-Eun-ah he started as he rubbed circles into her back. “You should call…”

“No…” He was the last person she wanted to see right now. A few weeks ago, she had been secure in her future with or without Kyungsoo. But he had stolen an chance she had at getting past this.

“I said I needed time.”

“Yeah, but you’re sick.”

“I’m not dying, Oppa.”

She was surprised Kyungsoo had given her the space she asked for. Well… kind of anyways. He called Jongdae daily and had texted her almost as often.

           Tuesday, 8:34 pm

                        Soo: Please talk to me…

           Wednesday, 10:30 am

                       Soo: I put in time off for you.

           Wednesday, 10:36 am

                       Soo: Let me explain… please.

           Thursday, 5: 50 pm

                       Soo: Come on baby, call me.

           Saturday, 3:12 pm

                       Soo: please

           Tuesday, 6:45 am

                       Soo: it’s been a week

           Thursday, 11:45 pm

                       Soo: I just want to hear your voice

           Saturday, 2:00 pm

                       Soo: I miss you

As much as she hated it, she missed him too. She missed the days spent quiet in each other’s arms, and the nights up late talking about anything and everything. She missed his eyes peering through his glasses at her as she painted in their office. She missed watching him cook, and the way he hummed when doing menial tasks. She missed the way her hand fit into his and how his lips felt on her skin.

The tears started falling again.

Soo Young sighed, sitting next to Jae and wrapping her in a hug. Jae leaned her head on Soo-Youngs shoulder and let them flow. There was no stopping them anyway.

The building buzzer rang and Jongdae stood to check the display.

“Um, Jae, he’s here.”

Jae-Eun shook her head. She wasn’t ready.

“Sorry little brother, she doesn’t want to see you yet.”

Kyungsoo’s smooth calm voice came back over the comm.

“So help me, Hyung. I will burn this building down to get to her.

She was afraid this was going to happen. The last thing she wanted was to cause a rift between Kyungsoo and Jongdae.

He moved again to protest but Jae stopped him.

“Jongdae, it’s okay.”

He watched as she wiped her tears away and smoothed her hair back into its bun before he hit the button to let Kyungsoo up.

“Do you want us to leave?” Dae asked.

“Please don’t, I’m not ready to do this alone.”

He and Soo-Young agreed and when Kyungsoo walked in they stood like a shield between him and her.

Kyungsoo nodded to the other two but his eyes stayed on her.

“Jae,” his voice was calm but assertive, “I got you point. It’s time to come home.”

“No,” she said simply.

“What do you mean no? I’ve waited for two weeks for you to come home. What do you want me to say? I don’t love her, I love you, now get your things and let’s go.”

Jae stood a little too quickly, but she recovered before Kyungsoo could notice.

“Are you kidding me? The level of her voice was making her nauseous again,” Let’s say for a minute I believe you, and I’m not inclined to, why would I go anywhere with you after a confession like that?”

Kyungsoo sighed, “Is there any way I could confess that would make you believe me?”

She shook her head.

“Then what’s the point. You won’t talk to me or let me explain.” “What’s to explain, you had your tongue down her throat.” Jae shot back.

“I didn’t have my tongue down her throat. I was trying to push her away.”

“Didn’t look like that to me. And let’s not forget the whole ‘you don’t love me like you love her’ confession.”

“Is that all you heard?”

“What more do I need to hear.”

“A lot,” Kyungsoo spat, “There was so much more to that conversation.”

Jongdae and Soo-Young shifted uncomfortably as his voice grew louder.

“It doesn’t matter, she’s obviously thorough jealous and wants you back, so you get what you want.”

“I already told you want I wanted. Damn, Jae, can’t we talk about this at home?”

“You lost the right to choose where we have this conversation.”

“If I wanted her, why am I not with her now? Why and I here begging you to come home? Why am I sleeping in the damn penthouse instead of our home, because the thought of being there without you makes me sick.”

He moved toward her but Jongdae side stepped in Kyungsoo’s way. He gave Dae a slitted look but didn’t push further.

“I won’t fall for your pretty words again.” She mumbled.

“Pretty words? Jae, you know I’m shit at telling you how I really feel. So what? You think this was all a lie?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“If I really wanted her, what reason would I have to lie now?”

“I don’t know, you keep promising the truth, but I have yet to hear it.”

Kyungsoo ran a hand through his hair. “You want the truth? How about I didn’t want my wife to know how big an idiot I was. How about the fact that I got played, from the very damn beginning? I was stupid and naïve, and I gave her everything she wanted and didn’t ask a damn question. Or how about it’s your damn fault I got involved with her in the first place?”

“I didn’t even know you then, that doesn’t make sense.”

“But I knew you,” He didn’t hesitate, “When did your parents tell you it was me they wanted you to marry?”

She sighed, pressing her fingers in the back of her neck to relieve the ache. “I don’t remember, in college maybe. Yeah, they didn’t approve of Nate. I was told I could date if I wanted, but I would be expected to marry you once I came home.”

“Our mothers are best friends. Do you really think they only came up with this when we were in college?”

He had a point, though her mother never gave a name before university, she had always seemed to be talking about a specific person in regard to Jae-Eun marrying.

“I’ve known since I was ten. You went to a different primary school but transferred to our high school. Your bullies didn’t stop messing with you because you hung out with the upperclassmen. Mom told me about you being bullied. They quit because I cornered them and threatened to have their parents fired from my company or call in favors if they didn’t work for my dad. I knew who you were then, and I didn’t mind. I kind of like that my parents had someone picked out for me. You were pretty and likable enough from what I could tell. I would even meet Jongdae after his art class so that I could see you, but I didn’t think it was right to talk to you if you didn’t know who I was.”

“Gee thanks, Kyungsoo-yah. Nice to know our little tradition was because you wanted to see a girl.” Jongdae whined.

Jae-Eun huffed in annoyance, “What does this have to do with her?”

Kyungsoo continued, “One day in third year you didn’t show. Or any day after that. Your parents had sent you to the states, I was pissed. Here is this girl who was supposed to be mine, and I wasn’t even informed when you were sent away.”

“I don’t’ belong to you. Why should you have been told?”

“I know that now. But then I was angry. I could have gone with you so that you weren’t alone. It felt like an ambush. But I mostly blamed myself, if I had said something to you, had we become friends then, maybe you would have stayed. So Jongin and I made a promise to each other not to marry the women our parents arranged for us.” Kyungsoo explained.

Jongdae belted, “That was because of her.”

“This is ridiculous.” Jae-Eun hissed.

“That was caused by Lee Jae-Eun.” He confirmed. “My hope, when I was sent to the states, was to find a woman to bring home so that I could marry who I chose, not someone who was chosen for me. That’s when I met Mi-Sun. She was my choice, and it was the biggest mistake of my life. But I didn’t cheat Jae.”

Jae-Eun felt the tears well in her eyes.

“When we went on that first date, Mi-Sun had just told be she was pregnant. So, I had given up on everything. But you walked into that coffee shop with this confidence. You were still the same girl I liked in high school, but it was like the air around you changed. It was hard to take my eyes off you. You were professional and poised, and you had this plan to make this marriage work and for the first time in years I was actually interested in something other than Mi-sun. But I wasn’t ready to let her go. I wanted to I just wasn’t ready and I took that out on you.”

She wanted to believe him, she wanted it to be the truth. Jae just didn’t know if she could trust what he said ever again.

Her emotions mixed with hormones made her stomach churn uncontrollably. A hard sob sent it over the edge and Jae-Eun dropped to her knees, dry heaving into the can.

“Jae!” She heard his voice in the distance.

Soo-Young came to her side, holding back her hair, rubbing circles into her back.

“What’s wrong with her?” Kyungsoo demanded, “why do you keep acting like you have to protect her from me?”

“I’m not trying to, but you need to back off. She’s sick.”

“Kim Jongdae.” Jae managed a warning before her stomach finally emptied.

“I’m sorry, Jae-Eun-ah,” Dae said when she managed to stop retching. “He’s my brother, I can’t lie to him anymore.”

“You promised.” She cried.

“But I didn’t,” Soo-Young came to her feet and stood beside Jongdae. “Your wife just got out of the hospital last night. She was extremely dehydrated, and close to going into shock.”

He moved forward again, but Jae-Eun held her had up for him to stop.

“Why wasn’t I told. She’s my wife damnit.”

Jongdae placed a hand on his shoulder, “I was there as her guardian. We didn’t have to inform you and she asked me not to.”

“She has a condition called hyperemesis gravidarum.” Soo-Young explained. “It’s a very severe form of morning sickness.”

There was silence from him at first. Jae-Eun slid off her knees and rested back against the couch. She sniffled as she wiped the tears (some from crying, some from the stain of vomiting).

Kyungsoo was hidden from her sight by Dae and Soo-Young, her hand in his.

“Are you saying…” He couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Yes, she’s pregnant.”

Jae heard a shuffle and a loud bang as Kyungsoo backed into the wall and slid down to the floor. Jongdae knelt at his side as Soo-Young turned back to check on Jae-Eun.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to Jae-Eun, “I couldn’t let Dae do it.”

Jae-Eun nodded in understanding. Jongdae was doing much better, but who knew what could send him spiraling. She brushed more tears again. With his head between his knees, Kyungsoo’s shoulders bounced. She would have thought he was crying, but the sound he emitted was nowhere near a cry.

He was laughing.

When he raised his head, his face was contorted into a half-smile-half-sneer.

“You’re having my baby, and we can’t even be happy about it. I told you I would fuck this up. You should have run when my mom gave you the chance.”      

His voice broke and the smile disappeared. Kyungsoo breathed heavily and Jae thought she saw moisture in his eyes.

With Jongdae’s help, Kyungsoo rose to his feet.

“Baby, please come home. Let me take care of you. We can work this out… please.” He begged.

“I’m not leaving you. I made a promise and I intend to keep it.” Jae assured him. “But, I’m not ready to go home with you. I still need more time.”

There was something in his face that looked like hopelessness to Jae. It almost had her changing her mind, but then she remembered just good at acting Kyungsoo really was.

He nodded his head, turning away, but he thought better of it. Shoving his hand in the pocket of his jeans, he produced a USB drive.

“The time that Mi-Sun walked in on us in my office, she didn’t know that Secretary Yoon told me she always asked if I was alone before she came in. So she would have had to know that you were in there with me. I didn’t trust her after that, so I have audio and video installed and Secretary Yoon would turn it on every time Mi-Sun showed up.”

He knelt next to her, taking her hand and slipping the drive into her palm.

“If you want to know what really happened it’s on this drive,” Kyungsoo closed her fingers around the box. Then he placed a kiss to the back of her hand, pressing it against his cheek.

Jae-Eun closed her eyes for a second and allowed herself to feel, to take in the sensation of his skin against hers.

Then he released it and stood.

“I’ll give you whatever time and space you need. You know where I’ll be and how to get a hold of me when you are ready.”

He turned to the door but Jae-Eun needed to know something before he left.

“Kyungsoo,” she called after him. “How can I ever trust you when you keep her by your side.”

“Yoo Mi-Sun no longer works for Ganghan.” He said simply. “Monday is the last day of her notice.”

“Why?”

“She tried to wreck our marriage. Let’s just say when given the option between a new position in Busan and a sexual harassment lawsuit, she chose the former.”

Jae-Eun remained silent, unsure of how to respond to that. She knew there was no guarantee she would go through with it. Jae-Eun had learned that hoping, when it came to Kyungsoo, was futile.

“I love you.” Kyungsoo’s voice was solid and confident. “I know it may not matter to you now, but you deserve to hear it. I love you more than anything.”

He turned to Jongdae, “Take care of her for me, Hyung.”

Then he walked out the door.

Jae tossed the USB on the table like it was toxic. She didn’t want to hear his confession again, or to see their passionate exchange. But more than anything she didn’t want to watch as he rushed to her side protectively.

Jae climbed to her feet slowly so she wouldn’t agitate the nausea and dizziness. With out a word to Jongdae and Soo-Young, she walked out of the room. The taste of bile lingered, so she brushed her teeth. It would be important for her to maintain this if the sickness were to be a regular occurrence. From what the doctor told her, anything could set it off and it could last anywhere from a few months to the entire pregnancy.

Pregnancy!

Jae-Eun hadn’t’ let herself believe it yet. But Kyungsoo knew, she couldn’t avoid it anymore. She couldn’t continue to wallow in self-pity any more because she was having Kyungsoo’s baby, and she was happy about it. No matter what their baby was a good thing. She could focus her time raising their child, the next heir to the Ganghan empire, and not waste her time caring about who her husband did or didn’t love.

When she came out of the bathroom, Jae-Eun had renewed strength.

Jongdae and Soo-Young sat on the couch with a laptop, the drive slotted on the right side.

“I know you don’t trust him.” Jongdae spoke over the back of the couch. “But I think he is telling the truth. You should watch the video.”

He was right, of course. Jae-Eun needed to know. Seeing the whole picture would be important if she were ever going to find a way past this.

So, the nodded and joined them on the couch. “I will watch it if you stay with me.”

Jongdae sighed, “okay, which one is it?”

“There,” she pointed, “that was the date.”

Jongdae’s fingers moved over the touchpad, selection the video and hitting play.

Kyungsoo and Jae-Eun stood together as Mi-Sun stepped into his office.

“CEO, Director Lee.” Mi-Sun bowed.

“Director Yoo.”

“Early as always, Director.” Kyungsoo’s voice was clipped.

“Yes, sir.”

Jae-Eun turned back to Kyungsoo, “I’ll see you at home.”

She placed a kiss to his cheek then whispered something that was inaudible. As she turned away Kyungsoo grabbed her hand, pressing it to his chest.

“Be safe,” he released her and Jae-Eun walked out of the office, leaving Kyungsoo and Mi-Sun alone together.

Mi-Sun stepped forward, tossing the binger on the table where Kyungsoo took his in-office meetings.

“The others are running a bit late, but they will be here soon.” She told him.

Je leaned back against his desk, crossing his arms and acknowledged her.

“You look happy.” She noted.

“I am,” he responded.

“It’s a complete one-eighty from what I saw at your wedding.”

Kyungsoo pulled his glasses off and tossed them back on his desk.

“We had a rough start. Jae-Eun and I … we figured things out. Everything is good. It’s really good.”

Mi-Sun came up next to him, “You’re in love with her?”

A smile formed on Kyungsoo’s face that was visible across the distance from the camera.

“Yeah, I’m in love with her.”

“But you don’t love her like you love me.”

Kyungsoo’s smile faded and he stepped out of Mi-Suns touch.

“You’re right. I don’t.”

 Jae-Eun felt the daggers in her chest again. It was worse than the first time. Kyungsoo told Mi-Sun he was he was in love with Jae-Eun only to turn right around and contradict himself. To say it wasn’t enough.

She wanted to be done, but his voice caught her attention again.

 “Loving you had be twisted and broken. I felt like I was drowning all the time. With Jae, it’s like I can breathe again. She’s my air. She doesn’t try to control me or stand on my coat tails. She stands beside me. Jae-Eun is my partner. I never loved you the way I love her.”

Mi-Sun approached him again. “How could you say that after everything we have been through. I messed up, I know I did. But I still love you and I still want to be with you.”

Kyungsoo backed away again, “Why are you telling me this now? After I said I’m in love and happy.”

Kyungsoo made quick eye contact with the camera.

“Because I’m not happy and I miss you. It kills me that I sent you into someone else’s arms.”

He huffed, “You van stop how. I don’t believe a word you say. All you know how to do is lie.”

Mi-Sun threw herself at him then, grabbing onto his lapels, pulling him down, plastering her lips to his.

Kyungsoo pushed her back, “Yoo Mi-Sun!”

But she flung her arms around his neck pulling him back down keeping him locked there.

His hands grabbed her hips and pushed against her. Then the door slammed.

 Jae-Eun watched herself step out of her heels, stalk over to them and plant her fist in Mi-Suns face.

Jongdae released a loud, “ooohhh,” as M-Sun fell to the ground.

But Jae kept her eyes on Kyungsoo as she grabbed her around the waist and stopped her from attacking. His focus seemed to be more on her than the bleeding woman on the floor of his office. Then he jerked a few tissues from the box and knelt down, presenting the tissue to Mi-Sun between two fingers, turning away as soon as she took it.

Jae-Eun had been wrong. It wasn’t like their wedding day when he had run to Mi-Sun’s side worried for her wellbeing. He seemed annoyed to have had to help her. Kyungsoo was curt and called her director instead of by her name. But it could just be that he was at work and was trying to be professional given the situation.

Then he told Jae-Eun to go home.

The door slammed a second time.

Kyungsoo picked up the black binder and walked behind his desk.

Taking he seat he spoke. “You should go to the hospital and have that checked out. I’ll go over your numbers and conduct the meeting without you.”

He slid his glasses back on to look over the papers.

“Not until you call the authorities, Kyungsoo. That woman is crazy.”

“You expect me to call the police on my own wife. Are you out of your mind?”

“You saw her attack me. She’s out of control. I’m sure my nose is broken.” She pushed him as she stood up.

“And tell them what exactly? She walked in on you sexually harassing her husband. Are you planning on explaining that to the police?”

“It was just a kiss, Kyungsoo.”

“One that was unwanted and unsolicited.” He fumed, “Your nose is still bleeding, you should really focus on taking care of that.”

He skimmed through the binder, not showing her much attention. He sounded disinterested in anything Mi-Sun was saying.

“Kyungsoo…”

“I’m not calling the police on Jae-Eun. If you decide to pursue this further then I’m just going to have to file a complaint of my own.”

“Kyungsoo, if you love me you will…”

“I don’t love you,” Kyungsoo’s voice boomed across his office. “And I’m done feeling responsible for you and your son.”

Mi-Sun gawked.

“Now go get yourself checked out, send the bill to Secretary Yoon, and leave me and my wife alone.”

“Kyungsoo…” She pushed again.

He dropped the binder and picked up his phone. “Secretary Yoon, could you call a driver for Director Yoo. She needs to make a trip to the hospital. Thank you.”

He replaced the receiver and looked back at Mi-Sun.

“They are expecting you Director.” Kyungsoo spoke to Mi-Sun with the same disdain he had shown Jae-Eun when they were first together.

Mi-Sun huffed, but she turned and stomped out of his office.

Kyungsoo picked the binder back up just before the video cut off.

 Jae-Eun sat in silence. Her brain didn’t seem to be working. The information didn’t want to process correctly.

Jondae spoke up, “And now I remember why we never liked her.”

Jae-Eun came to her feet. Her mind wasn’t working but her body propelled her forward.

“Where are you going?” Jongdae asked as she pulled her keys out of the dish by the door and changed from her slippers to her shoes.

“I was wrong. I have to go. I need to go home.”

She didn’t wait for a response before she was out the door and in the elevator. The ride down took centuries, time for her head to catch up with her heart.

Jae had only seen and heard what she had expected to, hot what really happened. She hadn’t noticed the blandness of his voice when he spoke to Mi-Sun, the disinterest. She didn’t notice his body language. The way his hands were pushing at her hips not pulling her to him. Hw he’d knelt just to pass along the tissue, not to make sure she was okay.

Kyungsoo had been right those months ago when he told her she had one foot out the door. Jae thought her insecurities were fading, but the moment Mi-Sun posed any kind of threat, Jae had been prepared to flee. God how could she ever make up for what she put him through for the past two weeks.

When the elevator opened, she burst through the doors taking the lobby at a jog. It was a risk with her stomach on overdrive, but she didn’t care.

Jae kept her speed outside to find her car, only she noticed the one in the building looked like Kyungsoo’s.

Jae-Eun slowed her pace as she recognized the figure in the driver seat. Hands gripping tow and ten, his forehead pressed against the steering wheel, Kyungsoo’s shoulders heaved. He hadn’t even made it out of the parking lot yet.

She laughed, tears pouring in torrents. Her idiot husband, the love of the life, was crying in his car.

She came around to his door and knocked on his window. He jumped, lifting his head, his eyes widened when he saw her.

Jae-Eun stepped back as he jumped out of the car.

“Is everything okay? What’s wrong? Do you need to go back to the hospital?” he bombarded her with questions.

She laughed through a sob as he brought her hands up to wipe the tears away from Kyungsoo’s cheeks. A red spot lined his forehead from where it had rested on the steering wheel.

“Are you really going to make your pregnant wife pack her bags by herself?” She cried.

Kyungsoo stammered, “you… You’re coming home?”

She nodded her head and Kyungsoo wrapped her up in his arms.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you.”

“No, I’m sorry,” he inserted, “I will never do anything to make you doubt me again. I love you so much and I should have told you.”

“You were right, I was so insecure, I thought you would leave me for her, and I didn’t see what was really happening.”

Kyungsoo laughed. “You are stuck with me now. I have my wonderful wife and a baby on the way. I will never leave you. Not for anything.”

He peppered her face with kisses, and Jae-Eun giggled at the gesture.

“Can we just be happy now. Madam Do?”

Jae-Eun agreed, “at least until I have to throw up again.”

His smile faded in concern, “Is it that bad?”

Kyungsoo draped his arm around her shoulder as he turned them back to the building.

“Oh my God, it’s so bad.” She replied as they started back to the building. “So you liked me in high school.”

“I did. And I have a feeling you’re not going to let me live that down.”

“Nope, it’s forever ammo.”

  It was warm, familiar, and safe when she woke, surrounded by objects and smells she was accustomed to. Kyungsoo lay, still sleeping, next to her, his face obscured in a tangle of her hair, his hand splayed out protectively over her belly.

The happy feeling lasted all of ten seconds before her stomach had her making a run for the bathroom. Jae-Eun barely made it to the toilet before emptying her stomach, then dry heaving for a solid five minutes. At some point her hair was pulled away from her face and a toasty hand rubbed comfort into her back.

When she was finally done, she crawled over, propping herself up against the wall. Kyungsoo wet down a wash cloth and handed it to her as she took the floor in front of her.

“Good morning, beautiful.” He smiled lightly at her.

Jae wiped her face and neck down.

“This is not exactly how you pictured you saying that to me.” She told him.

“How exactly did you picture it?”

“I don’t know, wrapped up in each other’s arms in bed when we first wake up in the morning. Definitely not while I’m covered in sweat, tears, and vomit on the bathroom floor.”

Kyungsoo took the cloth back patting it around her face.

“Well you are growing my baby. You look beautiful even on the floor covered in sweat, tears and vomit.”

“Now you’re just kissing my ass.” She teased.

“And I will continue to do so. At least for the next eight or so months.” He explained, helping her to her feet slowly, “Are you sure you want to go to work today. You can take a leave of absence or work from home.”

She shook her head lightly, “I want to keep things as normal as possible for as long as possible.”

Kyungsoo didn’t like it, but he agreed.

Getting breakfast to stay down was challenging. Nari hovered over her, jumping at every move. Kyungsoo wasn’t any better.

They both thought it was better to wait a while to announce the news to the company, so Kyungsoo had a member of the cleaning staff assigned solely to her office. One under instructions to keep her condition a secret.

Jae-Eun felt bad for the woman. The biggest part of the time she only dry heaved, but she had to force fluids or be at risk of dehydration again. So, the woman was kept busy.

Jae-Eun mostly stayed to her work and was able to keep control while she spoke with her staff, but half way through the day she knew it would be difficult to do this for very long.

She was scanning through the slide prints for the new ad pitch when her phone rang.

“Lee Jae-Eun.” She rattled off, her head still in the slides.

“Have you been able to keep any thing down?” Kyungsoo’s voice came across the receiver.

“Yes dear.” She teased.

"I'm going to bring lunch up down in a bit. We can eat together so I can be there if you get sick." He asked.

"Mmm" she agreed.

"I thought I should let you know, she is here today. I didn’t think she would show, but she clocked in." Kyungsoo warned her. Again, the disdain he had shown Jae-Eun when they were first married was thick in his throat as he spoke about Mi-Sun.

Jae-Eun smiled. She never though he would speak to her with such love while referring to Mi-Sun with distaste and annoyance. 

"Are you okay baby?" His smooth baritone sang to her across the line. 

"Absolutely," she said with the confidence of a woman who knew where her man stood. "I'm not worried. She will likely keep her head down and finish her last day. I'm looking forward to lunch. Well kind of anyways."

She wanted to have lunch with Kyungsoo, but was not looking forward to the eventual, barf session.

He showed up some time later with a bowl of broth and crackers. 

" I figured we could start off simple and see what will be easier on your stomach. Also, it said if you eat smaller more frequent meals and snack, it may help control the sickness some." He explained.

"Look at you, doing your research." She doted.

"You are already going to go through so much, I want to make things as easy as possible. Secretary Yoon was able to get a hold of everyone. So we have the weekend with all the guy and the family to tell them the news.”

They had plan to tell their immediate family, only that also extended to Kyungsoo’s brothers... all eight of them. 

Broth and crackers were not easy.

She had to send him back to his office. Kyungsoo had an important meeting after lunch, but he didn’t want to leave with her feeling sick.

The remainder of the day was quiet. So far, the first day back had been relatively easy. Her staff were competent enough that she didn’t have to hover or micromanage.

Everyone else had left for the day and Jae had finished editing slides, when she decided to head home. She grabbed her bag out of her desk and when she stood, a figure at the door had her jumping.

Mi-Sun stood just inside her office.

“Mrs. Yoo, it’s not polite to lurk in some one’s doorway.” Jae-Eun chastised.

She stood with her keys and pushed her chair into her desk.

“You think you won.” Mi-Sun murmured.

“Won what exactly? I’m not playing a game Mi-Sun. This is my life. I don’t have time for games.”

Mi-Sun snickered. “He may think he loves you now. But he will come back to me. He always comes back to me.”

Jae-Eun didn’t falter. She shrugged. “I don’t think so. But if he does then I hope the two of you are happy together.”

“You are a smug little bitch, turning your nose up at everyone. You don’t want to admit that you can’t control him.”

“I don’t want to control him. I like him just the way he is. If he wants to be controlled, I’m sure he’ll go find you again. And I don’t turn my nose up at anyone, I just don’t have to patience to deal with immaturity and drama. I never have and he knows it.” Jae-Eun remarked.

“He only wants you for your money.”

“No, Mi-Sun that’s you.”

The woman huffed.

Jae recognized Mi-Sun’s last-ditch effort to get between her and Kyungsoo. It wouldn’t work this time. Kyungsoo’s feelings were clear in his behavior. If he still had feelings for Mi-Sun he wouldn’t have sent her away. No, Kyungsoo was done with her. And Jae-Eun wouldn’t fall for her tricks.

“You can believe what you want, but he won’t ever forget me.”

“Probably not, and most likely not in a good light. But there is something I want to send you away with.” Jae-Eun shortened the distance between them.

Mi-Sun raised an eyebrow.

“Before you, before your lies, before he loved you, there was me. For longer than you could even imagine. He was mine first.”

Mi-Sun seethed. The look in her eyes were dangerous, but Jae-Eun wasn’t intimidated.

“What’s going on here.” Kyungsoo’s voice came from behind Mi-Sun.

“Oh, Kyungsoo, I was just apolo…” Mi-Sun started.

She trailed off as Kyungsoo passed her without a look and came to Jae-Eun’s side.

“Mi-Sun was saying her goodbyes.” Jae-Eun told him.

The woman was flustered. Especially when Kyungsoo wrapped his arm around Jae-Eun’s shoulders, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

“Are you okay.” His hand came to her belly.

“We’re okay.” Jae-Eun whispered, covering his hand with hers.

“So, your pregnant.” Mi-Sun demanded.

At this point, Jae-Eun was finished with this woman.

“That is none of your business.” She snapped. “Now get the hell out of our building. You no longer work here.”

Mi-Sun whined, “Kyungsoo.”

“You heard her.” He remarked.

Mi-Sun huffed as she turned and stomped to the elevators.

Kyungsoo and Jae-Eun watched as she disappeared.

He turned wrapping his other arm around her, his lips brushed against hers gently.

“She will be in Busan tomorrow. And completely out of our lives.”

Jae shook her head, “Not completely. She will always be a part of our story. But it’s a chapter we can close now.”

“And keep closed… forever.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Kyungsoo released her shoulders, he took her hand in his.

“I have something for you.”

He wrapped his fingers around her wedding band, pulled it from her finger and held it up.

“This is the ring I gave to a woman who was arranged to marry me.” He tossed the ring on her desk and pulled a box out of his jacket. He produced another ring from the box and held it up to her. It was a simple band just like she preferred, silver and rose gold with a row of small diamonds inlayed across the middle.

“This is the ring I had made for the woman I choose the spend the rest of my life with.” He slid the ring on. “I love you, so no more arrangement. Just be my wife.”

Jae-Eun held her hand up and studied the ring.

“I kind of miss my quiet husband who, wasn’t so sappy and emotional.”

Kyungsoo pursed his lips and narrowed her eyes. “It’s all your fault. You opened the flood gates.”

“That I did,” she smiled, “I love you too, real husband.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck taking his lips with complete abandon. He followed, even though her office door was open.

Once they were both breathless, Kyungsoo pressed his forehead against hers.

“Let’s go home.” He whispered.

“Home it is.”