“Hello?”

“!” Bobby cursed, flinging his phone onto his bed and running out of his room in a panic. “Trouble! Big trouble!” Donghyuk, Chanwoo, and Junhoe had been joined by Jinhwan and Yunhyeong. All five of them looked up at him at his call of distress. “I picked up one of the calls!” A moment of stunned—and confused—silence ensued.

“What call?” Yunhyeong asked, frowning.

“One of the many calls you’ve been getting for the past half an hour?” Jinhwan asked, looking equally bemused. “I thought those were just your friends from America.”

“Are you kidding? They’re all asleep right now!” Bobby exclaimed, looking towards the other three. “What do I do?!”

“Wait, why’d you pick up the call?” Junhoe asked.

“It was an accident! Do you really think I’d pick up on purpose?!” Bobby paced back and forth, shaking his hands furiously. “What am I supposed to do?!”

“Just handle it calmly,” Chanwoo rolled his eyes, and everybody turned to look at him. He glanced up at his hyungs like they were children who needed everything spelled out for them. “Play along. Tell her that somebody’s already taken the deal and she can’t do anything about it. If that doesn’t stop her from calling again, then just change your number as soon as possible. Okay?”

Bobby thought about it. “Okay. That sounds like a good plan.” He marched back into his bedroom and picked up his phone again; the girl was still on the other end, and he could hear her muttering in confusion:

“—ll the wrong number? No, I swear I typed it in right. Then why’d he sound so surprised? Am I still even on the pho—?”

Bobby cleared his throat and tested out a deeper, more gravelly voice before timidly saying, “H-Hello?”

The rambling stopped abruptly and the girl answered, “Hello? Oh, thank goodness. I thought you dropped the call after cursing like that.”

I did drop the call. Literally. “Er…no, I was just…startled. By a spider. In…my room.” Bobby cringed at his own ineptitude with words. Shut up now.

“Oh, then I’m glad that was taken care of. I’m calling about the offer you put out for a room in your apartment. Is it still available? I’d like to come by to take a look at the place before making a deal, bu—”

“Actually, no; somebody jus—”

“—t I’m not all that picky; I’m in urgent need of a new place as soon as possible.”

Bobby inwardly groaned with guilt. I shouldn’t even have to feel this way. That blond kid should be apologizing instead. “I’m very sorry, miss, but you’re out of luck; somebody already took the offer, and we signed the lease.”

“What?!” He could easily hear the panic in the girl’s voice. “But…but the flier was literally posted half an hour ago! How could somebody have taken it already?!”

“I don’t know what to tell you, ma’am,” Bobby answered, just wanting to end the call as soon as possible. “Have a good day.”

“No, wait! Please, can’t we work something out? I can…outbid the other person! Please!”

Bobby ignored the pinch of guilt in his chest as he pulled the phone away from his ear and disconnected the phone call. She’ll be okay; Seoul’s huge, so it’s not like this could’ve been her only option. He tried to ease his guilty conscience by telling himself that she was better off being turned down like this instead of falling even deeper into Junhoe’s not-thought-out-very-well trap.

Anna’s mouth fell open, and she pulled the phone away from her ear. “What the ?” she cursed in English and then pursed her lips upon remembering she was still in public, and the people who’d heard her were now giving her dirty looks. She searched for the redial option and pressed it, only to find that her call was immediately redirected to voicemail. Growling under her breath, she angrily stuffed a piece of kimbap in .

Hanging up on me, and you think you’ll get away with it?! No freaking way. She punched the Redial button and put the phone against her ear again. Take a piece of me, you jerk! But the call went straight to voicemail. “Ugh!” She basically threw the phone onto the plastic table and hurriedly chowed down her cheap dinner before standing to stomp back to Lydia’s family’s apartment. During that time, she’d called the number about nine million times, and every single one of them had been sent to voicemail.

With a heavy sigh, she entered the passcode for Lydia’s apartment and walked inside…and the first thing she noticed was the pair of Nikes set beside the all-too-familiar pair of mint green Converses in front of the door.

Oh, no.

Almost as if he could sense Anna’s dread, the awful face appeared in her line of vision, and he gave her the cocky grin she’d come to detest. “Hey, look who it is!”

Anna gave him a disdainful look, disliking the way he was sprawled so comfortably across the couch with his feet propped up onto Lydia’s coffee table. His ankles were crushing Anna’s apartment-hunting newspapers and her job description papers. She didn’t bother replying and instead yanked her documents out from under his feet and dusted them off. Briefly meeting eyes with Lydia, who was preparing dinner in the kitchen, Anna looked away hastily and walked towards the door of “her” room. “I’ll be out of here as soon as possible,” she notified Lydia tersely.

Lydia replied with a stiff nod.

Once in her room, Anna shut the door with likely more force than necessary and buried her face her the pillow to scream. Now I really need to get out of here! There’s no way I want to be here to witness those two flirting all the time! She wouldn’t even have a problem with it if Matthew was a decent guy, but never.

Anna shuddered; just putting the two words “decent” and “Matthew” in the same sentence made an angel lose its wings.

She yanked her phone out and redialed the number again without much hope. And surely enough, it went straight to voicemail again. With a dejected sigh, Anna flopped onto her back and stared up at the ceiling without really seeing anything.

That’s it; my last hope is gone.

Word had spread of what Junhoe had done, and while Jinhwan found it in equal parts abominable and hilarious, he’d