Gary Stu - An annoyingly "perfect" male fanfiction character.

Princess - Heechul

They crossed the restaurant and headed over to the podium, also known as the hostess or maître d' stand, where abeoji kept his newspapers – or at least, that's what Suzy had said. For whatever reason, she had always thought it was just this solid mass of wood. As it turns out, there was a shelf and a storage space underneath. Sungmin tried opening it, but the cabinet was locked. Ji Eun looked up and underneath the stand, but there was no key.

"Hold on," said Suzy, jogging over to the back room and disappearing behind the door. She reappeared with a set of keys, fiddling with them until she settled on one that looked particularly unused. She stuck the key into the keyhole, turned it and unlocked the cabinet door. A cloud of dust escaped and there lay a tall stack of newspapers and magazines. Suzy took the stack in her arms and leaned back. Luckily, Sungmin caught the newspapers and took them off her hands before the weight could overwhelm her. Ji Eun pulled away the top layers of the aged print, searching for the oldest ones abeoji kept.

"Wow, mom must have cleaned this recently," Suzy mused, flipping through the piles of print. Ji Eun wondered what her definition of "recently" was until her dongsaeng added, "The newspapers from the '80s and '90s are gone now."

Ji Eun shook her head, in that way when you loved someone but sometimes their bad habits just got the better of you. She looked down at the stack and realized that there were no recent papers whatsoever. They dated back around five years ago, at least. She noticed that most everything was junk and wondered why he kept all of these ad-filled papers until she stumbled across a few legit newspapers. Sungmin was right – the papers meant to inform were filled with mostly bad news. Frankly, she was starting to believe that the local newspaper didn't have any interesting news to offer when a headline caught her eye.

TWO GIRLS FOUND DEAD

On Saturday night at twelve p.m., the body of seventeen-year-old Park Mi Young was found in the women's restroom at local restaurant Koreyums. Police say she was stabbed through the chest but have yet to locate a weapon. Another body was found crumpled near the balcony of the restaurant, though her identity remains unknown. Investigators are pursuing leads to the murder and suspect that she may have been pushed off the height deliberately. The only possible witness to the event is Kim Heechul, 18 and supposedly Mi Young's date for the night. He insists that he took no part in the murders and "had no idea what was going on"…

Ji Eun's head was swimming. She hardly noticed that her hand was shaking a bit until Sungmin steadied it. He and Suzy were reading the article upside down and had their eyebrows in a twist. She was afraid to read on. What—

"Um, hello?" a melodious voice broke the intense silence and they all stiffened in surprise. Ji Eun looked up and nearly jumped back in response to seeing none other than the singer in question. Sungmin discreetly covered the newspaper headline with his hand and moved it behind his back.

"Hi, hyung," he said casually as if they had not just read an article that made Ji Eun want to run from the restaurant. Run for her life. Was she next? At the moment, the only thing that stopped her from doing so was seeing whom Heechul was with.

Sohee. Seeing his arm wrapped around her made Ji Eun's heart ache with longing and the sight froze her in place. She had been quietly admiring Heenim for a while and she was starting to wonder whether staying silent was more painful than rejection. She normally let Suzy or abeoji or some other third person take his order merely for fear of embarrassing herself in front of him. It was always the same routine, she was told. Wine. Champagne. Soju. Alcohol. Not all in one go, of course; Heechul wasn't an addict. She knew that he never talked to the staff, and when he did, it was typically one-word answers. Ji Eun wasn't missing out on much. He was still mysterious, still closed off, and very, very Gary Stu-like. She had no business trying to pry for answers. Now, she wasn't so sure.

She watched Suzy lead them to a table with rather expressionless eyes, mostly because she hadn't caught what he had said to them. Often when she was deeply engrossed in thought, it was like she was in her own little world.

"Yah, Ji Eun-ah, are you listening to me?" Sungmin snapped his fingers impatiently in front of her face and she blinked, as if out of a trance.

"Oh, sorry..." she murmured softly, her mind on only half of the one-sided conversation. "What did you say?"

"I said, I think you or someone else needs to talk to him." He was obviously referring to Heechul, with the way his eyes were trained intently on him. She instantly felt bad for dragging Sungmin into this, in a way. He had summarized the rest of the article to her while she had been half paying attention. From what he told her, the phrasing of the article made it sound like Heechul was a murderer. "—and I think it should be you because Heechul hyung is very hard to get to. He has a soft spot for girls way younger than him."

Ji Eun raised an eyebrow quite high and stared at Sungmin. He seemed amused, but his expression quite plainly read, No, I'm not even joking.

During the first few nights when Heenim brought a date, it was always a different girl. They looked to be around her age, or maybe slightly older.

"He likes being called oppa," he added as if it was already confirmed that she was going to start interviewing him or something. Ji Eun knew that questioning him about his past in front of his date would be rather rude. Hey, by any chance did you kill one or two girls ten years ago? Here's your wine. What a mood-killer. Not to mention incredibly subtle. Sarcasm.

Ji Eun just stared moodily at the couple across the restaurant. They seemed to he having a great time. She vaguely remembered Heechul saying multiple times on shows how Sohee was his ideal type. She pouted and crossed her arms with a huff. Sungmin looked at her with a strange expression and she refrained from saying anything nasty. "Are you... okay?" he asked carefully and Ji Eun replied, "Fine," in a slightly higher-pitched voice. She wondered why she was getting so cranky. None of his other dates had bothered her... much. Maybe it was because she rarely actually saw him with his date too long before leaving for the night. Or maybe because he seemed to have finally gotten what he wanted after so many years. Or maybe it was because he was kissing her–

Ji Eun stood up suddenly, much to Sungmin's surprise and stormed off much like the Princess himself when he was mad. She grabbed her coat and headed out into the freezing midnight depths, hearing Sungmin and Suzy call out to her faintly.