"No. Nuh-uh," Park Bom denies in abject horror, thinking her eyes must be playing tricks on her because no way - "No way" - was Choi Seunhyun aka Tee-Oh-Pee her new virtual husband for the next God only knows how long.

Hopefully the viewers would hate them enough that the producers would scramble to pleasepleaseplease terminate the contracts they both signed when they hopped on this crazy bandwagon. Gone terribly awry.

"Am I supposed to be jumping up with joy?" she hisses at the production crew camped out in the little café chosen by who knew who for this hi-how're-ya. Gone terribly awry, might she repeat. "Can I get a refund?" she asks them hopefully.

The PD, a bit red in the face, sweating profusely and doing the gaping fishmouth at her with a side of flailing arms, seems to be trying to want the floor to swallow him whole.

But, come on. "Surely Yang Goon President cannot have agreed to this madness..." she mumbles practically, turning back to... urgh.

Seunghyun sips his mocha latte quietly, eyeing her beneath his beant hat, steam rising in delicate wisps around the escaping locks around his face. There's nothing written on his face that can tell her what he's thinking across the room, but there... tension does lock his body. It's like he's waiting for her next move, and she's got a lot resting on her shoulders now, doesn't she.

Bom sighs, toes curling inside her boots at the choices lying before her: waste a lot of good people's time because of this... this stupid thing about Choi Seunghyun that's just so freaking harrowing or step up to the plate and do this thing like a civilised human being.

It's not that she hates him or that he's a ist prick behind closed doors. He's not. He's a perfect gentleman. It's just... she doesn't even know when it all began, but she supposes it's an accumulation of things upon things upon more things that have made her leery of spending time with him because he gets under her skin in the worst way possible.

Being "married" to him is going to require a lot of patience and yoga lessons, she can already tell.

Well... let's go, then, she tells herself, forcing her feet forward while her fingers battle it out with her coat buttons. She should have worn the one with the zipper. Practical.

Seunghyun stands up when she climbs the few steps to the slightly elevated section in the back. "Noona," he rumbles in his low tenor, dragging the chair across from his out for her. "This is going to be interesting," is all he says as he helps her get settled.

She can't see his face, but she's sure he's wearing a grin behind her back. He's not anymore when he sits down, though.

"Did you know about this?" she fires at him as soon as he plops back down, because it just might have been his idea of a gigantic cosmic joke after all.

"I assure you," he replies with a straight face, "that I was sure the president would never allow this when I learned you'd been interviewed for the show."

This being something akin to , them being in YG Family and all. Although, heck, the president had a twisted sense of marketing.

Bom pounces on the thing because it's all she's got working for her benefit. "Maybe this is a mistake and we're supposed to be waiting for our other half in the same café," she speculates out loud, searching out the PD's eye to validate her super logical reasoning.

Natch. The PD shakes his head, effectively quelling any hope Bom had that the president would never have allowed this.

Seunghyun quietly picks up his mug and glances over it at her before sipping at it. "Looks like we're stuck with each other."

Slumping in a rather unladylike pose on the table - but that's what he does to her - and moans at it. "I must be the first in the history of We Got Married to be unhappy at who her husband is," she moans, then bangs her head at it for good measure. "Oh, why did it have to be you? I'd be fine with anyone but you..."

She hears his little amused snort, then, "I love you too, noona, but you're going to hurt yourself."

"It's better than being stuck with you," she says, punctuating each syllable with a dull thud. Um, this was starting to hurt.

He was smiling, she could feel it. "What's so terrible about me anyway?" he asks, resting his elbows on the table, leaning closer. "I've always wondered."

Bom lifts her head, considering him anew.

"What," he said after a moment. "Do I have something on my face?"

She purses her lips at him, squinting her eyes as well for good measure, and tilts her head this way and that, studying his face in earnest. "I don't know why, to be honest. You're just so..."

"So?" he prompts when she doesn't continue her train of thought.

Bom stares at him, her eyes darting over a sharply slanted eyebrow, the corner of a full lip, a subtly laughing eye, a high cheekbone, the glint of a stub earring, his high patrician nose, the dark piercing glint of his eyes... unnerving eyes... Bom glances away first. "I just think we're a terrible match," she huffs, tacking on, "You're weird."

"Pot calling the kettle black," he laughingly huffs back.

Bom bristles. "You're an alien," she shoots back tartly, loathe to let him have the last word.

The waitress shows up then, effectively bringing the argument to an end - hopefully for good! - and, with stars in her eyes for "charismatic BigBang T.O.P.", barely glances at Bom as she jots down her order of a green tea, sauntering off with a definite swing in her hips. That T.O.P. barely acknowledges.

Ah, conscious of the cameras latched on the "newlyweds", most likely.

Seunghyun clears his throat. As she looks over, Bom decides this is the first time she's ever seen him fidget in place. "Noona, I prepared something for you," he begins, reaching down into the messenger bag he tends to take with him wherever he goes. "I mean, we've known each other for several years but-"

"Eight years," Bom interrupts, smiling as she reminisces over how deathly afraid they'd all been, hadn't they, even when they'd been accepted into the trainee program. They'd all sat on the boys' dorm floor late that night, the newest trainees - she and Seunghyun amongst them - introducing themselves and listening to the more experienced ones detailing what they should expect.

"You're going to cry," Kwon Jiyong, impossibly stern for his little baby face, had said. "You'll sweat yourselves to the ground. It's hard, really hard, but it's the only way to proudly climb that mountain. Arasso?"

Walking dreams at their fingertips' reach and falling asleep all together like they all belonged together. It never ended that way for them, did it. But she'd woken up the next day with her head pillowed by Seunghyun's belly and someone's face in her foot and it had seemed like they'd all be all right.

"Eight years," Seunghyun now repeats, jolting her back from the echo of his heartbeat in her ear and his face framed by that tightly wrapped, eternal night hoodie that made him look like a cartoon character. "Yeah. But since I didn't think you'd be my wife" - strange that she caught on that tiny hesitation at the word - "I wanted to introduce myself to... her... you."

"Yo, I'm Choi Seunghyun alias Tempo," Bom suddenly mimicks his introduction that fateful first night. "I'm a rapper. Rapper Tempo. I'll be your live beatbox, yo. God you were so uncool," she chortles.

A flush rises over his face and she giggles at his endearing embarrassment. "Yeah," he laughs, dragging a hand over his face. "That was lame. And I believed in myself, too." He sighs, only to glance up at her with a mischievous glint in his eye. "Annyeong haseyo, Park Bom imnida!" he begins, pitching his voice high. Too high; it cracks. "I can't do it," he admits laughingly.

"Yah." Bom kicks him under the table. "I don't talk like a baby."

Seunghyun just grins, the lifts the piece of paper that he'd pulled out, hiding the words from her. "Read this as if you're just meeting me, okay?" he asks pleasantly but pointedly, nodding at it in question.

Bom stares at it. It does often feel like she doesn't know him, actually... like... like they'd drifted apart gradually somehow after the initial spark of "sameness" -- them being the oldest of the bunch, hungry to prove it wasn't too late for them. After that... she doesn't even know.

She takes the piece of paper, in all likelihood torn from the moleskin notebook he writes lyrics in -- there, she can see the indentation of scratched-out words on the surface -- and immerses herself in his slashed, deliberate blocky handwriting, reading aloud:

Annyeong haseyo, buin,

Most people know me as TOP from BigBang. It was a stage name given to me just before my debut, and that's not all I am. I'm Choi Seunghyun, just a regular twenty-four year-old with all the baggage that comes with the age: pride, worries, responsibilities... I'm not a demanding man but I'll treat you well, if you'll let me. I promise to do my best to make you happy. Let's share a good life together.

With you in this journey, Seunghyun.

Bom lifts her eyes to his, feeling like she's seeing an entirely different Seunghyun from the ones she knows: the cocksure, dorky or hardworking one. Here is the man beneath all those veneers... an admittedly vulnerable but courageous Seunghyun, much like the nearly-sixteen year-old she'd found herself drawn to that first night in the boys' dorm. After his cocksure "I'm a rapper" introduction.

"Do you want me to write one, too?" she asks quietly, unable to look away from his eyes this time. Serious, somewhat uncertain eyes. Fascinating eyes.

He releases a breath, and she wonders why he held it in in the first place. "If you want." Twisting in his seat, he digs inside his tote for his moleskin and a pen, and then s the objects at her.

Bom takes the proferred objects and thumbs through the moleskin a moment, feeling like she's invading his privacy but unable to stop. "Have you been working on new lyrics lately?" she asks, stalling. He really is a brilliant lyricist, she has to give him that. And, knowing it often came from his own personal experiences...

She remembers the night she'd caught him on the phone with his then-girlfriend. "Mianhe tchakia," he'd said in a broken voice, his gaunt, tear-streaked cheeks haunting her for weeks. She hadn't been able to look him in the eye, even as he put up a brace front and handed in his handphone to their trainers as though nothing could shake him. "I won't be needing this anymore anyway."

Am I supposed to laugh.. as if nothing's wrong? Each day passes by... as if nothing's wrong.

"Always," he now answers her, then quips, "I'm just not as proficient as Jiyong."

Which makes Bom snort. "What do you guys feed him?" She wanted to say something else but figured MBC would censor it if she so much as alluded to drugs. Which is so unfair because, hello, joke.

Seunghyun leans forward conspiratorially. "I saw him fall on his head as a kid once. Maybe that scrambled his brain cells in a genius alignment." He then sits back to savour her squawk of laughter.

"You're impossible!"

"You're not writing." He nods at his notebook.

Strange, but as she hunches over it and starts writing, sharing his private possession like this feels... good. A bit like she's... closer. To him.

When she's done, Bom pivots the book his way, letting him read it aloud. Her words spoken with his voice sound... weird... but like a very male caress.

Annyeong,

I already know you but it feels like this is a new beginning. It feels like a barely know you sometimes, though it's been eight years since our first meeting. Did you change so much? Did I? Maybe we just grew up. And we didn't even really have loads in common, so I guess it was only natural...

I turned twenty-seven this year... I often feel like time slips me by - it's not so much that I hate getting older, but we don't get much downtime in this business, do we? - so I hope you and I can help each other reconnect with reality and share good moments. And maybe bad ones... Personal experience taught me that relationships are never 100% simple or quiet. And, knowing us, we're going to have quite a journey on our hands!

Let's do this (... fighting?)|
Bom.

Seunghyun is laughing by the end. "Did you have to make us sound doomed?"

"Better to inform our viewers from the start that we won't be a cute and lovely couple."

He leans closer, grinning. "FYI, you're not on 2NE1 TV. Pretend there are no cameras."

"Kind of hard when there's five trained on you," Bom replies tartly, waving at one with the tips of her fingers.

He literally facedesks, speaking at the table in a long-suffering manner. "You'd make a lousy actress, Bommie noona. Just saying."

She sticks out her tongue at his bean hat. "Sorry, mister Award-winner."

"Aisht!"

Bom, ignoring the very specific "rule" that she was to ignore the cameras at all times, turns to one and sweetly adds  her commentary, "He asked for it, really."

Author's note:

Eight years: I have absolutely no idea when TOP was recruited into YGE, though I do know that Bom trained for six years before debuting with 2NE1 (2009-6=2003). Now, I only know that GD (Jiyong) and Taeyang were recruited six years before debut and Daesung only a few months (thank you BIGBANG documentary). Beyond that, I don't know about the others. But I thought it didn't sound too far-fetched to have TOP recruited something like three or four years before debut (2007-4=2003) since GD wanted him in YGE. We only know that TOP was rejected the first time because of his weight issues, but two years (between GD's recruitment and TOP's) is a good enough window for him to have lost that weight and re-auditioned, I think.

Am I supposed to laugh.. as if nothing's wrong? Each day passes by... as if nothing's wrong.: Part of the lyrics to TOP's solo song Act Like Nothing's Wrong. Seriously, watch/listen to this. I meant it when I wrote that TOP's a brilliant lyricist. GD is awesome and he's produced some great hits, but TOP is a more lyrical writer. It takes one to know one ;)