Round Sixty-One

 

“Why are you here, Grandpa?”

 

Yoong was a little wary of his grandfather’s sudden appearance at his home. In his hand was Sunny’s, which he squeezed gently to comfort and assure her.

 

“I came here to see how you were doing.”

 

“That’s all?”

 

“And also to talk to you about Sunny.”

 

Yoong glanced at Sunny before looking at his grandfather through narrowed eyes.

 

“What is it that you want to talk about?”

 

Grandpa Im looked at Sunny as he answered, “Her family.”

 

“What is there to talk about? Her family is perfectly normal.”

 

“I would like to meet her family.”

 

“I’m sure that can be arranged.” Yoong turned to Sunny and smiled. “Hunny, it’s not a problem, is it?”

 

Yoong grinned as Sunny blushed. She ducked her head and shook it. “It’s not.”

 

“Sunny says it’s not.”

 

“I can hear what Sunny said, Yoong.”

 

Grandpa Im chuckled a little before getting up. He scanned the living room, roving his eyes over the furniture that was in it. Then he started moving towards the other rooms.

 

“Grandpa, where are you going?”

 

“I’m checking out your apartment. I think you’re going to need to get a much bigger one.”

 

“Why? This one is just fine and I like it a lot.”

 

Yoong found himself on the receiving end of Grandpa Im’s piercing stare quite suddenly and froze, thinking that he had just gotten himself into trouble.

 

“At the rate you kids are playing, you’re going to have lots of kids running about real soon. You need a bigger house.”

 

~~~~~
 

Sunny was red all over. If she didn’t look it, she sure felt like it. To be caught in the midst of their ‘fun’ by his grandfather was just…mortifying. She definitely felt like sinking into a hole when they realized that it was his grandfather at the door! She made a mental note to go into hiding the next time the doorbell rings when she’s decked out in y outfits.

 

~~~~~

 

An arm slipped around her shoulders as a warm body sidled up to her. “Still feeling embarrassed?”

 

She could only nod. Speech was an unavailable function as her embarrassment had disabled it momentarily.

 

“Oh come on, it wasn’t that bad. Grandpa was pretty cool about it.”

 

Sunny buried her face in her palms at the mention of his grandfather and her muffled voice went, “He said you’ll need a bigger house at the rate we’re playing! Oh gosh, I don’t want to think about what he thinks we’re doing all the time. We don’t even actually play that much!”

 

“So would it make you feel better if we actually lived up to Grandpa’s imagination of us?”

 

“Yoong!” Sunny delivered a hard smack on his arm that would have hurt if he wasn’t so occupied with grinning like an idiot.

 

“Let’s get started on living up to Grandpa’s imagination.”

 

He waggled his eyebrows and cast the most suggestive look at her. Then, without any warning, he pinned her on the couch and snuggled himself between her legs. She squealed and squirmed to escape from him but he was too strong for her. Despite his lanky appearance, he had the strength of an elephant and any guy who had the misfortune of getting into a strength contest with him would learn very quickly not to challenge him the next time.

 

His impish grin was stuck on his face when he felt her soft assets under his hard muscles. Hardness versus softness. Most would think that hardness prevails over softness but more often than not, softness triumphs because of its ability to meld itself to hardness. This, he knew too well. He had the experience of falling for a woman who had concealed her hardness under a thick blanket of softness. He had almost succumbed to her apparent softness only to find himself falling down from heaven into the deepest depths of hell; shattering into smithereens thereafter.

 

But Sunny was different. Sunny was the epitome of softness. Her heart was soft and kind, unlike the other heart he thought he knew. Her heart was soft and needed to be protected as he had found out when he hurt her with his actions or words. She was as fluid as water, artfully flowing around obstacles and challenges in the office and with other people yet, he found her to be vulnerable around him. That was how he knew. He knew that she wasn’t like the other one. He knew she was true. True to him. Her unabashed softness was only for him. For him to love and protect.

 

He wasn’t in his Pikachu suit as he had planned and she wasn’t in her bunny suit either, but it didn’t matter. None of it mattered because it was just the two of them and they were all they needed. He kept his grin as he the fair skin of her cheek. The feeling of her soft assets being squashed under him was more than pleasurable. It was immeasurable.

 

“Bunny…” he breathed.

 

By then, she had quietened and stopped squirming. She was sensitive to him that way. She knew exactly when to play and when to stop and he liked how she knew how to respond to him without him having to utter a word.

 

Silence fell around them and their increasingly deepening breaths became louder.

 

She initiated it with a simple lift of her head to close the distance between his and her lips. It was brief but it was the opening. He pursued her lips when she lowered her head back onto the couch and caught them again in less than a second. And when he caught them again, he refused to let them go. Their heads tilted this way and that, happy lips curled up during the short separations and soon, their kisses became French.

 

“Je t’aime, bunny,” he whispered in a moment of passion.

 

“Huh?” Her cute little voice tickled his ears and he opened his eyes to look at her.

 

“It’s French for ‘I love you’.”

 

Sunny giggled adorably, her eyes lighting up like the sun on a hot summer day. “Why are you spouting French out of the blue?”

 

He shrugged. “Because we were French kissing?”

 

She lapsed into a bout of cute little giggles that he could not handle so he buried his face in her chest and slid his hands down her curvy body to her waist. She stopped giggling when he found her sensitive spots and paid loving attention to them and he was relieved. Anymore of those giggles would make him lose all control and the night wouldn’t be as slow and romantic as he would like it to be.

 

He kissed his way back up to her lips, passing over her enticing collarbone and jugular which gave her the shivers. By the time he got back to her lips, she was all ready to take him in and more.

 

She felt so right. Everything felt so right. And he knew right then, that he didn’t want her to leave anymore.

 

“Bunny…”

 

“Yoongie…”

 

His hand found hers and grasped it tightly.

 

“Will you move in with me?”

 

“Yes, Yoongie…” Her eyes were closed, lips slightly parted and she looked very, very y.

 

Arousal aside, he was delighted. Absolutely delighted.

 

“Really?”

 

“Huh? W-What?” Her eyes sprang open and spelt cluelessness.

 

“I’m sorry, I know that this probably isn’t a good time to ask, like when we’re right in the middle of…but…right now…I really don’t want to let you go. I want you to stay.”

 

“Oh, Yoongie…I want to stay too.”

 

“Really? You’ll move in with me?”

 

“Move in with you?”

 

“Uh huh, that’s what I asked.”

 

“I didn’t hear you ask.”

 

“I did. I asked you and you said yes.”

 

“Did I?”

 

“Sunny, you said yes.”

 

“Well, I must have said yes to something else I thought you were asking. You can’t just ask me questions like that in the middle of…you know…I’d say yes to anything when you’ve got me all…wound up…like that…”

 

“So you don’t want to move in with me?”

 

“Huh? No. No. Yes.” Sunny squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “What am I saying? Good grief! Yoongie… I…I need some time to react properly to this.”

 

“Is it that difficult to decide? All I want is to see you more. To see you in the morning. To see you in your pyjamas at night. To hug you and fall asleep. To see you in the morning again the next day. To—”

 

“Yoong, Yoong…stop. Oh my gosh. You’re so good at this.”

 

“What am I good at?”

 

“Confusing me.”

 

“I’m good at confusing you?”

 

“You don’t do it on purpose. You just…confuse me…like at this very moment.”

 

“My question is simple, bunny. Will you or will you not move in with me.”

 

“It is not an easy question to answer.”

 

“Why? You agreed to my proposal so quickly. Why is this any different?”

 

“Getting engaged to you and eventually marrying you is like a dream come true. Moving in with you is something that will naturally happen when we get married but for me to move in with you now…that is something I have to think about.”

 

“Why?”

 

“My parents will want to have a say in this, silly boy. It’s one thing to sleep over at a boyfriend’s place on some nights but it’s a completely different matter if I were to move in permanently.”

 

“Oh…your parents…okay…I’m sorry…it didn’t occur to me. I’ve been living on my own for so long now that I don’t really think about them that much. And they weren’t around that much when I was growing up either.”

 

“They weren’t? Who took care of you then?”

 

“I had caretakers and Grandpa. Grandpa was always around. He had handed the company over to my dad and so he was effectively semi-retired. He was the one who attended my teacher-meet-parents day when I went to school.”

 

“And that’s why he’s so concerned over you wanting to marry me.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Sunny traced little circles on his cheek with her thumb and planted a tender kiss on his lips.

 

“Yoongie, let me think about your question for a while. Okay?”

 

He smile and nosed her hair. “Don’t force yourself into making a decision quickly. I don’t want you to be unhappy. You’re right, anyway. We’ll be staying together after getting married. I guess there’s no hurry. I just…I just miss you so much after you go home.”

 

Her smile was as sweet as the purest honey money could buy.

 

“Yoongie…you’re so sweet.”

 

He grinned and swept the strands of hair from her eyes, tucking them behind her ear.

 

“No, you’re the sweet one. You’re so sweet that I can’t get enough of you. I want you so bad right now.”

 

Her grin was as salacious as his. “Then come and get your hunny now.”

 

He growled and launched into predator mode, all ready to eat his bunny up and she squealed in delight, not in the least afraid of his aggression.

 

~~~~~
 

“Jieun, seriously. You can’t be serious! You promised me that part!”

 

“I did no such thing! I promised to help you out and I did. Without me, you would never have gotten to know that director. You screwed up that chance. I’ve done my part for you.”

 

“Do you know that I fell out of good terms with my manager because of that stunt we pulled? I sacrificed so much to help you and Hara and now you’re telling me that I have no part in that drama? Get me another role! Another drama! Or a movie! I don’t care which!”

 

Jieun scoffed at the audacity of Malina to speak to her like that. Even her own father had never talked to her like that before. Who did she think she was?

 

“Rubbish. You know fully well that you made that news up to get revenge on that girl. The way I see it, I actually did you and Hara a favour, helping you two get that onto the news. I stand to gain nothing from this stunt, except the small thrill of giving the Jungs a taste of what it’s like to meddle in other people’s affairs.”

 

“You! YOU ! YOU SELFISH !”

 

“Watch what you say to me, idiot. I can easily kill your future in showbiz with just a few words to my father.”

 

“LIKE I CARE RIGHT NOW?!”

 

Jieun gasped in pain when Malina grabbed a fistful of her hair and started shaking her. She struck out her leg and kicked instinctively in a bid to free herself and stop the pain but it was no good. Malina held on like a dog to a bone.

 

“LET ME GO!!!” she screamed.

 

Just then, the doors burst open and somebody wedged herself in between the two of them, yelling at the top of her lungs, “STOP!!! STOP BEFORE MORE PEOPLE SEE THIS!!!”

 

Jieun felt the grip on her hair loosening and yanked her head away from it. She felt a sharp pain shooting from her scalp all the way to her toes and shrieked in pain. There was a loud gasp that told her something was immensely wrong. She opened her eyes and saw a substantial lock of hair in Malina’s fist. She gasped as loudly as the one she heard and felt her head with her hand in panic. She patted the hurting area and screamed again. There was a bald patch where her hair once was! NO!!!

 

By now, more people had streamed into the room and were gaping at the scene. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that a catfight had just taken place.

 

“You are not going to have a future in showbiz. Mark my words! A little fame as a model and you think you’re God’s gift to showbiz. Let me tell you this. There are tons of promising actresses out there. Right here in this building even. And you are a conceited, selfish idiot who has just seen the last of this television station. GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!” Jieun ranted while covering the bald patch with her hand. “GET HER OUT OF MY SIGHT!!!”

 

The girl who separated them started pushing Malina out of the room and soon, other people did the same. Between a down and out newbie actress and the daughter of the boss of the television station, the choice was clear and nobody was silly enough to help the girl who probably had nothing left but that tuft of hair in her hand.

 

~~~~~
 

The girl escorted Malina out of the building along with her co-workers and heaved a sigh of relief when Malina stomped away in a rage.

 

“Luna, do you know what happened?” One of them asked her as they made their way back into the building.

 

“I heard a little of what they said but I think it’s best not to say anything right now.”

 

Her co-worker looked at her curiously but did not ask any more questions, much to her relief. She had heard the entire conversation and it didn’t take her long to put two and two together. So that scandal involving the Jungs and Chois wasn’t true. It was a publicity stunt. She should have known. Having worked in the industry for a few years should have wizened her up but even she fell for it.

 

She suddenly pitied the girl who was labelled as the illegitimate daughter of the Jungs. She reckoned that much was true because the Jung family did not launch a libel suit at the television station that aired that news but it was their private affair after all. There was no need for the world to know that they had an illegitimate daughter if she didn’t want to be known. But she was obviously left with no choice after that report. Fortunately, her father was the great Jacky Jung, better known as Mr. Jung. His reach in various media platforms was, no doubt, what prevented pictures of her from leaking out, thereby protecting her identity from the massive public.

 

It wouldn’t do her any good to tell anyone about what she had heard. She was just a regular girl trying to find her place in the big, big world. She’d better keep what she heard to herself and let the big players fight their own battles.

 

~~~~~
 

Yul smiled awkwardly when Mrs. Jung opened the door and said, “I was expecting you.”

 

“I’m really sorry about this.”

 

“Oh, you don’t have to be. I know my daughter. When she’s angry…she’s like the worst storm. She rains everywhere and no matter how you try to keep yourself dry with umbrellas or raincoats, you’re bound to get wet somehow.”

 

“But it really is my fault that she’s so angry.”

 

Mrs. Jung waved her hand dismissively and laughed.

 

“Couples fight all the time. And over the most ridiculous things. I would know. I’ve been through it all. She’ll be fine. Just…sweet talk her. She’ll come around after a while. Although I must say that you’re the only guy who’s this patient with her when she’s angry. Those other guys…they didn’t come here like you. Your actions speak louder than your words and I’m really glad that my daughter is in your hands.”

 

Yul blushed at her praises and felt guiltier for missing the food tasting. Jessica had been so good lately but he’d let her down. Even if it was for a good reason.

 

He smiled politely at Mrs. Jung before making his way up to Jessica’s room, passing by Krystal along the way.

 

“Good luck, oppa.” She patted his shoulder and waggled her eyebrows before casting a look at her sister’s door.

 

“Thanks Krystal. You take care too, okay?”

 

“I will.”

 

Yul smiled as she descended the stairs but it faded away when he refocused his attention on his fiancée’s door. He had an uphill task to complete.

 

“Sica baby, will you please open the door?”

 

“Go away! I hate you!”

 

“Baby, you don’t hate me.”

 

“I do! I totally hate you!”

 

“Baby…”

 

“And stop calling me baby! I’m not a baby!”

 

“You are. You’re my baby.”

 

“I’M NOT A BABY! GO AWAY!”

 

“Are you sure you’re not? You’re starting to behave like one.”

 

“NO I’M NOT! SCUMB—SCUM!!! YOU’RE…YOU…GO AWAY!!!”

 

“Do you really want me to go away?”

 

“YES!!!”

 

“Okay then, I’m going to go now.”

 

“WHAT???!!! DON’T YOU DARE!!!”

 

He heard the sound of feet stomping and barely a second later, the door opened and a fuming Jessica was glaring knives and daggers at him. He couldn’t help grinning when he saw her. He wasn’t sure if he was entirely sane or not but he thought she looked positively adorable with her sergeant like stance and pouting lips.

 

“WHY ARE YOU GRINNING LIKE THAT? DO I LOOK FUNNY TO YOU?!”

 

His grin grew that much wider as he stepped forward and said, “You’re cute.”

 

He could have sworn he saw a ghost of a smile flit past her face but he couldn’t be sure because the door was slammed in his face and rammed against his hand like a baseball bat to a baseball.

 

“OWW!!! OWW!!!” he howled in pain as he crouched down, cradling his injured hand in his luckier hand that escaped unscathed.

 

“FLATTERY ISN’T GOING TO GET YOU ANYWHERE, KWON YUL!”

 

“Oww…” He was in severe pain and in no mood to continue operation Appease Jessica so he decided to call off the operation for today. “Jessica, the door slammed on my hand and it hurts like crazy right now. I need to go back and put some ice on it so I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

 

He turned around to leave and began walking towards the stairs but he heard the sound of a door opening so he stopped. It was Jessica. She was still frowning but she tugged on his arm and began walking down the stairs towards the kitchen.

 

“Samchon! I need an ice pack. Now!”

 

Her chef samchon turned around looking inquisitive until Yul lifted his left hand and winced.

 

“I see. I’ll get an ice pack ready in a jiffy. Just hold on a moment.”

 

“Samchon, give him the ice pack and send him home. You know where it is.”

 

And with that, she stomped out of the kitchen and presumably, back to her room again. He could only sigh at her departing back. Again, he was touched by her show of concern for him but it wasn’t going to be easy to appease her this time. Perhaps, tomorrow will be a better day.

 

A sudden thought struck him, however, just as he was leaving the house with Jessica’s samchon chef.

 

Didn’t she say that she was going to soundproof her room? How is it possible that I can hear her from the outside then?

 

~~~~~
 

Krystal sighed the biggest sigh of her life as she trudged up the stairs to the rooftop where she used to hang out at with Sulli. She wasn’t there to enjoy herself with Sulli this time, however. She was simply going there to find some respite from the increasingly intolerable bullying that was starting to get to her despite the strong walls she had put up to hold herself together. It had been another challenging day at work and she really needed to get away from it all.

 

Her co-workers hated her. It was plain to see. They were the ones who had witnessed the fiasco as the car show and figured out that she was the illegitimate daughter who had snatched Malina’s boyfriend who was Young. She laughed soullessly at the ludicrosity of the news and her laugh echoed in the stairwell, seemingly laughing back at her, mocking her, just like everybody else.

 

Yet, she knew that the bullying wasn’t the main cause of her pain. It wasn’t. It was a convenient reason to explain the ache in her heart but if there was anybody she couldn’t lie to, it was herself. She hadn’t been the same after that night out with Jessica, Yul and her parents. She became more withdrawn after that night. She didn’t feel like talking much anymore.

 

Her sister had tried to find out if she was okay but she merely brushed the issue aside and went to bed, claiming that she was tired. It wasn’t until her sister picked up the phone in a huff, wanting to give Young a piece of her mind that she got up and yelled that she was fine so that her sister wouldn’t make the call. And it was right at that moment that she knew she wasn’t fine. Lying that she was only made it all the more obvious that she was, in fact, anything but fine. She was heartbroken, hurt, angry, jealous, frustrated, disappointed and a myriad of other negative emotions but she wasn’t fine. She wasn’t.

 

The setting sun’s rays pierced her eyes when she reached the rooftop. Raising her hand to shield her eyes from the sun, she sighed again. The air up there used to make her feel more refreshed but it didn’t seem to do that now. She didn’t feel refreshed at all. She felt almost as suffocated as she did down below in the show room but at least she was free from their vindictive stares for a while.

 

She sat there quietly, watching the sunset until she shivered. She had gone up without wearing her coat since she wouldn’t be up here for long. It was the cold season and temperatures were low in Seoul. It wouldn’t do to be out here for too long. She stayed for a while longer until the cold began to get to her. She then had no choice but to go back in to warm herself up again.

 

Only, she couldn’t.

 

The door was locked. She panicked a little as she jiggled the handle. It was well and truly bolted from the other side. She was stuck. Out in the cold. Not a good thing. She reached into her pants’ pocket to get her phone only to remember that she had left it in the show room to charge. This wasn’t good. This was bad. Very bad. She had no way of asking for help. How was she going to get back in? The cold was going to be a problem real soon and she didn’t know what to do.

 

~~~~~