"Where's Jinki?" you immediately asked when Kibum entered your bedroom. You even managed to only spare him a five-second glare for not knocking again.

    Kibum shrugged, collapsing onto the couch at the front of your room and pulling out his Blackberry.

    "Can't you stay off that thing one second?" you snapped, feeling bad for your harsh tone but also annoyed because you hadn't seen Jinki at all in about two weeks. You blamed it on Kibum. Okay, not really, but you had to blame it on someone who wasn't Jinki. You didn't want to blame it on him. You knew that he was busy lately from all the news coverage you watched on television each night, but you were still somewhat—very—hurt that he hadn't even texted you in over a week.

    "Checking stocks," Kibum replied flippantly, and you sighed, wondering why you put up with him. The answer was quite plain and simple in Kibum's mind though. Both of you shared a certain bluntness with each other that the other one appreciated. "If you don't check them constantly, things could happen."

    "Are you checking Minho-ssi's stocks?" you asked curiously and could see Kibum stiffen before he shrugged again.

    "I check on everyone's stocks," he said.

    "That's just an excuse. You miss him," you observed, seeing Kibum's shuttered expressions.

    "Has anyone told you that you're really annoying?" Kibum replied bluntly.

    "Mostly you," you said, rolling over on the bed and clutching your pillow so that you were lying on your stomach comfortably, "but you do miss him, right? Everyone does. That's why Jinki's working so hard." For his friend, you told yourself in your brain. He's doing it all for his friends. And you understood that friends came before girlfriends, a lot apparently.

    "And you?" Kibum asked. "Do you miss him?"

    "Minho?" you queried, purposely clueless.

    "You know who I mean," Kibum said quietly, and you buried your face into your pillow.

    "Has anyone told you that you're really annoying?" you asked, voice muffled by the pillow.

    "I tell the truth."

    "Of course, I miss him," you said, rolling back over onto your back and clutching your pillow to your stomach. Kibum was surprisingly easy to spill your feelings to. Maybe it was because you knew that he wouldn't give you any sugar-coated words. Kibum would tell you if you were being an idiot.

    "You're an idiot."

    You blinked, not completely expecting that. "I'm an idiot for missing him?" you wondered, staring at Kibum from your position on the bed. He looked rather funny upside-down, and you stifled a laugh.

    Kibum rolled his eyes and swiveled in his chair to face you, putting his Blackberry down. "I mean, you should have expected this, right? You may be an idiot, but you're not that dumb—"

    "Thanks," you muttered. The interruption made Kibum frown, and he plowed on.

    "You're not that dumb to actually expect your relationship with Jinki to stay the same," Kibum continued, glaring at you and daring you to interrupt again. "You had to have known that he is now currently the CEO of one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the East Asian market. He's been gone for almost four years now; there's a lot of backlog that he has to deal with. Plus with Minho's company floundering, he'll have to work twice as hard to get his mother's approval to re-establish a working relationship with the other's company."

    All of the reasons Kibum was listing off were reasons that you knew, and you nodded, avoiding the blonde man's gaze.

    "Honestly, you should understand these things, and you should understand who Jinki is. He's someone who truly cares about his friends and would try anything in his power to keep them together. He may seem sweet and naïve on the outside, but you can't forget that he's grown up in a ruthless world. He's not Jinki, the college student. He doesn't have the time to be in a normal relationship, but I'm sure that he chose you because he knew you could deal with that."

    Except he chose me when he thought he wasn't going to be discovered, you wanted to say but kept your mouth shut. He chose me when he was just Jinki, the college student.

    Kibum eyed you critically. "You," he said slowly, drawing out his words so that they pierced like swords when they were finally spoken. "You always act as if you're the most open person in the world, but in reality, you keep a lot of things hidden inside. Still, you call yourself truthful. I wonder if Jinki has realized this yet."

    "I don't have secrets," you replied, but already your mind was whirring to everything in your life that you hadn't told Jinki.

    "Why do you always do that?" Kibum asked.

    "Do what?"

    Kibum's smirk was a little bit sad as he shook his head. "Hide what you really want to say."

    "Argh!" you yelled, kicking a random soda can lying on the edge of the street so that it clattered into the gutter. It only took a few seconds for your environmental side to kick in, leading you to pick up the can and throw it in the recycling bin. With a small huff, you sat down on a bench at the side of the street and leaned back, ignoring and in return being ignored by the other pedestrians.

    "Bad day?"

    You looked at the man who had sat down on the bench beside you and shrugged, catching your breath at how beautiful he was for a second. He reminded you of a prince but a lost prince judging from his rumpled hair and wrinkled clothes.

    "You look like you had a bad one," he said, leaning back as well. "I'm having a bad day as well. Well, bad week."

    "You look like you're having a bad year," you remarked, looking at the haggard expression on his face and the bags beneath his eyes.
    
    "You could say that." A tired smile that didn't quite reach his eyes appeared on his face. "But I have friends who are helping me through it."

    "That's nice," you replied sincerely. "Sorry about your bad year. Seems a lot worse than my bad day."

    "Heh," the man chuckles, and he reaches out for you hand, shaking it firmly. "We'll see, won't we?"

    "I guess?" you said, confused as to what he was saying. "Hey, you know you look kind of familiar."

    "I dyed my hair," the man replied, tugging on one of the black locks. "At least, this was my original color at the beginning, and I just dyed it back."

    "Right," you said as you watched the man leave but not before he bowed politely to you, ever the prince to the end. "Well, that was interesting."

    When you shared the weird experience with Taemin—not Kibum because you were mad at him, for what you weren't quite sure—Taemin simply smiled and looked more like a man than you had ever seen before.

    "You should just lose the extensions," you said, taking a long lock of the brown hair that Taemin sported.

    Taemin shook his head. "Not until…"

    "Not until," you prompted, but Taemin simply handed you his iPod and went off to do…whatever his job was. You spent most of your time in the mansion locked up in your room, talking with Kibum, so you didn't exactly involve yourself in Jinki's world much.

    The buzzing of your cell phone distracted you for a moment, and you looked at it only to blink and stare at it again before picking it up hurriedly.

    "I'm crying," you said flatly when the other deeper voice on the line began to babble.

    "You don't sound like it," the boy replied softly.

    "How did you find phone reception in China, Tao-yah?" you asked, changing the subject.

    "I found it right after I saw you all over the news!" Tao exclaimed. "Are you okay?"

    "Mm, I guess," you sighed. Tao was always so gentle and understanding, though he did have a habit of saying deep, meaningful phrases that always had your head spinning. "I mean I just didn't expect this."

    "Neither did I," Tao muttered. "Victoria-noona is calling me. I have to go, but good luck."

    "Why is everybody saying that?" you asked, annoyed and at the same time touched. "I don't need luck. Jinki's my boyfriend, not my husband. I just wish that we could spend more time together, and you know, maybe he could call me once in a while to tell me he misses me. Maybe we could go out on a date."

    "The meteor carried all too many wishes; it will fall so heavily. Just remember I'm your friend. Goodbye..."

    "Goodbye," you whispered back, suddenly struck by your situation. You were just a college girl, beginning to make her way out into the world, but you had ended up, in the span of a few months, on television as the girlfriend of newly rediscovered CEO of Lee Laboratories. Seriously, a few months. It was all very crazy now that you thought about it. Everything with Jinki had been built on impulse, from your first attraction to him at the library. You had even invited him to live with you for goodness sakes! What had you been thinking?

    It was just like your mother said. You really were an emotional being at times. You thought you weren't, but when you looked back on your actions, most of what you did just wasn't logical! In fact, you were acting just like…just like…

    Just like one of those shoujo manga characters that you despised so much.

    "Oh my gosh," you moaned, leaning forward on the couch to bury your face into the pillows. "I'm an idiot." You finally understood what everyone was warning you about.

    It was another three days before you saw Jinki again, but you had already stopped counting the total amount. It wouldn't be a favor to either of you if you mentioned the amount of time the two of you spent apart versus the time the two of you spent together.

    "Jinki," you began, but once again, Jinki wasn't listening. He was on the Blackberry Kibum had so graciously provided from his personal collection.

    "Sorry," Jinki apologized, but you could see how his fingers twitched when he put the phone away. It had been this way since he had promised to spend the day with you. During breakfast, he had excused himself multiple times to take calls on his phone, and with each call, he became increasingly agitated and eventually excused himself from breakfast altogether. You had ate the omurice you had made by yourself, wondering how long this would go on.

    "Jinki," you tried again, and Jinki looked up from his Blackberry, smiling weakly.

    "Yes, jagiya. What is it?"

    The nickname even sounded weak falling from his lips, and you shrugged then, suddenly not feeling like speaking anymore. "Sorry, I forgot. Go ahead and do whatever you were doing."

    Jinki didn't bat an eye as he returned to his Blackberry and picked up the iPad on the table in front of the two of you. You pulled up your legs closer to yourself on the couch and rested your cheek against the platform that your knees formed. It was currently three in the afternoon, and after the failed breakfast, you and Jinki had simply sat on the couch all day without talking much.

    "You owe me jeans," you finally sighed out.

    "Mm?" Jinki murmured noncommittally. You wondered what it would take to get a reaction out of him. You didn't want to be a needy girlfriend, but you did think that Jinki had been rather distant really. And you didn't even want to go into all the internet articles you had found online. Of course, you had known people would talk, but you weren't prepared for this type of talk about you. You didn't want to think about it at all, actually, and you wondered if Jinki knew.

    "There's a party this Saturday," Jinki said, looking up while scribbling down a mess of numbers that you didn't quite understand onto a pad of paper. "Ask Key to dress you up nicely."

    "Kibum," you corrected automatically.

    Jinki paused his scribbling, looked at you with an unreadable expression on his face, and nodded. "Right, Kibum. Ask Kibum to dress you up nicely."

    "Will you be there?"

    Jinki put down his pen and smiled at you, a genuine smile this time though it wasn't as large as the ones he had given you in the past. "Of course."

    "Promise?"

    "Yes."

    "Okay," you said quietly, and not for the first time lately, you didn't know what to expect in the future.

A/N: I apologize in advance for chapters 14-18. Nothing else I'm willing to say. :3 Oh, except I hope that everyone enjoys Tao because he is a certain someone's bias in EXO-M.