It was known fact in his high school: A crush lasts for as long as four months… more than that means that it must be love.

When Gunwoo started training to be an idol singer, he thought the whole notion was true. He’d liked girls before… all of them pure and innocent up until the feeling expired before the end of the fourth month. Beyond that, he had never felt more and so the quote fit him to a ‘T’.

Lee Gunwoo is the King of Crushes, and it’s a title he kind of liked.

While it was true that love could inspire him to feel his songs better, he’d never exactly been in love before. Love is too complicated, he thought, what’s the point of going through too much for something you could get over a few months?

That was his motto for a long time – that is, until he met her.

**

It was by accident when Lee Gunwoo met Im Yoona.

He and his soon-to-be members were out for dinner with Hwanhee after a whole day’s practice, and they’d bumped into her going into the restaurant. She hadn’t been wearing any make-up; she wasn’t wearing anything particularly eye-catching and her hair was pulled up into a plain bun. By all accounts and means, Im Yoona looked too plain, too simple.

(Though if anyone had asked him what he thought at that moment, he would have said something along the lines of “Holy crap, she’s gorgeous” and embarrassed himself.)

Yoona exchanged hellos with their boss (Hwanhee seemed very familiar with her, calling her by a nickname he’d never heard or read from fans before and patting her head) and bowed at them in greeting before disappearing into the back of the room. His eyes followed her retreating figure without his meaning too and almost crashed into a wall. If it wasn’t for Seyoung pulling him into a seat beside him, then he might have gotten a black eye already.

The meeting happened in a split second really, hardly any time for proper introductions and such – but Gunwoo swears it felt like a lifetime.

That was when he developed a crush. His first mistake.

**

The next time they meet it’s at his group’s first venture at MUBANK and her group’s comeback stage.

Technically he doesn’t meet her face to face. Gunwoo found himself too chicken for that and had opted to watch the performance closely from the overhead TV in the waiting room instead. He held his breath each time the camera panned in to zoom close to her face.

She looks so much different from when he’d first seen her, and he couldn’t identify whether that was a good thing or bad – but really, who cares about that right now?