We touched down during the wee hours of the morning. It was a good thing and a bad thing. Good thing since not many people were around and we managed to get away quickly without being noticed. But since it was about 3 AM back in New York and my body clock had not adjusted to the new time zone, I was having troubles getting my rest.

When we arrived at our house, I was wide awake. The guards pretty much looked like they had just seen a ghost when I walked up to the gates with the others. They refused to let me in at first, thinking it was a hoax but when Jay went up and talked to them, they immediately opened the gates.

I asked them not to report to my Dad and that I’d be the one handling telling them that I was back. We sneaked into the house while all the guards looked at us strangely. While the others went to their own quarters, I immediately went to my room, all the while thinking of how I can make this a good surprise.

When I walked towards my parents’ room, I found out that their door was locked. Not feeling discouraged, I went to Geun Suk’s room.

Seeing as it was unlocked, I sneakily went inside and gently climbed into my brother’s bed. Having trouble getting some sleep, I contemplated on waiting for my brother to wake up in the morning or just wake him up right now. I know for a fact that he’s a light sleeper. But since I managed to lay beside him without him even waking up, then he must be super tired. I wondered what he would do if he found me on his bed in the morning. He’ll probably think I’m an intruder or something. Uh oh. I think I better not proceed with this, I thought.

I climbed out and began walking back to my room. I’ll just surprise them in the morning, I thought.

When I woke up the next morning, there weren’t any indication that my family knew that I was there. In fact, nobody even knew we were there. It was only 5 AM and nobody but the maids were probably awake. When I went down to the dining room, plates were served but the food wasn’t. When I went inside the kitchen, I saw Gain and Suzy already talking to the other maids. They all vowed not to say anything before I went back to my room. At exactly, 6 AM, I heard my parents talking as they went downstairs. A little after that, I heard my brother coming out of his room. I waited for a few minutes before I followed them.

“What’s for breakfast?” I asked as I went inside the dining room.

My mom’s eyes widened so big I thought something was wrong with it. The bread my brother was eating fell off his mouth and landed on his coffee. Even my dad’s coffee spilled on the table.

“Yoona!” my mom shrieked. She hurriedly ran towards me and hugged me tightly. “My baby girl is here,” she said as she wiggled me around. My father followed suit.

“My dear lord, don’t scare us like that,” he said as he enveloped me in his arms.

My brother approached and messed my hair, “I knew something was up when you didn’t want the company plane to fetch you,” he chuckled.

After much interrogation and more squealing from my mom, we finally had our first breakfast together at home after 2 years.

I asked them not to tell anybody that I was back. “I want to surprise Aunt Tae and Uncle Teuk. Especially Dong Wook-oppa,” I said purposely leaving out Donghae. I wanted to surprise my parents on this one too.

“Honey, you’ll give Taeyeon a heart attack,” her mom chuckled.

I laughed, “Not to worry, the bags I brought home would probably make up for that.”

My mom looked thoughtfully at me before saying, “Would you mind telling Donghae too? That boy’s been going crazy ever since he found out about the incident.”

“I- I’ll try Ma,” I said putting my best acting skills to use.

“Please try and mend your relationship with him. You know they’re family,” her mom added.

I only nodded at her, thinking, If only you knew mother.

My brother gave me a ride going LE, knowing Yuri was there.

As luck would have it, I saw her going up the steps to the building. I sneaked in behind her and said, “Boo!”

She shrieked and turned around. Her eyes widened as she looked at me, “Oh my god Yoona!”

We both jumped up and down by the steps. Seeing as we caught everybody’s attention, Yuri pulled me inside the company. As we were walking towards the cafe, I noticed everybody looking at me. I decided to ask Yuri about it.

“Why is everybody staring?” I asked.

“Uh, maybe we’re too pretty for their eyes,” Yuri joked. We both laughed aloud. “I think it’s because Im Yoona’s here,” she said seriously. “You’ve been all over the news you know,” she added.

News about the shootout, my hostage and Jay’s hospitalization were all over the news internationally. Although the peak of it already subsided, news about me was still hot in Korea.

“Yeah. It’s not exactly the kind of news I wanted,” I said quietly. “Whenever news about me leave the entertainment page of the newspaper, I always end up with news about my break up, rumored affairs, new flings and hostage taking.”

“That’s what you get for being famous,” Yuri chuckled beside me. We ordered coffee and sat down to talk. I noticed that everybody was still staring at me.

When we asked a friend of Yuri about it, she merely said, “Well, you know. Mr. Lee.”

Was this about Donghae?

The girl continued blushing, “Well, we know it’s not our business but we saw how Mr. Lee acted when the two of you broke up. Ever since then, all the staff tried their best not to mention your name in the building.”

“So I was banned from this building?” I said, shocked by the revelation.

Yuri interjected, “I didn’t hear anything about that. I mean, I talk about you all the time to my friends here.”

Changmin, a friend of ours back in college who was the owner of the cafe inside LE, managed to clear out the situation for us.

“They didn’t voluntarily ban your name, Yoona. It was just that one time, a staff apparently forgot a magazine about you in one of the staff lounges. It was the same day Donghae went around to check on the facilities. A few staff who witnessed him seeing the magazine by the table reported that he threw the magazine to the wall then picked it up and threw it to the garbage can. After that, news spread about how much Donghae doesn’t want to see or hear about you. And then the rumors about him and Eun Seo spread, well you know how Eun Seo can be such a , everybody thought it best to completely exclude you from any conversation or topic. You have to realize that all the staff here adored Donghae before you two broke up and he became all grumpy. And he was in the moving on phase. Pretty much everybody thought that was the best course of action to help their poor boss,” he explained.

“And Yuri, we didn’t tell you because you were her best friend,” Changmin added.

“I didn’t know he hated me that much,” I frowned. Just then, we saw Donghae coming inside the building.

I stood up and strode towards him, “Lee Donghae!” I shouted.

He turned to me, a look of utter surprise etched on his face. This was immediately replaced by what seemed to be bewilderment as he saw me walking towards him angrily.