Emma's POV

It's dark. I can see blurs of light outside, streetlamps, as we drive past them. Inside the car, though, I can't see. Nor do I want to. I'm just sitting in the back seat, staring out the window, tears rushing down my face. Youngbae is driving, and he has been letting me cry. I'm kinda glad. I don't want to have to talk to him yet.

I don't know where we're going, but I have some ideas. We could be going to the airport. I heard Daesung and Top talking about sending me home before they drugged me. They drugged me..... I still can't get past that, no matter how hard I try. How could they?! I shake my head, and try to get back on track. Ok, airport, or we could be going home, to Bigbang's appartment. I don't want to face the rest of Bigbang either.

I regret saying what I did, and I'm mad at myself for regreting it. What was I saying earlier? I'm the boss! I'm in charge, I'm the best, and I can say what I want! But I don't feel that way anymore. I just feel tired. Tired of everything. Maybe if I wasn't like this, so angry all the time, if I didn't have this huge chip on my shoulder that I keep daring everyone to knock off, maybe if I didn't have this attitude, life would be easier.

Life would be easier? Oh, listen to yourself, will ya? That's your exhaustion speaking. That ain't you! I lecture myself. I realize how right I am. I am angry, I am a huge chip on my shoulder, I am this attitude. I wouldn't be Emma if I wasn't like that. Emma is an angry, opinionated, arrogant, hurt, hurtful, in-your-face type of girl. But do I really wanna be Emma anymore?

No! No! No, you stop this right now! Ok? You need to stop! My inner voice starts off again. If you start thinking like this, you're gonna be letting all of them win. Billy, Youngbae, Mom, Dad, the rest of Bigbang, all your psychs, all of them. You remember? It's us against them. Us against the world! And we are not letting them win!

My head hurts. There's a war going on in my brain. There's the tired, hurt, scared little girl voice who just wants things to get better vs. the angry, big buff and tough, mean girl voice, who wants things to remain the same, where we know that as long as I'm in control, no one will be able to hurt me. Except my closest friends. The little girl voice points out sadly.

I'm not sure which side is winning. I'm not sure which side I want to win. I'm not sure about anything. Just that everything is going wrong, everything is falling apart, and I don't know who to blame, or what to do.

Suddenly, the car stops moving. Youngbae opens his door, and shuts it. The noise seems so foreign after the silence that it takes my brain a minute to understand what that noise was. Then Youngbae opens my door. He doesn't look at me. He just opens my door, hand out to help me if I need it. I refuse, and pull myself out of the car.

Standing on wobbly legs, I look around, trying to figure out where I am. Not the airport, not home, so where am I? I would ask Youngbae that, but I'm not sure how I would be recieved. So I just follow Youngbae as he leads me across the parking lot to the building's front steps. The building is a brick rectangle, white brick, with a yellow stripe across the top.

Youngbae opened the door for me, and made an attempt to smile. It looked more like a grimace, but I appreciated the attempt. I returned the gesture, and his eyes lit up momentarily with one of his eye laughs, though he made no sound.

Stepping inside the building, I am greeted with cold air, and an almost overwhelming smell of an ocean breeze. I swear I could hear the waves gently crashing against the shore, and I looked around for that little white thing that makes noise so you can't hear what's going on on the other side of a door. I take a deep breath, immediately feeling rejuvinated, relieved.

I step aside to allow Youngbae to enter. He looks around for a sec, pulls out his phone, checks something, and then strides confidantly down a hallway. I follow. As we walk, I look at the walls, which are decorated with framed certificates. Certificates? Warning bells go off dully in my head. I'm too tired to really be worried or suspicious. They're written in Korean, anyway, so I don't want to jump to conclusions. Listen to yourself! The angry girl goes off in my head again. She quiets down on her own.

Youngbae stops again at a staircase. Checking his phone again, he starts climbing the steps. I'm two steps behind him. Holy crap, these things are steep! I hope we don't have to climb that high. Whoever built these stairs wasn't very experienced.

It turns out we had to climb all the way to the top floor. Five floors up. Because god forbid there be an elevator in a brick building. Stupid architect... Youngbae trudged up in front of me, head down, hand on the railing, the other hand buried deep in his pocket. He kept marching, I kept marching, our footsteps in synch, reminding me of those clips you see of the military, with the steady left-left-left-right-left marching beat. The awkwardness was killing me.

When we finally reached the god forsaken top of this god forsaken staircase, Youngbae pulled out his phone again. Then he looked at a little sign on the wall, back at his phone, and then walked to the right down the hallway. Now, at this point, my legs were killing me - I hadn't really used them the past 24 hours - and I was considering just flopping onto the ground and asking Youngbae to drag me. But, again, I didn't know what terms Youngbae and I were on at the moment. So I kept going, following him down the hall.

We stop at the seventh door on the left. Youngbae turns the knob, and holds the door open for me. I walk in, and groan inwardly. Waiting room. This cannot be good. I force myself to keep walking, stiffly, into the room. I take a seat on one of the too-plush couches, my legs sighing from relief. Youngbae sits next to me, but he is rigid, and there's a good foot in between us. I'm way to tired to care. If it wasn't for the harsh flourescents above me, I could fall asleep.

As we wait, Youngbae starts tapping his foot anxiously. He looks really nervous.... He finally just plays a game on his phone to distract himself. I do the same, and groan out loud when I see there is no wifi here. I could've sworn I saw Youngbae's cheeks lift up with a smile, and I scowled in his general direction.

I pick one of my games that doesn't require wifi to work. Turns out the only two I have are Monopoly and Temple Run. Both are games for the conscious and aware. Pick your poison.... I think to myself. I settle for Temple Run, hoping it will force me to wake up.

Long story short, it takes several games for me to make it past 1,000 meters. After that, I was definitly awake, but just as I was about to start another game, the door opened, and a man stepped into the waiting room. Youngbae and I looked up at the same time. Youngbae stood and bowed, I just smiled and nodded at him.

He was a tall man, unusally so for a Korean, with blonde hair and kind eyes. He was skinny, but not bad skinny. If he was a woman, he'd have a decent figure, but not be to big. That kind of skinny. He was wearing casual clothes; a black hoodie, dark jeans, black sneakers with white patterns, and he had sunglasses clipped to his white shirt around the neckline. He looked young, and yet he struck me as the kind of adult who is obsessed with being 'hip' with the kids. Something about how he was dressed seemed a bit out of it, compared to the setting he was in.

"Hello. My name is Cho Jae-Sun, but my English name is Dylan. Why don't you come in, and we'll get started?" The man said in nearly perfect English. Youngbae nodded, and walked through the door as Dylan held it open for him. I didn't get up, still trying to figure all this out. Dylan looked at me. "You coming?" I blinked, stood, and walked hesitantly through the door.

Inside this room, the lights are much dimmer - thank the Lord - and the setup of the room is the last piece of the puzzle that has been bothering me. There's a couch on the wall next to the door, with side tables on either side. On those tables are mints, candles, and flowers. On the table closet to me is a plastic bin filled with cheap dollar store prizes. Pencils with silly erasers, bubble gum packs, little hackie sacks, mini Polly Pockets, and bouncing balls. In the middle of the room is a big leather chair, and another side table next to that, on which rested a clipboard and a Dunkin Doughnuts coffee. The whole thing clicked, and I realized I was in a counselor's office.

I do an about face, and walk back out into the waiting room. I would've walked straight back out the door, but Dylan grabbed hold of my by my hood - I changed when I was with Super Junior. Anyway, Dylan pulled me back into his office, and closed the door behind him, me struggling to my hoodie all the while. Once I was in, I whirled to face him.

"What was that?! Don't you touch me!" I snarl at him, taking a step forward so I was in his face. He calmly raised his hands and gently pushed me backwards, away from him. I raise my eyebrows, and take a step forward. He pushes me back. I step forward. He pushes me back again. Forward, back, forward, back, forward, back, on and on, for a couple of minutes, at least.

Dylan yawned, "Emma, as much as I'm enjoying our little game here, you're here for a reason. Let's get on with it, shall we? If you're done trying to be a rebel?" My jaw dropped. Well, this is a first.... I thought to myself. An adult managed to sound like a mouthy teenager while still sounding adultish! I closed my mouth, set my lips in a hard scowl complete with a death glare, and go to stand by the couch. "Emma. Sit." Dylan orders as he takes his seat in his big comfy chair.

"I'll sit when you stop talking to me like that." I say with a false sweetness.

"Alright then. You can keep standing." Dylan says with an equal tone. Oooh, if only I could kill him.... I thought, smirking at the idea. Dylan reached for his clipboard, and read over what was written on it for a second. Then he looked up. "Emma, please sit down." I grinned widely at my victory, and sat down next to Youngbae, keeping about a foot in between us. Dylan leaned forward in his seat, and said to me, "Well, now... You're profile was.... Interesting... to say the least. Anger managment and mood control issues when you were little, which your mom thought you would grow out of. Then comes middle school... The bullying gets worse, and you become depressed. You were left untreated, mainly because you're mother didn't recognize it as depression. If anything, it seemed to your mom that-- "

"I'm very well aware of my medical history." I say coolly to the shrink.

"This is more for your brother's benifit, and to give us a place to start." Dylan explained. "Anyway, to your mother, it seemed like you were just getting more and more out of control with your anger and mood swings, even becoming violent in one instance. You were finally taken to a psychiatrist in the ninth grade. He diagnosed you with Bipolar disorder, as well as the depression, is that correct?" Youngbae twisted to look at me, eyebrows raised. He probably had no idea about any of this, since I sure as hell never told him.

"Yes, you're right. He put me on pills for it." I answer, trying to avoid looking at Youngbae.

"And did the pills work?"

"No."

"Did you even take the pills?" Dylan asks, exhasperated.

"I did at first. But then....." I trailed off, sure as hell not about to share that particular story.

"But then, what?" Dylan asks, eyes searching my face. I take a deep breath, and shake my head no. He rolls his eyes, and asks again. I tell him no again. Finally, he just groans and takes out his phone, selecting something, and tossing it to me. I catch it, and look at the screen. It's a picture of Billy and me.

"Does it have something to do with him?" Dylan asks me, and now it's his turn to sound triumphant. I close my eyes, almost dropping the phone. But I don't. Not in front of Dylan. Not while I'm holding Billy's picture. I'm not going to let them win this. It's me agianst the world.

____________________

Okayyyyy! Done! I really like this one!

Props to BigBangAngel for the new poster!

I hope you guys had a happy Valentines day, and I will see you all next time!