“Alright, make yourselves at home,” Jodi told the crowd of people following her.

“I'll put him to bed,” JiYong said softly to not wake the sleeping JinShil in his arms. Poor boy had fallen asleep almost as soon as the car started moving. Jodi was okay about it. She looked at her husband and whispered, 'One down, one to go.'

JeongUi reacquainted himself with Ebah, and took it upon himself to introduce her to everyone else. Ebah wagged her tail vigorously, excited by the prospect of all the affection she would be getting. SeungHyun sat on the edge of the couch scratching the dog softly between the ears and trying to not be obvious about watching SooYoung straighten up the magazines. Luna and YoungBae sat at the kitchen counter and looked at pictures they had taken at the picnic. DaeSung, Emiko and SeungRi sat at the dining room table, speaking animatedly in Japanese.

Jodi made her way into the kitchen, music and took inventory of her fridge. It was as bare as she had assumed. Then she slapped herself on the forehead when she realized that she had left the eggs out all day. Smooth, Jodi, she thought as she set them in a pot to boil.

“Hey, Jo, do you mind if I use your laptop for a little bit?” SooYoung asked her.

“Of course. It should be on my bed,” Jodi responded while pulling takeout menus from a drawer. “You guys can look these over. I'm sorry, I don't have anything worth cooking in here.”

“It's okay, Jodi. JiYong-capo raves about your cooking. I'll come again and eat it then,” SeungRi told her confidently. Then he howled in pain and clutched the back of his head.

“JiYong-hyung. Hyung. And she's noona,” JiYong corrected with an irritated look. He approached his wife and kissed her cheek. He started pulling glasses from the cabinets and called out, “Alright, I'm taking drink orders. What would you guys like?”

“Do you have wine?” SeungHyun asked as he stood to come into the kitchen. SooYoung walked passed him, laptop in hand, and didn't look in his direction.    

“Yes. Look in the last cabinet at the bottom,” JiYong responded. SeungHyun knelt down to look and giggled gleefully.

“You have a bottle of '99 Chateau Nuit?” SeungHyun asked in awe.

“I got it as a gift, but I'm not big on red wine,” Jodi explained as she pulled out ingredients to make a peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich.

“I'll teach you how to appreciate it. We'll save this for another time.”

Jodi looked over at SeungHyun and clutched her hands to her heart. JiYong stood between them and gave Jodi a dirty look. “No flirting with my hyung.”

“Neh, oppa,” Jodi said sweetly and hugged her husband. She winked at SeungHyun over his shoulder. Letting go, Jodi cut the prepared sandwich in half and set it in front of Luna. Luna looked down at it curiously. “It must be hard being a vegetarian at a picnic. You barely ate anything. Let this tide you over until we decide on what to order.”

A wide smile broke across Luna's face. She grabbed Jodi's cheeks from across the counter and kissed her quickly on the lips. “Thank you.”

“No, thank you,” Jodi said once the initial shock wore off. Luna bit into her sandwich and laughed. All eyes were on the two women, stunned and silent. Jodi winked at Luna. “That's not the first time that's happened, but it's been awhile. That was definitely pleasant.”

“I didn't—I didn't get a good look. Farlo di nuovo, per favore?” SeungRi pleaded. YoungBae sent the maknae a withering look and he was silenced.

Jodi moved JiYong's still silent self out of the way and winked at Luna again before turning off the eggs. Jodi set the pot to cool on the cutting board and leaned on the counter to look at the menus, effectively ignored the shocked looks still being sent her way.   

“Noona, can I have an egg?” JeongUi asked while tapping her side.

“Not yet, honey. They need—”

“AAAAHHHHH!” JeongUi screamed and clutched his hand. Jodi picked him up, the cold water and held his hand under the water. The child screamed again and cried harder.

“I know, baby. I'm sorry. It'll feel better in a moment,” she assured him. Jodi rocked him as best she could with his hand still in the sink. JiYong came up behind him, looking very worried, and rubbed his back soothingly.

“Is he okay? Do we need to go to the doctor?”

Jodi shook her head and smiled a little. “It's fine. It's just a burn.” She pulled the crying child's hand from under the water can checked the damage. “There's no blisters, so he didn't do any real damage. What you can do, though, is hold him while I get the aloe gel from the bathroom.”

JiYong nodded and transferred the crying child to his arms, who immediately buried his face in JiYong's neck. He murmured soothing words in JeongUi's ear and kissed him repeatedly to calm him. Jodi came back up to them, and when JeongUi saw the bottle he started to squirm in his arms. “It's only aloe, baby. I promise it won't hurt,” JiYong assured him.

“You promise?” JeongUi asked between sniffled.

“I promise,” he answered solemnly. JeongUi nodded hesitantly and wiped his face on JiYong's shoulder. Jodi slathered the gel on his still red fingers and fanned her hand to help them dry faster. When she was done, she kissed the back of his hand.

“Band aid?” JeongUi asked

“You want a band aid?” JiYong asked with an amused grin. JeongUi nodded. Jodi rolled her eyes and smiled. “Arraso.” JiYong kissed him again and walked to the bathroom. After that was done, he kept hold of the child and sat back at the dining room table. Conversation picked back up around him and he felt JeongUi grow heavier and heavier in his arms.

 Jodi looked at the clock and smiled. 38 minutes. She took the sleeping child from his arms so that she could put him in his bed. But before going, she leaned down to whisper to her husband, “I win.”

* * * * *

They settled on Thai food. There were boxes and containers spread out on the table before them. Only Luna, the vegetarian, had her own separate food. The rest passed around dishes and shared freely. It was never quiet at the table, especially with the Big Bang members yelling jokes and insults at one another. There was an easy and genuine affection between them that seemed at odds with her perceptions of them.

“Okay, this is bugging me,” Jodi started. She set her fork down. “I've been under the impression that you all don't like each other much.”

“What makes you think that?” SeungHyun asked with his brow raised.

“I have never seen you all together like this. I see Ji and Bae together frequently, but not the five of you.”

JiYong sat back. “Well, there's a few reasons for that. For one, we tend to draw a crowd. Private dinners don't stay private.”

“We talk all the time, usually through SNS,” DaeSung added. “We've been friends for so long that there are jokes that only we would get.”

To illustrate the point, SeungRi said something about Cheerios and diapers that set all five men off. DaeSung then went on to say, “Also, there was a time, right after we debuted that we were our only friends. The people that we knew from school drifted away because we didn't have anything in common any more. We couldn't relate to them, and they couldn't relate to our new lives. If we didn't talk to each other, we had no one to talk to.”

“But the main reason we don't get together like this often is because when we're all together, it's usually for work,” YoungBae explained and gripped his wife's hand. “And when we aren't at work, we don't want to think about work.”

All five guys groaned and nodded, then SeungRi told her, “I can see how people might think that, though. Two of us are usually in Japan, two are in Seoul, one in his cave.”

SeungHyun reached out and hit SeungRi in the head. He had to have been expecting that.

“When we aren't working, we'd rather spend our time with the people that we love,” JiYong summed up.

“You spend most of your time with me,” Jodi said with a little smile.

“Exactly.”

* * * * *

The food was gone, but everyone stayed at the table. Almost everyone. SooYoung went into the office to keep working on Jodi's laptop. SeungHyun watched her go and spent a long time debating with himself about whether or not he should follow her. He really wanted to talk to her, but that hadn't gone so well the first time. Gathering his courage, he took a swallow of his wine and left the table as stealthily as possible to not draw anyone's notice.

He knocked lightly twice on the door and let himself in. SooYoung didn't look up. SeungHyun watched her typing with a slight frown on her face, her long hair pulled up in a messy ponytail. Yeppeuni, he thought as he observed her.

“You're being creepy again. What do you want?” SooYoung asked, eyes still on the screen.   

SeungHyun laughed nervously and moved forward to sit on the couch. “I wanted to start over. Our first meeting didn't go as planned.”

“Oh, yeah? What did you have in mind?”

The way she asked the question made him feel like she really didn't care, but he took it as an opening nonetheless. “Well, I planned to introduce myself and get your name. I wanted to talk to you and get to know you, tell you a few things about me. And after you gave some signal that you were interested, I was going to ask you to have dinner with me.”

“From that I recall, you didn't introduce yourself, nor did you ask my name—though I think you already knew it. We have talked and we even had dinner together.”

“But I don't know anything about you,” SeungHyun countered. “I think I would like to get to  know you.”

SooYoung's fingers stilled over the keyboard and she spun to look at him. SeungHyun learned his lesson from previously and kept his eyes squarely on hers. “Why?”

“'Why?', what?” he asked.

“Why do you want to know me?”

“I think you're pretty—”

“It's just a face.”

SeungHyun pulled back a little and smiled. “That's the same thing I tell people about mine.” All SooYoung did was raise her eyebrow and turn back to the computer. “Can we start over again?”

SooYoung looked at him briefly. “Whatever.”

SeungHyun cleared his throat. “My name is Choi SeungHyun. Sometimes called 'T.O.P'. I'm in a group called Big Bang. I'm a rapper and sometimes an actor.”

“That's a shame.”

“What is?”

“That you're an actor,” SooYoung told him. “I don't trust actors, they fake emotion too well.”

Rubbing a hand over his face, SeungHyun chuckled. “Arraso. Tell me about yourself.”

She leaned back on her chair and rolled her neck. “My name is Baek SooYoung and I'm about to enter my last year at Chung Ahn University.”

“That's a great school. What are you studying?”

“Korean Literature and Creative Writing.”

“Oh,” SeungHyun responded with an exaggerated sigh.

“Is there a problem with that?”

SeungHyun shrugged and stood. At the door, he said over his shoulder, “I don't trust writers, they come up with pretty words too easily.”

SooYoung threw her head back and laughed heartily. She her lips and nodded. “Touché.”

* * * * *

“. . . so drunk that he pushed all the buttons on the elevator wall. We had t