When the very hung over Baekhyun awoke the next day, he instantly felt millions of hands attempting to pull him back into slumber. The yellow light gleaming in from the window sent a bright shock through him, and the fact that Chanyeol stood a few meters away, already knotting his tie, told Baekhyun that he had even slept through the younger's morning sounds. A thick throbbing rung like blaring bells in his skull, and a thin ring of fuzzy darkness clouded his vision. He slapped a palm to his forehead as he cracked his neck.

"Baek, you look like hell," Chanyeol chuckled with a glance to his older business partner.

"Well at least I don't look like ," Baekhyun growled out. "Look at you though, all sunshine and happiness. It's not fair that you can handle your alcohol well."

Chanyeol shrugged, a tiny sliver of hair falling from his gell coated locks. If a retort was intended, it was never given, for a stern sentence took it's place. "You still have work to do, so I'd suggest getting dressed at least, in fifteen minutes no less."

With a grumble and a sarcastic thanks for not waking him up, Baekhyun trudged to the bathroom. He bathed, refreshed, and dressed himself in exactly fifteen minutes and twenty two seconds, as Chanyeol had timed him out of boredom. As both men walked down the hallway in silence, the early day sounds filling the hotel, Baekhyun soon noticed a certain peculiar two people as Chanyeol called Takuya from the large black phone that sat on the registry desk. A young girl with matted brown hair stood on a lone dry and cracking stair as a possibly even younger boy scrubbed the dust covered floor boards beneath her. He must've said something offensive, for the girl suddenly smacked the back of his dirt flaked head. Instead of a whine drawing out from him, he smiled widely and flinched as if he were about to grab her, to which she stumbled backwards out of fright with a grin to her chubby cheeks.

If it wasn't for her rosy cheeks, Baekhyun probably wouldn't have been able to recognize Suzume without the heavy maiko makeup that usually adorned her face. As for the boy, it was clearly the young servant from the teahouse. From Baekhyun's non-extensive knowledge though, a servant belongs in one place, but it baffled the Korean man that he would see the lanky boy in two different places. After much obvious gawking, the girl looked up, followed by the boy. Her eyes quickly widened before she lightly kicked his back with her heel, the stair where she stood now empty after she had bolted up the stairs. The boy continued to clean, with more vigor now, as if he was trying to pass off that he hadn't been casually speaking with a maiko of such status.

"Baekhyun-sama! Chanyeol-same! Please forgive me dearly!" Takuya suddenly burst through the doors, loudly announcing his apology while he simultaneously bowed to the hotel owner. "To be quite honest, I hit a dreadful series of traffic on my way here. I promise that as your ambassador, a late appearance like this shall never happen again!"

And although his undeniable accent masked half of what he was saying, Baekhyun and Chanyeol nevertheless understood. "Takuya, it's fine, really." Chanyeol waved his hand carelessly with his usual vast grin.

There was not a second during that busy day in which Baekhyun didn't think of Taeyeon. To him, just the thought of not having her sweet laugh floating around his mind was preposterous. In his drunken state, he had told his best friend that only after spending a few hours with this woman, he was head over heels in love with her. Try as he might, Baekhyun couldn't deny it when the conversation vaguely resurfaced in his mind. Now of course, as almost any person, this was not Baekhyun's first love or powerful feelings. In fact, he was quite the charmer. Baekhyun had even been married and divorced to a woman named Hwang Miyoung by this time (it was a college love affair that only lasted a good year). These feelings of pure infatuation towards Taeyeon were slightly different though.

On the day he met Miyoung, he had noticed her reading Shakespeare while she sun bathed on a powdery pink towel, the beach wind struggling to undo her tied up locks. The first thing that crossed his mind were her furrowed eyebrows and thin coral colored lips, and the next was the literature between her delicate fingers. He wanted a smart, beautiful woman, and Miyoung fit every criteria. Chanyeol had nudged him forward, into the first date, into proposing, and into the wedding... and also into divorce when he caught Miyoung's legs wrapped around the milk man's hips.

Baekhyun's heart fluttered and beat rapidly against his ribs when he saw Taeyeon, something that had never happened with Miyoung. He could feel his cheeks flushing of pigment just at the sound of her name. His body grew hot and his voice nervously clogged in his throat as he thought of what he might say to her the next time they met. The way she giggled at his drunken jokes were-

"Oh my god, I'm going insane," Baekhyun muttered under his breath as the two walked back to their hotel after a dinner with Takuya, which left Chanyeol with a considerably upset and overfilled stomach.

"How so?"

The shorter shrugged. "I can't stop thinking."

A hearty laugh emitted from the taller. "You better be thinking about work. Our company is lucky that I was paying attention today at the meetings. If it were just you, no deal would've been made with you non-existent attention span."

Baekhyun gasped, another snicker escaping Chanyeol. "I zoned out today?"

"You were like a walking corpse, Baek."

"Yeol, I... I'm sorry. I probably screwed up any chances of a positive first impression." The older's eyes bore holes into every grey brick he walked over.

"Well yeah, they probably noticed. It doesn't matter though, cause their pitch was fantastic. We're gonna be even richer Baek, just you wait." Chanyeol folded his arms behind his head as he stereotypically gazed off into the sky.

Baekhyun took this as a chance to daydream, for the tenth time that day. This one was about Taeyeon pouring him a small glass of sake, only a thin and ever so slightly transparent robe draped around her body, because Baekhyun never said he wasn't a ert. All too soon though, Chanyeol appeared in his daydream, and Baekhyun shook his mind out of it to hear Chanyeol laughing hysterically.

"What's going on?" Baekhyun froze in the street, his head tilted.

"I've been calling your name for five minutes now!" Chanyeol's cackle was similar to a down pitched hyena's howl.

"What was so important then?"

Chanyeol leaned against a building as he tried to calm himself. "We just passed a certain geisha who waved at you as she entered a teahouse."

"We what!?" Baekhyun shook his friend's shoulders frantically.

"You were so gone, that you didn't even notice her, and you kept on walking. We've walked about three blocks since then, too!"

Baekhyun angrily huffed. "Chanyeol, I swear-"

"Oh poor Taeyeon, she seemed so disappointed. My wave didn't even lighten her mood. Oh, and Suzume looked very pretty tonight too. You should've-" but before Chanyeol could continue his boasting and laughter, Baekhyun was already sprinting down the streets like a mad man, leaving Chanyeol in the dark shadow of a tall building alone.

Baekhyun didn't know what he expected to come by running to Taeyeon. Even if he did manage to select the correct teahouse (as there were nearly too many), he wasn't invited to any gatherings, so the best he could do was creepily stare in from a window. Baekhyun would never do such an act though, even if a Taeyeon was behind a teahouse window (a very unlikely situation that Baekhyun would later think more about). As he reached the third block, two rival teahouses stood at each end of the corner, and the combined laughter of geisha and men swarmed the areas around. Dejectedly sighing, Baekhyun bought a bottle of cheap sake from a street vendor, and just as he spun back around, Chanyeol stood with his arms crossed.

"She went in there, buddy, but we're not welcome," Chanyeol pointed to the maroon tinted structure with green toned lights as he took the bottle from Baekhyun's hands. "And what do you expect to do with this?"

Baekhyun shrugged. "I was gonna save it for the right moment."

"And that would be?" Chanyeol raised his eyebrows.

"When I embarrass myself again."