It was another two weeks before I had the chance to call him.

"Babe," he said cheerily, "hey, how are you?" In the background, I could hear a lot of people talking and I struggled to catch his words.

"...Fine," I responded, a little off put by his greeting and overly bright tone. "You?"

"Oh, me? I'm doing great. Fantastic, even. I miss you though. A lot."

This time, I held the phone away from my ear, checking to make sure I was talking to the right person, "Right. Are you drunk?"

He laughed, "Babe, you know I don't drink."

"Yeah, I know that. You just don't... sound like yourself. Are you sure you're—"

"Hey, could you just hold on one second?" he interrupted. I barely managed to mumble out an okay before I could hear him talking to other people. I couldn't hear much, but it sounded like apologies. I sat on my bed, staring quizzically out at the star filled sky. The distant sound of a door closing clicked in my ear and I heard Taeyeon sigh. "Ugh, you don't know how much you saved my just now." He said, sounding much more like himself.

"Care to explain?" I asked. It took me a moment to realize that the sounds of voices and laughter from around him were gone and I was curious about what he was doing.

"A bunch of people I work with invited me to some party one of their agencies was throwing," he said flippantly.

"Agencies?" my brow furrowed, "As in..."

"Talent, modeling, acting; one of those."

My jaw dropped, "You're at a party with a bunch of models?"

"Well yeah, Sica," he said casually, "I am one after all."

"You're a model?"

He laughed and I could almost imagine the way his hair fell when he tipped his head back, "I guess I forgot to tell you about that."

"I guess you did," I sputtered, still in shock. "I thought you wanted to act?"

"I'm doing that, too. But there's nothing wrong with a little extra labor on the side."

"Oh, yeah I'm sure it's such a trial to stand around and look pretty," I said sarcastically. I stood up and made my way over to my window to shut it against the cool breeze of the early September night.

"Well if you would get your up to Hongkong, you could do it, too." He responded.

I scoffed, "I could never be a model."

"Are you kidding me?" he said and I could hear the disgust in his voice, "You look ten times better than most of the girls here."

For a moment, I was speechless. Did he really think so? I felt the smile creeping onto my face but I cleared my throat, ing those thoughts away as soon as possible, "Do you want to tell me the reason for your strangeness earlier?"

"Oh right," I heard him sigh, "Well, there's this girl that I work with. She's kind of been making it clear that she's interested, you know?"

"Uh, okay," I said slowly, swallowing that same twinge of jealousy that I had been experiencing lately. "So what's the problem?"

"I don't want to date her," he said point blank. "Or anyone, for that matter. I was dying for an excuse to get out of there and you called at the perfect moment. Throw in a couple of casual terms of endearment and that was that."

"So you pretended that I was someone special to escape from that girl's advances?" I acted insulted.

"You are someone special," he said with laughter in his voice, "And let's just say that her advances were becoming far from appropriate."

I giggled, sitting back down on my bed, "You would have someone like that chasing after you. But after that commercial you were in, what did you expect?"

"Oh," he said, and by his tone I knew he was running a hand through his hair, "you saw that?"

"Hell yeah I saw it," I replied. He groaned and I laughed at him, "Oh, come on, Tae. It broadcasts on every Chinese channel at least thrice a day. It would have been a miracle if I hadn't seen it at least twenty times already."

"Sorry," he sighed, "I didn't know they were going to blow it up that much."

"What are you apologizing for?" I asked, surprised, "Tae, this is a huge deal! You're on tv. All the time. That's so awesome!"

"It's not that big of a deal," he mumbled.

"Now is not the time to be modest," I said sternly. Laying out on the bed, I kicked off my bunny slippers and started rubbing my feet. "Be proud of what you've accomplished in such a short amount of time. It hasn't even been two months and already you're acting and modeling."

"I know, I know," he said, sounding frustrated, "I just didn't come here for all of this superficial stuff. I want people to hire me because I'm talented, not because I look good after I come out of hair and makeup."

"Well it's always going to be a little bit of both," I said gently, "but you have to give it some time. You haven't been there very long yet and they don't know how amazing you are. But they'll figure it out soon enough and then you'll be so incredibly famous that I'll have to get through your people before I can talk to you."

Our connection cracked slightly, but I could hear him laughing, "Nah, Sica, you'll always have a direct link to me." I smiled to myself, lifting my hair off of my neck. I heard a loud banging and then Taeyeon sighed, "Well, I should probably get back to the party."

"You probably should," I agreed, though the last thing I wanted was to hang up. We hadn't talked in so long and it seemed a shame that all we managed to squeeze in was ten minutes.

"Let's try not to wait two months before we talk again," he said as though he had been reading my mind. "I want to hear about your life the next time."

"I'll see if I can pencil you in," I teased.

"Yeah, you better," he teased right back. We both laughed again and then he hung up. I set the phone down and then sighed, laying back in my bed. Without his voice in my ear, my room sounded abnormally quiet.

It was strange to go so long without seeing him face to face. The fact that we only really got to talk once in a blue moon was really unexpected, too. When he left, I figured that there would be a few hiccups in our communication, but two months? That was such a long time. It was hard for me to realize that we were both growing up and becoming real adults, albeit abnormally fast.

I couldn't lie, he was always somewhere in my thoughts. I was busy with my job at Choi and Associates, but nothin