The room is too small, too crowded, too cluttered, but that’s the price that comes with just starting out. Kim Chanyong doesn’t mind too much. Sure it’s small and cluttered and crowded, but it’s comfortable and, in just a few short months, they’ve made it homey.

There are couches pulled up around a low coffee table, covered with every magazine that has printed an article about them since the start of the new company. The boys are currently sitting on the sofas, sprawled out, comfortable. They’re sipping overpriced coffees from the little café down the street; Jihoon has his feet propped up on the coffee table despite Taeil telling him repeatedly to be more careful with company property.

Chanyong feels a swell of pride as he looks over his boys, playfully bickering with one another and with their manager, Sung Yoowon. They’ve been through a lot of difficult times in the past, but they’re finally getting to move on to bigger and better – and hopefully easier – things.

His fatherly smile fades as he thinks of another young person under his charge that is still going through some difficult times. Sighing, he pulls his handphone from its holster at his hip and checks the display screen. Though he’s hopeful, he’s not exactly surprised to see that there are no new messages. She hasn’t bothered to answer a single one of his dozens of messages since she’d disappeared on Saturday. He has no idea what she might be getting up to on her own in a city as big as Seoul; the very thought churns his stomach with worry.

But he can’t just sit here; there’s too many things to be done, even if his mind and heart aren’t fully behind them. So he clears his throat and the assembled men quiet down immediately.

So Chanyong launches into his little speech. Their comeback is very important, he reminds them, as it’s their first comeback in over a year. Their drama with their previous company had done little to tarnish their reputation, however, and many of the media sites were already predicting theirs as one of the most highly anticipated comebacks of the season. This means that they’ll have to work extra hard to deliver something absolutely extraordinary to the fans. The boys all nod along eagerly, none more serious than their leader. Chanyong appreciates this. Already the group has recorded some really fabulous songs for the new comeback album, and they’ve been working tirelessly on their choreography and vocal training.

“We haven’t got any television appearances just yet – we’re waiting until after the album drops for that – but we’ve got a few radio interviews lined up in the next few weeks,” Chanyong continues. “So we’ll definitely need to start preparing for that. And chat with the stylists if you’ve got some time. I know they want to hear your input as they’re coming up with new ideas for you guys and-”

He stops at a loud noise from the hallway. It sounds very much like a scuffle, followed by some muffled voices in both English and Korean, male and female. Chanyong hardly dares to hope.

There’s a knock on the door and, after Chanyong calls out for the person to enter, Cha Junhwa comes in. He’s the head of their new security force at the company, and Chanyong had asked him personally to look for his missing charge. If anyone would be able to find her in the bustling city of Seoul, it would be Junhwa.

Junhwa bows politely to his boss. “We found her, sir,” he announces. “Would you like us to bring her in?”

“Yes, yes,” Chanyong says impatiently. He needs to check with his own eyes that she’s alive and well and in one piece.

Junhwa nods and calls to the other guard, politely waiting outside the meeting room. This guard, who goes by the name of Seungbin, steps into the room. He’s an enormous man, taller than any of the others by a long shot, with broad shoulders and rippling muscles and a shaved head that would make him intimidating to anyone.

Well, intimidating to anyone other than the young girl who is currently thrown over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Though it’s obvious that she can’t win against him, she struggles fiercely to free herself, spewing a vicious string of profanities in English and Korean and probably some other languages that Chanyong can’t even begin to guess about.

Seungbin deposits the girl rather unceremoniously into the only unoccupied seat: the plush armchair that Chanyong usually sits in when he talks to the boys. Once she’s been thrown down, it’s clear to anyone that she’s a little worse for wear. Her long hair, dyed blonde, is disheveled and unkempt, one side tangled in a messy knot. She’s wearing the same clothes that she disappeared in last Saturday, and her makeup is a mess. But, more noticeable than all that, she’s got a blossoming black eye.

Chanyong sighs. “What happened to you, Emily?” he demands, rubbing his temples wearily.

The girl, Emily, crosses her arm over her too-loose tank top – revealing a sliver of the hot pink bra she’s wearing underneath – and refuses to speak. Instead, she presses her lips into a thin line and stays silent.

“Where have you been?” Chanyong tries next, keeping his voice stern. He knows that Emily has problems with authority figures, but he has to get her to understand that, at least until she comes of age, she has to follow his rules.

But again, she refuses to speak. Instead, she seems to challenge him by quirking an eyebrow in his general direction.

He sighs again. “You can’t keep doing this, Emily,” he says sternly. “You can’t run off and disappear for days at a time. My rules are that you have to be home by ten o’clock every night. If you wish to remain under my roof, then you have to abide by my rules. That’s how it goes.”

“Then I won’t stay under your roof,” she answers in flawless Korean, eyes flashing defiantly. “Let me take my and I’ll move out. I’ve got a dozen places that I can stay.”

“So she can get more shiners like that one?” Jihoon whispers to Yookwon, but if Emily hears it she says nothing.

Chanyong only shakes his head. “That’s not an option, and you know it. If you don’t want to stay with me, then I’ll send you back to America to be with your mother.”

Emily’s eyes flash again, but for a different reason this time. “You wouldn’t,” she says. “You wouldn’t send me back there.”

“I don’t want to, but I would if I had no other choice,” Chanyong says grimly. “You’re making things incredibly difficult for me. I want you to feel happy and safe here, but I can’t keep you safe if you’re always running off to do who knows what with who knows who.”

“I’m a big girl,” Emily mutters, sinking lower into the plush cushions of the armchair. “I can take care of yourself.”

“Yes, I can see that you’ve been doing a marvelous job,” Chanyong mutters, gesturing to the blue and purple bruise forming around her eye.

She wrinkles her nose at him in response.

“You need to prove to me that you’re responsible,” Chanyong continues, and he promptly plucks her handphone from her unsuspecting fingers. It’s the latest model, high-tech and expensive. It’s probably the thing that Emily treasures the most, he figures. Sure enough, she lets out a cry and makes a wild cry for it.

“Hey!” she shouts, jumping to her feet. She’s barefoot, like usual, and her feet are dirty against the wooden floors of the room. “Give that back! That’s mine! You can’t just take it!”

“Actually, if you remember correctly, I’m the one that bought it for you,” Chanyong reminds her. “So it’s mine. And, until you can prove to me that you’re responsible, you can’t have it back.”

She stares at him for a moment, eyes wide with childish indignation, and then she stomps her foot. “You can’t do that!” she all but shrieks.

Chanyong winces at the shrillness of her voice. “I can, and I have. So either you can pack your things and return to America, or you can prove to me that you can be responsible and I will give your phone back.”

She regards him suspiciously for a long moment, dislike written in every delicate feature of her face. “What do I have to do to prove that I can be responsible?” she finally demands.

Chanyong has been rolling this idea around in his head for a couple of weeks now, so he doesn’t have to think about it. “Work as a translator for my company for the remainder of the summer,” he suggests.

The incredulous look she gives him tells him exactly what she thinks of that arrangement. “Are you ing insane?” she demands.

He ignores her choice of language – as he often has to do these days – and presses on. “It’s not a bad deal,” he assures her. “You’re already fluent in both Korean and English, and it would be nice to have someone on staff to help with lyric translations and interviews and fan mail. There are much worse jobs you can have.”

She still doesn’t seem sold. “And you’ll give me back my handphone if I agree to do this? To work for your stupid little company?”

Chanyong tries to ignore the sting of stupid little company. This company is his baby, his dream, and it hurts to have someone write it off so callously. But still, this is Emily he’s dealing with and he’s come to understand that she doesn’t mean half of what she says. She’s a snake hiding in the grass most of the time, waiting to strike out at whoever has the misfortune of stepping too close. A regular little viper.

“Yes,” he says, forcing the little hurt to the back of his mind. “If you agree to do this and you prove that you’re responsible, I will give your phone back.”

“I’ll only do it if you give my phone back first,” she says, rather authoritatively for a bedraggled seventeen-year-old with no shoes and a black eye. She holds out her hand expectantly. “You can’t expect a translator to work without a mobile, Uncle.”

Chanyong hesitates, but she’s got a point. If she’s going to be working for the company, then he and other people at the company will need to get in touch with her on a regular basis. So he sighs and hands the phone over.

He should’ve known better.

The second her grubby little fingers curl around the too-big handphone, she’s off like lightning. Even though she’s barefoot and she probably hasn’t eaten properly since she disappeared on Saturday, she’s fast on her feet. She dodges away from first Seungbin, who has been standing beside her chair this whole time to make sure that something exactly like this doesn’t happen, and then Junhwa, who is still standing politely by the door. She’s been running away from them from days now, so she’s used to evading them.

What she’s not expecting, however, is the sudden and unsolicited help from the boys sitting around the couch. Several of them jump up the second she makes a run for it even though she doesn’t even know who they are, blocking her path and reigning her in.

It’s Jiho who finally grabs her, pinning her arms to her torso with his own arms. He’s taller than her, so he lifts her off the ground so that she can’t keep running.

But Emily isn’t above low blows – the contrary, they’re what she lives for – so, without a second though, she brings the heel of her foot up to connect with that oh-so-sensitive area between his legs.

Jiho lets out a startled and pained grunt, collapsing to the floor as tears sting his eyes. But, much to Emily’s chagrin, he lands on top of her, effectively pinning her to the floor long enough for Junhwa and Seungbin to grab her by the arms and prevent her from making another run of it.

Chanyong marches up to her, completely at his wit’s end, and snatches the precious handphone away from her. “That’s it,” he snaps, and it’s obvious that he’s finally lost his patience with her. “No phone! You will work for this company as a translator or so help me you will be on the very next flight to America. Do you understand?”

Emily is obviously furious with this outcome; she’d been so close to escaping again, after all. But she’s got no choice. She’s been backed into a corner and she’s really got no choice. “Fine,” she gives in reluctantly.

“Good,” Chanyong snaps. Then he glances at Junhwa and Seungbin, one on either side of the petite, chastised girl. “Take her back to my house,” he orders them.

“Do you want one of us to stay behind and keep an eye on her, sir?” Junhwa asks politely. “To make sure she stays put this time?”

Chanyong looks directly at his niece when he answers. “No, that won’t be necessary. Emily knows what will happen if she does this again.”