“Oppa! Saranghae, oppa!! OPPA!!!!”

A hospital in downtown Gangnam is absolutely surrounded, completely flooded, by an onslaught of girls, women and ladies alike. They chant. They scream. They wave various flags and signs. But they never stop, no matter the amount of security sent outside to hold them off from the entrances.

“Seung-chan, please recover quickly and get well soon!!! Japan loves you!!! Daisuki!!!”

He lays beneath the covers in his bed, in his private room, in his own off-limits wing on the top floor of that very hospital. Smiling weakly, he barely registers the blur of sound congealing from the TV nearby, the people cheering at him. To him. For him.

“We pray for you day and night! For Big Bang’s beloved maknae!”

A dragon sits in the dimly lit hallway of that very off-limits wing on the top floor of that very hospital. Said dragon tuts, almost spitting fire, as he pulls back the sleeve on his visibly expensive jacket for the twentieth time that hour. Exhaling flames of frustration and exasperation, the dragon leans back against the bench, and continues to wait.

“Oppa!!!!”

A sleek black van suddenly pulls up by the main entrance of the hospital, almost mowing down the masses. The crowd frenzies itself into an even further frantic mess, still screaming. But louder, even louder than prior to the suddenly arrival. The security guards hold them off, only just about succeeding.

“We love you!!!!”

A fur-clad figure emerges from the vehicle, reflecting the stares and shouts of the public with a pair of oversize, night sky-dark sunglasses shielding her entire face. The figure calmly but quickly makes her way through the cleared path up to the main entrance and safely into the hospital. Up above, the dragon stands and scans the window, roused by the sudden increase in volume from the ground level.

“Until whenever!!!”

Meanwhile, he barely stirs. As blissfully ignorant as he had always wished to be.

“It’s a promise!!!”

The figure, her pencil-thin heels clacking, reaches the front desk of A&E. The receptionist, not bothering to look up, begins standard procedure.

“This is the accident and emergency unit, sweetie. If you’ve got more than ten seconds ‘til you reach death’s door, I suggest you leave, yes? We’re all very busy here today, and if you’re media or just plain mad, regardless, you need to take a front seat by the front door. If not, I’m afraid we’ll have the police remove you from the premises.”

The figure removes her shades and places them on the desk, shaking her long, ebony hair out behind her.

“That won’t be necessary.”

The receptionist stares at the Chanel logo embellished in platinum on the arms of the designer frames. The receptionist then grimaces, preparing to meet the gaze of, as well as identify, the offending perpetrator.

“Just who the hell do you think you are?”

“Lee Seunghyun! Lee Seunghyun!! Lee Seunghyun!!!!!!!”

Meeting the steely, freezing gaze of an infamously international supermodel causes the receptionist to immediately leap up, bow twice in respect, and stammer a delayed explanation of-

“It’s-It’s on the top floor. Take the elevator up and take-take a left, the room’s at the end of his private wing, but-but, I think Mr. Kwon is already up there-“

“That will be enough.”

With security leading the way and covering her back, the figure swiftly continues on her journey without pausing for breath. The whole hospital can only stop and stare at her, gasping for air.

When the group reaches the top floor and exit as instructed, the figure spies the waiting dragon within a single second. Nodding her head in dismissal to her security team, she hesitantly makes her way over.

It only takes a few tentative steps forward to decide this is all a seriously, god damned awful idea, and she instantaneously flips around, heading straight for the emergency exit. However, the dragon has already caught sight of her, and has other ideas in mind as he directly intercepts her escape route.

“Going somewhere, Mihyo?” Jiyong inquires, casually stepping in front of her after having just literally running to catch up.

“Jiyong.” Mihyo growls more than sighs. She turns her head to the side, to the window, to anywhere that’s not Jiyong’s stupid, meddling face. She only returns her gaze to forward facing after she’s replaced the blackout sunglasses on the bridge of her positively microscopic nose. “What do you want?”

“To know where you think you’re going. Hence, my question.” Jiyong smoothly counter. He bares his ice-white teeth at Mihyo in a triumphant smirk, already anticipating her answer.

“Away from here.” Mihyo takes the chance to escape, sharply shoving past Jiyong’s whilst he’s all caught up in his victory play. However, she doesn’t even make it past the window before Jiyong’s back in front of her, and with new tactics in mind.

“Say…” Jiyong takes an incredibly dangerous step towards the incredibly hostile Mihyo, who retorts with a purse of her cherry lips and an ever so slight snarl. Suddenly recalling his abandoned Starbucks on the windowsill, Jiyong lunges forward to grab the paper cup and Mihyo’s arm.

“That’s a rather lovely mink coat you’ve got there,” Jiyong purrs, as his hands become all kinds of grabby. One grips the soft, unmistakable fur of the coat. The other precariously dangles the cold coffee directly above Mihyo, not so subtly threatening. “It would be a shame if…Oh, I don’t know. Someone were to drop this morning’s coffee all over it?”

Mihyo scowls furiously, attempting to wrestle her wrist from Jiyong’s hold without ripping any of the fur out from the coat. “You wouldn’t!”

“Oh, trust me, sweetie,” Jiyong smirks yet again, taking great pleasure in the highly conflicted look that certainly does not match Mihyo’s usually so exquisite face. “I will, if you won’t!”

Mihyo frowns, still struggling to free herself. “Won’t what?”

Jiyong wrenches his arm from Mihyo’s and very nearly flings his coffee to the floor in all his frustration. Instead, he settles for a short scream and a screeched reminder of an explanation.

“Won’t go to see him! Isn’t that what the hell you came here to do?! Funnily enough, I’m pretty sure you didn’t come here to be threatened physically as well as fashion-wise by yours truly, as very wonderful and not to mention as true as you know that is!” Jiyong spits, almost ripping his recently dyed hair off his scalp.

“Shut up!” Mihyo snaps back, almost, very nearly pouting as she runs a careful eye over Jiyong’s Saint Laurent-drenched ensemble of the day. Huffing, she turns away, her back facing Jiyong. But she doesn’t walk away.

There’s a slight pause before Jiyong dares to continue.

“What,” Jiyong ventures quietly. “You’ve already come this far. Practically the whole world knows you’re here right now. They did the second you set your Louboutins in the place. No guessing what for. Or, rather, who for. You may as well.” Jiyong yawns. He lazily stretches his lanky arms above his skeleton-like frame as he continues to lecture. “To back out now would be rather bourgeois, wouldn’t you say, my dear? Not to mention pathetic, too. What do you say?”

There’s no response from Mihyo to that. At least, not at first.

“…Scared.”

Jiyong frowns, taking a step closer. He barely hears the single, muffled word falling from her lips onto the cold tiles of the hospital floor. “What?”

“Scared!” Mihyo flips around, eyes wide with tears and a mouth trembling like a leaf in a hurricane. “I’m scared, Jiyong! I-I haven’t seen him for the whole summer! And whilst we went without seeing one another, he went and got himself in a car accident! He’s so lucky not to be dead, what with all the recent incidents! And-And even if this hadn’t happened, I still wouldn’t know how to face him! And now-And now-he’s injured! I don’t even know his real condition, having to scrabble at the vague YG press release statements for all the information I can get! I may as well be nobody to him, and-and rightly so! After what I did! I just don’t know anything anymore, other-other than what I did to him, and now we-we-” Mihyo takes a shuddering gasp of a breath, and pauses for a few second. She stares up at the ceiling, desperately trying to keep her tears from sliding down. She can’t break down. Not here. Not now.

“I can’t, Jiyong.” Mihyo finally mutters. “I can’t!”

 Jiyong remains silent for a few more seconds before responding.

“He’s in…quite a severe condition,” He admits. his lips, he draws in a deep breath before proceeding to deliver the final blow. The next word drops from his tongue like a guillotine slamming down onto a human’s throat.

“…Fatal, I would say.”

Eyes wider than Jiyong had ever seen, with shock even further beyond any imagined capacity, Mihyo stares at Jiyong, barely breathing. She can’t think. She can’t speak. She can only stare, frozen, rooted to the spot as the very word spins itself round and round in her now numb mind.

Jiyong does the talking for her. “You need to go. Now.”

She doesn’t need to hear it twice.