“And then what happened?” Minzy asked, smiling widely as she waited for more details about Dara’s date with Donghae on the resort planet of Phytosia.

“Did you meet any Phytosians?” CL asked.

“Who cares about the aliens?” Bom rhetorically asked as she playfully pushed CL aside, causing CL to nearly fall off of the bed. “I want to hear about the actual date!”

“I know what a Phytosian is!” Seungri suddenly blurted out. “That’s the plant creature we saw at the rest station, right? Am I right? Amirite? Right?”

“Oh my god,” CL mumbled as she looked over at Seungri, who was sitting at the foot of Minzy’s bed. “I forgot you were here.”

“Yeah, why are you here anyway?” Minzy asked, tossing her pillow at him.

Seungri caught the pillow and tried to stammer out some quick reply, lest his true motivations be known—that he was actually there spying for G-Dragon, who desperately wanted information about Dara’s date with Donghae. “I just, erm…” Seungri couldn’t think of anything. “Whatever! Why you all have to be ist? Treating me like I’m different and don’t belong…” He smirked now, happy to turn the question around.

CL rolled her eyes. “He’s probably spying for Jiyong,” she mumbled.

Dara shrugged. “Let him go back and tell Jiyong everything. I don’t care.” Still aglow and smiling from her date, she started swaying her shoulders and wagging her finger. “I don’t care-ca-ca-ca-ca-care,” she sang. “Yeah, I don’t care-ca-ca-ca-ca-care.”

The other girls quickly joined her in song, all belting out the chorus to that old single of theirs until Seungri suddenly chimed in, his deep voice not fitting in at all with theirs.

“Anyway,” Dara said, clearing as she continued the story. “So, this place was beautiful. It was a private spa called Garden of Eden. We were the only humans there. Everyone else was a Phytosian. But it was cool because they looked like plants, so even as they were moving around us, it was like they weren’t even people but part of the scenery. Does that make sense? It was like, just… like a flowing garden.”

“Wow,” Minzy said, breathlessly.

“Get to the good stuff already!” Bom yelled, practically having spasms from her impatience.

“Okay, okay,” Dara said. “So, I didn’t bring a bathing suit because I didn’t know we were going to a resort planet. But Donghae brought me to this boutique and said he’d buy me any swimsuit I wanted, so I started trying them on and… well, he was in the dressing room, too, so…”

“Oh my god!” Bom shrieked. “He watched you dress!”

“What? No, he was just waiting outside the changing stall on one of the couches they had in the dressing room. But every time I’d try on a different swimsuit, I came out of the stall to show him.”

All three of the girls shrieked now as Dara bit her lip, blushing.

“You y tease!” CL joked.

Dara bit her lip even harder. “I could tell I was driving him crazy,” Dara quietly said. “So, then…”

“Wait, don’t go so fast!” Bom said.

“First you want her to hurry up and now you want her to slow down?” Minzy asked.

“Yeah, because now we’re at the good part! I want to know how you could tell he was going crazy. Like, was he blushing? Or was he, erm… did you notice if he was… growing?”

“Oh my god, Bommie!” The girls instantly burst out in laughter.

“Growing what, exactly?” CL jokingly asked.

Minzy hid her face, peeking out between her fingers.

“You know!” Bom said. “His… thing. Sometimes you can tell, like, through the pants.”

“Oh my god, you’re such a ert!” Minzy said, still hiding her face.

“Well, let’s just say that he was smiling a lot,” Dara said. “So then we went to the pool and were just relaxing on the recliners they had, drinking these fancy cocktails and getting kind of buzzed. Like, not drunk, but just feeling good…”

The girls all nodded, enrapt by the conversation. Even Seungri was speechless, just listening.

“But they have two suns there so it started getting really bright and hot out, to the point where even though we were under an umbrella, it was still too much. So we decided to go in the pool and that’s when… erm… well, we were kind of flirting the whole time until then, but once we were in the pool, it was like this whole other level of flirting.”

Everyone leaned in closer, all excited to hear these juicy details.

“Like, just… a lot of, erm, playing around,” Dara said, as she thought back on how the two of them had started splashing each other, laughing like crazy in that playful teasing, until Donghae brought her into his arms to stop their splashing, their two wet bodies so close, and then how he had let her go only to pull her back toward him again, their faces close enough for a kiss but their mouths hesitating, not yet ready to make that first move…

“Hellooo?” Bom lightly slapped Dara on the cheek. “You daydreaming or what?”

“Hmm?” Dara hadn’t realized that she fallen lost in her thoughts. “Oh, sorry.”

“Wow, it was that good, huh?” CL asked, smiling.

Dara shyly looked down at her lap. “Yeah…”

“Oh, I just thought of something!” Bom leaped off of Minzy’s bed and dove onto her own bed, where her tablet was. “I bet there’s a ton of people who ship you with Donghae,” she said, as she quickly swiped to get to her favorite fanfiction site. She typed Dara and Donghae in the search bar and started scrolling through the results. “Yep! I knew it!”

“How many?” Dara asked, curious.

Bom clicked on the Darahae tag. “There’s 483 fanfics about you two!”

“What about G-Dragon?” Seungri asked.

“What about him?” Bom asked, looking up from her tablet.

“Like, Dara and G-Dragon fics,” Seungri answered.

Bom, familiar with Dara and G-Dragon’s ship name, quickly typed Daragon into the search bar, her eyes widening when she saw the number of results.

“Well?” Seungri asked.

“Like, erm…” Bom lowered her voice and mumbled out the number. “5,821.”

“WHAT!?” Dara’s jaw dropped. “Did you say five thousand something?”

Seungri smiled. “Well, that should tell you something!” he said, staring at Dara with that know-it-all smile of his.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” CL said. “Of course there are more fics of those two.”

Dara looked down, her smile gone for the first time since she had returned to the starship. She knew that what CL said was right, that it definitely made sense that there would be more fans shipping her with G-Dragon, but she hadn’t quite thought until now that she might receive some backlash from those fans if word of her and Donghae’s new relationship got out.

Although Seungri wanted to push the case about Dara and G-Dragon in an effort to help his hyung, his curiosity about fanfiction got the better of him. “Who are you usually shipped with?” he asked, looking at Bom.

“Me? Oh, I’m not sure. I think with T.O.P.” Even though Bom said this as if she wasn’t certain, she was just playing dumb. The truth was, she knew for a fact that they were quite a popular ship. She had even seen a few Topbom stories get featured on the site. Not that she had ever read any of them. She had always been too scared to read any fics about her, mostly because she was nervous about how she might be portrayed in the stories.

“What about me?” Seungri asked. “Does anyone ship me with Chaerinnie?”

CL rolled her eyes. “Who would ship us?” she asked.

Bom searched for Ririn and laughed at the results. “Almost the exact same number as Darahae fics! 482!”

“See that?” Seungri asked. He stared at CL with a goofy smile plastered across his face. “Just as many people want to see us together!”

“Well, that’s not going to happen,” CL said, as she tried to hide her embarrassment with a smile. “Not unless you, like, poison me with some love potion.”

“Love potion, eh?” Seungri bit his lip, wondering where he could get some.

After everyone kicked Seungri out of the room, and after CL and Dara, too, had left, Minzy got ready for bed while Bom scanned some TopBom fics. One story, in particular, caught her attention. It wasn’t a story at all, actually, but was instead a collection of drabbles, all of which were rather innocent tales of T.O.P. secretly pining for Bom. She read the first chapter, which was only a few paragraphs long and seemed to be an ode to her beauty.

T.O.P. thought about how fitting it was that her name means spring. She personifies this season, the way her beauty flutters like a breeze around her, always touched just faintly with a floral scent that fills T.O.P.’s nose and transports him to a field of dandelions where he lies beside her, staring up at the blue sky and watching the clouds go by. But he knows this can never happen. Their lives, the public path they had each chosen, prevents such a fantasy. Still, he could dream…

Bom quickly subscribed to the story and read through each chapter, feeling herself falling in love with this version of T.O.P. Of course, the T.O.P. she knew in real life was nothing like this fictional creation. T.O.P. in real life was somewhat of an intellectual snob, and always so moody. But in this story, he was a romantic, so hopelessly in love with Bom.

Suddenly, Bom received an instant notification informing her that the story had been updated. She refreshed the page and began reading that latest chapter.

There he was, realizing for the first time how much he had been denying his feelings for her. T.O.P. knew that he had to tell her how she had captured his heart, how every part of his body trembled at the mere mention of her name, throbbed at the mere sound of her voice, and fell apart at the mere sight of her in his presence. He couldn’t go on any longer with this secret. He needed to bare his soul. But how? And with what sudden bravery after all this time?  

Bom was curious about the author, whom she knew only as BomIsTheBomb, and went to the associated profile page. There, she found out very little, only that he was male, was from South Korea, and was… online? Indeed, there was a little green dot by his username, signifying that he was online. Bom decided that there was no harm in writing to him. After all, he didn’t know that she was the real Bom. For all he knew, she was just another fan on this site.

CornJunkie: Annyeong! I just wanted to tell you that I was totally moved by your story.

She waited for a reply, and after a few minutes, just as she was about to give up and close the page, she finally received one.

BomIsTheBomb: Thanks.

Guess he’s not the talkative type, Bom thought. Still, she felt compelled to tell him just how much she enjoyed reading it.

CornJunkie: T.O.P. is so sweet in your story omg. I wish the real T.O.P. was like this! If he was, Bom would totally date him.

Again, she waited forever for a reply. “Aish,” she mumbled, as she continually refreshed the page, waiting for her inbox icon to glow red, signifying an unread message. Finally it did.

BomIsTheBomb: Maybe he is like this in real life.

“Yeah, right,” she said aloud, laughing as she read his reply. “Poor fanboy has no idea what the real T.O.P. is like.” She knew, though, that she couldn’t correct his misconceptions because she would have no way of explaining how she knew what T.O.P. was really like. Instead, she decided to give this cute little boy some advice on where to take his story.

CornJunkie: You should totally have him confess his feelings in the next chapter. And then make him just take her in his arms and kiss her, and make her like all surprised but then start to kiss him back… and then… they should totally do it.  

This time, his reply came fast.

BomIsTheBomb: Do it?

CornJunkie: Yeah!

BomIsTheBomb: I think that would be rushing things, don’t you think? Plus, she’s not the type of girl who would just… do it.

Bom quietly giggled to herself, but before she could reply, he wrote back again.

BomIsTheBomb: Anyway, I don’t think I can write .

Bom let out a loud laugh and quickly covered . She felt as if she had ruined this poor innocent fanboy with her erted ways. Here he was, writing this sweet love story, and there she was, telling him to turn it into . She was suddenly so embarrassed by this that she quickly logged off and closed the page. 

Seungri, having completed his spy mission, was in search of G-Dragon to tell him what he had found out. He had already checked their room, and had also checked Daesung and Taeyang’s room, not finding G-Dragon in either place. Not knowing that G-Dragon was down at the bar on the second floor drinking away his sadness about losing Dara, and instead thinking that he must surely be in T.O.P.’s room, Seungri pressed the intercom button outside T.O.P.’s door and pressed his mouth right up against the speaker. “Hyung? Jiyong-hyung? You in there?”

T.O.P. was alone in his room and didn’t wanted to be bothered, but ignoring Seungri wasn’t working. Seungri’s staticky voice, filled with feedback from speaking so closely into the intercom, echoed inside his small room. “Aish,” T.O.P. said, as he sat up from his bed and walked to the door, opening it.

The door retracted into the wall and Seungri quickly peeked inside. “Jiyong in there?”

T.O.P. held his arm across the doorway like a toll booth lever, not letting Seungri in. “Nope.”

“Well, can I come in?” Seungri asked.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

T.O.P. breathed out deeply. “If you’re looking for him, why don’t you just call him?”

“You don’t think I’ve tried that? I called like a thousand times already.”

“Well, make it a thousand and one and leave me alone,” T.O.P. said, closing the door. Happy to have some quiet again, he returned to his bed where he had left his tablet and continued waiting for CornJunkie’s reply, only to find out, after checking her profile page, that she had logged off.

Not knowing what else to do, Seungri returned to his and G-Dragon’s room to wait there, thinking that G-Dragon had to return from wherever he was eventually. In the meantime, he reclined on his bed, thinking about CL. Suddenly remembering what she had said earlier, he quickly reached for his tablet, logged on to an intergalactic message board, and typed out a fast question for the forum: Where can I buy love potion?