#since1765

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Seoul Gardens Apartment Tower

City of Seoul – Gyeonggi Province

“Are you kidding me Kim Taeyeon?! Are you effin kidding me?”

SNSD’s Tiffany Hwang exclaimed right after she emptied her second glass of red wine. She was sat in the dining room table of Taeyeon’s solo apartment, along with the owner, and two men she wasn’t used to hanging with. And I’m even drinking alcohol with them.

“Steph, we have Big Bang's G-dragon and TOP in my house, on a Wednesday night. Does it look like I'm kidding?”

But Tiffany was more dumbfounded about the shamanistic arranged marriage that her best friend shared. Sure, hanging out with Big Bang was out of the ordinary, but nothing could beat the idea of G-dragon and Taeyeon marrying because of a centuries-old tradition. She poured herself another glass of wine, hoping that the alcohol would make it easier for her to digest the facts.

“Dude, I never thought The Great Pact was still practiced in this day and age,” Choi Seunghyun said, shaking his head after drinking his first shot of whiskey.

“It’s just an old folk tale! It can’t be true,” Tiffany cried. She was still in denial, because the bedtime stories her father told her couldn’t be happening to her best friend. That’s all sorts of messed up. Either they are pranking me or I’m too drunk and I’m dreaming.

“We thought it was just a bedtime story too, until last week,” shared Jiyong. “We’re not pranking you, if you’re thinking that. We thought it was a hidden camera joke too, but it’s not.”

Taeyeon added, “This is real. Jiyong and I are arranged to be married by our grandfathers because of The Great Pact.”

“Wait, I need time to process this. Oh gosh,” muttered Tiffany, finishing her fourth glass. She was unconsciously binge-drinking because off her astonishment about Taeyeon’s chosen dinner conversation.

“So what am I doing here?” wondered Seunghyun, also known as TOP.

Jiyong sarcastically replied, “You don't see any problem in this?”

“Oh I do. Sorry bro, but you have some real issues to deal with. But what's my role here?”

“I need you to convince Audrie to forgive me, so we can get married soon,” explained Jiyong. Now was the time to actually delegate the tasks to their trusted friends. “Marrying her would make me ineligible for this crazy arranged marriage.”

TOP chuckled, then finished another shot. He raised his glass to his friend, then said, “Oh, that's easy. Done.”

Tiffany was only surprised at the other man’s casual reaction. She questioned, “Wait a minute. You're actually taking this seriously? You believe them and all these… rituals… and customs… and ?”

“Yup.”

“G-dragon and Taeyeon are the chosen ones? Really?!”

Seunghyun calmly responded, “If the village elders of Gyeonggi and North Jeolla met and prayed on it, then yes, they are the chosen ones.”

“Why is this so easy for you to digest?” wondered Jiyong too. His elder friend was taking the news coolly, opposite to what he expected. Of them four, it seemed that Choi Seunghyun was fully bought in on The Great Pact. “I've known this for weeks now, and I still can't believe it.”

“I come from a long line of military men. My father is a naval officer for christ's sake. Half my ancestors were sacrificial lambs. My great-grandparents were said to be the Chois' and the Lees’ offering to unite the provinces of Gangwon and Gyeongsang.”

“And now there's three of them!” yelled the already sloshed Tiffany. She poured herself another glass while muttering, “I need more wine, geez.”

“So growing up, you already knew and believed this?” Taeyeon asked TOP, using formal language as she still wasn’t comfortable with Big Bang’s rapper.

“Uhuh. It’s one of those indoctrination I just grew up with,” said TOP. He immediately drank one more shot of whiskey, then continued. “Is that all? I have to go now kids. Don’t worry about Audrie, Ji. Consider it done.”

“Wait! How about me?” protested Taeyeon as she watched him stand up and wear his jacket, preparing to leave.

“We need to help Taeyeon too,” Jiyong explained to his friend in an attempt to stop his departure. “This will only work if the both of us get married to someone else.”

“You really want to marry Byun Baekhyun? ARE YOU KIDDING?” the temporarily silenced Tiffany finally talked again, and she almost broke the wine glass that she put down the table.

Big Bang’s TOP looked at the woman in amazement. Never has he met a lady able to drink as much as him, and still stay sturdy and awake. Since he sat down and joined the discussion, the SNSD member beside him has already finished half the wine bottle.

“Stop drinking!” warned Taeyeon, taking away the wine glass from her reach. “I need you sober for this!”

“It sounds like this Baekhyun is already your boyfriend, so what's the problem?” asked Seunghyun, sitting down again.

Tiffany answered the question even before Taeyeon had the chance too. It was too bad that her response caused discomfort on her best friend. “He's a ing baby! Just a ing baby. He's not gonna marry you!”

“You don't think I know that? Ugh, give me this!” Taeyeon’s uneasiness was now showing, and she grabbed the wine bottle away from Tiffany too. She didn’t need more private details slipping off her drunk mouth. You better not fry me tonight, Stephanie Hwang.

Yet Taeyeon’s empty hope and requests just bounced off of her friend. Tiffany was unstoppable, and it didn’t help that she was also already drunk.

“They've only been together for a year and a half. He's in Exo, she's in SNSD. And that's only two of the hundred problems I see in this plan,” Fany enumerated, addressing Jiyong and TOP more than Taeyeon.

“So we need to put our brains together! Any suggestions?” egged Jiyong, desperate to get some ideas from their friends.

“Hmmm... let's see... is this Baekhyun playful?” TOP asked Taeyeon.

“Yes,” now Taeyeon began to speak to him comfortably.

“Is he a chic magnet?”

“Yes.”

“Does he like video games? Sports? Trivial things?”

“Yes.”

“So, he's just like Jiyong four years ago,” established TOP.

“Yes. I mean, I guess,” Taeyeon hesitated, then she faced Jiyong. “Are you like that? Are you like Baek?”

Jiyong just shrugged, neither confirming nor denying.

“So what happened that made you realize Kiko's the one?” Choi Seunghyun interviewed his friend. The job was too easy, so he really wasn’t sure why he was needed for the brainstorming.

“Well? If you're just like Baek, then you think like him,” concluded Taeyeon, now talking to the quieted Jiyong. “What did your girlfriend do to make you love her?”

In truth, Kwon Jiyong didn’t agree that he was like Byun Baekhyun. For one, the kid sounded like a terrible boyfriend. I wasn’t that bad. I don’t understand why and how Taeyeon lasted five hundred days with a baby like that. He looked at her, and saw that she was expecting an answer. Unexpectedly, Jiyong felt a severe case of pity for the woman. She looked desperate to be loved by this immature Byun Baekhyun.

“I don’t know… uhm… she played hard-to get,” started Jiyong.

Because of the desperation he saw in Taeyeon’s face, he bow badly wanted to provide good advice. He thought for a moment. As he looked back in his last six years with Audrey Kiko Daniel, the words suddenly kept coming. Before he knew it, he was already sharing his love story with the two members of SNSD.

“She had me wrapped around her fingers. She insisted on seeing other men during our first few years. We were in an open relationship for years. But in all those times, she always gave me reasons to keep holding on to her. The words she said to me, the