Mai reaches her hotel an hour later, dragging her suitcase behind her despite several offers of assistance from hotel management. She’s regretting her polite refusal by the time she reaches the seventh floor, panting and mumbling to herself that maybe she should either work out more or pack less next time.

Key card, green light, hotel room.

The news agency she works for isn’t spectacularly large, hence the room isn’t spectacularly luxurious. But it doesn’t really matter, considering she’s only here for one night and she wasn’t really expecting the Ritz anyway. She dumps her suitcase on the floor of the bedroom, zipping it open and removing her essentials – laptop, camera charger, stuffed dog.

She grins, setting the last item carefully on the bed, positioning it on top of some rather ugly decorative pillows on the bed and taking a picture. Again, what with KHN News being a slow up-and-coming news company and herself slowly blossoming into a reporter of notable reputation, she doesn’t quite have as large of an online following as she might like, but it’s still considerable enough to merit a post of her childhood stuffed animal sitting on the top of her bed, along with the English caption, ‘just arrived in Korea, with enough time to explore the heart and Seoul of the place’.

(Really, she thinks, she has so much to thank her sister for, teaching her the importance of puns in a casual setting being one of them.)

After checking it over for spelling errors and then painstakingly translating it into Korean too (for the casual international fan of international news), she posts it to her blog, Instagram, and Twitter.

Now that that’s taken care of, she grabs her laptop, settles herself on the bed, and catches up on the news that she missed while flying over the Atlantic. Nothing really of note, one American senator announcing his run for president, a missing child sparking a manhunt in England. She switches over to the Korean outlets, seeing if there’s been any new developments in the story she’s seeking. There’s none.

That sounds promising. At least if there’s any breaks, she’ll be right there to be the first one to cover it.

Slightly pleased and more than slightly proud of only having to resort to Google translate twice while reading, Mai switches tabs to her email. A weight-loss advertisement in her spam box, a chain email from her sister, five messages from her mother all containing different pictures of cats. A note from her editor, confirming her arrival in Seoul (really, why couldn’t he just text her like a normal person), a message from Katherine in the Congo, with updates on her story on the latest guerilla warlord and his child army. Jim in New York on the latest United Nations developments, and a reminder that the monthly bet on nuclear ultimatums is still running and the pot is around $200 now.

(, she’d thrown $50 in there last Thursday on the assumption that Syria would deliver by the end of the month. Leila has a feeling she’s going to be sorely disappointed.)

With nothing really to respond with other than her arrival, she’s about to click out when she sees a new message pop up in her inbox. The sender’s address is just a string of random numbers, but it makes her stomach turn over in anticipation.

She clicks on it, and only three lines of Korean text appear, and she bites her lip as she translates in her head.

Cheongdam-dong
House No. 21424
The potted plant by the door

She’s unable to stop the small smile that spreads across her face at this, mix of emotions welling up inside of her. She glances at the clock – 9:22, she has to be up and on her way to the JSA by 7:30 tomorrow morning. It’s not a trip she looks forward to, but it’s not a trip she can miss by sleeping in either. 

Still.

She deletes the email, powers off her laptop, and grabs her shoes, wallet, and keycard. Pulls up the address on her phone as she heads towards the elevators, along with directions on how to get there by foot. 

It takes about fifteen minutes to get there, shivering in her sweater and wishing she had brought a coat along with her. But it doesn’t matter. She reaches the apartment complex fine, doesn't make eye contact with anyone as she heads in.

At least it’s warm in here, she thinks, blowing on her fingers as she heads up the stairwell inside. There's no one else on the second, and she’s grateful for it, as she glances around furtively to see if anyone’s watching when she bends over to dig through the soil of the potted plant by the door.

“Aha!” Mai can’t help the pleased noise that escapes when her fingers close around the tiny key. She feels vaguely like a spy.

She doesn’t have a suitcase to drag with her this time. She just swallows tightly as she stands in front of the door, key in the lock, turn, push open, apartment.

Darkness.

She squints into the dark room for a moment, frowning, before finally calling out, “Are you asleep or just trying to be dramatic?”

There’s a pause, before she receives a half-laughed answer. “A little bit of both.”

Mai flips the lights on. He’s settled on the couch, lying down with his head on one of the armrests and grinning up at her. A stark contrast to how it had been the first time they’d done this, when they’d both sat stiffly in chairs around the table and made awkward small talk. 

Now, Mai closes the door softly behind her and slips off her shoes. “Did anyone see you come in?” she asks as she approaches him, as he sits up to give her some room on the couch. She sits, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them, perched on the couch like a small bird.

Jongdae shakes his head, setting his feet on the floor as he answers. “No, I told my manager and the other members that I was meeting some old friends for dinner and drinks. They seemed surprised, but didn’t question it.”

“I bet, who goes out with friends after just getting off a plane?”

“Says you.”

“We’re not out, we’re in, and I plan on staying in.” She pouts, dragging out the end of her words. She’s keenly aware of how childish it sounds, her accented Korean only adding to the effect. It makes Jongdae smile and scoot a little closer to her on the couch.

“Okay,” he says. “We’re staying in.” 

Just like that. It’s that simple. Mai lowers her eyes and her feet to the floor, feeling even younger and shyer than she had previously. She wonders if he’s always like this, so quick to agree to make her happy, or if it’s simply because of their limited time together, these brief, fleeting moments. If they were to see each other every day, would he be more apt to disagree?

But it doesn’t really matter, because such thoughts can’t stop the sudden surge of affection Mai feels welling up in her chest, as he slowly drapes an arm across her shoulders and pulls her in towards him, the first time he’s touched her all night. She curls in willingly towards his body, leaning her head on his shoulder and letting her arms wrap around his waist.

Jongdae sighs into her hair, and says, in English, “I missed you.”

Mai smiles, loving the way his voice tilts on the words, unfamiliar in his mouth but still trying, trying. “I missed you too,” she responds in the same language, before switching back to Korean. It isn’t easy for her, but she needs the practice. “How were your parents?”

“They’re good,” he replies, tilting his head to look down at her. “Eomma made her usual fuss about how she thinks SM hasn’t been feeding me, Appa wanted to know how long I was staying. Hyung showed up on Wednesday with Yeojin-noona, she’s due next month. They think it’s going to be a boy.”

“Then you’ll be an uncle, huh?”

“Yeah.” A laugh. “Weird, huh? I’ve gotten old.”

She laughs, playfully smacks his arm. “Shut up, you’re not even thirty yet. In the news industry, you’d still be considered a baby.”

“What does that make you then?” He teases back. “A fetus?”

Mai sticks her tongue out at him, loving the way his smile lights up the room and makes his eyes crinkle at the corners. “I am an up-and-coming star reporter, thank you very much! Nearly a year out of college and already KHN’s number one correspondent in Asia!”

She’s actually quite proud, really, of how far she’s come. Graduated last spring with honors and glowing recommendations from her professors that landed her an internship at a startup news agency, working her way up the ranks, doing any number of assignments from the menial to the monumental. Her personal blog, where she records her own tiny adventures while on assignment for bigger stories, is slowly growing in leadership, her career is blossoming along with her agency, and she is doing this all at the age of 24. 

The most important story to her, however, is the one that she will never get to tell. The one on how on her first assignment to Korea, around August of last year, she was covering a story on the idol industry and how it affected the mental health and well-being of the Southeastern Asian culture. It was a topic she was well familiar with, having been caught up in the Hallyu Wave herself as a teenager. Through some called-in favors and connections, along with a bit of tenacity and her own applied charm, Leila had managed to gain access to some of the top entertainment companies to interview their executives, idols, and trainees. 

Including, as it happens, SM Entertainment, which happened to be the company that owned the popular male group, EXO. Comprised of nine (formerly twelve) artists, they had been the kings of the K-Pop industry around five years ago, before their fame slowly started to ebb due to the rise of newer rookie groups. At the time of the interview, two of the oldest members, Suho and Xiumin, had already been enlisted, and the band as a whole was going on hiatus.

Mai had, suffice to say, been quite the EXO fan as a teenager, remembering once having spent close to $200 for a ticket to one of their concerts when they had toured to LA. This, however, was an assignment. This was official. This was supposed to be professional. She would be cool, calm, collected, she would play her part of objective journalist, gathering facts and telling a story.

Mai Nguyen was going to meet EXO, which meant she was going to meet EXO’s Chen, aka Kim Jongdae, aka the singer she’d admired since she was 16 years old.

Mai Nguyen was privately freaking the out.