“The twenty-five dollars weren’t worth it, but it was worth getting to know you better,” Jungkook’s statement floated around in Mily’s head for the nine-hundredth time as she tossed and her bed. Mily grunted in frustration as she sat up and reached over her bedside table to turn on the lamp on her nightstand, it seemed she wasn’t going to be getting sleep anytime soon despite the fact that the dawn was merely a few hours away.

   “What does that even mean?!” She groaned as she threw her hands up in the air and allowed them to fall limply over her duvet, “were the twenty-five dollars worth getting to know me? Am I that difficult to get to know and that’s why the money wasn’t worth it? Am I that difficult to get along with?

She scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest at her own state of mind at the moment, “why should I even care?! It’s not like it was an apology or anything of the sort,” she paused momentarily, “what if he was lying? What if this is all a part of his sick, twisted game?! I definitely wouldn’t put it past him! That jerk!”

She desperately wanted to believe that it was another one of his games, it would be easier to just ignore him if that was the case, but then there was a small voice at the back of her mind that kept telling her that maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe he was trying to make things right but was too much of an idiot to go about it properly. Mily rested her back against the mahogany headboard staring up at the white ceiling, her thoughts running wild with confliction over a simple statement made by the person she despised most. She couldn’t sleep, not in her current mental state, she needed to vent out her frustrations to someone –anyone! She picked up her cell phone and checked the time noting that it was far too early to call Scott so she opted for her second choice; she typed in the phone number she knew by heart and placed the phone to her ear as she placed the call.

     “Mil’s!” a deep voice exclaimed enthusiastically after picking up the call, “I’ve missed you so much, New York feels so empty without you here!”

Mily chuckled, she could just imagine the man in his mid-twenties pouting at the moment, “I’ve missed you more, Dere.”

      “So tell me how has Korea been to my favorite girl?” Derek asked, his baritone voice smoothing out any tension in her body slowly. Mily adjusted herself in her bed as she turned to the right, letting her phone rest between her ear and her pillow, sighing as she readied herself to tell him the tale of her first two days back in Korea.

       “It’s been…eventful,” she stated, though she knew for sure ‘eventful’ was an understatement, “remember the story I told you a while ago after I moved to New York?” She questioned.

Derek paused momentarily, “the time you accidentally walked into the men’s room when you first moved to Korea?”

Mily slapped her forehead, “not that one,” she groaned, “the one about the roots of my self-esteem issues.”

         “Oh,” Derek replied idiotically, “what about it?”

         “Well,” Mily paused briefly trying to gather the right words to explain the entire story without going too far into detail, “the boy who asked me out as a joke became a member of a K-pop group under my old label and now,” she paused as she let out a breath, disbelieving her lack of luck, “we work together.” She concluded.

         “Wait, what?!” Derek shouted, “how the hell did that happen!?”

Mily shrugged, “Your guess is as good as mine.”

There was dead air between the pair before Derek decided to speak up again, his tone laced with concern, “are you ok? He hasn’t bothered you or anything has he?”