Jiyong stepped out on the balcony of his apartment. It was dark and cold, the sky was clear of any clouds and gave the night a freezing chill as the stars sparkled like they did in those romantic movies. 

The idol quickly lit a cigarette to somehow warm up his shivering body but unsurprisingly, it didn’t do much. How could a bit of smoke raise his body temperature at three in the morning anyway, even he wasn’t that delusional. Though, the word ’delusional’ probably described him well after all that had happened during the past week.

„So you are my boss huh…“ He whispered into the night and sighed upon not receiving an answer. But where should the answer come from to begin with, the one at whom the question was aimed at was currently on his way to Taiwan. For business. As always. „Don’t just leave me alone like that.“

He wasn’t angry at Seungri, especially after their conversation the night prior. He wasn’t angry nor was he particularly sad. He was… confused maybe, perhaps a little upset even, but not at Seungri.

Jiyong just didn’t know what to do with himself or how to deal with the whole situation. Seungri wanted nothing to change between them and obviously Jiyong didn’t want that either but he had never been a good actor and if he was being honest - nothing felt like how it used to be.

Seungri said he was still the same person, that his job didn’t change who he was and maybe that was true regarding his personality. But that didn’t change the fact that most of his life was consumed by his businesses and therefore he couldn’t say that it didn’t matter and that everything was as before. Once you’ve seen things you couldn’t unsee them and once you’ve heard things you couldn’t unhear them, they were so hopelessly stuck in your head.

Jiyong took a deep drag from his cigarette but this time it didn’t help to calm his mind at all.

Seungri was a good person, a better than just good one to be honest. And Jiyong was immensely attached to him. Of course he didn’t hold a grudge against him anymore, he always forgave the younger quickly and he always would. Seungri could probably kill someone and Jiyong would still forgive him but… that didn’t mean that his view of him would stay the same. He would look at his maknae differently, whether he wanted or not, and that’s what happened right now. Jiyong wished everything was back to normal but how could it if his maknae was basically his boss? The CEO of the company that Jiyong had joined when he was just thirteen years old? The company was his home and his family you could say, and now, for over five years, he didn’t even know that his own band mate, that joined the group as the last, was the CEO of YGE. He didn’t even know that YG had struggled financially.

Ah, what could he do.

Jiyong extinguished his cancer stick and left it in the ash tray before he went inside again and rubbed his hands against arms. It really was chilly outside, wasn’t it. Just like the other night when Seungri had wrapped his arms around Jiyong securely and held him until the sun was beginning to rise. It had been cold, but in Seungri’s embrace he felt warm, his tears were burning, and so was his heart as the pain subsided and his everlasting and never ceasing flutter-like feelings returned, feelings that always became nearly unbearable whenever he looked at the younger, touched him, heard his voice or simply just thought about his existence.

And that’s when Jiyong realized that no matter how many secrets Seungri had, Seungri would always stay his little maknae and he would always come back to the younger with his arms wide open and a smile on his lips, no matter what.

From now on Jiyong would be a better leader, a better person and, most importantly, a better friend.

~

Taiwan was beautiful. Not that it came as a surprise, Seungri had been here several times after all. He enjoyed traveling in general, he loved seeing the different architectures and cultures, the way people dressed or did their make up, the nature or simply just the mannerism and the language. Every country was different and Seungri just loved getting to know as many as possible, if he could, he would speak every language and visit every country in existence. He already traveled a lot, obviously, and people proceeded to assume that he must have had a lot of free time to do so but the truth was that literally every ’vacation’ abroad was actually a business trip in disguise. Sometimes he didn’t even get to see anything of the country or the cities at all, during those trips all he saw were planes, cars and different buildings from the inside. But he wouldn’t complain, he himself had chosen this kind of life.

Many liked to ask him whether he wasn’t already sick of all the plane and car rides. They told him that they found all the traveling exhausting and that they would never be able to endure so much of it, but honestly, Seungri was thankful for it. Of course sometimes he was annoyed as well if he had to fly several times a week and get on the road every other day, but in the end he used his time efficiently. 

You know, he was someone who liked to plan out everything, he was a very organized person so before every ’journey’, whether it be with a car, a train, a boat or a plane, he would make sure to find out how long it would take to arrive, then he planned out what he could do all the while. He mostly slept, because, and this was important to know, he barely ever slept during the night or in his bed. At those times he would meet with friends who felt neglected (especially s), went out clubbing to promote whatever was there to promote, or went to business dinners or lunches. There wasn’t much time left to sleep. 

So instead he used the time while going from location A to location B, where he couldn’t do much else, to work on speeches, financial planning, new songs or one of the languages he was currently learning. Because something nearly no one was aware of was that he couldn’t just speak Japanese, Mandarin and English fluently, but he was also in the process of learning Cantonese and started out with French. You never knew when they would come in handy.

So yes, you could say he was a little bit extremely busy.

But he didn’t plan on continuing that lifestyle for long. In fact, even if he wanted to he couldn’t. At some point he would have to join the military and until then he would have to prepare others to take over all of his jobs so the companies wouldn’t collapse while he was gone. He had already begun the process a year ago but it took it’s time to find the right men and women to get into his routines, yet he hoped it would work out well. After all he had mostly found and would find for every single project, organization and company a person each to take care of the business so they could get used to it slowly. Nothing was worse than being thrown in at the deep end.

Even when he would come back from the military, though, he wouldn’t continue like he did now, he had done this for many years and he could feel the strain on his health at barely twenty six years of age. His lack of sleep got to him immensely as well as the irregular eating schedule that caused him to either rapidly gain or loose weight. And, on top of it all, he wanted to be a better son, brother, and friend, who had more time to offer to everyone he was dear to. You never knew what would happen the next day and he didn’t want to waste the time he and others had. His parents were getting older as well…

The idol sat in the armchair of his hotel room and stared into space as he thought of everything and anything. It didn’t happen often as he was always too freaking busy but when he had a bit of free time where really nothing was planned and he could neither sleep nor felt like preparing for any events, he just sat somewhere doing nothing. His body and mind were exhausted and he just needed to go on standby once in a while to recharge a bit. But of course these moments never lasted because there was always someone to rip him out of this peaceful state, such as now when when his phone started ringing.

With a roll of his eyes Seungri pushed himself out of the chair and waddled to the nightstand where the device laid. A quick look on the screen told him it was Youngbae calling and he was mildly relieved that it was none of his clients or business partners, so it most likely wasn’t work related.

„Bae, hi.“ He answered the phone and it was then that he noticed how tired his voice sounded, all low and raspy.

„Maknae, how are you doing? I heard you went to Taiwan.“ Youngbae said and Seungri immediately knew he ed up somewhere.

„Yeah, I have a few meetings coming up here. How are you?“

„I’m fine but I don’t know if I will still be if I ask you whether you forgot that the five of us agreed on going out for dinner tomorrow.“

And there he had it. He had ed up indeed.

„Ah, I am really sorry! It was tomorrow? I thought it was next week?“

„No, it’s tomorrow.“ Youngbae sighed, he didn’t seem surprised at all, merely disappointed. „Dude, get your together, it’s not the first time you stood us up.“

„I know and I am really sorry! I am just so freaking busy lately I must’ve messed the dates up, I’m sorry Youngbae! I will be there next time, I promise, but there is no way I can’t make it back tomorrow.“

„Seungri. I get that you like going out to party and that you try really hard with your businesses but you gotta get that under control. Bigbang should come first and you know that. Don’t play around too much, okay buddy? I will let it slide this time because I know you didn’t do it on purpose but I’m not sure if Jiyong will so maybe you should call him, he was looking forward to it a lot.“

„Will do! Man, I feel really bad about it I should’ve made sure I got the right date. I’m sorry I will make it up to all of you when I am back.“ Seungri ran his hand over his face and regret started taking over his thoughts, telling him that he was a bad friend. 

„I hope so, gotta treat us to some real fancy ramen.“

„Thanks Bae, I owe you. I should probably call Jiyong now though.“

„Good luck, he’ll probably eat you alive.“

„…Probably. Anyways, see you soon and have fun at the dinner. Don’t eat too much.“

„Yeah, yeah, shut up maknae, see you around.“

„Bye.“

„Bye.“

As the call was disconnected Seungri immediately searched for Jiyong’s contact and pressed the call button. He knew if the older found out on his own before Seungri could tell him he would give him hell and right now the younger tried to treat their friendship well and keep it alive. Of course they were still friends but it wasn’t back to ’normal’ and to be honest, Seungri wasn’t sure if it ever would be. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t fight for it. A rough and bumpy friendship with Jiyong was still better than none after all.

He let his phone ring for quite some time but unfortunately Jiyong didn’t answer which either meant that he was busy, that he forgot his phone somewhere again or that he already knew and ignored Seungri on purpose. Which wouldn’t be something new at all.

After another two attempts to reach out to the older Seungri gave up and instead sent him a rather long text that explained everything and contained probably seven apologies. There wasn’t much he could do now, he could only hope that Jiyong would not freak out. He wouldn’t put it past the older to throw a fit over it and while Seungri understood that he was at fault, it also was what he needed the least right now.

Even praying to god wouldn’t help but maybe that was because Seungri just didn’t believe in him. So perhaps god was a little like Jiyong: Both were salty so they simply ignored him.

~

Update: Jiyong ignored the younger for nearly a week.

The leader actually pulled through with that until they saw each other again at the day of their next Fanmeeting in Shanghai. None of Seungri’s eleven text messages and none of the six phone calls were answered, no matter how much Seungri apologized. Jiyong was a drama queen and the maknae knew if he really wanted to be forgiven he would have to sit his on a plan and fly back to Korea so he could have a personal face to face conversation with his beloved Jiyongie hyung and he knew the older expected him to actually do that. But, oh well. Seungri really didn’t have time for that, he had meetings to no end, so in conclusion he neither had the time nor the nerve to go back and use his energy to make up for not showing up to the dinner they had planned.

Yes, he was at fault and yes, he felt guilty and sorry. But if any of the other members were to be put in his situation they wouldn’t even be close to being able to handle the stress.

One of the reasons he never just told everybody about his ’real job’ so he could complain about it was simply that no one would care. He knew what they would say to him, especially s: If you are so busy, why don’t you quit some of your businesses? No one forces you to do that, you should concentrate on Bigbang more.

Yeah sure. Thank you for the advice but no thank you. His business life wasn’t just something that he started and then suddenly it was just there like it was today. It had developed over time. 

Imagine you want to grow a tree but you have no knowledge about it whatsoever so with the help of a few friends you plant many little trees with the hope of one of them to survive and grow big and strong. But what you didn’t expect was for several of them to be a success so you plant more because wow, it worked! But then they become really big, they are suddenly too much work and take so much space in your garden, other plants can’t grow proper