It's not like Jaebum to drink so much just before a press conference. But since he's a veteran idol, it doesn't matter what he does anymore. Now, he even has a personal lawyer to back up all his legal activities, so of course, he'll go ahead and s up. Anything to make his lawyer give in. Jaebum desperately needs a way out. Now.

The idol’s manager shook her head and turned to Myungdae, who shrugged his shoulders with a sympathetic smile. Youngmi sighed and grabbed her clipboard as she exited the room, which was now reeking of alcohol. When Jaebum was like that, there could only be one person who could maybe understand his wayward ways. Myungdae watched the door close behind the small figure of the tired manager before walking towards his best friend and yanked the bottle of whiskey away from said tipsy friend. “You need to stop.”

Laughing bitterly, Jaebum snatched back the bottle from Myungdae with a shake of his head, “No. I won’t stop. How would you know what I need? I need to sleep. And never wake up. Or I need someone to bash my head with a sledge hammer, so all my brain matter could scatter all over the walls of this ing room.”

Myungdae rolled his eyes, “Alcohol isn’t going to help you solve anything.” He pulled a chair to sit properly across from his mess of an idiotic best friend. Jaebum didn’t have to elaborate on anything. Myungdae already knew. On any day, Myungdae wouldn’t spend so much effort stopping Jaebum from drinking. Just not today. The press conference is in less than three hours. And Jaebum’s sobriety kept slipping away bit by bit along with his sanity. Sighing, much like Youngmi earlier, Myungdae stared worryingly at Jaebum, “Did something happened last week? I heard from Youngjae that you wouldn’t pick up his calls and that it seems like you're trying to avoid him. He said you were running away from him every time he happened to track you down. He told me to tell you that if he did anything wrong, he would like to apologize face-to-face. He also said that you still need to give him a statement-”

“Shut up… SHUT. UP!” Jaebum roared, slamming the glass bottle down hard against the table. “I don’t care! I don’t ing care! the stupid statement! everything! I. Don’t. Give. A. . I just want-”

“What do you want, Im Jaebum?”

“...”

“See. You're a ing problematic, spoiled, self-centered little who doesn’t even know what he wants. So it all up and get your to the damn conference room!” Myungdae could say a lot more. But seeing the scrunched up expression on Jaebum’s face like the idol was in immense pain, Myungdae’s voice softened. “Clean up. You need to get ready. Please.”

“I just want Youngjae.”

Silence soaked the room. For more than two minutes, there were no words or sounds. Neither Jaebum nor Myungdae remembered where they were sitting at. They both lost themselves in their own worlds. In their pasts. The past where there was an adorably innocent Choi Youngjae with a smile that was brighter than the sun itself. The past that they both shared and could not, would not, forget even for a single second. Youngjae to Myungdae was like the little brother he never had. And well, Youngjae to Jaebum was indescribable. There were no words grand enough to describe the amount of effect Youngjae had left on Jaebum. Choi Youngjae was that sparkling light at the end of a dark tunnel, the flame that burns against Jaebum’s frostlike skin. And the person he will forever keep loving more than anything in this world.

First to open his mouth after a dead silence, Myungdae offered a small smile, “What really happened, Jaebum-ah…”

Jaebum sat in silence for a while, gathering up the courage to croak out the words he’d been dying to say but at the same time dreading to admit. “He remembered.”

“WHAT?” Myungdae almost leaped off his chair in excitement.

“My name. He remembered my name.”

“Th-then isn’t that a good thing?”

The idol laughed and chugged on the bottle. “No. It’s not. I’m supposed to stay away from him. I’m supposed to leave him alone. I’m supposed to be out of his life for good… Because without me, he’ll live better.”

Not letting Jaebum drown himself in this unnecessary stupidity, Myungdae reached over the table and grabbed at his best friend’s collars angrily. “You need to ing stop! Stop making decisions for him!”

Matching Myungdae’s anger, Jaebum smacked those hands away and stood up, “He doesn’t even ing know who I am! Why does it matter that I’m trying to keep us from meeting? He doesn’t know anything! The last time I saw him was in a ing hospital! He was lying there with all these ing wires hooked up to him! And you know what? I caused it! I ed up his life. I…” Jaebum slumped back down in his seat and made no attempt to stop his tears. “I did that… I did that to him. I always said I loved him, but in the end, I was the one who hurts him. I just… I just want him in my arms again. Want to love him again. I want him.”

“Jaebum, you can. You-”

“No,” the idol wiped his tears on the sleeves of his coat and forced a broken smile, “I can’t. I couldn’t protect him then, but I’ll protect him now. I won’t let it happen again in front of me without doing anything. I love him so much. It hurts to see him so close yet so far from me. But I will stop it.”

Giving up, Myungdae sighed heavily in distress, “You ing idiot.”

“Come on. Aren’t you here to watch this idiot make an even bigger fool of himself?”

Murmured under his breath, Myungdae’s eyes cast down to the carpet floor, “I hope you fail.”

<||><||><||><||><||>

Indeed, it failed. The press conference never happened. Because the almighty young lawyer himself crashed the party before it even started. In one professionally, well-spoken, sentence, Youngjae dismissed the press. As soon as the large banquet room emptied out, Youngjae immediately turned to his person of interest, Im Jaebum. They sort of went into this intense staring contest for a few seconds. Jaebum tore his gaze for the very first time. If there was one thing that didn’t change about Choi Youngjae was that he still wore his emotions on his face like an open book. His face had frustration plastered all across it in bold red letters. His fists clenched tightly, seemingly trying to hold himself back from getting physical. And at this point, the manager, the CEO, and the athlete found themselves scurrying off in a hurry. They’d rather die outside with the press than stand here to witness a bloodbath between the lawyer and his troublesome client.

Jaebum rolled his eyes and sat on the edge of the long table, fingers intertwined as hands laid comfortably on his lap. Sometimes, things really can’t be avoided. “I don’t remember calling for your presence, Youngjae-ssi.” The idol slipped up accidentally and visibly cringed at the formality added to his favorite name on Earth. Quickly redeeming his facial expression, Jaebum cleared his throat and forced on his cold demeanor again.

“If I weren't here, you would have made matters worse,” Youngjae replied rather blandly. “You are making things very hard for me. I hope you know that.”

“Oh, my bad. Didn’t mean to. You can quit if you want.”

“No, I won’t quit. I’m quite good at dealing with children.”

With that comment, Jaebum snapped his head back to finally facing Youngjae, “Excuse me?”

Feeling victory on the tip of his tongue, Youngjae laughed dryly, “If you don’t want to be categorized as one, then start acting your age.”

The idol stayed silent. Youngjae scoffed and pulled a chair to sit in front of Jaebum. They returned to holding another intense staring contest. The room seemed to shrink in size as they both got lost in each other's eyes. It’s not spoken, but for sure they know it themselves that they do share a lot of stares whenever they see each other. For Youngjae, he still didn’t know how to exactly explain the feeling. Contrarily, Jaebum knew exactly what this tension was all about.

“Next time, if you want to hold a conference or make any more trouble, please discuss such things with me first,” the lawyer sighed with his arms crossed, “It is very difficult for me each time you act like this. You’re not the one who will be handling the aftermath. I am.”

Also crossing his arms against his chest, Jaebum sneered, “Then quit. You won’t ever have to deal with me or my s ever again. Easy as that.”

“The more you want to see me gone, the more I’ll stay.”

“I don’t want you here. Leave.”

“No.”

“What-”

“Stop avoiding me,” Youngjae finally said the words he came to say.

Jaebum froze for a split second before regaining his composer and glared angrily at Youngjae. “What the are you talking about?”

Standing up, Youngjae stepped forward to face Jaebum bravely, “If I did something to offend you, I am sorry. We’re both adults. There is no need for you to keep avoiding me like this. We can talk things out and reach a compromise. You’re still my client, and your CEO still wants me to solve this matter legally. We still need to keep seeing each other, so let’s not be hostile. I promise you, after all of this, you won’t see me ever again.”

Well, damn, Jaebum felt that. Those words hurt a lot more than Jaebum had imagined they would. Of course he doesn’t want Youngjae to disappear from his life, but he can’t be selfish. It had long been established that he would not meddle in Youngjae's life any longer. They needed to return to never meeting each other again. Needed to go back to being tens of miles away and never having the smallest chance to cross paths.

"Nothing happened," Jaebum said.

For a second there, Youngjae almost cursed. He hated how unpredictable this bratty idol is. Sighing and rolling his eyes, the lawyer fished out his phone and pressed the record button. "Can you elaborate?" Youngjae stepped back and reclaimed the seat.

"I was drunk and didn't know what I was doing."

"I need more than that."

"Fine. I wasn't lying about being drunk. I was at a private bar for celebrities, and some guy—I think he's a bartender there—came up to me. We talked for a bit while he kept serving me drinks. And everything else was blurry after that. I just remember waking up the next morning with Myungdae hovering over me. He said he was also walking out of that hotel when he saw the guy dragging me across the lobby. I didn't have my usual cap and mask, so Myungdae rushed over because it was suspicious. He didn't tell me what he did to that guy afterwards. But anyways, he took my back up the room he just left out of and stayed as lookout."

"So you got roofied and your friend saved you."

Jaebum shrugged, "If you put it that way."

Youngjae raised an eyebrow, "You could have told me all of this from the beginning. That wasn't so hard, wasn't it?"

"You got what you wanted, can you leave now?"

Stopping the recording, Youngjae looked up at his client. "Why do you hate me so much?"

"..."

"You've been like this since we met. At first, I thought you just hated all this legal business. But I came to realize you just hate me. So I just want to know why." The expressionless look on Jaebum’s face already answered Youngjae’s question. Most of it anyways. Youngjae looked down at his lap and opened his mouth to ask something he did not think he needed to ask, “Is it because I called you by the other ‘Jaebum’?"

Jaw tightened and fists clenched, the coldness in Jaebum's eyes melted into something more fierce with an unnoticeable tremble. This was unexpected. "The other 'Jaebum'?"

Looking away from Jaebum's intense gaze, Youngjae his bottom lip out of an unknown nervousness. "I…" He started, suddenly speechless. The air inside his lungs vanished with each ticking second. "I don't know. I-"

"You remembered?"

"Yes, I-"

"Who's this other Jaebum?"

"He… I don't know. I-"

"No," Jaebum said sternly as he got up and closed the distance between the only other person in this room, "You do know. Who is he?"

Youngjae felt threatened and unsafe. The dangerous glint in Jaebum's eyes burst into flames. Youngjae shrank back a little in his seat. "Wh-why are you like this? What have my memories got to do anything with you?!"

At the question, Jaebum halted for about three seconds before returning to his offensive ways. He scoffed, "This person you're trying so hard to remember… Have you ever wondered why you can't remember him?" Jaebum hated himself for doing this, but he had no choice. "Ever thought why he's just in your past and not your present?" The terror in Youngjae's eyes tugged at Jaebum's heart. But he had no choice. "So tell me, why isn't he in your life anymore? Is it something you did? Tell me, Youngjae."

Angrily, Youngjae shoved Jaebum with the strength that his anger manifested deep within his heart. Who does Im Jaebum thinks he is?! Youngjae pulled himself up to his feet, blood boiling and steam coming out of his ears. “Who are you?! How would you know?! You know nothing!” The young lawyer lurched forward and grabbed the blank-faced idol’s collars with much increasing hatred. “What rights do you have?” Youngjae spat harshly.

“Why are you angry?” Jaebum smirked, “Unless you’re guilty of something, Mister Lawyer.”

Triggered by Jaebum’s blunt words, Youngjae raised his fist impulsively. The usual calm and dignified young lawyer with God-tier manners completely lost it. How dare Jaebum speak like he knows everything?! How dare he make such judgement?! Who the does he think he is? All this time, Youngjae tried so hard to hold it in just because Jaebum was an important client. But this was it. Jaebum should have not crossed the line. There’s a high possibility that his career will be in shambles, but it. Youngjae clenched his fist tighter around Jaebum’s collars. He can endure anything. Except for someone to talk about his past like they know it better than him. Especially when that someone is a complete stranger. A person who Youngjae had never crossed paths with until now.

“You have no ing shame, Im Jaebum,” Youngjae said angrily.

That mocking smirk on Jaebum’s face only fueled Youngjae’s anger by the second.

The doors to the room swung open as Myungdae rushed in to break them apart. He looked mortified and extremely worried. “What the ?! What are you two doing? !” Ripping Youngjae’s hand off of his best friend’s collars, Myungdae was ready to risk everything he had. “Youngjae-ssi, you’ve gone too far!”

Youngjae scoffed in disbelief, watching the athlete checking the idol’s body and face with a concerned look, “The person who you should be saying that to isn’t me.”

Myungdae furrowed his eyebrows disapprovingly at Jaebum. Although he took Jaebum’s side, that didn't mean he didn’t know what Jaebum was doing to torment himself. “Have you ing gone insane? Im Jaebum, are you ing crazy?!” Without even hearing it from Jaebum, Myungdae already guessed the situation in his head. His idiot of a best friend probably made up some bull and forced himself to be a bad person. Otherwise, there would be no reason for Youngjae to be glaring at Jaebum with such pure hatred right now. The hurt in Youngjae’s eyes was enough to pierce into a person’s soul and melt their cold heart. Myungdae didn’t dare to directly look at Jaebum. He could never imagine the amount of pain Jaebum is in at this very moment.

Youngjae gave the pair another glare and walked away without another word.