RILIE (APRIL, 2011)  

      The white sunlight hits my face and I jerk awake with a start.

      Springing up from the bed, I don’t have to look around to know where I am or who’s lying beside me. In Changmin’s bedroom, there are two empty wine bottles are littered on the bedside cabinet, empty pizza boxes with grease stains on the floor and Titanic playing on silent on the TV screen. How we managed to migrate from the living room to Changmin’s room, I have no clue.  

      I take a minute to register myself: my shirt is wrinkled and stained, but it’s still on; my pants are still buttoned and I’m not sore anywhere.  So it’s all good, I tell myself, trying to calm down. Nothing happened. I want to be relieved by the fact that Changmin and I are pristine. But then, as I try to move, I find that my legs are wound around his and he has an arm around my waist.  

      A million questions rush through my head in rapid succession and I scramble to answer each one: Has Yunho ever even come home last night? The answer is no because he would have me kicked out by now for fooling around with his best friend. Did I break anything while I was mad drunk? No. All intact, all good. Why does Changmin have his shirt off? I don’t want to know.

      Then one thing hits me like a brick in the face: Changmin kissed me. Or did I kiss him? I don’t know for sure. Somewhere behind the haze of alcohol, I vaguely remember being pinned to the couch, Changmin on top of me. Maybe he had a hand underneath my shirt, and maybe I pulled his shirt off. That’s where everything gets foggy again.

      It’s at this moment that a primal instinct kicks in, propelling me to run.

      In the back of my mind, a voice sternly tells me that if I wait until Changmin wakes up, everything will be ruined. We will never be able to sit together in the study hall, innocuously talking about the intermolecular forces or gravitational forces. We can never walk down the campus courtyard with our chins up and head high because there is now an illicit secret.

      More importantly, while he is who he is—Shim Changmin of TVXQ—I am who I am, a geeky no one. It’s acceptable for me to be his friend, but nothing more.  

      Cautiously and silently, I withdraw my leg from underneath his and slide off the bed sideways. I never take my eyes off of him as I gather my belongings and head for the door. I don’t bother turning back to check on Changmin. Having been his alarm clock for the past two months, I know he can’t wake up even if the Earth imploded.

      When I reach for the doorjamb, I see my physics notes he borrowed for the first time taped to the back of the bedroom door. The sight of it make my heart squelch. Without hesitation, I tear away the sheets and shove them into my bag, reminding myself and him that this has all just been a dream.

      I don’t bother taking the elevator because I really need some oxygen in my brain in order have coherent thoughts again. My feet dragged along the granite floor as I plod down the brightly lit staircase, thinking everything but nothing all at the same time. I feel like a complete idiot for picking up the two bottles of damned Merlot: it may just have ruined the first and real friendship that I’ve had in years, all because I was too drunk out of my mind to stop what had happened.  

      By the time I reach the ground floor, my head alternates from dizziness to pounding aches, and my intestines gurgled from excess alcohol. Just as I push open the door to the front lobby, I feel myself falling forward with my face heading straight for the floor—

      “Whoa,” someone breaks my fall and catches me by the elbow. “Rilie, are you okay?”

      I stiffen, and then look up to see Yunho, still dressed in yesterday’s clean suit. There are dark circles under his eyes, an indication that he has worked all night.

      Robotically, I nod my head. “Just a little tired.”

      “You look a little sallow,” he points out with a chuckle. “Hope you and Changmin didn’t burn the place down.”

      I flinch at the mention of Changmin’s name and flash back to the scene back at the apartment. I force a wry smile. Before I can muster a sheepish “thank you” for everything, my stomach starts churning and I feel acidity working its way up my throat. I put a hand to my mouth.

      “Rilie—”

      I shake my head furiously and dry-gagged. The last thing I would want after a disastrous night is to vomit all over Yunho.

      “Rilie, you should sit down. Sit right here and I’ll get you some water.”

      I shake my head obstinately again and attempt to catch the hem of his lapel to tell him to leave. It was in that instant that a brilliant flash of the shutter strikes both of us.

      “U-know, look here! This is going to make the first page!”

      Yunho curses something unintelligible and all I can do is lean against the wall, seeing intermittent stars twinkling from all directions. Then the white light hits me again—over and over—with someone’s excited shouts knocking on my eardrums, “Miss, what’s your name? How long have you been dating U-know of TVXQ? Or is this just a one-night stand? Do you know exactly what you are getting yourself into? ...”

      In-between the ambushes of the reporter’s nasty interrogations, I become very awake. Do you know exactly what you are getting yourself into? I gawk at him strangely and feel the reality start to spin out of control. He approaches me again, instigated by my slight reaction and reaches for my wrist—

      “Get out of here!” Somehow, Yunho manages to shove th