Doyeon was sitting on the couch reading a celebrity gossip magazine.  It was the usual mix of truth, half-truths, exaggerations, and flat-out lies as usual.  None of it really made an impression on her until she spotted one particular item.  It was in one of the columns where the columnist just hinted at who the people were and what was happening, so that if they turned out to be wrong, they couldn't get in trouble for publishing falsehoods.

"Elly," Doyeon called out.  "You'd better come see this."

Elly came out of the bathroom, her makeup half-applied.  "What is it?"  Seeing what magazine Doyeon was holding, her face turned into a scowl.  "Why do you even bother with those things?"

"Because sometimes they're right," Doyeon said, holding the magazine out toward Elly and pointing to one of the paragraphs.

Elly read the paragraph, her face growing paler and paler.  When she reached the end, she said "I've got to call him" and scampered off to get her phone.

Sei had wandered in from the kitchen in time to see the end of this exchange.  "What's going on?" she asked.

She handed the magazine to Sei, who read the paragraph aloud for Lucy, who'd just followed her into the room.  "Do You Call It Romance?  Or is it just a Crush?  Who's the girl group songstress who's captured the heart of everyone's favorite balladeer?  Hopefully he won't end up Dropping the Tears and we won't end up saying 'I Don't Like Your Girlfriend.'  But he's always been so Picky, Picky that I think we'll see this Love Blossom."

Lucy scowled.  "Why does Elly get the coded column treatment and Momo and Moonbin ended up getting named on the front page?"

"It's because of K.Will," Sei explained.

Seeing the look of incomprehension on Lucy's face, Doyeon picked up the explanation.  "His first songs came out 15 years ago.  He's practically a national treasure.  A lot of ajummas are fans of his, and they'll be mad at the magazine if they publish the story and it turns out to be wrong."

"Which it won't," Lucy pointed out.

"Which it won't," Doyeon conceded.  'But that's why Elly had to call K.Will right away - so they could decide on a strategy of how to deal with this."

"What can they do?" Lucy asked.

Doyeon shrugged.  "Not much.  They'll probably pretend not to have seen the item, and if an interviewer questions them about it directly - more like with him than with her - they'll just blame it on the press needing to fill the pages, even on a slow news day, so sometimes a hunch or an idea gets blown up into a story when there's really nothing there."

Elly came back just at the end of this.  "Plus, he's about to announce that he's leaving for Japan today for an extended stay at a health spa."

Lucy got indignant.  "So he's just running away and leaving Elly to face the press alone?"

Sei did her best to calm her girlfriend down.  "No, it's not like that at all."

"The press will be coming for him a lot harder than they'll be coming for me," Elly added.  "If he hadn't already had the idea, I was going to suggest it to him."

"Plus, we need to eliminate the possibility of any encounters between them, even a chance crossing in the street.  The less that gets said about this, the sooner everyone will forget it was ever published."  Doyeon said.

Just then the front door opened and Suyeon came in.  Seeing so many of her members standing in the middle of the living room, she immediately asked "What's up?  Is something wrong?"

Doyeon showed Suyeon the magazine.  As she read it, a variety of emotions ran across her face - first confusion, then fear, then anger and determination.  "Somebody go find Yoojung, Lua, and Rina.  We've got to have an all-band meeting."

Once everyone had been gathered up and the remaining members had been brought up to date on the situation.

"We don't know exactly what this columnist knows - or thinks they know.  And since all her clues point toward the group, not to any specific member, the press will be watching all of us.  So until we're sure that all of this has blown over, no dating.  Nothing that could be misconstrued as dating.  Pretty much no socializing with anyone outside the band.  The press doesn't know what they're looking for, so they'll be happy to find anything."

Rina shrugged.  "K.Will's going to Japan, and Jeongyeon's leaving for America next week, so it shouldn't be that big a deal."

"What about Sei and Lucy?" Lua asked petulantly.

Sei opened to respond, but Doyeon started speaking before she had a chance, hopefully heading off a fight in the maknae line.  "Sei and Lucy, as well as Yoojung and me, will be making sure not to do anything couple-y in public.  In fact, we shouldn't even be alone together in public."  She looked significantly at Lucy.  "Nothing that would give anyone any clues."