"What?"

There were no more than twenty people that knew where she was.

Of that same list, the people that knew how to contact her directly was even smaller.

It had taken the wrangling of a lifetime to escape the press, to escape them without any sort of hassle, to escape the glare and disappear. Yes, she'd taken advantage of the piles that the boys all seemed to step in served to take attention away from her, but she had still gone to great lengths to hide. The exclusivity of her phone number was the only reason that she picked up. Six people had it, two of which were at the company, two belonged to family members and two belonged to friends. It had taken actions, more than words, to make her feelings clear to them. She did not want to be disturbed, the boys were going into the service and she was on vacation.

A real vacation, a down-to-earth, honest to god vacation, her very first.

She rented a villa in the Maldives under an assumed name and vowed to not leave.

Jiyong spent her days blissfully disconnected from the outside world. It was easy to forget the verifiable dumpster fire that had engulfed her professional career. Secluded, with a prime view of the beautiful sight of the clear water with nothing but her books, records and notepads, it was paradise. Home was six and a half thousand miles and nine hours away. It was easy to forget how everything seemed to burn the second the boys had to go into the service and would never be the same. 

They'd all known that it wouldn't be easy, but even she had to stagger back under the full load that those events had dumped on them all.

First, there was Youngbae and his wife.

It wasn't so much that her lifelong friend had decided to get married. It was the fact that his wife was half-convinced that she had feelings for her husband that were more than what best friends should have for each other. That had strained their relationship so much that she barely communicated with him when she was in the outside world. It was on her list of to fix when it was time to return to the world at-large, if it wasn't the first on the list, it was certainly second on the list. It wasn't the first time that the idea, that of her and Youngbae, had existed, but as it was then, the idea of them could provoke nothing but laughter from the both of them.

How she would fix it escaped her, but she would figure it out, she knew she had to.

Dae was the only one that she talked too regularly, but Dae was also the only one to have his life straight.

He'd hit rock bottom and struggled, but the diffrence with him was that he'd done it early.

He wanted to focus more on acting and musical theater, but he had gone out of his way to promise her that he would come when called. In the midst of all of the chaos, it was nice to have a rock, a pillar with which she could center all of the work of the future in.

She wasn't shocked over the mess that Seungri got himself into, as much as there was a part of her that wanted to feel for him, he'd screwed himself. He'd never told her the details, but she had a pretty good idea of what was going on, at least on the surface. She'd tried to get him to stand back, not to stick his fingers so deeply into that pile, because he didn't know what was in the middle of it. His retirement, an interesting word, had forced her to write him out of the mountains of new material.

They'd spoken once, on the day he'd decided to retire.

They hadn't spoken since then, and Jiyong doubted very much that they would speak until the worst was over. What's more was that she suspected that it would take her forcing the conversation before it happened. Part of her wanted to be empathic, part of her wanted to cast him out of the circle forever, but at the same time, she understood that he’d made his bed. Seungri had to suffer the consequences of his actions, but the group would endure, she would endure, even at this cirtical hour. 

"Rude."

Then there was him.

She was a novelty in and of herself, she was the leader of the most successful group in the history their business.

She had the novelty of leading a group of guys. It was the nature of the beast that some people would read too much into her relationships with the other members. It was something of an open secret that those rumors were indeed true with Seunghyun. People were simply so beside themselves with the idea of her and Yongbae together, or even with Seungri, that they never considered what was right in front them. When it was talked of in public, it they were careful to cloak it in deep humor. 

Only, it went much deeper than that. The gaudiest of those rumors didn't even capture what really happened between them.

There were things that she shared with Seunghyun that would keep them bonded for life. It had never mattered how much they blew hot and cold with each other. There were points in their lives were they hated each other's ing guts and never wanted to see each other. There were days when they were merely content to be friends. Other times, they ed like rabbits and drowned themselves in oh-so romantic daydreams of three kids and a picket fence.

He was the great love of her life, in many ways.

There were some days when she wished it wasn't the case, but she couldn't deny it.

She settled back down in her chair and closed her eyes.

"You deserve it," She quipped.

His chuckle made her gut twist, but she said nothing.

It had taken awhile for her to forgive him for the events that proceeded the days before he went to enlist in the service. It had taken her even longer to get over the trauma of the events that occurred after he enlisted. Seunghyun's tendencies for depression had manifested themselves in those ways before, and it had been enough then. Back then, it hadn't progressed as far. 

She would never forget the feeling of staring down the prospect of his early de