Her heart is pulsing with the music booming out of the speakers as Sakura takes in the chaotic atmosphere around her. She tries to watch her step while maneuvering around this dimly lit club, trying her best to stick close to her friends. Her friends are running on adrenaline, clearly enjoying this way more than Sakura which is not really a surprise with one being a crazy dance genius and another? Hyewon just loves being in new spaces, especially one that brings out her party spirit. That girl is a party maniac when they were in the States. And put them in a club in Korea where drinking is legal for people their age? Sakura is beginning to regret this. Are we here for me?! Or them! 

“Well also we are leaving soon and we need to go out with a bang! So this is like killing two birds with one stone.” Hyewon slimily added this sentence after suggesting it. Sakura purses her lips at the recollection. Two birds? What jealousy when Eunbi isn’t even here! Sakura looks around. She can’t believe she and her friends manage to ditch Lightning too. Handling their last minute plan alone surely wasn’t on the older man’s plan of a weekend night when he was rostered on this shift. 

Suddenly, Sakura is ed something cold into her palm. “Here you go.” Hyewon says casually as she takes a sip from her own glass. “The taste of legal alcohol is amazing.” Sakura looks into the glass she is now holding; it looks just like water. 

“My treat.” Hyewon coolly adds. Sakura isn’t even worried about that. She has had beer and nothing more. Her interest in alcohol is close to non-existent, beer’s nice just because it is cooling in the day, relaxing at night.

“I would get Chae one too but I doubt she needs any.” Hyewon glances at her friend who is comfortably settled in the center of the dance floor, moving her body energetically to the music. Sakura wonders how long her friend can last and even she would not be able to guess. That woman is another breed when it comes to dancing. Then Sakura’s arm is suddenly pushed up, turns out Hyewon is nudging her to take a sip so Sakura hesitantly obliges. 

She cringes as the liquid touches the tip of her tongue and frowns at her friend. “Don’t be a wimp. You are older than us. Be an adult. Drink it and have a good night! Make her jealous!” Hyewon pushes Sakura to take another sip and this time, she didn’t stop until Sakura really drank a mouthful. The older girl gags prompting Hyewon to laugh evilly.

“H-how is this going to make her jealous when she isn’t even here! Or possibly not know!” Sakura tries to recover from the reflux on top of being annoyed while in this situation. It is not what she is baited here for.

“Oh trust me, she knows.” Hyewon gives Sakura the all-knowing smirk and Sakura is very tempted to throw the drink straight at her friend until she hears an audible comment from near her. 

“Oh my god, is that the new Kim daughter!”

“ damn, you are right!”

Seems like the clubgoers have realised her presence. This feels like the schoolgirls situation but worse. The schoolgirls feel less threatening and also… Eunbi is not with her. 

Eunbi pulls out notes from her wallet and passes it to the driver the moment she reaches her location. The music can be heard booming loudly when she opens the taxi. She shakes her head at the amount of people all waiting to enter the club. “What are you doing, Sakura?” A hint of annoyance audible in her tone as her rest night was interrupted by Lightning’s message. 

SOS, Cherry and friends. Gangnam Club.

The message is short but nothing tough for Eunbi to decipher its meaning. Speaking of the man, why is she seeing him- “Kyungsan Oppa!” 

The man is a couple of metres away but Eunbi’s sharp tone immediately gets him to snap over in her direction. “Eunbi ah!” He hurriedly comes over and Eunbi does the same as she maneuvers her small body around the crowd.

The moment she realises he is alone, “where’s Cherry!” Eunbi looks around him.

“They jumped out of the car the moment we arrived and I kept being prompted to not leave the car by the roadside! I managed to find a valet parking but by the time I rushed here, they must be inside the club now. I have been trying to get in but you know how clubs are, they are only easily letting in girls.” He grumbles at the discrimination but it is really a club thing. Girls are good business as they bring in the attention of rich men.

Eunbi grunts in frustration, their principal is now without protection and that is a big no-no. She looks towards the entrance. “Follow me.” Her footsteps are quick to bring her over to several bouncers decked in black suits. She glances through the faces and spots someone familiar. “Sungjin-ssi! It’s me, Eunbi.”

“Hey! What are you doing here! I thought you said partying isn’t your thing anymore.” A handsome man walks calmly over to Eunbi and Lightning. Lightning glances at the tag on his suit, head of security.

“It’s isn’t. It’s a work thing. The crowd’s really bad so do you mind helping me and my colleague cut in? I will owe you a favour.” The frown on Eunbi’s face reflects the pressing nature of her task and that sets Sungjin’s mind out of the casual zone. 

He pulls open the side barricade for the two. “Please you don’t owe me everything. We been through so much in training together. This is what comrades do.”

There’s still something Eunbi needs help in and she is about to ask him when Sungjin knowingly interrupts. “Wait, aren’t you working in KIS now? does this mean a Kim-”

“Yes.” Eunbi prompts him to end his words there. A Kim in the premises would surely bring chaos and the head of security obviously knows that it would not make an easy night. “I assume the club’s capacity is at its max now? A thousand people, five floors?”

“Six.” Sungjin interrupts her. “There’s a level for VVIPs.”

This information is not really important to her so Eunbi waits for him to realise what she really needs. He smirks when he does. “Always working the most efficiently, Kwon. Follow me.” 

Sungjin brings them into a room filled with screens, all showing different scenes of the club happening in real time. “There are a lot of cameras. This is going to be a tough find too.” Eunbi grumbles. She thought using security cameras would help them find Sakura and friends faster but now it seems no different from physically running around. 

Sungjin raises his brow. “You think only KIS can afford toys?” He nudges for his staff to move before taking over his computer. Eunbi and Lightning watch as Sungjin does an internet search of Sakura and searches for a clear photo of the girl from recent events. “Gotcha.” He whispers as he copies the photo into his database before running another search. Sungjin stands straight up, cockily crossing his arms. “Now we wait.”

“Facial recognition in a club. We are really living in new times.” Lightning comments from behind.

“Yet our principal thinks she can just run away from us like this.”

Lightning sighs recalling how they got in this situation in the first place. “They really outsmarted me. Telling me that they want to head out for dessert so I told Yujin I’ll take care of it myself. The girls changed the destination only when I was driving knowing it would be harder for me to inform anybody. Thank god I manage to stealthily text you during the brief red light stops. Yujin wouldn’t have been able to enter anyways.”

Eunbi rubs her forehead, not believing that after everything, Sakura chooses to behave like how she was when she first came.

“Let’s hope we can find them before we need to call anybody else.”

“Found her!” Sungjin moves closer to the screens and expands the camera that has Sakura in it. “Turns out I didn’t even need the facial recognition software to find her.” He points at the crowd surrounding their principal. 

.

This is exactly what they hoped wouldn’t happen.

“Where is this!”

“Main dance floor level one. The area closest to the washroom!”

When the nearby clubgoers recognised her, Sakura only politely nodded her head before turning back to Hyewon for some direction. Unfortunately, the girl was equally clueless on how to act. Clubs are places for people to let loose but it seemed hard when people actually know you. 

So Hyewon hooks her arm onto Sakura’s, before tugging them towards Chaeyeon hoping that getting the three of them together would be the safest. That isn’t as good an idea in hindsight as Chaeyeon is in the center of the dance floor and this means that there are a lot of people around her. News of Sakura’s presence spread fast in this tight space and slowly, it becomes evident that more and more are looking in their direction. 

“Wow, I can’t believe I would be dancing with a Kim.” Some girl who is scantily dressed comments as she slowly moves into their personal space. Others naturally copy what she is doing and soon the friends are packed like sardines. Chaeyeon, who loves making big moves when she dances, finds herself losing interest when there is barely any space to move. Furthermore, judging from the looks on Hyewon and Sakura’s faces, she already knew something was wrong but is trying to keep it natural. The friends do not even need to speak to know they are all thinking the same: they need to get out of here as soon as possible.  

Sakura eyes her surrounding