Jaejoong

            At first, Jaejoong thought it was cute that the girls from the lobby earlier were following him.  He was flattered that a couple of Americans knew enough about him to follow him around.  Now, he was just annoyed.  They didn’t come over and talk to him, and when he tried to talk to them, they were too shy to speak.   That wasn’t the problem, though.  He was used to that.  The problem was that they had been following him around the hotel for hours.  Seriously.  He was afraid to go to his room, because they’d follow him there and he didn’t want them to know where he was staying.  He couldn’t go to the bathroom without them waiting outside it for him to come out. 

He asked the hotel staff if there was anywhere he could go to hide for a while and they pointed out that the basement was a good place to hide.  No one really went down to the basement because its heater hadn’t been .  Maybe if he went there, the girls would get too cold to stalk him anymore.  He opened the door to the basement and stared down into the inky blackness.  It was a good thing he had brought a flashlight.  He started down the stairs and heard the door slam shut behind him.  That sounded sort of ominous.  He made his way past all the machinery and the cobwebs.  Why did this place have cobwebs already?  Wasn’t it supposed to be new?  He supposed it was because no one came down here.  He could see why.  This place was cold and creepy. 

            Jaejoong came across a nook in between a silent generator and some other piece of machinery that looked promising.  It was just large enough for him to squeeze into, but it looked like it opened up into a sort of open space in the back.  He hadn’t heard any footsteps or noises indicating that the girls had followed him down there, but he wasn’t about to take any chances.  He squeezed through the opening and settled down to wait for the girls to give up on looking for him.

            Shandi and Robyn had split up in their search for Jaejoong.  They had realized that he thought they were being stalkers and merely wanted to apologize for bothering him.  They had even gotten approval from Yunho and Changmin (though Changmin’s approval sounded more like he wanted them to scare Jaejoong more and was amused by their attempts at stalking him).  They searched the entire hotel in less than an hour with neither of them seeing any sign of Jaejoong.  Finally they met in front of the one place left to check:  the basement. 

            “You go first.”  Robyn was more than a little scared to descend into the cold darkness that was the basement.

            “How about we go together?”  Shandi suggested.  She didn’t look scared, but she felt it.  They grabbed each other’s hand and held on tight as they closed the door quietly behind them.  It wouldn’t have stayed open on its own anyway.  Stepping as silently as possible, they worked their way down the stairs and into the basement proper.  Without a flashlight, or any kind of light for that matter, they couldn’t see anything.  Shandi wished that Robyn had thought to bring a flashlight.  She could usually count on Robyn to come prepared for whatever they do.  That was why she almost never prepared for anything. 

            Both girls jumped at every noise they heard, but neither was prepared for the flashlight beamed directly at them from the darkness.  They screamed and the flashlight jumped as if their scream had startled the one holding it.  They huddled together, Robyn almost in tears, and begged for the dark shape with the flashlight to not hurt them. 

            When he realized it was the two girls who had nearly given him a heart attack as he climbed out of his hiding spot, Jaejoong sighed. 

            “Calm down, calm down.  It’s okay.  It’s just me.”  Apparently, he had scared them a lot more than they scared him.  He pointed the flashlight away from them as they looked up. 

            “Jaejoong?”  The darker-haired girl asked.  He nodded.  Of course it was Jaejoong.  Who else at this hotel would look like he did? 

            “Are you okay?”  As much as they annoyed him earlier, he felt bad about scaring them. 

            “Yeah.  We wanted to apologize for earlier.  We didn’t mean to bother you.”  The blue-eyed girl stood up and stuck out her hand.  “I’m Robyn, and this is Shandi.  We’re huge fans of yours.  And, well, sorry for being such a nuisance.” 

            He sighed again.  He was still annoyed with them, at least a little.  And why was he the one to calm them down when they came down there to stalk him in the first place?   

            “It’s okay.  Let’s get out of here.”  He led the way to the stairs without waiting for an answer.  They followed him down there, and they could follow him up.  He got to the door and tried the handle.  It didn’t move.  That wasn’t a good sign.  He pushed against the door.  It still didn’t move.  Apparently, the door locked from the outside.  He was trapped in the basement with a couple of creepy fangirls.  This was not his day. 

            “We’re locked in.”  He turned around to the girls.  They had been watching, silently, while he tried the door. 

            “Maybe there’s another exit.”  The shorter one, Shandi, had a point.  Didn’t some basements open to the outside?  They could go out and come back in the front doors of the hotel. 

            “It can’t hurt to look.”  The three of them walked back down the stairs.  It took a few minutes of searching, but they found the entrance to a tunnel that looked like it headed away from the hotel.  It had to open up somewhere.  For the moment, it was their best bet on finding a way out. 

            Jaejoong, as he had the only flashlight, led the way down the tunnel.  They walked for what seemed like forever in silence.  He was still a little upset that they had chased him into this mess and then expected him to get them out of it.  At least, he thought they expected that.  He hadn’t really spoken to them much.  After about an hour of walking, they came to a trapdoor.  It opened without too much effort on his part.  As soon as he climbed out, he regretted his decision to try the tunnel.  There was a full force blizzard going on outside.  They were far safer in the tunnel.  He heard a slam behind him.  The girls had let the trapdoor slam shut behind them.  At this point, he wasn’t surprised when it turned out that the door had locked behind them when it shut. 

            The two girls shared a look.  “Umm.  What do we do now?”  Robyn asked and Jaejoong sighed again.  He was going to have to do everything for them, wasn’t he?

            “We find shelter.  Pick a direction and start walking.”

            “Shouldn’t we walk back towards the hotel?”

            “We don’t know what way to go.  Didn’t you notice the tunnel curving as we walked?  Any direction we pick could take us back or lead us further away.  But, we can’t stay here.”  Jaejoong realized the girls weren’t dressed for walking out here.  He wasn’t dressed for this weather either, for that matter.  If they didn’t find shelter soon, they’d freeze to death.  So, he started walking.  As much as he was annoyed with them, he was sort of glad the girls were looking to him for leadership.  It made him a little better that he was the competent one in this situation. 

            Since the wind was so loud, he didn’t hear so much as feel the crack that came from behind him.  He turned around just in time to see the two girls falling into the lake that he hadn’t even realized they were walking on.  Faster than he thought he could’ve reacted, he grabbed their hands and pulled them out of the freezing water.  They were shivering uncontrollably, but looked like they could stand.  He helped them to their feet.  The situation had just gone from very dangerous to extremely deadly.  If he didn’t get them to someplace warm very soon, they both were going to die of hypothermia. 

            For the moment, however, the best they could do was to keep walking.  Hopefully they could find someplace that would give some kind of shelter.  Also, Jaejoong didn’t like being on the ice.  They walked a little ways further and came across a dark shape directly in front of them.  It was some kind of log cabin.  He found the door and forced it open.  The girls filed in behind him, looking as if they wanted to pass out.  He shut the door, bolted it, and his flashlight to get a look around.  He noticed the fireplace, the stacks of wood against the back wall and the single blanket sitting on top of the stack. 

            “I’ll get a fire going.”  Jaejoong found the flint and steel under the blanket and, with a little work, soon had a decent sized fire burning in the fireplace.  He turned back towards the girls with a smug look on his face that died the instant he saw them.  They had fallen asleep with their backs against the stack of wood.  He had to wake them up.  To fall asleep in their condition was tantamount to freezing to death.  He rushed over to them and felt for a pulse.  Both of them felt like ice, but he could still barely feel their hearts beating.  What was he going to do?  There was a thick blanket, but with their wet clothes, that blanket wasn’t going to do them much good.  Even if they had dry clothes, they were too cold to generate enough body heat to warm themselves up in time.  First things first:  he had to get those wet clothes off them.  The clothes were only up what little body heat they had left.  He dragged them both closer to the fire and took off their jackets. 

            Jaejoong paused.  If he didn’t do this, the girls would die.  But, it was so inappropriate!  Not that he wouldn’t mind seeing them.  What male wouldn’t?  If he had to hazard a guess, he would say that they would not be happy when they woke up.  But, at least they would wake up.