Maybe coming to Korea wasn’t such a good idea, after all…

            Robyn’s breath caught in .  “They saw us?  Who’s they and what exactly did they see?”  Judging by the uneasy silence from Yunho and Junsu, it was bad news.  Yunho spoke up first.

            “A couple of the hotel staff saw you leaving with Junsu yesterday and, when you guys didn’t return before the blizzard, they posted it all over the Internet.  What’s worse is that somehow they managed to get a picture of you two returning to the lodge.”  That was some seriously bad news.  Now, a picture of her wrapped in a blanket with Junsu after being trapped all night in a blizzard with him was circulating around the Internet.  It had ‘scandal’ written all over Junsu’s clean image. 

            “Plus, SM called.  They want to speak with you.”  Robyn felt like she had been punched in the stomach.  Maybe her fear of SM was a little irrational, especially when her favorite band ever came from them, but she couldn’t help it.  After hearing all the stories about what went on behind the scenes in SM, the last thing Robyn wanted to do was go to SM and be ‘spoken’ to.  They’d probably hack her body up into little pieces and use it as fertilizer for their garden.  Apparently, Junsu saw how afraid she was.

            “It’s okay.  We’ll be right there with you the whole time.”  He reached out and took her hand.  “Nothing’s going to happen to you, I promise.”  Sure.  Why don’t guys understand that there are some promises that are just plain impossible to keep, even if they try?  No one can protect someone from everything. 

            “Robyn, how quickly can you get packed?  SM is sending a car.  It’ll be here in about thirty minutes.”  Yunho glanced at the mess around the room.  He was probably thinking something like ‘they’ve only been here for 24 hours and they’ve already made this much mess?’  She had to admit:  her and Shandi’s mess was pretty impressive.  Robyn had thrown pretty much all of her clothes on the floor the day before in her haste to find her overcoat and boots so she could play in the snow.  Not to mention all the stuff strewn around the bathroom.  She was a little embarrassed.  Usually, she was a lot neater on trips. 

            “I don’t need that long.”  She headed for the bathroom to try and tackle that mess first.

            “We’ll leave you to it, then.  Be out in front of your room in twenty minutes.”  With that (plus a lingering glance at Robyn from Junsu), Yunho and Junsu walked out the door. 

            “We’ve only been out of the U.S. for two days.  How did you manage to get into this after only two days?”  Shandi’s tone was more lighthearted than her words suggested.  She was trying to keep Robyn’s spirit up.  It was hard to be lighthearted when one had SM hanging over one’s head.  They packed the rest of their things in silence with only the occasional sigh of exasperation when something fell or wouldn’t fit in their suitcases the way it had before.  It took them a surprisingly short amount of time to finish.  They had to wait a good ten minutes for Yunho and Junsu to come get them. 

            Junsu gave Robyn an awkward, but reassuring smile when he saw her.  “You got everything?”  She nodded, not trusting her voice at the moment.

            “Okay.  So, there are reporters swarming the lodge.  The hotel has managed to keep them outside for the time being, but it’s going to take some major luck for us to get out the back door unseen.  Jaejoong, Yoochun, and Changmin are going to be bait for us.  They’ll go out the front and take one car, hopefully drawing the reporters away from the back.  We’ll use the distraction to slip away unnoticed.”  Yunho said this in a calm voice, but Robyn detected a hint of strain.  He wasn’t sure the plan was going to work. 

            “Do you have any sunglasses or a scarf to wrap around your head?  Just in case?”  Robyn pulled out her favorite scarf from her suitcase.

            “I don’t have any sunglasses.”  She wrapped the scarf so that it was covering her hair and most of her face.  “This okay?”  Junsu gave her a quick look, then dug something out of the bag he was carrying.

            “Here.  Take my sunglasses.”  Normally, she would have protested.  But, after seeing the look on Yunho’s face, she decided not to.

            “Thanks.” 

            Changmin came out of the next room with a duffel bag off one shoulder.  If Robyn hadn’t known better, she would have said he was going to the slopes.

            “Hey.  Jaejoong and Yoochun are already on their way downstairs and the cars are here.  It’s now or never.”  He punched Junsu in the shoulder and continued on towards the stairs. 

            Junsu rubbed his shoulder and winced.  “Let’s head out.”

            Yunho led the way to the back stairs and started down them two at a time.  Shandi and Robyn shared a glance and followed at a much slower, much safer (especially with luggage) pace.  The car that Changmin had mentioned was more of a van than anything else.  A white van.  In other words, it was a kidnapper van.  It looked like those vans in the movies that always carried little kids and helpless women away to be murdered.  The back doors were open and the driver stood next to it, waiting.  Robyn did not want to ride to SM in the back of a kidnapper van.  She and Shandi stopped and looked at each other.  They had both been thinking the same thing. 

            “Come on.  Do you want to be seen out here?”  Yunho grabbed both their suitcases and threw them into the van, before climbing in himself.

            “Come on.  It’s okay.”  Junsu gave them both an encouraging push towards the van.  Robyn sighed.  If she didn’t make it out of this alive, she would blame Junsu.  It was all his fault that she was in this mess in the first place.  She held onto Shandi’s hand and they both climbed into the van.  The doors slammed ominously shut behind them.  Junsu and Yunho had already claimed two of the seats, leaving only two open.  Robyn didn’t know if they had devised it on purpose or not, but there were only two seats left: one next to each of them.  Of course, Shandi sat next to Yunho.  That only left the seat next to Junsu.  Robyn glanced at him.  He was pretending not to notice her dilemma.  So, he had done it on purpose.  She sat down and buckled her seat belt, trying to pretend that she wasn’t sitting so close to him.  It didn’t work.  She could feel her face heating up again.  Stupid face.  Stupid blushing.  She had a feeling that this was going to be the longest two-hour kidnapper van ride ever. 

            As the van pulled around towards the front of the lodge, she caught a glimpse of a swarm of reporters surrounding a black suburban.  That must’ve been the car that the others were taking.  The bait car.  She smiled a little at that.  It was more than a little amusing thinking of Jaejoong, Yoochun and Changmin as bait.  She got a mental image of the three of them as fishing lures dangling in front of a school of evil reporter fish.  She almost laughed at that.

The van drove around a bend in the road and she lost sight of them.  The awkward, pensive silence stretched out around them.  Robyn was so preoccupied with the fact that Junsu was so close to her, that she almost forgot about what was awaiting her in Seoul.  Almost.  The knowledge would sneak up on her.  Just when she thought she was safely ensconced in the awkwardness of her thoughts about Junsu, it would pop up and drag her kicking and screaming towards the unnerving SM ‘talk’.  Who would have thought that she would rather face a school of hungry, evil reporter fish than go have a ‘talk’ with someone at SM?