With so many scenarios playing through my head, there was no way I could find enough peace of mind to fall back to sleep. Clearly something bad had occurred, something that affected Ji Yong deeply, but he purposely left me in the dark. I was an outsider. This is what I asked for, and he followed through with it, but why am I feeling even more anxious? I wanted to call and ask someone but it was barely an appropriate hour of the morning, and so I fired up the laptop. The only thing left to do was pray that whatever it was wasn’t big enough to make it to national headline news; I couldn’t stand the thought of history repeating itself just when the boys were taking their first steps forward.

“Thank god…” I said to myself. A wave of relief rushes over me as the regular pictures of old businessmen and information on politics and stocks bombarded the home page of a Korean news site. There was nothing Big Bang related on the entertainment news sections either, it was just the old rumors of a comeback. I convinced myself that I was over reacting and closed the browser.

For the entire morning I occupied myself with cooking, cleaning and dancing to loud music which I blasted off the speakers from the living room. Being placed under house arrest wasn’t necessarily the best feeling, but in my powerless state, it was the only thing I could do to help. That was until my phone rang sometime in the late afternoon with a call from CL unni.

“Rika, can you come out? 678* is on the way to Ji Yong’s to pick you up. Something’s happened.” Finally, some answers. Despite Ji Yong’s warning curiousity got the best of me and I immediately agreed, hung up, changed and ran downstairs towards the awaiting sedan. On the ride towards 2NE1’s old dorm I sent a quick text to Ji Yong.

I’m with CL unni. We’re going to their old dorm. I’ll be home soon.

The sight of the girls when I came through their front door was grave. Their managers were sitting in silence at the kitchen table, while they were pacing around the living room or all tensed up on the couch.

“Erika! You’re here!” Bom unni exclaimed. Everyone in the room turned their heads towards a very confused me.

“Someone better tell me what the hell is happening here. Everyone is acting weird today,” I said, now a little frustrated.

"Erika, they got caught," CL said.

“Huh?” I took a quick glance around the room to make sense of it and then I finally realized someone was missing. 

“Where is she?"

"She's in her room sleeping."

"Well, can we do anything about it? There must be something we can do."

"There are paparazzi shots of them at NB. We can’t even lie anymore because it’s so obvious.”

“But there’s nothing on the news. I checked.”

“Sanjangnim’s trying to stop it,” Bom said.

“But why!?” Dara asked. She was frustrated and I could actually understand where she was coming from. There was nothing wrong about this relationship at all. I could understand why they wouldn’t want to announce it to the world, but why did they have to keep it so secretive? Then I realized something.

“It’s because of her,” I reasoned. “He's older, his career is more or less stable but she’s still trying to make a name of herself away from you guys. This news would bury her.”

“It’s not fair…” Dara whined.

“It really isn’t,” I agreed. Knowing that she was in her room wide awake all stressed, confused and helpless, I let myself in. The skies were so grey and the rain so threatening when I looked out of her bedroom window. I could’ve sworn there was a sun when I was in the car just an hour ago. Minzy was still in her pyjamas; long black hair loosely tied into a ponytail and in her hand was her cell phone which she strongly gripped. She looked so pitiful. I took a huge breath before I closed the door behind me. At this rate she’s not doing any good to anyone. Today, I was going to play the .

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked her. Minzy turned and looked at me in surprise.

 “Unni…”

“I’m asking you a question.”

“I- I’m…I don’t know.” She looked down at her phone again.

“What were you hoping for? That Young Bae oppa would call and tell you that everything’s okay? That he loves you and he’ll always be there for you? If you just took one good look at what was happening outside you’d see that it’s clearly not okay.”

“Unni, why are you doing this!? Why are you trying to make me feel even worse!?”

“Because I’m not like them. All the unnis and mangers have been with you, supporting you and protecting you because you’re the adorable maknae, but all I see in front of me right now is someone weak. You’re someone who waits for others to solve your own problems.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Really? Because that’s exactly what I’m seeing right now.” With tears b her eyes Minzy looked away from me and curled up underneath her blanket.

“Don’t pretend like you know how I feel. You have no idea!”

“You’re right, I don’t know because I’m not as blessed as you. But I know people like you, and I really don’t like them. People who think they can do whatever they want and then don’t own up to the consequences,” I said and walked out of her room, slamming the door behind me. She needed to stop being a coward.

By evening there was still no news from the company or Ji Yong, but nothing had leaked online either. We ordered some dinner and Minzy had yet to come out of her room.

“I’m going to talk to her, cheer her up a little bit,” Dara unni finally decided. She was about to get up from her chair when CL unni stopped her.

“Unni, just leave her alone. She’s not 16 anymore, Minzy can handle it,” I said.

“Erika’s right. It’ll be good for her,” CL unni agreed.

“The poor girl…” Bom unni murmured while playing with her food.

“If people knew about them, I wonder what they would think?” I asked.

“It’ll be huge. They’ll lose some fans as well I’m sure,” CL unni said. “People will be judging them and I don’t think Minzy can take it that well yet. Most importantly, she wouldn’t be happy any longer.”

“But Young Bae will be there for her, right?” Dara asked.

“Of course. But it won’t be easy,” CL explained. Out of the managers, only 678 stayed until midnight. I didn’t want to go home yet, not until I could get Minzy back on her feet. Now I knew why Ji Yong wouldn’t let me out of the apartment. If another scandal had popped out right after this one, he wouldn’t be able to protect me, and I would be brought into this world where everyone was watching your every move. Ji Yong didn’t want me to be trapped. I hadn’t realized I had fallen asleep on their couch, until I felt myself being lifted up by warm and familiar arms.

“You must be so tired,” Ji Yong whispered in my ear. I faintly shook my head then huddled myself towards him.

“Minzy…” I mumbled.

“She’s with Young Bae.” I heard him say goodbye to everyone and then took me out of their dorm. The time in the car read 1.30 am as we drove under the street lights of Hongdae. What an exhausting day.

“You got the car back,” I commented. Ji yong had stopped the Bentley on the opposite side of the river today near a large bridge that was decorated with flashing yellow lights.

“Nam Gook oppa brought it back early in the morning. Apparently yesterday you had a stomach ache during our walk so we had to abandon it,” he said.

“If you say so.” I chuckled. Ji Yong rolled down the car windows to let the humid night breeze in, and we both leaned back our chairs and faced one another. “You have bags under your eyes,” I pointed out.

“Can you blame me? After last night and the mess that was today I’m surprised I’m still awake.”

“Last night was… something else. Do you know how much of a mess we made? It took me a while to clean up.”

“Did anything break?” Ji Yong asked worriedly, though the smile on his face betrayed any signs of concern.

“My . They were really nice ones as well.”

“I’ll buy you new ones, don’t worry.” I smiled and took his hand in mind.

“What’s going to happen to Young Bae oppa and Minzy?”

“Don’t worry about them, they’ll be fine.”

“Good.” I should’ve known to trust Ji Yong and to stop being restless. “What did you do?”

“It was difficult. Hate is a strong word Ri Ah but you had no idea how angry I was throughout the whole thing. I just felt dirty, like I was dealing with plain bad people. In the end Hyun Suk hyung and I managed to cut a deal with them.”

“Oh?”

“They want to have the exclusives on our comeback, and they wanted it fast. We had to push it forward…”

“…When?”

“Next month… I need to stay here Ri Ah, there’s just so much to do.” When the news sunk in the world suddenly got a whole lot darker and all I could hear was white noise. I laid there frozen, and without realizing it I’ve let go of his hand. At this point it would've been nice to take my anger out at someone, but who? Minzy wasn't the one to blame for this, it was just the way it was.

“No, of course.” I sighed. “Do what you have to do, I understand.”

“But I’ll come to your graduation-.”

“No. You don’t need to do that.” I smiled a little and touched his cheek. “It’s alright. It’s finished and that’s okay. We promised, remember, that we would have a clean break. It’s just a shame this happened so fast.”

“I really didn’t want to do it like this. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to turn out. Trust me, I’m going to take some time off work and stay with you until you have to back.” I shook my head. What was the point in dragging it out now?

“Just let me leave as soon as possible, it’s what’s best for the both of us.”

“Ri Ah…”

“It’s what I want.” Ji Yong looked away from me and just stared into the city view that lay across the river.

“I guess you got what you asked for, you’re finally free now,” he said.

“Yeah, I guess I am.” But for some reason that thought did in no sense make me feel liberated.

*678 is the nickname for 2NE1's manager

AN: Enjoy everyone, and thanks again! As you guys can see we're almost coming to an end =(. I'm somewhere in between writing a sequel, a short epilogue or just a whole new story. What do you guys think?