The girls rushed back to backstage after the little interview following their opening act just now. While they changed their clothes to a rather pure looking, long, flowy gown, the fans and invited guests were served with a rather entertaining and insightful behind-the-scenes montage throughout the album making, from recording session to jacket photoshoot to music video recording. It was quite hectic backstage, but Hyosung appreciated the little chaos. It kept her mind off him, and it made her more alert than ever. Just now, during the opening act, her eyes automatically wandered at the VIP seatings, wondering if he came.

Her heart broke a little to find out that he didn’t. But on the other hand, she was glad that she could put her whole focus on her performance. Those days spent meeting him every single day but acting like strangers towards each other were plain torture to her. She didn’t even know how things came to that, because ever since that incident at his home, they just did.

Hyosung and the rest of the girls paid close attention to their earpiece, waiting for the cue for them to appear on stage again. White smokes from dry ice began to fill the stage as the girls entered, and then the smoke slowly cleared away revealing the four members of Secret; Hyosung, Zinger, Jieun and Sunhwa, all clad in their lovely dresses, ready to perform a ballad piece.

And then suddenly, from the far corner of the stadium, Hyosung saw a source of light which leaked into the dark space as a door opened. And then entered a tall, lean guy. She couldn’t see his face because of the shady lighting and the distance, but she knew it was him.

Adam.

Hyosung would have described the relationship between Adam and the Secret members to be good. He lost his temper sometimes, but at the end of the day he would order pizza for the girls or brought them for ice cream. He didn’t seem to enjoy doing those one bit, but he did understand the effect those gestures brought to the girls. The girls began to like him too for them to be able to make fun of his brooding and strict image in front of him sometimes. And on rare occasion, he would smile or laugh at the girls’ antics, or Hyosung’s, whenever they had their private lunch session in the studio together.

Yes, everything was good, was going well until this happened.

Sunhwa was sitting on one of the swivels chair at the control desk of the recording studio, fighting back her tears as Secret’s manager, Sungjin, who was a couple of years older than Adam was standing right in front of her, acting like a shield for her against Adam’s incoming, exploding rage. The rest of the girls were just watching with their head hanging low.

“Does screaming at her makes everything right again?!” Sungjin’s voice thundered.

“I can set her mind straight for sure!” Adam replied in a similar manner.

“You’re not even sure if it’s her fault! She said she didn’t do such thing but you keep blaming her!”

“She was the last one who occupied the studio last night! How did those tracks gone missing? If not her then who else? A ghost?”

The faces of the two men grew redder as rage began to fill them up to their head. Sunhwa used the recording studio last night to record a short song for a variety show she attended, and next thing in the morning, Adam found that almost half of the recording he had been workking on gone missing. Hyosung couldn’t believe that Sunhwa did that too, but right now, nobody could explain how that happened. Sunhwa might seem clumsy and all, but she wasn’t that careless.

“There’s no use screaming like that! Even if she actually did it, you’re being too much!”

“How can I not?! Do you have any idea how I- UGH!” Adam restlessly raked his hair back with his fingers, “Useless! Both of you! You and your manager both are useless! Hopeless!”

“!” Sungjin stepped forward and pulled on Adam’s collar to him. Hyosung quickly stepped between them, gently persuading Sungjin to calm down. Her slim, fragile fingers caressing Sungjin’s arm up and down, asking him to let go of Adam.

“Oppa, stop it, please,” Hyosung persuadaed him. Jieun and Zinger took part too. “Oppa, let him go, please? What if the management knows about this?” Jieun said, trying to change his mind.

Sungjin sighed heavily and pushed Adam away as he let go of his collar.

“I can’t belive I’ve been working with these idiots for almost two months,” Adam muttered, but Sungjin heard him clearly. He was so riled up that he raised his arm high, ready to release a punch. The girls panicked and quickly hugged him and pulled him back, trying to stop from things getting worse. Hyosung decided that she needed to do more than persuading her manager to stop them from fighting.

Hyosung grabbed Adam’s hand and gave him a stern look, “You’re coming with me.” She dragged him out of the room, causing a slight confusion for him and Sungjin.

“Hey! Hyosung! Where are you going with him?!” Hyosung heard her manager yelled from the back, but she was sure that the girls were doing a great job at stopping him from following her.

“Let me talk to him, oppa!”

“We lost about half of our recordings and some mixings which are almost done, and you brought me here?” Adam’s deep voice pierced painfully into her eardrums. Hyosung cringed at the pain and frantically rubbed her ear with her palm. Adam couldn’t care less of Hyosung’s reaction as he stared incredulously at the ice cream shop infront of them.

Ice cream? He kept repeating in his head that he wasn’t five.

“Huh! Just look at you! You look like you will get burned with all those fire in no time. Naturally, you need some ice cream to cool down!” Hyosung explained her logic before she proceeded in dragging him into the ice cream store. Since it was still early in the morning, there was not a single soul in the shop apart from the staffs. Adam refused to take another step, which gained him a stern look from Hyosung again.

“What? Am I five? If I have to cool down I’d rather have cold beer instead.” He stated flatly.

“Cold beer!” Hyosung repeated in a new englightenment, “That sounds good too. We’ll get both!”

After multiple attempt at trying to budge him from his spot, Hyosung finally managed to bring him into the ice cream shop after she promised him that he would get his beers soon.

They were sitting on the paved steps, facing the man-made lake of a park lush with greeneries in the middle of the city. This was her favorite spot to just let time pass as she stared listlessly at the lake and its beautiful water fountain during her trainee days, when things always got tough. These days, most people could recognize her, so she couldn’t just easily go out to public spaces.

“Are you sure we can stay here? You’re a celebrity and this place is something you usually avoid,” Adam asked before he took another sip of his cold beer, with no concern intended. He wouldn’t care whatever happened to her, but he didn’t want to get scooped up in annoying scandals or being chased by reporters.

“Oh, it’s fine!” Hyosung chirped cheerfully as she reached for yet another can of beer and opened it, “It’s still early in the morning, everyone is locked up in their offices. There are only retired ahjusshi doing little exercises here,” Hyosung threw her head back, downing big gulps of the cold beer and then sighed contentedly. Now that Adam was paying attention at the amount of the empty cans in front of them, he realised that Hyosung had drank more than him.

So much for ‘cooling him down’.

“How are you feeling now? Are you still angry?” Hyosung asked.

Adam ignored her question. How could he not be angry? He spent sleepless nights bringing out the best for each song, and all that effort simply went down the drain.

“Sunhwa wouldn’t do such thing. She’s a little clumsy, but she would never let such thing to happen. Just wait, in a couple of days, we’ll know,”

Adam sighed and emptied his beer can before he opened the second one. “ this .” He muttered under his breath, in English, because he had that tiny little hope in his heart that she didn’t understand his cussing, nor heard him.

“Are you angry?” Hyosung tilted her head to the side, trying to see Adam’s long face beside her.

“C’mon, answer me. Are you? Huh?” Hyosung playfully nudged his shoulder with her own, “Don’t frown so much, you’ll get wrinkles fast,” Hyosung laughed at her own words when Adam could only rolled his eyes.

“Awww, you’re so cute when you’re angry,” Hyosung reached out to pinch his cheek, but he stopped her before doing so.

“Hyosung, you’re drunk.” He warned.

“I am not!” She retorted stubbornly, and then stood up. She set her beer can aside and then walked infront of him and stood there. “How about I cheer you up? I’ll sing and dance for you, okay?”

Adam palmed his face. “Don’t... Just, get back right here and sit down quietly.”

“Have you ever listened to our previous songs? I doubt you did. You must think that your songs are so good there’s no need to bother with the crap Secret did before!” Hyosung said mockingly and then laughed at herself. She did felt a bit giddy, a little light as if her feet wasn’t walking on the ground, but she wasn’t drunk yet, as she had strongly convinced herself.

This girl is hopeless.

Adam sighed.

“Madonna-donna! Madonna-donna-donna!” Hyosung sang and even danced the actual choreography for the song, and then suddenly mixed in their latest song, “You don’t know me yet, you don’t know how popular I am! I’m not the kind of easy girl for you to see, no, no, no! Love is always hard to protect~ Ah, you’re driving me crazy! Why are you following me? You follow me and say... um, what was the lyrics again?”

Adam hung his head low to hid the smile that began to crept on his lips. He was arrogant and rude, he admitted, but to be honest, he did listened to their previous songs. As their producer, he felt the need to. He admitted the girls were talented, and they did their parts well in their previous songs, but they have the potential to go further. That was one of the reasons why he was so strict with them.

“Are you smiling?” Hyosung stepped closer to him and bent her body to take a peek at his face, “Huh? Are you laughing? You are, aren’t you?” Hyosung smiled her trademark gummy smile.

That gorgeous smile again.

“Let me see it! Hey, let me see your smile, do you know how hard it is to make you smile? Show me!” Hyosung giggled as she leaned further towards him but lost her balance and fell forward, right into Adam’s arms. He immediately held her tight and close to him. Her knees were touching the ground in between his legs, her chest pressed to his, her palms perfectly glued on his wide chest, their faces dangerously close, and his eyes, oh, his intense, stern gaze bore deep into her soul.

“You’re drunk,” he told her again, his voice calm and quiet, and then added, “So stay still.”

The fingers on his chest curled with determination, gathering the fabric of his shirt into her tight little fists. She stretched her neck towards him and pulled him closer to her, and planted a kiss on his lips.

The brief, intimate contact brought Hyosung into her senses again. What was she doing? She asked herself while searching the answer in Adam’s eyes.

“Do you like me?” Adam asked. Hyosung was too stunned at the thing she just did, or the feelings she had just realised that she indeed liked him. She liked being with him, she liked listening to him, she wanted to know more about him and if possible, she would very much like to kiss him again. But only if he felt the same towards her.

Adam took a deep breath, and released it.

“Don’t,” he simply advised her as he peeled off her fingers from him and then stood up and walked away, leaving Hyosung kneeled on the ground still.

The management did a thorough investigation regarding the missing tracks, and found out that someone had slipped into the recording studio after Sunhwa had finished using it the night the tracks went missing. He purposely did that, knowing that the blame would fall on Sunhwa. He was actually a sound engineer who was sick of Adam for constantly treating him badly, and he deleted those files to revenge on him.

Sunhwa demanded a brand new pair of shoes as an apology from Adam, and he had no choice but to comply to the young girl. Hyosung, on the other hand, was still left in a bunch of mess with her feelings. He pushed her away the moment she realised how much she liked him, leaving her in a constant state of denial. There was no explanation, nor a reason as to why he told her to not like him. So she left him a banana milk at the door with a note on it saying, ‘If I continue to like you, will you hate me?’

The day after that, Hyosung and the rest of the girls were told to stay at home and rest, because Adam was down with a bad fever.