“You seem down, Byunghun-ah.”

            L. Joe blew his brown bangs out of his face as he flipped through the channels on Dandy’s TV.

            “Don’t remind me,” he mumbled. “She couldn’t have gotten back together with Nam Woohyun, right?”

            “The West girl?”

            “Yeah.”

            Dandy shrugged. “Who knows. I doubt it though. From what you told me it seems as if she really loved you.”

            “You’re making me feel even worse for doing what I did to her,” L. Joe said, running his hands through his hair. “Hopefully Yongguk will get off my ing back now.”

            “So you did go to the West,” Dandy said, “to see her.”

            “I have been going,” L. Joe replied, “ever since the breakup. It’s just that one time where I got caught.”

            “L. Joe getting caught? That doesn’t seem like you,” Dandy said with a chuckle. “Don’t lose your game here now.”

            “Trying not to. But she gets me weak in the knees you know.” L. Joe sighed.

            “You love her too, do you not?”

            “I do.”

            “Then how are you two ever going to get back together?” Dandy asked.

            L. Joe shrugged. “I don’t think we ever will. Not when Yongguk has those photos of us. It’s like a bomb that can explode any minute.”

            “Then let the pictures leak. It can’t be helped that you two fell in love.”

            “It’s not that easy,” L. Joe said, frustrated. “Nam Woohyun is, unfortunately, still deeply attached to her. Dandy, he followed me over to the East because he suspected that I threatened his ex girlfriend to break up with him. He wouldn’t think twice before putting the blame on me. The dude would probably accuse me of seducing his girlfriend and blame the whole thing on me.”

            “Well that did kind of happen…”

            “Yeah but not the way it sounds,” L. Joe said, defending himself. “It just kind of…happened. I didn’t force it on myself or anything. She just grew onto me.”

            “Look,” Dandy said, “I understand that. I understand that there will be the risk of war. But it’s just going to be something that the East and West will have to accept. If anything, maybe it’ll even end the feud.”

            “Maybe…” L. Joe pondered about it and decided that thinking about the situation would be left to another day.

            He finally settled on a showing of Romeo and Juliet. Romeo was plucking a rose from a rosebush and giving it to Juliet. It was a bright red rose, in full bloom.

            “You know,” L. Joe said aloud to Dandy, “she’s a lot like a rose.”

            “The West girl?”

            “Yeah,” L. Joe said. “She’s beautiful, alluring. She has thorns that can hurt me. That does damage. But I put up with the pain because she’s just so captivating. Just like a rose.”

            “But no one knows about her,” Dandy added, “not even your closest friends.”

            L. Joe chuckled and said, “She’s the rose kept secret.”

            “Then you’ve got to pluck that rose before someone else does,” Dandy said. “Because it can’t stay secret forever.”

            “But if you pluck it…” L. Joe bit his lip. “It’ll wilt. And die.” She’ll get hurt.

            “Maybe,” Dandy said with a shrug. “But with enough love and care, it can stay with you forever.”

The two of them knew that they weren’t just talking about mere roses anymore.

“______, you seriously need to get out,” Doojoon said to me as I walked to the fridge for the umpteenth time to get something to eat on a Saturday night.

            “I’m fine,” I said.

            “Look, I know you’re all mopey about your breakup with Woohyun and everything, but you need to get back out there. That’s the only way you’ll get over him!” Doojoon explained.

            Breakup with Woohyun? Oh yeah. Everyone thinks I’m all mopey because of him. Go figure.

            “Doojoon, I said I’m fine,” I said.

            “No, you’re not. You see, this is where your awesome older brother steps in and takes control of the situation.” He held up a movie ticket. I stared at it, puzzled. “You have a date with Anh Jaehyo in an hour. Plenty of time to get ready.”

            “And who is this Anh Jaehyo?” I asked.

            “You’ll find out when you meet him at the movies tonight.”

            “And what makes you think I’m going?”

            “Because you don’t want to keep a poor guy waiting in front of a movie theater all by himself, now do you?”

            “Ugh,” I said, “I should’ve known that you would use the guilt card.”

            Doojoon gave me a satisfied smile, knowing that he’d won. “Exactly.”

Anh Jaehyo was pretty nice, and extremely handsome. He was a couple of years older than me, Doojoon’s age I think, and was much more mature than any of the other guys that I’ve dated. I kind of liked the maturity thing about him.

            After the movies, we went to go shopping at Hongdae and ate some spicy rice cakes. Then Jaehyo ran into some old friends and they started talking. He introduced me to them and everything but they kept talking and I got kind of bored so I wandered off to a couple of other shopping stalls. I was looking at a couple of bracelets.

            I suddenly heard some laughing coming from the bar next door. Some drunk guys had just all gotten kicked out and they were hanging out on the streets next to me. I paid no heed to them.

            But one of them decided to take an interest in me.

            “Hey there,” this one dude with a Mohawk said to me. His breath reeked of alcohol.

            I gave him the cold shoulder and started to walk away.

            “Oooooo she’s playing hard to get!” one of his friends said.

            “Yah, wait,” Mohawk dude said, forcefully grabbing my shoulder and turning me around.

            “Get your hands off of me,” I snapped.

            “C’mon babe don’t be like thisssss.” He began to advance towards me and I tried to push him off but he was a pretty big guy.

            “Get off of me!” I shouted. “Get off of—

            His weight was suddenly lifted off of me, his horrendous stench gone.

            “She said to get your hands off of her,” a guy in a hood was saying.

            “You can’t tell me what to do,” Mohawk dude replied. “You think a little shortie like you can go up against me?”

            “Why won’t you try?”

            Mohawk dude held up his fist for a punch and the guy in the hood easily dodged it. They started fighting but the Mohawk dude was clearly at a disadvantage. His punches weren’t nearly as well angled as the guy in the hood’s. That was when Mohawk’s friends started to jump in and help him but the guy in the hood took them all down just as easily.

            With all of Mohawk dude’s friends on the ground in pain, the guy in the hood finally looked up at me, and that was when my thoughts were confirmed: it was L. Joe.

            The hell?

            Across the street, some policemen were making their way towards the scene. L. Joe grabbed my hand and the two of us ran away from the area.

            Once we were far enough from Mohawk dude and his friends, I yanked my hand free from L. Joe’s.

            “What the hell are you doing?” I snapped.

            “I just saved your ing life,” L. Joe replied.

            “You know that’s not the answer I was looking for,” I said. “What are you doing back in the West again, huh?”

            L. Joe looked away. He wasn’t looking at me.

            I rolled my eyes, having enough of his antics. “Whatever,” I said, “I’m leaving.”

            “I saw you with him.”

            “What?” I asked. “Were you following me?”

            “No.”

            “You saw me with Anh Jaehyo,” I said. “You were following me.”

            “No.”

            “You’re a really bad liar,” I said.

           “Didn’t think you’d move on that quickly,” L. Joe said. “He seems nice. Not as handsome as me though.”

            “Why can’t you just admit it?” I asked him. “Why can’t you just admit that you came back to the West because you wanted to see me?”

            “Because it’s not true.”

            “Then why the hell would you be here in the first place?”

            L. Joe was being awfully stubborn and failed to reply to my questions.

            “You,” I said, “are one bipolar bastard.”

            “Look ______, I’m sorry.”

            “No,” I said. “I’m not going to listen to you anymore.”

            “I never wanted to hurt you.”

            “Too late,” I said. “You already did.”

            “I can explain,” L. Joe said. “Why I did what I did.”

            “What do you mean?” I asked him, puzzled.

            L. Joe looked around cautiously, then pulled me around the corner so that no one else could hear or see us.

            “That Yongguk guy I told you about before,” L. Joe said, “his men saw us at Jeju Island together and they took pictures of us.”

            “So?”

            “He threatened me,” L. Joe continued, “he threatened to publicly release those photos and create chaos for the both of us if I didn’t…if I didn’t break up with you and stop seeing you.”

            “Wait,” I said, trying to comprehend this new piece of information. “Does the guy want war?”

            “He just wants me to be miserable. He doesn’t care if it’ll create war. As long as I’m brokenhearted and suffering, he’ll do whatever it takes,” L. Joe said.

            “Well,” I said, “were you?”

            “Was I what?”

            “Were you brokenhearted,” I said.

            “You know very well how I felt during the past few weeks.”

            “But I still want to hear you say it,” I demanded. “You still used me. That, you can’t change. I risked my life for you and with just an ‘I’m sorry’ you expect me to take you back?”

            L. Joe stood there, not replying.

“My date is probably looking for me right now so I’m going to need to go find him,” I said, getting sick of his bull. “Goodbye, Byunghun.”

            I turned to leave, but then L. Joe spoke up.

            “I never gave you permission to call me Byunghun, did I?” he asked me.

            I froze. Where is he going with this? “No,” I said, “you...actually never said anything about it.”          

            “Do you know why?”

            “Tell me,” I said.

            “Byunghun,” L. Joe said. “Lee Byunghun. It’s what my parents called me and when they died…I felt like the name was sacred. Something that was only meant for them and only them. So I didn’t allow for anyone else to call me Byunghun and when someone did, it pissed me off to no extent. They literally had no right to call me by my real name. But with you, it was different.

            “Everything is always different when it comes to you, ______. When you call me Byunghun, I accept it. Because I know it’s coming from a person that truly, truly loves me. You love me.”

            “How are you so sure?”

            “Because you look at me the same way I look at you. And I love you.” He took a step forward and held onto my shoulders, his eyes twinkling in the moonlight. “I love you, ______.”

            My shoulders melted like butter at his touch. I fell into him, wrapping my arms around his broad back and sinking into his warm chest. It felt so good to touch him again, to be surrounded by his scent. “I love you too,” I whispered, just enough for him to hear.

            “Please let me spend the night with you,” he said softly.

            “I guess I can just send Jaehyo a text telling him that I can go home by myself…”

            “Or you can just forget about him?”

            I laughed, which made L. Joe laugh too. But the both of us knew that this night was an important and crucial one. It could be the last peaceful night that the two of us will have together before pandemonium strikes.