"What is the meaning of this?!" a newspaper article lands heavily on the table top.

"Sir...I don't know what you mean..." the boy hesitantly picks up the newspaper, only to gasp in shock at the title: 'SM trainee attempts to flirt with SHINee fan girl.'

"YOU FLIRTED?! WITH YOUR SENIOR'S FAN?!" the training idol's manager shouts angrily, "BYUN BAEKHYUN EXPLAIN YOURSELF!"

"No! What is this?!" Baekhyun frantically skim over the rest of the article, "she's lying! I didn't do anything!"

"This morning, the girl personally made a call to the media and relayed her story to them. Apparently, you told her and other fans to go home yesterday because SHINee won't be appearing at the company until 2 days later. Turns out less than an hour after you said that, SHINee turned up for a meeting with Lee Soo Man!" the manager's spit flies everywhere in his anger, "what do you have to say for yourself?!"

"I swear, I didn't know!" the younger pleads, "the girl misunderstood!"

"Then what about that umbrella?!" he shows Baekhyun a document, "she even got the finger-prints tested, and they were yours!"

Baekhyun's eyes widen in disbelief, "She gave it to me because I was standing in the rain!"

"Well that's certainly not what she said," the older male grumbles, "according to her story, you gave her the umbrella because she was standing in the rain - and that's her proof of you flirting with her."

"What is this nonsense?!" the vocalist's voice goes up an octave as his disbelief and frustration bursts from within him, "none of this is true!"

"I don't care," the elder hisses, "it's what the media and public believe that I'm interested in."

On the other side of the building, the boys of EXO have already been notified of Baekhyun's latest scandal via the newspaper.

"What are you all looking at?" Yun asks as she walks through the front door of the company alongside Jongin, spotting the other boys crowded inside the SM building's lobby immediately due to their numbers.

"Nothing!" Luhan quickly hides something behind his back as Sehun beside him jumps in surprise upon seeing Yun.

"Let me see!" Jongin snatches the newspaper from his hands, and laughs when the shorter tries to jump for it. As he reads it, however, his forehead gradually develops a frown, "what on earth is thi-- mmph!"

"Yun, please go home for today," Sehun hurriedly ushers the older girl back out the glass doors as Jongin is left struggling in Luhan's restraining arms, "it's really not a good time at the moment."

Curious at their peculiar behavious, Yun slyly disentangles herself from Sehun's hold and quickly makes a grab at the newspaper from Kai's flailing hands. Upon reading the title of the front page article, however, Yun's entire body freezes in shock.

'SM trainee Byun Baekhyun attempted to flirt with SHINee fangirl yesterday afternoon...'

"Yun, please, listen!" Luhan puts his hands lightly upon Yun's shoulders, worriedly glancing down at her hands as they start to tremble while clutching the paper.

The girl glances up at the older boy with reddened eyes, "Is this...true?"

"No!" Luhan cups her face with both hands insistently, "you know Baekhyun! You've known him longer than any of us! Is he that kind of person?!"

"His ideal type is pretty, charismatic and y with a good figure..." Yun whispers with a defeated air of silent forfeit. If the news article were to be true - Yun would be able to do nothing to stop the pair from dating each other. The girl in the newspaper looks cute, slender and innocent yet playful; exactly the type boys like Baekhyun want to hold in his arms while drinking at a party. Exactly the type, if Yun were to be perfectly honest with herself, which Yun shall never be no matter how much she tried to change who she was.

"Yun! Snap out of it!" Jongin comes over and gives her shoulders a hard shake, "this is Baekhyun we're talking about - he's totally not a player!"

"Please don't be sad," Sehun hugs the older girl from the side, "hyung isn't the type to flirt with fans casually!"

"You guys don't know him like I do..." Yun shakes her head sadly, tearing spilling over her cheeks despite her trying to control herself, "Baekhyun's always been like that. Back in high school; he dated 17 different girls just through those three years."

"Wow..." Sehun's mouth drops open.

"Seventeen?!" Luhan exclaims.

"He sure doesn't look like it..." Minseok mumbles.

"So...if he's such a player then why are you crying over something like this?!" Kai frowns angrily, "shouldn't you be used to it?! It's got nothing to do with you anyway!"

That's true, Yun wipes away the tears still trailing down her face, "You're right. Whether or not he flirts with some other girl is none of my business..."

"Right!" Luhan puts an arm around her shoulders, "just forget about it - he doesn't deserve your tears!"

"Just don't cry," Tao mumbles shyly while looking down at the floor, "we don't like to see you in pain."

Yun smiles gratefully at Tao, bringing her arms up to hug Sehun and Luhan back, and squeezing Jongin's arm to let him know she will be okay.

"I still don't believe this," Kris' angry eyebrows soften momentarily, "I haven't known him for a very long time, but the guy really isn't that bad - he has his morals and is quite self-righteous."

"Didn't you just hear it with your own ears from Yun?" Yixing grumbles with dissatisfaction, "I thought we were friends, but it seems that there is still a lot of things we don't know about his true self."

"Now, now," Suho soothes him as the gentle boy sighs in disappointment, "we don't know the full story, so we shouldn't be making any judgments yet."

"Come on then," Jongin grabs Yun's arm forcefully, "let's go and ask Baekhyun what the truth really is."

Upon locating the lifelessly slumping shoulders of their bandmate, Baekhyun's shirt collar is immediately balled up into a crumbled mess by Jongin's angry hands.

"Did you, or did you not flirt with her," Kai's angry spittles flew all over Baekhyun's innocent face.

"Please don't tell me you really did date 17 girls in high school..." Luhan ran a hand through his hair in confusion, "you're a really cool guy, Baek, but now I don't know what to think of you!"

"It...it's true...the 17 girlfriends thing..." Baekhyun hangs his head in shame, catching sight of Yun standing quietly off in the corner behind the boys. He can see the hurt in her eyes, the same murky greyness he first saw when he accepted his first confession in their first year of high school. Baekhyun doesn't want to hurt Yun - he really doesn't. But he's always been a little immature and playful so his thoughtless actions sometimes end up causing pain to his best friend. I'm sorry, Yun, but this time it really wasn't my fault!

"You disgusting...thing!" came Jongin's upset outcry, before he released his hold on Baekhyun's collar and took two steps backwards, "don't touch me with your filthy chin that's probably been cupped by heaps of girls while kissing!"

"Jongin..." Baekhyun reaches out to him with a tired hand, desperate to clear the misunderstanding but unsure of where to begin. Jongin, however, dodged his hand with a scowl.

"Don't come near me! And don't even bother apologising!"

"Calm down!" Baekhyun frowns in annoyance, "give me two minutes to explain all this mess to you!"

"Fine," Jongin scowls, "but what you say better be worth my time."

And so Baekhyun takes a deep breath, and begins to relay his shameful story about the 17 girlfriends, none of which he had actually dated for more than 3 days: "Back in the days, I was quite overweight in middle school..." he pauses to look around at the eleven boys, judging his every word, "...but during the summer break of the last year before high school, puberty just hit me out of no where. I grew 10cm in two months, and although my weight didn't change, my body shape certainly did."

"Can I presume you didn't ever grow again after that?" Chanyeol interrupts while chuckling, "length-wise I mean..."

"Yes yes," Baekhyun sighs, "I had that one growth spurt in my life, and it never happened again." 

"Carry on," Jongin's serious face urges him to continue on with the story.

"So when I got to high school, my confidence went sky-rocketing through the roof because of my new appearance. Suddenly, everyone wanted to be my friend, and every girl had a crush on me!"

"Shallow," Jongin snorts.

"Vain!" Luhan laughs.

"Alright!" Baekhyun grins upon seeing his bandmates loosen up, "I'll admit it - I was a pretty vain kid...but the main point is, those girls came at me in the hundreds! They were like real fangirls! And...well...I wasn't used to the attention, and I thought it'd be alright to try dating a few of the prettier ones..."

"What?" Sehun gasps, "so you really are a player!"

"Listen to the rest of it!" Jongin interrupts impatiently, disgruntled but curious about Baekhyun's side of the story.

"...So I practically had a new girl I would call 'honey' or 'babe' every week, but I never felt anything for them. It was pretty much a relationship based on physical attraction and casual . The boys who wanted to be my friends too - they only hung around me so that girls would notice them more. So by the time I was halfway through the third year of high school, I decided that I didn't need any of them; I only needed Yun by my side."

To this, Yun blushes a light pink, but remains silent to let Baekhyun relay his emotions first.

"So then why did you flirt with that fangirl?!" Jongin demands angrily.

"I didn't! I swear! It was a plotted scandal!" Baekhyun pleads. "That day, I was exiting the SM building, when I saw a group of girls waiting for Shinee and Super Junior, so I advised them to go home for the day, because none of them were scheduled to come to the building at that time!" the boy closes his eyes in frustration at the memory. "But there was this one girl, who handed me an umbrella because it was raining; and who claims I gave her an umbrella and flirted with her instead, because the information I gave them about Shinee not coming to the building was wrong!" Baekhyun takes a shaky breath, "she lied to get revenge on me! And unbelievably, it worked! Everyone believes her and the company is discussing whether or not they should take me out of EXO and only debut you guys as 11."

The members' mouths hangs open in shock. What kind of situation was this? Do fangirls just make up stories because they got angry at some nameless trainee that happened to give them wrong information? Is this the real appearance of the entertainment industry?

"Wow..." Suho recovers first, "that was...unexpected!"

Jongin stares at the older boy intensely, "So...you never flirted with her? She just made up some story by herself? And those fingerprints...they were there because she gave you the umbrella, and not because you took interest in her and gave it to her?"

"Yes. I guarantee my words are true."

Standing in the corner, Yun breathes a small sigh of relief, and suddenly thinking back to her high school days with Baekhyun. The better days, when he had stopped dating multiple girls in a month and was settling down to play the role of her best friend.

|flashback, 2nd year of high school|

"Sometimes...I feel like no one even likes me for me, you know?" Baekhyun leans his head against her shoulder in exhaustion.

"What do you mean?" Yun asks, concentrating more on the fact that his soft hair is inches away from her cheek, begging to be touched.

"Those girls that squeal and blush when I walk past...few of them have even heard me sing, or know my favourite foods, or care about what I do in my spare time...all they're interested in is how tall I am, how much I weigh, and my body parts' measurements!"

"Well..." the girl's eyebrows furrow in thought, "aren't you the same? You're only interested in those fan girls because they have long legs and big s, no?"

Baekhyun sighs, "That's true...I guess I'm expecting too much..."

"But you know," Yun pauses, wondering how on earth she should say the next words, "...I...I like you for you..."

His head lifts slightly from her shoulder in surprise, but then quickly settles back into place, "As a friend though, right?"

No! the girl's heart shouts at her, "...Yeah."

"So that doesn't count," Baekhyun nuzzles Yun's neck, sending electric waves through her entire body, "but thanks, Yun - I feel the same way towards you."

"Really?" Yun tells herself not to take his words too literally, "you like me...for who I am?"

"What else could I possibly like you for?" he chuckles, "your long legs and big s?"

Yun smiles, finally resting her hand upon his chocolate, soft hair and it in satisfied adoration.

"I only need you, Yun," Baekhyun whispers as his eyes close in relaxation, "no one can take you away from me. You're mine."

"But you'll never be mine," Yun whispers in answer, too low for Baekhyun's ears but enough for herself to understand.

A/N: I went on vacation, sorry for the lack of updates!! I'm always being so lazy with writing now omg <3 thanks so much for sticking around!