hi everyone. are you guys still alive? wow, i dont think i can even begin to apologise for the looooooooooooooong overdue update. i am really truly sorry about this, and i'm not going to lie, i'm honestly not about to get any faster at writing. it's my final year at school and i am just completely flat out busy.

i still read all of your comments, subscribes, and thank you all so much for writing them. even if it's just a short message of encouragement i hope you guys know that thanks to you i've got seven whole chapters up here when i thought i'd only have one, haha.

okay, enough of that cliche stuff. i'm considering marking the story complete because i think it would be totally cruel to leave it open when obviously the updates are just going to take me six, seven months plus. 

i won't stop writing though; i have a tumblelog; pandaja (yes, i am very original) and it's updated a little more frequently because i can release them one by one. at the moment i am just slowly uploading all my old stuff so i'm sorry, but there is *some* new content (1 | 2) (ps last one's topri), and hopefully more in the future. feel free to stop by, follow, or just say hi.

i don't think i will completely abandon this account though, and i definitely won't delete any of my fics. but if you are waiting for weekly updates, i highly suggest you check out other equally and perhaps even more kick- g-ri writers.

thank you for reading, everyone! it's been wonderful. stay gold ♡

31

// let’s learn some foreign vocab!

yeobo, jagiya; darling/honey/sweetie etc. in korean
-chan; japanese honorific of endearment, used often with teenage girls
kudasai; please in japanese //

“Open the door, baby.”

Jiyong’s cheeks are red and so are his hands, but the door stands stubbornly locked, refusing to open. He bangs his fist against the wooden panels again. The walls shake but not Seungri’s resolve.

“Panda! Yeobo, come on, answer me!”

Jiyong tries kicking next, but it takes him only a few moments to realise the impact of swinging his foot at a slab of solid wood won’t be absorbed by his thin pair of (designer) slippers. He hops around, squinting through the pain of his toes. Time to try tactic #34: Japan style.

“Seungie-chan! Seungie-chan, open the goddamn door! Kudasai!” Of course he mixes up the vowels and stumbles over the consonants, but Jiyong figures it’s the thought that counts.

He isn’t used to being disobeyed, much less by his little Seungri. He’s G-to-the-Dragon Kwon Jiyong, and usually people are falling over to get him what he wants.

“Jagiyaaaaaaaa…” Jiyong surrenders. That’s it. No more. Maybe maknae is a grown up now, maybe he’s not little Seung-Seung full of awkward and uncertainty, and maybe Seungri doesn’t need him anymore.

No, not today. Screw this - Seungri doesn’t need space. He’s still the same old Seungri who might pretend he’s older and wiser and better, but he still needs his hyung.

“Seunghyun… please let me in.”

What follows is possibly the longest moment in the world – but then a little click and the sound of a well-oiled door swinging on its hinges.

32

It’s been five years since their debut, and for five years has Seungri lived within a twenty radius from Jiyong - and he still thinks the faintly atrocious combination of scarlet red and fuchsia pink is socially acceptable. Jiyong facepalms, and shakes his head.

“No... Just no.”

Seungri offers a sheepish smile before ducking into the change rooms again. There’s a rustling of coat hangers and shoes, and then the curtain is swept back with a flourish. It’s a tacky gold-sequined jacket this time, paired with baggy green pants. “How about-”

Jiyong looks through the gap in his fingers. “Oh, god. Better than last time, but not by much.”

There’s an indignant huff at the continuous battering of Seungri’s fashion sense as he wheels around and stomps back into the cubicle. “Well, then, what do you think of-”

“Nope.”

“Maybe-”

“Nope.”

“What about this one?”

Jiyong begins double over with laughter, and Seungri takes it as a big, fat “no”.

“You’re impossible, hyung,” he mutters, tossing the light orange jacket to join the mountainous pile of rejects on the floor. “I’ve tried on half this shop and you still aren’t happy. What do you want me to wear?!”

“You could always wear nothing,” suggests Jiyong with a sly grin.

Seungri chucks a pair of studded shorts, the pretty shopkeeper looks horrified, and Jiyong dodges it easily, smile stretching from ear to ear as he waves his phone triumphantly in the air.

“It’s alright, I’ve got photos, anyway.”

“HYUNG!”

Taxi fare to downtown shopping mall: 13,000 ₩

Designer Spring Collection Imitation Studded Shorts: 48,500 ₩

Getting kicked out for knocking over multiple mannequins in a wild chase for Seungri’s almost-nudes: priceless.

 

33

It is days like these when Jiyong swears that if there’s a god, he’s purposely screwing with him just for fun. Four days in a row, he’s lugged his half-broken umbrella along with him on his daily college commute and today of all days, when it’s resting on his desk at home, the heavens finally open and dump water all over his designer beanie.

“Goddamn,” he hisses as he sloshes into the nearest warm-looking establishment, dripping all over the wooden floorboards. The happy sound of soft jazz and familiar aroma of coffee beans greets him and he has to relax a little because, after all, nothing beats a hot coffee on a cold-as-hell day, especially when your recently dyed bright red hair is a sopping mess across your forehead.

Especially when the barista is that cute. (He’s already making a beeline for the cash register, Gucci wallet in hand.)

“One cappuchino,” says Jiyong, checking the kid’s nametag. SEUNGHYUN. He can’t be older than nineteen, he figures. Probably just another student looking for a steady source of income. He briefly wonders if maybe he’s run into the kid on campus, before snapping back to the present:

“That’ll be two dollars.”

Jiyong blinks. “The menu says it’s three fifteen?”

Seunghyun flashes a smile. “Regular customer discount.”

There’s no doubt about it, this is his first visit to the cafe. “I’m not a regular customer.”

Seunghyun slides the cappuchino across the counter, lips tugging upwards. “Well, you will be now, right?”

Days like these, Jiyong swears that if there’s a god… well, thanks.
 

34

You never liked wearing suits and ties. They had a tendency to creep up your neck, knot pressing deeper into the recesses of your throat until you were nearly strangled to death. An overreaction, he always called it, and slapped you whenever you wore your bow tie loose around your collar. Look smart.

Then he’d say, a little softer now, well, you look really good, Seunghyun-ah. Maybe if you wore these stiff woollen black sheets of fabric and polished, polished shoes more often, people would take you more seriously. Seriously? Seriously, he’d reply, ruffling your hair. Yeah, right, of course hyung, you just want me to wear this dumb penguin ensemble to suit your own erted needs, and the bow tie sails across the room in a fit of faux anger. It doesn’t make much of an impact - it’s graceful, even, and he picks the limp strip of fabric up and twirls it around his finger. You’re both smiling.

“Heh, how’d you guess?”

You feel the tie tighten a little against the crisp bleached whiteness of your shirt and swallow hard, head bowed. You can see the blurry outline of your black leather lace-ups, blinking back the heavy tears. You see the outline of his face, eyes closed, and it feels like countless conversations ago he was telling you, take care, I’m going out, Seunghyun, I’ll see you around for dinner.

And then a phone call, a shrill, piercing ring, when you were just about to set the table.

There are murmurs around you; the priest is done. “Amen.”

“Amen,” you say, seconds late, but this time he isn’t there to dig an elbow into your ribs. It doesn’t really matter; you don’t really believe in this kind of stuff, to be honest, because otherwise, why would the speeding man have chosen Jiyong when there were a thousand people more deserving?

They’re calling for you now. You wipe a clumsy sleeve over your face, and everything’s a little bit clearer. I’m coming, you say. Fingers scrabbling at your collar, tugging and nearly making you gag, until the tie falls loose into your numb palms.

You place it on the glass lid, over his sleeping figure. They cleaned the blood up but you can still see it on the inside of your eyelids.

You never liked wearing suits and ties, but now you never complain.

 

35
 

If anyone knows that Jiyong is a complete and utter neat-freak, it’s Seungri. Poor, poor Seungri has to wake up on Sunday mornings to find their entire room rearranged, with their shoes lined in alphabetical/coloured/brand/price order (whatever has taken Jiyong’s fancy that week), desk swept clean and clothing hung back where it actually belongs, instead of draped over the chairs as Seungri likes to leave his jumpers.

“Hyung, where’d you stash my jacket!”

“I put it in the wash, you got a ramen soup stain on it, you disgusting creature.”

“Hyung!” Seungri rolls his eyes, faced with the oh-so-terrible situation of having to rethink his outfit to match a different jacket (but not like it matched in the first place, Jiyong points out snarkily, and lends him one of his designer coats instead).

It’s kind of embarrassing but Jiyong clucks like a mother hen before they go out, patting down Seungri’s hair and checking his attire for rude words, smoothing his shirt and brushing random bits of lint out of his sleeves. Seungri often complains that he’s babied more in Big Bang’s dorm than in his hometown Gwangju, and Jiyong only replies by telling him he has his shirt buttons done up incorrectly.

Seungri realigns the right buttons to their respective holes furiously, trying to think of something to say while Jiyong reminds him that his shoelaces are untied, again.

“If you weren’t so messy, I woudn’t have to tell you how to dress all the time,” says Jiyong, annoyed as he straightens Seungri’s collar backstage.

“I can do it myself!”

Jiyong ignores the protests, spinning Seungri around and reading the English written on his shirt slowly, mouthing out the words. “Okay, clean.”

“Of course it’s clean! What do you think I am, some kind of dirty layabout-”

“Yes.”

Seungri shoots him his dirtiest layabout glare, before huffing angrily and stomping towards the door.

“Seungri, stop-”

“I don’t accept your apology, hyung! I’m-”

“-no, your fly is undone.”

Seungri’s hand rests on the doorknob, shaking as he fights an epic internal battle, before slowly moving to zip up his pants properly. Jiyong is smirking.

“Goddamn, hyung, why were you even looking there, you sick ert!”

“Tsh, I love you too, Seungri-yah.”