There comes a moment in anybody’s life when one realizes how much they depend on a certain routine. You sit down and enjoy your favorite cup of tea at that certain hour in the evening, you enjoy that sinful chocolate bar you always stupidly reward yourself after a good workout or you just come back from work and wait for your exuberant dog to show up and greet you, when it suddenly strucks you: what would you do if you didn’t have the chance to enjoy this particular moment every single day? How would you go on without this habit in your life?

Well, that was exactly what it happened to Yong Deuk as he was leaning his forehead on the opaque window of the dance studio's door. He was staring inside. His every particle was paying attention to the dancing figure from the other side of the glass, whose fluctuant movements were completely mesmerizing to him. He has been staring for quite a while, his gaze glued to the undulating silhouette inside.

When a sudden wave of lucidity hit him.

Man, I am screwed. Big times. That’s it; I am hopelessly, wholly, irremediably in love. She’s becoming an addiction. Like I am getting drunk on her presence. But just look at the way she moves. I bet that's exactly how angels dance in heaven.

These were in fact Minzy’s last minutes of practice for the day and just as the music stopped playing, she her final pose, finishing her routine. The girl grabbed a towel, shut down the music and packed her bag.

It’s obvious I am becoming a little stalker but I can’t quit this. It has become a habit. I need to be close to her somehow. And actually, this is just me trying to build up some courage until I have enough confidence to have a normal conversation with her. Plus the fact that I should also wait until my brother comes back so I can actually be myself before I can do anything about this. Well, I should get going. It’s getting late. Oh look, Minzy finished too. I bet she must be tired it was a really good practice she had today. I’ve never seen this dance before, it must be new one. I should be getting out of the way, it looks like she is going to open this door. OPEN THE DOOR? OH GOOD SHE IS COMING THIS WAY! WHAT DO I DO SHE CAN’T SEE ME HERE OMG QUICK I NEED TO HIDE

”OOOCHIEE HELLO MINZY!!”

The girl opened the door right across Deukkie’s face, almost knocking him on the ground.

“OH SHOOT! I AM SO SORRY!”

The boy was slightly dizzy but shook it off like nothing happened.

“I didn’t know you were here! Are you alright?! I am really sorry, did I hit you with the door!?”

“Oh, no, no, no it’s alright, I am fine! It’s my fault; I was the one staying right in front of the door . . .”

 “But I should have been more careful. Wait a second. You said you were staying here?”

Yong Deuk nodded, fidgeting around and avoiding eye contact:

“Yeah…”

 “OH THAT S GREAT! Then you must’ve seen my dance!”

His eyebrows rose a notch:

“Your dance!? Of course, uhm . . . well I . . . yeah I was just . . .”

“Perfect! It’s a new choreography I have been working on for a while and I would appreciate some feedback. I really wanted to ask an opinion about it. So is it ok? Tell me what do you think.”

Deuk felt a lump forming in his throat. Beads of sweat were starting to drip from his forehead. He was looking more and more like he was the one who finished a tiresome hour of intense dance training.

“What I think? . . . well you are very . . . I’ve seen a lot . . . you seem to me . . . a drunken angel dances better . . . “

“Huh?!”

“Huh?”

“. . .”

“ OMG NO! I mean you dance better than an angel – ”

“Oh god I knew I needed some more practice but I didn’t imagine it was that bad. At least now I know I should work harder. Thanks for being honest, Don. The truth is always the best answer.”

Yong Deuk was sinking into an ocean of restlessness and embarrassment, as he realized what an absurd and ironic conversation he had generated.

He sighed and put on a bitter smile:

“Truth, oh, of course. I couldn’t ever lie to you, Minzy!”

I am going to hell for this one.

___________________________________________

It’s been half a day, it seems as an eternity to me! Really now, I have never gone so long without texting her. It’s about time I should give her a message, right? Just to say hello. We’re just talking I am not pushing her into anything. Well, technically it’s not even talking because she hasn’t replied since she . . . since she told me the relationship won’t work. But that’s just another reason for me to try harder! I got used to talking to Yuri, I can’t just stop because she isn’t answering. Nobody would! And she’s been busy with her comeback lately so it’s expected she won’t reply too often. But anyway, when she sees my messages after a long day she will be happy that somebody cares so much about her! Yes, this is a great idea! Ooooh I love texting Yuri so much!

So this was a relatively new routine of Daesung’s: having conversations on his own, asking himself weather he should go ahead and have some further more one sided conversation on his own, this time being in the form of texting Yuri. Because that is exactly how this activity has been developing for Daesung lately. He kept on texting without any reply.

So he went on writing his message for his sweetheart, bearing in mind not to exaggerate. He kept it cool: a casual greeting, the usual ‘how are you I MISS YOU SO MUCH PLEASE COME BACK?” question and just a couple of hearts and smiling emoticons to seem friendlier.

He selected the recipient: the sole contact saved as favorite, the one near which a golden star shined proudly, showing that even the phone knew who the most obvious choice was.

He automatically hit ‘sent’ and watched dumbly as the confirming report popped out on the screen. At the same time, a broad smile popped out on his face. Now he was feeling at peace.

Following next, just as Dae would usually do, he brushed his thumb on the screen, swiping downwards. This allowed him to go over the conversation and recollect some of the past messages. He did this pretty often, satisfied to analyze his own words and think about the fact that Yuri will do the same when she will read them. Because Daesung loved to think that despite the lack of reply, the girl did in fact check out his texts.

Hold on. Something weird is going on. These are not my texts. And this is certainly not my conversation with Yuri. I’ve never seen these before.

As confused as one could get, Daesung hastily went over the mysterious messages again, wondering how it was possible for such a thing to happen.

WAIT A SECOND! Of course I don’t remember any of this. These aren’t my messages because this isn’t my phone! IT’S SEUNGRI’S! I am such an idiot. He must’ve written these before I took the phone. The conversation was just saved and preserved here.

He scrutinized the screen more carefully and this time he noticed that the number and the name of the recipient was, instead of Yuri’s, a different yet familiar one: CL’s.

His gaze went further down, absently reaching the lower section, where his attention was caught by a random snippet of a text written in bold. Daesung read the words in his mind:

”ANNOYING HABBIT” . . . Huh? Seems like Chaerin is pretty irritated with the maknae. Well, too bad she is not the only one. I swear that guy can get on a Buddhist monk’s nerve if he wants so.  Anyway, these old conversations are just as annoying as him, so I’d better get rid of them before they cause any potential confusion in the future. Also, I should retext my dearest Yuri. MAYBE THIS TIME SHE WILL REPLY!

Heavily disinterested with any further activity that might keep him from getting in touch with his beloved one, Daesung deleted every message and completely emptied the phone’s memory.

___________________________________________

*beep* *beep*

Chaerin was slightly startled when she felt the phone buzzing in her hands, as she was already concentrated on the device’s screen at the time. She was on instagram, deliberately wasting some time, when the familiar notification of a new message appeared in front of her eyes.

Seungri sent me this? But that jerk is right in the next room! Can’t he make the effort to come and tell me personally, like seriously we are just 5 feet away! He seemed busy anyway, that is why I left. What does he want –

Hello! ^^ how are you I MISS YOU SO MUCH PLEASE COME BACK? 💖 💕 😊 😍 

CL’s expression brightened up when she read the atypically sweet words she assumed her boyfriend sent. Amused and cheered up by the warm message, she rushed outside and entered the room where Seungri was sitting at his Computer.

A smile was shining on her lips:

“What are doing?”

“Oh, hi there babe. Nothing much, the same thing I was doing before as well, checking some fan comments and reactions. Can you believe how popular Nyongtory is these days?!” He answered while scrolling the fan page.

“You are seriously investing too much energy into these kinds of things. You know they are called FAN pages for a reason, right? Like, they have a certain target audience…”

“Yea of course I know. Seungri is Seungri’s biggest fan. I thought everybody knew that already.” The boy lifted his gaze from the screen for a bright moment and playfully smirked at CL.

“Tsch! Damn, your self-esteem is no joke” She nodded her head in amazement.

“Now, moving on to serious business” Chaerin warmly placed her hand on his wide shoulders. “I’ve seen your sweet, rather cringe worthy message. I’ve heard you missed me. Very unexpected of you, by the way, but I must confess I actually really enjoyed it. You should act like this more often. It's really sweet.”

Seungri kept focusing on the computer’s screen, but his voice replied with a trivial perplexed undertone:

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m sorry, what did you say?! Don’t you dare play jokes with me! I really think it was nice of you to do it. I was pleasantly surprised.”

She grabbed his shoulder tighter, but his center of attention was undisturbed.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?! You - little douchebag, sent me - your girlfriend, a very sweet text message, just minutes ago!”

“Uhm, no. . . I did not . . . And could you please keep your voice down when you use such specific terms? Someone might hear you. I am trying to bond with my fans here.”

CL stared authoritatively at her clueless boyfriend for a few seconds, when suddenly, as brutal as a storm, indignation and frustration eventually piled up over the acceptable limit and took control of her reactions.

“I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS! YOU MISTER, HAVE SOME SERIOUS NERVE! You successfully managed to turn a lovely gesture into a headache! You can’t even admit you sent the damn message! You don't want to assume anything! I really don’t understand why you always behave like this. I am tired of all of this denial and hiding and secrecy!"

 “Hey, hey” Seungri finally stoped scrolling on the computer and turned around to face CL. He took her hand and gently guided her to sit in his lap. “Come here, love. No need to get angry. Even if nobody knows it yet, that definitely doesn’t mean that it isn’t real. I might not shout it out loud, but I have my ways of showing that I care for you.”

He held her hand tightly and glided his other arm behind her waist. Their lips took no further time to meet and tenderly intertwined with each other.

“Still mad at me?” he asked as he was parting away and smiling cloyingly.

“You are such an emotional blackmailer. I can’t believe I put up with your stupidities daily. I’ve told you over and over again, you became my annoying habit, I just can seem to give you up” Chaerin sighed and brushed the hair out of his face.

“You wouldn’t even want to give me up”

­­­­­­­­­­­­­___________________________________________

Two hundred and fifty-four. Freaking 254 employees. How on earth will I be able to find him? At least I have some sort of clue now.

Dara always racked her brain trying to figure out the identity of her ‘dream man’. She was feeling completely lost in her search until her latest nap revealed another part of the dialog, that helps her narrow down the search.  Her partner that night revealed himself to have had worked with her before. This meant that he was an employee of the company! However, this also meant that the abundance of people working for YG required to be individually scrutinized, one by one.

Come on Dara, cheer up! This is good news, not bad! I finally have something to guide me. An actual list of names I can go through and check one by one. *sigh* Two hundred and fifty-four names to check one by one… HANG ON A SECOND I don’t have to take all of the employees into consideration, I am so stupid! The only thing I am sure of from that night is that my interlocutor was a male! So this cuts out half of my list! AND OMG I SHOULD ALSO CHECK THE LIST OF PARTY ATTENDANTS. If I am able to cross over the employees and the people who attended the party, I’ll be left with the most plausible possibilities! SANDARA PARK YOU ARE A GENIUS

She was on the verge of standing up from her chair and high fiving herself, but commonsense kicked in right in time to stop her from making a scene in front of her makeup artist and staff members of the show, Sugarman.

Dara was having her make up done and she got lost in her train of thoughts, as she would always do when circumstances required her to stay put for a period of time.

“2 minutes! Everybody get ready juseyo!” The producer’s voice could be heard resonating through the studio and everybody started rushing to their places.

“One second Dara-shi. I am brushing this off and . . . Done, you are ready to go!”

“Oh, thank you Sora. Great job!”

Here we go again, back to MC-ing. Hmmm, but it seems like I still have one thing to figure out. How in the world can I get my hands on the list with the party guests? I know for sure that the list of employees one can easily find in the database of any YG PC connected to the company network. But the party was quite some time ago, where would that kind of information be stocked???

“1 minute!”

Dara hesitated before heading to the filming plateau. Her eyes fell on Sora, who was now cleaning up her make up brushes just next to her.

“Hey Sora? Excuse me for a second, but if I remember correctly, weren’t you in charge of welcoming the guest at the KTAA celebration party 3 weeks ago?”

“Huh? Yes, I actually were. Me and 2 other girls from the graphic department volunteered to do so.  Why do you ask?”

“I was just wondering, did any of you write down the guests who attended the party on a list or something? I mean, is there any document where I can find the people who were there that night?”

“Yes, of course it is. Sajangnim specifically asked that we do so. I think he knew that these certain kind of gatherings have a certain tendency to get out of hand. And oh boy, so did this one. Ha ha . . .”

Dara was happy with the affirmative answer, yet slightly uncomfortable upon hearing the last remark.

“30 seconds, pali pali!”

“Aish, I have to hurry. Tell me quickly please, where is this list now?”

“Uhmm . . . I would normally answer that it was automatically saved by the database, as everything was conducted digitally. But you know, since the system crashed and the blackouts started, much of the recent data has been lost. There is another one though! One of the girl’s Ipad crushed right when she tried to turn it on, so she had to do it all old school, with a pen and paper.  I personally left this list on Sajangnim’s desk the next morning, so he should have it.”

“Thank you so much Sora! I owe you once!” She waved and run at once to the MC table.

 So it’s settled. After I finish with the show for tonight I will go back to the HQ and find that list. Sajangnim’s office is usually empty at that hour. It should be easy to get in. It’s already the second time, I must be a pro already!

“Welcome to TwoYooProject Sugarman! We’re back!”

___________________________________________

- later that evening  -

Dara watched silently as the numbers displayed by the elevator’s little screen gradually increased. They stopped at number 5, since the girl decided to take the stairs to the last floor, and prevent any type of potential suspicion from arising.

She reached the door of YG papa’s office, and proceeded to open it with a surprisingly confident familiarity.  She had discovered a little trick by accident, on the night of the party, when her drunk and curious feet made her wonder around the HQ randomly. She broke into the office that night. So, just as she already previously did one time before, her thin fingers pushed the knob up and the door instantly opened without any effort.

Who would’ve ever thought it’s so easy to get into such an important person’s office. Even a brilliantly clever person would never be able to open it without an authorized ID card, but a drunken Dara stumbled upon it and found a secret and deceitfully simple way to enter. It looks like I’m starting to make a habit of breaking into Sajangnim’s office.

She carefully stepped inside and saluted the 3-meter-tall Robot Taekwon-V who guarded the room. The wall next to him was filled with parallel shelves, dimly lit by cold neon lights, displaying a proud collection of dolls and figurines.

Hello friends. Nice to see you again. I’m glad you are the only ones who know I am here tonight. Now, let’s hope I get the list quickly and never have to sneak in here ever again.

The paper Dara was looking for has been lying in the same corner of the desk since Sora left it there, so our cunning intruder had no problem finding it.

Pfeew, thank God this copy still exists. My job here is done. Next time I’ll see you, my friends, let’s pray that it would be under legal circumstances. Anyong! Have a nice –

*ding*

Dara remained in stupefied bewilderment upon hearing the specific sound of the elevator bell, signalizing its arrival at the 6^th floor.

The automatic doors opened, letting the dialog of two deep, manly voices freely resonate along the hallway, swiftly reaching and piercing through Sandara’s alarmed ears.

Two sets of steps were now approaching the office, interrupted regularly by the distinct metallic sound of crutches.

The newcomers’ conversation became intelligible, and Dara’s darkest fear came true: the identity of the two men was unmistakably certain: YG papa and Jiyong were on the verge of entering the office.

CRAP!!! NOW WHAT? THEY CAN’T FIND ME HERE. I need to hide!

She instantly squeezed her slender body behind the giant guardian Robot, holding the list tightly.

I’m sorry I am touching your , Taekwonie. But it’s a matter of life or death . . . Oh, God, please let a miracle happen and be it so that they won’t see me here.

Let’s say God did listen to her prayer, or she just might’ve had a lucky strike, however, it seemed that Sajangnim and GD decided to stop for a while before going inside the room and continue their discussion just in front of the door.

“Hyung, I am going to be alright, seriously! My injury is not at all a problem, in fact, this gives me some precious time to rest and concentrate on my work. I was thinking of starting to intensely compose and write songs for a while, so I am considering spending my full time here at the studio. I'll be resting and productive at the same time, so it's ok!”

“Yes, this is a well-thought course of action to take into account right now. I am also trying to push hard and encourage a healthy working rhythm, so that we realize our company’s full potential for this year.  It was an honor to win the first edition of Korean Talent Agency Awards, but this means we have a title and a high standard to maintain since now on.”

“Of course, I completely agree.”

“Anyway” YG papa blinked heavily, opened his eyes and smiled at Jiyong. He cheerily went on: “A lot of work eventually requires a lot of relaxation. Let’s talk about more joyful subjects. How’s your love life? Still nothing new?”

Welcome to Awkwardville. Population: Kwon Jiyong. Surprisingly enough, it wasn’t the nature of the question that bothered GD, he and Sajangnim have openly talked about this sort of things many times before. The thing that made him suddenly uncomfortable was the fact that this time, his answer was a different one. This time, something did happen.

His reddened cheeks gave him away even before his words came out:

“Well Hyung, you see . . . there might be this girl –“

“FINALLY! I was starting to get worried! It’s been quite some time, congratulations!” YG leaned over and hugged him, patting his back happily.

“Oh, my, thank you!? . . . Sajangnim, ugh, please be careful . . . my crutches”

The hug ended as quickly as it began.

“Here, come inside, you can tell me more while we take a seat. I am extremely happy we are having this talk.”

Yang Hyun-suk intended on searching for his ID card, but he was surprised to notice the door was already cracked opened.

“What happened here? Why is this door open? All sorts of irregularities started happening since the KTAA party. I think somebody broke into my office during that night and ruined the security system.”

Dara held her breath and made herself smaller.  I am so stupid. Stupid! STUPID! *facepalm* I left the door open . . .

“Hyung” Jiyong intervened. “Try closing the door and opening it again with your access card. Maybe the digital system still works.”

“Oh, good idea. Let me find my ID.” He took out his wallet from his back pocket.  “I am really starting to regret having agreed to host that party.”

“Agh, come on, it couldn’t have been that bad. Everybody had fun, right?”

“They most certainly did. What about you, Jiyong? I didn’t see you at all that night. Were you even there?”

“Ugh, no . . . you see . . . I was . . .” G-Dragon stammered, unable to utter any complete sentence.

YG chuckled:

“When love hits you, one doesn’t even feel like partying anymore, eh? Hold on, I think I found it.” His hand revealed the rectangular card. “Oh, well, here it is. Let’s see if it works.”

The door shut and opened promptly, the second Yang Hyun-suk swiped his ID accordingly.

“So the system has no problem! Huh!”

The guys stepped inside the office. YG reached out and came across the light switch on the wall, almost brushing his hand on Dara’s paralyzed body. He snapped the toggle but nothing happened. Instead, the neons stopped and all the lights went out, leaving the room in complete darkness.

“What is this?! Another blackout? This is unacceptable!” Sajangnim’s voice was flooded with anger.

“I can’t believe the electricians are still struggling to find the problem.” Jiyong sighed in frustration.

“I have to urgently make some phone calls. It’s impossible to work in such conditions.”

Dara seized the opportunity right away and vanished somewhere in the darkness, as far away as possible from the dangerous cursed area of her boss’s office.