Footsteps on the cold granite floor of the small apartment bounce of the walls, sending soft echoes through the room. The figure pauses as he hears someone in another room grunt in his sleep and shift around, but eventually the soft snoring continues. He lets out a sigh of relief and continues on his way to the door. He's carrying a small bag containing only things he deems necessary for his plan of the day - two water bottles, a change of tee-shirt, some snacks, and a jacket for when it gets colder in the evening. Making his way as silently as he can over to the corner he left his shoes, he runs over his plan of action once again. After swiftly donning his sneakers, he slips out of the door and gently closes it behind him.

Smiling with grim satisfaction, he sets off. A beanie is drawn low over his face, and he hopes it's enough to avoid attention. The worst part of being an idol - to him - is that there's almost no chance of ever having a normal life after your debut. Once you make your name known, there's barely any possibilty that you'll be able to walk down the street without having a couple of fans recognise you. And especially since his band has been in the industry for some time, it's gained quite a bit of fame - which means it's all the more difficult for him to remain relatively anonymous when he steps out into society. Hence his makeshift disguise. Apart from the beanie, he's wearing a black hoodie and loose jeans - comfortable clothes for a long day.

He lengthens his stride and picks up the pace, eager to make it to the apartment he'd be staking out - again - as quickly as possible. Years of training hard to be an idol pays off, since he has the agility and stamina of any athelete. Even walking briskly as he is, he doesn't break a sweat or start panting. His heartbeat picks up slightly, but not much. To while the time away, he tries whistling a tune, but it fails and comes out breathy instead. Scowling with frustration, he stops trying to whistle and just focuses on getting to his destination.

Walking past a closed supermarket, he catches a glimpse of his reflection. A pale face stares back at him, the eyes a warm brown and bright with anticipation. His lips are slightly thick for a guy, but he ignores that most of the time. Eyebags are formed under his eyes, but he knows that no amount of sleep gets rid of them - they're natural, a part of him. His dark reddish-tinged hair is messy, but it's not really something he cares about. Stylists will attack it when he eventually goes for his next schedule. 

That's if he even has a schedule. With a member absent, it's difficult for the company to move on as per normal with the many activities they'd had planned. In the end, they'd had to cancel various talk shows, variety shows and countless rehearsals to cover up their member's sudden lack of presence. Not to mention, it has been incredibly hard, emotionally, for everyone to deal with this sudden loss. As the leader, Seungho can see that the other three are sick with worry over Joon - none of them have any clue as to what happened to him. He, himself, is incredibly worried, but he's confident that he's made a slight headway with finding a clue to his whearabouts.

It was so simple, really.

His thoughts are brought to an abrupt stop as he finds a spot in a small bookstore on the opposite side of the street. Seungho grabs a book and sits in the corner, right next to the window. From there, he has a clear view of the apartment door across the street, and if he tilts his body and angles his head a certain way, he can look like he's reading when he's actually watching the door. Satisfied, he settles down and opens the book, which he sees is written in English. No hope of understanding much of it, then. He sighs and flips to what he thinks is the first page of the story and pretends to read. Certain words glare out at him because he understands them, but mostly nothing makes sense, and he ends up just being bored.

Eventually, he decides it's better that he can't understand the book. That way he can concentrate more on watching the door rather than distracting himself by reading. Seungho stays like that for half an hour, occasionally turning the page to make it actually seem like he's reading to avoid the curious gaze of the shopholder. She's an old woman somewhere in her mid-sixties, and the hard look in her eyes tells him that she won't tolerate troublemakers. But it's evident from her manner that she has an avid love of books, and she empathises with anyone who loves them as well.

To his alarm, she suddenly starts making her way over to his seat. He panics but tries not to show it, forcing himself to appear more engrossed in the book than he actually is. 

'Sally picked up her bag and... walking down the... happily, she smiles...'

He has no clue what half the words in that paragraph mean. Out of the corner of his eyes, he notices that her feet, enclosed in a comfortable looking pair of leather shoes, has stopped a small distance from him. She clears , and he slowly looks up into her smiling eyes.

"It's so wonderful to see young people these days enjoy the magic of books. I'm impressed that you can read that," she says in what he thinks is English. "It's full of quite advanced vocabulary that most here don't understand."

Seungho, completely clueless, tries to keep his cool, confident smile on his face as he says, "Yes," - the failsafe reply to anything that you can't understand.

He's relieved when the lady nods, but to his shock and dismay, she sits down beside him, sighing heavily as she does so. She gently lifts the book out of his hands and admires its pages, her eyes flicking over it as she reads the short passage on that page. Seungho resists groaning out loud and waits patiently, smiling politely all the while. As he watches the old woman beside him warily, he notices that her eyes are almond-shaped, and have that faint trace of green in the brown. Her nose is sharper than most he's seen, and he realises that she has foreign blood. But he also thinks she could be part-asian, because her skin tone is darker than most of the Eurasians he's met in his life. Just as he realises this, the woman hands the book back to him and looks up. 

"What's your name, son?" she asks, again in English.

Seungho relaxes slightly, understanding this question perfectly. "My name is Yang Seungho, ahjumma."

The lady laughs. "Korean honorifics. I really don't care for them, so you can just call me Ms. Mu," she tells him using Korean.

"Ms. Mu," he repeats, nodding - hoping that she'll leave him alone soon if he keeps the conversation simple.

Using English again, she then inquires, "So, do you converse in English often? And what do you think of this book?" 

He tries not to panic. Should he say "yes" again? Seungho looks at her expectant face and opens his mouth, but he's saved by the tinkling of the bell over the door at the entrance of the bookshop. A pretty young lady steps in and smiles directly at Ms. Mu, her dark hair slightly windswept from the breeze outside. The shopholder immediately climbs to her feet and embraces the girl, who waves at Seungho. He feels taken aback, but he still dumbly waves back. It's silly of him, and he curses himself for thinking it, but the girl makes his breath catch.

"Grandmother, I heard that you have something for me," she says excitedly, and Seungho buries his red face in the book. He can't help but think her voice is melodious. Grinding his teeth, he realises there is something wrong with him - this has never happened before. He's never acted so ridiculous about anyone in his life. Except when he's bullying his bandmates, but that's a different kind of ridiculous.

Ms. Mu breaks out into a smile similar to the girl's, and he sees the resemblance between them. "Wait for a minute, dear. I just have to get it from the back."

The girl nods and drops her bag behind the counter. Spying Seungho, she walks over and takes the recently vacated seat beside him.

"I've never seen you here before," she remarks, thankfully in Korean, and he looks up, trying to act startled. "And you can stop pretending to read that book, I'm sure you don't understand half of it!"

Seungho's ears turn red as well, and he reluctantly sets down the book. "How could you tell?"

He's dazzled by another smile from her as she answers, "I've used the same tactic so many times before - my grandmother thinks I'm as much of a bookworm as she is!"

"Oh," he says in reply, and he flashes a comfortable grin back at her. "She's a nice lady."

The girl nods, and a faint blush spreads over her cheeks, as if she's suddenly shy. Feeling daring, Seungho extends a hand to her, and she eyes it warily.

"I'm Seungho," he states, smiling warmly.

She tentatively takes his hand and attempts a smile as well. Her awkwardness seems cute to him. "I'm San Shi, and it's nice to meet you, Seungho-sshi."

He feels an unexpected grin stretch over his face. "I don't think you have to be so formal," he tells her, while her eyes narrow and her gaze becomes distant. Slightly put-off, he continues, "You can call me Oppa."

"Wait," she trails off, her eyes focusing on him again. "Are you MBLAQ's Seungho?!" 

With wary eyes, he nods silently. Seeing that she's about to scream, he reaches out and places a firm fingernover while her eyes open wide. "Don't scream!"

She nods furiously and moves her head back, and his fingers leave her lips. He sits back in his chair, feeling slightly abashed. The curse of an idol strikes again. 

"San Shi," Ms. Mu calls out from behind a bookcase, before either of them could say anything more. "I've got it here! Come over here, dear."

The girl jumps up from her spot on the floor and runs off, disappearing behind a bookshelf. Seungho picks up the same book and continues staring blankly at the pages, watching the door from the corner of his eyes and listening to their conversation at the same time. Meanwhile, his heartbeat slows from its breakneck speed of a few minutes before. He seriously wonders what might have gone wrong with him, for him to suddenly be falling head-over-heels for a girl he barely knows. He flips a page in frustration and glances up at the door again.

It's then that the shock of blonde hair catches his eyes, and his gaze is drawn to the familiar loping gait of the figure across the street. Seungho's jaw drops half-open, but he remembers the other two in the room and closes it before it attracts their attention. Mindful not to do anything too eye-catching, he sets the book gently down and stares at the guy opposite. What's shocking is that his lanky figure disappears through the door he's been staring at all this while. An uncomfortable cold grows in the pits of his stomach, and he curses himself  for not seeing it earlier.

Determined, he picks up the book and drops it onto a shelf, weaving his way in and out of the shelves to the exit. On his way out, he sees Ms. Mu with a thick book in her hands, and San Shi, who has a frozen smile on her face. "I've got to head out, but thanks for letting me read in here," he tells them in Korean. The older woman nods, while her granddaughter turns pink again, but smiles nevertheless. They wave to him and bid him goodbye. The bell tinkles once again as he leaves the shop and crosses the empty street.

When he reaches the other side, he surreptitiously slips into the apartment through the door and climbs the stairs, looking on each lever for the blonde guy. He finds him on the fourth floor, standing impatiently outside a closed door, which opens to reveal a young girl as he watches. She flashes him a grin and stands aside to let him in, soon closing the door behind him. Seungho sees enough of her to remember her face. Frowning, he finds a seat on the stairs on that level, deciding that he'll only move if he notices someone coming towards him.

But, at least now he knows where the culprit lives. Maybe Joon is hidden in the house? Seungho stares at the closed door, mulling out the possibilities. It's obvious that the girl who ran away, Sofia, had something to do with the kidnapping. And the guy who'd entered her house, Kwon Jiyong - otherwise known in the Korean pop industry as G-Dragon - is the one who he'd wrestled to the floor and jumped over the day before, when Sofia made her escape. Of course, she didn't know she was being followed at the time, because Seungho made sure to keep himself out of sight.

Now he realises that the idol has something to do with Sofia, the kidnapper. Seungho feels torn and confused, though. Why would one idol want to kidnap another idol? As far as he knows, Big Bang has no feud of any sort with MBLAQ - in fact, they're quite close, for two bands of different companies. So why on Earth would their leader want to kidnap any member of MBLAQ? And of all people, Joon? He just can't understand.

Even then, the house, or what he saw of it, looks too small to be able to room all three of them and an imprisoned Joon. Besides, the girl who opened the door looked too young to be kidnapping famous idols. Then again, looks can be deceiving. Breathing heavily out, Seungho decides to wait for a while more, to see if any of them leave the place. His resolve is to tail someone until he finds a clue to Joon's whereabouts, or some form of evidence to link the three of them to the crime. He's sensible enough to understand that there's no way he can approach anyone with his doubts until he has proof of his accusation.

He glances at his watch - it's still early afternoon, around eleven. Settling into a comfortable position, he prepares to wait.



The sound of hurried footsteps tramping up the stairs jolts him out of his reverie, and Seungho jumps up, taking a few hurried steps up to the next level before he sees a girl with vividly blue hair bound out of the stairwell and down the corridor to the same door. She greets the same girl as before with a huge grin. Before he can see anything else, the doors slams shut. He feels vaguely disappointed. But now it seems as if a huge gang was behind the kidnapping, rather than just the one waitress whom he initially suspected.

He's just about to relax again when more footsteps echo up the stairwell, and he jumps back into his hiding place on the next level. A girl with a loose bun saunters up the stairs, and he can see the underside of her hair dyed a blue as vivid as the previous girl's. She turns in the opposite direction to the kidnapper's house, and he can just see her face before her figure gets completely blocked from his view. But that one moment is enough to send another electric spark racing up his spine - the girl is none other than San Shi.

Seungho tenses when he realises how close to the kidnappers she lives, and he's tempted to go and knock on her door to warn her, when he thinks better of it. If he goes and asks her about it, she's sure to get suspicious of how he knows where she lives. And since she'll be likely to distrust him after that, she'll go after the kidnappers and talk to them at least, to see what she can gather from them. And he has a strong feeling that they will give a nice girl like her nothing but trouble. Just in time, he stops himself from running down to knock on her door. Instead, he chooses to go back to his stakeout position and wait some more.



Some time later, the door finally opens, and Seungho jerks, clambering to the top of the stairs for the third time that afternoon. He flattens himself against the wall again and watches as the young girl walks down the stairs with heavy steps, her eyes ringed with red. Seungho briefly wonders what happened to her - did the others tell her that they kidnapped his bandmate, and was she so horrified that she cried about it? He's not exactly sure, but he's has the faint incline to just trust her. Anyway, trustworthy or not, she's still a lead, and he hopes that by following her, he'll find something.

Casting one last glance behind him at the door, he follows discreetly behind the young girl.



Isabella hears a knock sound on her door, and she stares at it with surprise. Who could be visiting her now? She's not expecting anyone. Warily, she dusts herself off and pats down her hair, and hoping that she looks presentable, she opens the door to reveal a small figure she never thought to see at her house, much less at this sudden time. The one lock of blonde hair glares out at her, and she glares into the oval face of her younger cousin.

"Miyu," she hisses. "What are you doing here?"

The girl looks nonchalant, but Isabella knows her well enough to know that the faint rings of red underneath her eyes are a sign that she's upset about something. That, and her extremely pink lips - the girl has been chewing them too much again. Isabella knows Miyu extremely well, a fact that she's not at all proud of. Rather, she wishes that she'd never even met the girl.

"I'm just here to... Check if you still have that old game of mine," the girl replies steadily, albeit looking slightly uncomfortable.

Isabella rolls her eyes. She knows for a fact that the game is buried in the muck underneath her bed - where Miyu had left it all that time ago. As she stares into her cousin's eyes, she can see that she won't go away and leave her in peace unless she gives her what she came for.

"Come in and dig it out from under my bed yourself then," she says drily, stepping aside to let her in. Miyu wears her socks inside and makes her way quickly to the bedroom, getting down on her hands and knees to rummage around under the bed. It looks perfect and classy from a distance, but once you lift up the bed skirt, the absolute mess underneath it is exposed for the world to see. 

Miyu grunts as she knocks her head on the bed, and Isabella struggles not to roll her eyes. Her cousin is as clumsy as ever. "Isabella?" she suddenly asks.

"Yes?" she grits her teeth as she replies.

"You like MBLAQ's Joon, right?"

Isabella feels a chill dance up and down her spine. "Why?" she asks tentatively in return.

Miyu pulls her head out from under the bed to look at her cousin. "He was kidnapped a few days ago."

The older girl carefully schools her expression into one of complete nonchalance. "Yeah, right," she mutters, trying to inject sarcasm into her tone.

"I'm serious!" Miyu insists. "Some nut job from this bar swooped in and took him away! Nobody knows where he is now!"

Isabella raises an eyebrow. "I'm not even sure I should believe you."

"It's been on the news, you know. The news is that he's missing, but some inside scoop on one of the more popular newspapers has it that he's truly been kidnapped."

She decides to play along now. "Are you serious?! That's just terrible!"

"I know, right?" Miyu agrees, tugging a board out from the mess underneath her cousin's bed with a slight frown. "Anyway, sorry to bother you, but thanks for letting me get this."

"You're welcome. You used to treat this like your place anyway," Isabella courteously replies, trying not to grimace.

A faint smile touches Miyu's lips. "Yeah, I loved living with you and having you take care of me before."

"Me too," the other girl chokes out, and Miyu pretends not to notice the rising tension in the air.

"I should be going," the younger announces with a small smile, waving at Isabella and stepping out. "Bye."

"Bye."



Miyu takes off down the stairs as fast as she can, once she's out of her cousin's house. She doesn't stop till she leaves the apartment altogether. For the second time that day, her heart feels like it's been wrenched in two. Firstly, she's happy that her cousin seems innocent of the crime of kidnapping Joon, but she's disappointed that she now has almost no way of finding the real kidnapper. That's not all that bothers her, though. As she walks past the park, she decides to drop into a bench, and she leans against it, a frown on her face. 

What her cousin said really disturbs her. The way she acted hurt her, although she knew the reason for why Isabella disliked her so much. Then again, it's not like Miyu could have helped what happened. The past is the past, and nothing she does now can change that. But then, she never knew just how deep Isabella's hatred of her went, and it troubles her to see how much she despises her. After all, they're cousins, and after everything, they're still family. Miyu has nobody else, apart from her friends. Besides, Isabella was the one to raise her, and she was the one to give her a home and make her feel cared for when she needed it the most. To see that same loving person turn into this new Isabella with so much coldness in her makes Miyu feel indescribably sad.

But as always, there's nothing she can do to change that. Isabella will never accept any apology, although it wasn't Miyu's fault in the first place. The only thing that can solve the rift between them is if time turned back on itself and the event never happened.

They're stuck at odds with each other.

 

A/n: Okay, so this chapter is set slightly earlier than it should be, and I wanted to do something about Seungho to spice things up. ^^ (Gosh, I wanted to say something more but I completely forgot) Oh I remember now, applications are finally closed! I got about 40 applicants? And I think that's way too many already T^T Hope I can manage to make the story interesting without neglecting any characters... Anyway, what do you think of this update? It's only 3900 words, sorry people~ Kekeke *that is weird, to be apologising for 3900 words... my average is 1000?* By the way, since applies are closed, confirm your name and character is up on the list in chapter 1 okay? If it's not, tell me immediately! Ugh *sniffles and rubs throat* I haven't been able to speak all day and sign language is so derpy OMG. I've been attacked by some random virus thanks to my mom, who got it from my brother. Eesh. Well, I hope I get better soon! :D