That night I have strange dreams. They were the same flashbacks as before, but more drawn out and the colors were strange. I could place the faces of the girls, as I now knew who they were. I tried to reach out to them, but they would fade away from me. My memories just all fade away from me. I can’t reach them anymore.

~~~

I wake up unwillingly the next morning. The clock in front of me seems to glare at me with the “6:29 am” in red letters on its face. I look over to Key and see that he’s still asleep. Maybe I could cook breakfast or something, but I have to be quiet. Something tells me that waking a sleeping Key would be a version of hell.

I get up and creep over to the closet where I pick out some random girl-looking clothing. I head to the bathroom and change. I picked a sweater with a lot of bold and jarring words on it and some sort of white pants. I then tiptoe to the kitchen where I start my endeavors.

I look in the refrigerator and find a package of bacon and some eggs. That’ll do for breakfast. I hope he likes this stuff. I put a pan on the stove and put the bacon strips in it. I hope I don’t fail at this. I barely remember anything about cooking.

I accidentally touch the pan and burn my finger. I shriek out in pain and quickly run my finger under cold water. I see Key pop out of the bedroom and walk towards me in the kitchen. I woke him up. He will not be happy.

“Chaerin what are you doing?” He asks me. He looks groggy in his pajamas and with messy hair, but nevertheless he looks perfect. I will never understand how he does this.  I probably look like .

“I burned my finger while cooking.” I stick out my index finger to show him. He takes my hand and looks at my finger intently. He then drops my hand and looks in the pan.

“You’re gonna be fine, but you’re bacon won’t. It’s burning.” I quickly rush over and take the bacon out of the pan. I feel the heat rising in my cheeks as I look at the charred meat. Good job, you embarrassed yourself already. I hear Key chuckle a little then walk away. I crack some eggs in the pan then turn to look at Key.

He’s seated himself on the couch staring at some sort of a laptop on the short table in front of him. I take in Key’s messy beauty for a few seconds until he looks up at me and I go back to scrambling my eggs. I blush to myself. He’s going to catch on. What if he already knows? What if he doesn’t like me at all? Then I’m stuck here with heartache. I better not let him know.

Once the eggs are done, I put the food on a couple plates and put it on the tiny kitchen table. I make sure the place settings and everything looks okay. I don’t want him thinking I’m a slob too.

“Breakfast’s ready!” I shout to Key. He comes in with a smile on his face and not a trace of mischief in his eyes, which is slightly unusual. He immediately walks over to me and grabs my hand. He looks at my burnt finger again and then walks away. He looks through the cabinets and finds a band-aid in one of them. He then puts it on my finger as I blush madly. This is going to be a hard stay here with Key.

“There. Now your burn should be all better soon. I don’t want anyone getting an infection or anything.” He looks at me and smiles brightly then sits down at the table.

“I tried my best cooking with what I can pull out of my head. Sorry about the burnt bacon.” I say, trying to preemptively apologize for what might me the worst breakfast ever.

“No problem. We’ve only been awake for what, three days now?” Key questions. I shrug and try to eat my own cooking. The bacon tastes like char and the eggs are disgustingly flavorless. I swallow hard and try to pretend like I’m not disgusted by my own cooking. I plaster on a smile and continue eating.

“Nothing like good homemade breakfast.” I lie. There was nothing good about this breakfast.

“Yeah, I think I should do the cooking from now on.” Key says as he delicately lays down his silverware on his plate. I blush out of embarrassment. Great going, CL. So fierce with the eggs! Suddenly, I put my head in my arms on the table and start laughing. The situation just seems so ridiculous. Here I am, locked in an apartment by the mob with only the memories of the last few days, and I have a crush on the guy with me. So I try to cook for him, but I end up burning myself and ruining the food. Yet, my stage personality is fierce and powerful. It’s so bizarre.

“What’s so funny? Did I do something?” Key says confusedly. I force myself to stop laughing and shake my head. Key shrugs to himself at the lack of explanation. I clear my breakfast-gone-wrong and start doing the dishes. Key probably thinks I’m slightly insane. Maybe more than slightly. Oh well. Suddenly he pops up beside me and starts helping me with the dishes.

“Anyway, apparently I was on a TV show where they taught me how to cook in a restaurant.” Key states. I wonder what TV shows I was on. Maybe I could look it up… WAIT.

“How did you even find out about that?” I question. If he can find out about himself, maybe I can find out who I was.

“We got a laptop. It has internet. Maybe we could look up ourselves and our groups. I already started looking up myself. I am an awesome dancer. Beware Lee Chaerin, Diva Key is here.” Key grabs my wrist and drags me towards the couch where a silver laptop sits. On the laptop is says, “We know what you see – Kang.” So I guess we can’t google an escape plan.

Key opens it up and pulls up a site called ‘Youtube’. He types into the search box ‘2NE1’ and clicks on the first video, ‘Can’t Nobody’. My jaw drops as I see myself looking gorgeous and, well, fierce. I can see what people mean.

“I was so badass.” I say, gawking at myself. When the screen turns to Minji my mouth hands even farther open. She’s so young! I watch the whole video in amazement. And when it ends I’m still in shock.

“I can’t believe I was so… charismatic and awesome. I was so much a leader. Wow.” I comment on myself. I haven’t acted like that a single time since I got here.

“’Was’? Who says you’re not badass now? You’re still the same person, just with less memory. I think you still have all that.” Key says seriously. He’s being to nice, it’s a little weird.

Key then searches ‘SHINee’ and clicks on a video called ‘Lucifer’. I force myself not to drop my jaw again as I see five incredible dancers and singers on the screen. They all looked interesting (and hot) too. Key was the most interesting, with his head half shaved. Even with the weird haircut, he still looked amazing.

“Look how creative I am. I can do weird hairstyles and still be trendy and good-looking. Aren’t I the best?” He grins at me sort of seductively while modeling his current hairstyle, which is almost black with slanted bangs and purple highlights. I giggle at his ridiculous display.

“No, I think we have a song called ‘I Am the Best’. So beat it, kid.” I retort. Maybe I am a little badass.

“Who are you calling ‘kid’? I’m not that much younger than you.” Key says while pouting, and moving on to the aforementioned song.

~~~

After a few hours of staring at ourselves on the computer, and a hastily made lunch made by Key there was a knock on the door. I get up to answer it, but a piece of paper slides underneath. I pick it up and bring back to Key.

Just to make our intentions clear, we’re just holding you hostage to get money from your respective companies. Have fun with the laptop, we didn’t want you to die of boredom. Dead idols are bad. But we can still see what you do.

~~ Kang

“Okay, so we’re hostages now. But we still have the laptop.” Key says. I shrug. It could be worse, we’re not slaves and we don’t hate each other. Key slides in closer to me so our sides are touching. I get a little nervous but my attention is diverted to the screen where SHINee is playing with a little boy named Yoogeun.

“I was the best appa.”

~~~

I wake up the next morning to a surprise. Key is right next to me. The proximity is almost scary. Then I remember that we had both fallen asleep on the couch because we were too entranced with watching seasons upon seasons of 2NE1tv. Then I also remember that we did not even eat dinner.

With my stomach growling I get up very carefully and walk over to the kitchen. I check behind myself to see that Key was still sleeping. I sigh out of relief that I avoided an awkward situation. But I did still technically sleep with him. I accidentally slept with my crush. Fun.

I start searching through the cabinets to find something to eat that does not require cooking when I feel a hand on my back.

“Chaerin, why did you get up so early?” I turn to the left to see Key standing beside me. His hand slides off of my back as we face each other. My heart keeps beating unreasonably fast, partly because of the shock, and partly because of the fact that I have an unreasonable crush on Key.

“I don’t know, but now I’m really hungry so-“

Suddenly, there is a hand on my chin, and then lips on my lips. Key is kissing me. KEY IS KISSING ME OH MY GOD. The kiss is soft, his lips are soft, and his hand is soft on my face. It is a perfect moment. I try to deepen the kiss when he pulls away.

“Lee Chaerin, CL, or whatever other names you have, will you be my girlfriend?”

“Yeah, sure I guess.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes.”