When he eventually was left alone in his old place, the place he supposed he could imagine a bright future with the one he loves, Jiyong cried his heart out. Who says a man is strong enough to get over these things when a man is also a human? And all human are weak.

He supposes he has to come back to his regular life, which he soon realizes it is the same life he always has, the life he has always been sick of it, and he just sometimes wants to get rid of it.

People love him this much, but the one who could understand him should be counted enough on his hands. Jiyong is the love of the nation, the love of millions of boys and girls, the love of the public, but all he wants for his life is to be the love of someone.

BigBang all joke that he is an attention , always seeks for love. But, to take into account of that statement, he’s just someone who’s desperate for love.

That’s ridiculous. How can a man who is the love of the nation can be desperate for love?

Even Jiyong denies it.

But, he also knows it’s actually a lie.

<1>

“Here? You don’t know this is my café shop?”

Jiyong bends his head, looks intimidated because, he doesn’t expect her not to know about his famous café shop; but by looking how she got so taken back and somehow flustered, he finally admitted that she might not never hear about this before.

“I’m sorry, sunbaenim.”

“It’s fine.”

 “Sunbaenim…” Jieun looks reluctant, not knowing what to say, so she finally comes up with a question instead. “Did you just text me?”

Following that is a nod, from him. She realizes that all of this makes sense, when she was sure that she already saved his phone number but the fact that he’s someone that will pop up out of nowhere with a new number several times has eventually explained everything.

 “Ah.” Jiyong suddenly laughs and touches his black hair, which is rarely seen. “I changed my number. You must be surprised, right?”

“No, it’s fine.”

Jiyong supposes that the conversation becomes awkward, just because they are both awkward. But what triggers him right now is how she ends up in here without knowing that this café belongs to him. And, to remind of who he is, Jiyong is just a man with great curiosity who always craves for more.

“So why are you alone in here? In Jeju?” He wants to start a new conversation, when Jieun almost quits from it.

<2>

When he finishes the sentence, Jieun still stands there, looking awkward as she always does and trying to find words. Maybe the question he asks is too private that he’s not someone she could even tell, but he does want to know the reason why. Someone like her tends to not be at a place like this alone, and from what he guesses, she’s not in a very good mood right now.

He did remember some images of her in the past, but what she looks like right now, on her T-shirt with ripped jeans and a big cap to cover her face, doesn’t remind him of the ‘IU’ that she is supposed to be. Wait, he doesn’t want to judge her, he just analyzes what he sees right now. Even one year ago when he encounters her the first time, like actually encounters her not just passing by each other in some ceremonies and festivals, she doesn’t talk much. Sometimes, Jiyong wonders if Jieun has always been like that, but he did remember some sceneries in which there were Jieun and his best friend’s interactions and she was totally different. But Jiyong supposes that people can change, though.

“I’m just traveling, sunbae.” She finally speaks that makes Jiyong somewhat disappoints with her bad excuses.

“If you want to lie, you should come up with some better ideas.”

Jieun grabs her hands tight and puts behind her back, so Jiyong immediately feels regretful. Maybe, he shouldn’t play a joke in this kind of situation, especially when a girl is not really in the mood.

“Sorry. I don’t mean to go further than a joke.”

“No, it’s fine, sunbae. I’m not good at lying anyway.”

She grins, but Jiyong knows she’s being polite. But, the thing is, Jiyong hates the idea of people being polite just because they have to.

“Do you mind if I ask you what’s going on?”

He should know he would be regretful after saying that sentence, but he still does. So, Jiyong takes a quick glimpse at her whose face is hidden by the shadow of her cap while she’s already standing in the dark but her face is still partially flashed by the light on the walls. And when he notices that her body begins to shake softly, he realizes how small she is when she’s not in the heels. (Somewhat Jiyong remembered that she’s not even that tall when she’s in heels; he’s not that tall but she isn’t either.)

<3>

Jiyong supposes that she will make an excuse and quickly disappear from his vision and will never appear again, and Jiyong will never have to be concerned about what is going on with her life. But no, everything happens in a blink of his eyes, with his most unexpected mind, she just stands there, shaking her head while tears are streaming down her face and saying nothing.

Because he had wrapped up everything with the members for their last concert in Seoul, he decided to go to Jeju for a rest. When he means rest, he means that he wants to be alone. But when he means that he wants to be alone, he doesn’t mean that he wants to be alone right now in this situation.

In a situation like this, Jiyong wishes he could become a woman to detach the myth saying that woman always does silly things when they’re not in their right mind. Because he’s tired of being in a situation when a woman always ends up doing things without saying anything and making the man to guess what the freak is going on, and no man will ever be the first one to break the wall. And especially, this lady standing in front of him, crying for something, either for a jerk or for a misery or something else that he has nothing to do with, makes him completely like an right now because it’s the case for every outsider who is observing the scenery.

So what he comes up with to resolve this typical situation is to drag her to his private room, and of course quickly he doesn’t forget to remind the employees to shut their mouth up about this whole thing. Well, so to be exact, Jiyong finally realizes that the unluckiness always comes along with luckiness. Getting in a freaking-fabulous situation like this is undeniably the most unfortunate thing of this month, but to consider the time of this circumstance that happened, he’s so relieved at the fact the coffee shop is closed early on Friday (for some private reasons) and no one is around to take some weird photos.

He leaves her alone in the sofa, while she’s still sobbing hard. Then, Jiyong orders a hot lemonade for her, and sits in the corner further away in silence.

Jieun after crying holds the cup to warm up from both the weather at night and the cry. She then sometimes glares at him, not exactly at him but at his figure, and quickly turns her head down. He supposes she feels embarrassed, and that makes sense because she looks like someone who just made a fuss in a coffee store for no reasons and then ended up going to the private room.

<4>

After a very long time staring at the wall behind each other’s backs (and sometimes at each other), Jieun feels like she should break off this awkward atmosphere.

“Sorry, sunbae.” Jiyong suddenly looks up from his phone that causes a quick back-off from her.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” She starts to speak irrelevant things, he supposes.

“Don’t know what?”

“I don’t know why I am here alone.”

Something in her voice makes he think of the past, when he always tried to run away from everything. Then, he would tell himself the same line he just heard right now.

“You don’t have to know, though.”

Jieun lifts her head up, revealing her red and a bit swollen eyes, and looks at him with her eyebrow folding. Maybe she is trying to comprehend what he said then, but she’s also not sure if that is what he meant.

“You will eventually figure out why you’re here. Everything happens for a reason.”

“Right?”

She doesn’t want to admit that, but it sounds true. So instead of making it sound like a sentence, she curves her voice up to question herself if she ever will find the reason why she ends up here alone. Actually she does, literally all of these things came from Yoo Inna, her-freaking-amazing-and-lovely-best-friend.

“Actually… This is not my idea at all.”

Jiyong suddenly stands up from the corner, since the room is not that small, he supposes he needs to move closer to her, either to listen to her story (if she is to tell him) or to make the atmosphere more communicative. When he sits down, her eyes still moves around and he could tell, she’s shy just because of his recent movement.

“Is it okay if I sit here?” He means to say that in a more cocky voice, but he can’t somehow express it.

“Of course, it’s your room, sunbae.” She spontaneously moves backward from her seat that makes him notice if she’s not getting used to be in this kind of situation: a man and a woman alone in a room.

“So you were saying?”

“Ah. It’s actually Inna unnie’s plan. She bought the ticket for me.”

“Only one for you?”

“Yeah.” She stresses her voice with frustration, and just then she remembers she is in front of a man who seems not to know so much about her precious friendship so she suddenly coughs off and grins awkwardly. “Sorry. I was just so pissed about this.”

But that catches Jiyong to laugh, like a real funny thing to make he laugh. But he doesn’t mean to laugh at her misery, the misery of being left alone in this land and being pissed by her friend, but at how she tries to portray herself in front of a stranger (Somewhat, he considers him as a stranger to her just because he doesn’t really think they’re friends.) And her face right now looks like someone who misunderstands him for his laugh, and he still finds that funnier.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to laugh at your story.” Jiyong tries not to sound too rude. “Anyway, Inna must be very close to you to do that.”

“She is.” She rolls her eyes, as much similar as Jiyong thinks he always does when he hears one of 1001 jokes from his precious Lee Seunghyun. “She’s taking advantages of it though, to do this kind of thing.”

Jiyong does know that this girl has so many relations to do with his companions in YG. She knows Hyukoh and Zion.T, she does collaboration with Seungri before (he still remembers somewhat the way Seungri brags with everyone about how he got to do the song with her when she’s finally famous), she obviously knows Youngbae (and he wonders if they are a thing but since Youngbae never says anything, he confirms by himself for a no), she basically connects to Akdong Musicians, and he also knows that she hangs out with Inna. Sometimes, he will hear things about her in YG buildings when he passes by the trainees’ studio. Though, he had thought that even if the list is getting longer, he never once had considered himself to be in the list.

“So, since you’re here alone. And as you can see, I’m here alone too.” He lifts up his head, trying to make his voice not sound too jerky (and flirty). “Why don’t we hang out together?”