Nine Months Later

Jaejin took another sip of his drink, eyes sweeping the room as he leaned casually against a wall in the shadows of the gloomy bar area of the club. Why had he allowed them to talk him into this? He hadn't been to a club in years, not since his carefree, slightly reckless college days. He looked over at the men laughing and talking together at the table beside him and sighed. He was too old for this, they all were.

"Why a club, of all places?" he asked, looking out across the room again, trying to find at least one thing about the place that interested him.

"Because this is where the sexy things are. Or have you not seen the women in here?" Yoonsung lifted himself slightly out of his seat, neck straining to look out over the club. "One more round and I'm going out there to have some fun that does not include brushing thighs with you." He turned to look down at Junho who was squeezed into the booth next to him.

"I'm not going to argue, some of them are pretty, but how do you even connect with someone in a place like this, with all this noise and this... this..." Jaejin's hand swept in a wide arc to take in the club before them.

"Maybe next time we can take you to a museum to celebrate," Jiwon said with obvious sarcasm. "Or a library."

"Your sarcasm is duly noted, Won," Jaejin replied dryly and leaned back on the wall again.

"And Jin hyung..." Junho looked at him, a look of obvious disapproval on his youthful face as his gaze swept over Jaejin. "Uhm... how do I say this..."

Yoonsung took one look at Junho's expression and started laughing, clearly knowing exactly what their friend was trying to say, but was having trouble finding a tactful way to say.

Jaejin looked down at them, his eyes clouded with annoyed confusion.

"He wants to know... as all of us do, why you're at one of the hottest clubs in the city dressed like an investment banker," Jiwon said, helping their friend out.

"What's wrong with what I'm wearing?" Jaejin glanced down at his attire. Sure, he could admit that he did look slightly out of place in his dark suit, but what did they expect if he'd come there straight from the office. He flashed them an annoyed look as they started laughing, his hand subconsciously moving to loosen his tie slightly and unbutton the top few buttons on his shirt.

"And come sit with us, Jin-ah, you're making me nervous hovering like that." Jiwon pointed at the empty seat beside him.

"I thought you brought me here for the women? How am I supposed to see them with your big skulls blocking my view?" Jaejin retorted.

When he turned his attention back to the club, someone was right there in front of him – one of the girls he'd seen out on the dance-floor. She looked up at him, a wide smile on her heavily made-up face. Jaejin raised a quizzical brow, asking without really asking what she wanted from him. Sure she was pretty, but she was also drunk, exactly the kind of girl he was avoiding by not hanging out in clubs. He watched as she turned to nod at two other women at the bar, then turned back to him, her mouth opening as if she was about to say something.

"I don't dance," he stated calmly before she could utter a single word.

The girl stood looking up at him with a blank expression, mouth still open, obviously not sure how to react.

"But you do look pretty." He lifted his hand to pat her head lightly, the way you would when praising a child. "Now off you go, your friends are waiting," he said with a wave towards the bar where her friends waited.

At first, the girl looked unsure, then turned and walked back to where she'd come from, shoulders slightly slumped.

"What the hell was that?" Yoonsung asked with a nervous laugh.

"Well, you sure haven't lost your magic touch with the ladies, Hyung," Junho said with a smile.

"Did she look like she was about to cry?" Jiwon laughed.

Jaejin gave himself a mental shake before sitting down at the table and listening to his friends tease him about the encounter with the drunken girl. "I need a stronger drink if I'm going to get through this night," he said as he shoved his empty glass at Jiwon.

▼▲▼

"What was that?" Aerin asked as Bona sat back down, her shoulders slumped in defeat.

Bona shrugged, looking back at the man she'd moments ago tried to talk to.

"Well, looks like you owe me." Ree did a little victory dance in her seat, arms moving from side to side.

"No. I want to know what he said," Aerin said, looking from the man in the dark suit to her more than a little tipsy receptionist.

Being out in a club on a Friday night was not Aerin's idea of fun, but when she'd learned that it was one of her employees' birthday and that she knew no one in Seoul she could spend it with, she'd offered to spend the night with her. When she'd suggested dinner at a restaurant and then moving on to catching a show at the live-theatre, Bona had scrunched her nose in obvious distaste. Half-dozen other suggestions later she'd allowed the birthday girl to suggest a place. And that was how they ended up at Black-Out. Feeling slightly out of place, Aerin had called two other friends to join them. Ree, her oldest and dearest friend, had agreed immediately, as always, while one other was yet to show up.

Bona was about to say something when Ree's perfectly manicured hand covered her mouth.

"No. Don't you dare tell her until she's paid up." She did a little come-to-mamma wave with her other hand.

Ree and Bona had been out on the dancefloor a few times, leaving Aerin to check for e-mails she'd been waiting on from a few investors. By the time they got back from their last bout of bopping she'd concluded her correspondence, so the girls had decided to stay and have some fun off their tired feet. After a few rounds of Bona losing their drinking game, they decided to stop, sparing the red-faced blonde the embarrassment of having to be carried home by her boss.

The next game was Ree's idea. She'd been eyeing a group of men at the table furthest from the dancefloor. One man, in particular, stood out starkly in his business suit and rigid posture as he stood against the wall behind their table. So a tipsy Bona had been sent to ask him to dance. Aerin predicted that he was the type who was out for a good time, trying to impress women with his expensive suit. However, according to Ree, he hadn't shown a flicker of interest in any of the women in the club all night, so he was quite obviously not into women. And as always, they'd settled their different opinions with a wager.

"Fine." Aerin dug through her purse and pulled out a few notes, tossing it at her crafty friend, her eyes moving back to the man who'd been standing up against the wall all night, but who'd by then moved to sit at the table with his friends. "Now what happened? Tell me everything."

▼▲▼

"I think that's my cue to get out on the dance floor and work some magic of my own," Yoongsung said after the girl had gone, eyes twinkling with mischief. He turned to Junho, tugging playfully at his shoulder-length hair. "You coming, flower boy?"

"Now that's more his type, don't you think?" Junho said, ignoring his friend's question.

"I don't have a type," Jaejin said as he reached for Yoonsung's half-empty glass.

"What is it about her?" Junho continued, his brow creasing in a frown as he looked somewhere over Jaejin's shoulder. "Hmm..."

"It's the hair. Definitely the hair." Yoonsung nodded enthusiastically as he spoke, then laughed as the male beside him nodded too and smiled.

"She could be my type any night..." Junho said in a sing-song voice.

"You think she's coming over here for me?" Yoonsung nudged Junho lightly as he spoke. "I mean, he's not even half as good looking as I am and this one doesn't look all that drunk."

Jaejin merely looked up at his friends with a half-amused, half annoyed expression. "This is why we should've left the children at the kindergarten, Won." He sipped at the drink and grimaced as the Scotch burned its way down his throat. "Ahhh... that's good."

The two men across from him went quiet, a look of curiosity on both their faces as they continued to look somewhere behind him. His body stiffened at the light touch to his shoulder, his eyes moving to his two friends, raising a curious brow – Yoonsung shrugged, Junho merely continued staring at the person behind Jaejin, his bottom lip jutting out, something he did when he was deep in thought.

Jaejin turned slowly in his seat, a sigh of annoyance escaping as he prepared himself to brush-off the drunk young woman yet again since his earlier subtlety hadn't seemed to have worked. "Look, sweetheart, it seems I didn't make myself clear..." he started to say, his words trailing off as he looked up at a dark-haired woman with her arms crossed over her chest, her stance one of annoyance.

He turned to look at Jiwon briefly, meeting with an almost imperceptible shrug, which translated meant – 'How the fuck should I know...'. He flashed his friend an annoyed look, silently thanking him for his uselessness, then looked back up at the woman.

There was something about her that amused him, she was dressed the part, but she stood out sorely, almost as much as he did. Not only that, but her stance was almost comically aggressive, which matched the fiery look in her dark eyes. Admittedly, he wasn't up-to-date on the latest flirting fashions, but even to him, her seduction tactics seemed strange.

His eyes moved to the strawberry blonde approaching from behind the annoyed-looking brunette, then back to her. How many more drunk women were going to come over?

"Whatever it is you're looking for, you didn't lose it here." He looked around her to the end of the bar where the drunk girl sat slumped over.

He cocked his head to one side as the blonde's hand covered the brunette's mouth just as she was about to say something, his curiosity about what she was about to say strangely piqued.

"Sorry boys, my friend here seems to have taken a wrong turn." Strawberry smiled brightly at them, her gaze eventually coming to rest on Yoonsung, still trying to cover her struggling friend's mouth. "But even wrong turns can lead you to the right place sometimes... What say I spin her back over there and wait for one of you to come ask me for a dance?"

Jaejin almost smiled as the blonde spoke, her exuberance somehow infectious, despite the fact that her offer held little interest to him. The other woman was still pitching icicles at him with her eyes, but he had no interest in asking her why. This was about to get interesting, but not for him, so he looked down at his phone to check his messages, leaving the charming of the ladies to his friends.

"I just have one question for you, love," Yoonsung said from behind him; he did not need to turn and look to know that he was smiling. "What took you so long? I've been dying to get out there all night."

"What kind of man gets his kicks humiliating women?" By the sounds of it, the wild-haired one had wriggled herself free. "So you're clear, even if you were offering, we would never accept a drink from a man like you."

He could feel the heat of her gaze return without having to look up at the frosty one, her tone dripping ice as she spoke. Why did it feel like those words were being directed at him? Oh well, if it was, it was wasted. He had no intention of buying her, or any other woman in the place, a drink. 

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