Chapter Three: Of Silver Linings
Part 1.
*Two Years Before*

The thrum of the beats were exhilarating. An endless mass of people practically pressed close together danced freely, as if they’d had no other care in the world. Here, we find eighteen year old Lee Hyukjae dancing amongst the crowd of people. Every night he comes into clubs like these, simply dancing away all of the stress and anxiety of the day’s events. Sometimes he’d spend 2-3 hours in this place but there were times that he’d spend almost the whole entire night staying out. This was one of those nights. In fact, he wasn’t even really supposed to go out since it was his sister’s birthday but when he’d arrived home a few hours before, he was surprised to find both his parents locked in a heated argument. His sister was nowhere in sight which meant that she must not have been able to stand their parent’s bickering. He’d called her before and asked her if she wanted to celebrate her birthday with him but his sister refused and tearfully said that she wanted to be alone for the moment.

The days were certainly becoming harder for their family, being a struggling middle class family amidst the ongoing economic crisis. Hyukjae, or better known as Eunhyuk, felt really frustrated with his life. He wanted to be a good son. Really, he did. But what could he do? He didn’t have any remarkable talents other than dancing, at least that was what he believed. He’d already started working as a dance instructor at studio near his house just so he could help his family. The pay wasn’t really that good since no one had the time and money to a lot into leisure activities like dancing.

So here he was, wasting the night away, dancing with the company of faceless strangers. Heart beating wildly against his chest, sweat pouring off of his lithe body. Hours sped by without him noticing. After 2 hours dancing, he’d decided to take a break and headed to the bar. He sat on one of the stools and ordered a cold beer. The bar tender handed him his drink after a moment. He took a large swig of his drink, the cold liquid soothing the dryness of his throat. Putting the bottle down, he took the moment to let his eyes roam around the club. It was there that he first laid eyes on THEM. At the farthest corner of the club, THEY sat together in one of those excusive booths looking like kings among the rabble. The style of their clothes exuded luxury and glamor. All of them were handsome and all of them possessed a certain charm that everyone could feel and see miles away but one of them was a cut above the rest. He sat on the middle looking like the leader. He wore a red leather jacket and his hair was styled into a long Mohawk with half of its length dyed purple but that wasn’t his most catching features, no, his most memorable feature were his eyes. His eyes were so piercing that they seemed to see right through you and he was looking straight back at Eunhyuk.

Eunhyuk’s eyes widened and he quickly looked away. His heart beat hard against his chest, it felt as if he was caught looking at something he shouldn’t have been. After a few minutes, he stole a glance back at them. The guy was still staring at him. Feeling bold, Eunhyuk stared back after a few minutes the blue haired guy sitting at the right of the guy he was having a staring contest with whispered something. Eunhyuk watched a cool smirk spread through his lips, the guy nodded at his blue haired friend and titled his face at Eunhyuk’s direction. The blue haired male stood up and was heading at his direction. The male stopped by his side leaning at the bar, he spoke with the bartender and ordered a round of various hard drinks. For a minute there Eunhyuk thought that he was in the clear. That drinks were all the blue haired guy wanted but then he turned towards Eunhyuk, an easy smile plastered on his face.

“You were great.” His voice was husky yet friendly.

“Huh? What are you-“ Eunhyuk couldn’t seem to get a grasp on his words. It felt surreal, as if he was imagining that the blue haired guy was talking to him.

“You were that guy right? The one who was dancing. My friends and I saw you. We thought you were great.” The man said patiently to him.

“Ah, yeah… Thanks.” Eunhyuk said quite awkwardly.

“My name is Top. Nice to meet you…” Top extended his hand waiting for Eunhyuk to shake it. Not quite still grasping what was going on, it took Eunhyuk a few seconds before he realized that he should shake Top’s hand.

“Eunhyuk. My name’s Eunhyuk. Sorry about that, I seem to be quite slow today.” Eunkyuk as he shook Top’s hand.

“Haha, that’s alright. Hey, do you want to come and have drinks with us? I’m sure the other’s would like to meet you.” Top said smiling invitingly.

“Eh? Are you sure? I don’t want to intrude.” Eunhyuk said with uncertainty.

“No, it’ll be great!” Top replied reassuringly and with that he lead Eunhyuk towards their booth.
“But, your drinks-“ Eunhyuk said looking back at the bar.

“Its fine, they’ll take care of it.” Top continued on, leading Eunhyuk back to the booth where the others were waiting.

Once they reached the booth, Top introduced him to everyone. Desung was the blond one in a black jacket with white designs on it, Seungri was the neat short black haired one who wore also wore a simple black jacket with a white undershirt. Teayang was the one who had a faux hawk hairstyle and a cool looking hip hop jacket. And finally there was G-Dragon, or more simply known as GD. This was the guy in the red jacket, the one whom he’d been having a staring contest with only a few minutes ago. After the introductions, Top let him sit between him and GD.

“We saw you dancing. You’re very good you know.” GD began, his gaze was cool yet easy going. He let his arms stretch out leaning against the back rest of the seat.

“Ah, yeah… Thank you. Top mentioned that before…” Eunhyuk said nervously.

“Hey, no need to be so nervous. Relax. We’re here to have fun.” GD said to Eunhyuk.

At that moment, the waiters came with the order of drinks. GD picked up the bottle of whisky and opened it. Grabbing two glasses filled with ice, he poured the liquid into them and set the bottle down once he was done. Taking the glasses he offered one to Eunhyuk. Eunhyuk accepted the offered drink and took a nice long sip from it. GD downed his in one full swing and set his glass back down on the table.

“So, as I was saying, we saw you dancing and we were all really impressed.” Around him, the others nodded. Eunhyuk didn’t know exactly where they were going with this and stayed silent.
“We represent a company that values great talent above all else.” GD said looking straight at him, a beatific smile on his lips.

“What are you saying?” Eunhyuk said boldly meeting GD’s piercing gaze.

“Well, what we’re saying is that we’re offering you a once in a lifetime opportunity Eunhyuk-shi.” Digging at his right breast pocket, GD drew a pristine thick white envelope and handed it to Eunhyuk. Eunhyuk took the envelope and opened it. Inside was a folded paper and at last 10,000,000 worth of won. Eunhyuk’s eyes widened in shock.

“I know it seems small but we can give you much more later, Eunhyuk-shi. Give us a chance and read the paper.” GD misread Eunhyuk’s reaction, since he believed that the amount inside the envelope was quite small. Eunhyuk looked at GD and turned back and took the paper out of the envelope. It was a contract. A contract that was offering Eunhyuk a job. A job as part of the YG Company’s administrative research department.

This was something that Eunhyuk could not seem to grasp. If he was following correctly, GD had said that the company values great talent, but why would dancing be considered as a great talent? Something like this definitely had a catch and there was obviously much more to this than meets the eye.

“What’s the catch?” Eunhyuk said quietly. GD looked at him and smirked.

“There’s no catch Eunhyuk-shi. We’re just trying to find people with special enough talents to help us. All of us right here, we’re part of the Administrative Research Department.”

“Bullshit! You mean to tell me you’re offering to pay me 10,500,000 won an day just to become part of your ‘Administrative Research’ department! As if I’d fall for that! Just who the hell do you people think you are? As if I’d whore myself to you people!” Eunhyuk stood up abruptly all but ready to march away from the five of them but Top caught his wrist and stopped him. GD laughed almost hysterically, as if what Eunhyuk said was the funniest thing he’d ever heard! Eunhyuk glared murderously at him. Top, Taeyang, Desung and Seungri were also chuckling.

“We’re not talking about THAT kind of Administrative Research!” GD said wiping the tears from laughing too much. “We’re talking about intelligence gathering Eunhyuk-shi. Our Administrative Research Department deals with gathering pertinent information for the sake of the company. Anything that can help improve our company’s performance in the global market.”

“But you people kept talking about my dancing ability. I thought you were…”

“NO! Haha!!! We brought up your dancing abilities because of the way you moved. So fluidly and precise. We saw potential in that and we need people like that for special instances.”

“Why do you need something like that?”

“We can’t discuss that unless you decide to join us Eunhyuk-shi.”

“What do you want me to join you right now?”

“No, not all. We understand that you’ll probably need a few days to decide but we can assure you that we’re very serious with this offer and we’ll wait for your decision after a week and the money, that’s yours now. Think of it as a bonus. Do you have any more questions?”

“Yes, just one more. If you guys are looking for people to work for you, why would you look in a club?”
GD smiled almost mysteriously.

“Well, you see Eunhyuk-shi, in our line of work, we look for people with special talents and potentials. Something like that can’t be found by holding regular job interviews where almost everyone is a ‘yes-man’ type of person and more often than not, they just turn out to be normal people that don’t possess any of the talents that we require.”

With that, they let him go. Eunhyuk went home with a lot to think about and only one week to decide where to go from there.

Notes

So guys this is the first part of chapter 3. As you can see we have a special appearance from BIGBANG. They will be involved in the story of course.