Internally

I spend the next week or so helping out Mom and the rest of the costume design team. I come into work, do the little jobs that need to be done, and stay out from under Mom’s feet.

But I don’t do this because I really want to.

Working is a great way to forget. It’s brilliant for when you want to take your mind off something, and stop thinking about it for just a minute out of the whole day. And there’s something on my mind right now that I can’t quite get rid of.

Why can’t I just stop thinking about it already?

“It’s not like anything even happened,” I mutter under my breath.

And it’s true – nothing did. So why do I keep replaying scenes in my head that are over a week old? I try my best not to get distracted, and continue to help out as preparations are made for the awards shows that are coming up fast.

It’s late when I wake up on the couch in the corner of the design hall. Night has fallen outside, and yet Mom is still here working away at her work station. I peer at my phone; 11:30PM. I must’ve taken a nap or something, and Mom must’ve left me sleep. Anyhow, it’s pointless to go home right now – I might as well wait for Mom to finish and we can go home together.

“Mom,” I whisper from across the room. She doesn’t look up, absorbed in what she’s doing.

I cross the room, wiping sleep from my eyes and stretching my arms. “Are you going to work much later, Mom?” I ask.

“I’m just finishing this for tomorrow,” Mom replies without looking up. “The Asian Artist Awards are tomorrow and this needs to be done before then.”

“Okay,” I say through a yawn. “I’ll go and stretch my legs and I’ll find you in a bit then.”

“Don’t get lost,” Mom reminds me on my way out the door.

“I don’t get lost anymore, Mom,” I tell her, a little miffed. She chuckles and I close the door behind me.

The Big Hit building is dark as I take a wander through the corridors. I use the light of my phone to guide me, suddenly jumpy at the shadows it creates. Where should I go? Then I remember something I should’ve taken care of last week.

My camera.

To be honest, I’ve been too busy to look, what with awards show preparations and everything going on. I’ve been hoping that it will just turn up sooner or later, but it hasn’t. I should look for it now. Where was the last place I left it?

“Where was the last place I left it?” I repeat aloud. Then it hits me.

The practise room!

The memories of Jin’s disastrous birthday party flood back into my mind. I left it there – on the table. Maybe it’s still there...

So I find my way to the practise room in the dark, hoping that nobody moved my camera, or that it’s in a safe place that’s easy to find. More than anything, I hope it isn’t broken. It was a present for my eighth birthday – from my dad...

When I get there, the practise room lights are off. They’ve probably all gone home, haven’t they? It should be empty, and free for me to go in and have a look. So my fingers curl around the door handle and I take a step inside.

But to my surprise, I’m greeted with a blur of phone lights and ‘Yah!’s.

To be honest, I nearly jump out of my skin.

“Mina?” says a voice from the small gathering on the floor in the centre of the room.

I take a breath, realising it’s probably just the members. But what are they still doing here? It’s getting close to midnight.

“Sorry,” I say, still blinking at the sudden light of multiple phone screens, “I was just looking for my camera, but I can go-”

“Oh, no you won’t,” says Jimin, grabbing my hand and dragging me into the circle.

“Why haven’t you gone home yet, Mina?” Namjoon asks. “You must be tired.”

“My mom’s working late today,” I briefly explain. “But why are you all still here? The AAAs is tomorrow. Shouldn’t you be getting some rest?”

Jungkook scoffs at that. “It’ll be fine. And anyway, we couldn’t let you miss out on a game of truth or dare.” He grins at me, and I know trouble is coming.

“Truth or dare?” I repeat. Like Twister, I’ve had bad experiences with Truth or Dare in the past. I won’t go into detail on the shaving cream and Pepsi incident.

“Yeah!” says Taehyung, looking up from his phone mid-text, “It’ll be fun.”

“And besides,” says Jin, “You’ve got nothing to do until your mom is finished. You might as well play with us.”

I give a long sigh. Nothing good ever comes from Truth or Dare. But I open my mouth, and say, “Sure.”

And so the game begins.

After a few rounds of the members taking the dares, the bottle finally lands on me. The dares so far haven’t been very pleasant, so when Namjoon says, “Truth or dare, Mina?” I say, “Truth, please.”

They hesitate for a minute, trying to come up with something other than a dumb idea for a dare. That’s when Jin says, “I’ve got one!”

I raise my eyebrows at him and he grins mischievously. It’s making me nervous.

“Out of all the members,” Jin begins, “Who would you date?”

Namjoon slaps his arm, but Jin just laughs. I guess he doesn’t mean anything that serious by the question, but it makes me freeze. For some reason, my eyes turn to Suga, who hasn’t said anything yet. His eyes meet mine and I frown. Why would I think of him first?

I try to come up with the most logical answer possible in the space of about six seconds. I change Jin’s question in my mind, so it’s, “Who would you be most likely to date?”

The answer to that is conclusive. I mean, it’s fairly obvious when you think about it.

“It’s such a tough question,” says Jin through a chuckle.

But I take a breath and laugh about it. It is a game, after all. “Okay,” I say, “I suppose... it would be Jungkook.”

Jungkook looks surprised at that. “Me?” he exclaims.

“Jungkook?” Taehyung repeats.

“It’s because,” I explain, “I’d be most likely to date him since we’re the same age.”

“Ah,” the members chorus slowly.

The game continues until Jungkook gets fed up and hungry.

“Why don’t we have a prize?” he suggests. “The loser has to buy us fried chicken.”

“It’s nearly midnight, Jungkook,” Namjoon points out.

“So?” Jungkook shrugs. “I’m hungry and the fried chicken place two blocks down is open all night.”

“You can’t really make someone pay for all of that,” Jimin reasons, torn between kindness and chicken.

“I think it’s a good idea,” I pipe up. “I’m hungry too.”

“See?” says Jungkook, giving me a hi-five. “People born in September think the same.”

“I suppose we could do it,” says Namjoon, swayed by my contribution.

“How about the two people who lose have to buy it?” Hoseok suggests. “Then they wouldn’t have to pay so much.”

“Okay,” says Jungkook, “As long as I get chicken. I’m starving.”

So round after round, truth after dare, the game goes on. Everyone is determined not to lose so they don’t have to pay for a dozen fried chickens for us all. No matter how stupid the dare is, they do it, and so do I.

Suga is the first to lose.

It’s stupid, really. Jungkook dares him to play rock-paper-scissors with Jimin – on the condition that if he loses then he’s one of the fried chicken buyers. And so he plays. And so he loses.
As much as Suga protests, Jungkook laughs harder, and insists that ‘hyung should keep his promise’. Namjoon cuts him off anyway with another truth for me.

“Which place is better?” he asks, “America or South Korea?”

I pause at that one. I think of here, and I think of the members, and my job, and Mom. And then I think of America and I think of Dad, and speaking English, and Jace. There’s no way I could honestly decide.

“You have to answer,” Hoseok insists, “Otherwise you’ll have to forfeit the game.”

I glance at Suga, who’s still bummed about having to buy all that chicken, and I think about the question again. The key is in the word ‘truth’. I couldn’t tell the truth, because I can’t decide.

“I guess I’ll have to forfeit,” I shrug, and sigh at the thought of how much that chicken will cost.

“Which means that’s the end of the game!” Jungkook announces. “Mina-ya and Yoongi-hyung will go and buy us chicken, and we’ll play the ‘of course game’ while we’re waiting.”

“Do you want to be the leader?” Namjoon accuses jokingly.

“Of course,” says Jungkook.

Namjoon almost glares at him.

“Sorry, hyung,” Jungkook adds, but he’s grinning still.

And then I realise I’m off to buy chicken with Suga.

How do things like this happen? I freeze as soon as I’ve got to my feet, unable to shut my gaping mouth. I must look like a complete ditz. There’s a strand of wavy blonde hair that’s fallen in my eyes, but I’m not in my right mind to even think about moving it.

Twister... That’s what I keep thinking about. It’s ridiculous.

“Well?” says Suga from the doorway, waiting expectantly. “I’m not paying for this by myself.”

So I shut my mouth and hurry after him.

It’s dark outside, but Suga hits a switch on the wall on every corridor, and we’re flooded with light. He doesn’t say much – as usual – and neither do I. Too many thoughts are going through my mind to even notice that we’re not heading towards the front entrance at all.

I feel weird.

I don’t feel like me at all. The person I usually am, or that I used to be, is witty and smart, and always has an answer for everything – especially with Mom. But now there’s a fluttering in my chest and my breath catches in my throat more often than not. And worst of all, I can feel my cheeks heating up when they’re definitely not supposed to.

I wonder if I’m sick.

“Aren’t we going to get fried chicken?” I point out with a cough.

“Yes,” says Suga.

“Then where are we-?”

“I’m going to need my wallet for that, aren’t I?” Suga interrupts.

I fall silent. Firstly, I’m thoughtless. And secondly... why are we suddenly so awkward? Only last week we were poking fun and bantering and everything was just a sarcastic joke. And now...

Suga unlocks the door to his Genius Lab and I follow him inside. He turns the light on and rummages through the pockets of his long black coat that is draped over his computer chair.
I let go of the door handle, letting it shut behind me. And then I hover near the door, waiting until this can be over and I can go home and I can stop feeling whatever this is.

“Got it,” says Suga, pulling out a sleek leather wallet, “Let’s go.”

I turn to go out first, but the door handle won’t go down. I tug at it, trying to make the door budge even a little, but it’s stuck. My eyes go wide. I continue to pull at the handle, even though I know it won’t open.

“Just open the door,” Suga mutters, and pushes past me to open it himself.

He yanks at the handle as hard as he can, pushing his full weight against the door. He tries everything he can think of to get that door to budge. It feels like an age before he finally gives up. It still doesn’t open.

Why won’t it open?

I feel a sense of dread surging through me and I gulp. This is my situation. I’m stuck in the Genius Lab with none other than Min Suga, and there’s no way out because the door won’t move and we’re a dozen floors above ground level.

I’m not sure if there are actually any positives to this. At least we’ve still got power, and the room isn’t freezing cold, and I’ve got my phone...

I haven’t got my phone.

“Hey,” says Suga, glancing my way. “Call one of the members to get us out of here.”

“Why me?” I argue. “I don’t even have their phone numbers.”

Just tell him you don’t have your phone, Mina.

“Well, I can’t do it, can I?” says Suga, “I left my phone in the practise room.”

He sinks into his computer chair and my heart sinks to the bottom of my chest. Neither of us have a phone. The members think we’re out of the building. And we’re locked in a small room with no way out.

Why do things like this have to happen to me?!

Suga catches my eye and frowns. “Don’t you want to get out of here?” he asks. “Call someone.”

“Um...” I trail off, hesitant to tell him the truth. “Well, my phone...”

“Yes?”

I take a breath and meet his eyes. “I left it in the design hall,” I say.

The realisation seems to hit him too. We’re stuck.

He slowly closes his eyes and gives a long sigh. For a few minutes, he sits there like that, and I hover near the door, watching for any change in his expression. His dark hair falls across his forehead and into his eyes, but he makes no move to sweep it away. He clasps his large hands together and rests his head on them, as if he’s trying to channel some sort of frustration.

Eventually, I start to say, “Suga-”

He leaps to his feet as if he wants to pick up the computer chair and toss it across the room. “Brilliant!” he yells, flailing his arms with every next word, “We have no way of getting out. This is just great!”

“I’m sorry!” I find myself shouting, angered by his sudden anger. “It’s not like it’s my fault your stupid door won’t open. It doesn’t mean you have to blame me for everything!”

He opens his mouth to snap at me, but our eyes meet and he sighs again. His fists uncurl and his limbs relax. He looks like he wants to apologise, perhaps, but he doesn’t. He just closes his mouth and looks at the brown carpet that lines the floor.

“Sorry,” he mutters, so quiet I can barely hear him.

I don’t look at him, or reply. Instead, I sit in the corner of the room, my back pressed to the wall, wondering when and if we’ll ever get out of here. He sits back in his chair, elbows resting on his desk. The silence in the room is deafening.

It’s weird, because I swear we’d started to get along.

Five minutes pass in total silence. Then ten minutes... I close my eyes and breathe slowly. But the image of his face appears in my mind, and then the feeling of his body against mine during Twister. Startled, my eyes shoot open and I gulp.

Then the hairs on my arms stand on end, and it’s not because of my imagination. The room is cold, heated by only one radiator, and the radiator is as far away from me as it can possibly be. It’s only marginally warmer than it would be outside. Winter had reached us long before now.

I try to shiver quietly, but my plan fails when a loud sneeze escapes me. I blink, and sneeze again before my nose stops tingling. Suga looks over and frowns. I expect him to ignore me – like he usually would do – but he stands up.

I feel a long black coat being wrapped around my shoulders, covering the bare skin on my arms from the cold. What surprises me even more is that Suga comes to sit beside me, just a few inches away, warming up the air around me. My eyes narrow, but I say nothing.

He’s actually being nice...

Right now reminds me of that day when I cried, and he sat by me and handed me tissues, and didn’t care when I got all ugly and snotty with my tears. Except this time it’s... different.

Suddenly, I say, “Sorry.”

Suga grunts a little. “What for?”

“Getting you stuck in here with me,” I shrug, chuckling slightly. “I shouldn’t have let the door close.”

Then he scoffs. “How were you supposed to know that would happen?” he counters.

A small smile works its way onto my face, but I keep my eyes fixed on the tips of my shoes. “I guess you’re right,” I murmur.

“I told you that you’d keep saying that,” says Suga, a little too smugly.

“Shut up,” I say, slapping his arm lightly.

He just laughs and I join in. His laugh is kind of cute... in a totally platonic way, obviously. We sit there for a while longer, both of us trying to figure out a plan to get out. Eventually we come to the same conclusion. There is no way out.

“Hey,” I blurt.

“What is it?” he asks, vaguely interested.

“When we get out of here...”

“...If we get out of here...”

“Suga.”

“Mm?”

“Stop it.”

He chuckles again and rolls his eyes. “What were you going to say?” he asks.

“When we get out of here,” I begin again, “Please get a better door.”

He gives me a pair of offended brown eyes. “This isn’t my door’s fault.”

“How long has that door been there?” I point out.

Suga tries to calculate in his head. “Since before we debuted,” he answers.

“It needs replacing,” I decide.

“Do you even know how much doors cost?” he remarks.

“You’re the one with the massive salary!” I protest. “Get it replaced. Please.”

He just laughs softly to himself and doesn’t reply. The light bulb in the ceiling flickers more and more dangerously the longer we sit there on the floor. I start to wonder whether we’ll end up staying the night. I have no idea how long we’ve even been in here.

“Hey,” says Suga, catching my attention.

“Yes?”

He pauses, and then poses the question. “I was wondering... why did you move to Korea in the first place?”

Why? Why of all questions did you choose that one, Min Suga?

Nobody here knows about my dad, or the not-so-secret ‘secret’ affair, or the fact that the last time I spoke to my dad I yelled at him down the phone. I haven’t told anyone about it, because it’s sort of supposed to be in the past. It might also be because there isn’t a lot of trust going around Big Hit Entertainment for me right now.

But as I think about it some more, I realise that this is the perfect opportunity. Though we’ve had many an argument, Suga is probably the one person I really trust here – as crazy as that sounds in my own head. Maybe telling someone will take the weight off my shoulders. That’s what the guidance counsellors always used to say at my high school...

“It’s kind of a big secret in my family,” I struggle, trying to form some sort of coherent sentence.

Suga doesn’t say anything, only meets my eyes and waits for me to continue.

“My parents went through a divorce last summer,” I ramble. “My dad had an affair with someone else. Mom was super angry. We never talk about it now. She hates him for messing up our family, and now I’m mad because he has a new baby with that woman, and now he hates me too because I yelled at him, and everything’s just going wrong and I can’t do anything about it...”

At that point, my throat gets all clogged up and I can’t say any more. I’m not even sure that he cares. Maybe I should have given some dumb generic reason so he’d drop it and none of what I’d just said would have come out of my mouth. I don’t know why, but I’m terrified of what he’ll think. He has the perfect life, and mine is a mess.

But Min Suga is full of surprises.

Just as my vision starts to blur with those tears, there’s a hand in mine squeezing it tightly. And then nothing else matters. I cling onto that hand like it’s my lifeline. My hand feels very small in his, and like before it’s like it’s protecting me. I close my eyes and the tears spill onto my cheeks. But it’s okay because I let my head fall onto the soft sweater that covers his shoulder, and I’m free to cry.

But the crying doesn’t last for long. I fall quiet. He doesn’t say anything either, but the warmth of his hand in mine is comforting. He doesn’t ask any more questions about the States, or my dad, or the mess of my life. Somehow, I think he just gets it.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Suga says through a wide yawn. “I’m sure you’ve had enough of people saying that.”

“Mm,” I agree.

There’s a pause, and then he says, “You know, Mina-”

And of course, that’s when the lights completely cut out.

But yes – I do manage to notice that it’s probably the first time he’s actually used my name. It feels like some sort of achievement.

However, I don’t have much time to think about it, because the electricity is out and the radiator’s turned off, and the room is turning slowly cold, and we’re sat in complete darkness... and I don’t know what the hell we’re supposed to do.

I hear Suga curse under his breath, and his hand slips out of mine.

Suddenly, I’m lost in a tiny room, and I have no sense of direction, and Suga is gone, and it feels like he’s never coming back to find me... I don’t like feeling lost. I distract myself with the road trip we took when I was ten – when we got completely lost on a long dirt track and my dad couldn’t read the map and our car broke down.

At least our situation isn’t completely hopeless.

I can’t see him anywhere. My eyes still haven’t adjusted to the dark and it unnerves me. My hands disappear into the sleeves of his long black coat, trying to stay warm as all of the heat escapes through the vent in the ceiling. I guess this room must be pretty hot during summer.

He still isn’t here.

Where the hell has he gone?

I can hear him stumbling about the room. I don’t know what he’s trying to find – maybe a light source if he’s smart. He keeps swearing and cursing because the light’s out and there’s nothing he can do about it. And then I hear it: my name.

“Mina?”

I get to my feet to try and find him to help him look for whatever it is he’s searching for. I almost trip myself up in the dark, feeling more stupid than ever. I reach out both hands so I don’t walk into a wall. But I don’t walk into a wall; I walk straight into his chest and I hurt my nose.

I look up to where his face is supposed to be, but it’s too dark to see. Instead, I listen to his heavy exhales and wonder if the light will come back on. Suddenly he’s cupping my face with his hands, and my heart’s gone again.

That’s when it happens.

That’s when he kisses me.

Notes

Ohmygosh you have no idea how long I've been waiting to write that scene ^.^

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter - I sure did - and by the way I'm also back from a long, almost wifi-less expedition, so I can upload again!

Please vote, subscribe, and comment if you like this story, and feel free to check out my other ones! One is about Luhan the Wish Granter, and the other is a story where GOT7's Mark is the protagonist of a fanfiction :)

I hope you're all having a lovely end-of-February <3