A/N: Alas, we have reached the end of the night, but I do believe I will be continuing this story, so this is not the last chapter. Thanks so much as always for the follows and reviews you guys! Makes my heart smile :) Enjoy! :)

They had been walking for another twenty minutes or so in silence, side by side, when Ga Eul started humming a tune Yi Jeong couldn't quite make out. It felt like they were the only two people in the world, and Yi Jeong wanted to pretend for the moment that they were. Tomorrow, he would settle the rest of his affairs at school and review the plans for his arrival in Sweden. He would greet his father coldly when they met with his grandfather to discuss plans for the museum in Yi Jeong's absence. He would walk numbly into his mother's hospital room and kiss her on the forehead while she was still sedated and tell her he loved her while she couldn't hear him. Tomorrow, he might drink himself into another stupor under the weight of it all or find a few women whose names meant nothing to him, whose faces he would soon forget, to distract himself from his bitter musings. Tonight, though, he was just a guy walking a girl home. A good guy walking a good girl home, even.

They had reached a residential area with houses and small, gated yards when Ga Eul halted abruptly. When Yi Jeong turned around to see what had happened, he saw her taking her red pumps off. Then she walked up to the wall bordering one house and promptly flung her shoes over.

"What did you do that for?"

Ga Eul smiled broadly.

"Welcome to your second dare, Sunbae. You asked for it."

Ga Eul leaned up against the wall and slowly tilted her head up and then back down. It took a moment, but Yi Jeong finally realized what she was doing.

"Ga Eul, you're not serious."

"Serious about what?"

Yi Jeong scoffed and looked out into the street.

"Yi Jeong Sunbae," Ga Eul continued. "Are you really going to make me walk home barefoot? And have to explain to my poor mother how I lost my brand new shoes after working my fingers to the bone scrubbing dishes every day?"

Yi Jeong looked at her like he wasn't buying it.

"That's trespassing."

"Oh, please. Don't tell me you've never done anything illegal before. And I thought money made you superior to everyone else. What? Can't buy your way out of jail?"

"You can't buy your way of tabloids. That's what you can't—"

"Come on, Sunbae," Ga Eul grabbed his arm and dragged him toward the house. "I know the owners of this house. They aren't home." Walking around to the gate, she beckoned him to look. "See? Their car's not there."

"How do I even know they have a car?"

"Sunbae, this pavement's not very comfortable."

"I can't believe this. Only you would do something this childish."

"Sunbae, that's a brand new pair of shoes. Unless, of course, you'd like to loan me yours?"

Yi Jeong glanced down at the pavement, then back at the house, then back at Ga Eul.

"Let me get this straight. All I have to do is climb over and get your shoes for you?"

"Yes."

"That's the whole dare."

"Mm-hmm." Ga Eul nodded.

Yi Jeong searched Ga Eul's face. She looked sincere. But then again, she had fooled him once—that time in New Caledonia when he heard her scream and thought she was being attacked.

Ah, what the heck. He had nothing better to do anyway.

Yi Jeong shrugged his coat off and handed it to her. Ga Eul slung the coat over her arm.

"And your tie."

Yi Jeong cocked an eyebrow.

"So it won't get caught on anything."

Yi Jeong sighed and handed the tie to her as well. She stuffed his tie into her coat pocket.

Grabbing ahold of the gate post, he stepped up and then stepped up a bit higher and hoisted himself over the wall.

Climbing over was the easy part, but once he got into the yard, Yi Jeong realized he could hardly see a thing. The house was, indeed, submerged in darkness, as though no one was home and whoever lived there wasn't expected to return any time that night. He had felt something like a hard knot, though, under his feet when he landed, but he wasn't sure if the knot had moved after that or if he had.

After a moment, he spotted Ga Eul's shoes lying a few feet away along the perimeter of the wall. He had just reached over to pick them up when he heard a low growl in the direction he had come from.

Yi Jeong froze, his fingers barely clutching the shoes.

He heard a chain rustling, and the growl grew stronger—a deep rumble that came incrementally closer as Yi Jeong slowly slid the shoes toward himself and stood up. At the last moment, when it seemed the growl was nearly right on top of him, Yi Jeong bolted for the wall. In his hurry to scramble up, he lost his footing, however, and fell onto his back just as the largest, hairiest dog he had ever seen lunged at him, barking maniacally. Recovering quickly, Yi Jeong grabbed Ga Eul's shoes once more and took off running for the front gate. As he climbed over, the dog managed to grab one of his pant legs, but Yi Jeong easily shook him off, jerking his leg forward so abruptly he almost lost his balance again. When he finally landed on the other side of the gate, the dog's protests had reached such a frantic level, he wouldn't have been surprised if the neighbors on either side came out to investigate him for breaking and entering.

Ga Eul, for her part, stood across from him out in the middle of the street, holding one hand over her mouth and the other one over her stomach and laughing hysterically.

"That's Fat Cat," she finally said when she caught her breath.

"That…" Yi Jeong breathed heavily. "…was a cat?!"

Ga Eul shook her head. "No, silly. Fat Cat's the name of the dog. He's missing most of his teeth. His owners have to feed him soft foods. Gives new meaning to the phrase, 'All bark and no bite,' doesn't it?"

"He still has claws, doesn't he?" Yi Jeong grumbled, more than a bit annoyed.

"I think his owners file those."

"You think?"

"Will you relax? He's chained up and completely harmless."

"Completely harmless." Yi Jeong looked incredulous. "Why didn't you tell me he was in there?!"

"Because…" Ga Eul had started crying admist her giggles now. "Because you should have seen the look on your face." Then Ga Eul dissolved into another fit of laughter.

Yi Jeong knew he should have been mad. After all, the dress pants that dumb dog probably just ruined cost more than Ga Eul would make in a year working at that porridge shop. But the longer he watched her giggling the more he couldn't help but smile and even laugh a little himself.

Such an utterly ridiculous prank. Only Ga Eul would subject him to something like that.

Only Ga Eul could subject him to something like that and get away with it.

"You got me Ga Eul-yang." Yi Jeong stood up and brushed some dirt off of his dress pants. "But aren't you forgetting something?"

Ga Eul had finally slowed down on her laughter, enough to mumble, "What?" as she wiped tears from her cheeks with her fingertips.

Yi Jeong held up her shoes.

"You've still got to get these back from me."

Ga Eul sniffed and wiped the last of the tears away. To his surprise, she smiled at him.

"It's okay, Sunbae. You can keep them." Turning away, she started walking down the street again, a certain bounce in her step.

"You're going to walk barefoot all the way to your house?" Yi Jeong called after her.

"I'm a commoner. We were born barefoot," Ga Eul sang, skipping a little as she twirled around to face him. "Come on, Sunbae. It's getting late." Ga Eul grinned at him and kept walking toward the other end of the street. Truth be told, Ga Eul felt relieved to have her shoes off. The cold pavement felt nice on the aching soles of her feet, although she had to keep her eyes alert for broken glass on the ground.

Nevertheless, when Yi Jeong finally caught up with her and practically shoved her shoes back into her hand, she slipped them on without complaint.

Yi Jeong felt torn between throttling her and kissing her senseless as they walked on in silence again for a few minutes until they were finally just a block over from Ga Eul's house.

This time it was Yi Jeong who stopped abruptly and spoke up.

"Hey Ga Eul-yang. Truth or dare?"

Ga Eul stopped too, right under a streetlamp, and turned toward him.

"Truth," she answered.

"Don't you think I'm entitled to give you at least one dare? After all of that?"

Ga Eul said nothing to this. His voice sounded deeper now, the way it got when he meant business.

"How about this? If I ask you something and you don't want to answer, you can do a dare instead. That's the way the game normally works, isn't it?"

Ga Eul nodded slowly. Perhaps she had pushed her luck too far. She had been having too much fun earlier to think about how badly this could backfire on her. It sure sunk in now as Yi Jeong walked up closer to her.

He studied her for a moment.

"If you could ask me for anything—just one thing—and I had to give it to you, what would it be?"

Your heart, Ga Eul almost replied but stopped herself, shutting her mouth before it could fully open.

"And it has to be something I have. I'm not God, you know." As he said this, though, Yi Jeong drew himself up in a manner that said he was as close to God as any mere mortal could be.

From where I stand, you might as well be, Ga Eul thought. If I could ask you for anything…

She couldn't tell him what she really wanted from him. She couldn't go through all of that again, but she didn't want to make something up either, especially not anything that cost money. Then she'd be no different from the throng of girls who threw themselves at him everywhere he went.

Why was he making her go back over this? Hadn't she made herself clear enough the night she got rejected by him? Well, she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of hearing it again, if that's what he was going for. She was simply going to have to come up with a clever answer—one that would satisfy him and not give herself away.

Think, pabo, she berated herself.

"Ga Eul-yang? Fat Cat got your tongue?"

"Give me a minute. I'm thinking."

"Isn't there a time limit to that?"

"If you would stop talking, I could think of an answer."

"Just say the first thing that comes into your head."

"Yi Jeong Sunbae."

"Ga Eul-yang, I already know you like saying my name. I just want to hear what comes after that."

"Pabo."

Yi Jeong laughed.

"You don't know, do you?"

"Maybe I don't know."

"Not knowing isn't an answer."

"You're asking me something I've never thought about."

"But I'm asking you something you should know."

"Well, I don't, and that's that."

"Well, I guess it's time for your dare then." Yi Jeong moved in a little closer to her, and Ga Eul half-consciously backed into the wall behind her.

"I don't have to do a dare," Ga Eul replied, standing up straighter, though her voice trembled slightly. "'I don't know' is a perfectly acceptable answer."

"It wasn't when you were asking me questions earlier."

"Well…that was different."

"No, you're not getting away with that, Ga Eul-yang." Yi Jeong's had gotten quieter, and although Ga Eul knew deep down she shouldn't be frightened, she shivered slightly.

Yi Jeong knew he was making her nervous; he saw how her hand drifted to the hem of her coat and squeezed it when he came closer—an unconscious, nervous gesture of hers he had noticed before. Her protests, too, had gotten softer and softer until the last one that was just barely audible. Then she just stared up at him with uncertain eyes like he could either kill her or heal her with a single touch.

He could do that to women—make them fall under his spell with a single look and a few well-timed words. He had been well aware of this power ever since he had been old enough to be interested in them. He just couldn't remember the last time he wanted to do that to someone so bad.

He couldn't remember the last time it wasn't women he wanted but just one woman—the one standing in front him.

A mere girl by his usual standards.

Unbelievably close and impossibly out of reach.

"Dance with me," he said after a long moment.

He stood so close to Ga Eul at this point that she feared she would fall into him.

"What?" she replied, feeling a little dizzy.

"Dance with me." He smiled kindly at her then. "I just realized I've danced with Jan Di-ah before but never with you."

Grabbing her hands, he walked backwards and pulled her to the middle of the street.

"B-but Sunbae," Ga Eul half-heartedly protested. She wasn't worried about them getting run over. No cars had passed by for a while, and there probably wouldn't be many for the rest of the night. It was just that, well, she'd have to get even closer to him, and, besides that, she couldn't dance very well. And the neighbors…

"We don't have any music," she mumbled.

Pulling his cell phone out of his pocket, Yi Jeong waved it in front of her.

"That's what these are for, Ga Eul-yang."

"Oh," she said as she helplessly watched him search for a song.

After a moment, a slow song came on that she had never heard before. One in English that Ga Eul, with her terribly basic understanding of the language, couldn't even begin to decipher. However, it made sense that someone as well-traveled and as well-educated as him would pick a foreign song. It sounded pretty, and Ga Eul didn't protest anymore when Yi Jeong took one of her hands and gently pulled her to him, resting his other hand on the small of her back.

He took a step forward, and so did she, causing her to step on his foot.

Immediately, she jumped back, and Yi Jeong smirked but kept a firm grip on her.

"Ga Eul-yang, you know the man is supposed to lead, right?"

"Ah, yes…right…sorry." She stepped back a bit further and glanced nervously at their feet and then back up at him.

"It's okay." His tone was soft, reassuring. "I'm going to step forward with my left foot first, so just follow me from there."

Looking into his eyes, Ga Eul nodded.

He drew her in a bit closer to him again, and they started over. Soon, Ga Eul's feet were moving in the right direction automatically, though she didn't know how, as they made a circle of sorts in the middle of the road.

Yi Jeong spun her around a few times, each time bringing her back to him a little bit closer than he had before. Or maybe that was just Ga Eul's imagination.

All she knew was that by the time the song ended and they stopped moving, he held her so tightly that if anyone had been peering out of their windows at that moment, they might have thought they were seeing two lovers locked in an embrace.

They stood impossibly still, Yi Jeong with his arm wrapped entirely around her waist and Ga Eul with her eyes trained on a loose thread on the shoulder of his coat. She rubbed her fingers against the fabric, hardly wanting to breathe for fear time would start again and he would let go of her.

But let go he did, stepping back abruptly and bowing…bowing…of all things.

"Thank you, Ga Eul-yang," he said, "and may I say you are much better dancer than Jan Di-ah? But please don't tell her I said that." Yi Jeong winked at her and bent down to pick up his phone, which had been resting on the ground.

Ga Eul shivered as a sudden gust of cold night air came rushing over her, shaking the trees in the yard across the street.

"We're almost at your house, aren't we," Yi Jeong stated more than asked. "Come on, Let's get you home before it gets colder out here." He held out his arm to her like he had that very first night she went out with him.

Numbly—and still in a bit of a daze—Ga Eul walked over to him and hooked her arm through his.

They set off again, and no one spoke until they reached the front of Ga Eul's house.

Yi Jeong pulled his arm away from hers when they reached the gate.

"Thank you," he said.

Ga Eul missed him holding onto her already.

"What are you thanking me for?" she asked.

"For letting a bad guy walk you home."

"You're all right, Sunbae," she stated calmly, with that air of knowing something he didn't. Then her expression suddenly grew panicked. "But Sunbae, your car is at the café! How are you going to get home?"

Yi Jeong chuckled and pulled out his phone again. "You know you can use phones to call people too, right?"

"Ah, right…Of course."

"I just messaged my driver, so he should be here to pick me up soon." Yi Jeong pocketed his phone and stuff his hands in his coat pockets.

His driver. Suddenly the few feet between them felt like a chasm again to Ga Eul.

"I'll wait with you until he gets here," she offered.

"You don't have to. Go inside and warm up." Yi Jeong nodded towards Ga Eul's front gate.

"Aniyo, I can stay outside a few more minutes."

"Suit yourself." Yi Jeong leaned up against the wall beside the gate.

Ga Eul walked over to stand beside him and leaned against the wall too.

"Sunbae?"

"Hmm?"

"When are you flying out?"

"A week from tomorrow."

Ga Eul nodded, letting this information sink in.

Yi Jeong suspected that the other F3 would be throwing a surprise going-away party for him, but he wasn't sure what kind or if Jan Di would even be invited, so he decided not to mention it to Ga Eul. What she never knew wouldn't hurt her. At any event, he would like to say goodbye to her the way they were—just the two of them and the quiet expanse of night. He was trying to figure out how to go about that when she spoke again.

"Sunbae?"

"Hmm?"

As Ga Eul turned toward him, the bright headlights of a car coming down the street assaulted her eyes. Recognizing it as the Cadillac his driver drove, she froze, unable to muster the words out in the bright light.

"Ah, that was fast," she said instead.

"Of course it was. What was it you said? I can snap my fingers and make anything happen?" Yi Jeong said, stepping out toward the street just as the car pulled up next to the curb. He turned back to Ga Eul to say something then—something along the lines of 'take care' or 'have a good life'—but before he could say anything she had pulled him into a crushing hug.

Crushingly quick too. It seemed like he had barely settled his arms around her before she pulled back and stepped out of his reach.

Her hand settled on the gate latch.

"I'll miss you." She clicked the latch open. "Yi Jeong-ah."

Then she pushed the gate open, slammed it shut, and ran inside and up the stairs to her room. Slamming her back against her bedroom door, she slid down to a sitting position and just kept breathing erratically and slightly trembling for the next few minutes.

When she finally gathered the courage to look out of the window, Yi Jeong's car had disappeared, but when she went to take her coat off, she discovered his black and gray tie still buried in her coat pocket.

She should return it to him.

She would return it to him, she promised herself.

First thing in the morning, she decided, even as she placed it carefully in a drawer next to the silk handkerchief and the silk scarf she always saved for rainy days.

If she forgot to return it to him, it was a small crime anyway compared to what he had stolen from her.

And she didn't think he would ever return that.

A/N: There's a 2005 song called "You and Me" by Lifehouse, in case you were wondering what song was playing. I know it's old, but I've always loved that song, and it seemed fitting.