A/N: Sorry for the delay. This chapter was a bit of a struggle for some reason. Enjoy :)

After they left the restaurant, Yi Jeong wouldn't tell Ga Eul anything except that he had a plan in mind. Truthfully, Ga Eul was still dying to reassure Jan Di that she was fine although she had tricked her once before. That had been different, though. This time Ga Eul was in another country. Jan Di wouldn't be able to see her again until Tuesday. Not that Ga Eul believed Yi Jeong would do anything bad to her, of course. She glanced at him from the passenger side of the car. At least the Cadillac afforded more space between them than his Lotus. She liked being close to him, but sometimes he made her so nervous she could hardly breathe.

They drove alongside the river for some time. The sun had been setting when they emerged from the restaurant, and now Ga Eul gazed past Yi Jeong at the lights from the street lamps dappling the water and the boats of various sizes docked along the waterway. On the other side of the road, the ornate architecture of the old European city flew by Ga Eul's window-a far cry from the skyscrapers and modern apartment buildings of Seoul. In fact, it seemed like the perfect setting for a fairytale.

Eventually, Yi Jeong pulled up in front of a colossal white stone building with many balconies overlooking the waterfront. He got out of the car first and then walked around to open the door for Ga Eul as he handed off his keys to a nearby valet.

"They only have underground parking here," he explained as he grabbed Ga Eul's hand and pulled her along with him toward the entrance of the building, which she now noticed was a hotel.

"Ah, Sunbae, what are we doing here?" Ga Eul slowed her walking pace, causing him to stop and pause right before the doors.

"I've got a room here. You'll see when we get there. Let's go in. It's too cold out here." The doorman had opened the door for them, and Yi Jeong tugged at her hand.

A room? Maybe she had made a mistake agreeing to stay in Sweden with him. What was she thinking staying alone with an experienced womanizer like him for three days?

Ga Eul looked past Yi Jeong to the brightly lit lobby and then back at him again, trying to discern what he was getting at, but his face gave nothing away. Finally, she let out the breath she had been holding and took a few tentative steps forward.

"Okay, Sunbae," she said.

He clutched her hand a bit tighter as they entered the lobby, interlocking his fingers with hers. Yi Jeong led her to the elevator and up to the fourth floor. They stopped in front of a room near the end of a long hallway, but instead of opening the door with a room key, Yi Jeong knocked, much to Ga Eul's surprise.

Her surprise turned into relief when Woo Bin opened the door, dressed in an immaculate light gray suit.

"Sunbae, I thought you had gone back to Korea!"

"And deprive all the beautiful ladies here of my company? I've got too many clubs to check out before I leave." Woo Bin ushered them inside the room. "But you should be ashamed of yourself, Miss Ga Eul, turning my partner in crime over here into a decent person."

Yi Jeong looked like he was about to protest, but Ga Eul beat him to it.

"A decent person?" Letting go of Yi Jeong's hand, she plopped down on the bed and glared at both of them. "I still haven't let you two off the hook for kidnapping me."

Yi Jeong grinned, and he and Woo Bin exchanged a look.

"So Ga Eul-yang," Yi Jeong said, shoving his hands in his pockets in a boyish way that only made him look more devilishly cute, "Since you're with two depraved human beings such as ourselves, don't you think we should be doing something indecent?"

After a rather lengthy argument over the merits and demerits of Yi Jeong's moral character where it concerned Ga Eul, Jan Di and Jun Pyo had both fallen asleep on the bed in Jun Pyo's room. Despite being a heavy sleeper, Jan Di woke up first to the sound of Jun Pyo's phone continuously buzzing. Stretching groggily, she glanced around the room, looking for the source of the noise and jumping a little when she saw Jun Pyo lying beside her.

She patted herself down quickly, noting that she still had on all of her clothes from the night before. They both did, in fact.

Jan Di sighed in relief.

Jun Pyo stirred a bit but didn't open his eyes. He looked so peaceful when he slept, Jan Di thought, in a way she could never imagine him looking while he was awake. Sighing again, she reached over to brush some loose curls back from his face. Her hand had barely touched his cheek when the buzzing started up again.

Putting her head up close to Jun Pyo's, she realized he had hid his phone under his pillow but not quite under his head so that she easily pulled it out and crept outside with her prized possession. Jun Pyo had confiscated her phone the moment she arrived in New Caledonia and had done a surprisingly good job at keeping her from finding it, but now she had the power!

Jan Di walked quickly down to the sand, which still felt fairly cool underneath her feet given the time of morning, and opened the phone to find Yi Jeong's number. The phone buzzed again then, signaling a text message from Woo Bin.

One of fifteen messages from Woo Bin.

Squinting against the sun's glare as she backed into a shady spot, Jan Di pulled up the messages, suddenly frightened that something might have gone terribly wrong in Sweden.

As she scrolled through the messages, which mostly contained photos, Jan Di rapidly came to the conclusion that something had, indeed, gone terribly wrong.

The message at the top read: Just as I feared. Our innocent Ga Eul was no match for his well-practiced charm. The fault is mine. I should have never brought her here.

The first photo showed Ga Eul and Yi Jeong with their arms linked together drinking wine at what looked like a restaurant table.

The second photo showed them dancing near a fountain lit up in blue and white lights.

The third photo showed Yi Jeong holding Ga Eul in mid-air, their faces almost touching, in that signature pose Woo Bin had claimed he'd seduced many women with before.

The fourth photo showed him pressing Ga Eul against a brick wall, staring into her eyes, and brushing her hair back from her face. There were several other photos like that, taken from a distance, showing the two of them in various seductive poses.

Then there were several photos of them checking into a hotel and the two of them walking down the hotel hallway, Yi Jeong's arm wrapped around Ga Eul's waist.

Rushing back to Jun Pyo's room, Jan Di collided with him as he came outside.

Jun Pyo grabbed Jan Di's arm to keep her from falling and then held onto it as he attempted to drag her back inside.

"See what happens when I'm not there to protect you? You almost fell into the water."

"Gu Jun Pyo!" Jan Di jerked her arm away. "How can you go back to sleep at a time like this?!" She waved his phone around demonstratively. "Yi Jeong took Ga Eul to a hotel, and now he's probably doing...doing..things to her."

"Yah, you're not falling for that hotel thing again, are you?" Jun Pyo scoffed. "I keep telling you. There's no way he'd go after a girl like Ga Eul."

"Woo Bin had them followed. Look! See for yourself! This all your fault!"

"My fault?! I didn't even know about it until I got back to Korea to pick you up."

"Ah, poor Ga Eul!"

Jun Pyo peered over at the photos Jan Di had pulled up and was rapidly flipping through.

"She doesn't exactly look like she's resisting."

Jan Di muttered something that sounded like 'Who could resist?'

"What are you doing?"

Jan Di punched a few buttons and held the phone up to her ear.

After a moment, she said, "Woo Bin Sunbae? Are you there? Yah, can't you break down the door or something?! Hello? Hello? Woo Bin Sunbae?" Jun Pyo grabbed for the phone, and she skittered away from him. "Woo Bin Sunbae? Sunbae?!" she continued, her voice rising another decibel.

On the other end, she heard nothing but silence, then a sudden burst of laughter seeming to come from several different people.

"Jan Di," Ga Eul's voice came to her then, sounding genuinely curious, "what are you doing up so early?"

"Ga Eul, are you okay? Did Woo Bin Sunbae come to get you? Where's So Yi Jeong? I'm going to—"

"Hold on a minute, Jan Di. Let me make this a video call. You do it, too."

Jan Di held the phone away from herself for a minute and stared at it, her thumb hovering over the screen.

"Yah, what are you trying to do?" Jun Pyo snatched the phone from her.

"Give it back! Ga Eul wants to make a video call."

Jun Pyo pushed a few more buttons, and when he handed it back to her three faces stared back at her: Woo Bin's, Yi Jeong's, and Ga Eul's. They sat side-by-side on a queen-sized bed, and behind them someone had showered the bed with red rose petals.

Ga Eul, who sat in the middle and held the phone, spoke again, her voice perhaps a bit too stoic: "Jan Di, are you having fun in New Caledonia?"

"What about me? What are you doing? What's with the rose petals? What's…going on?" A look of utter confusion passed over Jan Di's face.

"What do you mean?" Ga Eul glanced behind her. "Ah, I think the hotel staff did that before we got here. There's champagne too. And strawberries and chocolate."

"We? Ga Eul, don't you think you should come home now?" Jan Di whispered that last statement into the phone as though that would prevent everyone but Ga Eul from hearing her.

"Jan Di-ah, you're telling my girlfriend to leave me when she just got here?" Yi Jeong put his arm around Ga Eul. "You're really heartless."

"Girlfriend?!"

"Hi, Jun Pyo Sunbae." Ga Eul waved at the screen, and Jan Di realized Jun Pyo had come up behind her.

"Ga Eul, have you lost your mind?" Jan Di continued in hushed tones. "Do you know who he is?"

"Do you know who he is?" Ga Eul pointed at the screen.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jun Pyo demanded. "And what's with all those rose petals?"

"You should ask Woo Bin," Yi Jeong said. "This is his room."

At that moment, Ga Eul yawned.

"Jan Di-ah, I think my girlfriend's a bit jet-lagged. I'm going to take her home now." Yi Jeong stood up and moved out of the screen.

"Home? But Ga Eul, you should be careful. Remember what happened last time!"

"Honestly, Jan Di, you worry too much. But if any of the pictures came out good, save them for me, will you?" Ga Eul smiled and handed the phone to Woo Bin, who waved in a nonchalant fashion and hung up the call.

Jan Di and Jun Pyo both stared at the screen for a moment in respective states of shock, one hardly believing the two were together and one hardly believing they weren't.

"I just want to show you something," Yi Jeong insisted when they had driven back to his house. "Then I promise I'll let you go to sleep." After allowing Ga Eul to put her coat and purse in her room, he led her through one corridor and into a huge workshop space where a few tables were littered with half-finished vases and such.

"Whoa, is this all you've been working on?" Ga Eul exclaimed, picking up one vase. "I think you're getting better already."

In truth, the vases looked practically amateurish compared to his previous work, but Ga Eul looked at them like they were the most beautiful pieces she'd ever seen.

Then she looked at him and smiled.

"I knew you could do it."

When she turned away again, he allowed himself to smile a little. He liked watching her move around his workshop. It made him feel like he was back at home when she would come visit him. He hadn't realized until he had been in Sweden for a few weeks just how often she came around, always showing up when he least expected and, unfortunately for her, least wanted her there. Not until they had been separated by thousands of miles did he notice how quiet and empty the workshop felt without her unexpected visits. She had always been a bright ray of sunlight piercing through all of his hellish thoughts.

Just then Milo appeared at one of the windows, creeping along the barren flowerboxes on the ledge.

"Sunbae!" Ga Eul-yang spun around suddenly. "Can we let him in? It's starting to rain outside."

She looked so concerned for the cat; it was absolutely adorable. Nevertheless, Yi Jeong cleared his throat and protested, "He always stays outside. He's used to it."

"But it's so cold out there. Don't you have a heart, Sunbae?"

"I'm an awfully strange person to accuse of having a heart. Besides, if I let him in now, he'll expect he can come in whenever he wants. Next he'll be scratching up all the pottery."

"He's a cat, Sunbae. Not a large hairy dog."

"Yes, he is a cat," Yi Jeong admittedly slowly. "An outside one."

Ga Eul approached Yi Jeong and tugged on his suit jacket.

"Sunbae, please."

"What are you, five?"

"Please…please…please?" Ga Eul jerked on his jacket a bit harder with each word.

Finally, Yi Jeong sighed and, rolling his eyes, said, "Arasso, arasso."

Looking as giddy as a child who'd been given an enormous teddy bear, Ga Eul rushed over to the door, grabbed the cat who had stayed perched on the windowsill, watching them, and came back inside. Holding Milo and stroking him like she had earlier in the day, she sat down on top of a nearby table, facing Yi Jeong.

"Sunbae, do you not like cats?"

"Not like him?" Yi Jeong sat down on top of a table directly opposite her. "I think it's the other way around. How come he lets you hold him? He hardly even lets me feed him."

"Cats are a great judge of character."

"What's that supposed to mean? Anyway, I hate cats. They have such fickle loyalties."

"If you hated cats, you wouldn't keep one as a pet."

"He just took up here! I didn't—"

"Like I took up coming to your workshop." Milo had settled on Ga Eul's lap, but he jumped off then and went after a moth that had been hovering in the air to Ga Eul's left.

Yi Jeong laughed.

"Yeah, I guess so." He hastily added, "I don't hate you though."

Ga Eul smiled.

"I know."

Her smile slowly disappeared, though, and she grabbed onto the edge of the table and held on tightly with both hands.

"But Sunbae, who do you think sent me that message? I mean, why would someone go to all that trouble to set that up just for me?"

Yi Jeong fell silent and looked at the window for a long moment, then at the cat rolling around on the ground while batting his paws in the air. Just when she thought he might not answer her at all, he shifted his gaze back to her and said, "I don't know what happened, though I can promise you I'll figure out who was behind it. But Ga Eul-yang, in the meantime, will you do something for me?"

He looked intensely serious, even more so than he had earlier that day when he told her he liked her. After a brief pause, she nodded.

"Trust me."

"I do trust you, Sunbae," she answered softly.

Yi Jeong shook his head.

"Aniyo, I mean you really have to trust me. I don't even trust myself most of the time, but I need you to trust me. That's the only way anything between you and me is going to work."

"You…really want me to be your girlfriend?"

Yi Jeong nodded.

"But only if you want," he quickly added. "I mean, you're over there, and I'm over here, and you should be meeting other people. And four years—"

"Okay." When Yi Jeong looked like he was unsure of what he had heard, she said it again: "Okay, Sunbae. Is it okay if I just keep calling you 'Sunbae'? It feels strange calling you anything else." She restlessly kicked her legs in the air.

After a moment, he smiled back at her.

"You can call me whatever you like. As long as you're sure."

"Of course I'm sure."

Ga Eul pressed her lips together.

"But," she began, settling her feet back on the bench underneath her, "I want you to promise me something too."

"I won't date anyone else here in Sweden."

"That's very decent of you, Sunbae, but that actually wasn't what I was going to say."

"Then what?"

"You have to video chat me once a week and show me what you've been working on. I'll call you at night when I have time. And you better pick up! How else will I know you're not just stealing the pottery I send you and passing it off as your own?"

"That's just another way of making sure I'm not with some other woman. I know how women think. Don't forget that."

"If you knew how women think, you wouldn't have asked Woo Bin to kidnap me. If this were a movie, you'd be the worst kind of stalker."

"And you'd be that creepy fan that keeps sending me pottery with handwritten undying confessions of love tucked inside."

"Who said anything about confessions? We have a business deal. I have to pay for the pots I broke, remember?"

"I said you could always pay for them another way."

"See, I knew you had ulterior motives in bringing me here."

Yi Jeong's dark eyes lit up with mischief.

"And yet you've decided to stay." He leaned in towards her, and his voice grew quieter. "What does that say about your intentions, Ga Eul-yang?"

Ga Eul glanced away and hopped down from the table.

"I don't intend anything," she muttered, bending over to pet the cat.

"Everyone wants something." Yi Jeong's dress shoes thudded onto the workshop floor. She heard him come up behind her, and she straightened up.

"Well…I don't," Ga Eul said, her back still turned to him.

"You're still a horrible liar."

She spun around.

"I'm not..."

Yi Jeong stood just a few inches away from her.

"…lying."

He didn't hesitate this time but pulled her to him and kissed her, slowly and fervently, like they had all the time in the world and none at all.

As Ga Eul stood in front of the sink in her bathroom some minutes later, splashing cold water on her face, the enormity of all that had happened that day suddenly hit her.

So Yi Jeong wanted her to be his girlfriend.

Her.

Chu Ga Eul.

In her matching pink pajamas that had dancing cupcakes with colored frosting batons.

Remembering which pajamas she had packed had given Ga Eul new reason to be glad they weren't sharing a room.

Ga Eul dearly hoped she wasn't some passing fancy of his—some vague new whim that he would soon lose interest in. As if in answer to her restless thoughts, a remark from Woo Bin earlier that day came rushing back into her head.

Yi Jeong had gone to ask the hotel concierge something, and Ga Eul and Woo Bin were standing around in the hotel lobby, reviewing the photos and cracking up at the ones that had turned out badly.

"He's really serious about you," Woo Bin said suddenly.

Ga Eul laughed nervously.

"How do you know that? I haven't even been his girlfriend for a day."

"Because Yi Jeong doesn't have girlfriends. He has dates." Woo Bin stopped fiddling with the camera for a moment and glanced up at her. "You're the first one."

"The first one?"

Woo Bin resumed his inspection of the photos.

"The first girlfriend he's ever had. Just don't be too hard on him at first, will you?"

The first girlfriend he's ever had.

What an odd fact to learn about a guy whose very existence could command the attention of all the women in a crowded ballroom.

Ga Eul patted her face dry with the soft white hand towel hanging next to the sink. Going back into the bedroom, she wandered into the closet and inspected the clothes again, rubbing the soft fabrics between her fingers.

Why now? He hadn't known anything about the incident at the club. Why did he feel such a need to contact her all of a sudden, to lavish her with expensive gifts, to ensure they had a relationship in some official capacity? The Yi Jeong she had always known in Korea was so reserved with his true emotions. She almost didn't know how to react to a Yi Jeong who called her five times in one day just to see how she was or flew her to a different country just so he could 'spend time with her.'

Honestly, something didn't feel quite right. She didn't doubt Yi Jeong's sincerity, but there had been a sense of urgency in his voice earlier when he had asked her to trust him that made her feel uneasy.

Sitting down on the bed, Ga Eul took off her headband and slowly brushed her hair in the dim light from the single lamp on her bedside table, the steady rhythm of that familiar movement soothing her.

There was so much she didn't know about Yi Jeong, and none of the knowledge she already possessed had been offered up to her freely. In some ways, discovering the relationship between him and Eun Jae had made her feel like she was eavesdropping on a conversation between two lovers meant for only them to hear. Then there were those new pieces of pottery Yi Jeong had shown her in his workshop. He probably thought she hadn't noticed the slight, uncharacteristic imperfections in the art or the way he'd reach over and massage his hand like it pained him when he thought she wasn't looking. She had tried to ask about how his therapy was going during dinner, and he had given her a brief, vague answer and changed the subject to Ga Eul's college studies. She wondered if Yi Jeong would ever give her the truth about himself the way he had given her the designer skirt she had worn that night or if he would expect her to be grateful enough for his gifts that she refrained from probing too much into his private life.

"Be patient, Ga Eul-yang," she chided herself. "All good things in good time." She yawned through the last phrase and set the brush down on the small bedside table. Then, recalling her good night kiss, Ga Eul smiled contentedly as she pulled the lamp chain and turned out the light.