For You ;; yuyeon

Up on the return to reality

After ending the call, Soyeon sighs — from exhaustion, from stress, from unhappiness. She already knew that delaying her return to Seoul would be asking for trouble to arise and yet she did so, so she could spend more time with Yuqi. She doesn't regret, though, of all the good times with her girlfriend she now has to remember, but it's hard not to want to disappear from the world when a bomb is dropped on her head at three in the morning after such a good night.

She was sleeping on the bed in Yuqi's hotel room when she was pulled back to reality by the annoying, insistent vibrations of her cellphone, and answered the call inside the bathroom she's still in. Naked, with the messiest hair of her life, and procrastinating her next actions as she tries to strategize to resolve, or assuage, the ongoing crisis.

One of the artists of her company was accused of bullying during her school days. Her name is Minju and she belongs to the first group Soyeon debuted under Jelly Ent., GWSN, and from what her assistant informed her on the call, Dispatch released an entire article about the girl's teenage past and based it on the testimony of an alleged old friend of Minju and her sister, the so-called victims of bullying.

Soyeon knows for a fact that the claims are false because, before debuting any group, her selection and analysis procedure is strict. Naturally, the duo that runs GWSN, the managers, has done a check up on each of the girls' backgrounds, and it has included their elementary and high school teachers' views of them as people and students. Her team's final conclusion was that Minju was nothing more than a shy and quiet girl with few friends, and so she was approved to debut.

The rapper has no idea where these absurdities are coming from, but fake headlines continue to make their way onto nearly every magazine cover, online and in print, defaming the image of her company and her artist.

Biting her lip in anticipation, Soyeon opens the bathroom door and goes back to the bedroom after making sure Yuqi is still asleep. Instead of taking her place on the bed back, she texts her containment team to let them know her next steps and puts on the clothes that are strewn across the bedroom floor. Yuqi sure won't like waking up alone, but this is an emergency and Soyeon sneaks out of the suite as silently as she manages, her phone in one hand and her crumpled bag in the other. She hopes her girlfriend can understand.

The car she gets into belongs to a taxi driver, the first the hotel receptionist can get her, and Soyeon stops by her father's house just to pick up her documents and her most important things, then heads off to the nearly four hours ride to the airport, which she spends exchanging messages, calls and e-mails with her employees. Her hair is already in a messy bun when she gets out of the car, and the dark circles are vivid on her face. Her look — ripped denim shorts, a black tank top, and a white, sleeveless blouse — is sure to be a topic in some magazine the next day.

As the next flight to Seoul is only two hours away, and she doesn't have that time, Soyeon is forced to rent a private jet and takes off half an hour later, finally getting to rest during the few hours of travel. The flight attendant wakes her up at the time of landing, and as soon as she gets into her car, with her private driver at the wheel, she finally attends to a message that was sent to her almost after she had left the Yeh Hotel, but that she had not noticed until then.

Yuqi
do you have a fetish with leaving me at hotels or what? (03h40)

Soyeon
I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to (07h03)
guess you've gone back to sleeping now (07h15)
we'll figure this distance thing out, yuqi (07h15)

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The week after the bullying allegations, Jelly Ent. sued the sisters for defaming an artist under the company's management, and with the evidence in Minju's favor, they won a televised trial — because Soyeon wanted the whole world to have access to the judge's words when he acquitted Minju. Karma really is a bitch. But it goes without saying that Soyeon and Yuqi were barely able to stay in touch during the weeks of the crisis, as the production company had repetitive meetings with its group of lawyers and Soyeon had to attend trials and everything.