Prepared To Hate You

The Claim

Somehow her two guests got invited along to BTS's celebratory dinner. The two Chinese Idols met them at the restaurant they had booked a private room at. Lay somehow managed to arrange things so that Wang Yibo was sitting next to her, while he sat across from her.

"Tao's sorry he couldn't come too. He'll probably call you later."

"I'm sure he will. I swear he checks up on me like every day!"

"He's just worried about you, but perhaps he doesn't need to be anymore?"

"Uh, yeah, things are good, better."

"That's good to hear, isn't it, Yibo?"

Yibo who had been silent until now looked over at Lay and then her before clearing his throat.

"Yes. That's good."

It wasn't that he hadn't been paying attention, but his focus had been on the fact that Zitao was still in regular contact with her. Unlike himself, who had only called a couple of times since he had last seen her all those months ago.

There was an awkward pause in the conversation which was saved by Hoseok.

"So, Yibo, I hear you had a great deal to do with our newest member's dance skills."

"I wouldn't say that. She's a fast learner and works hard."

"I won't argue with you there. We have to drag her out of the practice room at the end of the day!"

The pair then started an in-depth conversation on the topic of dance. It made her smile to see. There were only a couple of topics that could get Wang Yibo talking, dance was one of them and motorcycles was another. She made a mental note to get Jungkook talking about that with Yibo.

"So, Noona, how was your debut stage? Was it everything you imagined?"

Lay raised his eyebrow at her in response to Jungkook's words.

"Noona?"

She ignored Lay.

"Amazing, Jungkook. It was better than I'd imagined it would be. I had so much fun performing with all of you."

"We did too. We're glad to have you as a member of our group."

"But you weren't always."

She turned to her other side and looked at Wang Yibo in shock.

"Y-Yibo?"

"It's a fact. You didn't want an 8th member and you made sure she knew it too."

"We won't deny that we took out our displeasure about the situation on her, and she didn't deserve it. We apologised and we're working hard to make it up to her. She's a part of our family now."

While Wang Yibo's expression may have been blank to everyone else, she was familiar with his micro-expressions which he had gotten very good at especially after his role in The Untamed. She saw the twitch of his lips and the furrow between his eyebrows and knew that he still wasn't happy about the way BTS had treated her.

She wanted to do something, to respond, but she hadn't anticipated this conversation. On one hand, she wanted to stop Yibo and tell him that she was okay, and everything was forgiven, but on the other hand, she was quite enjoying seeing him so protective of her. It was nice to see how much he cared.

Hoping to stop this from developing into a heated confrontation, Lay spoke up.

"She asked us not to step in, otherwise I might have said something before, but I'm glad you've sorted things out. As long as she's happy."

"But if you mistreat her again..."

She laid her hand over Yibo's clenched fist which was resting on top of the table. He looked at her for a moment and she felt his hand relax before his fingers linked with hers. Her heart raced as they held hands.

"... I'll come for you."