Work Text:
It started, once again, with one of her students.
For the first time in ages Han Sooyoung got to the classroom five minutes early instead of ten minutes late, so she gets to sit by the desk up front, sip her hazelnut macchiato, and check her socials instead of doing something more productive, like edit her presentation or reading essays. Honestly, the only reason she’s this early is because Yoo Sangah’s some kind of freak who sets her 6am alarms at full blast and expects everyone else to wake up at the same unholy time she does, so of course once she left the bed Han Sooyoung had no choice but to get up too, lest she drift back asleep only to jolt awake three minutes later when Yoo Sangah puts her phone right up to her ear.
Also, this is one of the rare nights Yoo Sangah stays over at all. So maybe Han Sooyoung likes getting to see her in the morning. Big deal. It’s not like it’s all that different from seeing her in the afternoon or the evening.
For a while that’s all Han Sooyoung thinks about anyway: the warmth of Yoo Sangah’s body in bed beside her, sunlight sliding over the sheets, the faint scent of peppermint shampoo tickling her nose. It hasn’t been long since they started — dating? are they dating? probably not — seeing each other like this, and frankly Han Sooyoung’s starting to see why Yoo Sangah had her little misunderstanding before, because it feels like nothing’s really changed, except for, well, the kissing. And more. Usually more. But Yoo Sangah doesn’t always stay the night: most of the time she has someplace to be first thing in the morning, like meetings or film schedules, and can’t risk being late.
“Also, it’d be very bad if someone saw me leaving this building in the morning,” Yoo Sangah said, once, while they were having black bean noodles for dinner. “People will talk.”
“Won’t they talk no matter where you are or who you’re comin’ out of?” Han Sooyoung grumbled.
“Well, I… Can you please not say it like that?”
Personally, Han Sooyoung doesn’t care one way or another if the media catches Yoo Sangah exiting the apartment building early in the morning and starts making up rumors about it — it’s not like they don’t already make mountains out of molehills all the time anyway — but she supposes Yoo Sangah wants to keep her private life private, and the woman’s made it clear how sick and tired she is of all the random dating rumors sprouting up around her every time she so much as stands next to a man.
Still, Han Sooyoung wonders if the paparazzi would actually care if they caught her and Yoo Sangah together somehow. They’re both women, after all, and she’s pretty sure most people will just say ‘oh, they look like very good friends!’ but —
“Come on, there’s no way Yoo Sangah would date him,” a loud voice whines. Han Sooyoung nearly drops her phone. “Did you even watch the behind-the-scenes vids? Yoo Joonghyuk doesn’t care about her at all!”
“Man, you’re crazy. He literally said he respects her and shit.”
“Yeah, but did he look like a blushing virgin then? No! They’re just friends!”
Han Sooyoung opens the Messages app on her phone and types out yoo joonghyuk the blushing virgin with record speed, then glances up to see — of course — Lee Jihye and some of her other friends in a little circle, all of them clutching their phones with varying intensity. “But they look so good together,” one girl says, sighing dreamily. “Like, yeah, of course they’d start dating after the movie. Maybe they even started dating during the movie! During filming and stuff! That’s so romantic!”
One boy shakes his head. “That’s got to be against workplace rules.”
“What do you know about office romances?”
“I still think this is just a dumb rumor. Yoo Sangah needs a real man. Like m—”
“Just look at the pic they took!” Lee Jihye commands, slapping a hand on a desk before her. “It’s a big dinner with all the other actors and staff from the movie, not just the two of them! If Yoo Sangah and Yoo Joonghyuk were really dating, it’d be a whole lot more obvious!”
Han Sooyoung’s phone buzzes. What is Yoo Joonghyuk’s only response.
since when were u dating yoo sangah?
What
all the other keys in ur keyboard broken or what mf?
?
This guy is useless. Han Sooyoung pulls up an entertainment news website and doesn’t even have to scroll down. Front and center, big bold text: Movie stars Yoo Joonghyuk and Yoo Sangah caught flirting on camera!
“I think,” Lee Jihye declares, “this is all just a cover-up so Yoo Joonghyuk can keep dating Yoo Sangah’s agent!”
A moment of silence. Then, “Who?”
Yoo Sangah sighs into her pitch black coffee. “Yes, it’s… been a real pain. For some reason the media has really been gunning for the two of us. I think it’s because they know photos and articles about Joonghyuk-ssi sell well, so they’re trying to milk him for all he’s worth.”
“Can you please not say it like that.”
“It’s true. And since the movie’s almost finished screening, they’re hounding Joonghyuk-ssi down for his next project… but he hasn’t announced anything, nor does he really care, so they’re desperate for material.” Yoo Sangah looks thoughtful. “Yes, the only thing he does is attend our dinners and all. So people are jumping on anything he does. See, the media can be scary.”
“I know how the media works,” Han Sooyoung says around the cream puff in her mouth. They’re in a café not far from Yoo Sangah’s latest film set, some historical documentary mostly aimed at kids; Yoo Sangah had invited her for a late night snack here after work. It’s a small, cozy place, with few tables, fewer staff, and virtually no customers aside from the two of them, but the food and drinks are pretty good. She pops a macaron in her mouth and nearly snorts it right back out. “Oh my god. They’re calling you a homewrecker!”
“What now?”
Han Sooyoung shoves her phone in Yoo Sangah’s curious face. “They’re saying Yoo Joonghyuk’s got a girl at home but you came into his life and turned it all upside down!”
“It would be no reach to assume Yoo Sangah’s seductive, curvaceous figure tempted Yoo Joonghyuk off the straight and narrow, especially after all their scenes together in their recent movie,” Yoo Sangah reads, voice flat. “Who’s to say they didn’t practice — pfft — didn’t practice more than just kissing scenes — I’m sorry,” she laughs, breaking her monotone, “I can’t — I can’t believe I was a temptress this whole time. Oh, poor Joonghyuk-ssi. Now everyone thinks he’s some kind of, of…”
“Blushing virgin?” Han Sooyoung suggests.
“Oh, that’s a good one. I’ll text him.”
Han Sooyoung wishes she gets to see the face Yoo Joonghyuk makes at that. “It looks like they’re just makin’ shit up,” she says, taking her phone back to scroll the other articles. “There’s another one where you’re an innocent angel and Yoo Joonghyuk’s the guy preying on you instead. Which is crazy. He wouldn’t know a pair of tits from grocery store milk bags.”
“I’ll text him that too,” Yoo Sangah says, engrossed in typing the message that will probably blow up Yoo Joonghyuk’s phone once and for all. She doesn’t look at all troubled by the rumors — if anything, she giggles when Han Sooyoung reads aloud the part describing their illicit affairs, somehow performed under everyone else’s noses in a brightly-lit restaurant — which just goes to show how comfortable she must be in her status; celebrities have been canceled for less, after all. That, or she just plain doesn’t care. Both seem likely.
Still. “It doesn’t bother you or anything?” Han Sooyoung asks, chewing on her straw. “I mean, what if you get interviewed and they ask you to say something about Yoo Joonghyuk, and the only thing you got is that he’s a bad kisser? You should say he sucks in bed. That’ll break some hearts.”
“Hm…” Yoo Sangah sets her phone down. “Not really. It doesn’t bother me, that is.”
“Seriously…? You’ve got nerves of steel.”
“From a purely practical standpoint, there’ll be popular demand for us to work together in a film or series again, and anything Joonghyuk-ssi is in always does well. It’s win-win for all of us.”
“Oh, sure, I bet that Kim Dokja would looove to work with him again,” Han Sooyoung mumbles. Now that she’s seen how his one-sided antagonism for Yoo Joonghyuk is little more than weird homoeroticism, the guy’s really not subtle. “And do you really need practicality at this point? You’re filthy rich!”
“Should I be happy to hear that from you?” Yoo Sangah wonders.
“I’m just saying! You could retire now and live in Gangnam and still be pretty much swimming in money!”
Yoo Sangah looks at her for a long moment, then says, “If we put our income together, that sounds plausible.”
Han Sooyoung stares back. “What? Uh… yeah, duh.” It’s simple math. “Why bring me into the picture, though? Anyway, you should say something if you don’t want to keep making out with Yoo Joonghyuk. Maybe you can just be buddy cops or something in the next movie and then you can stick your tongue in someone way hotter. Like, um.” Han Sooyoung tries to think of popular male actors along Yoo Sangah’s age and comes up blank. “Well. Kim Dokja will find someone. He probably has a list.”
Yoo Sangah sighs and sips the dark matter she calls coffee. “I don’t really mind. Joonghyuk-ssi is nice, and he knows these are just rumors. This is just another kind of acting. So long as it works in our favor, I see no need to make an official statement or anything.” She tilts her head with a little smile. “Also, isn’t it more fun this way?”
“…You’ve got a cracked definition of fun.”
“You were cackling over the articles calling me a succubus just now.”
“That’s different. I love it when they think you’re some kinda femme fatale and not a loser who grows mushrooms on her windowsill.” Thinking about it, though, does this mean Yoo Sangah wouldn’t mind if she and Han Sooyoung were photographed right here and now, too? They look a hell of a lot more like they’re on an actual date than those pictures of her and Yoo Joonghyuk, after all.
She has to admit that she’s just a little bit irked, too. If she were Yoo Sangah, she’d be pissed people think she’s dating some boring man and not her actual genius girlfriend.
Han Sooyoung glances over her shoulder, squinting to see if any of the waiters are secretly photographers in disguise. She must not have been very subtle, because Yoo Sangah says, “Oh, don’t worry about the paparazzi finding us here.”
“Ah? Why not?” Just one photo. One blurry photo, even. That’ll be enough for a rumor to spark and flare, and then Han Sooyoung can make a bunch of dummy accounts online to fuel the —
“I rented the whole place out, so no one will bother us,” Yoo Sangah tells her, smile bright and cheery. “Do you want some more macarons, Sooyoung-ssi? We’ve got half an hour left.”
A week later Han Sooyoung wakes up to her phone blaring in her ear. For five solid seconds she fumbles to hit the snooze button, figuring it’s probably her alarm, only to end up accepting a call instead. “Han Sooyoung!” a vaguely familiar voice shrieks. Han Sooyoung cracks one crusty eye open. “What on Earth is going on? What is — Why is — How did this—”
“Who the hell is this,” Han Sooyoung manages.
“Who—” The person on the other end makes a wordless sound of frustration that translates into mostly static. “Did you just wake up? It’s almost noon.”
“You mean it’s ass o’clock,” Han Sooyoung groans, her slowly-waking brain finally recognizing the voice. Only one person can inject that much disdain in their words and transmit it over the phone, after all. “So what’s Mr. Bright and Early Kim Dokja calling me for at almost-noon, huh?”
A sigh, now sounding less hysterical and more resigned. “I sent you something. Check your messages.”
Grumbling, Han Sooyoung rolls over to lie on her stomach and open the app, still struggling to get her other eye unstuck and open. Kim Dokja’s sent her a link, and she opens it without bothering to check the URL, figuring the guy would find a less boring way to infect her phone with a virus. In the two seconds it takes the page to load, Han Sooyoung’s already started nodding off again.
“Wake up,” Kim Dokja says, so loudly it’s audible even with the phone away from her ear. “Wow. How do you ever get to class on time?”
“I don’t,” she mutters, forcing her eyes open again and squinting at the screen. Of all things, it’s a news article. She has half a mind to verbally beat Kim Dokja over the head — he had woken her up at almost-noon for, what, the latest tax policy? she doesn’t even pay her taxes — when the text slowly unblurs in her vision, character by blocky character: Yoo Sangah… cover-up… real boyfriend, her agent —
Han Sooyoung stares. Then she laughs.
“Han Sooyoung. Shut up. How did this even—”
She laughs and laughs and laughs. Then she hangs up and forwards the article to ten different people.
“Now I truly have no idea how they came up with this,” Yoo Sangah says, later in the day, also over the phone. Han Sooyoung had called her earlier that morning to tell her, assuming she hadn’t already seen the article and presumably laughed her own guts out at it, but she hadn’t picked up and eventually Han Sooyoung had conked right back to sleep. Yoo Sangah only had enough free time to call back during their lunch break. “It’s not like Dokja-ssi and I don’t already meet up often to talk about work. Why make a fuss over it now?”
Han Sooyoung snorts. “To stir up drama. What else?” She slurps up her instant noodles, well aware it’s audible over the phone, and checks some of the new articles that have come up since this morning. Most of them are pretty much like the sort of gossip middle-aged ladies exchange at the wet market: Yoo Sangah’s dating her agent Kim Dokja, and she’s only pretending to date Yoo Joonghyuk to keep her real boyfriend a secret from the media. Some sources call them an entrepreneurial couple; others go with manipulative #queen and her boy-toy, which Han Sooyoung now has immortalized as a screenshot in her Favorites album. All the articles, though, use the same photo: Yoo Sangah and Kim Dokja sitting in a public library, their heads bent over a notebook, postures relaxed and smiles comfortable.
To Han Sooyoung, though, it really just looks like they’re discussing what Yoo Sangah’s next project should be after this documentary. Mostly because she used to see them do the exact same thing pretty much every week whenever she’d visit the movie set. “They probably also realized they can’t keep the Yoo-Yoo love story going since you aren’t working together right now, so they’re introducing a new ML into the mix. Amateur tactics, if you ask me.”
“Oh, really.” Yoo Sangah sounds amused. There’s some faint noise over her end, like chatter in the background of a busy film set. “And what would you do, Miss Genius Writer?”
“Introduce a new FL. Duh.”
“Sometimes I wonder how you got so successful.”
“You doubting my natural talent, woman?” Han Sooyoung barks, ignoring the scandalized look the high school kid managing the convenience store register gives her. She knows there isn’t much time left before Yoo Sangah’s got to get back to filming — they’re running her ragged for a children’s educational show over there — and Han Sooyoung herself has a class to get to in twenty minutes, but she doesn’t want to hang up and go just yet. It’s been a while since they got to see each other, what with their conflicting schedules, and already Han Sooyoung misses actually sharing food together instead of over the phone.
…Ew. Has she always been this clingy and sentimental? What is wrong with her?
It’s probably because the media keeps getting Yoo Sangah’s real love interest wrong. Who in their right mind would think she would date Kim Dokja, of all people? (She had said this much to Kim Dokja himself over text, and his response was a dull “I know, right.”) And because they don’t have much time to hang out, the paparazzi never get any incriminating photos of them to spin not-so-tall tales about. A vicious unfair cycle.
Han Sooyoung glances at the convenience store kid, wondering if he might be a journalist in disguise. Probably not. “Speaking of my natural talent,” she says, completely and totally casually and not at all like someone with ulterior motives, “I made progress on my next draft. Wanna read?”
“Oh! Did you?” Yoo Sangah asks, voice bright: Han Sooyoung can almost see her perking up, brown eyes going wide and smile turned up enough watts to blind a lesser man. “Just a while ago I was wondering what you had in store for that poor little protagonist and if the strong, independent female lead with wavy brown hair would come to his rescue again.”
“Why does it feel like you’re makin’ fun of me?”
“When are you free? We might actually wrap up early today if all goes well, so I’ll be done by… five?”
Han Sooyoung makes several calculations in her head within half a second — close to dinnertime, which means they can go eat at a nice fancy restaurant somewhere, and surely it’ll seem both low-key and expensive enough that Yoo Sangah won’t pull her stupid reserve-the-whole-place shtick, so possibly some journalists undercover in a nearby table can take some decent shots of them being all lovey-dovey over the steak — when Yoo Sangah says, “How about we go over it at your place?”
“My god, lady,” Han Sooyoung says, half on pure reflex, “you’re never going to stop inviting yourself over to my apartment, are you.” And there’s no way any photographers will get anything good if they’re holed up in her apartment! Though it does sound nice to just get takeout, eat at the kitchen counter, and lounge on the bed together with Han Sooyoung’s laptop balanced atop both of their knees…
Wait, no. Han Sooyoung stops that train of thought in its tracks before it can reach the next station. The plan is to —
“Well, it’s just that they’ve moved the schedule around to next week,” Yoo Sangah explains, cheerily, “so I have nowhere to be tomorrow. Can I stay over tonight?”
Never mind. Fuck the plan. “Yeah okay,” Han Sooyoung says, her train of thought metamorphosing into a bullet train speeding past several stations before flying off the tracks entirely.
By now a normal person probably would have realized there is no outsmarting Yoo Sangah, if what she’s doing can be called ‘outsmarting’ and isn’t really just her doing whatever she wants while coincidentally foiling Han Sooyoung’s master plans. But a normal person wouldn’t date Yoo Sangah either, so obviously Han Sooyoung isn’t about to give up here.
First she’d failed to foresee Yoo Sangah being crazy enough to rent out an entire café, and then she’d failed to foresee Yoo Sangah being perceptive enough to know staying the night at Han Sooyoung’s place would drive all other thoughts from her stupid monkey brain. But this time, Han Sooyoung is determined to stay on track. This time, Han Sooyoung is going to make those journalists see just who Yoo Sangah’s real ‘boyfriend’ is, and it sure as hell isn’t those two gay boys. This time, Han Sooyoung will prevail.
“Sooyoung-ssi,” Yoo Sangah says, “I think maybe you’ve had enough to drink.”
This time, Han Sooyoung… might not have thought this through.
“’M fine. Totally fine,” she mumbles, which would be more convincing if she doesn’t currently have one cheek pressed to the sticky bar counter. Five minutes ago sitting up straight had felt like such a pain, and also her head had started spinning, so clearly the logical course of action was to lie down, except she wasn’t that deep in the bottle yet to lie down on the even stickier bar floor. So obviously the next best thing was to lie her head down. Flawless.
She’s definitely had enough to drink. This sucks.
Another week has passed, and rather than calming down, the rumor mill has only grown and grown until Yoo Sangah’s evolved into master of her own harem, serial cheater wrapping seven different men around her pinky, or a dominatrix. Or all at once, and more. Honestly, most of the gossip articles and online comments are still pretty hilarious, with how much they extrapolate over a single grainy photo of Yoo Sangah drinking her Americano; Han Sooyoung has real respect for the guy who identified the logo based off all of three pixels, located the one and only branch it has in Seoul, and deduced she was seeing the barista because of the little heart drawn on the cup.
Naturally, when asked about it by a journalist the next day, Yoo Sangah had only wondered, “Huh, did I order something like that?”
Anyway, Han Sooyoung had taken great fun going through all the comments, but eventually staying silent had grown too frustrating to bear. Men, men, men! Yoo Sangah is always entangled with men when it comes to rumors! Don’t these mindless sheep know that a woman like her can only be satisfied by a fellow strapping female lead?
But she knows, of course, that normies are far more likely to assume an affair if Yoo Sangah is within fifty feet of a man. Thus, her master plan: calling Yoo Sangah up to ask, “When’re you free? I wanna go get drunk.”
As expected, she’d sounded bright enough to put a Christmas tree to shame. “How about Friday night? That’s our last day for filming. I can’t wait for it to be over,” she’d sighed. “Talking about history is fun, but it’s not the same as acting for the big screen. Tell me your next book will be a movie again, please?”
“Oh, heh, well…”
“After all, Sooyoung-ssi’s characters are so outlandish, they circle right back to being fun.”
“I should probably really expect this at this point, shouldn’t I? You sure love your carrots and sticks, don’t you, you serial dominatrix harem master?”
As expected. Yoo Sangah never passes up soju. Han Sooyoung’s strategic thinking is truly unrivaled, despite how this is more like her second-master plan, since the only thing better than getting photographed drinking together would be getting photographed entering a motel together.
In any case, she’d brought Yoo Sangah to the bar she and Yoo Joonghyuk frequent, then ordered just about every last thing on the menu. This isn’t anything really new for either of them, but this time they’re not eating in the privacy of either of their apartments, a small secluded restaurant, or out in the wilderness. (Literally. Han Sooyoung never wants to go hiking again.) There are probably journalists around every corner in here, snapping photos at light speed and cooking up insane stories about Yoo Sangah and her total bombshell of a girlfriend.
The one thing Han Sooyoung hadn’t accounted for, though, is the frankly unfair gap between their alcohol tolerance levels.
At first Han Sooyoung had gone slow. Which wasn’t hard, since she was starving and the finger-food here was honestly miles better than their drinks: fishcakes, pig trotters, cheese on corn… The problem was that not drinking would be suspicious, and obviously soju tastes even better with good food, so she’d had glass after glass and…
Anyway, here she is now. Cheeks warm, head spinning, Yoo Sangah smiling pityingly down at her.
“Then again, it’s not like you’ve got work tomorrow,” Yoo Sangah says, pouring herself another glass. “As long as you don’t mind throwing up in the toilet like usual, I guess it’s fine.”
Han Sooyoung snickers. “Would you still love me if I threw up in your toilet?”
“I’m still here, aren’t I?”
“Oh yeah? What about in your bed?”
“Let’s not go there just yet.” Yoo Sangah throws her drink back in one go, bar lights glimmering along the thin sheen of sweat down the column of her throat. The sight is so unbelievably hot that Han Sooyoung just stares up at her for a while, wondering if the gossip columns will still call them ‘very good friends’ if they have a sloppy makeout session in front of the whole bar right now. On one hand, they probably will. On the other hand, it’ll still get their photos plastered all over the headlines for sure.
She’s already got one hand on Yoo Sangah’s elbow, barely even aware of what she’s doing, when Yoo Sangah blinks down at her. “Sooyoung-ssi? What is it?”
My god, isn’t it obvious? Han Sooyoung wants to ask. “Um,” she says instead. Her throat is painfully thick, like the words are lodged halfway up her windpipe, and after a moment’s fumbling she pulls her hand away to grab a glass and down it instead, nearly choking for real on the soju. “Nothin’. Never mind,” she grumbles, staring down at her empty glass. Glasses? Great, her vision’s blurring too. Han Sooyoung blinks rapidly in some inane attempt at getting her head on straight and does the exact opposite.
“Wait. Don’t do that.” It’s Yoo Sangah’s turn to place a hand on her arm, gently, almost tenderly. She looks concerned, but then again she could just as easily look weirded out. “You’ll give yourself a migraine, then throw up right here in front of all these people, and—”
“And ruin your reputation?”
“—and probably mess up your nice clothes too.” Yoo Sangah frowns down at her. “What about my reputation?”
Han Sooyoung groans and buries her face in her hands. “Nothing!” She’s drunk too much. She’s way too drunk. But is it so strange if she feels just a tiny bit nervous that Yoo Sangah might just… lose interest in her? Even thinking about it makes her shudder from embarrassment, but when your girlfriend is a nationwide celebrity with millions of rabid fans, Han Sooyoung’s sure she can’t be blamed for being a little insecure. After all, Yoo Sangah doesn’t mind the dating rumors of her with multiple men — or at least, she’s never discouraged the journalists nor made some kind of statement to the press — but she’d go out of her way to rent out a whole café to make sure nobody sees her with her girlfriend, who to the ignorant eye could also just be her girl friend? Is Han Sooyoung just looking too deep into this, or —
“Sooyoung-ssi. I’m not ashamed of you, if that’s what you mean.”
“Gah! What?” Han Sooyoung yelps, dropping her hands to gawk at Yoo Sangah. “Ashamed. Me? What? I…” Did she just say all that aloud? She wracks her head for some way to miraculously wipe Yoo Sangah’s memory of the past five minutes, but the only thing she can come up with is to pour herself another glass of soju and down it in one gulp.
Yoo Sangah stares at her, expression unreadable. Then she takes the soju and drinks straight from the bottle.
“Man,” Han Sooyoung says, “that’s hot.”
“Thank you. I think.” Yoo Sangah sets the now-empty bottle down with a sigh. “Have you been worried about those things all this time? You shouldn’t be. Rumors are just rumors, and making a public statement would just make them worse, in my experience. And…” At this she leans in closer to Han Sooyoung, her brow furrowed in what looks like a mix of concern and confusion. “I… This whole time, I thought you wouldn’t want us to be noticed! The rumors made such good cover-ups for our relationship!”
“Uh, what?”
“I mean, other people are already getting hounded over unsubstantiated rumors,” Yoo Sangah remarks. “Can you imagine how much worse it would be with someone I actually spend time with? It’ll attract way too much attention, and you…” She pauses. “Well, you do like your attention. But I figured you’d think it’d be more bothersome than anything.”
Han Sooyoung opens and closes her mouth in succession for several useless seconds until she can finally sputter, “D-D-Don’t look down on me! You think a little attention would bother me? I’m a celebrity too, dang it!”
Yoo Sangah blinks, then claps her hands to her mouth. “You’re right! I forgot!”
“How do you just forget that? I wrote the damn book you made a movie out of, woman!”
“Of course, you must go to book signing events and give literature panels all the time,” Yoo Sangah marvels, as usual deaf to Han Sooyoung’s protests. “But does that mean you also get stalkers? People who follow you in their cars? Or try to install hidden cameras in your bathroom? I should have asked about investing in bodyguards around your apartment,” she muses, tapping her chin in thought. “Perhaps we could bribe your unit neighbors to move out so they can live there full-time.”
“Um.” Han Sooyoung clears her throat. “Wait a minute. Maybe… Maybe we’re different breeds of celebrity after all. And what do you mean, hidden cameras in the bathroom? What the fuck?”
“Yes, that’s what the bodyguards are for.”
“Okay, hold on! So you — you’re sayin’ you were, what, hiding me from the public so I wouldn’t be pestered by journalists? Seriously?” Han Sooyoung barks, jabbing a finger at Yoo Sangah’s chest. “Do I look like a fragile little damsel to you? I can handle a bit of attention! Give me all the interviews! Take all my photos!”
Yoo Sangah sighs. “I don’t think I want you to have any interviews, actually.”
“For that, I’m throwing up in your bed tonight.”
“Ah, so you’ll be in my bed, is that right?”
Han Sooyoung feels her heart jump off a cliff, into the ocean, and straight through the Earth’s crust. “You think you’re so funny,” she mumbles, grabbing the soju bottle before realizing it’s empty. She has half a mind to throw it across the bar, and the only thing that stops her is the knowledge that her body will probably end up in the dumpster afterwards, courtesy of the bartender. “Don’t baby me, will you? And I don’t need a bodyguard. I’ll pay Yoo Joonghyuk to be my attack dog instead.”
Yoo Sangah takes the empty bottle from her, sets it aside, and pours her a glass of water instead. “If you say so,” she murmurs. “It’s just… I know how seeing a public figure can be like. I want Sooyoung-ssi to be comfortable with me.”
She can’t seem to meet Han Sooyoung’s eyes when she speaks, which is partly how Sooyoung knows she means it.
In response Han Sooyoung just sips her water. “Let’s get out of here already. I can’t wait to puke on your pillow.”
The next morning, Han Sooyoung wakes up to an annoyingly clean bed, Yoo Sangah curled up beside her and face half-buried in Sooyoung’s neck like an enormous dog, but with about 70 percent less slobber. Her phone is pinging like crazy — she fumbles blindly for it, pulls it off the dresser, and checks the notifications from various gossip websites.
BREAKING NEWS! Actress Yoo Sangah caught at a bar: secretly dating…
Han Sooyoung shoots out of bed.
…the intoxicating bartender? Read more at—
Han Sooyoung flings her phone across the room.