It was a chilly night in December. Snowflakes were falling upon her black coat and cold air was making her breath leave her as wisps of white smoke.

Seulgi raised her balled fists in front of herself, preparing herself for the upcoming bloody fight that would not stop until one of them was dead.

In front of her, stood Kim Hana the heartless assassin, who had murdered her sister and brother in law in cold blood and had taken their daughter away.

The petite but intimidating woman lifted her chin, staring down at Seulgi from the higher end of the wood pile they were standing on. The sea waves hit mercilessly against the feet of the harbor as their only witness.

The assassin’s unfeeling, cold gaze matched her remorseless, clipped words. “Then come and get your niece from me. Who knows if you may find her alive or severed in a body bag?”

The woman’s crimson lips stretched into a sickening, lopsided grin, and for a moment Seulgi cursed herself because her focus had somehow shifted from the incoming hand-knife aimed at to how convincingly evil -- and ridiculously beautiful – the heartless killer looked while wearing that sinister smile.

.

Seulgi stepped on a wrong log of wood – which never happened before – and tripped down the mountain of wood logs unceremoniously along with her distractingly gorgeous opponent.

Except that Seulgi landed on a cold, hard ground while her opponent seemed to land with a chilly splash on the other side of the wood pile instead. The freezing ocean.

“CUT!”

The director yelled, making everybody on the set immediately drop their belongings and rush over to the edge of the harbor to check on their fallen, possibly frozen, villain.

“Somebody get her up now! Now!”

More yelling and chaos commenced, as some men swan dove into the night ocean and fussed about to pull Bae Irene up with the help of a rope and some other men above.

The said actress shivered as she climbed back onto the dry dock, looking positively murderous like Kim Hana, the character she played, as she glared at Seulgi.

Seulgi winced.

“Will somebody get her towels and jackets now?” The director shouted, as some other crew on set began to slowly shake in held-back laughter, their hands coming up on their mouths and their shoulders shaking.

Bae Irene’s glare became even icier compared to the temperature shrouding them.

“Christ.” Was all that she said, wringing her wet hair forcefully as she stepped out of the set angrily. “Coats for the drenched rat now and laugh later, please?”

That effectively shut the giggling crew up and sent them into frenzy to do their jobs. In mere seconds, staffs began crowding her and helping her dry up.

“We will call it a night!” The director announced, much to Seulgi’s relief for Irene’s sake.

There was no way the woman could carry on acting – no matter how great of an actress she was – while being completely soaked in this kind of abandoned weather.

The crew murmured among themselves and began collecting their stuffs, just before Irene lifted her palm and halted all of them. “That will be unnecessary. Just give me ten minutes to dry off and we will get right back on track. I will hate to delay everything.”

She shook her head off one more time and walked out of the set to her personal trailer, passing Seulgi on her way and mumbling, “Kindly try not to drown me on your second try, can you?” with her dry tone.

Seulgi gulped and nodded vehemently. “I will. I’m so sorry.”

Irene nodded as if accepting her apology and paced away, still with a tiny hint of annoyance on her face.

Well, she couldn’t be blamed. Even the angels would be pissed off if they were dunked into freezing water in Winter.

Seulgi sighed and rubbed her face in frustration. There went her hope to give Bae Irene a good first impression of herself.

-----------------------

“Will you stop laughing, please?” Seulgi whined, but it had little to no effect as Wendy kept on wheezing beside her while clutching her stomach. “It was an accident!”

“Like hell it was!” Wendy refused to believe, falling back on their apartment’s carpet with a guffaw as her abdomen started to hurt more. “Like it had absolutely nothing to do with you being a bumbling idiot because you finally saw her up close after idolizing her for nine years?”

Seulgi’s shoulders sank in defeat as she slid against their fluffy couch.

“Well, she was unnecessarily hot in that all-black assassin getup despite her attempt to continuously slice my throat open with that fake knife of hers.” Seulgi let a small grin pass and shrugged. “Can’t blame a gay girl for floundering.”

“That’s true on the hot part but I will also be scared out of my wits if I were you, mate. , she is…scary. Both her and that psycho character she plays give me the heebie-jeebies.”

Seulgi waved her hand off in dismissive manner. “That’s just because she is a great actress. She gives every work her all. She gets into her characters like nobody else and I admire her for that.”

Wendy nodded in agreement. “Old school professional, I admit.”

“Besides, I doubt that all the rumors about her being a difficult to work with are just, well, rumors. She hardly ripped my head off when I catapulted her into Winter ocean and she refused to stop shooting too. I have body-doubled for like, twenty other actresses and actors who are more high-maintenance than that. Heck, even the simple fact that she refused to use body-doubles for her work while her co-star, Lila Park, got me just for standing on a pile of wood should be telling people something about their misguided beliefs.”

Wendy held her palms up in surrender. “Okay, ma’am. I get it. People are stupid and Bae Irene is flawless. You are the biggest lovesick puppy ever.”

The short brunette stood up and carried their dirty dishes to the sink.

Seulgi huffed and crossed her arms while remained sitting, not bothering to correct her best friend or to help her.

Bae Irene was flawless. Everybody else spreading rumors about her being a difficult actress and a y person was either ignorant or just jealous.

At age 29, Irene had wrapped five prestigious acting awards under her fingers from multiple, highly acclaimed academies. One of them came from an international event too.

Seulgi, now 24, held pride in the fact that she had recognized Irene and believed in her talent since the actress was still a college student.

She still remembered that life-changing day, when she was 15 years old and was ushered by her Arts teacher along with her other middle schooler friends, to watch a theatre performance delivered by the neighboring Seoul Arts University students.

One of the acting major students, an already well-known child actress, Bae Irene, caught her attention instantly with her superb acting skill that brought Seulgi to tears that day. Seulgi was always a softie, but that was the ugliest she had ever cried watching something. Her teacher and friends had to her out, and she had to lie that her cat had just died to save her face.

Ever since then, Seulgi’s already existing interest and love for movie production skyrocketed even higher than before. She ended up enrolling into acting school, even though she dropped out after a year because she realized that simply loving acting didn’t mean she could be good at acting.

Wendy, one of her middle school friends from back then for example, knew that the dead cat story was a lie.

Seulgi could not lie to save herself, moreover to act.

So, she had decided to take parts in movie production by different mean instead, and that was by being a stuntwoman. Her mind reflexes might be slow, but her physical reflexes were surely not. She had finished rigorous process in Seoul Action School easily several years ago, and ever since, she had worked on quite some number of projects.

Her latest one, Lord blessed her, was her first ever project that happened to have Irene on board. Seulgi did ten ecstatic laps around her apartment that day when her boss told her that she would work with the famous Bae Irene.

So, here they were now, shooting an action movie titled ‘Lawless Reign’ together. Irene played a cold-blooded assassin who was hired by the government through an underworld organization to retrieve a USB containing evidences of their corruption from a much too stubborn reporter.

It was done at the price of that female reporter’s death, her husband’s death, and their daughter’s kidnapping. Lila Park, another famous actress, played the protagonist role to Irene’s antagonist, as the distraught cop who decided to abandon law after her sister and brother in law were cruelly murdered and her niece was kidnapped.

“I know she is a stellar actress but what if as a person, she turns out to be just as y as she is rumored to be? Some rumors may have ground on them after all.” Wendy’s voice interrupted her reverie from the kitchen.

“She isn’t.” Seulgi insisted, folding her arms indignantly. “I have been watching her for nine years. I would have known if she was a person.”

Her friend snorted amidst the clanking sound of dishes and yielded. “Suit yourself.”

------------------------------------

“Who’s there?”

Seulgi heard the velvety voice filter out of the biggest trailer in their movie set and swallowed nervously as she waited on.

The door in front of her opened not long after that and a seemingly grumpy Irene emerged with crumpled forehead and her entire body bundled up in thick coats.

There was a redness on her nose, a familiar sight on anyone with cold.

Seulgi winced as she knew perfectly well who the culprit was behind the actress’ cold. Irene seemed to remember who she was.

“Oh. If it isn’t the stuntwoman who flung me into the sea in the middle of Winter and nearly froze me to death. How may I help you today?”

Despite her rather sarcastic choice of words by majority standard, Irene’s tone displayed no cynical intent as her expression remained calm and open.

Seulgi cleared . “Um, I’m here to apologize for the unfortunate incident two days ago and to bring you my peace offerings, if you don’t mind. That was really unprofessional of me back there to slip and cause you trouble.”

She pulled out a capped plastic cup timidly from her back, extending it to Irene who was still standing on the doorway of her trailer, assessing the steaming cup carefully.

“I don’t drink coffee.” She said shortly afterwards.

“Oh, it’s not coffee.” Seulgi replied tentatively. “It’s sikhye. I heard from the staffs that you love drinking sikhye, so I got you one.”

Lie. She had had that trivial fact ingrained at the back of her head since seven years ago while reading up Irene’s interviews.

“Uh, as in canned sikhye?” Irene asked, seemingly confused with the gesture of kindness from a production member aside from her own manager. “I have a lot of them in here though. You don’t have to trouble yourself.”

“No, it is hand-made.” Seulgi grinned slowly. “Nothing like the canned things they sell in convenience stores. I’m sure this one will kick your socks off and leave you craving for more.”

Irene’s right eyebrow climbed even higher. She gave it some thoughts before finally reaching an arm out for the drink. For the sake of curiosity if for nothing.

Their fingers grazed slightly as they passed the cup and Seulgi’s cheeks warmed like it wasn’t Winter at all.

Sigh. She was such a helpless goner.

Irene took a sip tentatively, and then her eyes widened in amazement. She drained the entire cup in big, flavorful gulps in just under one minute.

Seulgi did a little ‘Whoop!’ in her head, feeling satisfied with the reaction she was getting. Irene didn’t seem fazed or embarrassed with the way she wolfed down the entire cup too.

“Oh my, this is amazing. Where did you get this from? I need the name of your supplier.”

“That will be my mom.” Seulgi couldn’t seem to stop smiling. “She happens to send me a heaping supply of this once every week. If you want, I can bring some for you daily.”

Irene crooked an amused eyebrow at her and threw aside the empty cup to the trash bin next to her trailer door. “All of this in the name of apology over your one mistake? For the remainder of six weeks of this movie shoot?”

Though her expression was reserved and calm as always, there was a hint of playfulness gleaming in her eyes and her lips were curling into a small smile. A genuine smile that Seulgi never saw in person before, because usually, Irene didn’t smile much on set.

She was always focused and sharp.

“Yes, uh, because that was a very grave mistake I made back there.” Seulgi rambled, losing her reasonings due to a certain disarming smile. What did she say again?

“I am not that bad.” Irene laughed, the sound of it soft and soothing as she shook her head. “I don’t know what you hear about me out there, but you don’t have to serve me drink for six weeks just because you tripped me into the ocean once. It was an accident. A maddening one back then but still, just an accident. Your apology is accepted, you don’t have to bring me anything anymore.”

She smiled and stepped back into her trailer, blinding Seulgi and stealing the remnants of her heart in the process. “Thanks for the cup.”

---------------------------------

“So, you are a sikhye deliverer now?” Wendy asked, brushing Seulgi’s face with makeup in order to magically transform her into looking more like Lila Park, who she would be body-doubling for again.

They were in the set, preparing to shoot some more of Lila’s action scene with several random bandits who were supposed to be Kim Hana’s, Irene’s character, subordinates.

“Yes, because she is kind and I like putting smile on kind people’s faces.”

Wendy snorted out so loud, she was in the danger of blowing her entire brain out. “That’s the lamest excuse I have ever heard. You just want a reason to talk to her dai –”

“Who is kind?”

Lila, the actress they were trying to imitate, came into their tent suddenly and claimed the seat next to them without being invited. Well, not that most of the actresses and actors in the entertainment industry would think much of manners when interacting with a make-up artist and a stuntwoman.

“Please tell me it’s not Bae Irene?” The older actress showed a dramatic, perplexed look. “She barely even greeted her seniors. She hasn’t spoken more than ten words with me since the first time we met on that script-reading two months ago. An arrogant brat, that one.”

Seulgi frowned deeply, thinking that she wouldn’t want to talk to this kind of person for more than ten words too if she wasn’t body-doubling for her.

“Just because she has some Daesang awards under her belt at that age, she thinks that she is some hotshot –”

“Don’t talk bad about Irene unnie!” A little girl around their elbow height entered the tent suddenly and seized their attention in an instant.

Kim Yeri, a feisty, ten year old who played the kidnapped niece of Lila’s character in the movie, showed up with crossed arms and indignant frown. Seulgi laughed softly.

The little brat had been helping her deliver the shikye to Irene’s trailer if Seulgi’s schedule didn’t allow her to deliver them to Irene herself.

It was funny how the brat was a lot fonder and a lot closer to Irene – who played her parents’ murderer and her kidnapper in the movie – than to the actress who played her aunt and hero.

How could people stay so blind towards obvious hint like this?

“Hey you, shikye unnie.” The little punk pointed at Seulgi. “I won’t be around today because I have to go to school. My teacher is threatening to kick me out because I never show up. Here is the key to Irene unnie’s trailer so you can put the drink there yourself.”

The brat threw the keychain coolly and paid the other actress one last glare before turning to leave the tent. “Stop badmouthing Irene unnie. It makes you look like the bad person.”

With that, she left them with a flourish. Wendy and Seulgi had to clamp their mouths shut while Lila looked positively near .

Seulgi liked that brat.