A fake dating fic inspired from a mix of books I read over the years because yes, I read a lot of fake dating books. And no, I'm not going to stop in the future. Come and arrest me.

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Bae Irene was a woman who had everything.

Or so, she liked to tell herself when she stared at the mirror every morning and found her tastefully dressed reflection nodded back at her.

It also didn’t hurt that a great many others seemed to think the same way as she did.

Turning only 27 years old, Irene was already one of the top couple therapists in the entire South Korea. She was the most sought-after psychologist in the Couple Therapy Centre she worked at, the keynote speaker of many notable seminars and the author of multiple national best-selling books.

She owned a luxurious apartment downtown Seoul thanks to her flourishing career and had a drop-dead gorgeous woman, Jennie, as her fiancée.

Her life was on track to reach its peak, and Irene believed that soon, she would be able to reach that top.

Because she was about to get her first ever international publishing deal from a highly acclaimed publishing house from UK.

“Yes, Joy?” She half-shouted into her phone, the booming cheer and handclaps from the audiences she had just left behind still deafening.

Her agent, Joy, mumbled something into the call that she couldn’t quite catch. She smiled at several seminar crews congratulating her for her good work and hurried into her private break room so she could hear the other girl.

“What I’m saying is, I met BoA’s assistant yesterday and he said that she is very interested in the manuscripts you sent them a few weeks ago.”

Irene’s heart jumped with celebration and she closed the door behind her with a wide grin. “So, does that mean I get the deal?”

“Not yet, cowgirl. You have to hold your horses.” Joy laughed. “But it’s very promising. Her assistant said she will be flying over to Seoul from London next week to attend the Ministry’s lunch party for International Literacy Day. It will be perfect if you can come with Jennie to meet her. She is extremely…picky. She wants to know you and the woman who inspires your writings about relationship. If you do this right, then that multinational deal is yours.”

Irene threw a fist up on the air and ran ten laps around the room like an overexcited toddler about to get chocolate.

Yes!

She tried to steady her voice because no one needed to know how ridiculous she was. “That will be no problem. I’m sure Jennie will agree to come with me. She has always been supportive of me.”

“She better be, because I’ve told them that you will bring her over. And BoA doesn’t come here every day, Irene. She rarely flies all the way from London. You better nail this in one go because I need those money transferred into my bank account.”

Irene laughed, grabbed her purse from a nearby table and skipped with glee to the parking lot. “Don’t worry, really. Jennie and I will be on our best behavior.”

“You better be. It’s BoA, the multinational publisher god. That woman doesn’t joke around. She sees one odd thing from you and your entire deal dies. She is very selective about her authors.”

“We will be more than perfect then, I promise.” Irene unlocked her car and slid into the driver seat with a big grin. “I’ll get you that money, my tall, capitalistic friend.”

“Thank you, my tiny millionaire friend. I’ll text you the address and time of that lunch party.”

“Got you.” Irene clicked her tongue, swiping the call off.

She barely placed her phone in her purse and switched on her car engine when suddenly, the small device rang again.

She held it up and saw Jennie’s name on screen this time.

Speak of the fortune lady.

Irene’s lips curled up into a smile as she picked it up. “Hi, sweetheart. How are you doing? I will be going to my last schedule today and then I will be heading home. I’m sorry I’m late again. If you are hungry, you can have dinner first –”

“Irene.” Jennie’s distraught voice cut her off in a way that stopped all her chipper thoughts, because it carried unusual weight and anxiousness in it.

Irene’s fine hairs rose in alarm.

“Hey, are you okay? You sound –”

“We need to talk.” Jennie’s voice came out shaky but resolute, making her insides churn with fear as blood seemed to drain from her all at once.

As a couple therapist, she knew perfectly well what kind of catastrophe usually followed that infamous statement.

Seconds ticked away silently before Jennie proved just how much of a good – or terribly awfully ty – couple therapist she was.

“I think we need to break up. I can’t – I can’t go on with this relationship anymore. I’m sorry. Can you please come home now so we can talk about this? I’m really sorry.”

She hung up on Irene then, making her feel like she had just been hit by a jackhammer straight to her head.

She lowered her phone and stared at its black screen like a complete , because maybe, she was. Her brain cells were dead.

‘Holy ’ were the only words that flashed in her mind, making her blink and swallow repeatedly.

She slapped her cheek once, winced in pain and realized with horror that she was not in a nightmare.

She was in a reality worse than a nightmare instead.

Irene shrieked until the neighborhood cats startled from their nap, stomped onto her pedal with the power of a F-1 racer and leapt her car out of the parking lot with a screech.

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Irene lay on her sofa forlornly for four whole days after that.

Her TV blipped from a cooking channel to a cartoon channel to a news channel in under five minutes, because apparently, her brain was on sick leave and unable to focus.

Her last resort was a sermon channel that she had never watched before, because maybe, this random old dude could tell her what to do with her life. He looked pretty sage.

“Bae Irene, are you home?!” A loud noise banged on her door, making her groan as she buried her face into one of her sofa cushions.

“Go away!” She whined into the soft pillows.

“If you don’t come and open this door right now, I’m going to spread that video of you sneezing and accidentally farting at the same time throughout the entire neighborhood! Come open this door right now!”

Irene’s eyes snapped open and she immediately sprinted to the door to do the Satan’s bidding.

The Satan came in form of her best friend and agent, Joy, who shoved her away and trod into her apartment guiltlessly the second she pulled the door open.

“You are a horrible, horrible best friend.” She grumbled.

Joy waved her off offhandedly and threw her handbag onto the kitchen counter. “Says the one who has been ghosting my texts and calls for four days. I thought you were dead.”

“Sadly, I am not.”

Joy whirled around to face her, hands resting on her hips and eyes judging. “So, are you going to tell me what the hell is happening? Like, really, what in the actual hell? Where is this breakup coming from? Because last time I checked, you said you were still on your merry way to wedding. Have you been fighting each other all this time without telling me?”

“No.” Irene let out a strangled groan, flopping back onto her couch face-first. “We didn’t have any fight. We didn’t even have any talk about it before. That’s the thing. She just called me and suddenly told me that she didn’t want to be in this relationship anymore.”

Joy’s eyebrows knotted together in suspicion. “Did she tell you why at least, before she walked out of here with all her belongings?”

Irene sighed. “She said that she feels tired of constantly…waiting. That I spend more time with my job and no time with her. She also said something about me being emotionally inaccessible or something. That even when she’s with me, she feels as if I’m not with her. But she never said anything to me before! This is so unfair.”

Joy lifted an eyebrow and then let out a long sigh. Her hand went up to pinch the bridge of her nose. “Well, I’m not going to lie, I kind of saw this one coming.”

Irene’s head sprang up from her sofa cushion and her eyes rounded. “What?”

“Well, your relationship with her felt too…cerebral. It was like you only dated her because she ticked all the right boxes in your criteria. She is hot. She has a flourishing job as a dentist. She is from good family. But then, I just didn’t see the visceral spark between you two. I don’t know. You are the couple therapist, so you tell me.”

Irene frowned harder and dropped her head dramatically back onto her cushions.

“Now, don’t get me wrong, pal. I’m not judging you. I know that psychologists – and doctors – have hard time practicing what they preach every now and then, but I’m not sure those people from UK will understand.”

Irene raised her head again and a worried look crossed her face. “Will it be a big deal to let them know that I’m single now?”

“Of course. Say, will you buy a book titled ‘How to Raise Kids’ from a writer who doesn’t have a kid?”

Irene’s hopeful eyes died again. “No.”

“Exactly.” Joy threw her hands up on the air. “If people know that you can’t maintain your relationship, do you think they will rush to buy your book titled ‘How to Maintain a Lasting Relationship’? BoA will use it as toilet paper.”

Irene groaned again, shrank even smaller on her couch and buried her face deep into her cushion. “So, we should just cancel the meeting and –”

“No.” Joy said firmly, flopping on the couch next to her and grabbing the TV remote to turn off the sermon with a weird look. “We are going to do something to save you – and my bank account – from this Jennie mess.”

Irene looked at her with hopeful eyes again, waiting for her brilliant, life-saving idea.

Instead, the taller girl nodded with solemnity and gave her a possibly life-ruining decision.

“We are going to get you a fake fiancée.”

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Irene really thought this shouldn’t be happening.

She stood in front of the hotel ballroom where she was supposed to attend the lunch party, pacing back and forth and feeling closer to having a .

Her hands pulled at the hem of her purple cocktail dress with growing anxiousness, not really feeling its expensive elegance anymore as she thought of the whole harebrained charade she was about to pull off.

Joy was really doing too much this time.

The tall girl had given her direction to a dubious looking ‘company’ in the corner of Seoul two days ago, citing that it was the ‘professional help’ that could save her career if she played her card right.

The ‘company’ was named ‘Rent-a-Date’, which was quite self-explanatory in Irene’s bemused opinion. She didn’t want to know how Joy came to know such place in the first place.

“Hello?” She raised her phone to her ear the second it rang, waiting with bated breath for Rent-a-Date’s manager – a guy named Hachul or Heechul or something? – to tell her that her fake fiancée had finally arrived.

Irene had picked the girl in their office two days ago – apparently, there was a string of beautiful people lining up to do this odd job because everyone was a slave to capitalism nowadays – her name was Yeji and she had pretty feline eyes.

Irene liked feline eyes, just like Jennie’s.

“Hello, Miss Bae, uhm…good afternoon. I was wondering if you have, by any chance, arrived at the lunch party by now?”

Heechul’s voice sounded strangely nervous and it sent all the alarm bells in Irene’s head blaring loudly.

Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.

Was there something more ed-up about to up her already ed-up plan?

“What’s wrong?” She tried not to cry right then and right there in front of the entire high-society crowd, because that would be a spectacle she couldn’t recover from.

“Um…I’m terribly sorry to inform you this so suddenly, but there will be a slight change to our previous arrangement.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Well, um…our girl, Yeji, that you have chosen, has an emergency that prevents her from coming. I’m terribly sorry about this Miss Bae. However, I assure you that you will still have a fiancée coming with you today. I’m sending someone else as we speak.”

“Are you kidding me?” Irene screeched. “The person I need to show her off to is already inside the ballroom! What can be so urgent that she drops her job fifteen minutes before its due? This is very unprofessional –”

“I’m sorry to say that she has an emergency appendectomy…”

“Oh.” That stopped Irene on her track because well, it was an appendectomy. Her brain whirled again. “Who is this new girl you are sending? I don’t even know her name! Has she even studied the back stories I gave you? What if she messes things up? This is a very important event to me!”

“Please calm down, Miss Bae. I’m sending her your files as we speak. She is already on her way to the hotel and is arriving in less than ten minutes. She is one of our best, actually. You are very lucky. She has a lot of experience. In fact, I personally think that she will fare much better than Yeji.”

Irene closed her eyes and in a deep breath to calm herself down.

“Okay, fine. I will believe you.”

“Thank you. I think it will be better for you to go down to the lobby now and wait for her there. Her name is Seulgi and she is wearing a dark red, three-piece suit. You will know her when you see her because honestly, she is hard to miss.”

“Okay.” Irene swallowed, feeling slightly appeased by the fact that her new fake fiancée was probably very hot. “Thank you. Wait, did you just say that her name is Seulgi?”

The line went off then, as Heechul probably thought she was done speaking.

Irene blinked into nothingness and lowered her phone.

It couldn’t be the same Seulgi she knew, right?

There must be hundreds of Seulgi in the entirety of South Korea.

She shook off her head and loosened up her limbs before placing her phone back in her purse and heading down for the lobby.

Once the elevator hit the ground floor and she stepped out, her eyes scanned the wide, fancy area for one target.

Look for a hot woman in dark red, three-piece suit whose name happens to be the same as your heartbreaker from a decade ago.

Yep. The mission was simple.

Irene looked, and looked, and looked, until finally someone who matched the description stepped down from a cab in front of the hotel and walked in through the rotating door.

The girl was hot, indeed. Very hot.

She wore a dark red hat that matched the color of her exceptional suit, holding a cane in one of her hands as a stylish statement of fashion.

Oh. Irene loved a girl who could dress herself so well.

Her day might have just gotten a little better.

Well, until the said hot girl neared her and took off her hat to greet her properly. The action revealed a pair of once familiar feline eyes that started off all Irene’s feline eyes craze on women many years ago.

“Kang Seulgi?” Her breath hitched, all her limbs losing their motor function as her arms dropped limply to her sides.

The girl in front of her – the very same Kang Seulgi she thought wasn’t possible to be thrown back into her life – smiled at her politely.

“Hi, Irene. Long time no see.”

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Before Irene had everything, she had close to nothing.

In high school, her nose was always too heavy with the thick glasses that rested on it permanently and her hair was always in a low ponytail that made her look like one of the founding fathers, thanks to her mom.

She was shy and awkward at her best, and downright socially disastrous at her worst.

Irene counted two friends in her entirety of high school life, which included a quirky girl named Amber and a bookworm named Luna.

Actually, scrap that. She shouldn’t even count Luna because she only ever talked to the quiet girl when they were together in the after-school book club.

So, that made her have only one real friend, multiple good grades and countless social struggles.

When Amber was sick, Irene would feel like a complete loser for not knowing who she could sit with in the cafeteria.

When there were team projects in the class, she would always be the last one left because no one would pick her. And she was the smartest in her class, if that said anything.

When there were parties on Friday nights, Irene would only look at the fun from her Facebook page at home because she wasn’t invited.

Her high school life was one giant story of boredom and loneliness, constantly looking in from the outside.

Until a particular hooky girl barraged into her library territory one day.

“I’m sorry! Please let me hide behind you for a while!” The girl – which Irene already knew the name of at the back of her head – ducked between her chair and the wall behind it.

Irene tensed immediately, knowing full well who it was.

Kang Seulgi.

Kang Seulgi the leader of their school’s dance clique and the idol of every student from first to third grade because she was just too damn attractive.

Kang Seulgi the heart robber and the owner of her secret crush since her very first year.

Kang Seulgi who had a very pretty pair of feline eyes and a warm, blindingly bright smile that Irene had watched one too many times as she walked down the corridors.

She followed what Seulgi said and immediately dropped her giant backpack from the table to the floor to help cover her up.

“Hey, student! Did you see another student run down this way? Tall, skinny, wearing a messy uniform and a pair of running pants?”

A PE teacher glared at her from the doorway, panting and realizing belatedly that he was in the library. He lowered his voice. “That dance kid, Kang Seulgi?”

Irene gulped and tried to steady her voice. “No, sir. No one has come down this way.”

“Alright, fine.” He threw his gaze around to scan the area before looking back at her with an apologetic smile. “Sorry to disturb your study. Please go back to your readings.”

He dashed down the corridor again and disappeared from her sight.

“It’s safe now.” Irene said after a while, realizing that she hadn’t been breathing properly.

She had never lied to a teacher before. Wow.

She felt like passing out.

“Is he gone?” Seulgi squeaked, peeking from behind her extremely big backpack.

“Yeah, he is gone.”

Seulgi emerged from her hiding place carefully and rose to her full height again. “Phew. Thanks. That guy is going to drive me crazy. Why on earth can’t he just leave me alone?”

Irene blinked up at her then, pushing up the thick glasses on her nose that needed no pushing because that was what she did when she felt nervous.

Right now, she felt incredibly nervous.

“I’m Kang Seulgi, by the way. Thanks for saving me.” Seulgi extended a hand to her and beamed with a grateful, megawatt smile. “That guy has been trying to recruit me into his sorry basketball team even though I’ve told him that I have a dance team to attend. What’s your name again? You are now officially my superhero.”

Irene let out a small, nervous chuckle and leveled her gaze at the handshake she accepted because there was no way she could stare directly at Seulgi’s eyes without dissipating. “My name is Bae Irene.” Her voice came out embarrassingly squeaky.

“Oh, are you first year, Irene?”

Irene looked up at her with a teeny tiny crack in her hopeless heart because of course, Seulgi didn’t know her.

“No, actually, I’m also a third year like you.”

Oops.

She drew her hand back and slapped her own mouth.

Now Seulgi knew that she knew her.

“Oh?” Seulgi looked puzzled, scratching the back of her neck with a nervous laugh. “I’m sorry. I’m not really good with faces –”

“It’s okay. It’s not like I’m eye-catching or something.” Being a self-pity loser – in front of her crush and in the very first encounter no less – must be the reason why Irene needed to be shot in the head immediately. She banged her head on the desk mentally instead.

Seulgi’s smile only seemed to widen though, as she moved to swivel the chair across of Irene’s and dropped herself on it.

Straddling it instead of sitting on it properly, she rested her arms on top of the backrest and put her very attractive face in one of her hands.

“I was going to say it’s because I’m a forgetful person in general. What homeroom class are you from and what are you doing in the library alone at this hour? It’s 5 PM, you should be home and napping peacefully like a real high school student.”

A genuine, small laughter escaped Irene despite her initial awkwardness. Seulgi did give out a very friendly, laid back vibe that made her feel less anxious somehow. The girl’s presence was surprisingly…comfortable.

“My homeroom class is 3-B. And oh, I’m here until this late because I like to read.”

Seulgi clutched her chest and pretended to gasp. “A student who actually loves reading?”

Irene’s laugh only grew bolder as she pointed at herself. “Yep, apparently they exist. Or should I say, I exist, considering that I’m alone in this men-forsaken library.”

Seulgi grinned and leaned forward to flip her book cover with interest. “I’m not sure if it’s, uh, ‘Critical Thinking in Psychology’ that keeps you here for so long or if it’s your secret chocolate bread.”

Irene’s eyes widened as she blinked a