“If you don’t say how you really feel now, you know that there might be no other chance to, right?” Ashton asked me.

          “I just don’t want him to hate me,” I said as I blankly stared at a random spot on the wall, completely out of it. But he probably already does.

          “There’s nothing to lose now,” Ashton said. “If you don’t say something right now, what are you going to do when Myungsoo and Yerim tie the knot? Jump off a building?”

          “Probably,” I mumbled.

          Ashton put his hands on his hips. “Don’t joke around with me like that. Now are you going to take my advice? Are you going to finally, properly tell him your feelings?”

          “I don’t know,” I said, looking down at my hands.

          “On the Tonight Show Live,” Ashton said, “I’m going to specifically arrange a question pertaining to this decision. It’s either you hold back all of your feelings and watch him marry someone else, or confess and hope for the best. It’s your choice. Be wise.” And with that, Ashton left the room.

Them  

“Myungsoo-ah,” Sungyeol said as he poked his head into Myungsoo’s room, “someone’s here to see you.”

          “Yerim?” Myungsoo asked tiredly.

          “Surprisingly, no.”

          Curious, Myungsoo got out of bed and walked over to the living room, where a petite and rather plump woman sat. She looked oddly familiar.

          “Wait,” Myungsoo said, “have I seen you before?”

          The woman stood up with her head hung low and kneeled to the ground, shocking Myungsoo and Sungyeol both.

          “Please forgive me!” she said.

          MyungYeol looked at each other, confused.

          “Um…mind introducing to us who you are?” Sungyeol asked.

          “My name…is Kim Hyemin,” the woman said. “I used to work as a maid at Entrust Entertainment.”

          “I knew you looked familiar,” Myungsoo said. “You were the witness, right? When the contract between me and ______ was exposed?”

          “Y-Yes.” Hyemin swallowed and hung her head even lower. “I came here to say that I am deeply, deeply sorry for hurting your relationship with _______. And I beg for your forgiveness.”

          “What are you talking about?” Myungsoo asked.

“Jaejoong wasn’t the one who revealed yours and ______’s dating contract to the world five years ago,” Hyemin said. “It was me.”

          Myungsoo’s eyes widened. “I-It was you?”

          “Y-Yes! And if you let me explain—“

          “--please.”

          “—I will tell you everything,” Hyemin said.

          “Well yeah you’d better.”

          Hyemin took a deep breath and said, “I am actually Yerim’s cousin. I coincidentally had a job as a maid at Entrust and overheard a conversation one day in Ashton’s office about the fake relationship. I knew that my cousin was deeply in love with you so I told her about it. I swear it wasn’t because I hated you two or anything! It kind of just slipped out. And she blackmailed me into stealing the contract and to put the blame on Jaejoong. She knew that would piss you off.”

          “So it’s been Yerim all along?” Myungsoo asked.

          Hyemin nodded shamefully. “I am so, so sorry.”

          “I can’t believe that I fought with her…for all these years…about Jaejoong being the one who ruined us when it was Yerim all along.” Myungsoo sank onto his bed and rubbed his head. He wanted to scream, to pull his hair out in frustration.

          “I just want to tell you,” Hyemin said, “that I think you and _______ really, truly did love each other. And that love shouldn’t end like this. I’ve been hiding for five years, dying of guilt for what I did. Never would I have thought that Yerim would go to the extent of marriage.” Hyemin grabbed Myungsoo’s hand and pleaded, “Please, please choose _______. Fight for her. I know she still loves you. Her interviews say it all.”

          “What makes you so sure?”

          “Just please watch her interview on the Tonight Show tonight, Myungsoo-shii. It’s going to be live and I can guarantee you that the interviewers are going to ask her a question about the proposal,” Hyemin said.

          “Okay,” Myungsoo said tiredly. “We’ll see what she says.”

You

          “And we’re on in 3…2…1!”

          “Hello welcome to the Tonight Show! Here we have Lee _______ with us today, who has recently made her comeback in over 5 years!”

          The audience clapped and I smiled at the camera, faking it of course. How can I smile when the man I loved was going to get married to someone else? Someone I hated?

          “Thank you,” I said. “It’s a pleasure to be here.”

          The interview started off normally, with the same old questions that are usually asked. I put my hands together, already feeling my palms starting to sweat from nervousness.

          “And for the last question of the night,” the interviewer said, “if you don’t mind us asking, how do you feel about L and Yerim getting married? You once said that you two were good friends now, correct? The relationship between you two is still a bit fuzzy to be honest.”

          I smiled to myself. “It is a bit fuzzy isn’t it?” I took a deep breath. “But do you want an honest answer?”

          The interviewer nodded. “Of course. I think most people are wondering how a fake couple turned out to be.”

          “Well,” I started, “let me start off by saying how much I truly appreciated Myungsoo.” I laughed to myself. “I remember saying that I’ll only call L ‘Myungsoo’ if I’m in love with him and look at me saying it now.

          “Honestly, I do admit that when I first met him I acted really mean. I was so, so infatuated with Jaejoong at the time that I couldn’t see how much L cared for me at all.”

          “Jaejoong? Jaejoong from DBSK?”

          “Yes,” I said with a nod. “He was my idol and I thought that I truly loved him. L had always been standing on the side, and we weren’t exactly close during the first few months of that fake relationship. We were still complete strangers and I didn’t exactly find him appealing. He was also pretty quiet and didn’t say much.

          “It’s funny though, how things change, how people change. I don’t know how or when it happened but things soon grew serious. I learned to joke around with him, to let loose, and to enjoy his company. I realized what a girlfriend truly meant and he gave me my first kiss.”

          “L-shii had been your first kiss?”

          I nodded. “The kiss he gave to me at the Anniversary Party so long ago had been my first. And I still remember it just like it was yesterday. Things began to change and we eventually grew close. I learned to love him, as a best friend and as a true boyfriend. The world had thought we were real, and I think I wound up thinking that as well. I was so lost in the moment, so in love with him that I couldn’t think about anything else.”

          I bit my lip and looked down at my hands. “I’d never wanted the contract to get exposed. I’d thought that we could continue acting like a couple, because we really were one. But no one believed us and I chose to leave so that things could die down.”

          “Did you see L-shii at all during your five year absence?”

          “Once,” I said. “But things ended very badly. I think we were both mad and frustrated about what was going on. I was suddenly wondering if we were ever even real; and I knew that to me, we had been more than real. But things got very complicated…and that honestly was one of the hardest times of my life.

          “When I got back to Korea, I didn’t expect to find out that he and Yerim were dating. It took me by complete surprise. But I guess I deserved it, after the way I’d treated him in the past.”

          The audience was quiet, and I felt the tears slipping down my cheek. I wiped them away and pitifully looked back at the interviewer.

          “I love him,” I finally said. “I still do. A lot. More than I ever have.”

          “How do you feel about the wedding then?” the interviewer asked softly.

          I forced a smile and said, “As long as he’s happy, I’m happy.”

          As long as he’s happy, I’m happy.

          I replayed those words in my head over and over again, feeling my heart clench in pain every single time. I curled up in a ball on my couch, crying my eyes out as an episode of Running Man played on the TV. Even Running Man couldn’t cheer me up. I was an even bigger depressed, rotten mess than I was before.

          The doorbell rang. It was probably the pizza that I ordered because I was too sad to cook myself dinner. I droopily went to the front door, not even giving a if the pizza man looks at me weirdly. My tomato-red eyes and splotchy face would probably scare him off anyways. Maybe I can get free pizza.

          I opened the door and was expecting an ahjusshi carrying a box of pizza on his shoulder.

          Instead, I got a Kim Myungsoo.

          “M-Myungsoo-ah,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

          “_______.”

It was at that moment when he suddenly pulled me towards him, and his lips crashed down onto mine. I struggled against it, trying to pry myself out from his grip. But that only made him hold on tighter. I did all I could to prevent myself from kissing him back, but soon I got tired. Soon I began to notice how nice his lips felt on mine, how I missed his kisses so much. I remembered that night on our anniversary party, when he kissed me for the first time. I remembered the day he kissed me on the beach, just a couple of hours before chaos broke out. The memories came rushing back to me, filling me with emotions that I’ve been trying so hard to keep inside.

          Myungsoo slowly pulled away before kissing away the tears on my cheeks and finally, my forehead. He pulled me into his arms, holding me tight. I loved the feeling of being in his arms, and made no word to object. I hugged him back and breathed in his scent, the scent I’ve missed so much.

          “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for saying what you said tonight.”

          “Don’t you hate me?” I asked. “What about Yerim?”

          Myungsoo let go of me and cupped my face in his hands, warm and soft. “I thought I already told you,” he said, “that there will never be a ring on my finger unless it’s from you.”

He pulled a necklace out from under his shirt, revealing the infinity couple ring that I’d given to him so long ago.

My eyes widened and I shakily slipped a hand under the collar of my shirt and pulled out the necklace that I was wearing. Dangling on the end was the other half of the infinity ring.

Myungsoo smiled and looked into my eyes. “I love you,” he said.

          I smiled through my tears and put my hand on top of his. “I love you too,” I said. “I’m not scared what everybody will think of us.”
          Myungsoo kissed my forehead and held me close to him. “Me neither.”