Author's Note: I AM SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG. Please be patient with me - things have been so busy at work and personally for me. This story is always at the back of my mind though. Promise to try to update more often.

In the meantime, comment if you loved / hated this chapter! PS. It helps with visualising my story if you watch the BTS beforehand.

(Personally hated it because it felt so horrible for both Min Young and Jae Uck (probably why I took so long to finish this chapter) - hopefully my next chapter will be happier:))

Min Young

C h e o n g d a m - d o n g

"...I didn't want the crew to talk you know? Always good to keep a distance.. especially for RoCos like this..."

"...can you drop by now? Eomma and Appa are coming...that will stop them bugging me about marriage..."

"...We gotta make a stop at El's..."

Min Young squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself to sleep a little longer. It was one of the rare days off whilst live shooting of a drama and she was determined to get as much beauty sleep as possible. If only her brain would cooperate.

Those words swum back into focus as she tossed and turned under her duvet. Jae Uck's deep voice echoed in her head as he said those words that knocked the breath out of her, right then, just as she was coming down from the high of kissing him - oh, that kiss.

He was getting in to the car when she heard him, just as the doors rolled shut."...We gotta make a stop at El's...". Her brain replayed that line again and again until... "AGH!" Min Young sat up suddenly, jolting Leon from his little nook on her side.

Putting her fingers up to her temple, she massaged her forehead gently as she slowly moved across to her eyes, pressing gingerly on her eye sockets. Of course they were puffy. Flinching, she got up from her bed, and dragged herself to her kitchen to grab the frozen spoons Eomma usually kept in the freezer for emergencies like this.

"You never know when you need to be camera ready.. say if you had Ramyun the night before, or cried your eyes out.. Use the back of the spoon and press it to your eyes. That will take the puffiness down.." she recalled Eomma saying, one of those days when she was over with her bags of groceries and homemade banchan.

"Esshhk..." Min Young flinched as she pressed two metal spoons onto her puffy eyes. Something tickled her calves and she looked down to see Leon looking up quizzically at her. "Eomma is stupid..bet I look stupid as well with these spoons.. keuttji Leon-ah?" Min Young sighed, plodding back into the living room and slumping into her cushions.

Groaning, she pressed the spoons harder onto her eyes, willing those images from last night away. Unwelcomingly, another image swam into her mind - that of her friend, Banso's. Back in 2018, when she first got the script for 그녀의 사생활, Banso had expressed some, well, reservations. Amongst her friends, Banso was the realist. She could always rely on her for real (if painful) advice. 

"Minyoung-ie, you know how you get when it comes to romantic scripts. I don't know what it is, either you're a really great actress, or a really crap one.. because you.always.fall.for.them...." she had said, when Min Young asked her if she should take it on. She remembered reading the script and feeling super excited, only to have Banso rain over her parade.

"Only Min-ho.... the others.. Changwook-ssi was nothing, everyone in the industry knows he's just a harmless flirt.. Seo Joon.. well that was over before it began..." Min Young had countered, weakly. "Anyway, I won't this time.. I'm stronger now. Look how I dealt with that whole WWWSK nonsense!" 

"How you "dealt"? Girl, you were crying your eyes out when you read all the crazy rumours. Don't you remember? You had cried the night before you went to that interview.. when you blurted out the denials.. your team agreed not to address any rumours, hoping that would die down, but remember, how you just lost it when the interviewer asked you about Seo Joon? Do you want Namoo breathing down your back again? Hah. "Dealt" with it indeed." 

Min Young dropped the spoons from her eyes, shaking her head, shooing Banso's disapproving look away. What would she say if she knew...

Knew what exactly? Was she really falling for him? Shocked and reeling from that last encounter with him, she had cried herself to sleep last night, feeling somewhat hurt and, was it, betrayal she felt?

"Ah-oh! Ah-oh!" her phone buzzed from her room.

Min Young jolted up, almost falling over Leon, she scrambled to her room. Diving under the duvet digging for her phone, her face fell, as she realised it was *just* Jessica sending her more selfies from wherever she was travelling at the moment. He hadn't texted her good night last night. And nothing this morning as well. 

Well, it shouldn't really matter. After all, he didn't owe her anything. It's not like they were dating or anything..right? "Jeongsinchalryeo Min Young ah - get yourself together. He doesn't need to text you every day. Just because he's been doing so, doesn't mean he now has to do it every day...."

Her thoughts went back to last night, when he was blindfolded, looking so vulnerable. Her heart was thumping so loudly as she leant in for that first kiss, she was sure Keunmin could hear it, and she was standing in one of the farthest corners of the room. When she felt him kiss her back, she was pleasantly surprised (if not a little shocked) as he had clearly said he wouldn't. 

And when it was his turn to kiss her....

Her insides felt weak again, even thinking about it this morning, even after not hearing from him since..12...hours ago...

"Michin-yeoja..." she said out loud, to no one in particular. Hugging her knees, she scrolled through their conversation on Kakao. Smiling to herself as she read one of his lame ahjussi jokes, she touched her lip lightly where his lips touch hers last night. How shocking it was (in a good way) to feel that ferocity, that passion from him. Almost as if he was trying to tell her something, she thought.

But all of that was dashed, just as she was about to muster up the crazy courage (who knows, it might have been the pheromones), to ask him out on their day off, for a clandestine walk along the Han river with their dogs.

It was probably his method acting, that even she was fooled. Could it be though? What a great actor then.

She sighed, and her phone buzzed again. Min Young rolled her eyes - that was most probably Jessica (again).

Jae Uck

G a n g n a m - g u

"Hwwwuaakkkkk..." Jae Uck let one of his typical yawns as he opened one eye to stare at the clock on his bedside table. It was afternoon. What a night at El's.

After fixing her record player (it was just one of the screws being loose), they had drank till the early hours of the morning. It was beyond him how El always had cartons of maekju and makgeolli magically appearing in her kitchen whenever they were around. That girl does love her drinks though, he thought. Those drinking sessions during the times together rehearsing Amadeus was what brought them closer in the first place. Until she took one of their mid-practice drinking sessions too far by drunkenly posting a sleeping shot of him on her Instagram.

That required quite some damage control from both agencies. He never harboured any hard feelings for that - it was just like El to do something like that without too much thought. His agency however, did have some words with hers. Poor El. Good thing they were still good friends. She could have kept her distance after that, but she stuck around. Jae Uck really appreciated a good friend that could keep a level head in the kind of industry they worked in.

Still with only one eye open, Jae Uck reached for his phone. Not a single text.

A little childish voice inside him immediately went "Ugh, you'd think she would have called / texted when you didn't say goodnight or good morning..."

Maybe she didn't even realise he didn't text? Nah, not possible. He thought he made it quite clear (well kind of) how he felt about her through that kiss. He was certain she reciprocated. So certain. So why did she not text?

Jae Uck rolled his eyes at himself internally. Was he even a man? To be bothered about petty nonsense like who text who first in the morning?  Jeongsinchalryeo Jae Uck-ah! Taking advantage of himself feeling particularly emboldened by that thought, he started typing:

JW: Gd morning :)

That little number in the lower corner dissappeared, almost immediately.

Jae Uck smiled. Evidently she was awake. Inexplicably, just knowing that, or seeing a "movement" from her, just made him feel warm within. Scrunching his eyes together he stretched out cracking his muscles. His splitting headache hit him - really, he really was too old for late drinking nights. Min Young was right, he really was becoming an ahjussi. 

She asked him once what his favourite thing to do was. Without hesitation, he had said that coming home and hanging with Daum and Mooryang was his best part of the day. Min Young had burst out laughing, saying that was kind of unexpected (but also expected in a way given his anti-celebrity / idol personality), as most men in the industry hit up the clubs in Gangnam after a long week. The celebrity status usually got them free flow of drinks... and women. Given his apartment was a stone's throw of Gangnam's main clubbing artery, she had initially thought he was one of those types, and that she was glad she was wrong about that (well, that was his interpretation - her verbatim  response was a burst of laughter and a playful hit on his shoulder, with a "OMG jinjaa? Maybe I should not call you Oppa...Ahjussi seems more appropriate? Ottoke - Jae Uck ahjussi does have a nice ring to it...". Much to his semi-annoyance).

Jae Uck swiped through his phone for one of Seoul's many food delivery apps. He needed some Haejjangguk (the ubiquitous Korean hangover soup) if he were to do anything marginally productive for the rest of the day.

"Your delivery will be there with you in 20 minutes ^^"

He swiped the notification away. Hm. Strange, he thought. Kakao hadn't buzzed in awhile. He was sure he saw her read his text. Typically (yes typically), he would get a response almost immediately. Unlike him, she would complain (he never really looked at his phone and would reply hours later, sometimes). The between them was all of three years, but oh did he feel it sometimes, especially when it came to all things social media. One day between scenes, she had looked him up on Instagram and had a nice giggle at his photos, and all his attempts at fanservi