Author's Note: Hi there, just want to say that I'm still on an indefinite hiatus but I just happened to miss school on Friday and was randomly inspired by a book to write this chapter. I'm becoming an insomniac these days so yeah... Happy reading! p.s forgive me for the ugly poster for this current chapter and the next 2 chapters! I don't have time to request for one from a shop so I had no choice but to take matters into my own hands!! xD 

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Tired. That was what Sujeong felt. For 4 hours straight, she was stuck in front of her bathroom counter, getting her hair styled and her makeup done. Not long after Hongbin had sent her to her room, the stylists from the wedding studio had arrived with the dress and cases filled to the brim with accessories, makeup and hair styling products. They even brought a salon chair!!! You know, those black chairs you sit on, in the hair salon while you get your hair done? Yes. That chair…

Altogether there were 3 stylists in her room, each with a specific role. Emily, Ah-young and Stella. The first stylist, Emily, was in charge of her hair. She was a tall, skinny woman in her mid-30s, with a small face and thin lips and a permanent scowl. Her hair was cut in an asymmetrical bob and dyed a platinum blonde with lime green highlights. Everything about her screamed ‘Hairstylist’ and a very professional one too. Dressed in all black, she obviously wanted to draw attention to her hair.

The second stylist, Ah-young, took the role of the make-up artist. She was the shortest of the three and also the youngest. She looked to be about 25-ish and had a round face. Her makeup was colorful which matched her amiable personality. Instead of black or brown eyeliner, she had neon pink cat-eyes and green eyeshadow which complimented her brown circle lenses and pinkish- lip. Unlike Emily, her hair was medium in length and a natural brown color. She wore a simple t-shirt and jeans.

The third stylist, Stella, she was in charge of the accessories and the dress. She was slimmer than Ah-young but slightly thicker than Emily, basically she looked fit and healthy.  She was the eldest of the three but could easily pass off as a woman, younger than Emily. It wasn’t because of great genes, just a good cosmetic surgeon. Her face was perfectly symmetrical and her complexion flawless. Her eyes were bigger, her nose almost too straight and the sides of her lips were always curled upwards in a small smile. It didn’t take research or a strong observation to know that she had gone under the knife. It just wasn’t natural for a Korean to look that way. Her long, brown hair fell in loose curls over her left shoulder, revealing her right shoulder which was bare because of her off-shoulder mini dress.

The first step was getting Sujeong into her wedding gown which was a shimmery, champagne gold, halter neck bustier, trumpet gown which accentuated her waist and her chest. Upon Hongbin’s previous request, a piece of white chiffon lace was added to the top of the bustier to cover her obvious cleavage. Due to the length of the dress, Sujeong was forced to wear a pair of glittery, silver stiletto pumps which were much too high and a tad bit small for her size 8 feet. With the help of Stella, it took her several rounds in the room before she could walk normally and look like it was nothing to her. She wanted to see what she looked like but Ah-young had covered the full-length wall mirror with a black sheet of plastic, saying that she had to wait till the end to see the full transformation.

She was relieved when she was told to take off the pumps and was needed to be in the bathroom, to get her hair and makeup done. Oh boy, was she going to get painful blisters after the dinner… And of course, the bathroom mirror had to be covered. The salon chair was positioned near the bathtub so that when she sat in it, the back could be brought down low enough that her hair was directly in the tub, so that it was easy for Emily to shampoo and rinse her hair. This stage was by far the best compared to the dress fitting and feet torture. Her hair was soaked with warm water before Emily started massaging a fragrant, herbal shampoo into her hair and unto her scalp. The feeling was heavenly. After rinsing off the shampoo, Emily applied conditioner to her hair which she took special attention at making sure that her hair was evenly coated. After that was rinsed off, the chair was reposition in front of the counter, where both Emily and Ah-young both dried her hair. A heat treatment liquid was spritzed into Sujeong’s hair and that’s when Emily really demonstrated her skills. Sujeong was only left to wonder at what Emily was doing to her hair, feeling only the tugs and pulls while the stylist curled her hair.

Emily took her time with each curl, making sure that each section she did was perfect before dispensing dollop of styling mousse into her hands and running them through Sujeong’s hair and setting it with a spray. Throughout this whole time, Ah-young was talking to Sujeong non-stop, as she was a fan of hers and was curious about her co-stars in her drama and Leo who was in the same company she is. Her cheeriness never fading even after Sujeong refused to tell her any details. Who knows? What if Ah-young was secretly an anti-fan who only wanted to hear what she wanted to hear like if Sujeong liked kissing Seo KangJoon in the previous episode of her current drama. That would only become a huge issue in the media. Why risk anything? She was already being criticized for announcing her wedding not long after her debut. Netizens were spreading malicious rumors about her sleeping with producers to get acting gigs and that she was marrying Hongbin to cover up the fact that she was pregnant with a producer’s child. Ridiculous. Yes. But this is Korea, K-netizens always have things to say about you even if it isn’t true.

Sujeong didn’t care. She knew herself and she knew that she was innocent. There was no sleeping around and no pregnancy. All she knew was that, she was a loyal girlfriend to Hongbin and that she auditioned for many companies before being recommended to Jellyfish Entertainment by a Mr. Jung TaekWoon or as everyone calls him now, Leo.  By now, Emily had stepped back and was now admiring her work. She clicked her fingers and the chair was spun around to face Ah-Young who was blending moisturizer with a foundation in the color pink ivory, on the top of her hand. The mixture was then applied to Sujeong’s face in a series of light taps with the tips of Ah-young’s finger before being blended in with a pink, egg shaped foam sponge.

Sujeong inserted her honey colored lenses before Ah-young began to work on her eye makeup. Ah-young’s hands moved quickly and slightly clumsily as she switched between an eyeshadow brush, crease brush and a blending brush. For Sujeong, she chose a rose pink colored shadow as the base and blended it with a shimmery pearl gold shadow. Natural looking false lashes were glued on and curled, only to be coated with a generous amount of volume building mascara. Foundation and concealer were dabbed under her eyes and lips. Tiny pink rhinestones were glued just below her right eye, under the bottom lash line. A light brush of coral colored blush brought a warm glow to her face and the look was finished off with a classic petal gradient lips.

The stylists gathered alongside Sujeong, in front of the mirror which was uncovered. Sujeong, couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw herself. Her mahogany colored hair was beautifully curled and set to fall over her left shoulder. The makeup done by Ah-young, was perfect. The foundation-moisturizer blended perfectly with her natural skin tone and made her glow. Her eyebrows were shaped to be as straight as possible with the slightest hint of a curve and that also seemed to have matched her eye makeup which gave her an innocent yet flirtatious look.

The dress. Wow. The dress made her speechless… Sujeong wasn’t really into wearing dresses but the dress she had on now made her regret it. She never knew that she could look so good in a dress. The dress hugged her body in all the right places and the pumps exaggerated the length of her legs. She thanked Hongbin mentally for choosing the dress. The man clearly knew what he was doing when he had chosen the dress for her in the wedding studio while she was aimlessly browsing the rows of wedding gowns.

“Thank you. Thank you so much.” She spoke in a breathy voice as she faced her stylists who were packing their stuff. Emily nodded her head, Ah-young flashed her a smile and Stella flipped her hair in a rather proud way. She spun around twice in two directions, checking herself out in the mirror. The doorbell rang and she went to answer it. Her mother stood outside dressed in her best hanbok, her salt and pepper hair tied up in a neat bun and her face made up. Mrs. Park gawked at her daughter, mouth open and eyes opened wide. “Eomma, what are you doing here? Where’s Appa?” Sujeong asked, breaking her mother’s short trance. 

“Sujeong…”Mrs. Park was beginning to tear up as she stared up into her daughter’s eyes. Sujeong panicked as she hugged her mother. “Eomma. What’s wrong?” She asked her voice thick with worry. Her mother shook her head as she dabbed her eyes with a tissue, a closed mouth smile on her face.  “Y-You look so grown up.” She replied. Relief flooded Sujeong as she realized that she had been worried for nothing. “My baby has grown up and she’s finally getting married…”Her mother continued, on the verge of tears again.

“Please don’t get mascara on the dress, Mrs. Park.” Stella warned from somewhere behind Sujeong. Mrs. Park quickly blinked back the tears and smiled at the three stylists.  “I’m terribly sorry for the waterworks. You must be the magic stylists who transformed my daughter into a beautiful swan.” She spoke. The three stylists bowed and thanked her for the compliment, then bid farewell as they hauled their stuff out the door.

Sujeong and her mother sat at the foot of the bed, her hands in her mother’s. Her mother told her how happy she was for her and also how sad she was to see her daughter all grown up. “Sooner or later, you might not even have the time to see me anymore…” Her mother spoke. Sujeong shook her head. “Eomma-“ Her mother squeezed her hand, as if to say that she knew what she was about to say. “Sujeong, sooner or later you’re going to have children to look after and maybe even your filming schedules will be filled. You can’t afford to travel back and forth from Seoul to Daegu all the time.” She explained. Sujeong bowed her head in silence, understanding the truth in her mother’s words. “Hongbin is busy too. Isn’t he?” She asked. “I know that he is interested in going into film making.”

Sujeong imagined being in that scenario. It saddened her to think that she might become too busy to visit her own parents. And what about her brother? She’ll miss him too. She shook that thought out of her head. She wasn’t going to allow herself to breakdown in tears on her wedding day. She looked up into her mother’s eyes and said, “Eomma, I’ll try my best to visit you as frequently as possible”.  “I don’t know how but I’ll try. I might currently live in Seoul but Daegu will always be my home.” She continued with the slightest hint of a Busan accent. “Are you saying that marrying Hongbin would be a bad idea?” She asked.

Her mother smiled and shook her head. “No, I just wanted to see how serious you are about this marriage and if you would be too eager to break free from me…” She replied. Sujeong gasped and gave her a light shove. “Eomma! I nearly cried! I thought that you were suddenly having second thoughts about me getting married to Hongbin!” She exclaimed. Face-palm that was what she was doing to herself in her mind at this point. Classic mom trick, she fell for it again... Somehow she felt that her mind had a slightly twisted sense of humor. Her mother laughed heartily, clutching at her belly and gasping for air at the same time. Her daughter's reaction to her tricks amused her for some reason. 

The sky outside was slowly getting darker as a storm began to blow in. Sujeong's mother clapped. "You're lucky, it's going to rain!" She exclaimed. Sujeong shook her head in disbelief. At first her mother had pulled a mean prank on her and now was telling her that she was lucky that it was going to rain on her wedding day. Noticing the look on her daughter's face, her mother clicked her tongue. Not in an irritated way of course, she just couldn't believe her daughter wasn't glad that it was raining. Koreans believe that if it rains on your wedding day, it brings good luck. Though the logic behind that belief is not so clear...

To Be Continued...
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Author's Note: I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter~ Make sure to comment below and subsribe if you haven't already! I hope to be able to update more often soon! ^^ I'm really grateful for all the support I've received for my previous posts and I would like to thank you guys again! MHIB has really come a long way since the first few chapters when I originally planned for it to be a short story of 5 to 10 chapters haha... I really look forward to reading your comments again so feel free to do so~~ <3 Peace! - Sam