— May 2017 —

Ji-hyun settled on the sofa in front of the tv with her Eomma and Appa sitting on either side. 

“Hyun-ie,” her Eomma said, her youngest daughter’s hair, “Aren’t you enjoying the episode? Why are you always on your phone when you should be watching?”

“Sorry, Eomma, I was just asking Orabeoni whether he thought Noh Lawyer would have a pet name for Bong-hee or if he would only use banmal or…” it had become her habit to pepper him with questions while they watched the show—never together but always in sync.

“Stop focusing on work!” Her father advised, “You work enough during the day.”

But Ji-hyun didn’t consider this work. It was a chance to talk to Orabeoni. So what if it was about their characters falling in love? Nothing felt like work when they spent time together.

It was as if she didn’t need sleep these days, because being with him on set, acting silly or teasing each other gave her more strength than any amount of sleep could.

On the day they planned to shoot the first kiss scene, she pulled Chang-wook over to talk to him.

“Oppa, I am sorry if I am lacking with kissing,” She said, too shy to actually make eye contact.

“Don’t worry,” he smiled. “I promise to make it comfortable. And please tell me if you feel awkward at any point. It has… I want you to enjoy the kiss and… Do you understand?”

“Just take care of me, Oppa,” She said.

“Always.”

Chang-wook, she decided, was the ideal partner for kisses. During the rehearsal, he got her to do their penguin dance. This involved facing each other, held onto each other, and waddled back and forth. The crew had given up trying to tease them because nothing worked. They were always doing it, which annoyed Tae-Joon, who had complained to Ji-hyun that she never was that nice to him when they did scenes together.

By the time they shot the first kiss the silly rehearsal back and forth was replaced by a kiss that was so natural that the director allowed his stars to play out the kiss until they were finished. It didn’t seem fair, he reasoned if he called cut and ruined the intense chemistry between them. It was good for the ratings, he justified to himself. 

For Ji-hyun, their kiss was… She wasn’t sure what. Did kisses really work like that? Before she hadn’t thought much about kissing her costars. Not because she didn’t feel comfortable around them but because they had not… She couldn’t put her finger on it, but even when they had rehearsed the kiss it just felt natural. As if they hadn’t needed to practice at all. That didn’t mean it was easy. He was so much taller and they had to do several takes because the light and angles had to be checked after each take. It had to look good and not just feel good. She used this as an excuse to take full advantage of every time they shot the kiss. She also convinced herself that if she was going to figure out why kisses with Orabeoni were different then all her previous kisses she needed to keep kissing him.

However, Ji-hyun wasn’t able to figure out why they were so special until she watched the kiss episode. Unlike any drama she had seen there was no music when the kiss happened. Her heart pounded and a delicate flush covered her cheeks. That is a real kiss, she thought, that is the kind of kiss I would give the man I liked. It left her heart pounding. It hadn’t been her imagination. She wanted that kiss, she realised. But her feelings also scared her. What about Orabeoni? He had a reputation for creating excellent chemistry with all of his costars. And in every drama he was in, the newspapers wrote that he was dating his costar. She tentatively brought up her concerns with Stylist-eonnie the next day when they were alone in the salon.

“Never trust the newspapers,” her eonnie replied.

“But, it isn’t bad that he is so good at creating chemistry. It is good. If people believe… You want that don’t you?” Ji-hyun asked.

“Nam Ji-hyun, if I have to spell it out for you then you are as hopeless as that oppa of yours. Do you think he would kiss you like that if he just thought of you as a costar? Of course not. He is your Orabeoni. You are his Ji-hyun-yang-i. Trust me. And if you aren’t sure, hug him.”

Even if she was a little uncertain if Eonnie’s advice was any good, Ji-hyun took the opportunity to pull Chang-wook oppa into a back hug. 

“Surprise Orabeoni!” She laughed. Humor was the best way to hide nerves. 

“Ji-hyun,” He said sounding very serious.

“Mmmm.”

“You are my style.” He pulled her closer so that her head rested on his back, “Do you understand? You are exactly my style.”

After that, it was hard for them to keep their hands to themselves. Lee Deok-hwa was so annoyed by their antics that he dragged both of them aside one day. 

"If you want to flirt like that, by all means, go ahead. BUT I will personally tell the press that you were getting married,” he threatened. 

The love birds, as he sarcastically described them, saying they would then tell the press that he was acting just like his character… in order to bring the ratings!

“I wash my hands of you both!” He threw up his hands and stalked off to complain to Jang Hyuk-jin and Choi Tae-joon. Unhelpfully, they just shrugged and pointed out that no newspaper would print a story that had no proof.

“PROOF!” Their senior exploded. “My wife keeps asking me when they will announce their relationship! And she doesn’t watch those “kissy-kissy” behind the scenes videos where… Oh never mind. No one is listening to me anyway.”

—June 2017—

On the 4th of June,  the director invited the cast to his home for a “family dinner”. While they waited for the chicken to arrive, someone suggested that they watch a film because all they watched these days was Suspicious Partner. As they discussed what to watch, Ji-hyun admitted that she hadn’t seen “Old Boy”. After the horror that their maknae hadn’t seen the Korean classic, they all agreed she needed to be initiated. Chang-wook, a professed lover of thrillers, was particularly upset that she hadn’t watched his favourite movie.

“Nam Ji-hyun-sshi, are you telling that you have never seen Old Boy?” He asked, “I can’t believe that I was such a bad boyfr… such a bad oppa.”

“Oppa! I was 8 years old when it came out. Tell me, would your Eomma have let you seen it at that age?”

“I was 16 and had to sneak into the theatre to see it… So no, she didn’t let me see it!” he laughed. He pulled her into a hug and pressed a little kiss on her temple. She was particularly adorable tonight, he thought.

The rest of the cast and director rolled their eyes. Ji-hyun caught Nara’s eye.

“Ji-hyun-ie,” her eonnie said, “I am saying this because I like you. It is ok if he…, if Chang-wook hugs you around us. But be careful. If someone saw, it could cause problems for both of you.”

Ji-hyun understood, probably better than anyone else realised. So she took him aside the next morning and told him that it was ok for them to have so much skinship at PD-nim’s house but they needed to be more cautious anywhere else. She made it clear that when they were on set they needed to keep things professional. Chang-wook was surprised. He had thought things between them were progressing but because he respected her and wanted her to feel comfortable he started to pull back every time she showed a little bit of affection. Ji-hyun was so annoyed that she grabbed him after filming that day.

“Orabeoni, as your sunbae-nim, I want you to know that you can be affectionate on set… Just don’t kiss me between takes!” She chastised him before stomping off.

So he couldn’t have made her happier the next day when he pushed the boundaries as far as possible by pulling her into a fake kiss. He just about managed to get his thumb over her lips before going “in for the kill”. It took all her will power to push him away. If he kept making her heart race like that, Ji-hyun knew that she would need to change her mind about her “no kissing between takes” rule.

Time flew by so quickly that before they were ready, it was the morning that they would shoot the bed scene. PD-nim, Chang-wook, and Ji-hyun had a quiet conversation about what she was comfortable with. The men were surprised when she insisted it needed to be believable for the audience since it was going to lead to a really big revelation that put their relationship at risk. She gave them a little lecture about the psychology of the scene.

“They have just become intimate for the first time,” she emphasised while pointing at the script. “If the audience doesn’t believe the skinship it will make Chang-wook, sorry, Lawyer Noh’s realisation… It just takes away from the impact. Ok?”

 The director for always bringing up psychology for why there was skinship and asked, not quite innocently, what she thought the psychology of Bong-hee was when she decided to go back and kiss Lawyer Noh after telling him goodnight. 

‘She decided she would prefer to kiss him than fold laundry,’ Ji-hyun said with her customary straight-man humour. 

‘Oooofff. That is what you call a backhanded compliment,’ The director laughed pointing at the hapless Chang-wook. Ji-hyun smirked. Keeping Chang-wook Orabeoni on his toes was one of her favourite things to do in the whole wide world.

To the amusement of the director, during the rehearsal Ji-hyun asked whether Bong-hee and Lawyer Noh would back towards her “bedroom” while they were kissing. Chang-wook’s heart stopped and as he walked off set to cool down he told her that she had clearly grown up. How she had thought to imagine the sequence of events from kissing to the bedroom made his heart race a little too quickly. But the PD decided to take her suggestion on board. When the scene cut to the bedroom, they filmed it as if they had been kissing while backing towards her room. 

“Maybe you should take up directing,” the PD said while reviewing the take.

As he watched over the PD’s shoulder, Chang-wook wondered whether she was more experienced than she at first let on. He decided to ask while they were lying in bed. 

“How did our innocent Ji-hyun come up with kissing all the way to the door?” he teased.

“To be a good actress you have to have a very, very, very good imagination. Don’t you agree, Oppa?” She said so seriously that she could tell he didn’t know how to take it.

He said as much to Stylist-noona while she fixed his makeup between takes. She replied that Ji-hyun was flirting and he better let her know how interested he was if he wanted to hold on to her when the show ended and he went to the army. 

While the show was a romance, the director was trying to keep the skinship fairly low key—he was actually a little worried what might happen if he gave Ji-hyun and Chang-wook more romantic scenes which increasingly were getting out of hand. But it is so hot that, before the director had a chance to protest, Chang-wook asked Ji-hyun if she would be uncomfortable if he took his shirt off. She turned over to face him and rolled her eyes. 

“Wouldn’t that be more natural?” she replied. The director shook his head. Thank goodness the scene was short and there was not an opportunity for them to come up with more little romantic ad-libs.

Chang-wook had other ideas though. During the first take, he found himself kissing her shoulder. It is too tempting when he had her lying in his arms. That simple kiss, not passionate, nothing to make anyone’s heart race was the catalyst for everything to come. Chang-wook lay there and realised he needed to confess his feelings. 

After wracking his brains for the perfect way to tell her, he decided to invite everyone for dinner. While the cast and crew were laughing, he managed to slip a note into her bag. Of course, he could just send her a message but he wanted to be romantic. He poured his heart out. Well, as much as he could on a piece of blank paper ripped out of his script. It rambled a bit but the message was there: I don’t want to hold back because I’m not ashamed of my feelings, I don’t want to miss the chance to tell you how much I like you before I enlist in the army, I hope you can return my feelings.

They didn’t start shooting until afternoon the next day. And by the time Chi-gu arrived to take him to set he was a ball of nerves. 

“So. Today. Big day. Lots of filming,” he rambled.

“How much coffee did you have this morning?” Chi-gu frowned at him.

“None. I couldn’t sleep last night. Any word from the set? Did anything happen? Do you know if Ji-hyun is sick?”

“What did you do? You didn’t drunkenly confess to her last night did you?”

“I didn’t get drunk last night,” Chang-wook defended himself. If he was going to confess he was going to be sober.

“Look. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to have this conversation with you while you… no, while I am sober.”

“Why does everything have to be with alcohol when we talk?” Chang-wook asked.

“Because if our roles were switched you’d be the exact same way. Let’s stop for a minute,” he pulled up in front of a convenience store. “I’m going to get something to calm you down. Don’t go anywhere.” Bang Chi-gu gave himself a little slap. How had he managed to keep his mouth shut this morning? Ji-hyun had sent him a text that morning telling him that ‘Orabeoni’, he rolled his eyes at that, would be a little anxious. Really, what had the girl done to him?

The first thing Chang-wook did when he arrived on the set was to look out for Ji-hyun. He worried first that she hadn’t seen the note, then he worried that she had and decided the best way to deal with the situation was to ignore him. Perhaps the attraction he felt was just acting for her—all the little times she stopped him from being too affectionate when they weren’t on set popped into his mind. He was building up his courage to ask Ji-hyun if she had read his confession when Stylist-noona stopped him. 

“Here,” she whispered slipping him a folded up piece of paper. “I promise I didn’t read it.”

He couldn’t believe that she gave him the reply like this—such an old fashioned, cliche for actors and idols to exchange secret notes through their stylists. But he didn’t know which “she” he was more frustrated with. Ji-hyun-yang-i for making him wait all day to tell him how she felt or Stylist-noona for giving him the note just before he had to shoot the next scene. 

When he finally got to read it, the contents are everything he wanted to hear. She accepted his feelings, she returned them. He could feel her smile and laughter through her overly formal acceptance. But there was nothing he could say to her while they were filming. Instead he tried to tell her with his eyes or touch or quick conversation between takes. 

At the end of filming, the director recommended that they go over their lines for the next day. Chang-wook wondered if anyone suspected the huge change between him and Ji-hyun. He knew that Chi-gu did. But everyone else was a bit of a mystery. 

He arrived at the rehearsal room just as she was closing the blinds. Ji-hyun only smiled briefly when he entered and the continued to deliberately set the scene. The tension nearly killed him. When she finished she walked over to stand directly in front of him. She clasped her hands in front of her and looked up with the iest come-hither smile he had ever seen. He couldn’t help himself and he knew she had set this up for exactly that reason. 

Almost without realising what he was doing, Chang-wook took her beautiful, y, smiling face in his hands and kissed her. It was their first kiss. The first kiss between Ji Chang-wook and Nam Ji-hyun. While all the previous kisses were wonderful this one felt completely different. They hadn’t rehearsed the angles and there were no people standing around with cameras or boom mics. The passion slowly turned into a torturous seduction. As things started to get more frantic, his phone rang. The caller id reads: Chi-gu. Chang-wook doesn’t bother picking up to knew what the message was: Time to go lover boy. 

Ji-hyun wondered how she could be so calm after the most important kiss of her life today. She gently, almost amazed that it was there, wiped the lipstick off his lips. She wanted to trace them but stopped because she knew that would only make it impossible to leave. While he smoothed her hair, she kept her eyes focused on his. 

“You look… you are so y like this,” he murmured. “But I think people might wonder what we were doing if you came out looking this good.”

Ji-hyun resolved that the next time they were in a room alone she was going to make sure to find a mirror and know exactly what she looked like after kissing him. What exactly was it, she wondered, that made her messy hair so attractive.

In what seemed like seconds from their first day on set, they filmed the final episode. During rehearsals, she chided him for never singing for her the entire show despite the fact he had to hear her horrible voice so many times. Chang-wook countered that she was so adorable when she sang that he wished she had sung more. Feeling nostalgic, the director changed the script so that the show ended with Chang-wook singing for Ji-hyun. So what if the audience thought it was Prosecutor Noh and Bong-hee. He knew that this was his little love letter to the couple. They were going to face a difficult two years when he enlisted in only a few short weeks.

—July 2017—

Before the wrap party, they got into an argument. He wanted to at least take her on a proper date before he enlisted. She disagreed, pointing out that neither of them needed the scandal if it came out. She assured him that it wasn’t that she didn’t want to but that it would bring him too much trouble.

“Oppa. No, listen. I want to go on a date. Of course, I do. But you need to think clearly and take care of yourself. You aren’t very good at that, you know. That is why I am so glad you have your Eomma and Chi-gu Oppa looking after you. Besides, I’ll visit you. The minute, no, the second you can have visitors, I’ll be there.”

It doesn’t satisfy him and they start the evening a bit distant but during the meal she slips him note: hwaiting. Things relax between them until he realised his mistake in demurring and saying he didn’t need anyone to come visit him while he was in the army.  It was a joke but he can tell from her little frown that she took it personally. 

When they were alone later, He reminded her to keep her promise to visit him. The stubborn tilt of her chin reminded him to explain why he had told everyone not to visit. 

‘Jag—,’ he caught himself and restarts mock-formally, ‘Ji-hyun-sshi, I don’t want you to worry. I want you to know that I can take care of myself without you.’ 

‘Oppa, you can’t take of yourself.’ she retorted before giving him a quick peck. Later he liked to think that it was their first real fight.

The post-show rush was highlighted by a fan meet and other interviews. During an interview, he laughed about their argument when the interviewer asked him which of his costars had promised to visit him. He couldn’t help but slip her in. It was so natural to include her in everything he spoke about. But they had mutually agreed that it would be wrong and complicated to start dating right now.

A week before he had to leave, the cast went for a private dinner. Their costars were careful to give them space and let them enjoy some private time. This included a very grand gesture from Lee Deok-hwa who shooed everyone out of the room for a mass “bathroom break.” 

In that moment, Chang-wook asked her if there was anything he could give her to remember him by. Ruffling his hair she replied that all she wanted is for him to stay healthy. 

“Oh, I have something for you,” Ji-hyun said. She pulled a large canvas bag out from under the table and handed it to him. It is full of books. “Wait until you get to the barracks to read them.”

Neither of them would know that was the last time they would see each other for a very long time.