Jung Hyerim was twenty five years old when she walked the popular streets of Itaewon for the first time in her life. She had only seen so many people at her university and her school, and perhaps even her wedding; but Itaewon crowd was as five times as big as that. She passed by at least five couples, and a few large groups of friends. Everyone’s chatting and laughing and drinking at small road side bars which had fancy english names in neon-light signs. Some were holding hands and hugging each other, some were in strange outfits, being their truest selves, living their lives. Once more, Kim Sung Gyu was, little by little, showing parts of life she could have lived had she had an ordinary life.

“Its spring, so Itaewon is slightly less crowded during this part of the year” Sung Gyu was telling her as they passed by two police officers. Had they not been talking on transmitters, Hyerim would have thought they were two young people in costumes.

“It gets busy by the time of Halloween” He gave her a smile. “Everybody here loves halloween”

Hyerim could tell he was seeing right through her; sheltered and spoilt, having not once been outside of her circle of elites.

“I don’t know if I should be offended or impressed by the fact that you could tell I have never been to Itaewon”

He laughed at this, and his grip tightened on her sleeve when the crowd pushed her back,

“Oh, I could tell you have never been to Itaewon, alright” His brows were raised when he looked down at her. “You didn’t know my mum’s store. Everybody here knows my mum’s store, if they have been here during halloween”

Hyerim recalled back to when she saw all these costumes on the mannequins; cartoon dresses, modern hanboks, wedding gowns. They were all costumes.

She gasped. “Am I also in a costume right now?”

“You are” He grinned, did a once over her pink checkered, pleated skirt, white, balloon sleeved blouse and her long, blond hair. “She put you in Cardcaptor Sakura”

Hyerim would have gotten offended if she knew what the hell that even meant.

“So, Miss Cardcaptor Sakura” Sung Gyu went on, maintaining the tirade, and held out an inviting hand. He was being so cheeky and charming, a part of her face could have melted off by this. “Would you like to grab a drink with me?”

She didn’t even care he was calling her weird cartoon people names. If somebody held her hand and smiled the way that Kim Sung Gyu did, Hyerim would leave her husband to grab a drink with him anyday.

“A thousand times I would”

And so, it happened. Jung Hyerim was twenty-five years old when she sat at an Itaewon Bar for the very first time, sharing a drink with a beautiful Stranger, talking and laughing as if the night lasted forever. She was seeing a world she had never seen before. People put glasses of Soju in bigger glasses of beer and called them Soju bombs. Some people danced under a flurry of red, green and blue neon lights like they had lost their minds. There were so many other girls with their hair in weird colors and in clothes that showed way too much than her father would ever approve of, and nobody even seemed to mind. When she gazed at all of this, probably looking like someone who had landed here from another planet, Kim Sung Gyu was watching her; there was a strange, captivating glint in his eyes. .

Twenty five years. It really hit her, Hyerim had gone twenty five years without once knowing a world like this existed, just on the other side of the wall, out the confines of the car, a mere little distance away from her house.

“If this is how your people lived every day, I’m never going back home” Hyerim told Sung Gyu, who only seemed amused and not one bit perturbed by her behavior as if he had expected nothing less from her.

“Hm, well, it’s not how my people live every day” He said, picked up his glass of beer and had a sip. “Some have it good, some have it bad-,”

“How do you have it?” She asked.

Sung Gyu made a face. “I’m a celebrity, Jung Hyerim-Ssi”

“I don’t think that explains a lot” She tilted her head.

Sung Gyu gazed back at her in a way that his eyes aligned right along hers. In the dark, she could see the way they traced her, how they slowly took up a smile. A look that she had never seen on her husband. It made her feel things that felt illegal and forbidden.

“You haven’t met a lot of celebrities, have you” He asked her. Hyerim couldn’t help the laughter that escaped her lips.

“Sung Gyu-Ssi, I married one”

He was smiling this playful, annoyed little one as he groaned, rolling his eyes.

“Okay, I know just two” She finally admitted. 

“See, I guessed so”

“Am I that transparent, now” She moved forward and rested her face on her hand. She was awfully conscious of what her body was doing. Leaning forth, batting her eyes, legs folded on top of one another. If not for the backpack on her back, she would have looked a lot ier than now.

And what for?

“I barely know you” Sung gyu put in, his voice cutting into her thoughts. “I just met you”

Get to know me, then. She wanted to plead to him, as if he was the sole man on this earth who could carry the memory of her when she returned to her life and it destroys her. Know me, remember me, devour me.

“What do you want to know?” 

He took a sip of his drink, closed his eyes, perhaps, at the sensation of the beer burning down his throat. “Anything and everything” He said. “I won’t push you. But I want to know you”

That was the second best thing she’d even been told by a man. Hyerim couldn’t help the heat spreading all over her skin, sending unknown signals to her brain. And perhaps that was what prompted her to open up to him like a dam in a rainstorm. Sung Gyu bought her another drink before she could start, and once she’d gotten herself tipsy enough, she could tell him everything under the sun. 

She told him about her husband, their companies, the fall after the Covid pandemic and the merger of the two groups that ultimately led to her marriage. She told him about her father; cold and stoic and the textbook example of a noble class man, and then her quiet, submissive, easily-manipulated mother. She told him about being homeschooled until she was fifteen, then the school she went to where nobody dare come near her as her father was one of the board members of the school. She told him about college, about the first man whom she fell in love with, fleeting and brief until he was forced to enlist early to stop any possibility of her being courted by the wrong man. She told him how she’d been isolated in her college ever since, and how it felt like a prison for her and less like a place of education. She told him how she was never employed until very recently, when she was suddenly appointed as a director of the conglomerate, which she knew nothing about running it.

And all through that, as their drinks finished, as their glasses refilled; despite the loud music, the flamboyant cheers and laughter of Itaewon life, Kim Sung Gyu listened to her. He listened to her pouring her heart out, never waning his gaze from her. He nodded, he tilted his head. He said not a word but spoke so much with his eyes. He did speak, then and there. A few words of acknowledgement, a question, a comment. For the first time in her life, Hyerim had revealed every big and little detail of her to a man that she hardly knew, and that felt like she had set down a weight she had carried on her back for the longest time.

Soon, when the beer took a toll on her, she was laying half across the counter, legs very un-lady-like, laughing like she had never laughed before. In her mind, she was thinking how charming and wonderful and funny Kim Sung gyu was, and how she had never known he’d existed until then. She thought about how there were probably so many more men out there who laughed until their eyes disappeared, who could tell jokes so bad that just their faces could send you down in stitches. She thought about men who’d listen to your most boring of tales like nothing intrigued them more, who could make you feel like you existed, you mattered. Who could gaze at you, warmth pouring out their honey-glazed eyes as if you were the only woman on this earth. All of these men. All the Kim Sung Gyus out there. And She had to marry a man who’d have her dead if she blinked.

“What are you thinking about?”

Sung Gyu’s quiet voice filed into her thought, and her worries immediately vanished. She looked at him, her face resting on her folded arms.

“Nothing, just…” 

Be honest. Be real. You have only one night

Sung Gyu raised his brows. Hyerim let out a sigh. “Just how I wished my life to be different… you know, What if I was born to a different family, in a different city, living with different people-?”

Things would have been so much better for her then. She would have spent her eternity in the presence of someone like him, all her worries at bay. Life would have been kalaidoscopic colors.

“But things could change, in just a matter of minutes, right?” He put in, and she lifted her gaze to him. Sung Gyu moved closer, pushing back the glasses getting on his way. Its strange, how he could say exactly the right thing at the right time.

“Think about what you did tonight” His eyes traced hers questioningly. “What did you do?”

“I ran away with you”

“Before that” He gestured with his hands, implying going backwards in time.

“I met you”

“True, but after that?”

“I sprayed perfume and hairspray on my rare-silk veil and set it on fire”

At this, Sung Gyu gave her a look so disarming that she felt her entire existence being set on fire. Something broke inside her, and there were sparks all over.

Then he smiled. “Good girl”

Hyerim could swear, at that moment, she was ready to sacrifice every inch of her in his name.

“Now, what if you hadn’t done that tonight?” He continued.

The answer was heartbreakingly easy. “I would be having the worst night of my life”

The look in his eyes was apologetic, understanding. I see you. He seemed to tell her. I can’t imagine how you feel, but I still see you.

“How do you feel the night is now, after you set your veil on fire?”

That too, was an answer just so easy. She only had to smile, lifting her shoulders, melting into the moment. She just hoped that he knew.

And he probably did. The smile that he gave her, small but knowing, warm but mesmerizing. Of course he knew. He knew it was the best night of her life.

“You see, time is this really strange thing” He started a moment later, and the excitement in him was so palpable, she could feel it in herself too. “There is nothing static in time. Nothing is mapped. Nothing is planned out. You can do just about anything you want. You want to walk out of your wedding? Fine, you did it! You want to set your veil on fire?” he clapped as if she had made a great achievement. “You did that too. And if you want to get drunk at a bar in Itaewon, you just have to make it work, right?”

Hyerim laughed, knowing that, life for her was not as simple as that. Everything he said had consequences for her, so much bleaker than he thought.

“You’re awfully optimistic, sometimes” Hyerim told him.

“It sometimes helps, doesn’t it?” He traced her eyes.

Hyerim smiled, but there was a burning in her heart that she knew could not be doused no matter what he could say. It was her reality, it was her life. And in that reality, in that life, there was no good optimism could bring her; not without something bad in return.

“You know this is for just one night, right?” Hyerim told him, breaking his bubble of innocent excitement. “Just for one night, I wanted to live a life I will never live again. But Sung Gyu-Ssi…”

He watched her, and she wished he could see the pain in her eyes. “It would all come back to me, and with consequences. Very bad consequences. So much worse than before”

Sung Gyu seemed to think about this. Arson charges, family feuds. Talks in the company and disciplinary actions.  Then her husband, her husband who would destroy her, every bit of her as if he had not broken her enough. That was her life. How could Sung Gyu know this all?

But Sung Gyu, forever positive, infectiously optimistic, had an answer for that too.

“But you wouldn’t go through them on your own”

The consequences didn’t take too long to show themselves to her, as if bad things were always hovering just around the corner, overpowering every little good. It happened when Jung Hyerim, aged-twenty five, running away on her wedding day, appeared on National TV as a wanted criminal. And there was Kim Sung Gyu too, right beside her. On Breaking News. On the wide Screen television, just behind the bar, for the whole world to see. They weren’t in those exact terms, of course. But for anyone who knew what happened at the wedding tonight would know, for certain, who the black figurine named ‘Woman A’ and the male counterpart of it named ‘Celebrity B’ implied.

Hyerim broke the news of them becoming wanted criminals overnight to her fellow partner in crime when he returned to her after a bathroom trip. He had taken his tie off, his jacket in his hands. As good as he looked at that moment, Hyerim had no time to spare devouring him with her eyes when the night was about to take an expected but a very bad turn.

“I did not think it would get that bad” Said Sung Gyu. And the tone of his voice, his optimism wavering, were warning sirens for her. 

“It would get that bad, Sung Gyu-Ssi. I’m Jung Hyerim” She reminded him.

“Yeah, I get that part, but” He sighed heavily and ran a hand through his hair. He contemplated for a moment, a hand on his waist, eyes in a distance.

“They don’t really want the names known” He eventually replied. “Not mine, but yours. That’s too big a risk to take”

He was right. Press could get nasty when it was about a woman, especially more so if it was about a chaebol women. The news report was just a warning sent out targeting specifically the two of them. To get her back home. Her family would want nothing beyond that and would never dare make a move that could tarnish their company or the family name.

In her silence, the two of them watched the news report on the fire. It hadn’t spread far, there were no casualties. The hotel had closed down, people were gathered at the foot of the building. The videos showed blurry images of the wedding goers, faces covered. Hyerim could almost tell who was whom by just their suits and dresses.

“You know what” Sung Gyu said once the news changed to something about a drug racket in Apujeong. “Let’s keep running, Jung Hyerim-Ssi…” He met her eyes. “If that’s what you still want to do”

Keep running with her partner in arson? She would want nothing more. It was exhilarating becoming criminals once in a while. There hasn’t been anything this exciting since…forever. And she’d be lying if she wasn’t making the best of it.

“Alright” Hyerim slipped off her seat. “Let’s be criminals on the run”

Rule number one of being criminals on the run? Never let anyone know your next move. It was what Sung Gyu told her, holding her hand, blending into the Itaewon crowd. Somewhere along the way they stopped at the costumes store and he got himself a pair of fake frames. He messed up his hair, slipped the fake spectacles on. Now, she was Cardcaptor Sakura on the run accompanied by a criminal mastermind. She prayed to god nobody could tell.

Rule two for criminals on the run, was to never make it easier to trace. Blend in, pretend to be somebody else. Eliminate any factor that could make them look suspecting, and basically, just have fun.

“I’m a little worried that you seem to know too much about being criminals on the run, Sung Gyu-Ssi” Hyerim commented, earning a prideful smile from him. They were doing exactly as he said; two criminals with fake identities, looking like a couple having a nice date in Itaewon streets.

“Lets just say I wantch a lot of dramas” He grinned. “What do you want to do next?”

What did she want to do? Hyerim had all the freedom in the world tonight until all of it could turn to naught. But as much as she wanted to break havoc and light the entire city on fire, there was one concern that had been itching under her skin, growing into a bigger, festering wound. Sung Gyu. His sister. His whole life. Was it worth the risk to potentially ruin his career and probably even his whole life? She had done enough damage until now, she had, even involuntarily so, pulled him into the mess of her life and made him a criminal. Hyerim realized, the deeper he fell into this abyss with her, the worse things would get.

Hyerim stopped walking, and so did he. She turned to him. “Listen, just drop me off at some Hotel, for now. We shouldn’t do this”

Sung Gyu scanned her face, and slowly concern etched across him; it was as if he could see right through her.

“Is this about being wanted criminals, or-?”

“About you” Hyerim brought up unhesitantly. “My life is already in shambles, I don’t give a flying . But you?”

“What about me?” Sung Gyu raised his brows, taking a step forward. 

“Your career, your family, your life…” Hyerim shook her head. “I can’t put them in jeopardy for one night of stupid fun”

A corner of Sung Gyu’s lips lifted, his eyes lightening up. Hyerim didn’t budge when his hands were placed on her arms. “Look, you didn’t put me into this. I put myself into it. Willingly. Because I wanted to”

“That was before we became wanted criminals”

Sung Gyu gave her a charming, mischievous smile. “When I handed that lighter to you, Hyerim-Ssi I already made myself a wanted criminal-,”

Hyerim opened to argue, but he beat it to her. 

“So what? We don’t live forever”

“Sung Gyu-Ssi-,”

“It will pass” He squeezed her arms. “It will be alright”

“I don’t even get to share the jail cell with you” She pouted, making him laugh.

“I love how that’s the biggest worry you have right now” He reached for her sleeve. “Come on, now”

Although he tugged at her, Hyerim did not move. She couldn’t. His smile, the flicker in his eyes, his words, all of it kept running in her mind in endless circles. The itch wasn’t gone yet, despite his reassurance. It fact, it had developed in multitudes, changed face, becoming something else.

“Sung Gyu-Ssi, Why…are you doing this?”

It was only once she let the words out that she realised it. That was the question. That’s what she wanted the answers for. Kim Sung Gyu, a celebrity, with a whole life ahead of him, far too much to protect, far too much that he couldn’t compromise. What was he doing here, holding her hand in the middle of this street?

“Hm?” He moved closer to her. “Doing what?”

“Doing this-,” She struggled, vaguely gesturing with her hands. “This, this whole thing. Helping me, running away with me”

Hyerim wasn’t sure what she was expecting, asking him this. Did she want him to answer to her, give her a clear, precise, explanation? Even if he did, what was the point? What was she trying to find out?

A sign, Hyerim’s mind reveberated. She had lived her whole life, always helped but never supported, always a hand at her expense but not a shoulder to depend on. She had lived with so many people around her, but the loneliness and isolation she had endured was a bigger pain than she had ever let on. All this time, Hyerim had wanted someone to see her, feel her, know her. Not help robotically, not stand in the same room as her, stuck to a wall, responding to every beck and call. She had wanted a friend, a partner. Maybe, she was seeing a part of that in him. And maybe, it's a clarification for this that she was seeking from him.

Sung Gyu’s face had changed. His brows have furrowed, his lips were smiling, but they weren’t reaching his eyes. When his eyes didn’t smile while his lips did, it had got to mean something. Something unknown, something mysterious. It was as if there was so much more to this than he let on.

“I did this because I wanted to, Hyerim-Ssi, there’s nothing more than that”

When he spoke, his voice was cool, breezy, but determined. He spoke with the confidence of someone who knew absolutely what he was doing.

“And if that makes you feel any better” He added, cautiously peeking into her eyes. “I’m going to stick with it until the end”

As comforting as it was, it’s equally terrifying. Hyerim swallowed, her eyes set on the ground. “You don’t have to” A moment, and knowing he would give her no answer, Hyerim still asked. “Why would you?”

Sung Gyu’s lips pulled into a tight-lipped smile. “I can give you an answer,” He said and reached for her arm. His eyes lifted, and he was looking somewhere beyond her. “But before that, Hyerim Ssi. I think we need to run”

“What-?” Hyerim whipped her head around. But all before she could see anything at all, a hand -his hand- pressed to the side of her head. He turned her back to him, gently and delicately. He was holding her in the way one would when they were about to…kiss someone. 

Hyerim’s heart lifted to . It was not the intention, of course. The gesture was unconscious as he kept looking beyond her.

“It’s…your people, I think” He said, his grip tightening on her wrist. “They just saw me, Hyerim-Ssi…We need to move”