프니엘: Dragging me along with her, I resolve to stay silent since I think words are quite unnecessary by now. By the look on her face, there’s only one thing that’s all behind this: bad news. There’s bad news behind this. There’s just one thing that puzzles me: why am I involved in this?

I sense that Se Na-ssi’s brisk-walk has toned down a little now; she walks with calmer steps and she seems more relaxed now. I’m really itching to ask her so I finally say, “What’s the matter, Se Na-ssi?”

As soon as I say that she stops in her tracks, which eventually makes me do so too, and she lets go of my wrist. “What do you do when you’re stuck in a bad situation?”

“Huh?” I examine her face. She seems so…no, not sad. Tired. “What do you mean? Are you in a situation as that right now?”

“Apparently.”

I force myself to smile so as to loosen up the tension a little. “I would tell someone first,”

Se Na raises her eyes and stares at me, grasping what I mean. “I got the lead role.”

I’m so surprised—happy, even, upon my discovery, that I let out this unintentionally prolonged “Ohhhh?” as exclamation of my incredulity. “Congratulations!”

Her nostrils flare in annoyance. “Well, thanks…” she holds her nape and rubs it gently, which seems a little boyish of her. She looks down on the ground. “It’s just really weird.”

“Let’s walk the talk,” I say, with a renewed smile. “Literally,” I tug her with me as we walk side-by-side to the café.

Smoke curling up from cups and the coldness of the cake set before us makes the atmosphere very much cozy, especially this time at night. However, at the peak of all this comfort someone sits discontented in front of me, developing grudging interest on the surface of the cheese cake.

“I think I should eat first.” Se Na states, her shoulders still evidently sagging. She would develop a Dowager’s Hump if she doesn’t fix her position, really. “Before I talk.”

“Or you could do both at the same time,” I jest. “Come on; be at comfort.”

She cuts a small piece from her cake with her fork and for a long while, stares at it. She puts it in and she chews, chews, and then swallows. I stare at her with the anticipation of the detonating of a bomb.

“Dammit!” she cusses, finally, just enough to be heard within several radius of miles and I don’t know why it makes me glad, but it does—it really does, feeling like I am to be of much use tonight. “I—I can’t take it anymore!” she rants on, even clenching her fists in front of her with the fork on the left hand. She does these really weird movements with her fingers like she’s clenching and unclenching them one by one, and her face is somewhat white with rage. “I—I hate this! Why is this even happening to me! I’m a fool for incurring this!”

I nod my head subtly with patience.

She goes on blabbing about things that goes along the lines of tragedy, misfortune, and she even rants that what is happening to her right now is the greatest calamity under heaven. Though she doesn’t say what the reason behind all this stuff really is, she just keeps on nagging and nagging and nagging and I just listen while she talks about miscellaneous things as long as they are of disasters. “I mean—you—you know, how could I have been so stupid! Come on! I was better than that! And-and-and why did I even fall prey to my very own ego! I didn’t mean to!”

When I notice that the people in the café, despite of the fewness, start to look at us weird, I halt the blabbing of my table-mate and without really meaning to, I put my hand on hers and shake it once. “Se Na-ssi,”

“What?”

“Calm down a little,” I offer a friendly leer, with a concerned knitting of the brows. “Why don’t you tell me the cause of all this first?”

that formed an ‘O’ shape immediately clamps down to a straight line. Looking back at me without blinking, I’m starting to think she’s stopped functioning again.

I wait.

She presses her fingers on her closed eyes for a while as if warding off unwelcomed light, and tells, “It’s just really uncomfortable for me, okay,”

“That you got the lead role?”

She nods.

For a second, my heart sinks. I start to think if she hates me.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s not you, okay. It’s just…ugh.” She grimaces. “How do I put this.”

“You’re unhappy that you’re gonna be teamed up with me?” I guess.

“What? No!” Se Na shakes her head from side to side. “It’s not that, really!”

“Then what is?”

She bites her lip and answers after, “Look, I’m 16 and I don’t look like I have gone through any romance, do I?”

I grin. “Well you do have a romance with Sungjae,”

Her face clearly says she wants to kick me. Even just under the table. “Seriously.”

“Why, it’s true though!” I laugh. “Kind of makes some of us sad, actually. Especially Ilhoonie,”

A look of surprise passes across her face, and something else. Something that’s somewhat…of disappointment? “But seriously,” she scowls. “I feel so…uncomfortable with it.”

“Uncomfortable with me, ultimately,” I say, looking at one side, a little disheartened inside.

“No-no-no,” she rises from her seat and quickly transfers beside me. “It’s not you, believe me!” she swallows a lump in . “I don’t hate you, okay?”

I must tilt away a little since this is the first time in my life when I feel embarrassed with  skinship. “Oh…alright then,” I suddenly develop interest on my cake.

“Great,” she says, avoiding my gaze as well, and quickly removes her hand on my arm. “You’ll start seeing Lee Bo Mi through me from now on,” her voice gets gentler and gentler with every syllable.

“Y-yeah…” is it just me, or the temperature here suddenly rose? “We could start by reviewing the scripts together, so we could uh…get closer,”

“Hm-mm,” she nods, slowly. And an awkward—a very awkward hush takes over. “You know what, I gotta be honest with you,” she says all of a sudden.

“Sure.”

“Promise me, one thing…just…whatever that’s going on in front of the camera…I mean…no matter how romantic the story goes we’ll still be friends, alright?”

Such an innocent kid, I think to myself. “Of course,”

“Deal?” she holds out her hand for a hand-shake.

“Deal.”

And the rest of the night goes on more smoothly, now that the resolution has been declared.

It’s midnight when I take Se Na home and whilst we walk, in a very slow pace, in contrast to the fashion of a while ago, I ask her, “Does Sungjae know about this?”

“About what?”

“You and I seeing each other tonight,”

I catch her doing this face gag with her eyes looking to a side where I’m not, and she smiles, sort of mischievously, “He does.”

I nod twice. “Oh,”

“It’s kind of surprising he let me out tonight, actually,”

“Why so?”

She scrunches her nose. “Well he has this superstition that it’s bad for ‘kids’ like me to ‘go out at night’” she makes quotation marks with her fingers on the emphasized words. “I’m not a kid,”

“But you are,”

Grunting, “Then we both are.”

“A really cute kid,” I remark, rubbing the top of her head affectionately, while we walk down the hallway of her floor.

She just looks back at me with narrowed eyes and her lower lip jutting outward. She turns a little pink. “Well here I am, then,” we stop, right in front of her door. “Would you like to come in?”

I shake my head and politely decline. “Ani, ani. I’m alright. Besides, we’ll still see each other tomorrow so yeah.”

“You’re right,” Se Na bobs her head.

I find myself smiling when a certain thought crosses my mind. “I suddenly remember the last time I took you home. Well, not exactly home,”

She chuckles. “Difference is you know my name now,”

“Right,” I open the door for her, and stretch out my arm to the inside, gesturing to let her in. “Pyo Se Na…ssi,”

“Haha. Ne,” she walks in royally, and what separates us now is the doorframe. “Good night,” her smile is so nice oh goodness I can’t even.

“Good night,” I reply, with the same tender voice, and she  bars the door with a soft click while I walk away.

 Going home, I feel pretty excited on how I would see her in a light where she assumes the role of Lee Bo Mi. And a sensation of nervousness bubbles in my chest when I recall what I had read on the third chapter, where a kissing scene was there.