"Tough luck to be you, eh?"

Hyejung turns around in her seat to face a man in his late thirties with hair as colorful as the rainbow and skin as pale as a printing paper. His sharp features are highlighted by the shadows in the dim-lighted bar. She an eyebrow and the man smirk, letting his cigarette hanging in between his thin, darkened lips.

"Not really, Sehun-ssi," Hyejung answers curtly with a sip of her glass of plain water.

"Really? He is your fiancé, but the only thing he talks about as he drinks is another woman. Aren't you even bothered?"

Hyejung gives Sehun a once-over, before she answers.

"I am not."

At least, that is what Lu Han thought of her, right?

"Really? Yet you still come rushing here whenever I call you to take him home, every time he drunk alone. You take a really good care of him."

Hyejung glances at Sehun and his sharp eyes bore deeply at her, making her diverts back her gaze to her glass and takes another sip.

"What I do shouldn't be any of your concern," she sternly says with finality.

"For someone called 'the Angel of Seoul', you're pretty harsh, eh? I'm just curious."

Sehun smiles good-naturedly and Hyejung feels like punching his face because damn, he is just too annoying.

The male restroom door is opened, revealing Lu Han who walks out of it with slightly wobbly steps. He has never been a good drinker, after all. He has always been a bit red by his first glass and passed out before his glass count reaches half-a dozen.

"It isn't good to keep lying to yourself, you know."

Hyejung has already risen from her bar stool when she hears Sehun talks to her. She decides not to pay any attention to him and goes to attend Lu Han instead, who clearly needs her assistance to reach his car.

"Don't be too friendly with the bartender," Lu Han warns her once Hyejung is in an earshot distance. He circles his arm around her waist to keep himself steady as soon as she is in an arm length from him.

"Sehun-ssi is the one who always calls me out when you are too drunk to drive home, Lu Han," Hyejung tells him matter-of-factly.

"He has your number. All the more reason to keep yourself away from him," Lu Han reasons out, "and it's Lu Han-oppa to you, kid. How many times should I tell you that?"

Hyejung rolls her eyes at his scolding. "You're not even Korean, Han," she mutters as she seats him in the passenger side and buckles the seat belt for him.

Anyone who comes across Lu Han's protectiveness toward her might have thought of it as an act of jealousy but Hyejung knows better. Lu Han has always acted like an older brother to her ever since his father introduced her to him as 'my friend's daughter who will show you around Seoul' when she was still in middle school.

"You should be respectful to those older than you, Young Lady," Lu Han retorts while reclining his seat as Hyejung starts up the engine, "even Hana who is less than a year younger than me calls me 'oppa'."

It is Hana again. Lu Han really can't stop talking about her, can he?

The car is filled with nothing but soft Moonlight Sonata played in the background until Lu Han speaks again. "It will be nice if I could be like you. You don't seem to feel anything, always so unperturbed. I'm envying you," Lu Han mindlessly says as he stares blankly to the roof of his car. "Let's open the roof," he adds, pressing the button in correspond to his wish.

The sun roof quickly slides down, revealing the open sky above them. There isn't much to see though, because of the light pollution in a metropolitan city like Seoul. Hyejung glances upward for a split second before she turns to see Lu Han, who is closing his eyes to enjoy the strong breeze. She shakes her head in disagreement before she faces the road again.

Devoid of emotion, that is what he thinks of her, huh?

Lu Han has no idea how wrong he is. Hyejung can feel.  Her parents' demand for her absolute obedience is indeed numbing her heart by a lot, but in actuality she is feeling everything like every other normal person is. However, she likes to pretend that she doesn't mind about anything, because experience teaches her that everything hurts less that way. She is too used with her parents stopping her dreams and restraining her wishes in the pretense of 'we know better about what is best for you', that she has started to seek comfort in nothingness. After all, there would be no pain in losing something you don't care about.

Hyejung steals another glance at the blonde man besides her and lets out a heavy sigh. She doesn't really remember when she starts to be troubled by her task regarding him. Her parents' command was clear: 'Make the Lu family likes you'. Stealing the hearts of Lu couple is a piece of cake; Hyejung has always been trained to be a charmer, anyway. Just like how she catches the attention of her parents' other colleagues, she gets them to adore her through her well manners, publicly known good-deeds, and most importantly, her well-practiced bright, brilliant smile.

Lu Han is, however, a whole different case. Since she first met him--when she was a middle-school student and he was still in high school--Lu Han has always told her that he hated her smile. Lu Han was raised in the same environment like hers--where everyone is bound to be fake to some extent--that he becomes sick of all the fabricated smiles, including hers. He chooses the dull, poker-faced Hyejung over the bright and smiling Hyejung, he prefers her sarcastic scoff to her melodious, lady-like laugh, and he likes her glare better than her eye-smile, simply because all of the first options are showing the real side her.

What Lu Han asks for was what Hyejung gives him. She is told by her parents to please him in any way needed, after all. She lets her boredom shows as she listens to his nonstop complaints about the most random things, she rolls her eyes at his silliness, and she bluntly points out his mistakes whenever he makes one. However, it all backfires to her. Lu Han gives Hyejung reasons to chortle through a phone call at one am, he gives her protection that her family has forgotten to provide, and most importantly, he gives her a sense of importance.

Because as much as Hyejung wants to deny it, she likes to be needed for just being her. She can't help but bubbling with pride when Lu Han comes to her with all of his troubles, because no one else listens. Albeit she always seems to be uninterested, she enjoys the times when he asks her to come over so they can share a pint of ice cream to ease his loneliness. Although she seems to be tired, she never really minds when Lu Han calls her to cook him dinner, just because he is craving for some warm Chinese food.

Hyejung doesn't know when it begun--she doesn't want to--but she does realize that she feels something different toward Lu Han. She is afraid to find out what it is; she doesn't want to risk herself caring about him more than she does now--which is already a dangerous mistake in the first place, she always tells herself--because she will never know when her parents will ask her to abandon him.

"We are here," Hyejung calls out, waking Lu Han up from his light sleep as she halts his car into a stop in front of his house gate. The said man wakes up with a slight shudder and straightens up his posture while reclining his seat back into its original position.

"Thanks," Lu Han says offhandedly, his fingers are slightly fumbling with the lock of his seat belt. Hyejung nods and closes the sun roof of the car before she leans in to help him with his seat belt. From the proximity, she can smell his perfume, Bvalgari that she bought for his birthday two months ago. A slight upward curve is formed on her thin lips, but it vanishes in less than a blink of an eye.

"You can take the car with you," Lu Han offers as Hyejung silently retreats to her seat after his seat belt is finally opened. "I'll take it back after the banquet," he adds and she nods; it is their usual deal: she will drive him home with his car and then she will always ride his car to her house. She doesn't want to go home with a public transportation in this kind of hour, anyway.

"Good night and be careful, Hyejung," Lu Han mutters as he lands a chaste peck on her cheek before he walks out of the car. He has always been rather touchy-feely when he gets a little tipsy, anyway, so Hyejung doesn't try to infer anything from his simple gesture. Instead, she gives him a half-salute while she drives his car back to the main road. She glances at the rear mirror to see the gate opens for Lu Han and sighs in relieve.

Needless to say, Hyejung is now trapped into marrying a man whom she can tolerate--she insists that Lu Han is not something more than that to her--but whose heart belongs to someone else.

She isn't sure whether she should be glad of this predicament or not.

In the end, rather than choosing any of the two, she plays it safe by pretending that nothing bothers her, just like how she always does.