iv.
Just Close Your Eyes for a Second“No, babe, I can’t really meet you right now—”
Distraught was very clear on Myungsoo’s expressions as he exasperatedly held onto the driving wheel of his car, stuck in traffic. He was on a call with one of his girlfriends (though technically, she was a girl-space-friend and one-of-many), who was very unhappy with him for not giving her any attention. Her tone was accusatory and unnecessarily loud; frankly, Myungsoo didn’t even feel a need to reply to her whining.
“Whatever—I’m hanging up.” He reached for the digital screen of his vehicle before pausing for a minute and added, “Oh, and… Don’t call me back.”
The young actor felt like if he rolled his eyes any harder than he just had, his eyeballs would rotate a full round and back. He wouldn’t even have known what to call the girl if it wasn’t for his phone contact list kindly informing him of her name. If her importance to him was so little, he figured that she shouldn’t have the right to accuse him of his whereabouts—not that he would ever, ever have exposed that he was on his way home from a mental hospital.
With a long groan, Myungsoo slammed his head on the wheel, staring right back at the street signal. It was still on red, as it was for the past hour (or so he felt). “Nothing is going right,” he muttered in annoyance.
And he was right, in every sense of the phrase. The signal gave him false hope for a better day by turning green, but just when he was picking up some speed, the car in front of him stopped abruptly, causing Myungsoo to stomp hard on the brakes by reflex. The car behind him seemed to be taken by surprise too, judging by the fact that a bump and the sound of metal crushing followed almost immediately after.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Myungsoo shouted at the top of his lungs, angrily parking his car and turning on the emergency lights. The old sayings were right—all the bad things came crashing down at once, he thought as he attempted to catch his breath, looking into his rear view mirrors to check the scenery behind him. Amusingly, however, things weren’t all bad. Raising his brows in half disbelief, he let out a chortle. “Oho… Is that the uptight doc...?”
Feeling almost excited, Myungsoo hopped out of his car, rubbing the back of his neck and turning it a bit to quickly check for injuries; so far, he felt okay, but he didn’t need anyone else to know that. He squinted his eyes to get a clearer view, though at this point it only served him as confirmation that the person that ran into his car was his psychiatrist, doctor Lee Jieun.
He figured he was supposed to keep a straight face, but he couldn’t bring himself to, no matter how hard he tried. Grinning mischievously, he strode up to her car, knocking on her window as she seemed to frustratedly mess with her hair. “Come on, doc, we need to settle this.”
Jieun was obviously amidst a hurricane of mixed emotions, but letting an ounce of logic get to her, she timidly rolled down her window. “Are you okay? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“You know whatever you say now can be used against you if we ever go to court, right?” Myungsoo taunted, furrowing his brows. “But seriously—” He pointed at the rear of his vehicle, which was crushed to an almost unbelievable degree considering how light the accident actually was. “—look at what you did to my baby!”
“Your…baby,” Jieun murmured under her breath, still unable to fully grasp the situation she was in. She tried to consider the probability of encountering the rudest patient she’d ever encountered outside of work hours in a car accident with herself being the one at fault, but couldn’t come to a rational conclusion. “I—I’m sorry, Mr. Kim. This is obviously my fault, so there won’t be a need to take this to court or anything.”
Her quick admittance did strike Myungsoo dumbfounded for a minute, but thankfully, he was one of the best actors of his age. He cleared his throat, turning his neck in circles once more before responding. “Well, glad you know that. The uh, repair costs will probably be a bit hefty.”
She pursed her lips. That was the part she was afraid of—it didn’t take a genius to know that his car wasn’t exactly common. Several parts of the luxury sports car appeared damaged, and it was far from Jieun’s payday. Jieun sighed. “Once you get the vehicle completely checked out and diagnosed, I’ll take responsibility for it.”
“But what about—” Myungsoo was planning on being a nuisance and a handful and argue about a (fake) injury just for the sake of petty spite, but a brilliant idea had crossed his mind. This accident wasn’t something he should make a big problem out of to get on his psychiatrist’s bad side, but rather a situation to cleverly take advantage of for his own benefit. His car was his baby, but he had other babies at home, and the repair costs were honestly unimportant to someone of his level of wealth.
He smiled, nodding. “Never mind, okay. I’ll get my car checked out and let you know…” He pulled his phone out of his pocket, handing it over to her past the window. “Your phone number?”
His actions seemed to really startle her. Her eyes moved back and forth from the phone in his hand to his face, blinking. “I—But you know who I am, and… You have the contact information to the clinic, so I don’t see why you’re asking me for my personal cell phone number—”
Myungsoo shook his head overexaggeratedly. “Come on, doc. Don’t be unprofessional. Let’s make the distinction between work and personal matters, shall we?” He grinned. “Your number, please. I’ll call you later once I have instructions from my insurance company, as well as the mechanic. Sounds good?”
Albeit hesitantly, Jieun had to comply. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, he was right; this was a matter unrelated to her workplace, so she couldn’t have him contacting her on a public line. As she was saving her cell phone number on his contacts list, however, it didn’t change the feeling that Jieun was doing something she was probably going to regret in the near future.
“Don’t you want to work on me tonight?”
The phrase Myungsoo had so graciously presented her with hours ago seemed to echo inside her head in a repeated loop. She wouldn’t have felt so iffy about giving him her number had he not said such a thing earlier; her only source of comfort now was the gut intuition that she’d probably left a bad impression on him anyway, and that he clearly didn’t take a positive kind of interest in her.
“Alright, you’re good to go, doc,” Myungsoo said smugly upon receiving his phone. He leaned away from her car, gesturing with his arms to permit her leave. “Your car can still go, right?”
“Yeah,” Jieun replied, sighing for the nth time. “Please let me know what happens.”
After watching her drive away in a flash, Myungsoo went on to call a few people to clean up his end of the mess; his vehicle was promptly towed away, and after deciding that he’d seen enough of Sunggyu’s face for the day, took the taxi home. He needed a few more days to make sure, but Myungsoo had a strong feeling he wouldn’t have any backlash from the accident; instead, all his ‘bad feelings’ from earlier on in the day had dissipated, replaced by an odd sense of satisfaction.
“I can’t wait until the last therapy session,” he said as he threw himself atop his bed, both his mind and body finding their peace. It was a rather fateful turn of events the more and more Myungsoo thought about it, despite not believing in things like fate in the first place. He never imagined that coincidences could overlap in such a manner, especially to his advantage. He was lucky. “I really don’t need to see that uptight doctor more than three times in my lifetime… She’s not my type. Definitely.”
He had to admit, though. She was way better with her hair down, since it went along well with her soft facial features and skin tone, and the ugly white doctor gown that hid her fair body lines off of her.
<:>
Sunggyu had worked with the actor Kim Myungsoo for years. He didn’t go as far back in history with him as CEO Lee Joongyup did, but he took pride in the fact that he’d dealt with the ‘top-star’ hysterics and antics for so long, longer than anyone else he knows in similar conditions. If he had to, he could write a manual on how to react in certain situations or what should be said to calm Myungsoo down.
Being used to all the bad sides of Kim Myungsoo, however, didn’t give Sunggyu the know-hows of what he should do during the very, very rare times that the other showed his ‘good’ sides. Myungsoo was actually in a good mood this morning, and as far as Sunggyu knew, there wasn’t any particular good news. He didn’t want to do or say anything that would change the atmosphere in the running van, but he also didn’t want to not do or not say something in order to not upset him.
“H-Had a good night’s sleep?” the manager asked, tapping at the driving wheel nervously.
Myungsoo shook his head, his expression nonchalant and still very undisturbed. “Not noticeably, but it wasn’t a bad night either. I had good thoughts before my sleep, actually!”
Sunggyu pursed his lips. “I—I see…” He wanted to ask what the good event was about, but the reward of knowing was far too little compared to the risk he had to take.
Thankfully, the actor spoke on his own. “Hyung, after today, you don’t have to worry about dropping me off and picking me up for counseling and all. I don’t think I’ll need it after today. I’m all good, perfect actually. I’m sure our lovely doctor Lee Jieun would agree with me.”
This was when Sunggyu knew paradise was too good to be true. According to the report the CEO had received a couple of days earlier, things weren’t as hopeful as Myungsoo had just made them sound; he didn’t know what made Myungsoo so confident, but what he did know was that hell would be waiting to board the van two hours later and that he might not make it out alive.
<:>
Lee Jieun thought she had braced herself enough for the events that would occur once the walking typhoon of an actor came walking into her office for the second meeting, but when she took a look at the documents he laid on her desk, she realized that she’d thought wrong. She felt as if somebody punched her straight in the chest, robbing her of the free air that she had every right to inhale upon being born on earth. “Six…” she finally opened , her voice almost hoarse, “…teen thousand dollars…?”
The arrogant actor nodded. “Yep.”
“But that doesn’t even make sense,” Jieun shot at him, her tone elevating in impatience. “Why are we even counting in dollars? This is Korea, and converting sixteen thousand dollars into wons would only make the amount…larger…”
“The car was part of a limited edition series, and the dealership said that the parts needed to repair it aren’t available in Korea right now. They need to have the parts shipped from the USA, and that’s the final amount after adding the fees, taxes, charges and whatnot.” He smiled, his expression almost angelic. “At least I wasn’t injured, right? That would’ve been…awful.”
Jieun rubbed her face. She wished she had an answer for this problem, but she honestly didn’t. She was a doctor, yes, but she was a psychiatrist, and that wasn’t exactly the most well-paying branch of her industry, nor did she predict this from happening years ago and had the ridiculous amount of money saved in a bank somewhere. “I…” She exhaled a deep breath, internally telling herself to keep her calm. “I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Kim. I don’t have the ability to present you with this amount immediately. But, I did say I’ll take responsibility for my faults, and I will. I’d just like to ask for some…time. I can reimburse you in parts or something, if you’ll allow me.”
Crossing his legs, Myungsoo shook his head, looking at her sympathetically. “The dealership needs the payment in full in order to have the vehicle repaired. The process involves international shipping, so I believe that’s the only way...” He let his voice trail off for a few moments to let his words sink in; he also wanted to see her expression change from desperation, but that was just a passing thought. “…technically, I mean.”
She blinked, tempted by the treat called hope he was taunting her with. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Kim Myungsoo stood from his seat, slowly approaching Jieun from across her desk; using both his arms on top of the wooden surface for support, he leaned in, his face only a several inches from Jieun’s startled one. He smiled. “Why don’t we make a deal? Something you and I will both like?”
a/n: i was actually working on an update for 'petals of blood' because of the historical feels that moon lovers was giving me... is anyone with me in the whole drama scene here. i'm honestly not very approving as a fan for iu's dramas because they have a tendency to flop and because it's a shortcut for iu getting hate everywhere, but UGH. the feels are way too much for it and. i personally think iu's acting is excellent for someone her age and her experience, especially compared to some of her peers, but apparently many of the viewers don't think alike... i'm avoiding park bogum and kim yoojung's drama crazily out of spite HAHA. anyway, despite the historical feels i thought i needed to work on something light for once to move on from a short block, so here we are! i kind of feel like this fic is kind of... cliche... but i've always wanted to do something extra super cliche. it gives me reason to write overly cringey and cute scenes i'd otherwise never be able to write in any of my other morbid stuff LOL. i keep updating once or twice a year, and that really needs change, but. where is the motivation anyway... i keep repeating this everywhere but our tag is dead!!!!!! keep iu alive!!!!!!!! or not. hehe. hopefully the updates will keep on coming! but no guarantees because i'm a liar....... :(
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