“Ahhh....oppa! You’re impossible!”

“Wae? What’s impossible for me wanting to save my girlfriend from those erted men? We never know that one of them could be the predator FBI had in their most wanted list!”

“Seriously, oppa! You are part of the industry and you know how things work in our world. Even you and the boys had to take off your cool rocker images and appeared to be a boyband in music shows. Its the concept we needed to follow whether we like it or not!”

“Tsk..!”

“Look, you know I love you and I will forever thank you for being such as sweet and loving and protective boyfriend that you are all this time. From now on, if we need to wear y stuffs for our show I will cover my body until the last minute we need to perform. How about that?”

“Really? You promise!”

“I promise, oppa!”

“You’ll do it for me?”

“Yes! I’ll do it just for you!”

“Why?”

“Because I love you silly!”

“I love you too!”

“Really? How much you love me?”

“More than you could imagine!”

“I’m number two after your mother right?”

“Ummm...!”

“Good...”!

“Yes!”

“Oppa..?”

“Yes, baby?”

“If you love me that much....you surely won’t mind in promising me to always stay healthy for me right?”

“Of course!”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to see you cry again like you did when I suffered my cord nodules and rushed to ER!”

“Promise?”

“I promise baby!”

“Oppa...?”

“Umm...?”

“Please stay healthy for me and drink this herbal medicine!”

“Wha..? But babe...?”

“Please, oppa! You promised!”

“Tsk....!”

“Please.....!”

“Dammit....give it to me!”

“Good, oppa!”

“You missy, need to spend the rest of your life listening to this oppa after making me drink that weird tasting medicine! It tasted like a combination cinnamon, lemongrass, jungshin’s hair, and milk all together!”

“Aishh, oppa! you’re disguisting!”

“But you love me!”

“I do!”

“I love you too!”

“I know!”

“I’m hungry!”

“Then let me feed you this heaven-liked taste dukkbokki!”

“Thank you!”

“You are most welcome, oppa!”

========

It was a hard life to work and served other people’s their meal when you struggling just to opened your eyes and leave your children at home just with their grandparents, after the grandparents themselves busy served the same thing in normal working hours. I got to see my girls just a few a hours before they all went to school and another few hours when they coming back home after school before I needed to go with my husband to our food stall to replace his parents.

I was just an ordinary wife of an ordinary man ran an ordinary food stall in one little corner of the metropolitan Seoul. My husband and I responsible in running the place from 9 pm to 5 am before my in laws took over and ran the day shift. There’s nothing special happened during the days and no special customers either.

But.....but......different things happened during the night. If the world only knew, especially those who called themselves fans of certain idols. Nobody would complaint to get a night shift. If they got the idea what they would found or see in the funniest hours of the day. Your idols with their girlfriends or boyfriends and their secret little romance.

It was not the first, a young idol couple came down to my humble little stall. They were just one between many tried to be the ordinary between the stillness of the night. Trying to embraced every opportunity they’ve got to love and belove. To let their most honest feeling shown towards each other they hardly showed in the normal hours of the day, when the whole world was wide awake.

When I first recognized that particular couple showed up in my stall, my heart jumped with so much happiness, knowing they were romantically tangled outside the contex of the popular TV show. I was a fan of one of the couple casted on the show too. And like the other fans, I was just a natural delusional who believed that the couple I followed was real. In my mind that time, if the most boring one could be that lovely and seemed to be very attached in real life, the one with so much skinship initiation had the biggest opportunity to be real too. I wanted to tell my other Khuntorian friends about my new discovery but...my husband stopped me. He said, my friends could breaks the scandal and those young hearts would break too and destroyed.

“Honey, if the scandal needs to break so be it! But let God to be the one to decides when and how! It’s his prerogative. Not ours!!  Didn’t we agree since the very first couple came down to this place that we will help them securing their privacy? We’ve been in their shoes once when your parents and siblings disapproved our relationship  right? It was hard already dating secretly at night for us and for them with those extra props to disguise themselves to be seen!”

He was right. My husband was right. Our stall was not the place for those idols, especially the boyfriends, to impressed their girlfriends. They came to place like our stall with one strong and solid reason, they could never brought their girlfriends out and eat in those fancy and expensive restaurants available in this city without being recognized by the public. It killed  them already for the fact they could not bring the girls out to warm beautiful places where they could dressed up in their most fashionable ways instead of bundling themselves in those silly disguises to covered themselves from being seen and discovered by the unwanted parties.

So I promised to help those young hearts to enjoyed their lives a bit and tasted the privillage for being young as much as they can. If my humble and ordinary place was on the list of their little escape to be a normal couple in love they deserve to be, so be it! I couldn’t be happier or prouder to provide that for them.

It brought smile to my face and got me on the best mood when I saw those young couples sweetly interacted. Especially to that particular couple from the popular show, they always showed up with so many different couple items. From couple hoodies, couple glasses, couple scarfs, couple shirts, couple bracelets, couple phones, couples shoes......they were so fashionable in between their silly disguises. One day I heard them talk about these Nike Air couple shoes the boyfriend especially ordered for them and asked the girlfriend to wear it on one of her dance practise videos.

“I’ll wear it on our Mr. Taxy dance practice, oppa! I’ll make my eonni-deul to push the agency to publish that one video on our youtube!”

“If you could do that, I promise to wear the very first shirt you gifted me from time to time until our fifth anniversary!”

“The blue checkered one?”

“Umm....!”

“Really? Whoa thank you! I love seing you on that. You looked adorably handsome wearing it with or without BB cream!”

“Yah!! What’s with the BB cream?”

“Aniyo, oppa!! What I mean is you look fantastic just with the will to show me how much you love me!”

“Babe....you are chessy lately!”

“I learned that from the best!”

I was not too surprised when I saw the girlfriend wearing the brand new seemed-to-be-the-shoes they talked about the other day in my stall and him wearing that blue checkered for so many times in public after that, sometimes twice in a week and in one of his concert overseas too. Considered him to be rich and fanshionable, he wouldn’t be so attachedto one particular checkered shirt from one store in Myeongdong without a valid reason behind it right?

I could only laughed when so many people speculating about one of the brothers of the boyfriend dated the girlfriend’s older sister. The second youngest in the group to be exact. It was never true although it was not entirely the fans fault by thinking that way.The dimple’s real girlfriend’s name sounds very similar to the name of the second youngest’s name of the group. And of course the band leader didn’t help too by saying his little brother’s girlfriend as his ideal type in various TV shows.

God, I guess I drove everyone crazy by now with my stories. But I couldn’t help it. I could not mentioned names for the sake of their privacies I promise to guard. And the second youngest, she was dating another guy. A singer, an actor, a tv host. Sometimes all three couples were here too. The band leader and his girlfriend, a certain maknae of the most famous girls group known as his onscreen wife in his early years of his career. The singer, actor, tv host and his girlfriend, the big sister of the band’s leader’s girlfriend. And the band’s leader younger brother and his girlfriend, the most charismatic athlete which the name sounds very similar with the actor’s girlfriend.

Anyway, I have to stop talking and make people a lot more confusedif I share more story about the tallest member of the band and his secret relationship with the shortest member yet the cutest came from the same agency with the leader’s girlfriend and the smiling eyes brother with the shortest girl group mate.

I have to stop. For real this time. If you want to see them all just came to my little humble stall in the corner of metropolitan Seoul when the world was all sleeping. You will get to see that in my place, in that funniest hour of the day, you’ll learn and see the beautiful sight your eyes could hold.

Night shift was difficult. But the uniqueness of the people you met in that unusual hours were helping you dealing with it. Night shift is hard but it could be nice and meaningful too. Especially in giving you the knowledge people working on the day shift rarely get.

Author’s Note:

Hello all. It feels good to be able to write again. Please enjoy the story and share with me your thoughts about it. As usual I haven't edit it yet so excuse me for every mistyped words and grammatical errors you'll find while reading the story. Thank you.