Chapter 4 - Shin Hye Lets Her Dreams Soar

Ki-Young wonders if Kyu Won will be coming to practice today.  He hasn’t seen her since he helped her find the necklace.  People are saying that she got sick from running around in the rain.

Maybe he should go and visit her.

That wouldn’t be weird, right?

As he climbs over the grassy knoll lining the art campus, he spots two figures sitting under a tree.  One looks like...

“Kyu Won!”  He raises his hand to get her attention.  Her head shoots up and she smiles at him, making him feel warm all over.  In a frenzy of flopsy movements, she places something glittering into a boy’s hand (It looks like the guitarist, Lee Shin, from The Stupid) and she gets up to join Ki-Young.

The boy, Lee Shin, stands up and says something that makes her pause.

Ki-Young senses that there is something more going on between them.  He feels the first pangs of jealousy when he realises that the necklace was Lee Shin’s.  He hobbles over towards them so that Lee Shin has to finish the conversation quickly.

Suddenly, someone bumps into him and tackles him to the ground.

“Aaaaah!”  Ki-Young winces as he looks up into the brown eyes of scruffy-haired Joon Hee.  They’re so close that their noses are touching.

He notices Joon Hee is missing his glasses, and gazes into a pair of beautiful almond eyes.

Ki-Young gulps.

“Hyung!” says Joon Hee.  “Are you okay?  You weren’t there...and then you were.”

A spark passes between them.

Joon Hee starts, and reels back as if shocked.

“Whooa!  Where did my glasses go?”  The drummer nervously scrambles off Ki-Young’s body and searches the ground for his lenses.

Ki-Young stares up at the sky and wondered what the heck had just happened.

Ki-Young is not the only person who is shaken.  Professor Jung Yoon Soo is watching Lee Shin from her office window, and wonders if he has completely gotten over her.  She doesn’t expect him to distance himself from her so quickly.  She’d thought his crush ran deeper for her than that.

The door opens behind her, and she jumps over to her desk.

Suk Hyun gives her his boyish smile.  “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“No,” she smiles and tosses her hair over one creamy shoulder.

The professor walks over to the window and looks out.  “Ah...Lee Shin.  He came to see me yesterday.  He asked me to take care of you.”  He chuckled.  “That kid.  He pretends he’s all grown up.”

She tries to look casual, even though she’s feeling unsettled.  “I saw him crying in the rain over his father.  It must have hit him hard.”

“I hope you comforted him,” says Suk Hyun, tilting his head to one side.

“No.”  She forces another smile onto her cherry lips.  “Kyu Won was there for him.”

Kyu Won got there first.

Why does that bother her so much?

Shin Hye rounded up her thoughts for the script, and Yong Hwa gaped.

Next to them, at the table under the rotunda, Director Pyo snored.  The copious amounts of delicious wine he’d been drinking had finally knocked him out.

The CN Blue star choked, and then burst out into a series of chuckles.

Annoyed, Shin Hye took another sip of her wine, and waited for Yong Hwa to stop laughing at her.

He tried very hard to stop, but every time he managed to straighten his face, he looked at her, or the director, and started chortling again.

“I like it,” he eventually said, hugging the laughing-stitch in his side.  “No.  I love it.”

Shin Hye couldn’t resist laughing at herself a little too.  “Yah!  I know you’re lying.  What’s wrong with my idea?”

Yong Hwa smirked into his wine glass.

Shin Hye blushed from the humiliation.

His deep brown eyes shone with mischief.  “I love it.  I want to send Min Hyuk a message right now and tell him the good news.  No, wait.  I want to see his face when I tell him.  I’ll have to wait til tomorrow to tell-“  He leaned forward and broke out into more waves of chuckles.

Shin Hye smothered another smile.  “It would be funny to tell Min Hyuk that his character was going to be biual, and in a love triangle.”

Yong Hwa bit back another laugh.  “Biual?  I thought you were just going to make him gay?”

“It’s important to keep raising the issues of uality in dramas.”  She tried to look serious.  “The world is too narrow-minded when it comes to love.”

Yong Hwa gave her a nudge.  “Plus, what girl can resist a bit of ?”

Shin Hye boldly ruffled his hair with one hand.  “Yah.  Yong Hwa.  You’re just happy that Ki-Young falls in love with someone else.”

“Why not?”  Yong Hwa gave her a smile, glad that she’d already let go of the moment in the dance hall.  “You’re my fan, not Hyun Jin’s.  Besides, you have to end up with Lee Shin sooner or later.  If I have to sacrifice CN Blue’s image to do it, then so be it.”

“Really?”  Shin Hye’s face fell.  “Would it be that bad for the band’s image?”

Yong Hwa let her down gently.  “Min Hyuk is still starting out in acting.  It wouldn’t be good to give him a biual role.  Besides, he wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

The two sniggered at the thought of Min Hyuk giving Hyun Jin ‘bedroom’ eyes.

“And,” Yong Hwa patted her hand.  “It’s just a little too mature for our younger viewers.  We’ll probably have complaints from teachers about promoting promiscuity.”

Shin Hye lay her head down on the cold plastic table.  “I guess I’ll have to wait until I’m an international star to change the world.”

He reached over and played with the curls in her hair, making her nerves tingle with awareness.  “If it’s any consolation, I think the director fell asleep from the wine, not your ideas.”

“He’s just tired.”  She yawned.  “Our poor director.  We’ll have to work on the script without him.”

“I don’t mind,” he said, running his hand along her brow and pretending to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

In the guise of sitting back up, she pulled away from him.  She didn’t want to hurt him.  “What did you have in mind for the script?  You said you wanted to keep mellow spirit of the show.  Tell me what you mean.”

To her surprise he tugged at her shirt sleeve, got up, and backed away from the table.  “I’ll show you.”

He gave her a playful smile as he walked backwards onto the field.

Aware that her resolve was slipping, Shin Hye drew in a deep breath and followed him.