Now, right this instant, I know for certain that my love is coming towards me. He is coming around the street corner.

At the next window, he will call out to me.

-

He clasps his hands in front of him in contrition, as she drags her wheel-less suitcase behind her in the direction of the KBS waiting room. When he next sneaks a glance at her face, her lips are downturned.

“Let me help you with-” he begins, tentatively.

“A win is a win,” she says determinedly. “You won. Again. So I’ll carry my own bags. Again.”

“Sorry,” he says, slightly guilty, “it’s a reflex.”

She nods. “It’s okay. A win is-” she begins, before clearing , clearly amid the realization that she’s already said it. Then lapses into silence.

He opens all the doors she walks through. That much he should, he knows.

-

“Operation Cindy?” he repeats blankly.

She shoots him a look of disappointment which lets him know he’s got it wrong again, “Operation You And Employment Save Cindy Officially. Operation UNESCO for short.”

“Oh,” he says inadequately, at a loss for words.

“Have you not heard of the UNESCO, PD-nim?” she asks, kindly, “it’s an agency of the United Nations; it deals with their cultural stuff. I am a cultural artifact of this nation, so I’m keeping up with the references. It’s smart and topical, and it makes me look smart and topical and well-informed. But it also makes me look like I need saving, and people like that. It’s okay, if you haven’t heard of it, google it when you get back home.”

He thinks, for a brief moment, of his third-year college internship with UNESCO, endless hours spent helping with the drafting of the charter of the National Committee on Education for Sustainable Development. It seems like a lifetime ago.

“UNESCO sounds catchy,” she ends, “catchy is good.”

He considers that for a moment. “'You’ begins with a ‘y’, and ‘and’ begins with an ‘a’, which would be YAESCO for short. Cindy-ssi, I’m not sure how-”

She reaches up and pokes him in the middle of his chest, “1960 called, they want their grammar police back. Have you also not heard of the internet? Statistics show that 70% of my fans fall in the age-range of 12 to 27, which is squarely the Y2K generation. And with the influx of messaging platforms, it’s reasonable to assume that everyone who loves me is familiar with and uses slang, keep up.”

She’s thorough. This he’s learned about her. He can feel a smile threaten to break out, so he hastily converts it into a cough.

“I don’t,” he admits, before he’s completely thought it out, “use slang.”

“Yeah, well,” she says, busying herself with the flyers and turning away, “you don’t love me either, PD-nim, so you’re not the target demographic.”

-

The full weight of Operation UNESCO only hits him when the entire internet picks it up and the Cindy-alert on his work laptop pings every three seconds and twenty centiseconds. He takes off his watch and times it thrice, just to be sure. His new watch is very accurate.

“Omo,” Ye Jin sunbaenim says, reading over his shoulder, “the kid has gone crazy. I always knew this would happen. The moment she jumped into your car out of nowhere and wanted to be a stowaway, I knew she was borderline, and it was only a matter of time. My instincts are very sharp.”

He clicks on the latest link out of habit. After all, he has to keep tabs on Cindy. She is an important member of his cast. This is only due diligence.

FORMER TOP-STAR CINDY TAKES UP PART-TIME JOB AS WAITRESS, the Dispatch headline screams.

He drops his new watch.

-

The café looks like a movie set, when he finally locates it, mobbed by cameras and…more cameras. The paparazzi milling around, and everyone in the nation who owns a camera-phone.

He makes his way in, pushing through the crowd. It's a whole minute before he finally sees her. She’s vigorously scrubbing at a spot on one of the tables. Wearing a uniform. With an apron. With what looks like a name badge.

He gets stopped on his way to her by a man who looks like he might be the manager of the establishment, or might be someone teetering on the borderline himself.

“I thought it would be great for business,” the harassed man complains. “I’m man enough to admit that when she came here looking for a part-time job, my eyes may have lit up with won signs, like they do in those cartoons that my three-year-old keeps watching. Goddamn cartoons, never let a man watch any sort of sport in peace. Those damn things are always on. Is it too much to ask for some beer and to get an hour alone to watch a few good men kicking some balls? Anyway, the point is, ain’t nothing wrong with a man wanting to make some good, honest money. But she keeps telling the customers off for ordering extra cream because it's unhealthy, and she’s arranged the entire coffee cabinet by some system that needs a special numerical code for deciphering it and she’s been scrubbing that goddamn table since over an hour. You need to take her back, sir, what sort of-“

“Do you know me?” he interrupts, hastily, before the monologue can reach Shakespearean proportions, which it seems well on its way to achieving. The familiarity with which the man seems to imply that Cindy-ssi is his to take care of, is... disconcerting, to make an understatement.

The other man glares at him suspiciously, like he suspects he’s being conned, or is on candid camera at the very least. “Of course I know you, you’re her boyfriend.”

That makes him pause. “Pardon me?”

“Aren’t you that guy who tied her shoe-laces all nice and held her when she almost fell on that show? I saw a repeat of that episode. It was obvious you were-”

“Oh,” he interrupts again, he’d almost forgotten about that. For some reason, it’s important to explain, “I’m not her boyfriend.”

The manager looks unconvinced.

“I’m not,” he insists.

The other man look at her side of the café. Seung Chan follows his gaze. She’s still bent over the table, completely focused. It makes something- something strangely like affection, course through his veins. An understanding of sorts. Like he's maybe beginning to understand her a little. “I don’t care who you are as long as you get her out of here.”

“Cindy-ssi,” he calls, as he reaches her.

She looks markedly unsurprised to see him, pushing her hair away from her face with the back of one hand. There’s a fine sheen of sweat layering her skin.

He offers his handkerchief.

“Did you know coffee stains wood?” is her cold open, as she wipes her face. He's about to answer with the fact that coffee is sometimes usedspecifically to stain wood, which would suggest that it... does, in fact, stain wood, but one look at her tells him that it was probably rhetorical and it would be wise to stay quiet. He's smart. His mother always said he was smart. “It’s outrageous, to open a café and keep no cleaning agent that removes coffee stains. This is maladministration. In fact, I’m sure it’s illegal, it’s destruction of public property-”

“-this is private property,” he supplies, helpfully.

“-destruction of public property,” she repeats, glaring at him. “There must be some sort of law against it. Like a tort of public nuisance or something. I’m pretty down with the law these days; I read a lot of it during those last few months with omm- Byun daepyo. One of my anti-fans works at the Judicial Research and Training Institute, he recommended a lot of books. It wouldn't be entirely inaccurate to say that I'm sort of an expert at this.”

He can’t help it. He laughs.

“Are you laughing at me right now?” she questions, threateningly. Raising herself to her full height. Of five feet three inches.

He schools his face into blankness, looking down at her. “Never. How could I possibly ever laugh at you," he checks the badge, "Lee Min Ho-ssi. You're the sort of person who would make an anti-fan want to give you legal advice.”

"They couldn't make a name-tag for me that fast," she defends, "so I had to use one left by their ex-employee."

"A rose by any other name-" he quotes grandly.

She looks unconvinced by his flattery- he’s clearly doing a bad job of that today- but apparently decides to let it go. “Anyway, I’m going to look up the legal part when I get back home. It’s a terrible state of affairs. When you think of the number of cafés in Korea alone…”

“Speaking of home,” he begins, placating, “don’t you think this is enough exposure for one day? You don’t want people to get tired of Operation UNESCO in the middle of its first real public appearance.”

She appears to consider that.

“You’re right,” she admits, reluctantly, “over-exposure is one of the most surefire ways to get more antis, because people who were earlier indifferent start hating you when you're everywhere and taking away airtime from their precious favorites.”

He nods his head, “exactly. That…exactly. So, let’s go. Only for now.”

She smiles for the cameras once, then keeps the cloth down.

The manager has her day’s pay in the envelope, before they’ve even reached the counter. “Severance pay,” he clarifies, hastily.

She picks it up between two fingers. “This isn’t over, ahjusshi,” she says, quelling, “not till Daehan Minguk is still a country under the rule of law.”

The café manager looks suitably quelled. Then, as a peace-offering, “your boyfriend seems to take really good care of you.”

“I already tol-” he begins, before she interrupts him with a casual, “he’s not my boyfriend.”

He swallows back his words.

(If he thinks about it, she didn’t really have to be that quick with the response. He was going to clarify anyway. Given a few more seconds, he would have. He’d already explained it twice. It wasn’t like he hadn’t already made it clear. If she’d waited a few seconds to respond, it wouldn’t have made any difference. He would have said it himself in that time.

Not that he does. Think about it.)

-

Outside, he offers his hand to help her pass through the throngs. He doesn’t know if he can protect her here, but he has to try. She’s a member of his cast, and he's learning to be a good variety producer.

She looks down. “Mine’s dirty,” she says, voice small, hair still plastered over her forehead, clutching his handkerchief tightly in one hand. She looks younger, somehow. Like a twenty-three year old girl, instead of top-star Cindy. Like Cindy outside the range of the main camera. It messes with his head a little.

“It’s okay,” he replies. Takes it in his.

He can’t tell if it’s dirty, but it’s warm.

-

He gets the text from Joon Mo sunbae at night, when he’s just about to reach home from office.

You need to take care of this Cindy business.

It strikes him then, that he… already kind of took care of the Cindy business. Without appropriate directions in the matter. And that he kind of… forgot that it wasn’t actually his business to take care of it. Her.

But, he reasons, it was a fair presumption to make, that he would be asked to settle it. Since he’s mostly assigned to her. Or she’s assigned to him. He’s hazy on the terminology in the variety world. But they’re assigned to each other.

And, after all, he is being asked to settle it. So by already having done something, he’s just being a model employee. He’s being a real PD. He’s growing in his profession.

I will, sunbaenim, he replies. Which is not a lie exactly, just an inadvertent mistake of tense, which is of no real consequence.

His phone sounds almost immediately. And wtf is Operation UNESCO???

He doesn’t actually know that, he realizes.

Operation You And Employment Save Cindy Officially, he texts back. It sounds even more bizarre in writing.

-_________-  is the eloquent reply. But then again, there really is no appropriate response to that, he’d imagine.

He hesitates, before clicking on her name. But it’s okay. He’s just getting to know his cast, as Joon Mo sunbae said he should. He’s doing his job. This is important.

Cindy-ssi, he texts, what exactly is Operation UNESCO?

It’s a feint, her reply reads. It’s like I’ve lived all my life as a star, but I’m now one of the people and I don’t make enough money to sustain myself, so I take up part-time jobs like ordinary 20-somethings my age. That’s the sell. You made me beggar Cindy, now I'm just graduating to Cindy of the Middle Class.

You don’t make enough money to sustain yourself? he asks.

He can read her exasperation across mediums, clear in every syllable. It makes him grin. He knows this now; he was reading her wrong before. Reading the Cliff Notes version, instead of the actual novel. Somehow, it feels like he missed out.

Aniyeo, PD-nim, it’s an image building exercise. It’s like saying ‘your support and your kind of work is saving me when my kind of work almost destroyed me’. Like I need to be saved. People like being saviors. It’s in the human psyche. Did you know that doing a favor for someone makes you more inclined to like them? Crazy right? I read it in a psychology book once, when I was preparing for the psychological warfare aspect of the contract negotiation with Byun daepyo.”

The Ben Franklin effect, he thinks. He remembers having read about it long ago. She always somehow makes him think of things he thought he’d forgotten.

Psychological warfare, he thinks next. Puts his hand in his mouth to not laugh out loud and wake hyung sleeping next to him.

You’re very thorough, Cindy-ssi, he texts. And, because it’s- worrying- her choice of words. Purely a business worry: do you need to be saved?

She doesn’t reply for three minutes, twenty six seconds and thirteen centiseconds. His new watch, even with the slight crack at the edge of the glass now, is still very accurate.

Of course not, is the answer, when it finally comes. It’s a business strategy. Do I look like someone who needs someone else to save me?

For a brief moment, he thinks of her hand in his. Thinks of the slight shaking of her voice that she’d tried to hide when she’d told him she’d have no one to hold onto when she got back to Seoul. That she only wanted to hold his hand once. Just once. She’d held once, let go and smiled beatifically for the cameras in the morning.

He looks down at his hands.

No, he replies, truthfully, you don’t.

-

She really doesn’t.

-

His workstation is flooded with mail and boxes the next morning.

“Don’t open it,” Min Joo sunbae advises, “it’s probably hate mail and rotten tomatoes.

“Sorry?” he inquires.

Hyoung Geun sunbae comes behind him and slaps him on the back, “looks like our maknae PD just started the Notting Hill loveline without any scripting. You’re the man, Seung Chan-ah.”

He’s about to go for another, more emphatic, more questioning sorry? when Joon Mo sunbae calls him from across the room.

“You really are amazing, Baek Seung Chan,” he sighs. “By ‘take care of it’, I didn’t mean ‘declare yourself her boyfriend in the national media’. Can you do anything right?”

“I have no idea what anyone here is talking about,” he says, a little desperate by now.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Joon Mo sunbae replies mysteriously.

Which he does, as soon as he switches on his computer and FORMER TOP-STAR CINDY AND HER TOP-SECRET BOYFRIEND is the headline of the first alert that greets him. Out of a hundred and seventeen. Complete with a picture of her hand clasped in his in front of the café. Apparently, according to the article, she’s looking at him adoringly, and he’s protecting her, like a man, and they've been dating for two years, and he's the reason she agreed to do 1N2D and the reason she was kept on during her scandal with CEO Byun, and she's the reason he became a PD in the first place. Because he wanted to be close to her.

He drops his head down on his desk.

“Think of it like this,” Hyoung Geun sunbae offers soothingly, “if there was no photograph, everyone would assume they were talking about TOP from Big Bang. So this way, at least you get your fifteen minutes of fame.”

Cindy-ssi doesn’t seem like the type to go for someone like Big Bang’s TOP, he almost says, but stops himself in time. That is not the point here.

“Throw out the boxes,” Joon Mo sunbae calls, “nobody wants the KBS headquarters to smell of rotten tomatoes. It would offend the fish market theme the office has going on.”

-

Sorry, is the text he gets in the evening, a week later, when he’s still in office, walking through the corridor assigned to the Star Wars team. It’s worse than theirs, at least for now, which is how it should be, in his considered opinion.

It's been radio silence for a week and it's been...too quiet. He assumes she's been lying low because of the scandal. But it's not like- it's not his phone is about to be hacked by crazy samchon fans, so he's pretty sure they can...talk.

Why should you be sorry? he replies He was the one who sought her out and got them into a mess, after all. Operation UNESCO had nothing to do with him, till he made it his business.

Just, she replies.

He’s about reply with a just what? even though he should just let it go, when he runs into her. Literally.

She lets out a soft sound as he steps on her foot, hard, and he immediately steps back.

“Cindy-ssi,” he says, startled.

“PD-nim,” she exclaims.

He watches her face turn white with pain.

“Sorry,” he says, immediately. He’s about to kneel down to get a closer look at her foot, but before he knows it, she has him by the wrist and is dragging him into the Star Wars room.

It’s dark inside. He doesn’t even know where the light switch is, although he can make an educated guess. But, as he reaches out, she pulls his hand back by the sleeve.

“Leave the lights off.”

He stills. She’s pressed against him, his back to the wall, and he hasn’t ever quite realized before how…small she is. She always seems so much bigger in his head. Loud and confusing and tough and alive and far too honest, much too sincere. Just taking up a lot of space somehow. If he said it out loud, she would hit him, he's sure. Remind him of their photograph and how her face was much too big because he took a step back. She does that. Even though she's always pretty. Like now.

“We can’t let anyone see us together,” she says, utterly failing at stage-whispering. “It’ll never die down otherwise.”

“I’m fairly sure,” he says, “there is no paparazzi in the KBS office at 10:00 P.M., Cindy-ssi. We can take our chances.”

“PD-nim,” she begins, seriously. He can’t make out her expression, but her tone suggests she thinks his stupidity just reached a level it would be difficult for gravity to reasonably withstand, “it is not the paparazzi we must fear, but the insiders. Most entertainment industry leaks are insider business.”

He tries to disguise his amusement. “Is that so?” he asks, solemnly.

She nods her head. He can feel the movement somewhere at the center of his chest. It’s an odd feeling. It makes it hard for him to breathe, for some reason.

She appears to register it then, the closeness. Moves back so quickly, she almost hits the table behind her. He reaches out to stop her trajectory. Lets her go once she’s stable on her feet.

He clears his throat, “why were you here, Cindy-ssi?”

Her voice is quieter now, practically a whisper, “for Music Bank.”

“Oh,” he says. Waits for the familiar hurt to flood back, as it does every time he looks at Ye Jin sunbaenim. But it’s a dull ache now, over time. He forgets to even remember some days.

She hesitates for a moment. “I’ll be leaving, then,” she states, moving towards the door, hand already on the handle.

A crash sounds from the corridor. And- maybe it's the dramatic atmosphere of secrecy, or maybe a moment of madness, but before he knows it, he has her pressed against the door, under him this time, on pure protective instinct. He looks out through the slight crack. Da Jung chaka is watching, blank-faced, as Ye Jin sunbaenim bends to pick something she's dropped.

Cindy-ssi cranes her neck to the side, trying to look outside. "What is happening?"

He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. "Nothing. Sorry, I just- I thought it might be...dangerous," he ends, lamely. Obviously it would be someone from the KBS office- this isn't a makjang drama- what was he even-

She peers through the crack, "Tak PD-nim. She must be done with Music Bank."

He moves to open the door, but she covers his hand, "Don't."

There's a pause.

"Tak PD-nim," she says, subdued, "might get the wrong idea. If we...come out from from this room together. Since it's so dark and everything. And since she's the person you like, there's no point in creating any... unnecessary misunderstandings between you and her." 

He looks down, but she's determinedly not looking at him. I can't bless it, but I don't want to disturb it either. It hits him again, then; Cindy-ssi is a go