There were countless people.
A loud noise filled the air.
Her vision blurred, and her ears buzzed as if subrged underwater.
“You’re a little late.”
That voice rang out, startlingly clear.
“…Even though you’re late.”
When he grabbed her slender arm and called out to her—
The radiant smile peeking out from beneath the crimson fabric was seared into his mory.
“I’m back.”
Crimson-tinted eyes.
A mischievous smile curling at her lips.
In that mont, he…
*****
Bzzzt—bzzzzzt!!
“…”
The vibration of a phone pulled him out of sleep.
Checking the clock—it was 5 a.m.
If he didn’t start getting ready soon, it might throw off today’s schedule.
“Haah.”
Lifting his head, he glanced at the mirror.
A weary-looking man stared back.
A well-defined face marred by a sowhat scruffy appearance.
Who would ever believe this man was South Korea’s most handso actor?
“Of all the dreams to have…”
Ju Seoyeon, back when her innocent beauty was still intact.
But nowadays, the way she strutted around made her look more like a wild beast than a refined princess.
Where had the ethereal princess who once captivated the world disappeared to?
‘If she were really that strong, she should’ve just beaten Jo Yeongdaegun to a pulp.’
Lately, Park Jungwoo had been genuinely considering this idea.
Why wait ten whole years?
She should’ve co back sooner and smashed the heads of those rebellious bastards.
Bzzzt—bzzzzzt!!!
“Ugh, what now?”
With a slice of toast in his mouth, Park Jungwoo scowled at his phone vibrating yet again.
He was sure he’d already turned off the alarm earlier.
But as he checked the screen—
Awake?
You up?
Say sothing.
Answer .
I know you’re awake.
Get up.
Hey, hey.
A string of KakaoTalk ssages flooded in.
Park Jungwoo narrowed his eyes.
There was only one person who would spam him like this.
What’s your deal this early in the morning?
Wait, it’s not even morning. It’s still dawn. Look at the ti.
Did this girl never sleep?
After typing those replies, he hesitated before adding one more.
And I’m busy today, so no gas.
The person flooding him with ssages—Ju Seoyeon.
Whenever she ssaged him, it was usually about one thing.
Asking to play Cold Wind together.
Or to try out so new release.
Basically, hobby-related stuff.
Even if he told her to play with her other friends—
“They’re either luckier or better than . It’s annoying.”
This annoying woman absolutely had to be the star when it ca to gas.
Most insults rolled off her back, but the words “You suck at gas” hit her where it hurt.
That’s why she chose casual online RPGs with no competition.
When Jungwoo heard she’d started playing with Jo Seohui and Lee Jiyeon, he thought he was finally free.
But then—
“You quit?”
“Yeah.”
“Why? It’s not competitive.”
When he asked offhandedly, Seoyeon looked genuinely upset.
“I’m the only one who fails upgrades.”
“…”
“Jo Seohui succeeds every single ti. How can soone be that lucky?”
Jungwoo had never seen Seoyeon glare at Seohui with such intensity before.
Not even when Seohui was called a nepo baby.
He knew the truth.
Seoyeon had even spent real money trying to keep up.
Dropping cash and still failing, only to see a free-to-play player skyrocket ahead—it was soul-crushing.
Jungwoo, who had a similar track record in gas, sympathized completely.
‘Although, honestly, this is all her fault.’
Back in school, Jungwoo had barely touched gas.
Whenever friends asked him to play, he’d tell them to buzz off—he was too busy.
And back then, he actually was busy.
But sohow, he ended up sucked into gaming anyway.
Now, though, he genuinely enjoyed it.
Bzzzt—
“This is getting ridiculous…”
Seoyeon usually respected his work schedule.
If he said he was busy, she wouldn’t push any further.
It was as if she understood just how important his work was.
But today, the ssages just wouldn’t stop.
“What now?”
Grumbling, Jungwoo opened his phone.
Thud.
The toast in his hand fell to the floor.
I think I just got confessed to.
By—
A woman.
Those words left him completely speechless.
*****
First of all, Seoyeon had pulled an all-nighter.
I an, how could she not?
For the first ti in her life, she’d heard sothing like that.
It was the kind of line you’d only see in dramas or movies—never sothing you’d expect to happen to you in real life.
—I want to know what love feels like soday.
She’d always carried that curiosity.
And at so point, she figured she’d experience it herself.
But she never imagined it would co crashing down on her so suddenly.
“J-Ju-Ju-Ju Seoyeon! Y-you—you and h-her—what happened?!”
“You’re making dizzy.”
The mont Stella’s plane took off, Lee Jiyeon grabbed Seoyeon’s shoulders and shook her violently.
Her bloodshot eyes and trembling voice honestly scared Seoyeon a little.
Was Jiyeon’s eye turning red too?
So it wasn’t just her?
“Should I turn the plane around?”
Jo Seohui said it with complete seriousness, clutching her phone.
Wait, could you even land a plane that had already taken off?
Why were they acting so scary?
“Nothing happened.”
Seoyeon, despite being caught off guard at the ti, managed to stay relatively calm as she said that.
And she explained exactly what had happened with Stella.
She swore—there really wasn’t anything special between them.
But after hearing the whole story, Jiyeon and Seohui…
“…We knew Stella was interested in you, but…”
“This is… hmm. No way. So then?”
The two of them kept nodding and whispering to each other.
Of course, if Seoyeon really wanted to, she could eavesdrop on everything they were saying, but she decided to hold back this ti.
“Ju Seoyeon.”
“Yeah?”
“You really are… your dad’s daughter after all.”
“?”
By “dad,” Jiyeon was obviously referring to Ju Yeongbin, Seoyeon’s father.
But Seoyeon had no idea why his na was suddenly being brought up.
“Well, does it even matter? From what she said, it doesn’t sound like she’ll be coming back to Korea anyti soon.”
“Yeah. It’s not like we’re planning to work outside of Korea anyway.”
Seohui’s response echoed Jiyeon’s sentint.
Hollywood.
Honestly, it wasn’t the kind of place you could just decide to step into.
Even if you poured your entire life into it, most people would never set foot there.
So far, you could count on one hand the Korean actors who’d made it to Hollywood.
And out of those, barely any actually succeeded.
Big-na stars in Korea often ended up as naless extras in Western films.
That’s just how it was.
At least, for now.
‘Give it a few years, and that won’t be the case anymore.’
Once streaming platforms fully took off,
that’s when Child’s Ga dropped—and absolutely shattered global records.
It changed how the world viewed Korean dramas.
It skyrocketed recognition for Korean actors.
And it established Korean entertainnt as a global powerhouse.
‘After that, more and more Korean actors started breaking into Hollywood.’
So, thinking about it that way, Stella’s words didn’t seem so far-fetched.
Especially since Kyungsung Lady eventually earned high praise overseas too.
If she got lucky…
“It’s too bad for Stella, but I guess this is goodbye.”
“Right, Seoyeon?”
Their words snapped Seoyeon out of her thoughts.
“Really? I have a feeling we’ll et again.”
“…”
Even if Seoyeon didn’t go to Hollywood, there was no guarantee Stella wouldn’t co back to Korea.
Stella never said anything about not returning.
If anything, she hinted at waiting for her.
It honestly felt like Stella was already picturing their next eting—in Hollywood.
Seoyeon thought it was strange.
How could Stella say sothing like that when she had no idea what the future held?
Was it because she believed in Kyungsung Lady that much?
Or was it sothing else…
“Ju Seoyeon, you’re so full of yourself.”
“??”
And with that, Jiyeon and Seohui didn’t let her breathe for the rest of the trip back from the airport.
Or for the rest of the day, for that matter.
But by the next day, both Jiyeon and Seohui had flown back to Japan for filming, leaving Seoyeon alone in Korea.
Seoyeon had already finished most of her scenes,
and there wasn’t much left to shoot in Korea.
One more scene, and that was it.
Director Baek Min had adjusted the schedule for her sake, knowing how packed her titable was.
But as a result, Seoyeon suddenly found herself with a lot of free ti.
Her only commitnts in Korea were a couple of ads for Eclat Étoile and ADz.
So, with no one to hang out with and no friends to call,
Seoyeon ended up spending a lot of ti lost in thought.
Hmm.
And that’s when it hit her.
The thing she’d brushed off so casually.
Wait…
Didn’t I get confessed to?
*****
“So.”
Park Jungwoo t up with Seoyeon at a café for the first ti in a while.
This wasn’t sothing they could talk about over text.
“…You’re telling Stella Baldwin confessed to you?”
“Yeah.”
“What the hell…”
Jungwoo felt his mind reel.
What the hell was going on?
Was Arica really that open-minded?
At first, he was going to brush it off—tell her she must’ve misunderstood.
But then he thought back to Stella’s words.
The way she’d told Seoyeon to study up on it because it was a trend in Arica,
the way she’d joked that she wasn’t kidding—there was no way to misinterpret that.
“With lines like those, even soone completely out of touch with romance would figure it out…”
Honestly, Jungwoo had received his fair share of indirect confessions over the years, so he knew.
Stella was serious.
And not just a little serious—really serious.
‘Wait… Stella Baldwin? THE Stella Baldwin I know?’
anwhile, Ju Seoyeon talked about it like it was no big deal.
Like she was describing a slightly aggressive Chihuahua she ran into on the street.
But from an actor’s perspective, Jungwoo couldn’t just dismiss Stella like that.
She wasn’t so ordinary actress—she was the actress of the century.
The youngest recipient of the Best Actress Award at the Berlin International Film Festival—
a feat no one else had achieved.
Honestly, it was a miracle she’d even been walking around Korea like a regular person.
On top of that, Stella was mixed-race but had grown up with an almost fairy-like beauty,
skipping the awkward transformations most Westerners experienced.
It was part of why she occasionally faced odd treatnt overseas,
but it also made her wildly popular.
There was no way Jungwoo could see her as a Chihuahua.
‘Jo Seohui’s got guts, though.’
Jungwoo knew he could never talk back to Stella the way Seohui had.
‘Then again, Seohui’s a chaebol.’
No matter how famous Stella was, Seohui probably just saw her as another actress.
Of course, if he said that out loud, Seohui would definitely blow up at him, so he kept his mouth shut.
“…But one thing I’m curious about.”
“What is it?”
“Why are you telling this?”
“Because…”
Seoyeon’s expression turned serious as she responded.
“You seem like you have a lot of dating experience.”
“…”
“I’m not really thinking about dating right now, but I wanted to know how to handle this properly.”
That was just like Seoyeon—always so earnest.
Soone had confessed to her, so of course, she felt she had to give them a proper response.
She looked a little flustered, a little embarrassed—but still completely composed.
“Sorry.”
Jungwoo sighed.
“I’ve never dated anyone either.”
“You don’t have to keep up your image with .”
“No, seriously. I’ve never dated. Do you think I’ve had ti for that with my career?”
Wait, hadn’t he told her this before?
Jungwoo honestly couldn’t rember.
“Anyway, I can’t give you any advice.”
“You’re just dodging the question.”
“I’m not! I’m being serious!”
Jungwoo felt frustrated.
He really hadn’t dated anyone!
Sure, he’d had plenty of won show interest in him, but he was too busy to even think about it.
It sounded like a luxury problem, but what could he do?
Besides, seeing his fellow actors get dragged through scandal after scandal because of their dating lives…
He didn’t even want to take that risk.
Jungwoo was the son of Park Seonwoong, one of Korea’s greatest actors.
If he made a single mistake, it would be all over the news—with his father’s na right at the top.
So, he had no choice but to be careful.
“Anyway.”
Jungwoo quickly changed the subject.
“Rember that audition you ntioned before? There’s news about it.”
“What?”
“Director Jo Bangwoo’s film.”
“!!”
Seoyeon’s expression turned serious.
Seeing the fire in her eyes, Jungwoo felt relieved.
He’d successfully dodged the conversation before it turned to his love life.
“What’s the news?”
“It’s starting in a week.”
“Wait, a week?!”
Seoyeon was stunned.
Of course, she was.
Jo Bangwoo’s audition was originally scheduled for the end of the year.
Sure, it was getting close to the end of the year now,
but there was still a huge difference between almost and actually the end.
‘It’s been pushed forward by at least two months.’
That kind of drastic change was unheard of.
So far, there had been small shifts here and there,
but nothing this dramatic.
‘What the hell happened?’
Seoul Escape.
Jo Bangwoo’s final film.
The project had been surrounded by controversy from the start.
And now, it seed like the chaos was only beginning.
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