Let Me Count The Ways

6: If Today Is The Only Day We Are Allowed To Be Scandalous (PART 1)

They count all their kisses and the one time that it mattered.

Lee Minho was a creature of habit. Every day, he would sleep at exactly 10 in the evening and wake up at 6 in the morning whether it was a full or half day's schedule. But during the rare few days between projects and media engagements, he could sleep for almost the entire day. While filming for a project, this would often have to shift to when he could actually get some sleep, whether it was 10pm or 3am. But he would stretch that out as much as he can without disrupting everyone's schedule.

Nighttime was to him, a time for eking out all the sleep he could get for the whole day. Needless to say, Lee Minho was not a nocturnal creature.

Kim Goeun was not a creature of habit. In the same way that she builds her playlists on Spotify by going for Kim Soo-Cheol's modernized traditional music to rock bands like Sinawe and then swerving to soundtracks of Hollywood movies like "A Star Is Born," she would run her days pretty much the same way. Schedules were followed, of course. But if there were none, she could while the day away with music, movies, a random trip to the nearest noraebang by herself or with her friends— whatever she felt like at the moment. While filming for a project, she would be subjected to a set routine. It would throw off her system that was much used to spontaneity that it often led to creative bursts of energy as well as finding sleep, at odd hours.

Nighttime was to her, a time to gamble between restlessness and sleep. Needless to say, Kim Goeun might very well be a nocturnal creature.

This was why they worked so well together. When one wanes in energy, the other one waxes and shines enough light to sustain both of them. And then, there were the prime hours between 7-10 in the evening and 12 midnight to 3 in the morning when their opposite energies would align for a few short hours.

On a cool winter night around early December, they found themselves in one of those prime hours at the haven for historical drama sets at Yongin Daejanggeum Park, hashing out strategies for Lee Gon and Jeong Taeeul's first kiss.

He drops his head onto her shoulder and he feels like he's falling. Just sideways.

"My body should be higher than this," she says as she moves closer to him and tries sitting up straighter. "Isn't it uncomfortable for you?"

He thinks it's ridiculous that she thinks he would ever be uncomfortable any time he had a chance to touch her— even if it was just his head on her shoulder. He would bend his neck at any angle if it meant he could be closer to her.

"It feels like I'm lowering my head endlessly," he teases her as he repeatedly bops his head sideways onto her shoulder, which seemed perpetually out of reach.

"Pfft!"

She flips her hair out of the way and tries once more to sit up while elongating her spine. She glances at her shoulder, then at him, with narrowed eyes.

"I'm 5 feet and 6 inches tall, you know. I am not small."

He tries to swallow a guffaw, and fails. "I didn't say anything!"

She rolls her eyes at him and then nudges him with her shoulder. "Come on, be serious. We have to fix this."

"Do you want to sit on a pillow?"

She makes a face at him and he tries hard not to smile at her by folding his lips inward. He gives teasing her a break and starts looking for a way to make their scene look less awkward.

He looks at the space between their misaligned shoulders, arms, thighs, and knees and wonders how their significant height difference never mattered when they were standing. Their bodies always fit, somehow. But now that they were sitting down, their angles, lines, and corners almost seem skewed. And he didn't like it.