Let Me Count The Ways

If Today is the Only Day We are Allowed to be Scandalous (Part III)

She tried to match it.

Why are you making me sleep just when I finally get to see you? I look awful, don't I?

Not at all. You look like a huge bandage right now. But you're a really pretty bandage.

If voices had hands when said those words, his would feel like the hands that had gathered her hair and held it in one hand while the other had tucked errant strands behind the delicate shell of her ear, one winter night. It was the kind of voice that steals through bamboo forests and envelops around her in the tightest of embraces and made her afraid of what she would see if she closed her eyes.

She wasn't afraid now.

But how did you find me, though?

I told you, I'm a decent person here.

I drank water at the Taekwondo center and lost consciousness. Now I know how important it is to have food tasted beforehand.

You can tell me about it later. You can tell me when you're all better.

On the last few syllables, his voice had quieted to something so tender and intimate that she wondered if that was how he sounded like when his head drops onto his pillow and he says good night.

Her voice tapered off and followed him into the quiet.

I thought it would've been our last moment together— that time in the bamboo forest.

Lots of things happened while we were apart. That's why I couldn't go back.

That's a relief. I thought that door had closed.

Don't worry. If that door closes, I'll open all the doors in the universe and I'll come to you.

It was like listening to him talk while her ear is pressed into his chest. There's the rumble, then the loud but muffled sound of something so close but still separated from her by skin and bones. She didn't mind that, though. Because if his voice sounded like that, it also meant that she could pretend that she was resting her head on the solid mass of his chest and simply fall asleep to the timbre of his voice beneath her ear.

And just like that, Lee Minho got to watch Kim Goeun fall asleep.

He figured he could buy her around 15 to 20 minutes of naptime if he could get their assistants to crowd around them as if they were watching them rehearse. The situation wasn't that far off, anyway. Jeong Taeeul was supposed to be fast asleep. Lee Gon was supposed to watch her sleep. So what if in the script, she was supposed to have woken up almost right away? He could always say they were improvising on the...timing. Yes, that was it.

So he did what he could to give her what she needed. And when twenty minutes later, she woke up less disoriented and a little bit more rested, he decided it was all worth it. After all, they didn't need that much practice to play a sleepy Jeong Taeeul and a Lee Gon who insisted that she sleep some more.

They got the scene perfect in two takes. So by the time they broke for late lunch, the only thing left for them to shoot together was the 12th episode's closely guarded secret.

It is their fourth kiss.

They show up to the set in softer versions of Lee Gon and Jeong Taeeul. Gone are the dark long coats of Lee Gone with stiff collars that kept his neck perfectly regal, and cold. In its place is a pajama set in fiery shades of dark red— a vermillion cotton top with loose lounge pants in a mahogany so dark it looked almost black in a certain light. He wears a long robe the color of silken sangria only someone with his strong, sharp features could carry. In these clothes, Lee Minho still looks so royally handsome but much more earthy.