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Da Young frowned and asked, “What happened to your faces?”
Imprinted on the sides of President Ha, Ms. So, and Jo Suk’s faces was the grid pattern from the ventilation opening.
“How far did you guys go?”
Yul Hee was seated across from Da Young in her room later that night. She wanted to hear all about her friend’s “first date.” They sat on the floor, which had snacks and beer cans scattered around.
“Can you take all that off first?” A disgruntled Da Young gestured at Yul Hee’s getup, which included sunglasses and another bandana tied around her face.
“Oh, I forgot,” she said, whipping off the accessories as she continued chewing on a piece of dried squid.
“And how far? We didn’t do anything…just got coffee and read some comic books.”
Yul Hee pointed the chewed up end of her dried squid at her friend, who grimaced in disgust. “You said you two were stuck in a freezer together. You guys didn’t do anything in there? You were both in close quarters…” Yul Hee tapped into her dramatic side, wrapping her arms around herself and closing her eyes. “You and Jae Woon, an admittedly very attractive man with the height and broad shoulders and those forearms. You didn’t think about those arms coming around you in a warm embrace, to keep you warm and safe?”
Da Young shooed away the memory of Jae Woon unbuttoning his shirt and his sleeves to roll them up. “No, I didn’t jump him in the freezer,” she said flatly. “As I said, it was a broken freezer, so we were plenty hot in there–” She immediately regretted those words as Yul Hee threw her a wolfish grin.
“You don’t say?” Yul Hee expertly wiggled her eyebrows.
After chewing on some dried squid to regain her composure, Da Young finally spit out, “I think you’re the one who needs to date.”
As Da Young reached for another drink, her phone lit up. She picked it up to see that she got a message. Upon opening said message, she stared silently at it for a few seconds, then suddenly tossed her phone across the room with a yelp, alarming Yul Hee and almost knocking over an opened beer can.
“What? What?” shouted Yul Hee, jumping to her knees as if they were suddenly under attack and they had to scurry for cover as soon as possible. Da Young looked too shocked and a tad disturbed to respond, so Yul Hee crawled over to the poor phone, picked it up, and likewise stared at the text message with an inexplicable urge to toss it across the room. She fought the urge, but there was still a chance she might vomit all over the floor.
Da Young had opened up a message from “Boyfriend <3” that simply read, “Good night, babe! Sleep well. Dream of me,” followed by an emoticon of a winking pygmy hippo.
“Here.” After the two were let out of the freezer and gave President Ha, Ms. So, and Jo Suk a sufficient amount of dagger-like glares, Jae Woon had asked for her phone to put in his number, saying they didn’t need more third-party arrangements they didn’t ask for.
Without any hesitation, he put “Boyfriend” with a heart as his name and handed it back, then took out his own phone, using the honey pot emoji as her name.
“This is what couples do,” Jae Woon said. If he was going to do this, he was going to do it right this time. His career, the only important thing in his life, hinged on this project. He paused, staring at her contact in his phone, and added a bit apologetically, although she couldn’t tell if it was towards her or himself, “I have to be careful just in case, so this is the best I can do for you…but I think it’s cute.” She wondered if his phone was vulnerable to reporters or fans, and then whether he had used that emoji before for somebody else.
She stared back down at “Boyfriend” with a heart. He continued, “And put me on speed dial. While we’re together, I plan to take this very seriously, Ms. Writer—I mean Joo Ni. I’ll show you what it’s like to have a healthy relationship so you know what to look for in the future.”
Da Young looked up at him. He really looked the same. Despite that, he hadn’t seemed like the same person at all—until now.
Scowling at the message from “Boyfriend <3,” Yul Hee murmured, “I suddenly have an urge to fight something.” At the same time, the corners of her lips began to twitch as a laugh threatened to escape. She threw the phone at a startled Da Young, who had yet to recover from the message, and said, “You should respond.”
“What do you even say to that?”
“Get back at him.”
Da Young considered texting, “No thanks, I don’t want nightmares,” but then thought the better of it. She tried to get into the mindset of the lovey dovey girlfriend. What would she write? And how could she up the cringe to the max as revenge?
–
Jae Woon was sitting in bed in the dark, only the glow of the phone lighting up his bemused face. He kept trying to suppress the smirk, but he could feel it creeping up as he imagined the writer’s reaction. Would she be grimacing? Or would her face be as unimpressed as ever, her go-to mask?
His phone finally alerted him of a new message. He opened it, eyebrows raised in anticipation, then snorted.
Her message read: “Sleep tight, honey boo. Let’s meet in our dreams!” He couldn’t imagine her unimpressed mask mouthing these words. She proceeded to spam him with emoticons of a girlfriend from a set she must’ve just purchased. He laughed, found the same set but the boyfriend version and spammed her back, ending with one of the boyfriend going to sleep. She responded with one more emoticon of a different, much stabbier character. Smiling, he placed his phone face down next to him on the side table and snuggled under his covers. His dreams were already unpleasant enough, but with Eun Joo Ni, they might at least be entertaining.
–
“I know that look on your face,” Yul Hee said, still chewing on the dried squid piece.
Sure enough, Da Young, who had been nibbling on the tip of her thumb, hurriedly grabbed her laptop from her desk, opened it on her lap, and started typing away. An unbothered Yul Hee jumped up onto her bed to hug a plushie and play on her phone. This was going to take a while.
Da Young had the characters in mind. She could envision how they met and how they behaved. She started typing away. Of course a lot of it was going to be terrible and likely erased. A lot of it was going to change, but for now, she was building a solid foundation and she could feel the thrill of weaving a story like an electric current running through her fingers to her keyboard.
Yul Hee fell asleep a few hours later. Da Young finally shut the lid of her laptop, feeling pretty proud of the work she had gotten done so far but having hit another block. Or maybe she just needed a break. She moved Yul Hee to the side and lied down next to her, her eyelids heavy as Jae Woon’s face inexplicably came into blurry view.
In the morning, Jae Woon groggily opened his eyes after a rare good night’s rest and checked his messages, wondering how Da Young had slept, when he saw with some surprise that she had messaged him around three in the morning. He rubbed his eyes, then opened the message: “Let’s meet.”
He was more awake now. He shook his head to get rid of the last remnants of sleep and texted back, “Where?”
A few hours later, he saw the back of Da Young’s head, her hair long and wavy as ever. He snuck up behind her and placed his hands over her eyes to surprise her. Do couples still do this nowadays? Did they ever? He had no clue, but he soon learned what happened when he put his hands over a woman’s eyes, at least if the woman was Da Young. Her sharp elbow snapped back right into the side of his ribs, knocking the air out of his lungs, and then she swiftly turned and kicked him in the groin.
Intense pain radiated throughout the points of contact on his body, but seeing that her fists were raised as if ready to deal more blows, he pulled down his mask as quickly as possible. His face was twisted in agony, but Da Young could still recognize him, thankfully. With no sign of regret on her face, she lowered her hands and waited for him to recover. Slowly, the tears started to subside from his eyes. He tried taking some deep breaths.
“You could’ve at least said ‘Guess who?’” she said, trying to look less pleased with herself and more remorseful. “But honestly, you really shouldn’t do that to any woman.”
“That’s fair,” he grunted out, nodding vigorously. “Anyway, why’d you want to meet?”
“I want to test out a scene I’m writing.”
“Oh!” He clapped his hands. “You’re writing! You started the script? That’s great! I’m happy to hear it.” He genuinely sounded very happy. Da Young, embarrassed, had to look away. She sniffled.
“A few scenes last night,” she murmured.
“Oh, that’s why you messaged me at three a.m.”
“Sorry, did I wake you?”
“No, but that’s a weird message to send at that time.”
She tilted her head, thinking back to what she had written. She shrugged then walked past him. He sighed and turned around to follow her.
Time for date number two.
Next week on 🌟How to Write a K-Drama🌟
He quickly disguised his snort of laughter as a cough. “So you want to try this out?” he asked once recovered.
“Yeah, I want to see how feasible this is and whether it actually is romantic, and then what could happen after.”