Chapter 1: Caught Faking It

“Why can’t I let you go? Why am I like this?”

CHAPTER 1

CAUGHT FAKING IT

“What was I thinking?! Oh my…oh my…dumb Shin Hye, dumb Shin Hye!” Park Shin Hye mutters to herself as she skims through articles online quoting her diary entry yesterday about her current state of mind. Oh but I was just being honest, right? I’m really sad parting with Go Mi Nam.

And Hwang Tae Kyung..? a small voice inside her head asked, making her bit her lip in frustration again. Now all the world knows what she’s feeling and judging from the comments from the fans she has read so far, she knows what she wrote online has been subjected to different interpretations…and oddly enough, quite a few of them are not really far from the truth!

But the thing she is most dreading right now is not what other people think of what she just wrote…it’s what one particular person thinks! What would he think if he reads about this? Would he, like most of the fans, think it’s about him,too? She feels herself flush with sudden embarrassment at the thought! But Oppa would never think about that, would he? He can really be a flirt sometimes but he is never one who would feel so presumptuous about how other people feels toward him. Didn’t he tell her one time that he is as dense as the guy next door when it comes with girls’ feelings? “I’m really like Tae Kyung, now that I think of it, because I’m also usually the last one to know when a girl kinda likes me,” he said, referring to a scene in the script where Tae Kyung was acting so clueless about how Go Mi Nam felt about him. Yeah, she remembers he told her that during one of the talks they had during breaks between shoots.

She remembers that quite vividly because that was when she told herself the unfamiliar feelings she was starting to feel towards him would actually be safe if she tried hard enough not to get caught, after all, given his admission to being dense.

“But I think I have started digging my own grave this time, pig-rabbit!” she cries in exasperation while clutching the dwaeji-tokki in her lap. Online, in a forum where her diary entry has again been re-posted for god-knows-how-many-times that day, a fan wrote in squeal-like fashion, “I think Park Shin Hye is referring to Jang Keun Suk in that entry!”

Shin Hye lays down her head in front of her laptop and groans in embarrassment. “Shin Hye, you’re so dead!”

~0o0~

“This girl surely knows how to weave words eloquently…” Keun Suk muses as he scrolls down the cursor, reading Shin Hye’s much-talked about diary entry. He has just got home from Japan yesterday and today is his free day to catch up on sleep, rest and visit his fan sites online. He has just been a few minutes into a forum when he got curious about a diary entry purportedly written by Shin Hye on her cyworld. His fans are dissecting and analyzing the diary so contentiously that he wanted to know if it really exists on Shin Hye’s site. And it does. He is on her diary page right now reading about her thoughts and he smiles to himself, admiring the choice of words and her poetic way of articulating her feelings… “Avant-Hye, you’ve really become attached to Go Mi Nam, right?”

He chuckles as he reads on the various interpretations of Shin Hye’s entry to the netizens. A lot of them are with the same conclusion that Shin Hye was referring to him in that entry and he just couldn’t understand why they think about that when it is so obvious that she was just referring to her character Go Mi Nam. He should know because he was a witness on how Shin Hye immersed herself into the role. She has been breathing and living as Go Mi Nam for three months that sometimes it was so hard to differentiate the real Shin Hye from Mi Nam. Like Mi Nam in the drama, Shin Hye is also as naïve and adorably clueless in real life.

He still remembers how as the love story in the drama progresses between Hwang Tae Kyung and Go Mi Nam, Shin Hye would bombard him with questions on whether she was acting the part of someone really hopelessly in love convincingly or not. And he would tease her endlessly about being such a good actress because he thought she was acting from experience. “Oppa! I’ve never even been in love for real except in dramas, so how could I know if I’m evoking the real feeling? That’s why I’m asking for your help,” she pleads, pouting like a child.

“Is that so?” he continued his teasing, “And to think you made my mother cry buckets in your drama Tree of Heaven watching you fall in love! Shin Hye must really be a good actress,” he laughed.

“Really, your mother watched that drama?” she asked, genuinely surprised.

He nodded. “She really liked you in that drama because she said you acted so real.”

She laughed, a little embarrassed. “I was so young then I even thought I was not doing the character justice. So Oppa, you must help me act for real this time okay? I would hate to disappoint your mother,” she teased back.

She was that adorably clueless about her gift as an actress. But one thing she is not so clueless about is her duty to her craft. She would constantly be seen during breaks in one corner, memorizing her lines diligently and interacting with her colleagues, discussing the scenes they would do together. And because they have more scenes together, she would always approach him every time she wants to practice a scene together and ask him for suggestions on how to make the scene more real for the viewers. Her work ethics on set was really amazing and even with the long hours and sleepless nights and days, he never heard her complain about anything. He has had a glimpse of this part of Shin Hye before when they were filming a series of CFs together but filming a drama is an entirely new thing which requires more effort, patience and dedication. And Shin Hye, to his delight, never once disappointed him.

“That sweet girl is a real gem, isn’t she?” he recalls his mom pointing that out to him one time he was home from shooting. They were catching a re-run of the pilot episode of You’re Beautiful together with his grandmother and aunt. “You look good together, Keun Suk. Your chemistry is undeniable on-screen,” his grandmother pointed out. He couldn’t agree more. “We really hit it off, grandma, that’s for sure. For someone younger than me, I really am learning a lot from her, acting wise.” And that was the truth. Shin Hye is one of those rare actresses in the industry who really could inspire a fellow actor to act better because in every scene, you really could feel her presence in the character she is portraying. Shin Hye becomes Go Mi Nam the minute the director says action. And for him, such talent inspires him to do his best even more.

“She looks like a suitable match for our Keun Suk, don’t you think, mother?” he heard her mother said jokingly to his grandmother and Keun Suk groaned good-naturedly. “Yah! Omma, you’re plotting behind my back again! Shin Hye is too young for me.”

Both mother and grandmother laughed. “Too young for you? She’s just the right age for you, Keun Suk. If you ask me, you are the one too young for your noonas!” his mother teased and both women laughed again, leaving him without anything more to say other than to shake his head.

Sure, the girl is pretty and talented and she is not one of those damsels-in-distress types that are just so achingly faking sweet. She can be, as he was beginning to find out, just one of the boys when she wants to and still be sweet as candy and nurturing as an ahjumma like the one time she peeled chestnuts for the cast or when she made hot drinks for Hong Ki, Yong Hwa and himself during the swimming pool shoot.

But she is just way too young for my taste. Omma must be joking.

Author's Note:

This is my first ever attempt of writing a fanfic for my current kdrama fave stars Jang Keun Suk and Park Shin Hye. Although the characters here are real, the story is not and though some incidents may be based on actual/reported news about these two stars, the readers are cautioned that the story is still a fiction and just a means for me to cure my YAB addiction and satisfy my fangirl obsession about these two. Everything in this fanfic is just imagined. For any complaints, sue or shoot me, but please never hate JGS/PSH. Happy reading! I will upload succeeding chapters as soon and as fast as I can.