My Beautiful Disaster (Part I)

My Beautiful Disaster

Shin Hye’s Story

When I was little, Appa called me yo shin. Good night, my little goddess, he would say, every time he would tuck me in to bed. He was a man of few words, still is, but with those words whispered every night to me before I went to sleep, he always made me feel special. Always loved, always appreciated.

I grew up knowing that no matter what I do, where I am, what I would be, two guys will always love me from head to toe, unconditionally – my dad and my older brother. Appa and Oppa. They may always not be articulate in expressing their feelings for me but their protection and care is always there. They are always on standby, like a first-aid kit, like an ambulance, to go running after me when they see me fall or hurt.

Oh, they do not love me to perfection. Appa does not always sing high praises for me. He merely grunts his acknowledgment whenever Omma says I have bagged another CF or landed in another role. He does not even seem to be aware that I am already earning my own money. He still gives me allowances; still sends me to school with his own money. In his eyes, I will always be his responsibility until I’m finished with university. I am not Shin Hye, the actress who stars in dramas and CFs. I am just Shin Hye, the little girl he still calls yo shin whenever he sees me all dressed up.

My brother does not even watch my dramas. He says he feels uncomfortable seeing my pictures in magazines because in his mind, I would always be the dorky face little sister lounging around at home in her PJs. Or at least, that’s what he claims. Until he starts criticizing on how stiff I look in a magazine cover or how awkward I moved my face in a kissing scene. My number one critic – that’s my brother. But I know that he is also my number one fan.

These two guys taught me all the things I thought I should know about men in general. Because of them, I am comfortable around the male species. I know how to deal with them, how to humor them, and how to understand them. I always hear remarks how I easily get comfortable with my fellow actors, young and old, and how surprised people are to see a shy, quiet girl like me totally at ease around guys of all kinds and sizes. What people don’t know is that I have lived with guys all my life --- and they have trained me well.

When I turned 20, my dad told me something he said I should never forget. It was the night of my birthday and we were talking, just the two of us, in our little garden. We were sitting in the swing he made for my brother and I years back when Oppa could still fit his frame in it. 

“You just become an adult today and as much as I want to always have you by my side, I know sooner or later, someone will take you away from your Omma and me,” he began. Appa loves to give talks like this on our birthdays. And it is something I always look forward to whenever my birthday comes along.

But I couldn’t help but laughed at the direction he was getting at. Someone to take me away? “Appa, you sound like you already found a good match for me,” I giggled. He was talking to me as an adult for the first time but I just couldn’t believe he would be choosing that as a topic. I have only read about scenes like this in drama scripts!

“Just listen up, you little rascal. You’re my only daughter. This is for your own good,” he told me sternly. I could see he was serious, although a little uncomfortable with it.  I stopped giggling, chastened by his voice. Appa is not one to waste his words over things that do not matter to him. And I knew what he was about to tell me that evening was something he felt he should do as a father. So I listened up, waiting for him to speak.

“Sooner or later, you will meet someone and fall in love. Whoever he will be, I hope you will choose well and wisely. He will be different from your brother and me, Shin Hye. He will come from a different family, a different background. The things you learn from us will be useful but they will not always help you to understand him. He will love you. But sometimes he won’t. He will break your heart and I would want to save you from the pain, but we -- your brother, Omma and I -- will not interfere. You will fall on your knees once, twice… as many times as you want. We will be there to raise you up each time you fall, but we will not be there to prevent it. Only you can do that,” he said, his quiet voice warming my heart from the chilly night air.

I knew he was talking about letting me go. Out in the wild, crazy world of adulthood. And I felt scared all of a sudden. Scared to meet the guy my dad was talking about. Scared to find a love which will break me, like he just said.

“I won’t fall in love that way, Appa,” I told him quietly.

My father laughed. “Everyone falls in love that way, Shin Hye, at least once. You just have to tell that heart of yours to choose wisely. You don’t have to choose the best in our eyes, but in yours. You will laugh with him and shed tears for him. At least, make him worthwhile.”

“And have a brave heart, yo shin. You will need it, trust me.”  

~0o0~

I call him a beautiful disaster. My own beautiful disaster.  A walking contradiction that never ceases to amaze me. A boy trapped in a man’s body, good looks and that voice. He is forever playful, forever friendly, forever tantalizing everyone with his beautiful smile. He is beautiful and he knows it. He loves to shine and he is shining brightly each day. He is dripping with confidence, talent and passion. Attributes which will inevitably make him the one to beat in the world of Hallyu.

But beneath that shining, aggressive, go-getter exterior is really just a simple boy with a lot of dreams. No, he didn’t tell me that. That’s just the way I read him. And I have been reading him for quite a while now.

I have to admit, my first impression of him was quite superficial – just another pretty flower boy who thinks he is God’s gift to women. You couldn’t blame me, he surely looked the part and if you follow him on the papers and gossip columns, he played the part, too.

Since I debuted, I have been lucky enough to be paired up with the so-called heartthrobs in the industry. They are the guys the ahjummas and noonas/unnies would fight tooth and nail for. My brother even foolishly warned me before to always watch my back whenever I was out in the street. “You might just find your head already rolling ahead of you a little too late. Fangirls of those flower boys are scaaarryy!” he warned.

But I was not afraid. After all, who was I to think I would get these beautiful guys to notice me and be a threat to their legion of fans? Working with them was fun but it was just a job. Nothing personal. Yes, they looked like gods but they were also just people, like everyone else. They were my oppas, nothing more. And I’m sure they felt the same way. Besides, I was too young for them. Surely, who would take a young girl like me seriously? Seriously enough to date or whatever. It is not like I am Soo Ae unnie or Yoon Eun Hye unnie. Those pretty faces are the stuff guys’ dreams are made of. But me? Like my brother says, I look too dorky to date.

And it’s not like I would die if I don’t date real soon. I won’t. And honestly, if and when I really date, I think I would be dating someone normal. Normal meaning a non-celebrity guy. Maybe someone from church or someone from school. I think I would be more comfortable dating those kinds of guys. At least, with them, I won’t be competing with a throng of fans or a troop of beautiful girls for their attention. For normal guys, like my father or my brother, I would always have a chance to be someone else’s yo shin. And falling in love would be at least, with my father’s warning in mind, a little less complicated.

Or so I thought. But God loves to make pranks to unsuspecting girls like me.

~0o0~

He was not my first on-screen kiss but he surely did make it the most memorable one to date. And let me remind you that on-screen kisses are the only kisses I have had so far in my life so I couldn’t even categorize his kiss as the most memorable on-screen kiss I have had. It was the most memorable kiss I’ve had in my life, period.

It was memorable not because of the obvious reason which is he was Jang Geun Suk, darn it! No, that was not my reason at all. It was because the kiss was the most comfortable kiss I did so far, thanks to him. He was a total gentleman and this is not to say the other actors I shared kisses with before were not. But with the kind of kiss we shared in the CF, I never felt awkward towards him after. It was like kissing someone you have known for a long time. That kind of feeling. It was a deep, intimate kiss. The kind of kiss which would certainly make me blushed if I had it for real. But surprisingly, it didn’t feel awkward to do it with him at all. We had fun doing it. He made it a lot less awkward for me. Thanks to his non-stop talking.

He talks a lot. He loves talking and it is good that I am the type who loves to listen so I just let him do the talking when we were shooting that scene. His jokes and his witty prattle took my mind away from the scene and let me be comfortable with him. I guess that was when I actually started reading him. He talked a lot but he didn’t talk nonsense. His talkative nature, I found out soon enough, was there for a purpose. He talked because he wanted to know more, to befriend me, to make us comfortable with each other. He told me jokes because he wanted to break the ice, to set a friendlier mood. And I appreciated that.

He loved to tease and laugh at himself. He loved to ask questions, poking his nose around the set during breaks, asking the cameraman how to set up this and that, even observing how the make-up artist mix-and-match make-up colors on my face. He was a curious little kid and the big world was his playground, I thought of him then.

A flower boy with a substance. Definitely a beautiful kind of disaster I did not know I had been waiting for to meet.