She didn't know that the boy she would hire... once ruled the night.
And he didn't know he was about to fall in love with the artist who drew him back to life.
tropes:
Fake Dating / Rent-a-boyfriend
Forbidden / Unaware Identity
Fated Love
sunghoon x...
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001
Yaeun had been staring at the blank canvas for three hours now. The blinking cursor in the corner of the screen felt personal, like it was mocking her.
She shifted in her seat, cracked her knuckles for the fifth time, and told herself this time the inspiration would hit.
It didn't.
Her stylus just hovered, half held, half forgotten while a thousand jumbled thoughts fought for space in her head.
Deadlines. Algorithms. Editors who promised to "circle back."
Oh, and the latest betrayal: that glossy, trending webtoon that looked suspiciously like hers.
Different title. Different studio. But the same plot, same character design, even the same stupid strawberry hairpin her FL wore.
It had over 400k likes 10M views in a day.
She merely had 742likes 17k views. Most of them bots. A few kind comments. And one message from her ex that said, "Guess your story got more readers than your life did."
She should've blocked him.
She should've thrown her laptop. Instead, she just sat there. Still. Quiet. Tired in a way sleep couldn't fix.
The door creaked open.
"I swear if you're still making your FL wait for a out of the world plot, I'm staging an intervention."
Yura, her roommate slash manifested chaos, waltzed in with a bowl of chips and a silk bonnet she never tied properly. She dropped onto the bed dramatically, letting steam waft into the room.
"Listen, I have an idea," Yura said between slurps.
"It's brilliant. Original. Dare I say-iconic."
Yaeun didn't look up. "It better not involve amnesia, reincarnation, or stepbrothers."
Yura paused. "Okay. Then I have no ideas."
Yaeun snorted.
Yura leaned forward, nudging Yaeun's chair with her foot. "Come on, do something fun for once. Give me a female lead who accidentally summons her soulmate from a coffee stain. Or a K-pop idol who turns into a cat at midnight. Anything! Just stop making your characters suffer in slow, existential despair."
"That's all I know how to write."
"That's all you live, babe." Yura meant it as a joke, but it hit a little too close.
Yaeun sighed and rubbed her eyes. "I need something new. Something big. I'm tired of doing everything right and still losing."
She thought about that one platform that took her work down without even an apology.
The influencer who posted her panels as "inspo" without credit.
The subtle shade in her college group chat when someone mentioned "real artists."
She thought about her ex's voice, low and smug, "Even if you draw romance, you don't know how to love."
Maybe he was right.
"Maybe I should just stop," she muttered.
Yura threw a pillow at her. "Nope. You don't get to say that. You're Moon Yaeun. The tortured, sleep deprived genius of Room 305. Your story just hasn't started yet."
"Yeah? And what it about then?"
Yura grinned. "A broke girl who falls in love with the hot rich guy."
Yaeun stared at her. "...Absolutely not."
Yaeun rolled her chair back and buried her face in her arms.
She mumbled, voice muffled, "How is that even a thing? Who hires a fake boyfriend? When did this thing come into play?"
Yura didn't even blink. "People who are hot, dramatic, or heartbroken. You're at least two out of three."
Yaeun groaned. "I'm not heartbroken."
"Oh? So you just casually looked like a Victorian widow for the past three weeks because it's trendy?"
Yura had a point, but Yaeun wasn't about to admit it. She just lay there, facedown on her desk, letting the hum of the monitor and the distant sound of a couple arguing in the hallway fill the silence.
Truth was, it hadn't even been that deep of a relationship. A few months. A few coffees. A lot of empty promises.
But it was the things he said at the end that clung to her.
Like the part where he told her she was "emotionally constipated" and that no guy could ever love someone who didn't know how to "act like a girlfriend."
As if love was a script, and she just forgot her lines.
---
Later that night, when the ramen was cold and Yura had passed out mid-episode of a trashy romance drama, Yaeun found herself back at her desk.
The screen was still blank.
She'd scrolled through hundreds of artist posts that day, new launches, trending panels, fanart of their own OCs. They were all creating. Moving. Thriving.
She wasn't bitter. Not really. Just... stuck.
She picked up her stylus again, drew a single line. Erased it. Drew again.
Still nothing.
Eventually, she opened a new tab and started typing random things out of boredom.
Prom date services. Fake partner hire. Boyfriend rental.
The last one made her laugh. It sounded like something from a parody manhwa Yura would obsess over.
She clicked anyway.
Most were sketchy. Weird interfaces. Pixelated photos. Probably scams.
But then one site popped up, clean and basic. No flashy design. Just three words in all caps:
BOYFRIEND FOR RENT.
There was a short list of profiles. Blurry faces. Fake names. And then-
She froze. One of them wasn't blurry.
One of them looked...real. Like he didn't belong on the site at all.
A guy with sharp features, slightly messy hair, a hoodie that didn't quite sit right on his shoulders. He wasn't posing. Wasn't smiling.
He looked distant. Almost cold.
But something about his eyes made her pause.
Not soft. Not warm. Just lonely.
Yaeun blinked, suddenly aware of how long she'd been staring. She quickly closed the tab, shook her head, and reached for her sketchpad instead.
Just a quick doodle. To clear her head.
Except... her hand moved on its own.
Sharp jawline. Straight nose. Distant gaze. The lines flowed easier than they had in weeks.
She didn't realize it then, but something had just shifted. A crack in the quiet. An echo of a story she hadn't meant to tell.
