Nineteen-year-old Rose Porter-Abe had everything a teen could want, except for a life of her own.
The daughter of a fashion designer and an actor, Rose finds herself lost in the long shadow cast by her parents' achievements and expectations, and una...
The shoot lasted hours, and Rose spent the entirety of that time wishing she could punch Tae-won in the nose until it receded into his smug face. It was almost impossible for her to play the part of the lovelorn girl who wished with all her heart that Tae-won's character would notice her instead of the flirtatious and confident Jin-hee when his declaration made her want to kill him, and more than once Si-woo had to remind Rose of her motivation because her expression had slipped from love to loathe between shots.
Oblivious to the event, Yuta and Hitomi had watched Rose work for a while before the former was called away to handle paperwork and chair meetings, while Hitomi had been distracted by one of the handsome assistants who was keen to earn her favour by bringing her bottled water and the best snacks he could find.
During a short break – less a break and more a wardrobe change – Eun-young sat with Rose in the dressing room and leaned against the counter, her back to the mirror, her eyes studying the exhausted girl's face. 'We can't replace him, either,' she said, sounding as frustrated by the fact as she suspected Rose was. 'He's so popular now that his fans would never forgive us. The netizens can be frightening when they're angry.'
'It's fine,' Rose lied.
It wasn't fine.
It was never fine for a man to presume that he could win a girl's heart in some stupid challenge because, in his mind, she was little more than a prize to be won through games and manipulation. No woman wanted that; they wanted someone who genuinely valued them for who they were, even their faults, because that was what made them an individual. If Tae-won thought that he could force her feelings with his cocky attitude, then he had another thing coming.
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The rest of the afternoon was spent with a reverse of fortunes. Tae-won – now realising the error of his ways – had left Jin-hee and was relentlessly pursuing Rose. At first, she was supposed to resist his attempts to woo her with flowers and play the coy, shy figure in the relationship. Ultimately, they reached the shots which depicted his triumph, and Rose was expected to embrace a man she wanted to knee so hard in the crotch that he'd choke on his own balls.
'Keep it clean,' she heard Si-woo warn Tae-won. 'This is still meant to be romantic and innocent. We're appealing to high school girls, remember.'
Rose didn't think it right to mention that there were high school girls who weren't so innocent as adults presumed them to be, mostly because she was happy to avoid anything too intimate with Tae-won, but also to allow Si-woo to keep his fantasy intact. She wasn't about to destroy the delusions of the one decent man in the room.
Dressed in clothes inspired by a girls' school uniform – a charcoal high waist skirt, a white blouse with puffy bishop sleeves, and a lace cravat embellished with a simple dusky pink jewel – Rose stood beside Tae-won who was refined and handsome as ever in his beautifully cut charcoal suit. The cufflinks on the white shirt cuffs which peeked out from his blazer matched the jewel on Rose's cravat; they were a perfectly coordinated pair.
