"When the walls have ears and the doors have eyes, what do you do if those ears and eyes are yours?"
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This is a BinJin Story mostly told from the POV of a stranger. It speaks of combined fan perspectives, of a hodge podge of truths...
I'm not exactly a stranger. Or at least that's how I see it. For the last few years ever since I arrived in Seoul's Gangnam District in August of 2018, I would often bump into one Son Eon-jin, otherwise known as Son Ye-jin - Korea's Queen of Melodrama, at my apartment floor. She has the penthouse but her unit spans at least two levels so I would guess, depending on whichever reason, she would sometimes enter her unit at the floor where mine was. It wasn't so much of a privacy issue for her. Apart from her unit semi-occupying the floor one level below the penthouse, there were only two other units at our floor - mine and someone else's. From what I was told by the property manager, the owner of the other unit, a British gentleman in his early 40s, was rarely in the country and only housekeepers came in every month.
Having just finished watching Ye-jin's newest hit on Netflix, Crash Landing On You (CLOY), I somehow could not help but feel like I was the female version of Jung Man-Bok. Well, more or less. Whichever I heard and saw though, I did not rat on anyone even if bits and pieces of Son Ye-jin and Hyun Bin's story was unfolding right before my ears and eyes. But I was nevertheless the wall and the door, or probably, that proverbial fly on the wall.
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AUGUST 9, 2018
I had just become a major shareholder of a Silicon Valley BPO. On an impulse trip to Reno to nurse a broken heart, I did not expect to hit the jackpot on a slot machine. As though fate was playing tricks on me, I also matched all the numbers on a scratch card and a lottery ticket. All in all, after tax, my payout was a whopping eight figures, nearly nine had it not been for it being short $8000. Luckily, for the right amount of money, in existence were lawyers, security agencies and financial consultants willing to move mountains to protect my identity.
Once the dust settled on securing everything, my first instinct was to invest on something. That something turned out to be the company where I was working. The idea came when the Bay Area's biggest jerk (who broke my heart) transferred to a rival company and along with him came several important investors and talents. I could not bear to see the company that took a chance on 25-year-old me, eight years prior, get its soul sucked up by the same spawn of Satan. I distinctly remember trying to set an appointment with our company's CEO. The secretary dismissed me as his schedule's jampacked with appointments after appointments in the hopes of convincing panicking investors to stay. Imagine her shock - and that of the board of directors' - when I marched into the conference room and said "I want to invest $50M USD."
That was the end of my initial efforts at anonymity. I mean, I did not mind helping those who needed financial assistance but when the ex-boyfriend suddenly showed up at my doorstep and idiot me agreed to wine and dine with him, and in the middle of what I thought would be him apologizing, pleading that we got back together, what I got instead was "I'm sorry, Paige. I really am. What we had together was wonderful. We were so good together. So now I am hoping we could be just as good as business partners."
Those were my thoughts the moment Korean Air's A380 landed at the Incheon International Airport. The same thoughts occupied my mind as I struggled to get three 75-lb pieces of luggage into what would be my home for at least four months of each year for the unforeseeable future. The idea was to spend most of the year in Palo Alto in California and at least over a quarter of the year in Seoul. All in an effort to find myself and have a semblance of sanity while not neglecting my duties as a training director for the North America and Asia Pacific division of our company.
I had just successfully lugged all three big bags and a heavy carry-on inside the fully-furnished apartment I bought when my clumsiness got the best of me.
"Ooof," I exclaimed as I stumbled while exiting my unit with the intention of going out to explore my new neighborhood. I swore on all shoe gods that I would never ever wear the pair of a half size too large slip-on Skechers but the comfort always had had me ignoring that its extra length on my toes was a stumbling hazard. And as if on cue, the contents of my dark brown Chanel PST, including a box of an Hermès twilly, a little pick-me-up I got from the airport, came spilling out with the orange cylindrical box rolling towards the elevator.
"Oh no, no, no!" I said as the box came rolling away as though with a mind of its own.
"I got it," the stranger in front of me said as my twilly's box rolled on her black suede Balenciaga Knife pumps
"I'm so sorry!" was all I could muster while covering my mouth, worried color transfer from the orange box could happen on the suede pumps of who I estimated was a 5 foot-five-inch-beauty in front of me. While I was acutely aware that Hermès boxes are generally acid-free, suede is not to be messed with.
"Oh no. Don't worry about it. Here you go," she said, her eyes disappearing in a concave line as she smiled. Thanking the pretty stranger in front of me, I walked away thinking how familiar she looked.
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I am a notorious procrastinator. It's a miracle I graduated at all, let alone got to the point where I was entrusted to be in charge of an entertainment transcription account of my employer.
After a few hours of exploring my new neighborhood, I got home just in time to catch local entertainment news on TV. Save for a few helpful phrasal greetings, I did not know how to speak Korean so I was grateful for technology that allowed closed caption translations of real-time television. Yep. Trust the Koreans to be ahead of the game, tech-wise. Besides, I wanted to familiarize myself with the accent even if I was told Koreans were actually accommodating to English speakers who did not know their language; that they wanted every opportunity to practice and learn English. It also did not hurt that the words "respect" and "integrity" were biologically hardwired in them so whichever intention they had, you could trust to be sincere and honorable.
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While fighting the urge to put off until tomorrow the unpacking of my bags, that's when I saw her. Streaming on TV was a clip of a press conference held a few hours ago for an action thriller movie called "The Negotiation". Set to be shown in September, I recognized first the black Balenciaga pumps of all things. I blinked twice and realized the girl who picked up my twilly box was none other than the lead actress in the film!
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I knew I had moved into a fully secure modern building that had high profile tenants. The real estate agent I talked to on the phone made sure I was aware of that. For whichever reason, I did not bother to know. All I knew was I did not want to consider myself "high profile" but that for once in my life, after working hard for more than 15 years, a change in atmosphere, paired with a cool $8M USD for an apartment unit, was my ticket to finally taking care of myself.
But wow. Son Ye-jin?! My neighbor?! Wow! I mean, I was pretty much a noob as a noob could possibly get when it came to the Korean entertainment industry but a quick Google search revealed she's an A-lister - Korea's queen of melodrama. Think Sandra Bullock-levels for the rest of Asian TV. Except that in as much as I was an Asian by blood, I was a pathetic noob for everything else that was going on in Asian showbusiness.
Several posts caught my eye about the presscon I had just seen. People were talking about the amazing chemistry she had with her leading man. Apparently, it was the first time she and Hyun Bin worked on a project, together, even if they debuted around the same time nearly two decades ago. Social media commenters couldn't stop gushing how good they looked together, with one even mentioning how a website once ranked them at the top of Korean celebrities fans wanted to be a real-life couple. The six-footer bedimpled actor ended a relationship eight months, prior, leading fans to push the pair even more because Ye-jin was single, as well.
"Well somebody looks smitten, indeed," I thought to myself as I watched and rewatched clips of their press conference and interviews, trying to see for myself what fans were saying about Hyun Bin stealing glances at his co-star.
