That Person

Rembrary's guess had been right — Jang Tae-ri had required lines of her own.

What neither Rembrary nor Jang Tae-ri knew, however, was that the required lines ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠handed to the two of them had been cunningly chained together as question and answer. The moment one person asked, the other could seamlessly deliver the follow-up reply — the structure practically guaranteed it.

The only reason they hadn't been given each other's lines as well was the production crew's hope of catching some genuinely fresh response, just in case.

But of course, that was purely the crew's intent.

Jang Tae-ri was every bit as flustered as Rembrary.

She did have a bit of broadcast experience, but it amounted to a handful of interviews as a hot-topic guest, nothing more. Back then she had written her own lines to say, shown them to the PD and the writer in advance, and gone through a few rounds of revisions. After that, all she had to do was memorize and deliver them.

Now, with the freedom dial suddenly cranked all the way up, she found herself at a loss.

Worse, her partner wasn't saying a word, and there was an awkward air about him. He looked just as confused as she was.

Ordinarily the celebrity was supposed to take the lead, but in the end Jang Tae-ri decided she would have to break the ice herself.

She was a Woo Yeon-woo fan, after all. She knew better than anyone that he overflowed with an adorable, airheaded charm — the kind of man who probably couldn't even pick Guan Yu out of a Three Kingdoms lineup.

The moment she saw him floundering, an urge to help him flickered up inside her like a small flame.

It happened almost simultaneously with Rembrary resolving to start with the trickiest line first — but Jang Tae-ri beat him to it by a hair.

"Have you ever been here with someone other than me?"

Rembrary had been about to deliver a different line and stumbled to a halt, mouth half-open. Then, sliding a furtive glance downward, he checked the script lying beside him.

Script confirmed, Rembrary realized that her question was meant to pair with ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠line number one, and answered with remarkable cleverness.

"Yes. I find it quite pleasant, coming here together."

Jang Tae-ri blinked rapidly, then murmured, "Ah. I see. It's a nice place, then."

She had caught on instantly that he'd checked the script before speaking — that line was unmistakably one of the required ones. It just didn't sound like something lovers would say to each other.

It was technically correct. The lines did come as a matched pair — but the order had been reversed.

The VJ, who knew the truth, bit her lip and fought down a laugh.

In the meantime, Jang Tae-ri did ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠her best to sand down the awkward line into something resembling natural conversation.

"It must be a good place, since you brought me here… um, wait, what I mean is — what did you eat last time you came?"

"Shrimp pizza."

"Shrimp pizza's delicious, isn't it?"

"Yes. Though eating the same pizza every time would grow tiresome, so this time I shall have the Shrimp Pizza."

But Jang Tae-ri's efforts bore no fruit.

"Ah. No, no…"

"Is it not tasty?"

"That's not it — oh no, what do I do. I've just added a whole new entry to your embarrassing-past archive, Yeon-woo."

"I'm afraid I don't quite follow."

"Try covering your mouth right now…"

"?"

As a devoted Woo Yeon-woo fan, Jang Tae-ri felt a duty to cut off this topic of conversation before it went any further. So instead of waiting for her phone to ring, she clutched her perfectly silent phone and bolted straight to required line number two.

"One moment — I've got a call. The reason you can't hear it is because it's on silent."

"?"

Having volunteered far more information than strictly necessary, Jang Tae-ri then nodded along with an expression of exactly the pained embarrassment her script called for.

"Ah. Um… good heavens. Really? Is that so? Yes, understood."

Even pantomiming hanging up at a suitably dramatic moment, she then turned to Rembrary with an apologetic look.

"What do I do? I'll have to leave early today. My father's fallen ill."

The scene the production crew had planned went like this: Woo Yeon-woo, having seen through Jang Tae-ri's lie, would ask in the wounded voice of the second love interest, 'Are you going to see that person right after seeing me?'

Or he might give some entirely different answer of his own.

Once again, however, the crew's intentions sailed wide of the mark.

Rembrary was simply incapable of grasping that his character was supposed to detect Tae-ri's lie and spit out line number two, so he selected the line that seemed to flow most naturally instead.

"Is that person me, perchance?"

Was that one of the scripted lines, or was he just talking? Panicked, Jang Tae-ri dragged out an "Um…" and tried again.

"I'm going to see my father?"

And here a new problem arose.

Watching Jang Tae-ri genuinely flounder, Rembrary failed to come across as someone lying to his current lover about going to see another one.

"That person cannot make you happy, Lady Tae-ri."

"Um. No — he's made me happy plenty…"

"Reflect upon it carefully, and you will find that he has not."

"Um…"

Jang Tae-ri shot a look of pure distress at the VJ.

Are we actually having a conversation here? her eyes pleaded.

The VJ hesitated, then decided to offer a subtle hint. She held up one finger toward Woo Yeon-woo's side, then two fingers toward Jang Tae-ri's.

The meaning was clear: Yeon-woo has one line left, Tae-ri has two. You two are speaking at different speeds right now.

Neither of them understood the signal.

Jang Tae-ri took it to mean she should deliver line number two, and Rembrary concluded he was supposed to deliver line number one, and the conversation lurched onward.

"I'm not joking. I really do have to leave early today. My father's fallen ill. Genuinely."

"Shall we summon him here, then? It would be pleasant to dine together."

"Yeon-woo. My father is sick right now, and you're asking him to come eat pizza?"

"Is a patient forbidden from eating pizza?"

"I like how light and fun you make things feel. Understood? I don't want any pressure from you."

"Does your father dislike pizza?"

"We agreed we wouldn't talk about that person."

The onlookers watching the shoot murmured among themselves. Did he just trash-talk her dad? Is this unfilial-son variety? I guess it's a son-in-law versus father-in-law feud concept.

Jang Tae-ri thought, This is not how it's supposed to go, but by then she had already burned through every last line on the page.

And somehow, impossibly, the conversation had held together all the way through.

As the two sat there in mutual dissatisfaction, salvation mercifully arrived — a server brought over the pizza they had pre-ordered and set it down.

Determined to salvage the wrecked two-timing dating concept, Jang Tae-ri quickly summoned a soft, honeyed smile and delivered a line of her own free will.

"Eat up, Yeon-woo."

"My thanks."

The moment Rembrary finally got his pizza and broke into a radiant smile, the surrounding onlookers started murmuring all over again.

"Sounds like they already made up."

"Weren't they fighting just a second ago?"

"What happened to the dad?"

Jang Tae-ri barely overcame the crushing embarrassment by staring at Rembrary's face and drawing strength from her fangirl devotion.

I can't hear anything. There is only Yeon-woo's face. So she chanted to herself as she heaped an extra-large slice of pizza onto his plate.

The production staff had passed along the intel that Rembrary had never once eaten pizza before, so this was her own small act of thoughtfulness.

"Thank you."

Rembrary murmured it absently, then picked up his fork and knife and set about cutting the pizza with intense concentration. The script had long since been shoved into some dusty corner of his mind.

At the sight of the yellow and red pizza, saliva pooled at the corners of his mouth. And the instant he speared the first neatly cut square slice with his fork and brought it to his lips —

Rembrary nearly wept. It was far, far more delicious than anything he had imagined.

It felt like fireworks detonating across his tongue. His taste buds, overjoyed at this novel flavor, embraced one another and danced.

Watching him, Jong-woo scratched the back of his neck, assailed by a guilty wonderment over whether he'd been starving the kid half to death.

Jang Tae-ri stared, entranced, at the glistening sheen in Rembrary's eyes.

The VJ found herself wanting pizza too.

In fact, at the sight of Rembrary slicing and savoring his pizza in open rapture, several onlookers stopped watching altogether and started eating their own.

Only after he had demolished nearly the entire pizza did Rembrary belatedly remember he still had lines remaining, and he fulfilled his duty at last.

"Are you going to meet that person as well, after meeting me?"

"Sorry? Jo-woon? Ah. Yes."

"Where are the two of you meeting?"

"Um… a restaurant?"

After swallowing his final bite, Rembrary set down his fork and made his request.

"Would it not be possible for you to take me along?"

"You want to follow us?"

"The two of you seem bound for an expensive establishment. I shall eat quietly and disturb no one."

"I'm sorry, what?"

After the short shoot with Jang Tae-ri wrapped, Jong-woo assumed he would be moving on to the next location with her — but the VJ explained that the location had been changed, and Rembrary would now be filming his scene with CEO Shin Jo-woon instead.

In the show's continuity, the next scene was supposed to be Jang Tae-ri meeting Shin Jo-woon, but a real-life business meeting made it impossible for her to carve out the time, so the Rembrary–Shin Jo-woon scene was being shot first.

"Hold on — I get that it's a two-timing concept, but our Yeon-woo is meeting CEO Shin already? We're barely out of the gate here!"

To the flustered Jong-woo, the VJ explained that the order could always be rearranged in editing, but the filming itself had to happen today.

"Of course, scrambling the order makes it tricky to nail the emotional throughline, but we have to release the teaser video first. The PD is planning to tease all the love interests tangled together in it."

The VJ handed Rembrary yet another script, and the three of them piled back into the van.

"The location this time is a café."

Rembrary gave the script the VJ handed him a cursory glance and raised an eyebrow.

This time, Rembrary had exactly one required line.

A short while later, the three of them stepped out at a large café not far away.

As they walked in, the VJ set the scene.

"CEO Shin Jo-woon has found out that Woo Yeon-woo and Jang Tae-ri met, and this is the scene where he summons Yeon-woo here and warns him not to see her again."

Rembrary answered that he understood and walked to the seat the VJ indicated.

"Cameras rolling from this point on."

Once again, Shin Jo-woon had arrived first. In a suit so impeccably standard it bordered on oppressive.

Perhaps it was the concept. Unlike Jang Tae-ri, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠who had waited for Rembrary to arrive so they could eat together, Shin Jo-woon — cast in the rival position — was nursing a coffee he'd ordered for himself alone.

When Rembrary approached, he greeted him with an icy smile and lowered the coffee cup he'd been raising to his lips, setting it back down untouched.

Rembrary nearly returned the greeting warmly before remembering that the two of them were meant to be rivals locked in a contest over one woman. Swallowing the pleasantry, he dropped heavily into the seat across from him instead.

Shin Jo-woon watched him with an air of faint amusement, smirked, and thrust the menu across the table as if flinging it down.

"What are you drinking? It's on me. Word is you've been mooching off Tae-ri forever, after all."

Rembrary returned his frosty stare in kind, and accepted the menu.

Earlier, his attention had been scattered — the smell of pizza drifting in from every direction, and so many required lines to juggle. But his belly was full now, and only a single line remained.

The professional's focus that had briefly gone astray came flooding back.

Now he would draw upon all the actor's craft he had accumulated filming Dear God, and unleash his full performance in the role of a man facing his rival in love.

The moment Rembrary opened the menu, a staff member hired in advance approached with a hesitation-tinged manner and asked,

"What may I get you to order?"

"The White Shake Latte Gold Coconut Sweet Potato, with extra cream. Large."

Having delivered the order in a voice of pure ice, Rembrary handed the menu back to the staff member.

And looking over then, he saw Shin Jo-woon biting his lip, digging his fingernails into his own chin.

He was clearly awestruck by the sheer audacity of boldly ordering a large, saccharine beverage in front of one's enemy.

Rembrary squared his shoulders and met his gaze head-on.

Shin Jo-woon wet his lips, then clenched his jaw tight again. He seemed about to say something, closed his mouth, thought for a moment — and then asked, slyly:

"You like sweet things?"

Rembrary tilted his chin up and smiled with magnificent arrogance.

"I am a man of great magnanimity. Concerns such as calories are beneath me."

Shin Jo-woon bit down hard on his lip once more, then nodded with an expression of grave solemnity.

"Hmm. That is genuinely impressive."

Meanwhile, the staff member — whose Americano had been prepped well in advance — scrambled frantically into motion: grating the sweet potato, loading the blender with ice, whipping the coffee grounds into a frenzy.

For some reason, Shin Jo-woon spent that time staring out the window, his lips moving silently.

Could it be that he, too, only has a single line, and simply has nothing left to say?

— End of Chapter 95: That Person —