Hyejin continued jiggling the door handle, trying to push it with all her might to get it open. Seeing that there was a problem, Hyunwon walked over and took over, putting his body against the door to try to get it open—still, the door didn't budge.

"Great, just great," he muttered. Turning to Hyejin, he scowled and said, "Why didn't you put a doorstop in! Don't you know that the storeroom door locks automatically once it shuts? Where's the key?" Although it was an automatic lock, the door could be opened from both the inside and the outside as long as you had the key.

"Uhh, it's in the lock—"

Hyunwon fumbled about in the dark to search for the key in the keyhole.

"—on the outside."

"What!" he exclaimed. If it had been a little brighter and Hyejin could see his face, she would have seen how awful his expression looked right now, so perhaps it was a good thing that they were enveloped in darkness.

Hyejin reached into her pocket and fished out her phone, and immediately the light from the screen brought some temporary illumination to the room. "No worries, I brought my phone along. We can ring Roxy and the others for help and they can help us open the door from the other side," she said optimistically. Swiping to her phonebook, she scrolled down to search for Roxy's number, but when she hit the call button, all she got was the telephone operator's voice on the other end.

"There's no signal in this place," Hyunwon said. "They jam the signal on set so that there won't be any unnecessary distractions from ringing phones during filming."

Looking at her phone screen in dismay, Hyejin realised that Hyunwon was right and there was no signal being received whatsoever. "What are we going to do then? Will there be anyone else coming this way?" she asked. Reaching out her hand she began banging against the metal door, shouting for someone to save them.

Now that his vision had somewhat acclimatised to the darkness, Hyunwon simply looked around the storeroom and found a suitable spot to sit himself down, leaning his back casually against the wall.

"What are you doing?" Hyejin looked at him in surprise.

"You do realise how big the warehouse is? Unless someone is coming to the storeroom for a specific purpose, no one inside is going to be able to hear you no matter how loudly you shout and bang," he said in a matter-of-fact tone. Yes, he was annoyed that she had gone and done something so stupid such as leaving the key on the outside and he was deeply regretting his decision to help her move the boxes, but the logical side of him knew that there was no point getting their knickers in a twist right now. "We just have to wait it out. Someone will come by sooner or later."

"Sooner or later? What if no one comes by until tomorrow morning? Or worse still, what if no one comes by in a few days?"

Hyejin shuddered at the thought of being stuck here for a couple of days. The storeroom was pretty much an enclosed metal box that had no windows whatsoever—they wouldn't even know whether it was day or night outside. Glancing down at her phone again, her stomach did a flip when she saw that she only had about a tenth of battery life left. Very soon, they would be stuck in the darkness and they wouldn't even know what time it was. Gripping her phone in her hand, she paced up and down the room, trying to think of how they were going to get out of here alive.

"Can you stop pacing up and down?" Hyunwon said irritably as he watched her shadow move back and forth in front of him.

"How can you be so calm at a time like this?" she exclaimed. "Do you know what's going to happen to us if no one finds us, ever? This isn't a TV drama or a movie where the hero and heroine get trapped in a room or an ice box and always get found just before they die of hypothermia! If no one finds us, we could die in here without food or water, or we might even suffocate to death!"

Rolling his eyes, Hyunwon replied, "Song Hyejin, we're not exactly trapped in some abandoned building or out in the wilderness, so can you please curb your overexcited imagination. Even if no one finds us here tonight, someone will most definitely let us out tomorrow because filming is still going on and they'll need to come by to pick up the equipment that we just carried over."

"Oh." Now she was feeling a bit dumb—not that there was a shortage of instances in which she felt dumb in front of Hyunwon.

Now that she was more or less convinced that they weren't going to die in here, Hyejin sat herself down beside Hyunwon, making sure to be at arm's length so that he didn't snap at her for encroaching on his personal space. She wrapped her arms around her knees, bringing them close to her chest so that she could keep out the cold. As the night continued to drag on, the temperature of the surrounding air was slowly beginning to fall and she had left her jacket back at the filming set.

Hyunwon glanced sideways, watching as she sat there quietly with her chin resting on top of her knees, trying to stop herself from shuddering.

Removing his blue jacket, he tossed it over to her and said, "Put that on."

"Oh, there's no need. I'm not that cold," she replied, a little surprised at the jacket being thrown her way.

"Like you said, this isn't a TV drama. No one's going to save you in the nick of time if you die of hypothermia, so don't create any more trouble for me and just put it on."

"It's not even cold enough to get hypothermia. Those TV characters only get hypothermia when they get locked in freezer rooms..." she mumbled, although she did as she was told and obediently wrapped the jacket around her shoulders.

The duo sat in silence for goodness knows how long (Hyejin's phone died within less than twenty minutes) until Hyejin decided to break the silence after some serious contemplation.

"Kara came to the salon today," she said. She couldn't see Hyunwon's reaction in the dark, but the temperature in the room seemed to drop a couple of degrees.

"Did she give you any trouble?" he asked.

Trouble, not quite; a bad mood for the rest of the day, yes.

"Well she didn't exactly come for a haircut," she replied vaguely. "I can tell that you really matter to her a lot. After all those years that you've been together, won't you give her a second chance?" She felt a little foolish right now, helping her opponent, but if there was one thing she knew it was that one could not love to order and there was no point fighting a one-sided battle if the person that Hyunwon cared about was still Kara.

Hyunwon let out a bitter laugh. "A second chance?" he scoffed. "I think it must be at least the seventh or eighth chance by now. I matter to her only as much as the name 'Kara Jung' does and definitely not more. Like you said, we've been together for so many years that I know her better than anyone—I just refused to see the truth. That I will never matter more to her than her career, and if she had to choose between the two, she wouldn't hesitate to throw me away."

Hyejin completely regretted raising the subject, because they were stuck in an enclosed space and she had no idea how to make an escape. Thankfully, Hyunwon continued talking, negating the need for her to respond.

"Kara and I went past the point of no return ages ago. She just doesn't want to see that because she's too used to me being there whenever she needs me. I made her into who she is today, so I have to take part of the blame for the way things turned out I guess."

A sudden thought struck Hyejin as she listened to what Hyunwon said. "Was Kara the reason why you became a stylist?" she asked.

Hyunwon went silent for a while, then he let out an audible sigh. "Seorin always wanted to be in the spotlight. When she was younger, she always jumped at every opportunity to be on the stage—that was where she shone the brightest," he said wistfully. "But who was going to notice a girl like her when there were so many others out there who were just as talented? She auditioned so many times, and each time she failed she would come home crying, thinking that she would never ever make it big. All I wanted to do was to help her achieve her dream, because it meant so much to her—but look where that brought us."

"That's why Kara has always attributed her success to you, isn't it?" Hyejin remarked, thinking about the radio and TV interviews that she had heard countless times before.

"I didn't enjoy styling to begin with, but I suppose you could say I had the talent. I helped Seorin do her styling for one of her auditions, and the rest was history." That single hairstyle not only got her noticed, it also catapulted her into stardom—and it brought Ryu knocking at his front door. He hadn't looked back since, at least not until now.

"Did you ever think of quitting the business? To do something that you like?"

"Perhaps it's time for me to seriously think about that," Hyunwon replied. His grandparents vineyards were still waiting back in his hometown, and now that he no longer had a reason to stay at the Cutting Edge, it might be a good time for a change in environment. "Maybe after the final assessment." He leaned back against the wall, resting his head against the palms of his hands as he contemplated over what he just said.

"Right."

Hyejin bit her lower lip, thankful that the darkness around them prevented him from seeing the disappointment in her face. The final assessment was only one week away and when that was over the training programme would come to a close. She wasn't sure whether or not she actually wanted that place in the Cutting Edge—after all, would the Cutting Edge still be the same if he wasn't there?

As time continued to drag on, Hyejin found herself slowly drifting off into slumber, exhausted after a full day's work (and some unnecessary overtime that had gotten her stuck in this situation). Wrapped comfortably in Hyunwon's jacket, her eyelids fluttered shut as dreams of a more ordinary yesteryear back at Gongja barbershop gradually took over.

In her dream, she was back in her father's antiquated shop, leaning against the counter as she watched him shave the sideburns off their neighbour Mr Kim, a man who pretty much only had sideburns left on his head. Mr Kim was almost in his late fifties now, and he had just one son that he was frequently trying to promote to all the single girls in the neighbourhood—herself included. As she stood there watching, she could hear the vague conversation taking place between her father and the other man, with the occasional mention of her name and his son's within the same sentence. It wasn't something that she typically paid much attention to, until the bell at the door jingled and someone walked right in.

"Son!" she heard Mr Kim call out as he peered in the direction of the door using the reflection in the mirror.

Turning her head towards the door, she was a little stunned to see Hyunwon standing there, not wearing his usual expensive threads but just the blue-and-white checkered shirt that she remembered him wearing when they had gone down to the village to do community work. Looking down, she realised to her horror that she was also in the same blue-and-white checkered shirt—it was like déjà vu.

Before she could even react, the doorbell jingled again and someone else walked in. This time, it was yet another familiar face, sporting a head of white with two lightning bolts carved just above the ear.

"Ares?" she called out in surprise.

The two men ignored her completely, turning to look at each other instead. Ares was the first one to open his mouth, though not before he reached out and grabbed Hyunwon by the collar as if he wanted to start a fight.

"Hyejin is mine, keep your hands off her you asshole!" Ares was shouting.

"Is that so? Doesn't look like there's your name written anywhere on her," Hyunwon replied, looking unperturbed by Ares's aggression. Typical.

It was rather odd to be standing there watching the two continue having a go at each other when the topic of their argument seemed to be her. Her father and Mr Kim had stopped what they were doing and had moved to stop the two younger men from coming to blows, but all of them were treating her as if she was invisible. It was almost like having an out of body experience.

Are they seriously fighting over me? she wondered to herself, feeling somewhat gleeful about it. She had yet to come to a conclusion when the doorbell jingled for the third time, and this time a beautiful young woman in hot pink heels and a miniskirt came sashaying into the barbershop. This has got to be a record for the barber shop, Hyejin thought to herself as she watched Kara Jung join in the fray. She rolled up her sleeves, thinking that this time it was her turn to pick a fight.

The moment Kara entered, the fighting and arguments stopped. Suddenly both Ares and Hyunwon seemed to calm down, turning to look at Kara instead.

"You know what, why are we even fighting over Song Hyejin? Who is she anyway?" Hyunwon said calmly. Taking hold of Kara's hand, he said, "Sorry Seorin, I must have been out of my mind. We should go and pick up your bridal gown from the studio."

"What bridal gown? What studio?" Hyejin shouted, but no one so much as turned to look her way. "I thought the engagement was going to be called off!" She ran over and tried to grab hold of Hyunwon's arm, but her hands simply passed right through him as if she were made of air. "Hyunwon, where are you going? Don't go with her. Please don't."

"You're right, we must have been crazy," Ares added. "I think I must have forgotten to take my medications today. You're lucky, Hyunwon. A girl like Kara is one in a million. Song Hyejin can't even begin to compare."

"What are you saying?" Hyejin moved over to Ares's side and tried waving her hand in front of his face, but she was still being treated like a ghost. "You're supposed to be my friend! I did so much to help you—I even let Hyunwon misunderstand our relationship just to protect your reputation. How could you turn your back on me now and say something like that?"

As she watched the crowd stream out of the shop one by one, the tears began to well up in her eyes and trickle down her cheeks. She watched as Hyunwon placed a protective arm across Kara's shoulders as they walked down the pavement further and further away from her.

"Come back!" she called out, but there was no sound coming out from her mouth. "Don't leave me behind. Come back..."

"Hyejin, Hyejin wake up," someone was calling out.

She felt someone's hand gently shaking her shoulder and in a split second her eyes flew open. The barber shop faded away, replaced instead by the darkness of the storeroom that she was actually in. Looking around in alarm, she found herself staring into Ares's eyes, his countenance illuminated by the moonlight that was streaming in through the open door.

"Ares? W-w-what are you doing here?" she mumbled, still a little disoriented from the dream. She quickly wiped away the dampness from her cheeks, embarrassed that she had been crying in her sleep. Within the next few seconds, everything came flooding back to her—and she caught sight of Hyunwon standing a couple of steps behind Ares, his expression wooden as he watched the two of them. Near the door, Roxy and a couple of other production staff were standing there looking rather worried.

"I kept ringing you but you never picked up, so I got worried. Yeseul told me you had come down to the filming set so I thought I'd come over and see if you were here, that's when they realised that the two of you had gone missing for a long while," Ares replied. "Are you alright? There's no heating in the storeroom—you must have been freezing." Removing Hyunwon's jacket from Hyejin's shoulders, he quickly put his own thicker jacket across her shoulders, adjusting it carefully to make sure it was covering her well enough.

Looking at the blue jacket that had been tossed callously onto the ground, Hyejin couldn't help but steal a glance in Hyunwon's direction.

He walked over wordlessly and picked up his jacket, before turning to head for the open door. "The two of you can take your romance somewhere else if you don't mind," he said coldly. "It's already close to four in the morning and work starts again in a few hours." With that, he brushed past the others and strode right out of the storeroom without even bothering to look back.

What was the point of looking back? Hyejin already had Ares with her anyway, so there was no purpose in playing the third wheel. As he got into his car, Hyunwon threw his jacket onto the passenger seat, glaring at it for a good couple of seconds before he finally stuck the key into the ignition.

Leaning back in the driver's seat, he felt a sense of indignation rise up his throat as he thought about what had happened. "So much for saying that you like me," he scoffed, thinking about what Hyejin had said in her drunken state back when they were in Hong Kong. "I suppose you were either drunk out of your mind or you just figured that you like Ares a whole lot more."

But if that was true, then why was it that the name he had heard her call out in her sleep was not Ares's, but his?

While Hyejin had dozed off, he had remained perfectly awake all the time, and half an hour into their locked-up state he heard her start to talk in her sleep. It was mostly unintelligible speech, but then all of a sudden he heard her call his name out loud—that was just before the tears started streaming down her face. He had never been one to be able to handle crying women well (that was more of Remington's territory), but he had instinctively reached over and wrapped his arms around her, trying to calm her down while she slept. With her head resting on his shoulder, he was absolutely certain that it wasn't just him imagining things—she was definitely calling out his name.

As he sat in his car pondering over all of this, he caught sight of Ares leading Hyejin towards the car park with his eyesore of a black coat still hanging off her shoulders.

At that moment, he reached an epiphany.

Since goodness knows when, Kara's place in his heart had slowly but surely been replaced by someone else—the only girl who had ever dared slap him in the face. It wasn't just because she was his apprentice, nor because he wanted to use her to get Kara out of his hair, but because he had genuinely developed some inexplicable feelings for this girl, so much so that it made him mad just to see her walking with some other guy's coat round her shoulders.

Most importantly, if he didn't do anything about it soon, then there was a chance he might actually lose her for good.

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