"Hyejin, are you feeling alright?" Ares asked as he pulled the car to a stop in front of Hyejin's block.

Sitting quietly in the passenger seat, Hyejin nodded her head. "I'm fine. Thanks for sending me home, and sorry for causing you all this trouble." She felt bad that Ares had to come all the way down to the filming set just because she hadn't been picking up her phone, and she felt even worse that she hadn't said a single word to him throughout the entire journey because her mind was too preoccupied with the image of Hyunwon turning his back on her and leaving the storeroom without a single word.

Ares leaned over and suddenly enveloped her in his arms, and she immediately went stiff as a board.

"Do you know how worried I was when I couldn't contact you?" he murmured, burying his face against her shoulder. "What would I do if something happened to you?"

"Ares..." Hyejin tried to push him away gently, but he was holding on far too tightly and her back was already up against the car door. "I'm a grown-up and perfectly capable of looking after myself. There's really no need to overreact."

Ares still didn't let go and there was nothing she could do but sit there and pray that her father didn't walk out from the block now. Although he seemed to like Ares well enough as the chubby kid from the past, she reckoned that affection didn't yet extend to Ares putting his hands on his only daughter.

I need to get the message through to him somehow, she thought to herself. This "charade" was not sustainable, because Ares's expectations were evolving into a new beast altogether and she wasn't sure if she was ready to meet those expectations. Still, she knew that she needed to tread carefully because the boy was like a ticking time bomb. The next thing she wanted was for him to sink into depression once more when his condition was only starting to improve—she wasn't ready to take responsibility for that.

Pushing him away slightly more forcefully now, she managed to squeeze some distance between them.

"Ares, I'm really grateful to have a friend that cares enough to come looking for me when I'm uncontactable, but at the same time I also need some personal space. There are times when I'm busy with something and I can't pick up the phone or reply your texts immediately—like the final assessment is just around the corner and I need to concentrate on it?"

"You find me suffocating, don't you?" Ares lowered his head, looking despondent.

"No," she fibbed, "I think you're a great person, but just because you hang around Gina most of the time doesn't mean you should become more and more like her, you know?" A controlling, possessive, and most definitely suffocating person. "It's late, maybe we should talk about this another time. I'll come round to your apartment tomorrow evening after work to do the cleaning and laundry, alright?"

She hadn't forgotten that she still owed a debt for the barber shop and she needed the cleaning job so that she could continue paying the installments.

Hearing that he would get to see her again tomorrow, Ares's face lit up like a child's would when he saw candy. Nodding his head, he reached over and opened the car door for her, saying, "Tomorrow. I have a photoshoot in the morning but it should be over by four. We can have dinner together!"

Hyejin took a deep breath and squeezed out a smile, although it was really more of a grimace.

When she was back in the safe confines of her own room, she collapsed face down onto her bed, exhausted from the day's events (even though she already had a long nap in the storeroom). Peeking out sideways, she counted the number of boxes on her wall calendar till the day of the final assessment.

Exactly seven days left.

This time next week she would find out whether or not she had what it took to become a professional stylist, though she wasn't going to get her hopes up.

"Doesn't matter, Song Hyejin. What's the worst that could happen?" Life would just go back to the way it was, before her brother sold her away to Medusa in exchange for a whole lot of money that she would probably never get to see for the rest of her life. Back to Gongja barber shop and back to the way she had lived before Ares and Hyunwon had appeared.

"You never wanted to join the Cutting Edge in the first place," she mumbled into the pillow, though she could already sense the tears soaking through her yellow pillowcase.

Seven more days. Just seven.

#

Hyejin was on her way down to Ares's apartment when her phone began vibrating in her pocket. Fumbling to get it out without elbowing the person sitting next to her on the bus, she stared at the screen in surprise when she saw it flashing with Hyunwon's name. He didn't usually phone her—maybe once ever just to tell her off for forgetting to arrange the dyes in ascending order in the cupboard—so this was a bit unexpected.

Wondering what she had done wrong this time, she swiped at the answer button.

"Where are you?"

"Uhh on the bus?"

"Are you heading home?"

"No?"

Hyunwon had been out of the salon for another day at the filming set, so she hadn't seen him at all for the entire day. It wasn't a bad thing, because after last night's incident she was still a little embarrassed at having gotten her mentor locked in together with her. Also, Hyunwon hadn't looked like a happy camper when he left the storeroom, which could only lead her to conclude that he was still bearing a grudge about being locked in.

"Where are you going?"

Hyejin bit her lower lip, wondering if she should come clean with the truth. Somehow telling Hyunwon that she was heading to Ares's house made her uncomfortable, even though she knew that the entire world thought that she was dating Ares and there was thus no good reason for her to need to spin a tale. Every time this "relationship with Ares" thing surfaced in front of Hyunwon, it made her want to dig a hole and stick her head in it like an ostrich.

She decided to be honest. "I'm on the way to Ares's apartment."

"What?"

There was an awkward pause at the other end of the line and Hyejin pressed her phone tightly to her ear waiting for Hyunwon to say something more.

"Come to the filming set right now."

"What? Are you being serious?" Glancing down at her watch, she noted that it was five minutes to seven. She had just told Ares half an hour ago that she would be there by seven and by the looks of traffic on the roads today she was already going to be running late. "I've already knocked off work and isn't there a regulation that says we shouldn't be made to work overtime two nights in a row?"

After she said her piece, she could almost sense the smoke issuing from Hyunwon's ears on his end. There was yet another awkward pause before he spoke again, saying, "Fine. What's Ares's address?"

"16 Yeoksam-ro," she replied before she managed to process what Hyunwon was asking for. "Wait a minute, why are you asking me for Ares's address, are you—"

Click.

The line went dead, leaving just the dial tone buzzing in her ear and the question marks buzzing in her mind. That was by far one of the strangest phone conversations she had had in a long while, because she couldn't make head nor tail of the reason why Hyunwon had rung her up in the first place. He hadn't scolded her about anything, which was a good thing, but if he wanted her to work overtime and bring stuff down to the filming set again then why did he make it sound as if he was going to come down to Ares's place to look for her? And if he wasn't intending to come down to Ares's then why did he even need the address?

While trying to make sense of Hyunwon's cryptic phone call, she almost missed her stop. Grabbing all her belongings, she dashed towards the closing doors and hit the bell once more, heaving a sigh of relief that the driver hadn't just ignored her and driven off.

The first thing she did when she got off the bus in front of Ares's apartment block was to look around the vicinity, as if she was expecting Hyunwon to spring out from nowhere.

"Even if he does come down, it'll take him at least forty-five minutes from the filming set," she mumbled. Although she was mostly not convinced that he was actually coming here—what could he possibly want to see her about that couldn't wait till tomorrow morning? It was either she was in real big trouble or she was in ridiculously big trouble.

Shrugging off the uncertainty, Hyejin headed into the block and up the lift.

"Sorry I'm late," she said when Ares opened the door, though he was wearing a broad smile on his face and hardly looked upset with her tardiness. "I'll get to work right away."

"The cleaning can wait," Ares replied cheerily. "It's not like my house needs very much cleaning. Why don't we have dinner first?"

He was right, because his apartment was always spick and span and he didn't own enough useless collectibles that would have been collecting dust on shelves. Still, Hyejin felt bad for getting paid for not doing very much work, so each time she came she literally scrubbed the entire house from head to toe. The minute she stepped in she already caught a whiff of the aroma of roast chicken coming from the kitchen.

Turning towards Ares in surprise, she asked, "Did you cook?"

He nodded his head, beaming proudly. Placing his hands on both her shoulders, he steered her in the direction of the kitchen, pointing at the chicken that was sitting in the oven. "I made roast chicken with a recipe I found online!" he declared. "There's also mushroom soup, but that's just out of a can because real mushroom soup is truly beyond me. I think the chicken turned out pretty well though. Why don't you take a seat? Dinner will be served soon!"

There wasn't just a roast chicken, there was also an elegantly set-up dining table with wine glasses and candlelight.

Hyejin gulped, suddenly regretting not rejecting Ares's dinner offer the night before. Watching him fuss over the oven and the chicken, she couldn't help but feel a little touched at the amount of effort he was putting in, considering he had just rushed home from a photoshoot and this was really not how a top star should be expected to behave, and that made her feel even more guilty towards him than she had already been.

"Ares, there's really no need for all this. I mean, just ordering takeaway would have been good enough, I'm not really fussed about food and all..."

"It'll just be another ten more minutes!" Ares hollered from the kitchen.

Sighing, Hyejin set her bag down on the sofa and stared miserably at the candlelit dining table, not daring to go anywhere near it. She was just about to break out the cleaning equipment so that she could get started (and get out of here as soon as possible) when her phone began vibrating once more.

"Hello?" she said, holding her breath as she waited for the person to speak on the other end of the line.

"Come down now. I'm downstairs."

"Are you kidding?" she exclaimed, rushing over to the window to check for herself. Something was seriously out of the ordinary today for Hyunwon to be calling her not once but twice, and then showing up at the base of Ares's apartment block. Peering out of the window, her jaw dropped to the ground when she saw Hyunwon's car parked by the roadside. There was no mistaking it. "What the hell did you come here for?"

"Is Ares there?"

"Umm yes. He's in the kitchen."

She almost thought she heard a derisive snort through the receiver, before Hyunwon's voice appeared once more, saying, "Just come downstairs. Or else I'll have to come up and get you and I don't think you'd want that." And then he hung up once more.

"Why does he always do that!" she ranted at her phone. She had always known that Hyunwon was as bossy as bossy could get, but this was pushing it a little too far. Glancing towards the kitchen, she wondered how Ares would react if he knew that Hyunwon was waiting downstairs.

Backing slowly towards the door, she reached for the handle and called out, "I'm just going to step out to make a phone call. I'll be back in a bit!" Fingers crossed behind her back for her little lie, she shot out through the door and ran towards the lift, hoping that Ares wouldn't follow behind. Just as the lift doors closed, she caught sight of Ares poking his head out through the front door, looking a little confused.

By the time she reached the ground floor, Hyunwon had already gotten out of his car and was pacing up and down at the entrance of the block. When he saw her approaching, everything that he had spent the entire night and day planning to say suddenly vanished from his mind. Whatever gave him the courage to come all the way here to Ares's apartment had fled without a trace and he just found himself standing tongue-tied in front of her.

"So? Didn't you come all the way here because you had something to say?" Hyejin asked after a minute or so of waiting for him to say something. "Did I do something wrong?"

"No," he frowned. Did he only ring her or look for her when she did something wrong? He searched his memory bank, and realised that she was mostly right.

"Then?"

"Uhh I came here because..." What the freaking hell is wrong with you Kang Hyunwon? He hadn't felt this nervous in a long, long time. Right now he actually thought that his stomach was churning enough for him to throw up, and that would be downright embarassing. When he first got together with Seorin, they had already been best friends for the longest time so things sort of just developed naturally—this time it was completely different. He suddenly felt bad for laughing at those male leads in the dramas Remington liked to watch whenever they were facing an inner struggle before a dramatic confession.

Hyejin blinked, waiting for him to continue. This was quite unlike the Hyunwon she knew, which made her all the more uncertain about what he was here for. Was he actually stammering now?

"Hyejin, what's going on here?" Ares's voice broke the awkwardness of the moment, emerging from the entrance of the building. "Hyunwon?" he said with a frown. "What are you doing here?"

"I asked him the same thing," Hyejin muttered under her breath.

"None of your business," Hyunwon replied, bristling with irritation at the new arrival. He should have anticipated this before deciding to come straight over to Ares's, but his brain was clearly not functioning properly today. "I need to speak to Hyejin. Alone."

"Anything you say to her you can say to me," Ares replied, placing a possessive arm over Hyejin's shoulders.

Hyejin looked from Ares to Hyunwon and Hyunwon to Ares, thinking that this moment couldn't get any more awkward. Trying to inch away from Ares because the physical contact was making her antsy, she said, "Ares why don't you go back up first? I'll just talk to Hyunwon for a while and then I'll come back up. He probably has something important to say."

"Is that so?" Ares arched an eyebrow, pulling her back towards him. "What exactly is it that's so important? She's already off work, so whatever it is can probably wait till tomorrow when you're back at the salon."

Hyunwon scowled. Grabbing Hyejin by the wrist, he tried to drag her away from Ares, saying, "Just come with me now. I'm not saying anything with this... this pop star hanging around." He was completely regretting his own decision right now, because trying to confess to someone in front of her boyfriend was just a horrible idea. When he saw Ares put his arm round Hyejin he suddenly lost a good proportion of the confidence he had come here with.

The harder Hyunwon tried to pull her away, the tighter Ares held on to her, and the only one suffering through it all was none other than the girl at the centre of their tug-of-war. While the boys continued arguing, she kept looking around to make sure they weren't attracting any unnecessary attention because they were out in the open and there was a fairly high chance that any of them could get recognised considering how much face time they had received in the tabloids recently.

Exasperated, she broke free from both of them and shouted, "Stop it! Both of you!" They were two grown men acting like a bunch of kids. Turning to Hyunwon, she said, "Whatever it is you want to talk to me about, can this just wait until tomorrow?" If he continued insisting on speaking now, she wasn't sure if Ares wouldn't just throw a punch into his face, judging from how irate the latter looked right now. She would be raging too if someone came along and spoilt her roast chicken candlelight dinner by insisting on dragging her dinner partner away.

Hyejin turned around and pushed Ares back towards the block, hoping that things would end there and then. A big part of her was still deadly curious at what Hyunwon wanted to say but he obviously didn't plan on saying anything in front of Ares and Ares wasn't planning on leaving them alone at any point.

She had barely taken three steps when someone took hold of her arm and spun her round. The next thing she knew, there was a sensation of warmth against her own lips, and it took her a good couple of seconds before her mind could process what was happening.

His eyelashes are so... long.

That was pretty much the only thing running through her mind as she stared in shock at the man whose hands were cradling her face and whose lips were pressed firmly against hers.

#