The studio looks different today.
Not in the obvious ways. The lights still glare, the cables still snake over the floor, the craft table still smells like burnt coffee and cheap pastries. The same PA is doing laps with a headset and a slightly haunted expression.
It is me that feels different.
Lighter… but also like I am walking around holding a very full glass of water, trying not to spill.
"Good morning, Writer Yoon."
I do not even have to look up to know it is him.
I look up anyway.
Jingyi stands a few steps away, already in wardrobe pants and a simple T-shirt, hair styled into that artfully messy shape that makes half the crew sigh. There is a careful softness in his eyes, like he is approaching a skittish cat.
"Morning," I say.
Our gazes meet.
Yesterday, there was a wall. Today, there is something gentler… a curtain, maybe. Thin. Easy to move if either of us tries.
"You ate?" he asks.
"Some," I lie. "You?"
He lifts a paper cup.
"Barley tea," he says. "Do you want one?"
"I have matcha," I say, holding up my own cup.
He studies it.
"You actually drank it today?"
I glance down. The cup is half empty.
I did not even notice.
"A little," I say.
His mouth curves, not quite a smile, but close.
"Good," he says quietly.
He does not step closer, but he does not step away either. The distance between us feels deliberate, but not cold.
We are both trying.
It is terrifying and warm at the same time.
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By late afternoon, everyone is tired and slightly glossy with stress.
The director claps his hands in front of the monitor.
"Tomorrow's confrontation scene is not landing," he announces. "We need a rewrite. Tonight."
The word tonight lands like a rock in my stomach.
He turns to me.
"Writer Yoon, can you stay and work the dialogue."
"Of course," I say. "I will tighten the emotional beats."
He nods, then looks over my shoulder.
"And Jingyi… I want you to rehearse the new lines as soon as she has them. You stay too."
Because why not? Of course, fate would schedule a late night in a small room with the man who said I worry him more than he is allowed to.
I sip my matcha. It has gone lukewarm.
The universe has a sense of humor.
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The rehearsal room they give us looks smaller at night.
Half the overhead lights are off, leaving the edges of the room in shadows. One long table. Two chairs. A whiteboard with someone's abandoned doodle in the corner. A single bottle of water sweating on the table.
I drop my bag onto a chair, pull out my laptop and script, and sit. Habit makes me pick the chair at the end of the table, angled toward the door.
Habit makes him pull out the chair beside me, not across.
We end up side by side, elbows almost sharing the same space.
He smells like clean laundry and his expensive, citrusy cologne.
Focus, Yoon Su-bin.
I flip to the scene we are rewriting. It is the one where the female lead finally calls out the male lead for pretending he does not care. Irony, my old friend.
"Is the director thinking more grounded or more dramatic?" I ask.
"More grounded," he says. "He wants it to feel like… like what actually happens when people who are scared finally talk."
My fingers hover over the keyboard.
I remember his voice yesterday.
I am not angry.
I just… I worry about you more than I am allowed to.
I swallow.
"Okay," I say quietly. "Grounded it is."
For a while, we work in a comfortable kind of silence.
I type, delete, type again. He reads over my shoulder without commenting, breathing steadily and close. Every so often, he leans in to point at a line.
"Here," he says at one point. "He would hesitate. Not because he does not know what he feels, but because he is afraid she will run."
"That is annoying," I mutter.
He gives a soft laugh.
"Realistic," he says.
"…Unfortunately."
I adjust the line.
The director sends a message through the assistant outside. We send back a draft. More notes. More tweaks.
Time passes strangely in rewrites. Twenty minutes feels like two, then suddenly it is an hour later, and the room has settled into a thick, late night quiet.
I reach for my aqua pen out of habit.
It slips from my fingers and rolls toward the edge of the table.
Before I can grab it, he moves.
His hand closes around it neatly.
Typical.
He does not hand it back right away.
Instead, he turns it between his fingers, watching the tiny blue rhinestones catch the dim light.
"This pen," he says softly, "feels like it has its own story."
"It does," I say. "She is very attached to it."
"She," he repeats, amused.
"SianSian bought it," I say, shrugging.
His eyes lift to mine.
"Ah," he says. "So it truly belonged to SianSian first."
Heat brushes my cheeks.
"I can't believe you still call me that," I mutter.
"I can't believe you thought I would forget," he replies.
My mouth opens, then closes again.
He looks back down at the pen.
"You said once," he continues, "that your best friend gave you that nickname in China."
I blink.
"I did," I say. "I did tell you that."
"Mm," he says. "You said she told you SianSian sounded like someone who was bright and brave. Someone who believed the world wanted her."
The words echo inside me like a memory with the volume turned up.
I had forgotten I said it like that.
He did not.
"You remember… all of that," I say.
He shrugs one shoulder, eyes still on the pen.
"I remember everything you say," he replies. "Especially the things you say like they do not matter."
My heart does a slow, ridiculous flip.
"I was… different then," I say. "In China. Before."
"Before Hyun-woo," he says quietly.
The name hangs between us like smoke.
I take a breath.
"Yes," I answer. "Before him. Before I learned how small I am allowed to be."
He looks at me, really looks, and there is something like pain in his gaze.
"You are not small," he says. "You just learned how to hide."
My throat tightens.
To deflect, I nod at the pen in his hand.
"You had a China life too," I say. "Your rooftops. Your quiet."
That makes him still.
He sets the pen down carefully between us, then leans back slightly in his chair.
"When I told you about rooftops," he says slowly, "I didn't tell you why I needed them."
I turn to face him.
"I didn't ask," I say. "I didn't want to push."
"You're not pushing," he says.
He looks down at his hands for a long moment.
Then he speaks.
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"My family is from the North," he says.
The words are matter of fact, but I feel the weight behind them, heavy as stone.
"We defected when I was young," he continues. "Too young to really understand, old enough to remember the fear."
He rubs his thumb along the seam of his jeans.
"My parents didn't explain much. Just… one night we packed. One night, we moved. There were more strangers' houses, more whispers, more rules about never talking too loudly. Then we were in China, and everyone pretended we were just… normal immigrants."
He gives a small, humorless smile.
"Except nothing about it felt normal."
I sit very still.
The room feels smaller. Closer.
"China was supposed to be safe," he says. "But it was… half safety, half hiding. We moved often. My parents worked too much. We learned to make ourselves invisible, so no one would ask questions."
He glances at me.
"Do you know what it is like to grow up learning how to disappear?" he asks quietly.
The question lands in my chest with a thud.
"Yes," I say, before I can stop myself.
We share a look that says too much.
He nods once.
"That is why I found rooftops," he says. "On the ground, people were loud. They argued. Slammed doors. Asked questions. On the roof… it was just air. Just sky. No one bothered a quiet boy if he stayed out of the way."
I imagine a younger version of him, smaller, sitting cross-legged on a rooftop with his chin resting in his hands, listening to the city rather than the people, letting the noise turn into something far away.
My chest aches.
"I am sorry," I say softly.
He shrugs. It is a small, fragile movement.
"It is just what it was," he says. "Other people had worse. My parents did what they could. They got us out. We survived."
He says it like survival is both gratitude and burden.
"They must have been very brave," I say.
He smiles faintly.
"They were," he says. "They still are."
Silence settles again.
Not uncomfortable. Just full.
I pick up the pen and roll it between my fingers.
"Is that… when you became Liu Jingyi," I ask. "In China."
He chuckles under his breath.
"Not exactly," he says.
He rests his forearms on the table, leaning in a little.
"Park Jung-hoo," he says. "That is the name I was born with."
I blink.
"That sounds very… normal," I say.
"Exactly," he replies. "Which is why my mother hated it."
A small laugh escapes me. The tension loosens just a little.
"She wanted something prettier," he says. "Something that fit in. Something… hopeful. So when we were in China, she chose a Chinese name for me."
He sighs, eyes tipping up to the ceiling.
"Jingyi," he says. "She thought it was perfect."
"It is," I say automatically. "It suits you."
He gives me a look.
"It is a popular girl's name," he says flatly.
I choke.
"What?"
"A very popular girl's name," he repeats. "Sweet. Pretty. Soft. Think… the kind of name you give a girl in a school drama who always carries flowers."
I press a hand over my mouth.
"Are you serious?" I manage between my fingers.
"Oh yes," he says. "Middle school boys in China are very creative when they realize your name matches half the girls in their class."
A wheeze of laughter escapes me before I can stop it.
He narrows his eyes in mock offense.
"You are not supposed to enjoy this," he says.
"I am absolutely supposed to enjoy this," I say. "Please, go on. Tell me everything."
He groans softly, but I can tell he is not really upset.
"They called me the wrong pronouns on purpose," he says. "Asked if I was lost on the way to the girls' bathroom. Asked if my parents wanted a daughter and settled."
"That's awful," I say.
"It was middle school," he says. "Of course it was awful."
I look at him, imagining him with a too pretty name and too much fear, learning how to laugh things off so they would sting less.
"But you kept it," I say. "You didn't change it."
His expression softens in a way I have never seen before.
"No," he agrees. "I didn't."
"Why," I ask. "If it was that bad, why keep it."
He looks at the table for a moment, then up at me.
"Because my mother chose it with love," he says simply. "She liked the way it sounded. She said it sounded like… hope. Like a new start. She wanted me to have that."
He breathes in carefully.
"I did not want to tell her she was wrong," he says. "So I kept it. Even when I came here. Even when the company said it was not… 'strong enough'."
Something in my ribcage twists and tightens.
"You didn't want to hurt her," I say.
He nods.
"She lost everything to give us a chance," he says. "If she wanted me to be Jingyi… then I would be Jingyi. Even if other people thought it was strange."
I stare at him.
At the man who jokes and charms and makes everyone else feel at ease, who once sat alone on rooftops so no one would yell at him, who kept a name that brought him trouble because it made his mother happy.
"Your mother was right," I say quietly.
He tilts his head.
"About what?" he asks.
"It does sound like hope," I say. "Especially now."
For a moment, he doesn't answer.
His eyes search mine in the dim light, and something unspoken passes between us.
My fingers move before my brain catches up.
I reach out and rest my hand lightly on his forearm.
His muscles go still under my touch.
Not tense. More like… surprised.
"You know," I add, voice softer, "I like Park Jung-hoo too. Very serious. Very proper. Sounds like someone who pays their bills on time."
He huffs a laugh.
"Not exactly idol material," he says.
"No," I agree. "But I can see it. The boy who hid on rooftops with a serious name and a soft heart."
His gaze drops to where my fingers rest against his sleeve.
He swallows.
"I do not tell people these things," he says quietly.
I realize my heartbeat is in my throat.
"About China," he continues. "The North. My name. Or… how it felt."
I whisper, "Why are you telling me?"
He looks up.
Whatever is in his eyes makes my stomach dip like I am on a roller coaster.
"Because it is you," he says.
The words are simple. Plain.
They may as well have been a poem.
"I do not know how to be… half honest with you," he adds. "So it is easier to be… fully honest. Or not speak at all."
My hand curls lightly into his sleeve.
"I am glad you chose the first one," I say.
"Me too," he replies.
We sit there like that for a few seconds, my hand on his arm, his history laid out between us like pages on a table.
The room hums with the neon light from the hallway.
I feel something in my chest unclench.
He trusts me. Not with gossip. Not with secrets he can turn into a performance later. With the quiet, ugly, tender parts he has never shown anyone.
And I'm not sure what to do with how much that means.
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The assistant knocks timidly on the door an hour later to collect the updated pages for the director.
By then, the scene is finished, notes smoothed, lines tightened. We have gone back to work mode, but the intimacy lingers around the edges of every word.
When she leaves, we pack up slowly.
He slings his bag over his shoulder.
I tuck my aqua pen carefully into the spine of my script.
We step out into the hallway together.
It is almost empty now, just the low buzz of the vending machine and the distant clatter of someone locking up.
Our footsteps echo in the quiet.
For once, they fall in perfect time.
At the main exit, we pause.
The night outside the glass doors is cool and dark. Streetlights smear gold across the pavement.
He turns to me first.
"Thank you," he says.
"For what?" I ask.
"For listening," he replies. "For not… looking away."
My throat tightens again.
"Thank you," I say. "For telling me."
Silence stretches, but it is not awkward. Just full.
He lifts his hand a little, as if to touch my shoulder, the way he did when his voice broke yesterday. The gesture hovers in the air between us, almost there.
He lets it fall back to his side.
He doesn't need to touch me for me to feel it.
"Goodnight… Su-bin," he says, voice low and warm.
I hold his gaze.
"Goodnight, Jung-hoo," I say.
His breath catches so softly I almost miss it.
A slow smile spreads over his face. Real. Unguarded.
He bows his head, just a little.
We push through the doors together into the cool night air.
We do not touch.
We do not need to.
Something has shifted anyway.
Hope, in any name, feels a little closer.