Chapter 23
Seoul, Korea
Convenience Store
Kita eyed the young woman sitting across from him at the convenience store she dragged him to. She made him change before they left into something less professional, in her opinion, then she came out of her room in a disguise. He wasn’t sure why. They weren’t leaving the hotel, so Kita didn’t know what the problem was or why the theatrics were needed.
But the moment they were on the main floor where the late hours restaurant was, Rain headed to the exit instead and he followed out of curiosity.
They could have taken a car, but Rain said ten-blocks wasn’t that far and it was a lovely night for a walk. Kita told her to stop hitting on him otherwise he’d file an official grievance with her superiors. She started to apologize then blushed when a small smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.
With the change of clothing and location, Kita lost some of the stick that was up his butt, it seemed, Rain had commented more than once on their walk.
The dossier Lula put together contained pictures of Myo Mi-Sun from promotional events, blogs, social media sightings, gossip columns and tabloids, and modeling jobs. She was always done up in them; designer clothing, professional makeup, hair styled and down, and a smile was seemingly a permanent on her face.
But there were no pictures of Seon Rain.
Now that she was without makeup or her trendy clothes, she looked like an entirely different person. She had her hair pulled back into a sloppy ponytail that stuck out the back of her ball cap, oversized glasses on that hid most of her face, baggy clothes, and sneakers. Rain looked like your average, run of the mill, young South Korean teen. But in Kita’s opinion, she looked better in her natural state then she did when all dressed up.
And that would be a problem.
“You’re staring,” Rain said, talking with her mouth full of sausage from the hot bar in her hand.
Kita nodded. “This is not where I expected you to go for dinner,” he admitted.
“So you’ve said a few times,” she pointed out.
“The late night restaurant at the hotel is rather good,” he informed her, again. “They make a decent kaiseki ryori.”
“Maybe next time,” Rain offered.
“Next time,” he agreed. “Why here? You seem ridiculously at home in a convenience store, more so than at swanky hotel. Why is that?”
“When I was younger, and we weren’t filming, I worked at a convenience store in Hyoja-Dong at night for extra money. Child actors don’t get paid nearly enough, especially compared to their adult counterparts, so it was hard. Uncle worked too hard to keep a roof over our heads. His wife left him a month or two after I came to live with them, abandoning them. Uncle worked himself nearly to death more than once… You know what the positive is to working at a convenience store?” she asked with a smile, changing the subject.
Kita shook his head; he hadn’t a clue what she was talking about or where the conversation was going, but he’d humor her.
“No. Tell me,” he said.
“When you work at the store you can eat the recently expired food for free!” she beamed, a smile filling her face. “If I hadn’t biked to work and home, I would have gotten fat during that time.”
Kita gave her a look. “That is the most disturbing thing I have ever heard,” he informed her.
Rain made a mocking face before shoving the rest of the hot bar in her mouth and chewed. “Aren’t you hungry?”
“Not for this.”
“You are such a snob,” she scolded, getting to her feet and went over to the ramyun and read the label on each before selecting four and started prepping them.
Kita watched her on the other side of the store, trying to figure out who this strange young woman was because it wasn’t the same person that had been assaulting him and throwing herself at him all day. She was humming under her breath as she mixed seasoning and sauce packets in each bowl of noodles. She absently swayed with the song she was humming, and there was something almost endearing about it.
The difference between Myo Mi-Sun and Seon Rain was like night and day, and Kita wasn’t sure what to make of it. Lula hadn’t prepared him for this, and in his opinion it was a significant development that would complicate things.
A complication that would be solely be one-sided.
His side.
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