Turquoise Summer ✓

Chapter 1

Airports must be one of the places on earth where all kinds of emotions can be found. A budding romance, a teary farewell, an exciting trip, a yearning to meet their loved ones, moving to a new city to start fresh, running away, and many more countless emotions. And so it makes perfect sense for our protagonists to meet at the airport. Don't you think so?

Luna isn't someone you can describe in a few words. Even though she doesn't quite understand herself. She has shades and tints of everything good and evil. Like any other human, she too dreamt of living a luxurious life with endless money. When someone asked where she was from, she had the longest and strangest answer. She was Indian by birth but adopted by a Canadian-American couple and was brought up and schooled in Australia. She did her Bachelors and Masters in London.

With such a complicated composition, she loved learning about other cultures and always moved around from country to country in search of her dream job. She became an architect and was one of the most sought-after in designing luxurious homes, especially by celebrities. Her diverse portfolio was a long list of big names from around the globe except for the continent of her birth; Asia. She wasn't sure if it was just aversion towards an entire continent because one of its countries abandoned her or if it was just destiny that she never found an opportunity there.

When she got an opportunity to join one of the firms in Seoul, South Korea, she decided to take it up to break her streak. And there she is, our 28-year-old dreamer waiting at the airport because her flight from New York to Seoul decided to take a detour and cause a delay of 10 hours.

Maybe I should've brought along a book. Not that I have completely read a book in the past 10 years. But still, it was worth a shot, she thought. Luna almost never left her office. She built herself a comfortable cocoon within the office she went to work at and was often overworked. This habit too has a story behind its formation.

It was during her final year of Architecture when she fell in love with the heartthrob of her batch. Let's just say that they didn't end up together and Luna decided to devote her life to work and fictional characters. Fictional characters can't break your heart. You can't beat her logic.

10 hours of doing the bare minimum didn't excite our workaholic. So she did what she did in every random public place. Took out her sketchbook and measuring tape and started detailing the business lounge. It definitely caught the eye of the security and she could have ended up in trouble like numerous times previously. But the security empathized with her and let her sketch and asked her to put away the tape.

That's when her eye caught a group of people shushing their way into a more private part of the lounge. We all know who it could be when something of this sort happens. It has to be a public figure or a celebrity. Stumbling upon celebrities is another great thing about airports. She squinted her eyes and tried hard to figure out who it was. The guy was wearing a hat and definitely looked Asian. After about 5 minutes, the bodyguards settled down and the guy who looked more relaxed took off his hat.

She looked hard. She had definitely seen him somewhere but couldn't recollect where. And then it clicked. He was one of the characters from a K-drama she had watched. His character was among her top 50 favorite ones. Don't ask me why she had such a huge list of favorites. Maybe the heartbreak did more damage than we thought.

She wasn't the type who would want to seem like a desperate fan but she didn't mind chatting up with a celebrity. She loved leaving an impression on people and she spent a hard time figuring out how she could do it. She imagined a background score too. She couldn't even pass a flower seller without doing something to impress the seller. She had the highest confidence levels that probably would have existed.

She observed him and how he behaved when a fan or two popped up for a selfie or autograph. If not for an architect, Luna would have most definitely become a psychologist or behavioral analyst. She had a new muse to sketch and nine hours passed by like minutes. It was finally time to make her final move to impress him. She signed over the dozen sketches she had made and headed over to meet him.

"I couldn't help but notice how great of a muse you were. Thank you for your time. Here are some of my signed works for you." Our muse looked more than shocked because he had never been in a situation like this. It was he who usually gave away signed cards.

"You must have a tight schedule, well, thanks again." She turned to leave only to be stopped by the muse's words.

"Excuse me. Do you ..." She cut him off and went out to say goodbye. "I know right? I'm quite good at sketching even though I haven't gone to any classes. And yeah you were quite good in the drama "Witch's romance" and " Scarlet Summer", Lee Gon Du-shi. I enjoyed your acting. Keep up the good work. Ok then. Bye, Lee Gon Du-shi."

She walked away in her imaginary background music leaving the muse in shock. He smiled to himself when he snapped out of it. She did leave quite an impression.