The Cutting Edge

037

"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.