Last Love

A reverberating crack of thunder wakes her. Son Ye-jin is disoriented for a few moments, blinking the darkness into silhouettes of familiarity until everything falls into place. She's in her bedroom in Seoul. It's week three of the COVID-19 lockdown. Around the edges of the pale buttercup yellow patterned shutters, the soft glow of foggy daylight tells her it's late in the afternoon. Rain pounds relentlessly outside, but inside it's unseasonably warm, and she's cocooned in the fluffy white comforter. Stretching her arms outside the covers, she reaches for the pillow on the other side of the king-size bed and pulls it against her chest. Ye-jin inhales the ridiculously high thread count cotton sham with a long sigh. It smells just like him. Musky. Sensual. She could drown in it for a century.

They've been holed up together for the better part of three weeks. It's unusual for them, this quiet mellow life with no social or professional obligations. It's not the spotlight she misses as much as it is the travel, the freedom to jump on a plane when the itch starts and disappear into a corner of the world where she's just another girl, wandering through the streets, meeting the locals and indulging in the food. He was by her side the last two times, his fingers tangled through hers, his strides twice as long but slower in favor of matching her pace. She loves these little gestures – unspoken things that show how much he dotes on her.

Unravelling herself from the duvet, she comes to her feet with a long lazy stretch and then makes her way to the living room in search of the man in question. She finds him lounging on the couch, casual in a pair of gray Nike sweatpants and a plain V-neck black t-shirt that emphasizes the bulge of his biceps. His gaze is focused on the sixty-five-inch screen TV, a turquoise pillow propped under his elbow as his hand toys absently with the remote, twirling it between thumb and forefinger like a plaything. His long legs are outstretched across the plush carpet before him, bare feet crossed at the ankles. For all this apparent relaxation, she notices the tense bearing of his shoulders and the way he doesn't look at her even though she's sure he's seen her come in out of the corners of his eyes. She shifts her focus to his clean-shaven, chiseled jaw and finds it clenched tightly. With a knowing sigh, she looks at the screen and grimaces.

Yoon Jin-ah – the character she played in Something in the Rain – is at her parents' home, practically shooing the inebriated pair into their bedroom, so she can sneak out and meet her young lover. The next few minutes will follow Jin-ah and Joon-hee through a romantic interlude, punctuated by blatant displays of intimacy from passionate kisses and heated embraces to suggestive fadeouts. What he's already seen of the episode featured the couple's first time having sex – insinuated of course through a series of shots of them moving under the bedsheets.

"Hey," she says carefully, takes another three steps into the room. He started watching Something in the Rain a couple of days ago, despite her objections. He'd only seen snippets of the drama when it aired a couple of years ago, having found it too awkward at the time to watch the blossoming love story on-screen when they'd just started dating themselves. It was a tentative beginning – their love. A shy foray into the unknown. She'd been nervous of the attention they would get, the complete loss of privacy. Most days, she still is. Resisting, though, was futile, and she tumbled head first in crazy love with her two-time co-star, consequences be damned.