Chapter 24 - A Hard Day’s Night

He wasn't sure what to do on a non-date.

He didn't remember the last time he'd been alone with a woman like Ms. Nam without any mutual interest, and he'd never gone on a blind date either. His life just didn't work that way. But this evening, definitely nothing was going as planned.

Kim Jun Hyeon had left home with the firm purpose of keeping his word, but was neither willing to further his acquaintance with Ms. Nam nor getting part into his grandfather's little games. Who by the way, probably had a lot of free time on his hands lately, to think of weird funerals and set up awkward situations for the people around him. He definitely needed to talk to his mother about his grandfather.

But of course, Miss Nam was just like her sparkling golden dress: a surprise blast of nonsense on his face. After making him fume about having to wait her getting ready, she arrived with a bruised eye and no makeup, and looking far less glamorous than the other two times they had met. On top of that, wearing mismatched shoes.

And because of that, Jun Hyeon couldn't even get angry about waiting so long. He couldn't be risking being rude to a woman who was feeling ugly.

"You do your act elsewhere, Ms. Nam? I mean, besides weddings and funerals? Is there any place other than the Pearl?"

"Uh... No. Not right now..."

He was going to ask her more about her career, which seemed like a pretty safe subject, but she interrupted him:

"What type of surgery do you perform the most, Dr. Kim? I mean, in quantitative terms."

"Nose jobs," he answered promptly. Apparently she had the same idea of keeping their conversation around their careers.

"Seriously? I thought it's eyelids. They say it's the most popular plastic surgery job being done."

"Yes it is, but I don't perform many of them. There are other people who can perform it better than me."

"Uhn…" She bit her lip, he saw in the rearview mirror. It looked like she wanted to ask a question, but was uncertain.

"Go. Ask your mind up."

"Ask my mind up what?" The singer frowned, confused.

"Ah, well, if you are not going to ask, then I'll answer it anyway."

"How come? Will you answer something without me asking anything?"

"Your question is obvious to me."

"Oh is that so? So what is the answer to the 'obvious question'?" she sounded sarcastic. Jun Hyeon realized that she was becoming comfortable with herself again, now that her eye was better and that she had accepted that he didn't care about her appearance. She was wrong, of course.

"The answer is no, you don't need a nose job."

"Bpppp, you're out!" She laughed, and so did he. "Dr. Kim. I wasn't going to ask that! And who ever said I never had my nose done?" She tested him, but Kim didn't fall for the trick.

"If so, please introduce me to my new master. He is genius."

"Oh! He's so full of himself…!" She grumbled audibly, he suppressed a smile as he drove. His attention, however, was caught by a glimpse of what was happening on the road behind him, by the rearview mirror. It seemed that the drivers behind him were angry about something, possibly a motorcyclist, because they were honking like crazy. But he couldn't see the cause of the problem in just a glance, and kept paying attention to the traffic ahead.

"Has Park Beum Mi ever had any plastic surgery? A nose job? Because I think it got a lot different in the last year. Did she?"

Kim Jun Hyeon almost fell into the trap this time, but in the last second he pursed his lips and shook his head in denial, refusing to speak.

"Come on, Dr. Kim! And how about Kim Hong Byul? Or at least, Kim Ha Neul? She did it, didn't she? Her face thinned a lot, she did a bichectomy, didn't she?"

He could barely contain his laughter now, with the singer's extra curious tone. He turned quickly to her, shaking his head alternately between yes and no as he kept his lips tightly pursed.

"What? What is it? She did, didn't she? Who didn't it?! Ah, how frustrating! Ha Neul did, but Hong Byul did not? I don't understand. Give it away...!"

Jun Hyeon let out a loud laugh at the demanding Ms. Nam Ye Rim. "Come on, you really don't want me to be your plastic surgery detection toy, do you?"

"Ahhh…! Well, actually, I do." She whined in frustration, but admitted at last with a laugh. They stopped at the red light, and then Kim could see in the rearview mirror a small motorcycle zigzagging between the cars. Strangely, although he could do that, the rider didn't make it to the first row next to the intersection. But the doctor's attention turned to his night companion's next comment,

"Ok, although the subject is quite juicy, Dr. Kim won't collaborate with my celebrity knowledge database. I bet you won't talk about your famous customers either."

"Uhm ." He agreed with her logic.

"So…"

"Here she comes again."

"Have you gotten any plastic surgery done, Dr. Kim?"

He was in the middle of a sound laugh when an absurdly loud and close thwack made him stop. Ahead of them, at the intersection, the lid of a manhole simply jetted over a few meters off the ground for no apparent reason. A few seconds later, a jet of water followed, reaching at least two meters at its apex, dwindling soon after. The lid fell to the floor a few meters away at the empty intersection with a loud crash.

He uttered an involuntary curse word and then asked at his own shock: "What the hell was that?"

Then he felt Miss Nam's little hands clutch at his arm and her face buried in his shoulder. She curled up in her seat, aghast, jutting forward to seek shelter in his body for some reason. Then Jun Hyeon put a hand on her head to comfort her, patting softly. "Hey, hey, calm down. It was just a scare. Nobody got hurt."

"Aeehh… Ermm "! Nam Ye Rim cleared her throat and composed herself and back to her seat, without apologizing. "What was this?! I thought we were going to die!" She said, with wide eyes of shock.

"I don't know. Apparently the manhole exploded. Plumbing gas, maybe." He changed the car's gear to leave, the cars behind them already honking frantically, people on near sidewalks gathering to watch. Although he managed to sound calm, his heart was racing, too.