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The sudden breath that mists across the back of her neck is so annoying that Minha immediately knows who it belongs to. She turns to give its owner – just as annoying as the breath he so rudely persists in exhaling – a chilling look.
“Go away. We’re busy here.”
Seungmin breaks out into a grin that’s as familiar as the back of Minha’s hand. “Yes, I noticed. Hosting interviews for GQ Korea, are you?” He shifts to step into full view of the camera, now standing at her side instead of obscured by the scarlet smear of her dress and tucks his hands behind his back in the very image of a gentleman. He cocks his head to the side, puppy-like. “I guess it’s my turn now.”
Her mouth, just as bloodred as her dress, purses into a scowl. “You guessed wrong. Now go away.” When he doesn’t move, she flicks her hand in his direction and says louder, “Shoo.”
Far from perturbed, Seungmin merely laughs. The laugh is just as familiar as his grin was, as the glimmer in his eyes that confesses his delight at having caught her on the red carpet. Just as the push-and-tug of their conversation is something that Minha knows well: the way she shoves Seungmin away, her eyebrow cocked high with the promise of danger, and the way Seungmin refuses to move, bouncing right back into her space until it’s her turn to give ground and admit defeat or vice versa. Here’s the bounce-back, it seems.
“It’s really nice to see you tonight, Minha-ssi,” he says loudly, pointedly, as though he’s reminding her how people should conduct themselves in a professional setting.
Luckily for Minha, she’s never needed to be professional for a day in her life so all she does is shrug and reply, as bland as flour, “Yes, I suppose I must be the highlight of the night for you. Understandable, really, I do look amazing in this dress.” She twists her head to look down the camera lens and adds for the viewers, “It’s from Seo & Yang’s SS24 Collection. Stunning, right?”
“Gorgeous,” Seungmin agrees. “Although I think the award I’ve been nominated for might be pretty nice too.”
“Ah, yes. You’ve been nominated for a Man of the Year award. Strange, really. I think the panel must not have realised you’re actually an overgrown, talking mutt.”
To which Seungmin, far too used to being called a puppy by Minha and pretty much all of the friends in his life, bends his hands at the wrists and yips, “Woof.”
The only thing that convinces her to resist her eyeroll is the fact that it’s far better not to give Seungmin a reaction at all. Minha remains deadpan for an uncomfortable number of seconds, the hand that clasps onto her mic limp at her side and her eyes hardly blinking. Seungmin remains frozen with his hands fashioned into paws, patiently waiting for her rebuttal.
Then she suddenly comes alive, looks at the camera again and says, “I think me and my dress are better.”
Seungmin shrugs. “That’s true. I only ever want to see you.”
Whatever quip Minha is going to come out with next comes to a screeching halt. “What.”
“On the red carpet,” he hastens to add, laughing. He leans towards her, his eyes still glimmering with mirth and wraps his fingers around hers to guide the mic to his mouth. “That wasn’t the end of my sentence! I meant on the red carpet. I only ever want to see you on the red carpet. Never outside of it.”
Smooth recovery. Minha can only hope she can make the same, though the tell-tale heat in her chest and neck betrays her. Already, she sees Seungmin’s eyes sweep over the evidence. Watches his mouth quirk higher at one corner, pleased like the smug brat he is.
She scowls. “Whatever. I don’t want to see you outside of it either.”
“Not even on one of your chicken shop dates?”
“Absolutely not.”
“That’s a shame,” he says coyly. “They seem like such fun.”
“All the better without you there.”
Seungmin grins again. Familiar. Puppy-like. The same sort of smile that helped to skyrocket him to fame after a drama he featured in exploded in popularity across the country. Minha’s fingers twitch with the urge to do something about it. Strangle him? Grab him by his tie? Who knows?
“Another time maybe,” he says. Someone calls his name from over Minha’s head. Seungmin’s eyes flicker over to them and then back again, trailing over the splotchiness he induced in her with his comments. He tweaks the strap of her dress further up her shoulder and murmurs, “It really was good to see you again, noona,” before he peels away from her side without a glance back, leaving Minha discombobulated and disgruntled about it with no one but her cameraman to offer comfort.
# # #
GQ KOREA @GQKOREA
@RealKSM only ever wants to see @MinTV… at red carpets of course 😉🤭
[.MP4 attached]
Kim Seungmin Updates @ksmupdates
ummm HELLO??? Are 2min back together because what the hell is this if not 😭
sweet almond @hudaking
obsessed with this clip and I don’t even go here… I’m sorry y’all but who is this couple and when will they start dating because that chemistry is off the CHARTS 😳 they’ve got me kicking my feet and squealing like a little girl 🤭
- Kim Seungmin Updates @ksmupdates
funny that you say that…
# # #
Minha’s dress truly is gorgeous. Carved from sangria-red silk that ripples under the spotlight, it clings to every curve of her body, transforming her from a sweatpant-wearing, stained-hoodie-clad, late-twenty-something-year-old into the kind of woman who GQ Korea might reach out to with a request to cover the red carpet at their prestigious Man of the Year event. Years ago when she first began her YouTube channel, she didn’t expect it to receive much attention outside of the local creator scene. In 2024, however, Minha’s channel – particularly her Chicken Shop Date series in which she interrogates celebrities in her halmeoni’s chicken shop under the guise of a romantic outing – reached new heights and placed her within the mouths of Gen Z consumers up and down the country. And so here she is: Lee Minha, twenty eight years old and counting, working at one of the biggest events in the industry and wearing designer clothes while she’s at it.
The dress is a work of art. Truly. Seungmin tosses it over his shoulder as though it was delivered to her mailbox in a Shein wrapper.
“Don’t ruin it,” Minha snaps, even as she allows him to nudge her back towards her bed. “I have to give that back, you stupid mutt.”
“I love it when you say sweet nothings to me,” he replies before he promptly grabs a generous handful of her sides and all but tackles her onto the mattress.
He stopped playing baseball after graduation when his workload and attempts at breaking into the acting scene became too much to balance with his love for sport, and the lack of exercise shows. The Seungmin she first met was wiry, toned by the hours he would spend perfecting his pitch form and sprinting from base to base. This one is all noodle arms and soft flesh – but then again, so is she nowadays, though it clearly isn’t unwanted given the groan of appreciation she receives when Seungmin begins lathering kisses all over every bit of skin he can reach while he fondles the rest.
“Gorgeous,” Seungmin mumbles as he buries his head in the valley between her breasts. “You’re still so gorgeous, noona. I almost forgot.”
“Damn right I am,” she says. She threads her fingers through Seungmin’s hair – stiff and crunchy from whatever products his team lathered it in – and sighs under his ministrations. Seungmin might use his tongue to fire too many witty remarks in her direction, but damn does he know how to wield it well in other ways too. “Too gorgeous for you anyway.”
Except she’s not really because when Seungmin lifts his head to fire her a smile, crooked and blinding with too many teeth – so straight now that she can’t help but run her finger along the ridges – it takes her right back to her post-grad days, to the young man who charmed her enough to convince her to marry him. Granted, she was also exceedingly drunk at the time. But Seungmin was persuasive enough to make her stick around afterwards and that was back when he still had the braces on. Now, he’s older and stupidly handsome and still just as smug and as confident and really is it any wonder why she ended up dragging him by the tie into her car to take him back home.
“Kiss me,” she orders.
Seungmin shifts and leans over her, though he doesn’t hurry to obey. “So demanding,” he remarks. “Did you miss me, noona? Did you miss this?”
“Hardly,” she says, though the wetness between her legs disagrees. “Just figured I need to shut you up somehow.”
“Oh, you definitely missed me,” he says – and then before she can snap at him for being delusional and running his mouth too much, he leans down and kisses her.
And okay, maybe she did miss this a little. Just a smidge. Just enough to whimper ever so slightly into the kiss, to tilt her head back and open her mouth in a pant, to dig her fingers into his hair a little tighter to make sure he stays right where she has him. She snakes her other arm around his back to press him down at the shoulder-blades, forcing him to bear down upon her properly. Seungmin breathes a chuckle into their kiss, but he follows her orders easily enough, settling against the contours of her body like he never left.
Stupid Kim Seungmin and his noodle arms. Stupid Kim Seungmin and his clever, crooked mouth. Stupid Kim Seungmin and his ability to wriggle his way back into her bed no matter how many times they agree to call it quits.
“You were supposed to have sent me the divorce papers months ago,” she tells him later while they wait for her to adjust to his cock. She sits astride him like a goddess claiming her throne and the way Seungmin gazes up at her, his hands wandering along her thighs and belly, makes her feel somewhat like it too.
“Is this really the time?” he asks.
She rocks her hips a miniscule amount. Curls her lip somewhat meanly when he tries to stifle a moan.
“Months ago,” she repeats with another wave of her hips. “Your lawyer was looking into it, remember?”
“He still is.”
“Liar.”
“The papers are in his office.”
“He doesn’t have an office,” Minha says, unsteady now that Seungmin has started to meet her thrusts with his own. His fingers press against her hips; her own are planted on his body for purchase. “Because he doesn’t exist.”
“I have a lawyer,” he objects.
“Not one who deals in divorce.”
Seungmin laughs, caught out. “I’m looking into it.”
“Like hell you are.”
“It’s on my to-do list somewhere,” he says vaguely. He moves his hands to her knees and forces them further apart, somehow managing to drive further into her than before. Minha moans, embarrassingly loud with her head thrown back, an entirely involuntarily reaction; Seungmin responds by squeezing her thighs some more. “Would you even sign them if I bothered? You burnt the last lot I sent, remember?”
“I was making smores,” Minha says. He pushes into her again and fuck, fuck, that feels so good. “The flames were running low, I had to stoke them somehow.”
“And the time before that?”
“Monsoon season was pretty bad. Rain kept leaking into my apartment and they were the closest thing I could use to seal the windows before my rooms all flooded.”
Seungmin snorts in a dismissal of her explanations – all 100% valid and definitely what happened at the time – because he’s stupid, he’s so stupid and so is Minha for not knowing how to let him go, even though he literally drives her up the wall whenever they’re around each other.
But fuck, she really can’t think about that right now, not when this is the best sex she’s had in months. Few people know her body better than Seungmin does, a fact that he proves when he coaxes her off and manoeuvres Minha onto her hands and knees to settle behind her. She won’t last much longer as soon as she’s in this position and sure enough, before she knows it, they’ve collapsed onto their backs in the middle of her bed, gulping in some much needed gasps of air. Her thighs won't stop quivering. Has he improved since they last time they slept together? If she weren’t so exhausted, she’d be infuriated by the thought.
“How are your parents?” she asks when her brain has stopped spinning out of control and is able to function again. “Still holidaying in Jeju?”
“At this point, I think they’ve just moved there without telling us,” Seungmin replies. “They’ll be back in a few weeks though. Oh, I forgot to tell you. Hyeongsunim’s having a baby shower at the end of the month. You’re invited.”
“Hyunjin-unnie’s having a baby?” She blinks, surprised. “Really?”
“Yep. Planned, this time.”
That’s even more mystifying than the announcement that she’s pregnant. The last time Minha spoke to Seungmin’s sister-in-law, Hyunjin vowed with a hand over her heart that she would be leaving Jisung once and for all. Minha isn’t surprised that she hasn’t gone through with it – Hyunjin and Jisung, much like Minha and Seungmin, have a nasty habit of returning to each other even after they agree they will not – but a planned pregnancy speaks to a greater level of delusion than she thought Hyunjin was capable of. Who knew teenage romances could hold such a grip on people nearly two decades later?
Then again, stones and glass houses. It’s not as though Minha has much of a leg to stand on to judge.
Speaking of which…
“I think we might’ve broken the internet with that interview,” she says after a moment. It’s all your fault, she wants to add, though she doesn’t. He’ll only take that as encouragement that he managed to get under her skin.
Seungmin huffs an approximation of a laugh. “Probably.” He shifts to his side and loops a strand of her hair around his finger, teasing it into a coil. “It really was cool to see you there though, noona. GQ Korea is big news.”
Pride warms her even further. Minha tries not to preen. “Sort of, I guess.”
“Yeah. I’m proud of you.”
That’s a step too far. “Shut up,” she says, reddening further. She thumps the side of her fist onto whatever body part she can reach. “Don’t be such a wet wipe, it doesn’t suit you.”
“Still haven’t learnt how to take a compliment, I see.”
“Still haven’t learnt how to follow orders, I see,” she mimics. She wags a finger in his face. “Bad doggy. Naughty. No treats for you.”
In response to which Seungmin, terrible mutt that he is, licks a stripe along Minha’s neck. Shrieking, she twists around and tries to deliver the most appropriate punishment she can administer – smothering him with a stuffed Pokémon toy he once gifted her until he falls unconscious – though somehow, he manages to make a swift escape and tackles her onto her back instead.
Terrible really. Absolutely incorrigible, she thinks as she melts into another kiss.
# # #
Minha Lee @MinTV
Took the local dog out on a walk this weekend… New #ChickenShopDate with @RealKSM drops this Friday @ 11am KST. Yes, we’re still getting divorced. Eventually.
[.JPEG attached]
- Kim Seungmin @RealKSM
You’re wearing the wedding ring I got you in this picture btw
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Minha Lee @MinTV
Blah blah blah all I read is barking
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Kim Seungmin @RealKSM
ㅋㅋㅋ Woof.