"I told you there was something going on between the two of them. Ares never used to stop by the salon so often."

"She probably seduced him, that little minx."

"Do you think this is going to affect the training programme? I mean, what if the bosses decide to give her the job just because they don't want to offend Ares?"

"Shit, you're so right. Ares does endorsements for the salon and he probably rakes in tons of business for us. But that's unfair! She isn't even as good as most of us!"

"She did come up tops in the previous assessment."

"Who knows whether Ares or Hyunwon pulled some strings in the background. Anyway that assessment only involved sketching! What's the point in being good at sketching if you can't actually bring your own designs to life?"

"Guys, if you're jealous then why don't you all go seduce your own celebrity. We get so many of them walking in and out of here. I'm going to ace this training programme fair and square."

"Get off your high horse. You were the first one to post a sour remark on Twitter about Ares and Hyejin's relationship. Did you think that no one would know your username?"

"What username? It wasn't me!"

"What's the point in us arguing about this? It's not going to change anything. Look at all those reporters, their necks are practically as long as giraffes' waiting there to get a picture of Mrs Ares."

The trainees were looking down from the glass windows at the group of reporters huddled downstairs in the rain with their little black umbrellas, still resolutely hanging on even though the rain kept battering down upon them.

It was two days after the Cutting Edge and Ares's management agency came out with a joint statement confirming the speculations about Ares and the junior stylist who had given him the famous lightning bolts—and the entire country was in an uproar. No one cared about anything else these days except digging up more about the story behind the entertainment industry's latest scandal. The media had settled on a Cinderella angle to the story, which seemed to have caught on like wildfire on the internet.

"Cinderella my ass," Hannah snorted, turning away from the window. "I'll wait and see how long this fairy tale lasts. We all know that celebrity relationships don't last long, and Ares is surrounded by pretty girls every day."

Yeseul caught sight of Hyejin standing quietly by the corner, having arrived just in time to hear everything that the others had been saying about her. She quickly ran over to her and led her away.

"Just ignore what the others say," she said. "They're just having a bad case of sour grapes right now."

Hyejin nodded, although her eyes betrayed what she was feeling inside.

It had all been a little overwhelming over the past few days. From the moment the press release was issued, reporters followed her everywhere. Gina had had to arrange for special security protection for her just in case she was attacked by Ares's fans. Her pictures were on the covers of tabloids and papers—she couldn't walk past a newsstand without cringing. Hell, she couldn't even walk past a newsstand anymore because walking on the streets just wasn't something that a celebrity's girlfriend was supposed to be doing.

Then there were the envious and disgruntled glances from the others at the salon. And there was Hyunwon.

"Do we pay you to stand around and chitchat? I'm sure there's a spot downstairs with the reporters in the rain, if cheap gossip is what you're more interested in," Hyunwon snapped at the group of trainees gathered by the window.

They immediately dispersed.

Hyunwon was walking around the salon as if he had swallowed a ton of dynamite for the past two days. From time to time everyone would be able to hear him shouting at some poor employee for even the slightest error.

Hyejin, especially, seemed to bear the brunt of his short fuse.

"What are you still waiting for?" he turned towards her and demanded. "If you want to quit just because you're semi-famous now then go ahead. I don't think I need to show you where the door is."

Hyejin tugged on Yeseul's sleeve in desperation, but they both knew there was nothing her friend could do to save her. When Hyunwon was on a rampage, he could bulldoze everything in his path. Reluctantly, she let go of her friend and chased after her irate mentor, who had already marched off in a huff.

Thankfully for her, despite Hyunwon's obvious displeasure at her dating revelation and the media attention surrounding the salon, he still maintained his professionalism throughout and continued with the mentorship (albeit with a rather grouchy face). The third and final assessment for the trainees would soon be upon them and this time round, even Hyunwon himself had no idea what the assessment task would be. Remington had insisted on hugging it close to his chest and Hyunwon was too proud to stoop to bribery. That meant that he simply had to increase the intensity of his training to ensure that Hyejin was well-equipped enough to not embarrass him in front of everyone.

In the training room, he had already laid out a full set of mannequins, each with a different hairstyle design sitting in front of them on a sheet of paper. As Hyejin walked down the row studying the designs carefully, her eyes widened just a little more with each one that she saw.

Picking up the last one, she turned to Hyunwon and said incredulously, "This one is impossible."

"Nothing is impossible. Enough hairspray can send long hair defying gravity." Hyunwon sat down on a chair and folded his arms across his chest, staring at her point blank. "Start from the first one and work your way down the row. Your main weakness is that you're too stuck within your comfort zone. Hairstyling can't always be about men's haircuts—in case you haven't realised, we make a hell lot more money from the women. If you can't break through your own boundaries then there's no point in us wasting time right now. Your technique is already abysmal as it is."

"I wouldn't call it abysmal..." Hyejin muttered under breath, still looking down at the design in her hand. She had improved considerably from the first time she stepped into the Cutting Edge, thanks to the harsh but extremely effective training from Hyunwon, but evidently she was still not meeting his sky high standards.

"Did you say something? If you can waste your breath cursing me then you might as well channel that energy to some actual work."

Rolling her eyes, Hyejin moved back to the first mannequin and picked up a pair of scissors from the trolley, angling it left and right to figure out how she should get started. The minute she made a decision and opened the scissor blades for the snip, Hyunwon abruptly stood up. His chair made an awful screeching noise against the floorboards, making her cringe.

"Are you sure you want to start that way?" he said sharply.

With a sigh, she shifted her scissors and settled on the other method she had in mind instead, noting that she probably made the right decision the second time around because the grumpy cat sank back down in his chair.

As she worked her way round the mannequin's hair, her mind drifted away towards the events of the past couple of days—it was as if her life had suddenly taken a hundred and eighty degree turn and she was now being thrown into a tornado.

If Ares had never found his way to the barbershop that night, if I never agreed to help him cut his hair, if Hyunjin didn't run away with Gina's money, if I never met Hyunwon at the Cutting Edge, if Hyunwon never became my mentor, if I told him that I liked him before Kara returned, if I didn't go up to Ares's apartment that night...

There were too many "what ifs", but none of it was of any consequence anymore. By some cruel twist of fate, she was here in this room with the one man that had somehow barged his way into her heart and then cruelly shut the door.

And somehow he seems to think he's the one entitled to a tantrum.

At that thought, she let out an audible snort, one that made Hyunwon sit up and glare. Sighing, she bowed down her head and hurriedly continued with her work, not wanting to get another earful.

About three hours later (with no break given), Hyejin was finally down to her final mannequin—the impossible design. Picking up the sheet of paper, she stared at it for a good ten minutes, with no idea where to begin. There were too many complexities involved that she couldn't figure out exactly where to begin and in which order she should do things. The model in the drawing had wavy hair, which obviously meant that some curling needed to be done, then her hair was braided at some parts and loosely pinned up behind her head, but there was a very specific way you had to place the pins in order to have the waves fall in a manner that seemed natural and not contrived. On top of that, when you looked closely, the braids were weaved in such a way that one seemed to flow into the other with no start or end, creating an effect that reminded you of the vines you would find in a rainforest.

The curls were the easy part. Once Hyejin was done with the curling iron, she knew that she would need to follow up with the braids. Taking a deep breath, she quickly parted the mannequin's hair into the various sections, securing all of them with bobby pins. Then, she picked up one section and began her journey of trial and error.

Halfway through, she was already beginning to realise that she probably wasn't doing it right. Pausing at where she was, she looked down at the drawing, a tiny frown appearing across her forehead.

"The base braid pattern is correct, but the linkages are wrong," she heard Hyunwon's voice suddenly appear beside her. He was concentrating on the mannequin, lifting some of the strands of hair to take a closer look at what she had done. To her surprise, he suddenly took hold of her hand and guided her thumb and index finger to take hold of a specific section of the braid that she had been working on. "To get a smooth, flowy effect that makes it seem like all the braids and fusing into one wave, you need to start joining the braids together at this point. The base braid is a waterfall braid, which is alright, but over here you need to work in not just three braids, but a total of four in order to get it looking right."

"Four?"

It wasn't very often that a four-stranded braid, but a four-stranded braid on top of a different braid pattern was something that Hyejin had never thought of till today.

Hyunwon took hold of her other hand, working through the braids with his hands covering hers so that it was actually her fingers doing the work. Out of the corner of her eye, Hyejin could see Hyunwon's face just inches away from hers, his eyes focusing entirely on the task at hand. He looked the most dashing when he was concentrating on his work, she thought, and as that thought ran through her mind she could feel her cheeks starting to heat up and her heartbeat beginning to race.

When the final bobby pin fastened the braids firmly in place, Hyunwon admired his masterpiece for a second. In the next second, he realised that he was still holding onto Hyejin's hands and he abruptly let go, doubling back a couple of steps.

"Nothing is impossible," he said, diverting his gaze somewhere else. "I have to meet Remy to discuss some of the appointment schedules for next week. Finish up this piece and I'll be back later to check." He turned and headed for the door. "And don't think of slacking, or else."

"Or else what? You'll kick me out of the salon for the gazillionth time?" Hyejin muttered.

When the door close behind him, she immediately sank down onto the nearest chair, placing one hand upon her heart.

"Stop it, Song Hyejin," she scolded herself. She thought she had made up her mind to set Hyunwon aside once and for all, after all that had happened with Kara and Ares, but clearly her heart didn't think the same.

#

The Seoul Entertainment Awards gala dinner was not something that Hyejin would ever have thought about, but an invitation landed in her hands anyhow, courtesy of Ares's tyrannical manager Gina.

"Do I have to go?"

All Gina did in response was to shoot her a look that was enough for hell to freeze over, and that was the end of the conversation.

Now, she was sitting beside Ares in a black Mercedes Benz headed towards the Park Hyatt Seoul where the dinner was to take place. Tugging at the maroon-coloured skirt of the dress that Gina had picked out for her, she tried to pull it a couple of centimetres lower to make it cover up a little bit more skin.

"Are you alright?" Ares asked, noticing her discomfort.

Hyejin nodded her head, albeit a little hesitantly. "Do I really have to go? I mean, I'm not a celebrity or anything, so no one would really care whether or not I'm there or not right?" she said.

"I'm so sorry Hyejin, I didn't mean to cause you all this troub—"

"Yes you have to go," Gina's voice interrupted from the passenger's seat up front. "I've already made this perfectly clear. The press aren't going to be satisfied with sneaky paparazzi shots and old teenage photos of you anymore. Since we've announced the news, the two of you haven't been seen in public even once. People are starting to suspect that all this is a sham, which it is, so this is the opportunity to shut everyone up once and for all. Once you've made your first public appearance together and the press get all the photos they want, they'll ease off and go bother someone else." She turned to Ares and said sharply, "As for you, if I hear one more pathetic word of 'I'm sorry' and 'this is all my fault' from you, I will literally hang you out to dry. You can't turn back time, so stop wasting your breath."

Once again, that was the end of the conversation.

Hyejin and Ares sat silently in the back seat until the car finally pulled to a stop in front of the grand revolving doors of the Park Hyatt. The red carpet had already been rolled out, and there were reporters and fans lining both sides of it, eagerly waiting for the arrival of the many celebrities at the dinner.

When the door to the car was opened, Hyejin gulped.

"Don't worry, I'll be here," Ares said with a smile. Adjusting his suit briefly, he stepped out of the car, holding out his hand to her.

Hyejin took a deep breath, but nothing was able to calm down her pounding heart. Get a grip, she told herself. You knew what you were getting into when you decided to help Ares with this charade. Wrapping her coat tightly round her shoulders, she placed her hand in Ares's and slowly stepped out into a flurry of blinding flashes. All around she could hear screams alongside the frantic shutter clicks—all of it was already making her dizzy.

"Come on, let's go." Ares hooked her hand around his elbow and led her down the carpet and towards the entrance. "It'll be fine once we're inside."

She didn't think it really qualified as "fine", because the first thing they saw when the stepped into the hotel lobby was Hyunwon and Kara, chatting casually with a couple of other entertainment stalwarts. Actually, it was more of Kara chatting and Hyunwon standing sullenly by the side. When he saw Ares and Hyejin arrive, a frown immediately became visible between his dark brows, although it vanished just as quickly as it appeared. Without even excusing himself, he walked away from the group and headed towards the duo.

"Aren't you supposed to be at the salon at this time? What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Ryu gave her permission to be excused," Gina answered on Hyejin's behalf. She flashed Hyunwon one of her Cheshire cat smiles that only served to make you feel intimidated. "Looks like almost everyone has arrived. Enjoy yourselves tonight." Whispering something into Ares's ear, she headed off in her four inch stilettos, probably to rub shoulders with some of the entertainment executives present to see if she could secure anymore deals for Ares before the year was up.

Ares placed his arm possessively around Hyejin's shoulder, saying, "We didn't expect to see you here. Did you come with Kara? Since your engagement has already been announced, when's the wedding date?"

"That's none of your business," Hyunwon replied drily.

When she turned and found that Hyunwon had disappeared from her side, Kara quickly made her way over. "Who do we have here?" she said, her velvety red lips curling upwards into a smile when she came up to them. The first thing she did was to link her arm with Hyunwon's, as if to mark out her territory. "Haven't seen you in a while, Ares. This must be your girlfriend—it's lovely to meet you. Do all of you know each other?"

"Hyejin is my mentee," Hyunwon said, trying to extricate his arm without looking too obvious.

"Ah." Kara studied Hyejin carefully from head to toe. "We should be heading into the ballroom now. The dinner's about to begin soon."

Hyejin had never even been to a three-star hotel before, much less a five-star one like the Hyatt. The moment she stepped foot into the ballroom, her jaw came close to dropping to the ground as she looked around the lavish hall with its intricate chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. A glitzy stage had been set up at the front of the ballroom for the various performances and speeches that would take place throughout the night, and a polite waiter dressed in coattails came up to help them take their coats.

Wearing only the sparkly maroon dress made her feel especially self-conscious because it showed far too much leg—it didn't matter that it probably cost more than her father's barber shop. Ares said his hellos to almost every person he passed by along the way and the only thing Hyejin could do was to smile and nod politely by his side. Their eyes would scan her up and down, as if they were grading her in their minds.

What the hell is she wearing? Hyunwon thought to himself as he watched Ares pull out a chair for Hyejin, three tables away from where he was. He had no doubt that the dress was all Gina's idea, because it was enough to draw every lecherous gaze in the room towards the girl in the dress.

"That's from Chanel's latest collection," Kara remarked. "It's one of a kind. Ares must really like her to have specially gotten that dress for her. I wanted to get it but my stylist said that I would look better in black. You can really tell that she doesn't belong in our world though—look at how uncomfortable the poor girl looks. Must be difficult for an ordinary person to fit in to the entertainment world." She placed her hand on Hyunwon's, but to her dismay he withdrew it immediately.

"Seorin, I'm only helping you temporarily," Hyunwon said coldly. "We still need to find an appropriate time to announce that this 'engagement' didn't work out. Don't forget that. There's no need for the unnecessary skin contact."

Hyunwon tore his gaze away and picked up the wine glass in front of him, downing the entire glass of red wine in one go.

Throughout the entire dinner, he was barely paying attention to anything that was going on around him. He hated these types of social gatherings in the first place, and he hated this game of charades that he was being forced to play because of Kara. Most of all, he hated that Hyejin was smiling so brightly while she was sat beside Ares.

#