“Here, this is outfit number one.”

Yeonji took the outfit from the photo shoot coordinator and stepped behind the curtain with Hari.

Hari undressing and Yeonji helping her into the clothes was easy and natural between them. Yeonji was Jungwook’s younger cousin, they had known each other since before Hari’s debut, and they were the kind of friends who went to the bathhouse together, so there was nothing awkward about it.

Fastening the hook on the white bikini top, Yeonji let out a small, unprompted sound of admiration.

“The more I look at him, the better he gets. That man.”

“What?”

“Your bodyguard, unnie.”

“Oh. He is good-looking.”

“I see a lot of models, right? But out of all the men I’ve seen, the bodyguard has the best body lines by far. And his fashion sense is excellent too.”

These weren’t just impressions of his looks, they came with objective reasoning. Even looking at the same person, Yeonji clearly approached things from a professional angle that was different from Hari’s.

As an actress, Hari admired his handsome face and the resonant depth of his voice. As someone in the fashion industry, Yeonji praised his physique and his sense of style.

Hari agreed about the physique, but she had no particular knowledge of fashion sense, so she tilted her head.

“Jisang always wears the same kind of suit, though.”

“They look similar but they’re different each time. And honestly, wearing a suit well is the hardest thing to pull off.”

There’s a saying that the face is the finishing touch of any outfit. Not knowing much about fashion, Hari assumed Jisang’s sense of style simply looked good because his body was good and his face was handsome.

“Honestly, unnie really has zero fashion sense.”

Yeonji draped a pale green strappy dress over the swimsuit and continued.

“Unnie. The suit he wore today is a very expensive designer label. The belt and shoes are all designer too. And don’t even get me started on the watch he wears. That one’s probably around a hundred million won? The last one was thirty million, and the scale just keeps growing.”

“What?! Really?”

Hari was genuinely stunned.

All the bags she carried were sponsored items she was more or less obligated to use. She had never once bought a luxury item with her own money, having no particular desire for possessions, so Yeonji’s claim was naturally shocking.

She came out of the fitting area and the photo shoot’s wardrobe coordinator began adjusting her look with careful hands.

Still unable to believe it, Hari leaned toward Yeonji and whispered again.

“……Could they be fake?”

Yeonji wagged her index finger.

“No. Absolutely not.”

Hari wanted to ask how she could be so sure, but then again, this was someone who worked in the field. There was no way she wouldn’t know. Hari gave up and let it go.

What kind of salary does a bodyguard earn that he could dress like that? The questions kept piling up, but her headache had grown so severe that she couldn’t think any further.

In something of a daze, Hari somehow made it through the photo shoot fitting. When the team cleared out and the silence settled, it hit her like a wave.

“Unnie. I narrowed it down to these three. Which one do you like?”

The dresses Yeonji had brought were white, pale yellow, and red-orange. The designs were all different as well, but Hari was in no state to examine them carefully.

“Originally I wanted you to try all three and then decide, but since you’re not feeling well, should we just pick one and see if it works?”

Hari nodded at Yeonji’s perceptive suggestion and chose the white tube top dress.

They stepped behind the curtain together and Hari had just taken off her clothes when Yeonji’s phone rang loudly.

“Yes. Director. Oh, that? ……Hmm, is it in my car? Let me check. Hold on. Don’t hang up.”

Yeonji gestured an apology to Hari and stepped out of the wardrobe room.

Left alone without Yeonji to help her into the dress, Hari decided to try putting it on herself rather than just stand there in her underwear.

The silk against her bare skin felt smooth and pleasant.

But the tube top kept slipping down without staying in place, whether because of the size or the style, and she couldn’t get the zipper at the back to close.

She struggled with it for a while and was about to give up and wait for Yeonji when, without warning, every light in the room went out at once.

A blackout in the middle of the day. But this wardrobe room had no windows, and the blackout curtains were drawn, so the darkness that fell was absolute, not a single thing visible.

This isn’t a simple power outage. This is the stalker. Hari felt it instinctively.

“Ugh.”

Gripped by terror, she could barely breathe. With her claustrophobia and her body already weakened, she felt herself on the edge of a panic attack.

Bang! The door burst open with tremendous force, and urgent footsteps rushed toward her.

“Ms. Yoo Hari! Are you alright?”

Even in the pitch dark, Jisang found her immediately and pulled her into his arms.

“This lunatic just keeps going.”

He muttered in irritation, held her tighter, and reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket while scanning the surroundings.

But in a room without a single point of light, his hand missed its mark entirely.

“Oh. Um, that’s……”

It was the soft, bare skin that had been left exposed above the slipped dress.

His hand, badly startled, couldn’t pull away cleanly from the smooth surface and fumbled. In doing so, it grazed her several more times.

Each time, Hari let out a faint, involuntary breath at the sensation that ran through her.

Even so, Jisang couldn’t release her, not when there was still a possible threat to guard against.

“God, this is……”

His low voice came out tangled with a rough, unsteady breath.

Caught between no good options, two bodies pressed together in the dark grew warmer in unison, as though competing.

“……D*mn it.”

A quiet curse, and then he slowly moved his lower half back and away from her.

Not long after, every light came on at once.

Hari immediately scrambled to pull her dress back up, and Jisang took off his suit jacket and held it out to her.

His gaze drifted belatedly to somewhere in the middle distance, but Hari already knew he had seen everything.

Against the white of the dress, her face, flushed as red as a ripe apple, stood out all the more.

The warmth of his hands on her skin kept replaying in her mind.

Embarrassing as it had been, she couldn’t say she had hated it.

Her head was a mess of thoughts she shouldn’t be having.

Her heart was racing and her breath had gone short, as though she had just crossed the finish line of a sprint.

“Are you alright?”

Jisang looked at her with concern, checking her color, and Hari, thinking it was simply the aftermath of the intense contact, didn’t think to question what her body was doing.

“Yes, I’m fi—”

She never finished the sentence. Hari pitched forward into Jisang’s arms and lost consciousness.

* * *

After years of military life, Jisang had faced every kind of sudden situation with steadiness and calm.

Yet one woman had managed to rattle him for the first time in a very long while.

Jisang did his best to receive the sight of her exposed pale skin with composure, and covered her with his suit jacket that had fallen to the floor.

At that moment, Yeonji came back into the wardrobe room.

“Oh my goodness, what happened? Why is she like this?”

Jisang gave her calm instructions.

“She needs to go to the hospital. Could you help her get dressed?”

Flustered as she was, Yeonji nodded vigorously and, while Jisang held Hari upright, quickly got her into a thick t-shirt and trousers.

Jisang immediately scooped her up, one arm under her knees and one at her back. Had the medicine she’d taken earlier not worked? Her temperature had climbed even higher in the short time since.

“Where is the manager?”

Yeonji ran out ahead of him to find Jungwook.

“Oppa! Jungwook oppa! Something’s wrong!”

“Hey. I’m right here. What? What happened to Hari?”

“What’s the nearest hospital?”

Yeonji searched on her phone as they headed to the parking lot and found the nearest emergency room was about five minutes by car, or fifteen minutes on foot.