Chapter 56 Then We'll Film One Too

Glancing at the time on her phone, Yoo Jimin slipped into the carefully chosen outfit she had selected for her date. Looking over at her fellow members sitting on the living room sofa, she took a deep breath and announced,

"I'm heading out!"

"Where is unnie going again?" Kim Winter straightened up, a frown furrowing her brow as she stared at her good unnie dressed in a beige knit sweater and jeans, a wave of suspicion rising in her heart.

"To a friend's place to ring in the New Year. Didn't I mention it before?" The girl put on an innocent act; since she was going to a friend's place to welcome the New Year, she naturally had to dress nicely.

"A friend..."

"It's always a friend..." After hearing Yoo Jimin's reply, Kim Winter mentally muttered a few complaints. Her unnie had admitted to liking Lin Shouxiu so many times already, yet she was still using the excuse of "a friend" to brush them off.

Why be so stubborn? For all she knew, the guy might just fancy a Yoo Jimin with soft lips.

"Of course it's a friend." Yoo Jimin shrank her neck slightly. "Besides, he hasn't confessed to me yet. If not a friend, what else could he be?"

The last sentence Yoo Jimin said mostly to herself. She needed to keep a clear head and constantly remind herself of December 31, 2022, at 8:30 PM Seoul time—the moment Lin Shouxiu and Shin Yuna trended on search engines due to an alleged sense of fateful destiny.

Alarm bells ringing loud and clear!

Despite how stubbornly defensive Yoo Jimin acted on the outside, if someone were to genuinely urge her to give up on the man named Lin Shouxiu, she would actually find it quite hard to let go.

Yet, because of the incident with Shin Yuna, she lacked the willingness to fight for it anymore, leaving her with no choice but to pull back and wait for someone to make the first move.

"Winter-ah, come over here and tell me, does my outfit look good today?"

"It looks good, it looks good. Unnie, once you get down there, you're guaranteed to make that guy Lin Shouxiu drool."

"Don't talk nonsense." Yoo Jimin waved her small fist and playfully tapped her teammate, feeling her face burn up completely out of her control.

"I'm not talking nonsense. It really does look good."

With a weary motion, Kim Winter opened the dorm door for her captain, handed over a pretty scarf, and watched as Yoo Jimin vanished behind the closing door.

Lately, her unnie seemed increasingly fond of venturing outside, gradually planting a preboding sense in Winter's heart that she was about to fall out of favor.

The longtime dear friend who had always cherished her was about to run off with someone else...

Though she felt a twinge of reluctance, she could only reluctantly choose to accept it. As long as unnie could be a little happier, she supposed she could manage to offer her blessings.

By the time Yoo Jimin arrived at the designated spot, Lin Shouxiu, having finished work, had already parked his car and waited for quite a while.

As the girl's figure drew closer, Lin Shouxiu noticed the movement outside and immediately hurried over. With an observant nature that was far from dull, he instantly spotted the cold expression the girl was directing at him.

"Wearing so little in this weather, aren't you cold?" While attentively opening the car door for her, Lin Shouxiu tried to gently pull the slightly shivering girl, chilled by the cold wind, into his embrace.

Somewhat unexpectedly, Yoo Jimin treated him like air. With a nimble bend of her waist, she slipped past him, leaving him frozen in place.

Was she jealous?

Indeed, he really shouldn't have gone to join the buzz at MBC. Who would have expected that something like this could come out of simply going to sing a song?

"Are you angry?"

"No."

"So you're frozen then?" The man's hand reached across the center console, taking her small, mangosteen-like hands and rubbing them gently within his palms.

"What are you doing? Don't you have ordinary female colleagues to take care of?"

Feigning utter indifference, she tried to pull her small hand back, but after several attempts, she failed to escape from the man's grip.

With a flash of defiance, Yoo Jimin shook her hand away forcefully, causing Lin Shouxiu's hand to bump against the steering wheel.

Even though it hurt enough for the girl to notice the man's fingers trembling, he still tightly wrapped his palm around hers.

"Jimin?"

"Has your anger subsided a bit?"

Though he felt completely innocent, he fully supported Yoo Jimin's urge to vent her anger. The man's eager hand cautiously pinched the girl's chubby cheek.

The silly gesture made the girl beside him chuckle.

"Does it hurt?"

"Not at all."

"Even if it hurts, you'll just have to take it!" Beneath the fierce tone was the sound of Yoo Jimin taking the man's palm and gently blowing on it.

And Winter had said she was the stubborn one.

Clearly, Winter had never met someone as truly stubborn as Lin Shouxiu. His fingers were curled and trembling from the pain, yet he was still insisting that he wasn't affected at all.

"Alright." Lin Shouxiu smiled warmly, looking completely unaffected. That attitude made the bulk of Yoo Jimin's anger melt away, prompting her to let out an involuntary sigh. "I really don't know what to do with you..."

"Yuna and I are just ordinary colleagues."

"Pfft, ordinary colleagues who shoot couple pictorials together."

"That was a requirement from the magazine side." The man scratched his head, feeling both entirely innocent and yet seemingly guilty of having done plenty of wrong things.

"You're the one who took the photos." Yoo Jimin was still fuming. Ordinary colleagues could shoot couple pictorials, yet she, his ambiguous romantic interest, didn't even have a single photo together...

"Then... let's take one right now."

The man turned on the dim car light, gently pulling the girl beside him closer, and carefully rested his hand on Yoo Jimin's waist.

"Fine, I suppose." The girl nodded reluctantly, casually wrapping her arms around him, and as the countdown went 3, 2, 1, she boldly pressed her face close to his.

Cheek to cheek, heart to heart, the man glanced sideways, catching sight of that exquisite and pretty face, as well as eyes as clear and limpid as a spring of mountain water.

He swallowed hard, regulated his breath, and swiftly pressed the shutter button.

Lin Shouxiu drove the car into the garage.

Taking the girl's small hand proactively, he led her around into a home brimming with the warmth of everyday life.

The moment she laid eyes on Lin Youngro, the girl—who was on the verge of snatching the younger brother away—guiltily loosened her fingers.

Tsk, if that Hanseong friend of his ever found out about the mischief she had been up to, she would probably be teased mercilessly for quite a while.

Actually, being teased was the least of her worries.

What she worried about most was Lin Youngro's attitude.

She was her good friend, but she was also Lin Shouxiu's older sister. Her attitude would largely determine the future direction of the lives of the two of them.

Lin Shouxiu closed his hand into a loose fist, feeling the emptiness in his palm, and raised his head to look at the girl beside him.

"Jimin-ah, let's go sit in the living room. Letting him handle the kitchen work by himself is enough."

"But..." Yoo Jimin still wanted to avoid this Hanseong friend, terrified that during their conversation, she might accidentally give away the ambiguous relationship between her and Lin Shouxiu.

"Come on, let's watch some TV."

"Yooran is coming over later, too."

"Kim Yooran?"

"Mhm."

"Oh..."