Yoon Jooho, a tsundere with a long memory for grudges,
He was sitting on the studio sofa, smoking and in a foul mood.
“I’ve got Pilates at six. What am I supposed to do if we’re just starting now?”
He gestured with his chin toward the wall clock.
It was almost 3 p.m.
Taking a seat on the couch, Song Hyunsoo cautiously offered,
“Should I come an hour earlier tomorrow, then?”
Yoon Jooho clicked his tongue and shot a sharp glare at Hyunsoo.
“You think I’ve got that kind of free time? Like I can just pull an hour out of nowhere?”
He tapped the ashes off his cigarette into the ashtray on the side table.
For all his constant grumbling, he never once mentioned deducting an hour from Hyunsoo’s pay.
Hyunsoo felt like he was starting to understand what kind of person Yoon Jooho was.
Suppressing a laugh that threatened to slip out, he asked,
“Well, since we’re already behind, do you mind if I have a post-meal smoke too?”
“……”
Jooho, who had been fiddling with a camera on his lap, paused and gave him a sideways glance.
Then he turned back to the camera and said dryly,
“Suit yourself.”
When Hyunsoo stood up from the couch, Jooho’s eyes followed him.
“Where are you going?”
“Left my puffer jacket in the living room. My smokes are in the pocket.”
“Just smoke mine.”
He pointed with his chin toward the pack of cigarettes on the coffee table.
Hyunsoo obediently sat back down and picked up the pack.
“Thank you. I’ll enjoy it.”
He pulled one out, lit it, and took a deep drag, exhaling the acrid smoke.
Whether it was the two air purifiers running or the excellent ventilation,
The air stayed perfectly clear even though both of them were smoking indoors.
A far cry from his rooftop room, where even one cigarette would instantly turn it into a raccoon den.
“Wait, you do Pilates too, sunbae? A friend of mine’s older brother has been doing it for a while too.”
After a brief pause, Jooho replied in a bored tone.
“…I introduced him to it.”
“Oh, you were the one who introduced it? Huh. I had no idea. He’s not the type to overshare.
I haven’t even seen any Pilates pics on your feed or— uh—”
Too late.
He realized his mistake as Jooho tilted his head with a sly smirk creeping onto his lips.
“You’ve been snooping through my feed?”
“I-I told you. I used to be a fan.”
“Why past tense?”
“I think if you give it just a moment’s thought, you’ll understand why it became past tense.”
At Hyunsoo’s blunt reply, Jooho chuckled and shrugged his shoulders once.
Then, he moved the ashtray from the side table to the coffee table, within easier reach for Hyunsoo.
“You said you heard all about me from Jung Jin. What a load of crap.”
“Okay, now that we’re being honest… I was totally flustered back then.
It was just a polite thing to say, and then you kept pressing me for details. What was I supposed to do?”
“So in reality, you didn’t hear jack from him, huh?”
“You know how Jin hyung is. Whether it’s good stuff or bad,
he’s not the kind of guy to go on and on about someone who isn’t there.”
Tapping his cigarette into the ashtray, Hyunsoo added,
“But he did say you take acting seriously. That part’s true.”
“Take acting seriously, huh…”
Jooho murmured the words as if mulling over their weight.
“What about other sports? What else do you do?”
“Well, the basics are Pilates and PT.
Then, on rotation, there’s tennis, golf, horseback riding, and archery.”
“All of that? Aren’t you busy? How do you even have time?”
“Didn’t I just say I’m not free?”
Ah, right…
“Tennis, golf, horseback riding. They’re all sports that take a lot of time to get good at like playing an instrument. It’d be a waste not to keep up with them after learning, so I try not to get rusty.”
Brushing off the ash and bringing the cigarette back to his lips, Yoon Jooho continued.
“You never know what role might come your way.”
“Ah… that makes sense.”
He’d been acting as an adult for over twelve or thirteen years now.
During that time, Yoon Jooho had taken on a wide variety of roles: chef, pianist, volleyball player, lawyer, prosecutor, doctor— he’d played each of them two or three times, switching specialties.
He’d even starred in historical dramas, riding horses and shooting arrows.
He wasn’t one of those actors who just stood around in a suit, spouting lines like a generic department head.
“Sunbae, aren’t you good at foreign languages too?”
Yoon Jooho’s dedication was often noted in articles, especially how he would always prepare greetings and remarks in the local language for every fan meeting tour abroad.
His English, Chinese, and Japanese were all known to be at a high level.
But his response was unexpected.
“If I claimed I was good with this level of skill, people would laugh. I can barely manage basic conversation.”
“Wow, that’s uncharacteristically modest of you.”
“I’ve never been modest. Don’t even know how to be. I’m just telling it like it is.”
He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and stood up.
With a bit of clatter, he moved to the tripod in front of the sofa to mount the camera.
Some actors were beloved for their humble and gentle image—like Jung Jiin, for instance.
But Yoon Jooho followed a different path.
He had a confident, seasoned manner of speaking that never crossed the line, a tall and well-proportioned figure, and striking good looks that he used to full effect with his luxurious styling.
You could say Yoon Jooho’s charm was in his slightly unruly persona.
Perhaps because of that image, people often assumed he lived a wild, hedonistic life— partying every night, always with someone new.
It wasn’t an unreasonable assumption; many young male actors seen from afar while hanging around the industry did live that way.
It was easy to lose their center when they gained money and fame at a young age.
As a viewer, watching them on TV, that life had once seemed enviable— riding in luxury cars, wearing expensive clothes, burning through cash.
That, I thought, was success.
But it didn’t take long to realize that their dazzling success was often no more stable than a sandcastle, ready to collapse at any moment.
Watching Yoon Jooho more closely, I came to see that he was different from those types.
Different from the version of him that Song Hyunsoo had imagined, too.
Even though he was the most successful actor in Korea.
He was always the first to arrive at script readings, attended group dinners to lift morale, never slacked off practicing even at home, and maintained strict self-discipline.
“Cases like Yoon Jooho’s, where someone gets lucky, are super rare.”
Chaeyoung’s remark wasn’t exactly accurate.
No one stays a top star for thirty years on luck alone.
As he finished adjusting the camera on the tripod, Yoon Jooho glanced over.
“What? What is it?”
“Huh? Nothing.”
“You were staring. Got something to say?”
“Oh, I stopped by Kkuline today.”
“Where?”
“The restaurant our team uses for gatherings.”
“Ah… the place where the junior was in the backyard, hugging and kissing the cat.”
With a raised brow and a smirk, Yoon Jooho’s expression was playfully annoying.
“Just because cats don’t like you doesn’t mean you need to drag me down.”
“Who cares about being popular with cats? Do you know how many members are in my fan café?”
“No matter how many Yoon Gyeolhos there are in the world, not a single one is a cat. That much I know.”
“Yoon Gyeolho? Wait, are you in my fan café?”
“……”
Crap.
I dug my own grave.
“You said you were a former fan.”
Yoon Gyeolho— Yoon Jooho’s fan café.
The name was a play on a marriage agency’s ad slogan, shortened from “Yoon Jooho, will you marry me?”
Fans were sometimes jokingly referred to as if “Yoon Gyeolho” were a real person— surname Yoon, given name Gyeolho.
“Anyway, out of the four kittens, two have already been adopted. With the weather getting colder, it’s a relief.”
As Yoon Jooho returned to the sofa after setting up the camera, I turned my phone screen to show him.
“Look. Aren’t they cute? They’ve grown a lot.”
Pretending not to care, Yoon Jooho still glanced at the video from the corner of his eye as he sat down.
Song Hyunsoo zoomed in on the screen and pointed.
“By the way, this one, this little guy stuck to his mom with the dot next to his nose he still hasn’t been adopted.”
“Why do you think I’d care?”
He was clearly curious but too stubborn to admit it.
Song Hyunsoo just shrugged and picked up the script.
“I just felt like sharing. So, where are we practicing today?”