Celebrity Status

Haru smiled and waved at Rainbow, a little nervous to be in the presence of such a prolific and well-known actor when he was still relatively new to acting himself.

“Hello, my name is Haru,” he said, greeting them once they had gotten closer.

“Nice to meet you Haru, I’m Rainbow,” she* replied, giving him a friendly smile.

“My agency told me that you wanted me to be your co-star for this project?”

Rainbow nodded, “Yes, that’s right. I thought that you’d be perfect for the role.”

“What is the role exactly? No one would really tell me much about it,” Haru was nervous about asking the question, but he really hadn’t been provided with much of anything to work with for the role.

“This is, very basically, an ad for this mall,” she replied, “the premise of this isn’t too different from the dramas that you’ve been in. The idea is that anything you could possibly need for any stage in your life can be bought here.”

“Ah, okay,” Haru said, nodding his head, “so what is my role then in relation to yours? Am I a … romantic interest? A friend? A sibling?”

“Romantic interest, which might seem weird, but I promise that it’ll make sense,” they assured him.

“I wasn’t really worried,” he replied, “although I’ll admit that I’ve never done anything close to resembling a noona romance**.”

“A what now?”

“Oh uh…,” Haru wasn’t exactly sure if he really wanted to explain what that was and was now regretting having brought it up, “don’t worry about it.”

Rainbow decided to move on then, “Alright then, anyway, the first scene we’re going to shoot is us having a chance meeting in the mall where we then swap numbers.”

Haru nodded, “Alright, sounds pretty easy and straightforward. Is your character the flirty one or mine?”

“Just do whatever comes naturally to you during filming and you’ll be good,” Rainbow informed him, giving him a warm smile.

Haru nodded, though he still felt like he didn’t have much to go on.

Shooting the scenes with Rainbow turned out to be fairly easy.

Indeed, the filming for the scenes seemed to fly by in a rather effortless manner, though it did not escape Haru’s notice that they seemed to be putting off the proposal scene as well as the date scene.

He suspected that it was because they were both scenes in which he would have to kiss Rainbow.

That reason being so that he’d feel more comfortable around her enough to do it.

After wrapping up the scene with the child, they were left only with the two kissing scenes to do.

“Relax,” Rainbow said, “I know you’ve done this sort of thing before.”

Haru nodded, though still nervous, he knew he could do this.

They ran through the motions of the scene, practicing before shooting.

When they and the director were certain that they were ready to shoot the scene, they got to their marks.

The director shouted, “action!”

Haru was on the spot now.

Haru reached across the table and held Rainbow’s hand, smiling at her in an affectionate manner.

They had a random conversation about dogs which had nothing to do with the actions they were doing to make it look like a date. At one point, he leaned in and closed his eyes, envisioning his crush as he kissed Rainbow.

He held the kiss for as long as possible until the director called “Cut!”

Fortunately, they didn’t have to do any retakes of the shoot, so they moved on to the next scene:

The proposal.

They moved to the outside of the jewelry shop that was in the store and, while the crew set up, the director explained to Haru that they were going to do multiple shots of this particular kiss and it was going to need to be as passionate as he could make it.

Haru nodded in understanding, determined to deliver what was necessary for the job.

He was handed the blue velvet box with the ring in it by the bean in charge of props and then was sent to his mark.

He was holding Rainbow’s hand, leading her over to her mark while making it look flawlessly natural, as if he was leading her to the place he wanted to propose to her at.

Holding love in his eyes, he got down on one knee and brought out the ring box from his pocket, popping it open, he smiled at her.

Rainbow acted excited and mouthed an exuberant “Yes!”

Haru got up and took the ring out of the box and put it on her ring finger, then wrapped his arms around her and brought her in for the passionate kiss that the director had wanted.

Since this kiss was meant to be more passionate than the other one, he had to give it his all, no matter how embarrassed it made him feel.

When the director finally called, “cut,” Haru was relieved to be able to finally break the kiss.

They went over the footage and, apparently satisfied, the director thanked them both.

“Thank you for being my co-star Haru,” Rainbow said, offering her hand to him for a handshake.

“You’re welcome, I was happy to help,” Haru replied, shaking her hand.

As he headed off to the dressing room, he thought to himself that he must be getting better at doing kissing scenes.