Top Actor Hired Me and Said Teach Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Teach Me
The top actor hires broke coach Ye-won as his fake girlfriend and opens his script to the bed scene; she sets three terms and he obeys the first one.
Gu Tae-oh opened the script to page sixty-one, laid it across Ye-won's knee, and said, "Teach me."
Ye-won looked at the page.
INT. FERRY CABIN, NIGHT. SHE UNDOES HIS BELT. THEY FALL ONTO THE BED.
The scene went on for four pages.
She looked up.
The most famous face in the country sat across from her in a penthouse above the Han River.
His hands were folded and his heavy-lidded eyes were perfectly calm.
He had been a lead for eleven years.
She had passed six billboards of his face on the way here.
"I'm an acting coach," she said. "I fix people's vowels."
"Then fix mine."
"Page sixty-one is not vowels."
"No," he said. "It isn't."
An hour earlier, Ye-won had been standing in the lobby of Hanbit Entertainment with her one good coat buttoned to her chin.
Her studio in Sinchon had closed in March.
She owed sixty-two million won for her father's hospital bills.
A loan collector in a gray jacket had been waiting outside her building twice a week.
Then a stranger had called and said a client wanted a private coach for three months.
The pay was ninety million won, in three payments.
Ye-won had said yes before the stranger finished saying the number.
Now the client turned out to be the man from the billboards, and the job turned out to be this.
A month ago, a photo had leaked of Tae-oh in a hotel corridor with a married actress's hand on his tie.
Two sponsors had dropped him by Monday.
The film that was supposed to bring him back was an erotic drama called Salt Season, and he had the lead.
"The agency wants me to be seen with a girlfriend," he said. "Someone ordinary. Someone who is not a scandal."
"Ordinary."
"Your word."
"My word is insulted."
The corner of his mouth moved.
It was barely a smile.
"Three months. You're my girlfriend in public. In private you coach me through this film."
He tapped the page under her knee.
"I'll be honest with you, Ms. Rho. I can't do these scenes."
"Everybody can do these scenes. It's two people and a bed."
"When the camera starts, I go quiet. My hands stop. The director calls cut and everyone is very kind to me."
He said it without any shame at all.
That bothered Ye-won more than shame would have.
"Last film they wrote me out of the love scene," he said. "This one won't. So I thought method."
"Method."
"I rehearse every scene in the script. With someone who tells me exactly what to do. For real, so my body learns it."
She stared at him.
"You want me to sleep with you for the film."
"I want you to direct me."
He didn't blink.
"You can say no. The fee is yours either way, for the girlfriend part."
Ye-won should have said no.
Instead she looked at his hands, folded so neatly on his knee, and thought about the man in the gray jacket.
And she thought, God help her, that he asked it like a man who had never been told what he was allowed to want.
She stood up.
"I have terms."
"Please."
"One. I direct. You do what I say, when I say it, and you don't improve on it."
"Yes."
"Two. Nothing happens without my word. Not a hand, not a kiss. If I say stop, you stop in the middle of a breath."
"Yes."
"Three." She leaned over him, one hand on the arm of his chair. "You don't call me Ms. Rho anymore."
His eyes lifted to hers.
They were darker up close.
"What do I call you?"
"Director."
He looked at her for a long, still moment.
Then he said, quietly, "Yes, director."
Something low in Ye-won's stomach turned over, hot and startled.
She hadn't expected that word to sound like that in his mouth.
He had said it too easily.
He said it.
"Good," she said, because it seemed to be the next line.
His breath caught.
She saw it.
It was a very small hitch under the open collar of his shirt.
It was the first real thing she had seen him do.
Ye-won put two fingers under his chin and tipped his face up toward the light.
He let her.
His skin was warm and the stubble rasped against her fingertips.
"Look at me when I talk to you," she said.
"Yes."
"You're not going to freeze on me. If you go quiet, you tell me. Then I fix it."
"Yes."
"Breathe out."
He frowned slightly.
"What?"
"Before you answer. Breathe out first. Slowly."
He did.
His whole chest dropped with it, and something in his shoulders let go.
For a second he looked at her.
Then the look was gone, and he was Gu Tae-oh again.
"Who taught you that?" he said.
"Every coach in Seoul. It's the first thing you learn."
She took her fingers away.
He didn't move his face from where she had left it.
"Okay, Tae-oh," Ye-won said. "Page fourteen. Let's see how bad it is."
She picked up the script and turned back the pages with a snap.
"You said every scene."
"Every scene."
"Then we start at the beginning."
She looked at him, sitting there in his expensive shirt with his hands still folded.
"Take off your jacket."
He stood.
He took it off without a word and folded it over the chair.
Then he waited with his arms at his sides for the next thing she would say.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend