♫♫ Listening suggestion: Bob Marley and the Wailers’ “Stir it Up”
Ae-jung first notices Chul-woo when she visits the set of A Flower Rises in the Sun. While other actors are joking around before filming a scene, he’s focusing intensely on the script in his hand. When the director yells action, Ae-jung is surprised to find he doesn’t even speak in the scene, just stands in the background. It turns out he’s just playing a bodyguard. While the scene is still being filmed, Ae-jung picks up this mysterious actor’s copy of the script, only to discover it’s dog-eared and all marked up: it’s got insightful notes scribbled on every page and every now and then the repeated message, “This is your chance, Chul-woo! Work hard; you can do it!” Ae-jung is so touched that an actor with such a small role would think this deeply about her script that she asks the editors to send her cuts of his scenes. The first time she writes a speaking scene for him it’s purely just as a little thank you to him for his dedication and hard work.
The first time Ae-jung and Chul-woo actually meet he’s the one who first notices her. He stops her as she’s walking around the set and points to her shoelaces, which have come untied. Before she can even thank him, he says, “Here, I got it,” gets down on one knee and ties them for her. Then he gives her a megawatt smile and says, “There, now you won’t trip and fall.” Ae-jung immediately falls for him. Which is terrible, because he’s not in his character’s costume but in his own clothes—a white t-shirt with rolled up sleeves that she can see tattoos peaking out from under, earrings in both ears, and beat up Docs. All signs point to the kind of guy she shouldn’t even dream about. That night she writes more than just a line for him; she writes an entire scene.
As Ae-jung continues to visit the set, she and Chul-woo continue to meet, and they become friends. He knows her as Ae-jung from the catering staff. They drink together after work, bring each other coffee in the mornings, and tell each other about their childhoods, their families, and their hopes. She asks him why he always marks up his script with so many notes when it’s just a soapy drama, and he tells her that Monster Writer Min-hee is actually his favorite writer, because even though her dramas are implausible, she always gets the truth about human emotion and motivation right. Disbelieving, Ae-jung quizzes him on all the shows she’s worked on, and it turns out he even tracked down and watched the drama specials she wrote when she first started working.
Ae-jung realizes Chul-woo isn’t at all who she took him to be: he’s genuine and kind and warm, and the more she gets to know him the more she likes him. But she can’t confess because she’s scared he’ll turn her down and then they won’t even be able to be friends anymore. After all, she’s been lying about her identity the whole time, and he probably doesn’t go for women like her anyway. Instead she writes more and more for him, giving him more screentime and making him more central to the plot of her show. Soon viewers and critics alike take notice—some are scandalized that Monster Writer Min-hee is so drastically changing the story, while others are praising Chul-woo’s acting (and looks), cheering for him to become the lead.
Little by little, Ae-jung plucks up her courage. She starts slipping snippets of their conversations into the script, and soon Chul-woo realizes that she is Monster Writer Min-hee and Monster Writer Min-hee is her—and that the woman he’s been crushing on for months is the one behind his success. Chul-woo thought he never had a chance with her either, but when he reads the big confession scene for A Flower Rises in the Sun, hope blooms in him. Instead of confronting Ae-jung, he asks her to help him practice a scene—the big confession. It’s a scene Ae-jung wrote especially for him, and in it she poured all her desire for how she hopes he could feel about her. Chul-woo and Ae-jung play out the scene, exactly as Ae-jung has it written, and it ends in a kiss. After Chul-woo kisses her, he says, “That was fake, but Ms. Moon Ae-jung, I want to kiss you for real. Is that all right?” Ae-jung nods, and then they kiss for real.
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