Peerless Perverted Actor Has a Celebrity Harem?!

His gaze travelled over her once more, then settled back on her eyes. "You’re beautiful either way, sis. I’m not saying the ponytail made you ugly, because I value my life and also have functioning vision. But this looks more like you. You spend all day pulling everything tight and keeping it exactly where it’s supposed to be — your schedule, your face, your feelings, this entire lunatic family. Let your hair do whatever the hell it wants for one evening."

His eyes gentled further.

"When it’s down like this, you don’t just look perfect but free. And honestly? That’s far more beautiful."

Aveline opened her mouth.

Nothing came out. That was becoming an alarmingly regular malfunction around him.

She had braced for something shallow; some shameless line about how unfairly gorgeous all his sisters were — easy to dismiss, roll her eyes at and walk away from.

Instead the little asshole had reached into the middle of her tightly run life, put one finger on the single loose thread, and spoken like he understood exactly how exhausting it was holding everything so it never unravelled.

Park’s smile tilted. "And before you start pretending otherwise — I know you like it too."

That finally rescued her irritation from wherever it had crawled off to die.

"You are becoming far too comfortable with these out-of-line actions," she said, folding her arms. "First breakfast. Then kissing my cheek on your way out. Now you’re undoing my hair in the middle of a corridor as though personal boundaries have been abolished by royal decree."

"I wouldn’t say abolished."

"Park."

"Loosened?"

Her stare sharpened.

"Fine," he said, looking nowhere near sorry. "Temporarily renegotiated under emergency siblinglaw."

"You cannot simply touch people whenever you feel like it."

"I know." He said so calmly that it stole the next half of her lecture out of her mouth.

His expression softened again. "And if you genuinely tell me you don’t want me touching your hair, hugging you, kissing your cheek, any of it — I stop. No jokes. No guilt trips. I mean it."

Aveline watched him very carefully.

"But," he went on, "you don’t get to spend nineteen years treating affection like restricted government information and then act shocked because I finally got tired of waiting on security clearance."

She stared.

"I told you this morning I’m going to make an effort with this family, and I didn’t mean sitting through breakfast for thirty minutes, eating politely, and collecting a gold star for good behaviour. I mean actually making the effort. Saying things out loud instead of assuming everyone magically knows. Telling Emmie I love her instead of trusting telepathy. Admitting Evangeline is terrifyingly beautiful even while she’s looking at me like gum stuck under her expensive shoe."

Aveline’s mouth almost moved. Almost.

"And it means telling you that you’re my sister, that I care about you, and that I’m done acting like either of those things is humiliating. It isn’t. Pretending I didn’t care — that was the embarrassing part."

She folded her arms tighter, mostly because she had abruptly lost track of anywhere else to put them.

"You make it sound very simple."

"It should be simple."

"It isn’t."

"I know." His gaze held hers. "But complicated doesn’t mean we have to keep making it worse for sport. This family already generates enough emotional bullshit to power a small country."

Not elegant but unfortunately accurate:

And the confidence in him wasn’t loud, which was exactly why she couldn’t dismiss it. He didn’t sound like a man performing a speech he’d rehearsed into a mirror — and acting was the one dream he’d chased his whole life, so she would have caught it.

He sounded tired but not weak or beaten.

Just genuinely tired of playing the old version of himself.

Aveline searched his face for the performance she’d accused him of at breakfast.

She couldn’t find it anywhere.

"You’ve changed," she said quietly.

His mouth curved. "Yeah. I’ve received several complaints. The review section is brutal."

"I’m serious."

"So am I."

"You’re behaving as though you have a death wish."

That got a laugh out of him — one second of it, and then it faded into something else:

"Maybe I’m just tired of pretending."

Her crossed arms loosened slightly, Park looked past her down the long corridor, toward the rest of the mansion sitting silent beyond it, then came back to her.

"I spent years acting like I didn’t care, because caring hands people the knife. I acted like Emmie annoyed me when she was probably the only person in this house consistently choosing me, even when I made it nearly impossible. I acted like I wanted nothing from you and Evangeline, because wanting in and being shut out hurt more than pretending I’d never needed either of you."

He swallowed once.

"I acted like being excluded didn’t matter. Like Dad barely looking at me didn’t matter. Like watching all of you be a family from somewhere outside the glass didn’t matter as if this huge, beautiful, completely fucked-up house was just a place I slept."

Aveline said nothing.

Park gave a small shrug, and his eyes stayed painfully steady through it.

"It was a terrible role. The audience hated me, the script was depressing, and the pay was shit. I’m quitting."

There was humour in it but nowhere near enough to cover what sat underneath.

Something pulled tight in Aveline’s chest.

"You cannot expect everything to change because you woke up one morning and decided to become affectionate."

"I don’t."

Again — the speed of it surprised her.

He stepped a little closer, though this time he stopped with room left, far enough that she could step back if she wanted to.

She noted, with some annoyance, that she didn’t want to.

"You don’t have to forgive every ugly thing I said when I was angry as I will forget whatever you said and did too, and you definitely don’t have to turn into some sweet older sister from a family sitcom who packs lunches and asks about my feelings every ten minutes...

...Frankly that would terrify me."

Aveline almost laughed.

"I’m not asking you to fake anything," Park said. "I’m just telling you what I’m going to do."

"And what exactly is that?"

"Keep showing up."

He said it plainly — and then kept going before the line could curdle into one of those fake-deep quotes people posted over sunset photographs.

"I’ll keep coming to breakfast. I’ll keep talking to you even when you answer like a lawyer billing by the syllable and I’ll keep telling you when you look beautiful, when I think you’re being unfair, and when you’re carrying too much alone because this family decided the eldest daughter ships with free emotional labour."

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

Park smiled and took none of it back.

"Stay suspicious as long as you need. Watch me. Test me. Wait for me to screw up — I probably will, because hello, nineteen-year-old male, the species is not famous for wisdom. But I’m stubborn, sis. I’ve got time. And I’m not going anywhere just because loving me is inconvenient."

Aveline studied him in silence.

The teasing curve came back to his mouth, gentler now. "And for the record — being honest also means telling you that ponytail was doing absolutely fuck-all for you."

She let a slow breath out through her nose. "You almost managed to sound mature."

"I panicked."

"Clearly."

"I’m nineteen. There are medical limits. Too much maturity before exercise could damage something."

Despite everything, the smallest laugh escaped her.

"Madre mía," he said, hand pressed to his chest. "She does have emotions. Somebody alert the Palace."

"Do not ruin this."

"Too late. I’m engraving the date into the family archives."

"Go to the gym."

"I was already going."

"Then why the hell are you still standing here?"

Park looked at her for a long moment. The thoughtful expression came back — and this time there was no uncertainty anywhere inside it.

"Because I wanted to do one more thing."

Her eyes narrowed. "Park."

He leaned in and Park pressed a soft kiss to the centre of her forehead for one second, warm and careful, nothing like the playful cheek-kiss from breakfast:

Only Park — her brother — standing close and refusing to pretend anymore.

He pulled back before her mind remembered how reactions were supposed to work.

"I love you, sis," he said, wearing that ridiculous, impossible smile. "And your hair looks fucking amazing. Don’t let your pride bully you into tying it back the second I’m gone."

Then he turned and ran, clearly aware that remaining within arm’s reach any longer carried physical consequences.

Aveline stood alone in the corridor.

Her hair hung loose around her shoulders, the dark strands still holding the faint memory of his fingers moving through them. The centre of her forehead felt embarrassingly, radioactively noticeable.

She lifted one hand toward it.

Stopped and checked both ends of the corridor to confirm no witnesses existed, then touched the place he had kissed.

"That little rascal," she whispered but there was no real anger left in it this time.

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