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___________________________________________________________25 CONTROVERSIAL QUOTES  FROM THE STYLE EMPRESSOn perfection:It’s a unicorn.Humans love myths and legends. Fairy tales.It feeds our hunger for what we don’t and can’t have.It makes Hollywood and people like me richer.Sandara Park__________________________________________________   JAEJOONG IS TAKING ME TO PUNTO FIAMMA one more time to have dinner with his mother. I’m glad for the distraction. I’m leaving tomorrow.  I have this blanket of melancholy shrouding me today and I can’t shake it off no matter how attentive Jaejoong is to me.  Funny how two weeks can change a person.  Honestly, I don’t want to leave. I want to extend my stay.  But I can’t.  I’m needed in Korea. Fashion Week is in two months. It’s the busiest time for all competitive designers. I just panicked and squeezed in this baby-making project because I knew I would be all over the place the rest of the year. I figured if I didn’t do it immediately while the fear was still inside me, I never would.  Fantasy time is definitely coming to an end.  Back to the real world tomorrow.  “You’re going to meet another person very close to me.”  I turn to him. We’ve been both silent and pensive after we took off from the airport on his chopper.  “And who is this person?”  “My stepfather.”  Oh. Hee Ae got married after the king died? Wow, another revelation. Hee Ae’s personal memoir will be really juicy, I bet.  “Are you close to him?”  “Very much. He makes everything a lot easier for me and Mother, especially when my father died. Mother was very depressed, but Nam Gil was there. I’m glad he was there. I didn’t know what to do, how to console her.”  I can imagine. When you replace a great queen in a king’s heart, the love that caused it must be really special and hard to let go.  “Then I’d love to meet him. He sounds like a really cool guy.”  “He is. He adopted me after father’s death. I do love my father but I’m proud to carry Nam Gil’s name. I think it suits me better.”  “So, who’s my Bubba Daddy?” I don’t hesitate to ask him that now, knowing this.  The smile he gives me is priceless. “Kim Jaejoong. Pleased to meet you, Sandara Park.”  I smile back. “Kim Jaejoong. Great name.”  “You’ll name our kid after me, right, Dara?”  He sounds so hopeful and my heart clenches painfully. I look away.  “Don’t you like Park?”  “It’s fine. Park- Kim is much better.”  My anxiety gets worse. “Hmm. So, tell me about Hee Ae and Nam Gil.”  “Ahh. Their love story is really interesting.”  I really adore this about him. He’s fond of love stories. We watched a few classic sixties movies from his DVD collection in his home theater and it was him who was going misty-eyed over the emotional scenes, hugging me and kissing my hair.  “More interesting than ours?”  He grins. “By a tad. Nah, ours is the stuff of legends.”  I wish I had his faith. “Tell me.”  “Nam Gil used to be my father’s most trusted right-hand man. He came into my father’s employ in his early twenties and has never left. He was my companion whenever I traveled or go out of the island when I was younger. My father trusted no one but Nam Gil when it came to my safety. He’s my second father. He’s proven that many times, that’s why I was so happy when he and Mother fell in love after father died. Or maybe Nam Gil was already secretly in love with her even before that. He has never married before Mother.”  I blink rapidly, my throat constricting. No wonder he’s so idealistic. He was lucky enough to be surrounded by good people who know how to really love. He’s been inspired by his parents, raised well by them. I’m afraid I’d be the first not-so-good person to get close to him and disillusion him. I really don’t trust my fucked-up self around him.  “Nam Gil is the CEO of our company, the one that runs this island. Mother’s the chairman of the board. I’m lucky I don’t have to be bothered by those things too much. Leaves me a lot of time for my other endeavors, though he’s been hounding me to take over his post.”  “Why don’t you?”  “I can do that. Been a member of the board since I was eighteen. But I’m really an artist, not a businessman. Nam Gil is only 55 anyway and sharp as a hawk. He’d be bored out of his mind if he retires now. He can run the company for another five years. Maybe then, I’ll take over.”  “I’m a businesswoman. Hard to the core.”  He grins. “You and Nam Gil will have a lot to talk about then.”  ————//————   By the time I meet Kim Nam Gil, I feel like I already know him. He’s a good-looking man with a really nice goatee and longish salt and pepper hair and a kind, ready smile.  He’s tall and