By Zephyria 
[I asked the hotel to prepare it so I could receive it before going out. It seems the timing didn’t work out.]
I felt sorry for Hyung’s voice, which tried hard to hide his disappointment. Sitting down on the bench next to the large areca palm pot, I thanked him for his thoughtfulness. Hyung laughed, asking why I was thanking him when I hadn’t even received it yet.
[It was the VIP opening yesterday, right? Was Lee Hyun’s painting sold?]
“Ah… no. The CEO said they would just check the exhibition response this time….”
[They’re not selling it?]
“Yes. Not this time.”
I wondered if he even intended to sell it. I fiddled with the can of my drink, listening to Hyung’s voice muttering to himself. A couple, who looked to be in their early twenties, walked past the bench as they moved towards the inner exhibition room. It was in the direction of the room where my painting was displayed. My heart inexplicably pounded.
[How are you feeling? Are you having trouble eating?]
“I’ve gotten much better. My appetite has almost fully recovered, and my condition is good, perhaps thanks to the supplements you recommended.”
[Hmm… it seems you still haven’t told them.]
“Yes?”
I could feel Hyung pulling the corners of his lips into a smile on the other end of the phone.
[I boasted a little, saying, “Who wouldn’t get better with treatment from me?”]
The call ended with Hyung’s earnest joke that Chicago doesn’t really have any representative souvenirs, and while it’s obvious, a Starbucks city tumbler would be a good travel gift.
I felt a little of my tension ease. Unlike the time spent with him, where I felt the need to perform well and was constantly aware of his gaze, talking with Hyung was comfortable. The tension he gave off was a pleasant tightening, entirely different from discomfort, but moments of relaxation were sometimes necessary.
With a lighter expression, even to myself, I put my phone in my pocket and stood up from the bench.
Unlike the second floor, which was crowded all the way to the stairs, the lower floor was much more tranquil. Following the stylish typography on the wall guiding me to the exhibition hall, I walked further inside. As I moved away from the bustle of the entrance and the upper floor, the calm yet dreamy lounge music flowing through the space gradually reached my ears.
“……”
As I rounded a concrete wall corner and saw the painting hanging on the wall, bathed in soft indirect lighting, my toes curled inside my canvas sneakers. Heat rose to my face. I could feel the upper part of my earlobes burning red.
It felt like the day I went to school and found my diary displayed page by page on the bulletin board next to the school gate. Or, as sometimes happens in dreams, it was close to the bewilderment of watching myself, naked among fully clothed people, being shamed, as if I were another self.
That was the first feeling.
The twenty or so visitors seemed mostly people waiting to kill time until the upper floor became a little less crowded. But it didn’t matter. I was a complete unknown, and I wasn’t so foolish as to not realize that having this opportunity at all, from my position, was a great stroke of luck and something to be grateful for.
Three paintings were hung side by side, spaced apart:
The exhibition space was not as narrow as I had expected. About 10 works in total were displayed with enough space between them so as not to interfere with each other’s individuality. Watching the people drifting in front of the paintings in their own ways, I walked towards the empty wall to the right of the entrance, where nothing was hung, and leaned my shoulder against it.
Although there were only a few visitors, most people seemed to be paying more attention to the two recent works. However, one man stood out, lingering for an unusually long time in front of
The man, who stood rigidly, resting his weight on a long umbrella covered in plastic, was an East Asian with hair that fell slightly past his shoulders. Although I couldn’t be certain from his profile alone, he looked Korean. And even from his profile, I could guess that the man had a remarkably neat and handsome appearance.
Even after being bumped into by two or three teenagers who giggled in front of
Afterward, the man moved back and forth between the three paintings, checking the captions several times. It was as if he were trying to confirm that what he saw was indeed true.
As people moved along the path like a leisurely stroll, lingering in front of a painting for at most 10 seconds, the man’s actions were bound to stand out.
It was the first time I encountered, in person, the meaning of a painting not as a means of expressing myself, but as something for the viewer to interpret, feel, and accept according to their own will.
The initial shame began to fade. What was hung there was no longer my vulnerability.
It was a light joke for the man with long hair and all the other visitors here, a mundane part of everyday life that passed by like streetlights or shop windows, or perhaps it was their own vulnerabilities that they saw reflected.
The man finally moved away slowly.
As he stepped a few paces away from the painting and then looked back, he was, as expected, more than ordinarily handsome. Our eyes met, and I offered a slight smile as per the etiquette I learned from my English teacher, but the man ignored my greeting and left the exhibition room with a stern expression.
It wasn’t the joyful face of someone who had discovered a painting they liked. I felt a little sorry, sensing that his prolonged gaze at my painting wasn’t for a particularly positive reason, but what was hung there already existed independently of my hands. Even if it made someone’s face harden, there was nothing I could do about it now.
I observed the visitors for about 30 minutes, leaning against the wall. While watching the various reactions of people viewing my paintings, I felt, strangely, a desire to paint being stimulated.
The urge to paint, which had always originated from within me, was now being triggered from a different direction.
I wanted to expose myself more fully to this interesting, unfamiliar sensation, but it was time to move on according to my planned schedule.
Before leaving the exhibition space, I looked back again, just like the man had. The paintings that had come from within me, and were once a part of me, now existed independently of me, were given new meaning by others, and lived and moved, changing their form according to their perspectives.
The couple who had passed me earlier while I was sitting on the bench had stopped in front of
The second floor was still as boisterous as if a party were in full swing, but fortunately, I was able to convey my congratulations to Shushu in person. Despite being busy, he took a moment to escort me to the gallery entrance.
“I didn’t want to interfere too much, fearing you’d complain about overprotection… but it’s a strange city, and it’s raining. Why don’t you take a car?”
Holding an umbrella wide enough for two people to share comfortably, he tilted it towards me with a worried expression.
But before meeting him, I had lived my life accepting the inconvenience of taking the bus in the rain and the discomfort of wet socks seeping into my sneakers as a natural part of life. Moreover, the rain had already lightened considerably, falling as a fine drizzle.
I couldn’t help but laugh at his face, which looked as if he had heard me say I was going to jump into a fire unarmed.
“I’ll visit the two galleries I couldn’t go to yesterday and head straight back to the hotel. I’ll message you immediately whenever I move. You know I won’t do anything that would make you worry.”
He sighed lightly as he took his hand out of his pants pocket and adjusted the collar of the jacket I was wearing. His breath touched my forehead.
“You usually don’t. It’s just that you sometimes do something impulsive that makes my heart skip a beat.”
Had I? I didn’t think I had ever done anything to make him worry. Looking up with a puzzled expression, he smiled as if he had lost and handed me the umbrella.
Afterward, he continued to give me very sensible advice with a serious expression, but I half-forced him to go ahead first and started walking down the rainy street.
I slowly visited the two galleries I hadn’t been able to visit yesterday due to spending more time than planned at the Chicago Art Museum, and it took over 4 hours to walk back to the hotel. Except for a brief 15-minute break at a cafe near one of the galleries for coffee and a muffin, I had been standing the entire time, so my legs were heavy at the end.
In the elevator heading to my hotel room, I had to lean against the bar in the corner. Thinking that it had been a long time since I felt such physical fatigue, I laughed foolishly at my reflection in the gleaming elevator door.
It felt like a distant memory that just a few months ago, I was sweating through my t-shirt almost every day moving furniture. And now, I was in Chicago, a city I had never even considered.
My body was tired, but my mind was eager, filled with images I wanted to paint. His words, “Experience is a treasure for a creator,” were true. From the moment I faced my paintings in the gallery this morning until I returned to the hotel, everything I saw, heard, and felt was a stimulus, pricking the skin of my senses like needles, drawing vivid red drops of blood.
They were still scattered images, not yet coalesced into a single concept, but I wanted to capture them before they dulled.
As soon as I arrived in my room, I took off my jacket and immediately started sketching. I recorded the desired images with brief croquis over several pages. I added short notes where necessary.
As time was limited, I focused and finished four or five pages of sketches before quickly taking off my clothes and heading to the bathroom. When I came out after showering, he was in my room.
He looked up at me from where he stood by the table near the window, looking down at my drawing notebook.
“When did you get here?”
Without even trying, as soon as I spotted him, the muscles in my face relaxed, and a smile threatened to escape. I bit my lower lip, trying to slow my quickening steps as I approached him. He quickly scanned my entire body. His gaze, ardent and hungry as if caressing me, felt like it was tightly wrapping around my post-shower body.
“Ah… I’m sorry. It was open, so I looked at it for a bit.”
He apologized, suppressing the desire conveyed in his eyes.
“It’s okay.”
I smiled and shook my head at him as he put down the page he was holding, his expression apologetic. He lightly put his arm around my waist, rubbing my wet hair between his fingers. My words, “It’s okay to look at the painting,” seemed to have pleased him.
I wanted to inhale more of his scent, which was deep, intense, yet never vulgar, possessing a profound, sinking weight, so I carefully buried my nose in the shoulder of his jacket. ‘That scent’ was faint, barely perceptible, but I liked all the perfumes and combinations he used.
“Did the event go well?”
“Um, the event itself went well, but….”
I looked up at his face, which trailed off. He narrowed his eyes, tucked my wet hair behind my ear, and said,
“Shushu was quite displeased when I suggested we go to the lunch meeting together tomorrow…. Even if it’s not strictly business, one can build relationships with people. He’s still stubbornly reclusive, even if he’s improved compared to before.”
He stopped talking, perhaps realizing he had gone on too long about something I didn’t need to know. Then, he checked his watch and his expression softened into a gentle smile.
“I want to shower one more time before we go out. Will you wait while I get ready?”
“I will.”
After he returned to his room, I dried my hair first. I wasn’t intentionally growing it out, but since I had only had it trimmed when I went for a haircut with him before coming to Chicago, its length was awkward, looking a bit messy if I didn’t tuck it behind my ears.
Not knowing how to style it with gel or wax, I thought I’d have to get it cut short when I returned to Seoul. Just as I was loosening the tie of my robe to change, the doorbell rang. It seemed my sister, who had finished preparing earlier than expected, had come up. Tightening the tie around my waist again, I headed for the door.
“Who is it?”
“……Is Mr. Lau Wikun here?”
“……”
After a brief pause, the voice outside the door was not my sister’s.
Peeking through the round lens, I saw a man lingering in front of the door. He didn’t seem like a hotel staff member, but since he had come asking for him by name, I couldn’t pretend not to know.
As soon as I grabbed the handle of the left door and pulled it open, I recognized the visitor at a glance. It was the man who had stood for a long time in front of
I was surprised by the strange coincidence, my eyes widening automatically, but he didn’t seem to recognize me at all. The man, who appeared anxious, narrowed his brow and stared intently at my face.
“Are you perhaps Korean?”
When I answered yes, his suspicious gaze swept over me, clad in a shower robe. The man made no attempt to hide his intention to find out who I was.
“Where is the owner of this room? Is it okay for you to just open the door like that? They’ll be really angry.”
His tone suggested he knew the person whose room it was better than I, who had opened the door.
“He’s… showering right now.”
At my answer, the man shrugged as if incredulous and clicked his tongue. Judging by his muttered words, “What a thing to be doing in broad daylight,” he seemed to assume that he and I had just been entangled in sex. Furthermore, he seemed to have concluded that I was his sex partner, whom he had brought into the room.
“I’ll go in and wait. Is that okay?”
Though he asked for permission, the man stepped inside without waiting for an answer. However, as he said, I didn’t have the right to let just anyone into the room. I subtly blocked his path, putting on a troubled expression.
“First, could you tell me who to announce….”
The man’s lips twisted as he glanced at me from the corner of his eye. He showed no intention of hiding or softening any of his emotions towards me.
“Has Baek Yuni arrived already?”
It was his voice.
He walked slowly out of the master room, pulling down the towel he had placed on his head, and looked out into the entrance hall. It was difficult to read his feelings towards the man from his expressionless face and gaze alone.
“What is it?”
The man shook his head and laughed at his hostile reaction.
“Is this what you say after meeting after so many years?”
“What is it?”
He walked barefoot to the entrance and pulled my arm, making me step back behind him. Seeing his aggressive posture, as if cornering the man, it seemed he was at least not a welcome guest.
The man, who alternated glances between him and me, both in shower robes, then looked directly at him, as if that didn’t matter, and said,
“I came because I have something to say.”
“If you come here like this, do we have a relationship where I have to carve out my precious time to listen?”
“Shushu’s work sold well. It’s the opening today, and almost everything has sold-out stickers. You’re staying at the same hotel, aren’t you?”
“So. Are you trying to threaten me?”
The man scoffed and lowered his gaze obliquely. Then, he tapped the tile floor of the hall with his plastic-covered long umbrella.
“Hyung, you’re truly amazing. I was really surprised. You finally found the artist of
“……”
He seemed like someone trying to poke around everywhere to find his hidden weakness, but the man himself also looked cornered, despite being the one probing for weaknesses.
He stared at the man’s face with a complicated expression, unsure how to handle the situation. Then, he glanced briefly back at me standing behind him on the left and made a decision.
“Go wait in the study.”
He had never used such a firm, commanding tone with me, or even with the Phantom family members.
He gestured towards the study door, visible directly opposite, next to the master room, separated by a corner, and stepped aside. The man, brushing past me, gave me a brief glance with eyes filled with mild contempt and curiosity, then entered the study and closed the door.
After letting out a deep sigh, as if drawn from the very bottom of his lungs, he turned his body completely towards me and stood facing me. His face, etched with accumulated fatigue, offered an awkward smile.
“He’s someone I used to know… he paints. I don’t know why he came all the way to Chicago, but I think I need to hear him out first.”
“……”
“As you can probably tell… it doesn’t seem like a situation you can just lightly ignore…”
“That’s… true.”
“Sigh… I really didn’t mean for this to happen…. What am I going to do about breaking our promise again? How about you two, Yuni and you, just go without me?”
Thinking my passive reaction was dissatisfaction with the situation, he lowered his body, grasping my shoulders and looking down at me. His face was full of apology as he gauged my mood. The face of a man flustered by the consecutive cancellations of our date. That’s exactly what it looked like.
But I had no complaints about the evening plans being canceled. Of course, it would have been better if we could have spent time together, but this situation wasn’t his fault, and I had no intention of showing displeasure or resentment.
“Would it bother you… if I stayed?”
“……”
He paused for a moment, perhaps surprised by my question, then shook his head several times.
“No, why would it bother me? Not at all. I was just worried you’d be disappointed because our plans kept getting canceled.”
“I didn’t want to go out; I just wanted to be with you, CEO Ryu… so if it’s okay, I’d just like to stay here. I’m… worried about what’s happening, too.”
With the hand that had been on my shoulder, he gently lifted my chin. My gaze, which had been looking down at his chest, met his eyes. I felt as though he might see through the word ‘worried’ to the petty desire hidden within it – the desire not to leave him alone with another man.
“Perhaps, before….”
“……”
His face, which had been approaching as if to kiss me, stopped. He shook his head and lightly pushed away his chest in front of me. He felt strange asking this question. While I was aware that we were dating, I still needed more time to adjust to acting like a couple.
“No, it’s nothing. I’ll explain it to you properly, Hyung. Please go in quickly.”
He grabbed my shoulder again as I turned to leave.
“Are you asking if he’s someone I dated before?”
“……”
“Is that it?”
Even if that were the case, I knew well that it had no bearing on our current relationship. I didn’t doubt him. That’s why, not wanting to show my ugly side, I didn’t answer. I wanted to hide somewhere. I could feel my earlobes reddening and heat rising to my face.
“You can ask. You have the right to question me about things like that.”
He gently shook my shoulder, trying to look into my face. I raised my arm to cover my face and pushed him away.
“F-first… please have your talk.”
He let his hand slide down my arm from my shoulder, and in the end, he cupped my face. My flushed face was finally revealed, but he didn’t make fun of it. His gaze, looking down at me, was serious.
“Later… I’ll tell you everything.”
As soon as he finished speaking, he pulled me into an embrace. While hugs weren’t uncommon, I was a little surprised this time because it wasn’t the expected moment. Moreover, the force with which he held me, as if trying to imprint me onto his body, tightened around my upper body.
Thinking about his journey, which had been lacking in both time and mental space since arriving in Chicago, this embrace seemed to encompass more than just the current situation. I felt as sorry as if I should have been the one to hug him first, realizing he must be going through an especially difficult time.
“I’ll tell you everything.”
He murmured, emphasizing it once more, and I nodded, wrapping my arms around his broad back. After a moment of hesitation, I patted his back a couple of times, and he laughed as if he had received unexpected comfort from a four or five-year-old.
He returned to the master room to change, and I walked to my room to call my sister and inform her of the situation.
I worried my sister would be disappointed about the canceled plans, but she seemed relieved instead. She said she felt burdened by the need to act friendly and cordial when we both knew it was awkward, so she was glad it was canceled. Hearing her words, I couldn’t say anything else.
To distract myself from my preoccupation with the study, I took off my robe after the call and changed my clothes. I sat at the table, intending to refine some sketches, but found it difficult to concentrate.
Just as I was about to take a can of beer from the refrigerator in the small kitchen between the living room and my room, the doorbell rang again.
“Ah, Lee Hyun-ssi… Awi, CEO Ryu, are you inside?”
This time it was Shushu. He was still in the same attire he wore to the opening event I had seen at the gallery that morning.
“Yes… but we have a guest and are currently talking.”
I figured he was managing his connections for the New York branch anyway. Shushu grumbled with a displeased look and gestured towards the inside of the door.
“Can I wait in the living room?”
It seemed like another worry had found him, but… there was no reason not to let Shushu in.
After guiding him to the living room, I asked if he needed a drink. Shushu, who had requested coffee, called out to me as I headed to the kitchen and asked for beer. I returned to the living room with two bottles of beer in hand.
“Thank you. Don’t mind me, you can rest in your room, Lee Hyun-ssi.”
“No, no. I was just about to grab a beer myself before the artist arrived.”
“I’d be grateful if you’d drink with me while we wait.”
Shushu didn’t refuse.
Shushu sat on a single velvet sofa with a sky-blue silk cushion, and I took a seat on an identical sofa across a small table. From this spot, the right window offered a view of Chicago’s east side, and the entire living room was visible straight ahead. Besides the seating we occupied, the living room had two other sofa sets, providing enough facilities and space for about twenty people to have a casual party.
“I saw the artwork.”
“Ah… I’m grateful you took the time to see it despite being busy. Thank you.”
“I only found out today that the artist behind
“……”
“That guy, Awi, he doesn’t usually display many paintings in his home, even though he’s involved in the art world. But that particular piece, he always hung it in a prominent spot whenever he moved.”
Everyone who knew him well spoke of how special
“…Why?”
Shushu, sensing my gaze, smiled as he took his lips off the beer bottle. Realizing I might have been staring too intently, I quickly turned my head and apologized.
“No, it’s just… it was surprising to hear you call the artist ‘that guy’…”
As if he knew I’d think that, Shushu laughed again. Then, tilting his beer bottle, he playfully raised his eyebrows at me.
“When I’m struggling with my work, I say worse things than that.”
Seeing my disbelieving expression, Shushu continued to laugh, looking at my face.
“It was like Awi’s hobby to ask everyone visiting his home for the first time what they thought the theme of that painting was.
He owns many famous works, but he was particularly fixated on that one painting… But then, Lee Hyun-ssi is the artist of
As if he himself had been a subject of life’s comedies, Shushu drank his beer with a bitter smile.
Even for him, who seemed so bright and cheerful, life was undoubtedly a real situation unfolding in the wild, not a greenhouse. Despite telling myself that appearances aren’t everything, I suddenly felt apologetic, wondering if I had developed prejudices about Shushu without realizing it.
“Does Awi treat you well?”
“……What?”
The question, like a surprise attack, made me choke on my beer, coughing. I was fortunate that I could attribute my flushed face to the coughing fit.
Shushu, while saying he was sorry and asking if I was okay, laughed as if surprised by my reaction.
“Awi and I have been friends since kindergarten. I can tell just by how he treats Lee Hyun-ssi. Besides, that guy doesn’t seem to have any intention of hiding it, you know.”
I know that guy, if he wanted to, he could fool God about who he’s dating. Shushu added, and I fiddled with the beer bottle in my hand, feeling a bit foolish.
“I asked if he treats you well, but it seems like he’s completely smitten with you, Lee Hyun-ssi. Isn’t that right?”
Shushu, urging me to talk, seemed to find my reaction somewhat amusing. The more he did, the more my face burned. Even dating him alone was something I hadn’t fully gotten used to, and talking about it in front of someone else was still too high a hurdle for me.
As I desperately tried to change the subject, I heard the sound of the study door opening from the hallway connected to the living room. It seemed the conversation was over. Thinking it was a timely relief, I let out a sigh, placed the beer bottle on the table, and stood up.
“……Seonyu?”
The hallway connecting the study and the master room to the living room wasn’t long. Moreover, Shushu and I could see the hallway directly from where we were sitting. Shushu, who slowly rose from the sofa as if he had seen a ghost, called out, but it wasn’t to him. The man emerging from the study, as if doubting his own eyes, reacted to Shushu’s voice. The man following him saw the situation and scowled, biting his lower lip. His expression was one of dismay. But Shushu’s eyes were fixed solely on the man.
“Why are you… here…”
“Uh… I’m looking into opening a solo exhibition in Seoul, and they said my gallery here would introduce me to a good place, so I came specifically, and it’s Wikun Hyung.”
The man, walking hesitantly through the hallway to the living room entrance, laughed awkwardly and rubbed the back of his neck. Then, looking at Shushu with complicated eyes, he spoke cautiously.
“Have you been well? Your work… has gotten even better.”
“……”
“How’s your ankle…?”
“That was a long time ago.”
Shushu smiled bitterly and looked down at the beer bottle in his hand.
The moment he mentioned his ankle, a page turned in my memory. The search results from a portal site that had told me about Shushu’s past – how he had to give up dancing due to consecutive ankle injuries and complications from surgery site infections.
Though it was merely a gaze without physical substance, it felt like a weapon capable of inflicting fatal wounds. As I watched their eyes cautiously meet in the air, I thought that perhaps the man’s past partner might have been Shushu, not him.
If the tension between him and the man at the entrance had been close to hostility, the atmosphere between Shushu and the man now was far more complex and charged. He, in fact, felt like a third party, standing behind the man with his arms crossed, removed from the situation. Though his expression was quite grim….
“What are you going to do? Are you going to catch up on each other’s lives and have some tea?”
He asked, looking at Shushu over the man’s shoulder. His tone and expression conveyed a subtle pressure, implying they didn’t even need to talk like this.
But Shushu couldn’t answer immediately, only moving his lips several times. The man also looked at Shushu, gnawing his lower lip, unable to utter any words. Instead of the two of them, who couldn’t move closer or turn away, he stepped in.
“Hong Seonyu, do you have more business here?”
The man looked back at him, prompted by the nuance of ‘think carefully’ about whether he had business. Then, looking back at Shushu standing by the sofa, the man’s gaze trembled intensely.
The man pressed his lips together firmly, then spoke slowly in a dry voice.
“Congratulations on the exhibition. Then…”
And even as he turned away completely, the man couldn’t take his eyes off Shushu. Shushu remained silent.
As I alternated between watching the man disappear towards the entrance and his retreating back, and Shushu, who had frozen in bewilderment, an inexplicable tension transferred to me, stiffening my body and mind. I couldn’t even take a deep breath next to Shushu.
He soon returned to the living room. Feeling like I should make space, I took the beer bottles Shushu and I had drunk from to the kitchen and went into my room. I sat at the table again, but I couldn’t possibly draw.
Seonyu.
Just once, but Shushu had clearly called the man that, and he had called the man Hong Seonyu.
It might be an overactive imagination, but the memory of the painting
At the time, the artist’s reaction to the painting had been striking, so I had held onto the artist’s name, SEONEW, to remember it. A Korean artist in her twenties. Affiliated with a gallery in New York.
Back then, he had seemed to want to hear my thoughts on that painting and its artist. It didn’t feel like he was simply asking for an impression of a randomly noticed piece. He even seemed to be urging me to criticize the painting more honestly and sharply, as I hesitated. He himself had also offered a cold assessment, saying it was a work whose bubble would burst within one to two years, its value dropping by more than half.
“He’s someone I used to know… he paints.” ―Adding this to his explanation at the entrance earlier, it didn’t seem like a completely baseless fantasy.
However, even if that man was SEONEW of
I must have been lost in thought without realizing it, because I was startled and jumped up from my chair when I heard a knock.
“Yes.”
After a stiff reply, the door leading to the living room opened quietly.
“Can we talk?”
He said, standing at the doorway without entering the room. It felt like an invitation to the living room, so I nodded and walked over.
Shushu had already left. On the table in front of a three-seater sofa, opposite the single sofa set where Shushu and I had been sitting, whiskey, on-the-rocks glasses, an ashtray, cigarettes, and a lighter were scattered messily.
He had me sit on a calm, ivory-colored long fabric sofa and asked if I wanted more beer. I didn’t want to get drunk, but I needed something to drink. I nodded, and he brought a bottle of beer from the kitchen. Then, he pulled a dining chair from the dining area between my room and the living room and sat down near the corner of the table, to my right.
He picked up a glass with about a third of the whiskey left and fiddled with it in his hand as he spoke.
“The atmosphere suddenly became a bit… awkward, didn’t it? You must have wondered what was going on. I’m sorry.”
I waited for him to continue without answering. His face, gazing at some point on the table, hinted that the story I was about to hear would not be pleasant. Moisture quickly formed on the surface of the beer bottle in my hand, but I didn’t dare wet my throat with the liquid inside.
“I know that knowing this story… might be a burden for Seo Yi-hyun-ssi, but…”
Still gazing at a spot on the table, he took a sip of whiskey.
“I don’t want you to misunderstand Shushu… or that guy, Hong Seonyu, so I’ll tell you.”
He had been leaning forward with his arms on his knees, but he lifted his head to look at me. His face was pale, devoid of all emotion rather than calm.
“Do you remember the painting
My heart pounded faster at the thought that my guess might not have been mere fantasy. I unconsciously tightened my grip on the beer bottle and slowly nodded at him.
“The man who came earlier is Hong Seonyu. He is the artist who painted that picture.”
After delivering only that brief piece of information, he couldn’t continue for a while. Although he had said he would tell me, he seemed unsure if confiding everything in me was the wisest choice.
I rubbed the surface of the beer bottle, which I hadn’t taken a single sip from, with my thumb and said to him.
“If it’s something I absolutely need to know… or rather… if it doesn’t directly affect your relationship with me, CEO… it’s okay if you don’t tell me. Since other people are involved too….”
His gaze turned towards me once more, wordless. I quietly met his eyes, waiting for his decision. His lips, seeming drier than usual, slowly parted.
“Hong Seonyu… was Shushu’s lover, and the one who caused the decisive accident that forced Shushu to quit dancing.”
“……”
“And, even before that, he was someone I dated.”
“……”
Upon hearing the last part, I involuntarily inhaled, then held my breath. I knew my widened eyes were revealing my shock, but I couldn’t quite recover.
Watching my reaction, he remained calm. His expression suggested he had either anticipated or braced himself for this kind of response.
“It was hardly a relationship… like all my other relationships before it, it was just a sex-only physical relationship that didn’t last even half a year… but, at any rate, we did meet. It was when I was studying abroad in London after finishing the H.M.I.S. program in Hong Kong. I was a third-year student, so I was a graduating senior at the British university, and Hong Seonyu was a first-year student at R.C.A., the Royal College of Art. After my father’s business moved our whole family to London when I was in middle school, things went well, so he was very confident and arrogant. He was young, too. I was young then, and I found that somewhat charming.”
As if mocking his younger self, he raised one corner of his mouth in a short, cynical smile.
“That doesn’t mean I tolerated or indulged that arrogance, though.”
He downed the remaining whiskey, about a mouthful, then refilled his glass and continued speaking.
“I was a person with no time or emotional capacity to spare for dating or love, and as a graduating senior, I was overwhelmed with my own issues, so I only saw him as someone to relieve my sexual urges when we met occasionally. I knew he had a few other partners besides me, but I didn’t care at all.”
He paused his story there and glanced at me.
“Talking about this past… probably won’t earn me many points.”
Based solely on his account, Juhan Hyung’s speculation about his past romantic life seemed to be somewhat accurate. In my case, it was harder to imagine his detached relationships, focused only on himself.
“Just as there was no talk of dating, of becoming a committed couple, when we broke up, we just drifted apart as contact became less frequent… It was during the time I was contemplating whether to stay in London and build my own career or return to Hong Kong as my father suggested and learn the family business, that he suddenly contacted me again. He said his father’s business was in trouble, and his family, except for his father, was giving up their life in London and returning to Korea… He asked if I could let him stay in London. He said it wouldn’t be a problem for me to support him and pay for his studies, would it?”
He chuckled, clicking his tongue as if still finding it unbelievable.
“Given his proud personality, the courage it took for him to approach me, someone he only had a physical relationship with, and someone we had already broken up with, to make such a request was commendable, but the way he came running like he was collecting a debt, even at a moment like that, made me lose whatever residual affection I had left. His obsession with success was always strong, but with his financial backing gone, it seemed like all that was left was the sheer will to succeed, not pure passion for art. He lost whatever charm he had left.”
His lips tightened, and he furrowed his brow, swirling the rocks glass in his hand before wetting his dry mouth with whiskey.
“After that, Hong Seonyu had no choice but to leave London, so I thought that was the end of it. He was one of the people I had erased from my memory, expecting never to see him again, until Shushu introduced him to me in Seoul as his lover.”
“Ah…”
It was an involuntary sigh, a sound of surprise. But he looked at me and smiled crookedly, as if that wasn’t all.
“I knew Shushu had a romantic partner he was infatuated with before the introduction, but to think it was Hong Seonyu. When he saw me at the introduction, he looked like he’d seen a ghost. Wouldn’t you?”
He stared into space, his calm tone breaking as he spoke with force.
“Shushu is an Omega, and Hong Seonyu… as far as I know, he’s a Beta gay man to the bone. And someone who’s more than twice as greedy about sex as others. But that guy, with an Omega?”
“Make it make sense. As if Hong Seonyu were standing right in front of me, as if to condemn that man before me, he added.”
“Of course, not all Omega males exclusively prefer the receiving end of sex, but most Omega instincts lean that way. Alpha and Omega have much stronger sexual instincts than Betas. And Shushu had been growing up, conforming to his instincts and destiny, from the moment he manifested as an Omega. If we were to compare Shushu and Hong Seonyu to two Beta gay men, it would be like two bottoms whose orientations can never change dating each other. So, knowing Hong Seonyu’s nature, I was flabbergasted. It’s not like two grown men were going to have a platonic love. It made no sense for them to be in a relationship, including their sex life.”
He paused for a moment and asked if he could smoke. Instead of answering, I picked up the pack of cigarettes and lighter placed closer to me and handed them to him. A bitter scent rose with the smoke. He exhaled a long breath, as deep as he had inhaled, and spoke.
“The moment I heard they were going to study abroad in New York together, I had a rough idea of Hong Seonyu’s objective… but the problem was…”
His brow furrowed tightly, and he pressed hard on his eyelids, as if feeling a headache. It was easy to infer that the source of their tuition funds was Shushu.
“That I had a past relationship with Hong Seonyu, that I knew what kind of person he was, and that your boyfriend was trying to use you for his own success. I couldn’t say that to Shushu.”
None of those words were easy to say to a close friend. He ran a hand over his face, took a deep drag of his cigarette, and shifted his posture.
“‘You are an Omega. There’s no future with a Beta man….’ I tried to persuade him with obvious lies like those, but it was completely ineffective.”
By then, the two had been meeting for over a year. To completely break them apart, he would have had to reveal Hong Seonyu’s past entanglement with him, shocking Shushu. But facing his friend’s happy face, deeply in love and trusting his partner, that choice was not easy.
“If I told him everything… I might have been able to stop him from leaving for New York with Hong Seonyu immediately, but Shushu would have to experience the shock of betrayal anyway. If the shock of his precious first love being his best friend’s former partner was added… I don’t know if his psyche, which was much more fragile back then, could have handled it…”
He looked down at the tip of his cigarette, smoke rising, his hand holding the cigarette resting on the armrest, and shook his head. Then, he slowly brought the cigarette to his lips.
“At the time, I was only in Seoul for a short break during my vacation and had to return to Hong Kong. Once I returned to my daily life, there were further limitations to dissuading him over the phone from abroad.”
This time, he lowered his head as if he were a criminal.
“In the end, that was it. I was afraid of the shock he would receive right in front of my eyes, so I didn’t try harder to dissuade him.”
His voice was full of self-reproach. Suddenly, he picked up his glass and swallowed several mouthfuls of neat whiskey, then took a drag of his cigarette. He looked like someone trying to punish himself indirectly with unhealthy substances like alcohol and tobacco.
Shushu’s lover was a man he had a past relationship with. — I thought the story would unfold with Shushu finding out and having to break up with his lover, but the situation was more complicated.
He seemed to have chosen not to tell Shushu about Hong Seonyu’s past and true nature, which meant they didn’t break up for that reason either.
“The two of them inevitably left for New York as planned, and surprisingly, they lived together for another two years after arriving in New York.”
After swallowing another sip of alcohol, he let out a light snort. His story was now flowing like a monologue recalling the past.
“Well, even if they didn’t break up for those two years, it’s questionable whether they were fully focused on each other. Who knows if that kind of behavior continued for two years, just without getting caught.”
His lips twisted cynically as he roughly stubbed out the now short cigarette in the ashtray.
“Shushu had surgery to repair his Achilles tendon due to an injury sustained during practice. He was regularly attending physical therapy at the center. At that time, the surgery results were perfect, and the probability of him being able to continue dancing was very high. It wasn’t a cause for concern. But one day, his physical therapist had to leave early due to family matters. Shushu, who was shy around strangers, decided not to train with another therapist and changed his schedule, returning home much earlier than planned.”
With the expression ‘that kind of behavior’ he used earlier, I could somewhat anticipate what happened next. Despite being able to anticipate it, my mouth felt parched, and for the first time, I drank the beer in my hand. The beer had already gone lukewarm.
“In the very bed where he slept and started his day with his lover, or at least the man he believed to be his lover, he witnessed his lover so engrossed in sex, moaning loudly, that he didn’t even notice the bedroom door opening, with another man’s penis inside him. He saw his lover panting, overwhelmed with pleasure, held by another man in a way completely different from how he held him…”
My face contorted as if I were another witness to that scene. I put down the beer bottle on the table, covered my head with both hands, and bowed my head. It was a horrific story.
“After that… it was a mess. I only heard a brief account from Shushu, so I don’t know the details, but Shushu ran out, and the guy chased after him naked, wearing only his underwear… While they were tumbling on the apartment stairs, Shushu, crying out like a madman, lost his footing and re-injured the same ankle he had surgery on. At the time, he didn’t even feel the pain… that’s how out of his mind he was.”
He probably wouldn’t have felt it even if the pain had been greater. From the point he introduced Hong Seonyu, it was one year, and two years after leaving for New York. That’s a total of three years. If you witness your partner’s infidelity like that… anyone, not just Shushu, would lose their composure. Me… if it were me…
I picked up the beer bottle I had put down again. The lukewarm beer tasted more bitter and the carbonation was flat, but I mechanically swallowed the liquid.
“That ended Shushu’s life as a dancer, and their relationship. Of course, Hong Seonyu could no longer receive Shushu’s financial support. I don’t know what he did afterwards, but after taking a year off, he did manage to graduate.”
He spoke of Hong Seonyu’s subsequent life as if it didn’t matter, and refilled his glass. As he slowly emptied the refilled glass, he continued his story painfully.
About a year after the accident, he opened Phantom in Seoul with the Director, and it took another year to get Shushu, who had become a complete wreck, to focus on photography by giving him a camera and holding his first solo exhibition.
He spoke heavily of the guilt he had felt watching Shushu during that time. I couldn’t say anything.
“Now that it’s all over with Hong Seonyu, if Shushu were to find out about my past with that guy, and that we both kept silent about it… it would probably be irreparable this time. He would think all my suggestions and actions over the past time were born out of pity stemming from guilt. Since he’s someone whose thoughts naturally lean towards negativity…”
I could understand why he showed such a hostile attitude towards the work and the artist in front of
Thinking of the time he had spent treating Shushu while carrying the heavy weight of guilt as part of himself, I lowered my gaze and spoke cautiously.
“I’m sorry…”
“……”
Though my voice was very small, he didn’t miss it. I felt his gaze on my face but didn’t meet it, answering the unspoken question in his eyes.
“About Shushu… being so childishly jealous…”
He let out a soft chuckle. It was a laugh that suggested he hadn’t expected me to react that way. As I raised my gaze from his knees, his face, with a faint smile and warmth, was looking at me. He was no longer the person who seemed lost in the past, talking to himself for a long time, but had returned to the present moment, looking at me.
“Choi In-woo transferred to Minton in the middle school program right after his manifestation. We’ve been friends since then… but Shushu and I have been together since kindergarten.”
H.M.I.S., where the children of Asian tycoons gathered, did not officially declare itself an educational facility exclusively for Alphas and Omegas, but to transfer in middle school or later, one had to have manifested as an Alpha or Omega. For kindergarten and elementary school admission, at least one parent had to be an Alpha or Omega. While not an official requirement, it was a clearly existing implicit condition.
Although Beta students were occasionally mixed in middle and high school, it was only for those with exceptional family influence, and those who hadn’t manifested were usually forced to transfer due to unspoken pressure. No, it was almost a tradition within H.M.I.S., recognized as a standard procedure. Therefore, he explained, students who completed their higher education there could be considered top-tier Alphas and Omegas of the privileged class.
“I was indifferent to others, to the point of being called cold, and being an only child, he’s like a brother to me. But… no matter who it is, or in any situation, nothing comes before your feelings.”
He stated it clearly with a tone of conviction. I already had enough trust in that, based on his actions so far.
“I don’t worry about that…”
He smiled once more at my murmur and simply looked at me for a long time. We were both tired from a long day and hadn’t eaten dinner, but I didn’t feel hungry. Outside, it had already become completely dark.
“Everyone maintains an objective distance and a cold perspective when it comes to other people’s affairs, drawing plausible conclusions and offering clear advice… but when it comes to their own matters… they hesitate even after the conclusion is already made. The reason is simple. No matter how perfect a conclusion seems, there are always flaws, and the small probability of failure that could be easily dismissed in someone else’s life becomes an insurmountable fear in one’s own life. The fear of even a 1 percent chance of failure silences a person, ties their feet… and makes them a foolish individual who cannot make a decision, even knowing that the problem is worsening with time.”
I knew better than anyone what he was talking about. It was precisely because of that fear that I had tolerated my father’s silence and avoided the issue.
Afraid of being rejected again, I had done nothing to draw my father out of his silence. I knew that nothing would change in our relationship if I didn’t try something, but even knowing that… I chose to simply watch the situation unfold.
He looked at me for a long time without speaking, as if contemplating his own words. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his gaze, which held a lighter shade of blue than usual. His face looked like it would crumble the moment I looked away. It was the face of someone enduring with great difficulty, and I understood his struggle.
“You were driven by the thought that I was blinded by judgment, swept away by an emotion like love, which could disappear at any moment, but now….”
Without fully finishing his sentence, he turned his head as if to flee and drank. Then, looking back at me, he took a deep breath and opened his mouth.
“If I were to lose you, what would become of me, I think about every day.”
“……”
“How many times a day am I consumed by that thought? Not only when you’re not by my side, but even when we’re together like this… even in the moment of climax, when I’m inside you, connected to you through knotting, completely drenched in the pleasure you give me… I am, in fact, afraid.”
It was such an unexpected confession, I felt a slight shock. It felt like a confession of deep love, but I didn’t want the most overwhelming emotion he experienced through me to be fear.
“Seo Yi-hyun.”
His voice was calm and steady, without any tremor or waver, but strangely, there was something about it that instilled a vague sense of dread about what was to follow. My heart felt unsettled, like a door that didn’t fit, rattling in a strong wind.
“……”
“……Will you marry me?”
However, the statement that left his lips with a calm expression was not a threatening one.
If it were an impulse, I would have sensed some faint agitation, but his voice, the way he looked at me, his expression—it was all unwavering and serene, as if he were about to share something he had prepared for a long time.
There were so many things I wanted to say, things I had to say, filling my chest, but it felt like he wanted to convey it all with that single phrase… I even sensed a humble caution.
Separate from his seriousness, it was such a sudden proposal that I looked at him with a bewildered smile.
He leaned forward, loosely gripping his on-the-rocks glass with both hands.
“Whether it’s in England, France, Germany, the United States, anywhere… as long as it’s a country where marriage between an Alpha male and a Beta male is legal. It won’t be difficult for me to obtain permanent residency or citizenship in any country. If we do that, all my rights will be legally guaranteed to you… and if something were to happen to me, all those rights could be safely transferred to you.”
As if the possibility of something happening to him was imminent, my expression stiffened slightly. Seeing that rigidity, he closed his mouth for a moment, avoiding my gaze as if he had spoken out of turn.
“I’m not trying to tie you down with the excuse of some trivial material benefits, but…”
No, maybe it wasn’t entirely not that. He muttered to himself self-deprecatingly and swept his jaw broadly with his hand. Then, he ran his fingers through his hair, which had dried naturally after his shower, tangling it.
“To bring up marriage with you, who are only twenty-two… it must sound crazy.”
He seemed to interpret my lack of reaction as a negative reception to his proposal, or that I wasn’t taking it seriously. He set down his glass, roughly swept his face with his palm, then took out a cigarette and lit it.
Now I understood that his calm demeanor when bringing up marriage wasn’t composure, but a blank expression born of tension and anxiety, a frozen rigidity.
He leaned forward deeply, resting his elbows on his thighs, and for a while, he only repeatedly brought the cigarette to his lips. Looking at his bowed head, which seemed dejected by my reaction, I twisted the beer bottle in my hand.
Even though I thought I was running towards him with all my heart, his love was always a few steps ahead of mine. It wasn’t that it was too much to catch up to. It was just that if he had to stop every time to wait for my slow pace, I wondered if he might get tired at some point, a vague fear arose.
Gnawing on my lower lip, I looked down at his face and slowly opened my mouth.
“If you could say it not as if you’re being chased by something… but after fully considering things like your future or life plans… then I will answer with all my heart, at that time.”
He looked up at me, straightened his upper body, and said in a dry voice.
“It was an impulsive remark, but that doesn’t mean it lacks weight.”
“……”
“And it’s certainly not something I said just on a whim, without sincerity.”
Watching him crush the half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray, I felt a little anxious this time.
It wasn’t that I was trying to ignore his sincerity. How could I not know that when a man like him brought up the word marriage, there couldn’t be any lightness mixed into it?
I was happy that he wanted me so much that I felt impatient… but I didn’t want marriage as the method he chose to resolve it.
I tightly gripped the beer bottle, now covered in condensation, with both hands.
“This is my first time being in a relationship like this with someone… I don’t know if I’ve made you anxious in some way. But… my feelings are absolutely not light.”
Looking back, he had always craved deeper affection from me. Sometimes jokingly, sometimes with serious eyes. But he had never once forced it upon me, so I had accepted it as just one of the minor emotions that make up a relationship, like my jealousy towards Shushu.
Unlike him, I had nothing… but even my feelings, which had begun to grow again, albeit meagerly, and my past that I had buried and ignored, I thought I was showing him everything.
Was I still, without realizing it, holding something back inside me and not giving it to him? Was that why he was anxious?
I knew intellectually that the balance of love between two people was unrelated to objective conditions… but sometimes, his anxiety towards me, a man who seemed like he would never need to be anxious in any relationship, was unbelievable. Compared to him, I was a child who knew nothing, and yet… I was completely falling for him…
“I don’t know how you’ll take this, but… I came this far because of you, Representative.”
“……”
“Morae noona and Hyung’s situation, starting to paint again… being able to talk about my father to someone… all of it was possible because you were there.”
If I was the only one who could erase his anxiety, I had to find the courage to break the silence. Taking a deep breath, I continued speaking as if I were slowly swallowing it. The moisture from the beer bottle in my hand felt like sweat beading from me.
“Even though I thought it was an impulsive remark… when I heard about marriage, setting everything else aside, I was happy first… I want Awi too… and I love you.”
“……”
His face looked as if he had heard a declaration of separation, not a confession of love.
He looked like a person standing under a collapsing sky.
His lips parted as if in a sigh, and his furrowed eyelids trembled slightly, like someone who had heard a cruel sentence that took everything away, not a tender whisper that filled and satisfied.
Taking a deep breath of the air I had been holding, I placed the beer bottle on the table and rubbed my wet hands on my pants. My lips pressed together involuntarily.
Was my confession too raw? Was the word love, spoken by a twenty-two-year-old after only a few months of knowing each other, too light to inspire trust?
But even though I hadn’t expressed it in words, I was convinced that the emotions that had melted into our exchanges had naturally evolved into love at some point.
My feelings for him took on a complex form that couldn’t be fully contained within the simple word ‘like.’ What I saw through him wasn’t just pink heartbeats or excitement. If the definition of love ultimately differs from person to person, from couple to couple, then the word closest to my current feelings for him, no matter how I searched, was love.
“……”
“……”
He blinked and shook his head a few times, like someone trying to shake off a deep sleep. Then he roughly rubbed his face with both hands. When he looked at me again, his eyes were bloodshot.
He stared at me for a long time, his face looking like it was feeling the sting after being hit by harsh words, then he stood up from his chair and moved to the seat next to me. Hmmm. The breath escaping his closed lips was heavy.
He cupped my cheek, turning my face towards him, and with long, neat fingers, he swept my hair behind my ear.
“Even if you found out I was a fickle man who had never had a serious partner… would Seo Yi-hyun still love me?”
I offered a silent smile to him, who tried to make a joke with a voice tight with effort. He rubbed his earlobe with his thumb and smiled back. When he smiled at me, he was so warm. When he was like that, he looked so happy, like someone enjoying what he wanted to the fullest, that I thought I was conveying my feelings to him well.
I lowered my head and rubbed my cheek against his jawline, then rested my forehead on his shoulder.
“If you knew my true desires beneath this barely suppressed reason… you’d be very surprised.”
That I was not disappointed by his casual past relationships, but relieved and happy that he had never given his heart to anyone before me.
He cupped my face again, turning me towards him. His face, looking at me, was overflowing with emotion, but the flow wasn’t pointing in a single direction. I probably had a similar expression when I heard the word marriage from him. A complexity that couldn’t be defined by a single word.
With my cheeks cupped, his gaze traced my face, and the distance between us cautiously narrowed. His lips were drier than usual. Our lips, which had touched just enough to slightly press the surface, parted, and he rubbed his nose against mine, looking down with a low voice.
“From the perspective of someone who can’t suppress it, and isn’t suppressing it, it probably wouldn’t be that surprising.”
His hand, which had been stroking my cheek, moved to cup my head and then down to grip my nape. With our foreheads touching, he whispered again.
“Love me more surprisingly.”
“……”
“It doesn’t have to be a proper or healthy way, just… surprisingly enough to shock me. Forget all self-control and dignity when it comes to me. I want you to be so greedy for me that people point fingers and call me a bad person.”
“……”
“If not, it won’t work. I don’t think it will.”
It sounded like he was saying that he himself was already loving me in that way, beyond the bounds of what was acceptable.
I gently stroked his arms that were wrapped widely around my neck. He pressed his lips to my eyelids and the bridge of my nose. Then, pulling my head closer, he pressed our faces together and kissed my temples and ears for a long time.
“The only value I think I can give you with these words is that they are words I’ve never said to anyone before…”
So, he whispered into my ear like a breath of wind, his voice dry and about to crumble like a cookie crumb, saying his confession was pathetic compared to mine.
“I love you.”
It was a whisper so quiet I could barely hear it. But for me, hearing it was enough.
After the low, husky whisper of love, our lips met, and in the moments they weren’t touching, we spoke of love. As if his lips existed only to kiss me and speak of love.
Though we had shared many emotions and stories, we had always subtly avoided direct expressions that defined our relationship, but it seemed he had decided to stop holding back his words.
Even after repeating it several times, the meaning of love that his lips released never became lighter. Rather, it felt as if a part of him was being chipped away each time he uttered the word, as if he were speaking with the resolve of such a sacrifice, his love flowed into me and accumulated with weight.
In fact, I had dismissed words as not being that important if the feelings were already clear. Yet, paradoxically, it was precisely because I knew their importance that I hadn’t put my feelings into words, even while being sure of them.
Perhaps that too was something I had held back inside me, something I hadn’t given him, which had made him anxious. In any case, I needed to express myself more in all aspects.
“Don’t say it’s… pathetic.”
I said, my fingertips brushing his cheek from the distance where our lips almost touched. Before I could finish speaking, my lips were swallowed. The outer surface of his lips was dry, but the inner membrane and the flesh that pushed in were hot and wet.
The love he conveyed seemed to seep into a more fundamental gap, beyond the realm of romance like sweetness or emotional fulfillment. Each time I heard his whispers, my chest swelled. I wanted him, right now.
He released my lips, alternately taking my upper and lower lips into his mouth, then moved his hand up my neck and down to my chest. As his hand fumbled under my t-shirt and caressed my bare skin, I let out a groan and hugged his head.
As he caressed my ear with his lips and tongue, his hand moved behind my back, burrowed into my pants, and gripped my buttocks. Lifting my body slightly to make it easier for his hand to move, to make it easier for him to touch me, I realized anew how accustomed I had become to such actions.
But that thought soon faded as his weight pushed me onto the sofa and I fell back.
Feeling his weight pressing down, using his long, slender body that looked sleek even through clothes, my chin lifted and my lips parted. His lips overlapped with my parted lips, like puzzle pieces fitting together.
His hand, which had slipped between our lower abdomens, was already unbuckling my jeans. Meanwhile, he didn’t stop stimulating my lower body, which was pressed tightly against him, by moving his hips.
“Ugh, mm… hng.”
As friction and heat were generated by the movement, I fumbled for the sofa’s backrest and gripped it tightly.
After spreading open the front of my jeans, he pushed up my t-shirt and licked my bare skin with his hot tongue. As the t-shirt was pushed up to my armpits, he circled my nipple with his thumb a few times and then licked it as if stroking it from bottom to top.
“Hng… hng.”
The stimulation of his tongue repeatedly licking my nipples, which were swollen and protruding more than usual, made my back arch upwards. Watching my reaction with wide eyes, he traced my exposed upper body with his hand and moved down to my waist. Near my side, he grabbed my jeans and briefs at once and sucked the skin around my areola strongly into his mouth.
“Agh, hht! Hhup.”
With the hand that had been gripping the sofa backrest, I tightly grasped his shoulder, and he, still looking up at me, scraped the small piece of flesh in his mouth with his tongue. After thrusting my hips several times, I ended up painfully gripping his shoulder instead of the sofa backrest, and then he detached from my nipple with a wet sound.
He grabbed the jeans and briefs, which had already been pulled down enough to expose more than half of my buttocks, pubic area, and genitals, and pulled them down all at once. I lifted my legs towards the ceiling to help him remove them. The jeans, pulled off inside out, were discarded under the sofa, and the white briefs I had put on after my shower were in his hand.
“……”
He straightened his back and positioned himself between my legs, looking down at me with narrowed eyes. Then, covering his nose and mouth with the briefs, he stroked the inside of my thighs, which were draped over his thighs, and rubbed his hips languidly. It was as if he were smelling the briefs, or kissing them.
Feeling his heat between my legs after a long time, amplified by the lingering effect of the confession, I could only gasp for breath and look up at him. Smack. He made the sound of kissing the briefs, then instantly took off his black short-sleeved t-shirt and dropped it on the floor with the underwear.
Then he lay down, squeezing into the small gap between the sofa and me. I turned onto my side to make room for him, and he lay down, pressing his body close to my back, then placed a cushion that had been rolling on the sofa under my head. He slipped his arm under my neck, pulled my chest towards him, kissed my nape, and nibbled my skin with his teeth. His firm thighs dug between my legs.
“Ughhhm… Hhng, hmm.”
My eyelids grew heavy, and my body lost its strength. I overlapped my hands with his as he massaged my chest and looked back at him behind me, and our lips met. His upper lip pushed down my lower lip, and then his full lower lip pushed up my lower lip. The kiss, without tongues, was tantalizingly slow, but the movement of his thighs rubbing between my legs and his hand stroking my penis to make it hard was explicit.
He was wearing indoor pants that tightened at the waist with a drawstring and a band that fell straight down, and they were far too thin and soft to hide the volume of his penis hardening between my buttock bones.
“Seo Yi-hyun….”
My body trembled just from the sound of his voice, rubbing his nose and lips against my earlobe. Honestly, it was a really good voice too. It wasn’t a voice that was easy to listen to, but its unique low rasp created an impressive accent that made it unforgettable. Especially when he lowered his tone even further during intimacy, mixing in plenty of breath as he whispered in my ear…
“I love you.”
When I heard such a confession, accompanied by his hot breath as his lips traced the uneven curves of my ears… it was indescribably sexier.
He reached his arm over my side, gripping my penis and pushing his body against me more and more as he stroked it rapidly from bottom to top. Half-lying on my stomach, almost crushed by him, I stroked his cheek.
“Hngh, hng.”
I tightly grabbed his wrist as he pinched and pulled my nipple, and pushed my hips back to press more firmly against his penis.
He, who had been widely stroking the area covered in pubic hair, slid his hand between his groin and my buttocks. His index and ring fingers spread the sides of my anus, while his middle finger rubbed around the entrance as if exploring, then slipped between the narrowly closed mucous membranes. I groaned, biting my lower lip. It wasn’t from pain.
“Haaat, hng. Hngh.”
I let go of his wrist, which I had been clinging to, and reached my arm back to grasp his buttocks. I could feel the movement of the hard, bunched muscles beneath the thin fabric.
Without haste, not roughly, but hiding the fierce excitement that felt like it was about to explode right behind him. His long, stiff fingers fumbled inside, stirred, slid teasingly over the mucous membrane, and then, mimicking insertion, stabbed inside at a rapid pace.
“Haa-hng, hng. Hngh. K….”
Perhaps intentionally, each time he scraped deeply over the spot where I felt the most, I lifted my chin, closed my eyes, and pulled his buttocks harder towards me.
“Already… the scent is so strong….”
At his heated voice, which seemed to savor it, I opened my eyes and looked back. His lips, which had been kissing my jawline, cheek, and ear, met mine as if they had been waiting, swallowing my lips, parted by excitement and groans. His lips were no longer dry.
The strong scent, I guessed, meant the degree of his arousal. If it meant my reaction was faster than usual, that was true. But it was his fragrance that permeated the air of the entire living room, pressing down on everything in the space, including me.
Inside, as his fingers bent and stimulated my sensitive, aroused mucous membrane, at a distance where our lips, parted towards each other, brushed slightly, he whispered with wet eyes.
“The scent that turns me… from Golden to Regular.”
A deep kiss followed immediately. In the ecstasy of being the one to break down his defenses, I felt so dizzy I thought I would collapse, even while lying down. As the scent flooded in with the kiss, I opened myself completely and closed my eyes.
“……Eut.”
But the next moment, a strange sensation detected inside my body made me instinctively grab his wrist. I turned my head, pushing away his tongue that was sweetly conquering my mouth, and looked down. Denied his escalating arousal, he ignored my resistance, scattering hot breaths by my ear, and continued to move his fingers.
“Wait, just a moment… right now….”
He now lay almost completely on top of me, his body overlapping mine, and simultaneously creating a large curve throughout his body as if he had inserted himself, he dug his fingers in as far as they could go, pushing my hips up.
“It’s not just a moment…. Why should I stop?”
“Something came out from inside….”
“…….”
He paused for a moment. But soon, he began to thrust inside faster than before, rubbing his entire body against me. My arousal overwhelmed my thoughts with his wet breaths, wetting my ear and gnawing at it. His other hand entered my mouth, touching the mucous membrane inside my cheek, and I reflexively pursed my lips and sucked his long finger.
“It’s because the pre-cum flowed in.”
“That’s not… Hup.”
I couldn’t finish my sentence as his fingers moved smoothly out from between my legs. His fingers, alternately applying pressure with his index and middle fingers and tracing my tongue, were so soft and flexible that they seemed to awaken every sensation in my mouth that I hadn’t even known existed. Further thought was impossible.
His fingers, now withdrawn, moved between my legs with a lewd motion. Every spot his palm brushed was slick and wet, and he deliberately twisted his palm to create a lewd friction sound, looking down at my lower body as if to remind me.
“Look at this. You’ve leaked so much…. If it’s like this, every time you twitch, it’s bound to seep in….”
Instead of telling him not to look, I reached my arm back and pulled his neck, kissing him. I wanted him now, deeper, closer, whatever it took. No matter how much I breathed in his scent through the kiss, I couldn’t quench the thirst that burned through my entire body.
He pressed his penis, which was pressed even more firmly against my buttocks than his fingers had withdrawn, and sucked my lower lip until it tingled. Releasing the soft flesh he held between his lips and applying pressure, he said in a voice that was almost secretively low.
“Shall we go to bed?”
“…….”
I nodded. He sat up, pulled me to sit facing him on his thighs, and as he carried me to the bedroom, he didn’t stop kissing me, moving his lips, jawline, neck, and shoulders… everywhere his lips touched, as if not allowing even a moment of my arousal to cool.
He climbed onto the bed on his knees, with me on his waist, and then collapsed onto the bed with me. He brushed my hair, buried in a large pillow, and his blue eyes, looking over every inch of my face, were right in front of me.
His eyes, reminiscent of a stormy sea, were not just perfect without flaw like a painting or sculpture, but possessed a unique aura and presence that left a deep mark on the impressions of those who gazed upon him… The fact that this beautiful man loved me, and that I loved him, felt new. Perhaps it was because today, for the first time, we allowed ourselves to express the word ‘love’ to each other.
As I gazed at him, entranced, he lifted his upper body after kissing my nose and lips. The groin of his black indoor wear was unnaturally bulging, and the area between the legs of his pants was even darker and wetter from the copious amounts of pre-cum from the Golden Alpha.
He quickly removed his lower garments and, in his semi-erect state, which still exceeded the maximum expansion of many men, he slid his penis over my testicles and settled between my legs.
“Heeu… Mm….”
Just the feeling of his penis touching my flesh made my hips lift off the air. He stroked down my legs and grabbed both my ankles, pulling them towards my chest. My knees naturally bent, and the next moment, as my bent legs straightened, my ankles were resting on his shoulders. The position pressed his groin even more firmly against my buttocks. The sensation of pubic hair rubbing between my buttocks made my breathing even more erratic. He stroked my thighs and calves, causing my waist to curve and applying lewd stimulation to the area where we met.
“Haa, hng. Hup. Hng, hoot.”
Our breaths, rising and falling irregularly as we held each other’s gaze, created tension.
As he placed his hand next to my shoulder and bent his upper body, my lower body folded in half with his movement. I cupped his face with my hands, stroking back his sweat-dampened hair, and as I watched his face repeatedly move away and closer, kissing him, I waited for him to rub deeper into the area where he was grinding against my testicles and penis.
“Aaah, hng!”
I gripped the sheets and bit my lip, but what I felt from below as his glans pushed in was far from pain.
His thick, glistening glans pushed unhesitatingly into the walls, which had contracted to return to their original state after several days without sex. It wasn’t enough to be called pain, but I vividly felt the sensation of raw flesh, healing and closing, being forcibly torn open by a ruthless external intrusion.
To be honest, I preferred it that way. I lifted my chin and parted my lips with a sense of fulfillment as I was slowly, clearly pierced and seared by something hot and immense. His always felt like it pierced my lungs and heart, suffocating my breath and obstructing blood circulation. And with just a little breath and a little blood, it made me feel more alive than ever.
Watching my every reaction as if he were devouring it, he lowered his upper body, took my lower lip into his mouth, and with his lips and teeth, flowed in a tingling stimulation. Along with a deep, potent, and lewd scent that numbed my head.
“Eum, um… Haa, eut.”
The moment he pressed his body so close that my knees reached his shoulders, the deeper parts inside me opened. I stroked his arm, which was wriggling with delicate muscles, and lifted my chin. His face contorted to the rhythm of his repeated movements, withdrawing and then penetrating deeper than he had withdrawn. I released my grip on his arms and traced my way up his broad, thick shoulders and the taut, long nape of his neck.
His dark eyebrows, which lowered towards his forehead when he was serious, displeased, or occasionally playful, the deep, bluish-gray eyes set a short distance from his eyebrows, proving his complex lineage, the straight line of his nose with its masculine width and height, and… his sensual lips, which became particularly sexy when they were closed, slightly parted, and especially when pronouncing the English F and L… I traced them slowly with my fingers.
He breathed deeply, his shoulders heaving, and surrendered his face to my touch, concentrating on penetrating deeper inside me. As my fingers traced over his lips, he pursed his lips and kissed me. Looking up at him, whose wet mucous membrane inside his lips was rubbing against my fingers as he widened and pulled up my lower lip, I forced out a voice that was choked.
“Awi’s pheromones… I sometimes wonder what they smell like.”
“…….”
Perhaps it was an unexpected remark, as his eyes narrowed slightly. He lightly licked his lower lip with his red, wet tongue and briefly slowed the speed of his hips, which had been widening me.
“They probably smell… really good, right?”
“…….”
“I… won’t be able to know, though.”
He began to move his hips fluidly again, looking down at me. Bending his arms, he leaned his entire upper body towards me, pushing his alpha deep inside me and taking my breath away. I could no longer speak or think anything. Other than feeling him, embracing him, and becoming one with the rhythm he set, inhaling his fragrance rather than his pheromones.
Burying his lips deep in my neck, hidden by my hair, and sucking my skin to leave a mark, he urged himself on. The entire mattress swayed with the thrusting that dug into me.
“Haa, hng… Hup….”
As I stirred his hair and slowly opened and closed my eyes, his face was right in front of mine.
“Did you forget I’m Golden?”
“…….”
“I won’t let anyone smell it….”
So don’t make that face. He promised, without me even asking, that he would ensure no one else would know that scent.
I nodded. Pulling his sweat-dampened neck, I kissed him first and whispered, “Don’t let anyone smell it.” I didn’t want to think about whether this greed, this desire to claim even his scent, which I couldn’t smell, as my own, to seal it as mine, was a healthy love.
I couldn’t continue my thoughts for long due to his movements, which created heat inside my body by repeatedly entering and withdrawing.
He, who had patiently restrained himself until my inner walls fully adapted to his size, soon attacked like a fighter, swallowing my lips and beginning to thrust his hips as violently as he desired.
His method, which involved not just his hips or penis but his entire body’s curves, requiring immense energy and delivering immense pleasure in return, was as always.
As he withdrew, scraping my inner walls, and then thrust in with a tightness that splashed the accumulated bodily fluids outside my body, I repeatedly spread and contracted my toes, which were on his shoulders.
“Haa, hng. Hng. Hngh.”
I gasped, gripping his shoulders tightly, sensing the approaching knotting, like detecting a tidal wave rolling in from the distant sea, slowly shaking the blood in my body.
If previous knotting felt like an accident driven by complete arousal, this time was different. His eyes, looking down at me, were glistening with pleasure, but they were clear. They were eyes that were clearly aware of what he was doing. The intense friction happening below was calm and collected to an unbelievable degree.
Receiving his powerful knotting, which pulsed within my body, proving his existence to me, I climaxed without him even touching my penis. But the previous climax was no longer the issue. Even after climaxing, the pleasure and orgasm continued. My hypersensitive genitals continued to leak fluids, whether semen or pre-cum, and reacted on their own.
After a deep kiss, he rubbed his face against my cheek until my nose was flattened, and called me through his rough breathing.
“Seo Yi-hyun….”
“…….”
“I love you.”
“……I love you too.”
I hoped that no matter what happened in the future, the sincerity of this moment would not be doubted or tarnished. He said, his eyebrows furrowed towards his forehead, as he took and released my lips.
And he added, in a voice that seemed completely blocked by something.
“I’ll… do really well.”
I remembered hearing him say something similar before. I embraced his neck, which seemed to give so much yet still felt like it couldn’t give enough, and kissed his hot lips.
Perhaps it was the pleasure of the knotting I felt inside me, or perhaps something else. Stroking his contorted face, kissing his eyelids, nose, cheeks, and lips, calling his name, and saying I loved him. His words, that he was actually anxious even while knotting inside me, lingered in my heart.
As if he understood my intention, he smiled faintly, looking down at me. He stroked my hair, showered my body with kisses, leaving marks, pulled my body close, and with his knotting state, maximally expanding my inner walls, he held me hotly inside and ejaculated. The sensation of a huge amount of semen gushing out between my legs as the knotting subsided was also an extension of the sex.
Without eating, we clung to each other’s bodies until past midnight. All that remained on his bed after the sex was a naked body covered in sweat, semen, fluids that had soaked the sheets like a spilled 2-liter bottle of water, and the red and blue marks he had left all over my body.
He, who was not tired at all, as always, and still in an erect state, prepared a bath for me, who was too weak to even stand and shower. Although I had no appetite, he brought me a banana and a glass of milk as I lay languidly in the bath.
After finishing my bath by washing away the secretions in the water, we went to my room instead of his messy bed and slept together.
I was excited by the fact that we were sleeping together for the first time after having sex. And rarely, it was hard to hide. We shared a large pillow, lying facing each other, stroking each other’s bodies as if enjoying afterglow.
He bent the arm he had placed under the pillow, in the space between my neck and shoulder, to wrap around my shoulder, and with his other arm, he hugged my waist and slowly caressed my side.
I wrapped my arms around his back and stroked his skin with my thumb, lifting my chin to look up at him and asked.
“When I wake up tomorrow, I won’t have turned into a toad or a beast, right?”
He smiled with his eyes closed. Then, stroking the curve of my shoulder, he said.
“Isn’t the story supposed to be about a toad or a beast who turns into a human when they realize true love? The order seems wrong.”
The words asking me to marry them, the permission we’d given each other to use the word love—they felt so distant, I wondered if they had truly happened, but the way he turned over and pulled me closer, the kiss on my forehead, were proof of it all.
“It’s time to sleep now,” he said, kissing my forehead and stroking my hair. I closed my eyes, feeling his touch. My deepest sleep was always in his arms.
■ ■ ■
The wind grew stronger the closer we got to the lake, but the weather was clear, offering an unrealistically blue sky.
“I wondered where all the Chicagoans had gone on a Sunday, but they were all gathered at Navy Pier,” my sister muttered, pulling her hand from her leather jacket pocket and tucking her scarf inside to keep it from flying away.
It wasn’t a crowd, exactly, but there were quite a few people around the pier compared to the relatively quiet downtown. Families and tourists were particularly concentrated in the area with amusement rides like the Ferris wheel and carousel.
My sister and I looked for a quieter spot to enjoy the view of Lake Michigan, heading towards a direction that offered a diagonal view of the Ferris wheel. No matter where we looked, the view seemed open and not too far, but as we walked, the destination didn’t get closer as quickly as it appeared. We thought it would take 2-3 minutes, but it took nearly 10 minutes to reach the bench we had picked out.
“Alright, let’s taste it.”
As soon as we settled on a backless bench under what looked like a pine tree, my sister eagerly opened the popcorn. It was the popcorn she had been looking forward to trying since before her business trip, calling it a Chicago specialty she absolutely had to try, no matter how busy.
After opening the bags of cheese and caramel flavored popcorn we had each bought, my sister popped a few pieces of the caramel flavor into her mouth first. Then, she immediately scrunched up her face.
“Whoa, it’s really sweet! Is this even edible for humans?”
Her description of the sweetness, so intense it felt like it would melt my brain, piqued my curiosity, so I popped a few pieces into my mouth as well. Ah… it was incredibly sweet. In my case, my teeth felt like they would melt before the sweetness even reached my brain.
“Quick, eat the cheese flavor, the cheese flavor.”
My sister, as if administering emergency first aid, hastily shoved cheese-flavored popcorn into my mouth. A few pieces missed their target and rolled into my jacket and between my legs. We both burst into laughter.
After laughing for a while over something so trivial, we took turns reaching into the cheese and caramel bags, chattering about inconsequential things. My sister talked about the peculiar people she’d met on her business trip, and I talked about the paintings I’d seen at galleries and museums.
“It’s really vast, though. It’s so vast you don’t even think about its size because you can’t see the end. People don’t usually think of the sea as vast, do they?” my sister said, looking out at Lake Michigan. She exhaled a breath as deep as her raised shoulders, which sounded more like a sigh than a deep breath.
Her words were true. The blue expanse before us, with its horizon and seemingly endless limits, resembled the sea in that applying the concept of ‘vastness’ felt awkward. Just as no one talks about the vastness of the sky, the same was true for the sea.
When I was at Grandfather’s house, the sea was a part of life and daily routine. Just as the sky and land are a given premise for people living inland.
The sea was always there, with its wind, the salty scent mixed in the wind, its corrosive power that quickly rusted all doors and cars, its blue and white sparkle that entered my field of vision whenever I turned my head—it was everywhere.
And Father was still there.
Did Father feel abandoned by me, just as I felt abandoned by him?
I recalled Father’s silence on the night I left that house with Hyung, his silence that didn’t try to hold me back, that seemed to see me as nothing more than a part of the darkness.
Perhaps Father didn’t feel the same way I did.
I was already excluded from Father’s world, or rather, everything was excluded, so even if the world turned its back on him, he wouldn’t need to feel a sense of loss or abandonment.
Even though his persuasion and kindness led me to paint again, and I was stimulated by visiting unexpected cities like Hong Kong and Chicago, and as he predicted, stories I wanted to paint emerged, and I seemed to overcome something by confiding my past to him… in reality, it was like wearing protective gear within the safe confines of his affection and pedaling a bicycle with him holding the back, while my actual reality, left behind in that other world, remained unchanged.
Perhaps that very thing was the cause of his anxiety, stemming from me.
What I haven’t fully revealed to him, in other words, what I’m avoiding, must ultimately be over there, where Father is.
The whispered “I love you” we shared last night, all the affectionate words, the happiness of sleeping and waking up with him—the smile I quietly offered in his arms was not the present we had built together.
I knew it. Just as I had known about Father’s silence, I had simply pretended not to know.
He had said Chicago would be colder than Seoul… Even the jacket I was wearing now was something he had prepared for me before the trip. No, everything I wore, from the sunglasses blocking the sun to the underwear, was his gift. In my studio closet in Seoul hung striped t-shirts from a brand Picasso also favored, in various designs and colors.
The light I had created myself was nowhere to be found yet. This wasn’t just about financial matters. What he gave me wasn’t just clothes, a place to stay, or luxurious trips. I looked at my hands, at what was in front of me and around me, and grasped things, relying on the light he shone.
As if fleeing from the object before me that reminded me of the sea, I lowered my gaze to the coffee in my hand. The cup of iced coffee was covered in condensation. It was coffee I had bought from Starbucks, where we had stopped for In-woo Hyung’s gift. The ice had already melted by more than half.
“Yesterday… the appointment was canceled, and I went to meet Reed last night.”
“……”
Snapping out of my thoughts, I turned to my sister. Her face was still turned towards Lake Michigan. But I couldn’t tell what her clear black eyes behind the sunglasses were actually seeing.
“He messaged me on social media. He said he was returning to Paris the next day and asked if I’d like to grab a drink.”
My sister, after popping the popcorn she was holding into her mouth, brushed the crumbs off her hands and checked her watch. “She’d be on the plane by now,” she muttered indifferently.
“I was feeling down, so I agreed to meet him, but honestly, I suspected it wouldn’t just be for a drink. We had a long talk at the party, and I had a feeling then.”
“……”
I thought I knew what my sister was going to say. But instead of interrupting, I waited quietly for her to continue.
“Do you remember the organization Reed manages? The one Jane and Connor are sponsoring.”
“Yes.”
“He asked if I would consider working with them.”
“……”
Even though it was what I expected, I was speechless. The popcorn bag, lighter now as we ate, threatened to fly away in the wind, so I held it down with my hand and swallowed dryly.
“Ah… uh… what did you… say?”
“I haven’t answered yet. I asked for some time.”
My sister’s face turned towards me. I couldn’t see her eyes, but I could tell she was frowning.
“But… I’m not the only one who was offered.”
“……”
‘The Hands,’ an organization Reed had personally conceived, built from the ground up by soliciting sponsors, was an art foundation that selected promising new artists struggling to make a living from their art, whose direction aligned with the foundation’s. It provided them with accommodation, art supplies, and studio space for a certain period, and also handled exhibitions and sales management.
According to my sister, ‘The Hands’ headquarters, which served as the artists’ residence and the foundation’s office and exhibition space, was a small apartment in Paris. Reed wanted to recommend me as a new resident for one of the vacant studios.
‘The Hands,’ which operated with the support of various art patrons and corporations in addition to Jane and Connor, did not charge commissions on artwork sales, unlike most galleries or dealers. All revenue generated while affiliated with the foundation went entirely to the artist. Even so, since they were all emerging artists, the amounts weren’t large, but it was undeniably a great help in establishing oneself as a painter.
Galleries typically charged commissions of 30-50 percent of the artwork’s price. A 30 percent commission was considered very low. Therefore, if the commission wasn’t included in the sale price, it wasn’t just the artist who benefited. Beyond a wealthy few collectors, more people had the opportunity to purchase good art at a ‘reasonable price.’
That was the direction ‘The Hands’ pursued in art, and I couldn’t deny that I agreed with their philosophy and found it appealing.
“……What do you think?”
My sister asked cautiously, leaning forward slightly, as if gauging my reaction.
I fiddled with the cup of coffee, its color much lighter now as the ice had almost completely melted, and lightly moistened my lower lip with my tongue. I felt thirsty, and I had coffee in my hand, yet I didn’t feel like drinking it.
“I’m truly happy about the offer… and grateful, but….”
I shook my head at my sister. She moved closer and sat down, taking off her sunglasses and holding them in her hand.
“They want to email me information about the foundation’s nature, operating system, and facilities. There’s no harm in just receiving and looking at it, right? I haven’t told them yet… but may I give them your email address?”
“Even if I receive the materials… my mind won’t change.”
My sister’s clear eyes, which had made a strong impression on me from our first meeting, looked at me intently. Her short black hair was being blown haphazardly towards her face by the strong wind, but she didn’t seem to mind.
“Is that because of the CEO?”
“……”
“You and the CEO… are dating… right?”
As if finding her own question odd, my sister chuckled before I could answer.
“I really never imagined I’d be asking you this question about the CEO,” she said, explaining the reason for her laughter by resting her legs on the bench, knees bent, and leaning her arms on them. She then put her sunglasses to her lips and shook her head.
“No, it’s not that the other person is you. I had no information about who the CEO was dating, or if they were dating at all. But he’s definitely not the type to play games with someone like you. So, you’re definitely dating, right?”
“……Yes.”
When Hani Hyung warned me to stop if I liked him, because I wouldn’t get what I wanted. Even then, I had a certain level of certainty about his and my relationship. Back then, it was a cautious stage that could only encompass him and me, so I couldn’t tell Hyung that we liked each other, that I wasn’t just unrequitedly in love with him.
But now… I was admitting to my sister that we were ‘definitely dating.’ Although I hesitated slightly before answering, it wasn’t due to a lack of certainty.
At my answer, my sister smiled and reached out, tapping the lenses of the sunglasses I was wearing.
“These are the same ones as the CEO’s. For him to buy you the exact same pair and want to claim ownership.”
She laughed, half teasingly, half in disbelief, then took a sip or two of the coffee she had placed next to the popcorn.
“I thought he doted on you particularly, but he’s someone who takes good care of all his affiliated artists, and you’re not someone anyone would hate. I just thought he liked you because you’re young and your actions are cute, and now you’re an affiliated artist, so of course he’d favor you. Even if he acted rudely at first, like you’d never see each other again, he’s not someone who ignores the merits the other person shows over time.”
It was exactly as she said. He might not be polite, but he didn’t set arbitrary expectations and get disappointed. He clearly recognized and acknowledged merits, and he was someone who delicately observed the needs of those around him.
It was hard to see the provision of an officetel to my sister and Hyung, the support for English tutoring, and the creation of a comfortable travel environment as mere consideration from a superior.
It was just that I had never encountered that type of person before. Looking back now, he wasn’t a cold-blooded person who wouldn’t bat an eye in front of someone suffering from hyperventilation. Even if it wasn’t me, he was the kind of person who would provide first aid and lay them down comfortably to rest. Although he wasn’t the type to caress someone and make them ejaculate to calm them down from hyperventilation.
After we both chuckled, looking at each other, I stirred the ice in my cup with a straw, recalling this morning.
He was scheduled to attend Chloe Kent’s lunch meeting with Shushu, so today, our last day in Chicago, my sister and I had planned to sightsee together. I had woken up first and started getting ready.
To avoid waking him, I showered in the master bedroom’s bathroom and quietly finished preparing. As I sat beside him, looking down at him sleeping, finding it strange, I was about to get off the bed when he grabbed my wrist.
“Are you just going to look and leave without a kiss?”
He said that, but he seemed very tired, barely opening his eyes. He must have been exhausted from lack of sleep since Seoul. I turned back, hugged him, and kissed his cheek and lips.
After asking if he had taken his medication and hearing his reply, he released my wrist and buried his face back into the pillow. As I was about to leave the room, he apologized again to my back for not being able to keep his promise.
But I really didn’t care about sightseeing. Since coming on this business trip, it seemed like difficult things had piled up for him, and that worried me. Of course, most of those issues had been pressuring him since Seoul, and I just hadn’t known about them.
“Then… have you heard why the CEO is rushing the New York branch situation so suddenly?” my sister asked in a subdued voice, after staring silently at Lake Michigan for a long time, lost in her own thoughts, just like me. I shook my head.
“Even if you know something, asking you to reveal what he told you, his girlfriend, is a bit much,” my sister said, glancing at me and smiling. Then, she turned her gaze back to the lake, whose vastness was immeasurable, and thus, infinite to our eyes.
“When I left home, I was completely driven by spite. I was arrogant, thinking that because I was smart, resourceful, and good at everything… I could create my life as I wished without following the path set by my parents for their financial support… but in reality, I was a high school graduate with no experience. I started at the bottom of a gallery, receiving ridiculously low pay and being exploited for labor. Since there were people lining up willing to work for even less, those who wanted to gain experience had no choice but to endure that period. The fact that I was smart, resourceful, and good at everything… wasn’t really important to them. After all, those aren’t the virtues required of entry-level staff. It wasn’t just me; even those who graduated with relevant degrees started the same way in this field. Being a gallerist sounds impressive, but as you know from working in it, the practical work is mostly miscellaneous office tasks.”
My sister smiled bitterly and took a few sips of her coffee.
“Then I met the CEO. Even though the work wasn’t much different from my previous gallery… meeting someone who recognized and appreciated my efforts to do better made the same work feel rewarding in a different way. No matter how much I bragged, I was still a child, and I had to admit that I could grow better with the recognition and praise of adults like the CEO and the Director.”
“……”
“The CEO and the Director… they are like second parents to me and Kwon Juhan… they probably are.”
Having witnessed it firsthand, I understood perfectly what he meant, but I couldn’t bring myself to say that I knew.
That day. After the after-party, in the elevator, she had apologized to him for confusing personal and professional matters, but she, he, and I all knew that their relationship, centered around Phantom, was not clearly divided into personal and professional spheres.
“The Director might not, but the CEO would probably be disgusted if I said, ‘Why am I your parent?’ when you talk like this.”
I could so clearly picture the tone and expression he would use that I found myself smiling along with her, looking at her.
“Please keep the offer I received from Lead a secret from the CEO and the Director for now. I think I need some time to think about it quietly on my own. You should also discuss it with the CEO. Especially if you two… have a serious relationship.”
My feelings weren’t going to change. So, I didn’t answer and just offered an ambiguous smile.
“You’ll tell Juhan Hyung… won’t you?”
She stretched out her arm, ruffled my hair, and smiled. Her smile was also unclear.
“Let’s go. It’s too windy. What if the CEO cuts my business trip bonus because I made you catch a cold?”
She put her sunglasses back on and got up. The popcorn she had wanted so badly was less than half eaten, but she unceremoniously threw it into the trash can on the way out of Navy Pier.
Shushu and she were going to Seoul, while he and I were going to Boston.
The next day, we left the Windy City, Chicago—the city of wind that blows everything away and mixes it all up—heading in different directions.
Wow, the way this novel is written, truly amazes me. I mean, is clear, given how pronouns are often wrong, that you’re MTL’ing. I’m not criticising, I’m just impressed how well it still translates and, conveys, fundamental human fears, behaviours and feelings. I am truly impressed by this author so far. Thank you sooo much.