By Zephyria 
Unlike Joo-han’s surprisingly simple room, Yuni’s room, filled with all sorts of items, was so cramped that it was difficult for three people to move around simultaneously. Moreover, the room was filled with an unstable atmosphere, characteristic of someone about to leave.
Yuni had invited Joo-han and Lee Hyun to her room before they started drinking properly, telling them to take anything they needed. Most of the items filling the space were clothes and books.
Watching Joo-han’s back as he rummaged through a half-empty, two-tiered clothing rack, searching for clothes that suited his taste, Lee Hyun tried to focus on Yuni’s story.
“She said to do as I please. When was it that you ever needed our permission?”
Yuni, who had continued talking while perched on the single bed cluttered with books, magazines, and printed materials of various sizes, took a swig of beer after a wry smile.
“So?”
Joo-han, who had been struggling to pull out a knit sweater from a box under the rack, stopped and turned around. Unlike Joo-han, who clicked his tongue as if incredulous, Yuni aimlessly flipped through a magazine within reach and simply shrugged her shoulders.
“I told you I wasn’t here to get permission. I’m going abroad for work, and I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I felt I should tell you, so that’s why I came.”
She said she had met her family that afternoon. Although she had made a few short calls since leaving home, this was the first time she had actually seen them, and Lee Hyun had been quite surprised, though he didn’t show it.
He knew she had been gone for at least four years. He was surprised once that she hadn’t met her family at all during that time, and then again by her decision to bridge the long gap and seek out her family herself.
Relationships between people also have inertia; once a distance opens up, it’s not easy to reverse that gap. However, it required no effort or resistance to simply observe without intervening. That was much easier. Despite having plenty of excuses to avoid it, she had chosen the difficult path.
“I told you to just talk on the phone.”
Looking down at Joo-han’s back as he grumbled, thinking of the hurt she must have endured, Yuni chuckled.
“Whatever my parents said, it’s not something to be conveyed over the phone between parents and children.”
She must have had her reasons for choosing to meet in person this time, even though she had been relaying news that they hadn’t been curious about, or at least hadn’t welcomed, over the phone. If her previous choices were merely secondary consequences of her initial decision, this time it was like a turning point, marking a new phase in her life. It wasn’t just about her place of residence changing from domestic to international.
Yuni leaned her head back, massaging the back of her neck, and muttered towards the ceiling.
“They still tell me to come back home, prepare for college entrance exams again, and enroll in teacher’s college. They have no intention of acknowledging anything I’ve achieved on my own since leaving home. They think I’m just being rebellious or defiant, going off track because of them… that they still think that way…”
Unable to finish her sentence, Yuni shook her head slightly and slammed the magazine she had been flipping through shut with a sharp sound.
“Before, I at least thought it was for my sake. To have a stable job and settle down. From my parents’ perspective, that’s a good life, so they were being firm because they wanted me to live well. But seeing as they still say such things and don’t try to know anything about my current life or the future I dream of… I don’t know anymore.”
Faced with Yuni’s frustration at being denied once again by the very people she most wanted to be accepted by, as she was, neither Lee Hyun nor Joo-han could offer words of comfort.
“Even if I struggle, even if it’s not stable, I’m happier this way… why do they keep saying I’ll regret it later?… Even if we’re connected by blood, even if we’re siblings born from the same parents, aren’t the conditions for happiness different for everyone? Huh?”
Lee Hyun, stretching his legs and pressing Joo-han’s back, looked at her profile as she sought his agreement. He subtly turned his head away from the pressure building inside him. Then, he mechanically swallowed the beer, which had tasted like nothing from the start. It felt like the only thing he, in his current powerlessness, could do.
“Even our family of four has different tastes, so how could the conditions for happiness, something so specific, be the same?”
Yuni’s voice, as she said this, was clearly weary. It wasn’t physical fatigue, but rather a resignation that the time had come to face the fact that she had to cut the thin thread of lingering attachment she hadn’t completely let go of.
She hadn’t achieved the desired outcome, but at least she hadn’t run away from the problem, nor had she made excuses to justify her escape. She had walked into a situation that was bound to be awkward and uncomfortable.
Her family’s home. Lee Hyun could easily imagine how much she must have hesitated and lingered at the door of the place that should have been the most comfortable in the world.
Even living in the same house, it hadn’t been easy to say a single word to his father. He had rationalized his avoidance by telling himself it was useless to try since he wouldn’t get a response anyway. Avoiding it was much easier than repeating the pain of speaking to his father and being met with silence.
But Yuni hadn’t turned away from the door, even though she anticipated the reaction. She had done what she needed to do and conveyed what she needed to say. The rest was not her responsibility.
Yuni, who had been tilting her beer bottle silently, suddenly pulled her lips away as if remembering something.
“Ah, my family has similar aspects too.”
“……”
“Mom and Dad always say, ‘Who did she get this stubbornness from?’ I probably inherited it directly from them?”
As she said this, she even managed a smile. It was a smile to desperately block out complex emotions, but she seemed relieved, having decided not to expect any more understanding from her parents. She had finally confirmed that there was no room for lingering attachment. Before moving on to the next chapter of her life, she was clearly separating what she would leave behind from what she would cherish.
Everyone was moving forward somewhere, using their own choices as fuel. It felt as if everyone was choosing for themselves what lingering attachments to leave behind, what to cut off, and even what mistakes and regrets to carry.
Lee Hyun felt like a coward who had never clashed with anything.
Was this retribution? The price for not digging into problems and seeking a breakthrough… for relying on a ‘cowardly peace’ by backing down, taking detours, and remaining silent? And for his own body, which he could most concretely recognize as his own, to be altered by another?
To prevent his thoughts from becoming overly sentimental and self-deprecating, Lee Hyun drank more beer. This was not the right situation to be thinking.
Yuni got up from the bed, placed the empty beer bottle on the sink, and took a new one from the refrigerator. She nudged Lee Hyun, who was leaning blankly against the sink, with her shoulder.
“Why are you so quiet today?”
“……”
It was not a question he could answer. My head is more jumbled than your room right now. I feel like an ant crushed by a problem so large I can’t even grasp it all, unable to even scream. I couldn’t speak.
Even if he had the courage to open up, he didn’t know where or how to start. It was impossible to explain a problem to someone else that he hadn’t even properly recognized himself.
Facing Yuni’s worried gaze, Lee Hyun bit his lower lip hard. Yuni playfully ruffled the back of Lee Hyun’s head and gave him a faint smile.
“What, are you sad about us parting ways?”
Joo-han, who had jumped up from his seat, grabbed Lee Hyun’s shoulder with shining eyes.
“Seo Yi-hyun, then you tell the CEO. Let’s not go to New York.”
And then he was lightly hit on the back of the head by Yuni.
“Ah, why’d you hit me?”
“Lee Hyun, he’s just spouting nonsense even though he knows it’s ridiculous, so don’t mind him.”
Watching the two engage in their usual trivial bickering, Lee Hyun tried his best to focus on this last moment they could spend together.
The problem of his body changing into an Omega by Rau felt like someone else’s story, as distant from reality as an internet gossip article. But regardless of not being able to fully grasp it, the shock had taken a toll on his body and mind. The shell enclosing his insides was shaking, everything was falling out of place, breaking, and mixing, yet he still didn’t feel like it was happening to his own body.
So, he wanted to shove aside problems he couldn’t do anything about right now and focus on the situation at hand. Wasn’t avoidance and suppression his specialty? Even if his and Rau’s trip to New York was canceled, Yuni would still leave for Paris. Lee Hyun didn’t want to treat his farewell with her lightly.
“This kid’s mind is really somewhere else, isn’t it?”
He tried to force a smile towards Joo-han, who was waving his hand in front of his eyes, but… it was impossible. His specialty wasn’t manifesting at the moment he needed it most.
Lee Hyun wiped his face with his hands several times.
“Why, what’s wrong?”
Yuni carefully pulled down Lee Hyun’s hand and asked. Seeing her worried face, Lee Hyun felt an urge to confide this shock to anyone. He felt that he needed to disperse the impact by projecting the shock onto another entity, otherwise his body and mind would shatter.
“Actually… I’m not feeling well…”
If Shushu’s words were true, the thought that not feeling well might not be entirely a lie brought a hollow laugh to his lips.
“Your complexion is bad. Your lips are pale too.”
Joo-han, now looking concerned, examined Lee Hyun’s face carefully. Yuni took the beer bottle from Lee Hyun’s hand and placed it on the sink.
“You should go home and rest. You’re not the type to say you’re not feeling well just because your condition is slightly low.”
“……”
Yuni gently ruffled Lee Hyun’s hair, who remained motionless with a reluctant expression, and coaxed him.
“It’s not like we won’t see each other again. I’m going to the CEO’s house on Friday, so we can see each other then.”
According to the plan, Lee Hyun and Rau were scheduled to depart on Saturday. Because of that, they had planned to finish Phantom early on Friday and have dinner together.
It wasn’t just dinner; the trip to New York might be canceled too. In a single moment, everything had been thrust into uncertainty, where nothing could be foreseen.
Swallowing the urge to confess with utter resignation to the two of them, Lee Hyun slowly nodded. Then, he picked up his unopened backpack, which had been standing in the corner by the bed. The bag felt heavier than when he had packed it.
“Thank you for the gift.”
When he looked back at the hand gently massaging his shoulder, Yuni was smiling bitterly. She was referring to the travel souvenir that no one had taken last time, which Lee Hyun had brought today.
“I just brought it… the CEO bought it, though…”
“Right. The CEO gave it…”
Muttering this, Yuni seemed to be counting the many opportunities and considerations Rau had given her. Even if Manager Han had told her it wasn’t a betrayal, Yuni’s heart wouldn’t be at ease so easily. But Lee Hyun was certain that Rau hadn’t provided all these opportunities solely to tie Yuni’s and Joo-han’s labor to Phantom.
No, by now, he could no longer speak of knowing Rau so well. Moreover, he had now been relegated to a distant, hazy existence, belonging to the most incomprehensible realm of chaos and the unknown.
After much persuasion, Lee Hyun was able to leave the officetel, declining Joo-han and Yuni’s offer to drive him home. The thought that they might contact Rau, or Rau might contact them, crossed his mind, but a “let it be” attitude of resignation abruptly halted such worries.
He had absolutely no room to restrict his actions by considering that someone might worry about him. Even without fully grasping the situation, a faint sense of rebellion towards Rau flickered, and he wanted to think only of himself, regardless of whether Rau worried or not.
The night air, as October approached, was cool. The wind rushing between the massive high-rise buildings made him hunch his shoulders. But he didn’t feel like putting on the jacket in his hand.
Now that he was alone after parting ways with Yuni and Joo-han, it was time to solve the problem. He had to understand what was happening and grasp it properly. This was no longer a matter of perspective on life or a passive attitude. It was something happening to his body, so he couldn’t ignore it.
Sigh….
Lee Hyun sat on a high flower bed in front of the officetel, covering his face with both hands, letting out a sigh filled with confusion. After rubbing his face so hard it stung, he took out his phone from his jeans pocket.
Who should he contact? There was no need to think for long; his meager contact list had fewer than ten numbers.
He stared blankly at the name ‘Awi,’ which used to be ‘CEO,’ and rubbed it with his thumb for a long time. Whether he was caressing the memories represented by that name or wishing them to be erased, Lee Hyun himself didn’t know.
■ ■ ■
“Lee Hyun-ssi.”
He looked up at the urgent voice calling him. Inwoo, who had stopped his car close to the sidewalk, was walking quickly towards him, almost running. Lee Hyun awkwardly got up from his seated position.
“I’m sorry, for suddenly…”
“No, don’t worry about it. I’m really okay.”
Inwoo didn’t rush Lee Hyun, who stood looking down at his feet, biting his lip and fiddling with his bag’s shoulder strap. He didn’t make any trivial jokes or chuckle as he usually did. The moment Lee Hyun had suddenly contacted him asking if he could stay over, he had already acted far from his usual self. Inwoo must have sensed that the situation was unusual just from that.
Keeping his gaze lowered towards his toes, Lee Hyun tightened his grip on the bag strap.
“I’m really sorry, but I… I have nowhere to go right now…. It’s not that I don’t want to be with Hyung and Nuna… it’s just that my thoughts are too complicated right now…”
“Lee Hyun-ssi, you don’t need to explain. Let’s go first.”
Inwoo gently placed a hand on Lee Hyun’s shoulder and cut off his rambling.
“……”
But Lee Hyun couldn’t follow the pull on his shoulder towards the car and remained in place. Inwoo took the small shopping bag Lee Hyun was holding into his own hand and let out a sigh.
“I won’t tell Wikun…”
Only then did Lee Hyun slowly lift his head, meet Inwoo’s eyes, and follow the pull on his shoulder.
Inwoo occasionally glanced at Lee Hyun, who was sitting in the passenger seat, while driving, but he didn’t ask anything. Feeling his gaze, Lee Hyun pretended not to notice, staring blankly out the car window, biting his dry, chapped lips. He self-deprecatingly thought of this desire to run far away, to a place where he wouldn’t need to explain anything to anyone or face his problems… a very characteristic thought of his.
As he had mentioned once at a Phantom party, from the living room window of Inwoo’s apartment on the 32nd floor, the Seoul night view literally spread out below him. Thinking that it was a landscape with a different character from what he saw from Rau’s second floor or rooftop, Lee Hyun stood close to the floor-to-ceiling window, exclaiming his admiration for the night view, wanting to avoid any thought connected to him, however trivial.
“I’m glad you like the night view… but put your bag down. Does it contain something precious?”
Inwoo, carrying two glasses from the kitchen, met his eyes through the window behind him and chuckled. Lee Hyun smiled sheepishly, pulled his backpack off his shoulder, and accepted the glass he was offered. What was in Inwoo’s glass was whiskey with ice, but Lee Hyun’s share was warm milk. The same kind Rau had brought him when he sat shivering in the bathtub, on a summer night when the Great Uncle had visited and the rain had poured down.
“Um, Hyung, if it’s okay, I’d like some too….”
“Ah… I don’t have any beer at home right now….”
“I can drink whiskey too.”
Lee Hyun pursed his lips, feeling like a child stubbornly insisting he could do everything adults did, thereby only revealing his own pale immaturity. He watched Inwoo disappear towards the kitchen with the glass of milk, a faint smile playing on his lips as he ruffled his hair, and felt a pang of regret, but he didn’t call out to him.
Lee Hyun himself was just as flustered by the continuous string of unusual words and actions. The unexpected attitudes that burst forth, escaping inertia and control, reminded him of a whack-a-mole game. But he felt no desire to swing the hammer to catch the moles that taunted him from different spots.
Brushing his face, Lee Hyun turned his head and his gaze stopped at the easel and art supplies scattered haphazardly behind the sofa, near the corner where the two large windows met.
The work on the canvas seemed more than half-finished. It was far from Inwoo’s usual style, which blended a cheerful cartoonish aesthetic, primarily using warm colors, with a slightly eerie atmosphere.
It was much bolder and more direct. Yet, it contained richer stories and emotions than usual. The intention to dilute the weight of his inner self with witty jokes, common in his usual work, was absent. As if he was sick of the evasion and avoidance disguised as ease, the desperate movements of a naked man struggling on the canvas captured his attention.
“Lee Hyun-ssi, come over here.”
Inwoo, standing by the long, spacious dining table between the sofa and the kitchen—a table large enough for about ten people to enjoy a feast—raised his glass and called out to Lee Hyun.
“Were you… working on a painting?”
“I’m the kind of person who can draw well even with someone watching intently, but I feel strangely shy knowing Lee Hyun-ssi is looking.”
“I didn’t know you painted at home.”
“I’m not someone who stakes everything on painting to the point of needing a separate studio. Not like someone said.”
Setting down the tray with the glasses from the kitchen on the dining table, Inwoo looked up, glanced at Lee Hyun, and smiled. Lee Hyun thought he knew who ‘someone’ was, but he merely lifted the corner of his lips and didn’t react further. He accepted the glass of whiskey with a few ice cubes and sat down opposite Inwoo.
“The feel of the painting seems a bit… different.”
“You’re a real fortune-teller when it comes to art. Just like someone said.”
Feeling that Inwoo was mentioning Rau somewhat intentionally and repeatedly, Lee Hyun couldn’t laugh along this time. He lowered his gaze, caressed the glass in his hand, and slowly let the liquor flow into his mouth, like drinking hot coffee.
“Perhaps it’s because Lee Hyun-ssi is honest in front of paintings, so you can recognize the sincerity the artist has imbued, intentionally or unconsciously. Like literature or music, the more you study painting, the more you see, and the wider and deeper your interpretation becomes. But I don’t think one can overcome the limitation of seeing art only as an object of academic interpretation simply by studying hard. That’s what I think.”
He looked up at Inwoo. Inwoo, leaning back loosely in his chair with his upper body relaxed, ran a hand down the back of his neck and laughed, as if embarrassed by his lengthy, serious speech. Perhaps his change wasn’t limited to his art.
Everyone was moving forward somewhere. While he remained frozen, his thoughts and wounds twisted into their current state, fearing change, others who made different choices had embraced and absorbed even shock and transformation as fuel.
For them, scars were their individuality. Just as Rau had said…
But individuality couldn’t be born from scars alone, without any cost. It was a radiance granted only to those who faced their scars with their own strength and endured the time of pain without compromise, with their entire being.
He bit his lower lip hard with his teeth, and the taste of alcohol lingered on his lips.
“I appreciate you thinking that, but….”
The potency of the whiskey Rau often drank reminded him of their kisses. They had shared a deep kiss just this morning before he left, but now it felt distant and hazy, like recalling memories from a past life.
Lee Hyun tightened his grip on the glass and the teeth biting his lip, then stared intently at the ice in the glass before continuing.
“You can’t say someone who abandoned painting themselves is honest in front of art.”
“You’re painting again. You couldn’t completely let go of art. That’s what’s important.”
As soon as Inwoo finished speaking, Lee Hyun drained his own glass of liquor and stated his conclusion with ruthless finality.
“Thankfully… I got to paint again. With someone else’s help.”
Feeling trapped in a maze where no matter how hard he ran through countless corners, he always ended up back at the starting point, Lee Hyun smiled bitterly, unable to escape the conversation that inevitably led back to Rau. He stood up. He retrieved the shopping bag he had left on the sofa, brought it back to the dining table, and pushed it slightly towards Inwoo.
“This….”
“…….”
Inwoo’s eyes widened slightly, asking about the contents.
“It’s a Starbucks City tumbler. This one I bought in Chicago, and this one… in Boston….”
As he took out and explained the two tumblers, Lee Hyun’s hands and words suddenly slowed. He let out a sigh, brushing his face.
“I should have wrapped them. I’m not very thoughtful….”
“You have good taste if you chose tumblers like these. These Starbucks City tumblers are quite pretty. I didn’t expect you to buy one in Boston too. To spend time together so intimately… you must have been short on time. Thank you. Honestly… I didn’t expect much, thinking you might not remember.”
Holding the orange tumbler he had bought in Boston, turning it around as if admiring it, Inwoo’s face became thoughtful, a faint smile appearing on his lips.
When he had asked to stop by Starbucks briefly in Boston, saying he wanted to buy a tumbler as a gift for Inwoo. Rau’s furrowed brow, showing his jealousy, his petulant tone like a young boy. And the feel of his arms pulling him close from behind, his waist tightening, the warmth against his back as he chose the tumbler… all came back with just one tumbler before him.
But like the kiss this morning, like vicarious experiences through fictional characters encountered in movies or novels, it skimmed the surface of his senses without true connection.
Lee Hyun sensed from Inwoo’s reaction, his voice slowing down at the mention of ‘intimately,’ that Inwoo had already guessed his sudden contact was related to Rau.
Well. What would be left of him these days if Rau were excluded? It was a simple question that didn’t require any great deduction.
Now that he was forced to stop, looking back, not only his daily life but also matters related to the grand design of his life were all connected to Rau.
The influence of another person dictating his very life.
With him present or absent, everything… from the immediate necessities of food, clothing, and shelter to the direction of his life, literally everything changed.
Could he confidently call that love? Wasn’t it dependence and reliance?
Wasn’t he engaging in the very kind of love he had feared most, like the love of his father who had turned away from the world after losing his mother? To shake off a new fear, like the subtle tremor a tsunami, originating in the distant sea, sends through the primal senses of someone standing on the shore, Lee Hyun swallowed more liquor.
“When I was in Boston, there was a really nice Starbucks near Ellen and Marcus’s place. It felt more like a unique, traditional local cafe than a franchise coffee shop… Oh, do you know Ellen and Marcus too, Hyung? You probably do, right? You’ve been friends with the CEO for a long time… They’re truly wonderful people, and when I visited…”
“Lee Hyun-ssi.”
Inwoo leaned forward from his reclining position against the backrest, placing his large hand on the table with a thud, interrupting Lee Hyun’s uncharacteristic rambling.
“I won’t ask anything, so you don’t have to force yourself to talk. Of course… I’ll listen anytime if you want to talk.”
“…….”
Lee Hyun’s gaze, which had been fixed on Inwoo, tilted sideways towards the dining table.
From the moment he had selected Inwoo’s name from his contact list, he had actually intended to ask for help. He planned to disperse the shock’s aftermath onto him. But he knew he would suffer greater damage in the process of confirming the details… he was just delaying because he was afraid of making it a foregone conclusion.
Lee Hyun, moistening his lips with whiskey that still carried the strong scent of alcohol, his eyes fixed on the glass rather than Inwoo, opened his mouth as if possessed, as if someone were controlling him.
“Shushu-ssi visited today.”
“…….”
“She seemed to have something to say to the CEO, but his schedule was full until Friday, so he was out today too. I had some time before meeting my sister and Hyung, so I waited with her….”
As he tried to voice the story Shushu had told him, he felt like a child about to recount absurd tales of meeting aliens or talking to his toy dolls, and a hollow laugh escaped him.
To him, who had lived his life aware only of a world made up of Betas, with no particular connection to ordinary Alphas or Omegas, let alone Golden Alphas, the ‘Ghost’s ability to turn a Beta into an Omega’ was less believable than talking to a doll; it was closer to a legend or a ghost story.
Lee Hyun rubbed his face with his free hand as if to smudge it, then rested his chin on the table.
“Hyung, do you know?”
Unsure how to continue, he changed direction and posed a question to Inwoo. Lee Hyun, resting his chin heavily as if propping up a collapsing body, looked down, appearing exhausted.
“Phantom, Ghost… why the CEO is obsessed with those words.”
“…….”
Inwoo’s lips stiffened, while his eyes flickered with unease. Seeing this, Lee Hyun’s eyes narrowed. A dark, chilling premonition seemed to freeze him to the bone. As if someone was mercilessly lashing his frozen body, his breathing became ragged, his shoulders heaving. He swallowed dryly, moistened his lips with his tongue, but his mouth felt as dry as if filled with sand.
He had asked if he knew, but it was merely a question in form. He had never imagined receiving a response indicating he knew.
“Then… you knew about other things… too?”
His hand holding the glass, his lips that spoke the ominous premonition, trembled involuntarily.
Inwoo’s face, which parted his lips as if to say something, unable to admit it himself, then closed them tightly as if he would say nothing about the question, his gaze falling with sorrow. His face itself was the answer.
“It seems you did.”
It wasn’t a calculated action. He simply couldn’t bear it. He sprang up from his seat, needing to breathe and live.
Even the place he sought refuge in to hide for a moment and catch his breath was, in fact, enemy territory. It felt as if everywhere he looked, there were people who knew Rau’s secrets, making him wonder how he had lived without knowing until now. Threat and crisis were right at his doorstep. Right behind the smiles of kind and friendly people.
How fragile the glass floor of peaceful daily life was, so easily shattered… He had learned this sufficiently through his mother’s accident and was overly cautious about it… or so he thought… but once life decided to play tricks, there was no adequate preparation for it.
Without even thinking of grabbing his bag or jacket, without any plan, driven solely by survival, Lee Hyun quickly and roughly strode away from the dining table towards the entrance.
“Lee Hyun-ssi, Lee Hyun-ssi!”
Midway down the hallway leading to the entrance, Inwoo firmly grabbed Lee Hyun’s arm. Forced to turn around, he met Inwoo’s desperate face, but he didn’t want to let his guard down. He wanted to become hard, cruel. His gaze was drawn directly down towards Inwoo’s chest, and Lee Hyun bent at the waist. He pushed against Inwoo’s stomach.
“It might sound like an excuse, but I only found out recently too. Lee Hyun-ssi, please… just listen to me. Right now, Wikun and I… I know you probably can’t stand the sight of us, but… if you really hate it, I’ll leave. Just… don’t try to leave right now. Huh? Where are you going to go if you leave now?”
Inwoo’s grip on his arms, trying to pull him up, was so strong it made his arms numb, but Lee Hyun couldn’t even register the pain.
When he heard from Shushu that Rau was using his special ability to change his body into an Omega… at the time… he had felt an instinctive shock but couldn’t grasp it. But Inwoo’s reaction before him transformed that vague ghost story into a reality happening to his own body.
What Lee Hyun wanted to escape from was not Inwoo, but that sense of reality. Like someone trying to swat away a swarm of winged insects closing in from all sides, Lee Hyun shook his head.
“No… I know it’s not your fault, Hyung. That you’re not the one who did wrong. But right now, what I know in my head is useless… It’s like my brain has stopped functioning and my limbs are moving independently… I can’t control it! I want to… react calmly too… but my body…”
“Don’t blame yourself. Who wouldn’t be flustered in a situation like this? It’s strange if you are.”
“What’s strange and what’s normal… I don’t even know that anymore. How should I… how should I accept this, this situation… the CEO…?”
Looking up at Inwoo, Lee Hyun had completely lost the balance he usually maintained, his emotional range far exceeding his age. In his confusion, with the face of a frightened young boy, he grabbed and shook Inwoo’s arm, repeating his question.
“What on earth… is this, Hyung?”
“…….”
Like a truck that crashed into a taxi listening to the radio while waiting for the signal to turn green.
Without any warning, it had rammed into the side of his everyday life, smashing everything, breaking the flow, ruining his plans… and turning the touch of someone he felt as close as himself, whom he had embraced within his flesh, into a sudden, unknown, chilling strangeness.
He never thought he would experience a shock of that magnitude twice in his life…
Inwoo, looking down at Lee Hyun with an expression like he had just taken a bitter medicine, his hands gripping Lee Hyun’s arms tightly, pulled him in. He embraced his shoulders and squeezed his back, exerting no control over his strength.
“You don’t need to understand, or try to accept it. You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Then what… should I do? What do I do?”
“…….”
“Should I blame and resent and demand responsibility… Is that what I should do?”
“If you want to do that, you can.”
The feeling of the other’s shoulder being slightly lower than his own when embracing Rau was awkward. The warmth of their chests touching, the sensation of their ears and cheeks overlapping, the fact that it wasn’t him… made Lee Hyun shrink back.
But now, he wouldn’t be able to feel the same familiarity and reassurance in an embrace with Rau. Perhaps. He realized this in another person’s arms.
Lee Hyun slowly pushed away from Inwoo’s chest. The two arms that had held him so tightly, as if not letting him go anywhere, loosened with surprising ease, as if the pressure from moments before had been a lie.
Lee Hyun steadied his staggering steps, backing away until he leaned against the wall behind him. To maintain at least a minimal level of composure, he ran his hands over his face and lowered his voice.
“And then? After venting all my emotions like that… should I just go back to how things were as if nothing happened? Or….”
Or… is it something I can never forgive?
Biting my lips so hard they turned white, I swallowed the words I was about to say. The genuine image he had shown me, or at least the image I believed to be his truth, along with his words of healing and empathy, felt closer to reality than the horrific changes Rau had wrought upon my body. Those accumulated moments were still attempting to defend him.
“I’m sorry… Truly, I don’t know how to apologize… No, this isn’t a matter of apology anymore… Regardless of when I found out, I’m just as much of a lunatic for keeping my mouth shut…”
Lee Hyun shook his head, cutting off Inwoo’s words. Inwoo was right; it wasn’t a matter of apology. What was needed now to calm down wasn’t an apology either.
Lee Hyun gnawed on his lower lip and mumbled.
“It’s not something Hyung should apologize for… I think that, and I want to say that, but I don’t know…”
“Even I, an Alpha, can’t understand it, so for you, who has lived as a Beta… it’s beyond words. I agreed with that bastard’s words that only by speaking it yourself would your shock lessen even a little, so I kept my mouth shut… but if you were so afraid of the shock you would receive, that bastard shouldn’t have done this in the first place. I know I can’t be free from responsibility for this, having been silent, falling for such sophistry.”
Inwoo’s voice grew increasingly agitated. He leaned his back against the wall opposite Lee Hyun and ran a hand through his neatly styled, waxed hair. Repeatedly clenching and unclenching his fists as if before drawing blood, he stared with fierce eyes at his own forearm, revealed beneath the sweatshirt sleeves pulled up to his elbows.
“My pheromones went wild. The Alpha instincts I had never been swayed by before took control of me… That’s too pathetic an excuse coming from the mouth of such a great, near-perfect Golden Alpha, isn’t it? If he couldn’t resist the pheromones… if he couldn’t control himself while looking at you, touching you, by your side… then he should have given up on being by your side altogether.”
Inwoo, still clenching and unclenching his fists, seemed to be suppressing the urge to strike something. Veins bulged blue on his forearm.
“To have watched and observed the object of your lust every day… and then claim there was no intention of rape is no different than an excuse.”
Inwoo’s voice was low and quiet, like a whisper, but it was as cold and metallic as if there was no room for reconsideration of the conclusion he had reached.
“……”
The word ‘rape’ seemed to lower the temperature of the surroundings and my body by several degrees. Lee Hyun flinched, stiffening, and stared directly at Inwoo. However, Inwoo, burning with anger towards Rau, who was not before him, didn’t even notice Lee Hyun.
Strictly speaking, no coercion or force was applied to the sexual act itself. However, I had not been informed at all about the fundamental physical changes that could occur through it. While it wasn’t rape in the conventional sense, even as I felt revulsion at Inwoo’s analogy, I couldn’t readily defend Rau by calling it an excessive and unfair leap.
Was it really like that? Did he do something as disgusting as rape… to my body?
The gravity of that word felt like a splash of cold water on the jumbled thoughts swirling in my mind. I needed to be cold. To see the truth behind the temporary haze without distortion, I had to sink, cold and heavy. But it wasn’t easy.
“How… can you turn a Beta into an Omega? By what method did I…”
The end of my voice still trembled faintly. Inwoo’s gaze, filled with guilt, carefully met Lee Hyun’s.
“Through knotting…”
“……”
“Normal knotting has no effect on a Beta… but Ghosts can perform special knotting. It can cause some inexplicable chemical change. If you continuously knot a Beta in that state, they gradually turn into an Omega, and that’s… called Changing, I heard.”
I hadn’t received such a detailed explanation from Shushu. That Rau was a Golden Alpha, and a ‘Ghost’ with the special ability to transform a Beta into an Omega. That whenever an attempt to change someone into an Omega occurred, his eye color would turn cloudy, like a ghost, within hours. That was all.
Lee Hyun wrapped his trembling body tightly.
“Then, during all those knotting sessions…”
A hollow laugh escaped after the mumbling that sounded like talking to himself. The fact that the sex with Rau, which I had thought was the most intimate communion, was merely a tool for his thorough deception, added shock upon shock.
Inwoo placed his hands on Lee Hyun’s shoulders, which were shaking his head slightly as if unwilling to believe, and squeezed them again.
“Let’s go to the hospital tomorrow. We can check how far it has progressed, and if there’s a possibility of living closer to a Beta if we stop it now… I’ll arrange for a VIP check-up, and I’ll examine you myself.”
Lee Hyun’s eyes looked at Inwoo. His gaze was unfocused, as if asking what the point of that would be now. Inwoo loosened his grip on Lee Hyun’s shoulders, which were as defenseless as a young animal before violence, and stroked them as gently as he could.
“Of course, if you’re not ready, you don’t have to do it right now.”
“How long will it take to know the test results?”
“We should be able to confirm quite a bit with just an ultrasound.”
“It’ll be something we can tell from the development of the uterus, right?”
“……”
The word ‘uterus’ felt as alien and unfamiliar as the metallic sharpness I felt from the word ‘rape,’ making my words slow down. Seeing Inwoo, who answered by pursing his lips and averting his gaze, Lee Hyun let out a faint sigh.
I remembered Rau’s words, asking me to sleep together without having sex, wanting to stay with me until morning. Recalling my subsequent question, asking if we couldn’t sleep together after sex, a bitter smile surfaced. Yes, that wouldn’t have been possible… What expression did he have when he looked at me then?
Sympathy? Regret? Conflict and pity? Whatever complex emotions were mixed within, at this moment, I didn’t want to block my own feelings to try and decipher his.
Lee Hyun took a deep breath and bit his lower lip hard.
Now, I could vaguely understand the reason for his frantic state after the first penetration and first knotting in Hong Kong, when he’d scraped semen from his body like a madman… the reason he’d apologized so many times, and the reason for the ‘unnecessary aftermath.’ His confusion, unable to do anything but try to clean up what couldn’t be cleaned up.
“I want it. Do it for me. Knotting… do it again.”
My own lewd whispers, begging him for knotting, were vivid. I released the arms that had been holding my own body and scrubbed my face as if trying to erase it. It was becoming difficult to control my rapidly accelerating breath. I wished I could lose consciousness, like when I first faced
Every moment spent with him now looked different. The sex with him, where I felt a grand sense of freedom, liberated from norms and morals as if I had become an entirely different person. The deep reassurance, as if we had shown each other our true selves and understood each other, which was astonishing, even after spouting such explicit words that would make me blush alone when recalling them later.
It was all a delusion. For him, sex with me wasn’t just that. It was an act with a different purpose, or at least including a different purpose.
“I was the one….”
“……”
“I asked for it… to knot me, I wanted it… so many times…”
“That’s not it. It’s not your fault!”
Inwoo shook Lee Hyun’s shoulders and shouted in an agitated voice. It wasn’t meant to imply it was his fault, but Lee Hyun didn’t even feel the need to correct Inwoo’s misunderstanding.
“Lau Wikun is the bastard, and you were a victim who knew nothing. You should not blame yourself at all.”
“……”
Like the day Great Uncle visited, I felt as if I were soaked in rain. Foolishly, I missed Rau’s warmth, the warmth of his body that had held me without asking any questions when I jumped out of the car that day. Even though he was the one who had driven me into this coldness… I wanted to be warmed by his body.
Realizing that my love was probably one of dependence and entrustment, Lee Hyun’s eyes welled up. Not wanting to be emotional, I raised my hand to wipe them away without giving them a chance, when Inwoo’s head tilted deeply.
“……”
His tongue didn’t enter, but it was a kiss deep enough to press our lips together. As Lee Hyun, frozen, blinked slowly two or three times, Inwoo slightly shifted the angle of his lips, gently rubbed the inner mucosa, and slowly pulled away.
“……What is this.”
With my body stiff as if someone were holding a gun to my lower back, without moving an inch, Lee Hyun moved only his lips to ask. Inwoo, removing his hands from Lee Hyun’s shoulders and showing his palms as if surrendering, rubbed the back of his neck and forced an awkward smile.
“Getting new shock… did it make the shock of Changing disappear, even for a moment?”
He was trying to act as if he were making a crude joke with his usual lighthearted attitude, but Inwoo’s eyes flickered unstably, and his lips twitched. Faced with Lee Hyun’s gaze, demanding a proper answer, he soon gave up the pretense of being flippant. He exhaled heavily through his closed lips and stared at Lee Hyun as if he had been sharply scratched by something, his eyes piercing.
“I can’t watch.”
“……”
“I know that to you, I am also just another bastard involved in this. But at least I’m not the one who changed your body like that bastard. I stepped back thinking that bastard truly wanted and cherished you, but if that weren’t the case…”
“What’s the use of such hypotheticals?”
As if the kiss just moments ago held no meaning for me, Lee Hyun’s voice was neither cold nor hot, as if the hypothetical situation Inwoo presented was meaningless.
“I understand that you are also very shocked by this.”
As Lee Hyun tried to conclude things that way, Inwoo, with a frown, strode forward.
“Don’t pretend not to know. You’ll remember, but I was the one who showed interest first.”
“Yes, I remember. And I know that even if it hadn’t been me there, you would have acted the same way.”
“……”
Lee Hyun had dismissed Inwoo’s initial attitude, which felt like he was flirting or trying to sleep with me, as typical habitual behavior of a womanizer with no genuine feelings. Since he hadn’t crossed a decisive line, Lee Hyun had left him alone without reacting.
Even if there was a possibility of developing into deeper feelings behind his seemingly casual demeanor, bringing up that possibility now was meaningless.
If my father had reacted differently then, if my mother hadn’t had the accident then, if we hadn’t changed restaurants then, if the truck driver had gotten his vehicle inspected on time… what meaning would such hypotheticals have?
“You’re too confused too… I’ll think of it as a momentary mistake.”
Inwoo’s eyes looked at Lee Hyun, who spoke with a tired voice, as if wanting to conclude this matter here, filled with resentment.
“You don’t even feel confused about me.”
“……”
“You can deal with me so calmly.”
Lee Hyun couldn’t handle Inwoo trying to throw another problem at him at this particular moment. Whether his feelings were genuine or not, he didn’t have the strength to bear even the weight of a feather more.
“I, um, today… I’ll sleep somewhere else.”
Inwoo’s hand, which grabbed Lee Hyun’s shoulder and turned him around, was no longer careful but firm, as Lee Hyun turned towards the entrance without his jacket or bag, with no plan.
“There’s no need for that. As Lee Hyun said, it was an impulsive mistake with no meaning.”
“……”
“But.”
“……”
“It seems mistakes also have timing.”
Pushing Lee Hyun towards the living room, Inwoo tilted his head askew, gripping Lee Hyun’s shoulder painfully tight.
“Living as a coward who just smiles and tries nothing… is perhaps worse than making a life-or-death, once-in-a-lifetime mistake…”
Inwoo muttered in a bitterly self-deprecating voice. As Lee Hyun, who was being pushed, walked towards the living room, he looked back. Inwoo patted his shoulder a couple of times as if to encourage him and gave a playful smile, as usual.
“Who’s this I haven’t seen before? New lover?”
The Inwoo who had said that, showing curious interest, when we first met in front of Phantom, in front of Rau’s car… that Inwoo overlapped. But there was a subtle difference, like two pictures in a spot-the-difference puzzle.
Inwoo chuckled, gently pushing Lee Hyun’s cheeks away with his hand, as if telling him not to look back.
“At least then… something will happen.”
The voice from behind him was no longer laughing.
■ ■ ■
Among the many books Morae possessed, there was a work by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida.
I used to kill time by borrowing various books from her, regardless of genre or content (at the time, any excellent book was merely a tool to kill time for Lee Hyun), but now the memory of how I came to choose that book, which was unpolished and riddled with mistranslations, was hazy.
Since it was a mechanical act of filling the envelope of time with letters, discarding it, and then opening the next envelope to stuff in more letters, the fluidity of the sentences or readability were not issues for Lee Hyun at the time.
Even within that unfriendly translation, which I had to read slowly and haltingly, as if reading a French original despite it being in my native language, there was a sentence I could bring into my life.
‘The giver of a gift should not expect to receive value in return, nor wish to be remembered by the recipient. Nor should they keep it as a symbol of sacrifice for the other in their own consciousness.’
At the time, Lee Hyun had thought of Morae and Lee Han through that passage.
The elders in the family accepted Lee Hyun, who outwardly seemed fine, eating, sleeping, going to school, and even serving in the military… living quietly without causing any trouble, as an untroubled child. But in reality, it was merely performing assigned tasks mechanically.
When exam schedules were announced, I prepared diligently, but not out of a desire to get high scores. It wasn’t because I was a deeply understanding child who had ‘fortunately overcome everything,’ as the adults thought, even though I hadn’t rebelled once after experiencing ‘that.’
I was merely making my inner self numb, so as not to feel intense shock, confusion, resentment, or sadness. A state where human desires and emotions were completely dehydrated, unable to genuinely laugh or genuinely get angry, was akin to a quiet death, a passive death.
Keeping such a person by one’s side without being consumed by their apathy was harder than one might think. The light and energy they provided, allowing me to maintain my life even in a state of numbness, couldn’t possibly spring forth from nowhere.
Even if my father had turned away from me and the world, the world hadn’t entirely turned away from me. At least Morae and Lee Han were there.
Not something else, but that was the gift.
A gift that perfectly met Jacques Derrida’s conditions for a gift: not expecting to receive value in return, not even wishing for the recipient to acknowledge it.
While discussing the content of that book, Morae had also mentioned another definition by Jacques Derrida.
‘If one were to forgive what is forgivable, the very concept of forgiveness would disappear. Forgiveness is only for the unforgivable.’
While replacing simple parts on a motorcycle, sitting on the worn sofa of a regular repair shop and drinking barley tea given by the owner with Morae, Lee Hyun had thought of his father.
If I had possessed the maturity to forgive what was unforgivable… I wouldn’t have needed to protect myself by numbing my emotions. I couldn’t forgive, nor did I know how to forgive, so I tried to become indifferent to it as well.
So that my eyes wouldn’t redden when I looked at my father, so that I wouldn’t expend my emotions by spewing sharp words, Lee Hyun’s best effort at the time was to harden the surface of his heart, to be able to look at his father with no emotion, as if looking at a washbasin by the faucet or a broom in the corner of the yard.
In the taxi, driving slowly up the incline towards Phantom, Lee Hyun looked out at the streets of Samcheong-dong, lit by warm lights in the evening, and this time, he was thinking about Rau.
Was what he did unforgivable?
Like my father’s silence?
To Lee Hyun, who had lived in a narrow, monotonous world with almost no interaction with anyone other than Morae and Lee Han after finishing middle school and moving to a fishing village, Phantom was a new world, full of vitality, splendor, and unpredictability, where passion and respect for art coexisted.
The feeling he had in the taxi leaving Phantom on the first day he helped prepare for an exhibition with Manager Han was still vivid. The surreal sensation that if he turned the car around, the spot where ‘Gallery Phantom’ had been would be overgrown with weeds. Or the dazed feeling, like after waking from a dream that felt too real.
At that time, Lee Hyun felt a ‘desire’ behind his strangely distorted sense of reality. He wished Phantom were real, that it would remain in its place.
As proof that even if light is blocked to make it dark, and water is withheld to make it dry, light will inevitably seep into a human heart and water will permeate, and desire will eventually grow, Lee Hyun had diligently cultivated his desires thereafter.
On the night he hyperventilated from
And Rau… was pursuing his own desires through me. Because there’s no guarantee that the object of my desire will desire me in the same way.
Scoffing at himself for having invoked concepts like the future, hope, and overcoming, Lee Hyun cautiously optimistically believed this time it would finally lead to fruition, blooming into flowers and bearing fruit, and he shifted his gaze out the car window.
The street, lined with trendy cafes and shops, was vibrant with people enjoying the brief autumn atmosphere, even on a Monday evening. As he intently observed each face of the people he had unconsciously passed by, considering them all Betas, as if they were the faces of old friends, Phantom’s building came into view. Lee Hyun clenched his sweaty, empty hands tightly on his thighs.
To be continued in Diamond Dust Vol. 6
Note:
1.Close Out: A surfing term. A state where surfing is impossible because waves do not roll in one after another but crash down all at once.
2. Ding: A surfing term. When a board is chipped or damaged.
Thank you so much for the chapter <3