From the bedroom window that faced North Michigan Avenue, the John Hancock Tower—famous alongside the Willis Tower as one of the best places to take in the Chicago skyline—stood practically right in front of us.
The wide living room, with windows to the north and east, offered an even more open, airy view. Beyond the John Hancock Tower and the building of another world-famous hotel chain behind it, you could just make out a horizon on Lake Michigan that looked like the sea, and to the east the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago was a stone’s throw away.
From my room—the other bedroom in the same suite—I could look straight out through the south- and east-facing windows at the glittering panorama of the Magnificent Mile, the shopping street everyone talks about.
Yuni looked mildly surprised that he and I were staying in the same suite, but with two bedrooms and two bathrooms there wasn’t any real need to book another room. She seemed to reach that conclusion on her own and soon nodded along. Maybe she was too giddy about the first-class seats and the five-star hotel room he’d arranged like a surprise event to dwell on small suspicions.
There were five of us on this business trip: the artist Shushu, Yuni, him, me, and our driver. Thanks to his consideration, all five of us traveled comfortably in first class. When Yuni explained that a typical first-class round trip to Chicago runs about 12 million won, I couldn’t exactly keep my mind at ease.
Anyway, unlike me—pointlessly tense and watching Yuni’s mood—he looked entirely unbothered by the situation, signing the check-in papers on the sofa in his suite’s living room instead of at the lobby counter.
Never mind the driver... with Shushu and Yuni still in the same living room, he ran his fingers through my hair and, in a voice tinged with special tenderness, asked about my afternoon plans, so I rolled my eyes around and even stammered when I answered.
Maybe he really wouldn’t mind if things just naturally became known as they were. Then again, making some big announcement—“we’re actually dating”—would be oddly showy.
I remembered Juhan’s warning that he wasn’t a good person to date, that if it was an unripe crush I should drop it quickly. If he found out I’d ended up dating the very person he’d warned me about, how would he react? What about Yuni and the chief?
It felt strange to be having even light, silly worries about dating, so I puffed out my cheeks, blew out a breath, and picked up my pencil again. I was sketching the downtown Chicago skyline at dusk. By his bedroom window, waiting for him to finish his shower.
"So you spent the whole afternoon at the art museum?"
He came out of the bathroom connected to the inner dressing room in a robe, smiled over at me, and asked. Even that ordinary gesture—raking a towel lightly through his wet hair—made my chest flutter, ridiculous as it was.
Because the plan I’d told him in advance had been so grand, I nodded a bit sheepishly and smiled back.
He leaned against the wall at the entrance to the dressing room that ran long like a hall and slid both hands into the robe’s front pockets.
"It’s on a different scale from a typical gallery."
He was right.
The title "one of the three great museums in America" hadn’t charmed me much, but I chose it as my first stop thinking there had to be a reason it was a must-visit in Chicago, a city full of lively, varied galleries. Split broadly into a main building and a new wing, it held about three hundred thousand works.
"I tried to be diligent... but I only got through the first floor and basement of the main building, and I didn’t even make it to the annex."
We landed at O’Hare around ten in the morning and checked into the hotel around noon. He, Yuni, and the trip’s star, Shushu, had a meeting straight away with the gallery hosting the exhibition.
Until they came back to the hotel to prepare for the evening VIP opening party, I’d planned to visit the art museum and two more galleries in the area.
It was too much. I couldn’t even do the one art museum justice.
Maybe my rare display of disappointment amused him; he cocked his head for a moment, wiggled a teasing index finger, and disappeared first into the dressing room. I paused my fretting over how to render the city lights growing showier as the natural light faded and followed him inside.
He was at the innermost wardrobe, choosing his outfit for the party. I perched awkwardly on the velvet bench set between the drawer cabinet and the full-length mirror, right across from the bathroom door.
"How was it? If it were you, I figured the second floor of the main building would be your favorite."
I rubbed the back of my neck and snorted at his spot-on guess. The second floor of the main building displayed European paintings from the fifteenth century onward. There were many pieces familiar from my parents’ art books. Back then I’d been the kid who only looked at the pictures, not checking the artist’s name or the title, but this time was different.
I lingered in front of works that caught my interest, took photos of the works and their captions with my phone (the museum allowed photography), and fixed in my memory the names of artists who left a strong impression.
Picasso, Monet, Rembrandt... Even someone as ignorant as me had heard those names, and even if I hadn’t known they were by those artists, I knew the works. I stayed in front of them a long time.
Even in a single line I could feel the discipline of lives pledged to the canvas through countless practice over long years; colors and touches at a level you can’t reach with thin tricks or clumsy imitation; a depth granted only to those who devoted their time without falsehood. They weren’t painters who were judged great posthumously by luck.
"Honestly I care more about content than form, so I’ve always found contemporary art, with lots of radical work, hard to understand. I’d unconsciously kept my distance. But going through the galleries today... I realized not every contemporary artist is trying to deliver a message through radical form. Of course there are many kinds of painters—that should be obvious—but I’d had a narrow, prejudiced view."
Watching him, naked under the robe, pull on black boxer briefs that hugged the tops of his firm thighs, I confessed. In his underwear, he started with his hair in the mirror over the drawers, and I leaned my temple against the corner of the cabinet and looked up at him.
Among the contemporary artists that struck me, I told him about Edward Hopper’s "Nighthawks."
It was entirely personal, but those bold, long horizontal lines cutting across the canvas didn’t read as form for form’s sake—they felt like a form arrived at through the artist’s struggle to deliver content effectively. For someone like me, who’d prioritized content and, as a backlash, neglected or slighted form without even noticing, it was fresh—like I’d found a small breakthrough.
Even if it was common knowledge everyone else already had, to someone who’d been trapped in his own world when it came to painting, each realization like that was precious.
When I was little, around the time I drew with the chief—back when seeing and depicting the world through painting, and in that process meeting yet another new world, felt like the most fun game—the excitement of that era felt like it was splitting anew inside me.
He finished his hair, slipped on a shirt with pintucks at the chest, leaned against the wardrobe opposite, and listened, then tilted his head.
"It surprised me a bit to see you interested in someone like Edward Hopper—the most American of painters—but... maybe it’s not so surprising."
"..."
"Hopper believed that great art expresses the inner world of the artist well."
He grinned, then told me other interesting things about Hopper: films like "Shirley: Visions of Reality" and "Carol," which take his work as motif or homage, and even a short story collection where seventeen writers gathered to write pieces ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) inspired by his paintings, titled "Light and Shadow."
"The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston should have his piece ‘Room in Brooklyn’ on display. If you’re interested, we can find a little time on this trip to go see it."
He said this while buttoning the front of his shirt.
After our three nights and four days in Chicago, instead of returning to Seoul with the rest, he and I planned to head to Boston. It would be a short, two-night, three-day visit to a couple who were like mentors—people who took him in for about two years when he was a boy.
Chicago to Boston was about two hours and twenty minutes by plane, not far by U.S. standards, and since he hadn’t been able to visit for a long time, he’d asked if I would come with him. If it was a chance to meet people important to him and get to know him more deeply, there was no reason to refuse. I can’t deny I also felt a quiet thrill at a trip for just the two of us.
With cufflinks fastened at his sleeves, he pulled on the trousers of the tuxedo suit he’d chosen from among several, crossed in front of me, and adjusted his look in the full-length mirror. It wasn’t classic so much as brisk and modern—emphasizing his broad shoulders, sharp waistline, and the spring of his long legs. He was nearly ready to go out. Beyond the bed, the night view of Chicago outside the opposite window had already turned fully dark and glittered gold.
Passing me again, he opened the top drawer of the cabinet and set his hands on his hips. Scanning the neatly arranged ties and scarves his staff had set out, he said,
"After Hopper died, his wife, Josephine, donated all the works she owned to the Whitney Museum in New York. MoMA and the Met also hold major Hopper works. Well, New York... it’s not just Edward Hopper—it’s the best city to see art from many countries and many eras."
What he added at the end sounded a bit like a New York tourism slogan, but it didn’t seem to carry any particular meaning.
He picked two very different ties: a wide, dressy black silk tie and a small black bow tie with a clean, intelligent feel. He held each up in turn against his shirt and checked the mirror.
Then he popped his collar, looped the bow tie around his neck, looked down at me, and gave a slight smile.
"It’s only been a few hours apart, and you’ve changed a lot in that time, Seo Ihyeon. What thoughts do you have that I don’t know yet?"
I snorted at his tone and pressed my right palm with my thumb as if massaging it. It was a shy tic. I’m terrible at putting tidy private thoughts or resolutions into words, but he’d helped me so much on the way here. He deserved to hear it. No—truthfully, I wanted to share it with him.
"The time I spent not drawing... suddenly feels like such a waste."
His hands slowed as he flipped his collar back down. He turned toward me and smiled softly.
"That’s the best kind of spark."
I returned a faint smile at being properly understood.
"I’m not very good at shortcuts... For me, drawing is like language learning. You have to use it every day without skipping, consistently, as often as possible, so it adheres to the body, not just the head—I know that."
He paused his getting-ready, settled in to really listen, and leaned his hip against the cabinet.
"At minimum, I want to spend on drawing every day the way an ordinary office worker spends time at the office... That’s how I’ve started to think."
"..."
"Now that I’m full-time, I mean."
I tried to lighten the weight of it with a laugh, since I sounded a bit too earnest, and he smiled. But his eyes were complicated—lost in thought. Straightening from the cabinet, he folded his arms and leaned his back against the vintage bathroom door across from my bench, the kind you could open from both sides.
"It’s a project I’ve been thinking about for a long time..."
He wetted his lips with his tongue, kneaded his left upper arm with his right hand crossing his chest, and took his time.
"I’m thinking of opening Phantom’s U.S. branch."
"..."
His tone was calm, trying to make it sound like it wasn’t a huge deal, but he couldn’t completely hide the gravity or caution. I, too, went wide-eyed and stiff at the sudden news.
"Since New York is one of the most influential cities in the global art market... odds are it would be there."
He bit his lower lip, hesitating.
"It’s not something simple, so I can’t do it right away, but I’m thinking of pushing it forward as quickly as possible. If that happens... I’ll leave Seoul to the chief... and probably... I’ll be the one to watch over the branch."
His words slowed, and his gaze, which had been tilted toward the dressing-room floor, turned to me.
"Honestly, I wanted your debut itself to happen in the U.S., and for your activity to start here. This exhibition isn’t official enough to call a debut, but the gallerists, curators, and collectors at tonight’s VIP party and tomorrow’s opening event are the most influential people around—so it’s practically a debut."
I already knew he’d negotiated directly with the host gallery to exhibit about a dozen pieces—mine and those of other artists represented by Phantom—in a small separate hall, apart from Shushu’s show.
In Seoul he’d told me not to feel burdened, that Shushu’s exhibition was the main event and those extra works were just a side event.
But now he was saying it would be effectively a debut in front of global heavyweights in the art world... My mouth felt bone-dry. I could see why Shushu would feel uncomfortable about exposure and being photographed.
Sensing my nerves, he came closer and stroked my cheek gently.
"It’s just that a good opportunity came up, so we’re test-driving a display—no need to be that tense. These are people it doesn’t hurt to get your name in front of; think of it as making an impression."
I nodded in his hand, but my heart pounded.
"I want you to work with the best environment and conditions, and receive recognition to match. That’s the most reliable support I can give you as a gallerist and dealer, Seo Ihyeon."
As he said it, his thumb brushing my lower lip, I felt the firmness particular to someone who had already decided and steeled himself.
"It’s not simple, so it’ll be at least next year before anything takes concrete shape. If I relocate to New York... will you come with me?"
"..."
It was hard to respond. It was sudden, yes—but unless I was misreading things, unless it was just my ego, it felt like he was overreaching for my sake. Opening an overseas branch might indeed have been a long-held dream, but I had the sense he was hurrying because of me.
Watching me hesitate, he narrowed his eyes. The hand that had been slowly tracing his lips slipped away, leaving a hard smile that couldn’t hide a touch of bitterness.
"You don’t have to answer now. Opening a branch abroad isn’t something you settle in a month or two. There’s plenty of time to think."
He said that, but he still looked a little hurt by my wavering. Yet it wasn’t that the decision was hard. Not in the way he thought.
With Morae and Hani gone, I had no lingering attachment to Korea or Seoul. My admission that I didn’t want to be apart from him wasn’t some lip service blurted out in emotion. If it was a decision he’d reached after careful thought, I was ready to trust it and stand behind him.
