People looked loose and relaxed. A woman in a stunning silk evening dress had slipped off her killer heels and was sipping a cocktail barefoot, chatting with a bright, easy smile.
It felt like everyone in the hall either knew one another well or had at least been aware of each other beforehand. As he’d said, it didn’t feel like an extension of a formal business party.
He first introduced Yuni and me to the owners of the house hosting the gathering.
Jane Song, a Korean American from New York, and Connor Drake, from Orland Park not far from Chicago, were a couple who had studied abroad in London alongside his parents. In Chicago they were partners in a fashion business and passionate collectors of works by promising emerging artists.
“I asked if they could help me find a place to host a small party in Chicago, and they said, ‘Why go anywhere else when we have a house?’ and offered this place right away. Ah—Yuni, you already met them at the gallery earlier, right?”
Yuni exchanged quick greetings with the couple first, and he introduced me as a new artist at Phantom he was very excited about.
“Connor and I enjoy buying good pieces by lesser-known artists. I mean, works by famous artists are just outrageously expensive.”
Jane protested as if it were unfair, but it was clear they weren’t avoiding big-name purchases for financial reasons.
“I told Awi at the gallery that I wanted to buy Seohyeon’s nude painting on the spot, but he refused—said it wasn’t for sale yet.”
Jane shot him ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) a look, saying it was mean to flaunt something you weren’t going to give, like shaking it in someone’s face. Thankfully, Connor brought cocktails from the bar for Yuni and me.
“Awi, there’s someone I want to introduce you to—that’s why I invited him. Is that okay?”
“Of course. If it’s someone you’re introducing, I’ll make time no matter what.”
He answered readily and cheerfully, but as he raised the glass to his lips, his eyes flicked, as if his mind had gone elsewhere. He didn’t look like the man who’d been laughing loudly a moment ago.
“He’s not based in Chicago, but the timing worked out for both of you. I thought it’d be good if you met. He texted that he’s arriving any second. Ah—there he is!”
At Jane’s delighted wave, I reflexively turned—and for a split second, I mistook him for Juhan.
A close-cropped buzz you could imagine feeling prickly under your palm, an extremely lean frame that sharpened his features, long limbs on a tall body, and head-to-toe black.
“Oh my god. No way. That’s R.R.!”
Knowing who he was—the man who reminded me of Juhan—Yuni yanked her cocktail from her lips and jabbed my side, while he simply watched the man approach us with a steady, unruffled gaze.
“Jane, Connor! Thanks for having me.”
The man strode up with a broad smile for the couple, greeting them simply and familiarly, like they’d seen each other recently.
Up close, he looked far less impish than Juhan. It seemed odd I’d thought they resembled each other; his impression was calmer, more grown. He also looked three or four years older. And, beyond all that, he wasn’t Korean.
“This is Reed Rogers, the leader of a group I support. And this is Lau Wikun, who runs a gallery in Seoul.”
He nodded first and offered his hand; as they shook, the man spoke.
“I actually went to the VIP opening today. I enjoyed the show.”
“You did?”
With a little frown, Jane set a hand on R.R.—Reed Rogers’s—shoulder.
“I wasn’t invited, but someone on staff I know had a plus-one go unused and asked if I was interested. They knew I was at loose ends in Chicago.”
Even as he listened, he looked as if the man didn’t interest him—or as if his mind was somewhere else.
“If it’s an organization you and Connor support, what is it... exactly?”
He asked, but it felt like the bare minimum of courtesy for the couple who had gone out of their way to introduce the man. It was also unexpected that he asked about the organization instead of Shushu’s work, given the man had attended the VIP opening.
“It’s a kind of artist community. Specifically, we identify highly promising young artists in difficult economic or environmental circumstances and support both their living and their practice. I handle overall operations.”
“Hm.”
Even at his noncommittal reaction, the man answered steadily.
“It’s not like we all pursue a single shared mission; it’s a very personal organization... but since people with similar bent gather, we call it a community.”
Strangely, the more he explained, the fuzzier the picture became, but he didn’t press. Jane laughed and patted the man’s shoulder.
“Reed was a painter himself. He even won a special prize at the Venice Biennale at a very young age.”
“Yes, and that prize is what ruined my relationship with painting.”
The man’s expression and tone suggested resentment toward that accolade.
“I don’t paint anymore. I got sick of the system—galleries engineering stars with slick management, milking them for cash, then abandoning them when the bubble looked ready to pop. I wasn’t truly that talented; I was one of those bubble-laden flashes the system manufactured.”
His content was biting, but his tone wasn’t. I’d heard a little from him about how slices of the so-called global art market really work—that competition is impossible without publicity and management—so I could follow the man’s point.
“That’s part of why I help beginner artists now. These days I write fiction and focus on running the foundation.”
“Your short-story collection from earlier this year—impressive.”
Yuni’s bright voice drew everyone’s eyes that way.
With a wrinkling of his open forehead, the man pointed at Yuni and himself in turn, smiling.
“Yuni, right? We follow each other.”
So it wasn’t just Yuni who knew him. He held out a hand, delighted, like he’d run into an old friend, and in a heartbeat the conversation shifted to the two of them.
Someone started playing the grand piano under the glass ceiling by the huge folding doors to the back garden, and attention drifted that way.
“I liked your real-time posts from the opening. Did you direct the show?”
“No. This one was hosted by the gallery here. I was just our side’s point person.”
“Quite a party.”
“Hosting was the gallery’s, but for some reason our CEO went all out this time.”
While Jane, Connor, and the elders around him responded to the jazz piano, Reed Rogers and Yuni kept talking.
Apologizing for the late introduction, Yuni presented me to him, and him to me. He stumbled over “Seohyeon” with amused interest. “Yuni” is convenient and pretty internationally; “Seohyeon,” he said, had an exotic resistance in the mouth when you tried to pronounce it—earning him a playful glare from Yuni.
“My name’s the worst, really. Anyone can pronounce it in any language, which means nobody remembers it.”
He wrinkled his forehead in his characteristic way, carving three or four distinct lines; it didn’t make him look older.
When Yuni suggested the three of us sit at the bar and chat, he agreed at once. Most others were absorbed in a jazz arrangement of a famous Michael Jackson hit. I couldn’t tell you which, but it didn’t sound amateur.
Before I left, I lightly tapped his shoulder—he was half-turned, talking nearby.
When I told him I’d be at the bar with Yuni, he smiled and stroked my cheek. Even to me, his gaze brimmed with affection. He didn’t seem to notice at all, but just being near him and talking to him intimately drew people’s subtle curiosity—or naked hostility. I wasn’t used to being looked at, unlike him. The sidelong glances, pretending not to look, made me uncomfortable, so I laughed awkwardly, caught his hand, eased it down, and slipped away.
At the large S-shaped bar backed by bold printed wallpaper, two formally dressed bartenders mixed cocktails and poured drinks to order.
We took the seats tucked into one of the inward curves of the S, and the man proposed a toast, asking me to call him Reed.
Reed said he’d seen my pieces that afternoon in the first-floor gallery and leaned over the bar to study my face. His fine brows, shaved thin like with a razor, twitched. I noticed he didn’t have any piercings.
“To be honest, I didn’t feel the mastery of a seasoned artisan or the weight of long years... but the bold negative space, the refusal to fill in the background, and the way you used a blue, cool palette to catch the transience and loneliness of sunset—there’s a distinct voice and color there. I didn’t expect the artist to be so young.”
Sitting with Yuni between us, Reed rocked back, narrowed his eyes, and shook his head.
“No, maybe it does make sense. The works... how to put it... They carry this wistful nostalgia, like an old man at the dusk of his life looking back—and at the same time, they sting like the raw pain of a boy passing through the thick of growing up.”
“Ah... mm...”
He’d just given a specific, passionate reading of my work, and I felt I should respond—but I wasn’t sure whether agreement or thanks was the right response. While I stalled, fingering the slender stem of my glass, Yuni stepped in.
“This is his first show. He gets shy hearing talk about his work.”
After that, the three of us chatted easily about all sorts of things. It felt like light banter among friends. For all his sharp first impression, Reed wasn’t hard to get along with—especially with Yuni. Within two or three minutes they already felt like old acquaintances.
We were laughing at Reed’s comic delivery of an anecdote—how an ultraconfident museum director once walked past a trash can, thinking it was just that, when in fact a star artist had exhibited it at a biennale—when I felt hands settle on both my shoulders from behind, pressing gently.
“Good. Looks like you’re having fun.”
I looked up; he was smiling.
Sometime during that, the piano had finished, and a faster rhythm filled the hall than when we first arrived. The lights went dimmer, club-like, and the music got louder. People whooped and amped up the mood.
“Sorry to interrupt, but... there are two people I really want you to meet. May I steal you for a moment?”
After a quick word to Reed, he led Yuni and me to a sofa set at the very back of the hall. Of the four or five seating clusters scattered around, it was the smallest, but the most lavish and comfortable.
Unlike the people swaying to the music between sofas and the round standing tables—probably added for tonight—half a dozen gathered around this set were speaking quietly.
“Chloe, these are the friends I mentioned. Yuni, Phantom’s director. And the artist... Seohyeon.”
His hands on our shoulders gave a little squeeze in turn as he introduced us to them—specifically to a woman in a black suit. Then it was his turn to introduce her to us.
“And this is...”
“I know who you are.”
Because he was standing between us, I had to lean forward to see Yuni’s face. He looked surprised, too, that Yuni already knew who the woman was.
“Ms. Chloe Kent, senior director of the New York branch of H&W Gallery. Before moving to H&W, she spent fifteen years at Christie’s New York as a Modern Art auction specialist.”
Yuni looked like a highly paid, capable executive assistant. That impression held despite her strong smoky makeup and an outfit “adults” tend not to like. The woman rose from the sofa with the faintest hint of a smile on thin lips and offered Yuni her hand.
“I’m nervous now, finding out there’s a young gallerist who knows so much about me. Makes me wonder if I’ve been up to no good.”
Even at her joke, Yuni couldn’t relax into a laugh. She watched every reaction like a kid meeting her idol, eyes dreaming.
“I didn’t realize it was to this degree either. I’m pretty sure Yuni has most of the resumes in this room memorized. Her understanding and sense for art are excellent, she works incredibly hard, and on top of that... she has ambition.”
He put extra weight on the last word, as if ambition were Yuni’s most compelling trait. He’d once been lukewarm about her studying abroad or moving to an overseas gallery, but now he praised her generously in front of key people. Yuni’s brows twitched in surprise, and—so others wouldn’t see—she shot him a discreet thumbs-up.
Chloe Kent—armed with a dazzling resume as senior director of the New York branch of a global gallery with seven locations worldwide—guided us naturally to an empty standing table by the sofa. A waiter orbiting the hall zipped over, cleared the abandoned glasses, and brought fresh drinks as we ordered.
“This young man, Seohyeon, is a pre-debut newcomer. Through Shushu’s show we’ve displayed a few pieces, but it’s strictly an unofficial test-level reveal. We intend to spare no support to stage a debut that will leave a strong impression on the art world.”
Measured yet confident, his statement drew the smallest smile from Kent as she only wet her lips with champagne. It was a smile that said she understood exactly what he meant.
