It took about two hours to stroll leisurely around Harvard. In the clear mid-September fall weather, the campus felt less like a university and more like a rural village, and the two of us wandered here and there at an easy pace.
There were of course many people who looked like students, but it wasn’t uncommon to spot local residents out for exercise or a walk. Because there wasn’t any hard boundary like a wall separating the university from the outside, the place felt surprisingly community-friendly—quite the opposite of the stern, authoritative image suggested by the title of a world-class university.
After breakfast with Marcus and Ellen, we left their house around eleven, viewed the Museum of Fine Arts Boston’s holdings including Edward Hopper’s Room in Brooklyn, then took the 1 bus across the Charles River to Harvard.
Yes. We took the bus together. To make the trip a little more familiar to me, he’d deliberately not prepared a car in Boston.
Yesterday, when we flew from Chicago to Boston, we took a private jet.
A trip by bus and by private jet.
He said that because most domestic U.S. flights didn’t even have proper business-class seats, let alone first class, he generally used private jets when traveling within the States.
According to him, chartering a jet was quite commonplace in the U.S. (like rental-car companies stationed at every airport), so it wasn’t “as expensive as you’d think,” and he tried to put me at ease. He explained he would have taken a private jet even without me, and that as long as you were within the base headcount, the rental cost was the same for one or two people, so there was no extra expense on my account—yet that didn’t make it easy to accept.
After landing, he and I took a taxi straight to a neighborhood called Beacon Hill. That’s where the house was—the one where he’d lived from thirteen to fifteen while being homeschooled, and the home of the mentor-like person who had guided him into becoming a nearly perfect golden «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» Alpha.
Marcus, a world authority on pheromones—especially Alpha pheromones—had spent many years researching and teaching at a university in Boston and had been living in that house with his wife, Ellen, for thirty years.
Marcus and Ellen were as kind and warm as I’d imagined—no, even more so. They were delighted to see him, and not out of courtesy or social grace. Instead of resenting him for not visiting for years, they spoke of how happy they were to see his face again after so long.
They welcomed me just as warmly when he introduced me as his partner. Just as Jane, hearing “my precious person,” had given me a kind, motherly smile.
In Boston our lodging wasn’t a suite in a five-star luxury hotel; it was Marcus and Ellen’s home. The room he had used as a teenage boy, left just as it had been, on the second floor at the very end, looking out over the alley in front of the house.
Yesterday we arrived in the afternoon, enjoyed the meal Marcus and Ellen had prepared for us with good wine, and spent the evening in lively conversation. And today, until dinner time, I could go sightseeing with him. It was the single day on this U.S. trip given just to the two of us.
Whether because he wasn’t wearing the sleek suits or smart casual he usually wore in Seoul, or because he wasn’t at the wheel of a luxury sedan—or riding in the back seat—he looked much younger than usual and even a little... rakish.
In black pants, black shoes, a black T-shirt with a leather jacket, hands shoved in his back pants pocket or jacket pockets, or with his arm slung over my shoulder, even his stride and expression were a little different than usual.
Telling me the folklore that if you touch the top of John Harvard’s left foot your descendants will get into Harvard, he touched the statue’s foot—its varnish worn smooth and shiny—and pressed his lips close to my ear to whisper, “When we get back to Seoul, I guess we’d better get to work on making those Harvard-bound descendants.”
In front of the statue, he and I took the second selfie of our lives together. In the photo we still looked awkward. Even he, who was relaxed and free in front of a lens pointed at him, seemed to have a hard time getting used to the self-camera mode. Looking at the photo, he ruffled my hair and gave a short laugh.
With that awkward commemorative shot as the finale, the tour ended and we stopped by the gift shop to buy presents. As in Chicago, he said there wasn’t really anything you could call a specialty in Boston, and, sounding put out, suggested we just buy a few Harvard T-shirts; I hid a smile as I watched him from the side. If he were truly put out, he wouldn’t buy anything at all.
The store with the COOP sign was enormous. It was as if they had stamped the Harvard logo on every item one could need for daily life. Though he’d looked uninterested—as if he would leave the moment he bought only the mandatory gifts—at the clothing section he urged me to try on a hoodie: gray with HARVARD in brick red across the chest.
“Hmm... how does it look?”
I asked him that after stepping out of the fitting room, but it was the most neutral hoodie imaginable—something that would suit anyone, nothing to debate.
Tilting his head slightly toward his shoulder, he eyed me for a moment, then rolled his eyes, made a playful face, and looked up at the ceiling with a sigh. Not knowing why he was reacting that way, I stood there quietly. He came over, cupped the back of my neck, pulled me close, and pressed his forehead to mine.
“People are going to think I’m dating a minor.”
“It’s not that—”
“It is that.”
“If you don’t want to see me get hauled off, you’d better take it off now.” He lowered his voice and glanced around; his expression was serious, but this was one of his jokes.
I went back into the fitting room, changed, and came out. He took the hoodie from me and, instead of putting it back where it was, added it to the shopping basket.
Sensing my puzzled look, he picked up one of the many mugs stacked on a three-tier display, turned it this way and that, and explained:
“I meant don’t wear it right now. I didn’t say we wouldn’t buy it. I said you looked very young in it, not that it didn’t look good.”
I shook my head with a little snort, and he glanced back at me with a broad grin. Peeling a Harvard crest magnet off a steel post and sticking it back on, he said:
“Why don’t we get something for your brother and sister, too.”
“We already got T-shirts, mugs, notebooks... and pencils.”
I pointed into the basket in his hand, already piled high.
“No, for Bally.”
“...”
Without meaning to, my gaze dropped. Thanks to his kindness and consideration, we were taking this kind of trip—but I didn’t feel only gratitude; I also felt guilt and pressure. Even if it wasn’t me, he was extremely generous to the people around him, especially those younger than himself, but what he gave me went far beyond mere generosity or kindness, even though we were partners.
He had even set aside personal spending money for me in advance back in Seoul. With that money I bought popcorn and coffee with my sister, ate a muffin at a café, paid the museum admission, and bought a tumbler for Inwoo. I could buy gifts for Morae and for my brother with that money too, but in the end it was his money. I was trying to spend as little as possible and return what was left to him.
“Seo Ihyeon, aren’t we dating?”
He must have guessed the meaning of my silence. He stuck the magnet to the steel post like throwing a dart and looked back at me. Then he came over to where I stood by the edge of the mug display, put his arm around my shoulder, and said:
“Not just dating... we’ve said we love each other, and we’ve even talked about marriage.”
He bumped his temple against the side of my head and went on:
“Though, yes, when it came to marriage I got turned down.”
I couldn’t help laughing. He lowered his head, put his lips close to my ear, and dropped his voice.
“That measly hundred million—you’ll make up for it in no time.”
“...”
“And then you’ll be free of me.”
He drew back the arm around my shoulder, walked ahead of me, and stopped at a wall hung with keychains strung with small animal characters.
“And even before you make up for the hundred million, if you end up going to New York you could pick up a part-time job.”
“...Is that okay?”
I stepped in close, took his right hand, and asked. He turned his head and looked over my face as if tracing every feature. I only then realized my eyes were shining and my lips were smiling. He glanced down at our joined hands, then rubbed a bear keychain against the tip of my nose.
“I’m more rattled than when I brought up marriage. Your reaction’s better.”
“...”
Smiling, he stepped back and hung the keychain where it had been.
“You asked if it was okay, but this isn’t a question of my giving permission. It’s not like ‘Mr. Im’ is the kind of man who’d send someone all the way to New York to tail you or kidnap you. If you’re there, working wouldn’t be dangerous.”
I tried to remember whether I’d told him that Morae’s father was known as “Mr. Im,” but knowing him, he might have looked into a few things to make sure.
Including the gifts for Morae and my brother, we paid and left the store, then took the bus back across the Charles. We still had time before seven, when we were to have dinner with Marcus and Ellen, and though it wasn’t much, we decided to spend that time entirely on our own.
“Is this too shabby?”
He leaned his arms on the table and asked.
“I like it. It feels like the America you see in movies.”
Holding a one-page menu about the size of a half sheet of paper, crammed with text, I looked around the pub as I answered.
The pub, on the second floor of a corner building in downtown Boston, didn’t have the sleek or upscale atmosphere of the other restaurants and bars I’d been to with him so far. He’d brought me to a place he thought was the most American of pubs, since we were in the States. It was shabby and popular, but that made it comfortable, and I felt more like I was really in America than when visiting museums or galleries.
Even though it was an odd hour between lunch and dinner, the pub was noisy, and though there were windows, the interior was dim. There were inviting half-moon booths by the windows, but there were only two of us and we weren’t planning to stay long, so we took a spot at a standing table set along the right-hand wall near the entrance.
So as not to spoil dinner, we ordered just two beers and onion rings. The food came quickly.
“Since New York came up a little while ago—”
After his first sip of beer, he leaned forward and rested against the table, which came up to about his navel.
“I think things can move faster than we thought.”
He explained that at Chloe Kent’s lunch gathering the discussion had progressed more than expected. H&W’s New York branch strongly wanted to host the exhibition of the artist he’d talked to Chloe about at the party, and he’d all but reached an agreement to loan works at a good price from that artist’s holdings owned by his father and by himself.
“And of course, in return, Phantom’s New York branch opening will proceed smoothly too.”
He took a couple more swallows of beer, then leaned in toward me.
“If we hurry the preparations, I think it’s possible to open by next spring.”
Among the people Chloe had introduced were quite a few contacts who could provide concrete help with opening a branch, and with that, he said, a lot of time could be saved.
It was already well past the middle of September. Even I, a kid ignorant of how the world worked, knew that opening a gallery in a major city like New York wasn’t simple. It was also something with limits if you tried to handle it from far-off Seoul with only email, video meetings, and calls. And he didn’t want to hire someone to do it in his stead. As my sister had once said, Phantom wasn’t a matter of survival for him; it was a matter of proving himself.
“To do that, I’ll probably need to... stay in New York a little sooner than expected.”
With a hesitant look he said that, then straightened and drank his beer. He watched me for a moment as I stood there silently, fingers on the neck of my bottle, then adjusted his stance and set both hands on the sides of the round table.
“I don’t mean I’m going to move there completely right away. But to get things ready, staying there will be more efficient than shuttling back and forth.”
“...”
“Think of it as a slightly long trip... and I’d like you to come with me. We’ll make the rounds of the overflowing museums and galleries, you can work a part-time job, you can paint... We can decide whether to move for good after the gallery is ready.”
An uncertain gaze rested on my face.
“When...?”
Pressing his long middle finger to his brow as if acupressure, he answered:
“I’ll have to talk to Chief Han as soon as we’re back in Seoul, but if things settle the way I expect, I’m thinking of going to New York within two weeks. I already have an apartment there, and all I’d need to do is pack personal things, so moving my base wouldn’t be much trouble.”
I remembered my sister saying he owned two very expensive homes just in Hong Kong, two more that I knew of in Seoul, and apartments in South Kensington in London and on the Upper East Side in New York.
He took a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his leather jacket, muttered a small curse, and put it back. The pub was non-smoking. Watching him tip his bottle and swallow quickly, like someone very thirsty, I drained my beer as well.
If Phantom was his means of self-validation rather than a livelihood, then why was he rushing to open a New York branch, sharply changing his prior policy? It was time to ask. All the more because if I was going to go to New York with him, I needed clarity on this point.
I edged a little closer to the wall and moved nearer to him, biting and releasing my lip several times.
“I’ve already received too much from the CEO... from Kun, but... I really hope that because of me Awi won’t sacrifice something important... or change who he is.”
Regardless of how noisy the pub was getting, his calm gaze held mine.
“I... already have enough. I’m not lacking anything. So... please don’t strain yourself or sacrifice anything... because of me.”
When I lowered my head to look at the bottle in my hand and then raised it again, his eyes were the same. Like the sea on a quiet day, peacefully reflecting the sunlight.
