"I might be... overthinking this...."
"...."
"Are you rushing the New York branch... because of me, by any chance...?"
Still holding my gaze, he leaned his shoulder to the wall and came closer. In a dark corner where the light didn’t reach well, we ended up side by side, both leaning on the wall and looking out over the bar’s hall. I angled my body a little toward him; he angled his a little toward me.
With the back of his head against the wall, he lifted his right arm and tucked my long hair behind my ear. Somewhere deeper in the pub, a group burst into rowdy cheers and laughter. It sounded like they had some kind of bet going. I didn’t take my eyes off his face.
"I don’t remember ever showing kindness to anyone. How did I end up meeting an angel like this."
Whether he meant to twist the situation on purpose, or meant it sincerely—I couldn’t tell just from his face and tone. Even if it was twisted, I could tell the sharp edge wasn’t aimed at me but at himself.
I watched him lift from the wall, scrape the inside of his cheek with his tongue, and take a drink of beer; then I spoke, heavy-voiced.
"Yuni and Juhan both rely on and respect the CEO as their boss and elder. And... they think of him as a benefactor."
"...."
"You probably... already know that."
Worried, belatedly, that I’d overstepped by commenting on relationships that had lasted longer than mine, my eyes fell to the hand that had been idly turning my beer bottle.
He, arms folded and leaning on the table, casting a vacant look into the room, raked his hair back with a rough hand.
"Whatever I did for someone else, whatever I gave—every bit of it was shallow kindness that didn’t touch the line where I or my life would be affected. That’s how I’ve lived until now... The only person I could tear down every boundary for is you."
His eyes came back to me. No longer calm—waves ruffled there.
He straightened from the table, reached out, cupped the back of my neck, and drew me in. His hand’s pull was gentle, but the overlapped lips were fervent. We’d held hands walking around Boston, hugged, and even kissed, but this wasn’t like the brief kiss we’d shared on the museum stairs. This was a real kiss—lips crushed, mucosa rubbing.
"It’s fine. They’ll just think we’re an Alpha–Omega couple."
Sensing my stiffness at the surroundings, he pressed his forehead to mine and whispered quickly.
"And I don’t care if they think it’s something else."
He added that and fitted our mouths together again. He didn’t use his tongue, but he used the whole of his lips—lapping upward, rubbing at soft flesh, changing angle—for a deep, layered kiss.
I don’t know how he interpreted my stiffness; I simply wasn’t bold enough to be unfazed by heavy skinship in a place like this. It wasn’t that I cared what people thought we were.
With a damp friction the kiss broke. The hand at my nape slid slowly down my shoulder and upper arm, then toyed with my fingertips for a moment before letting go. He chewed lightly on the lips that had just kissed me and tapped the tabletop with his index finger.
"But even if I made up my mind like that... I still felt like there was nothing I’d be sacrificing for you."
"...."
"Money, time, affection. Even if you pour those out—if nothing is lost in the process, people don’t call that sacrifice, do they?"
At the end of his bitter, short smile he drank his beer, and I couldn’t say anything. If I didn’t consider the time I spent with him or the affection I gave him a sacrifice, I couldn’t insist that what he gave me was a sacrifice either.
And money.
If the money spent on me was an amount that didn’t affect his finances at all... regardless of how large that sum was to me, it wasn’t a sacrifice to him. At least, I had no grounds to deny his view that it wasn’t one.
Deliberately trying to keep some ironic distance from the problem, he let out a silent, heavy breath with his mouth closed. Still holding the neck of the bottle on the table, he looked at me.
"Whatever I give you, whatever I set in motion—there’s no need to worry about me or feel sorry. Honestly, there’s hardly any need to be grateful either. I’m not sacrificing anything."
With long, straight fingers he stroked down the bottle. As his gaze followed his own hand downward, the delicate shade of his lashes fell across his cheek.
"In Chicago I acted like we had plenty of time to think, but... the truth is I never had any intention of going to New York and leaving you behind. Even if you were technically among the considerations in making a decision, the final motive was sly and selfish from the start."
He clucked his tongue in a laugh, took his hand off the bottle, and looked straight at me.
"So, Seo Ihyeon."
"...."
"Will you come to New York with me. That’s the only answer I want."
His eyes looked full of certainty and confidence—no, full of a plea strong enough to look like certainty and confidence.
It wasn’t as if I had attachments in Korea, in Seoul. My passion, my career, the results of my efforts weren’t there; Morae and my brother had left too. If I counted what was precious, it was only a few human ties connected to Phantom.
If his home base changed cities and he wanted me with him, I had no thought of refusing and staying in Seoul. I only worried, as Yuni had, about the motive driving him to rush opening the New York branch—even to the point of overturning his usual policy.
My sister’s suggestion—to talk it over with him about Reed’s offer—floated up faintly, but that was off the table from the start. If he went to New York, there was even less reason to go to Paris, turning my back on the person who understood my painting most deeply.
Looking into the depths of his eyes, I nodded slowly. He smiled without showing his teeth.
He slid an arm behind my neck as if cradling my head, swept up my fringe, and pressed his lips to my forehead. Then he kissed my eyelids and cheeks, and joined our mouths. Ignoring the awkwardness and embarrassment of showing a kiss to others, I closed my eyes and answered his lips with mine.
As he’d said, they might think we were an Alpha–Omega couple. I didn’t care if they thought it was something else.
■ ■ ■
At Marcus and Ellen’s house, dinner preparations were in full swing. Margaret, who handled the household for the two busy people, was there of course, and it looked like Marcus and Ellen themselves had taken to the kitchen as well. They were genuinely delighted by a visit from someone who was like their second son (though older than their first). Even if we’d arrived only yesterday and had to leave tomorrow.
Marcus, in an apron, opened the front door, and the cooking smells that had been wafting out to the street grew stronger. Since we had left most of our onion rings untouched at the pub, the scent gave us both a little appetite.
Ted, their nine-year-old chocolate Labrador retriever, came to the door with Marcus, wagging his tail to welcome us home.
"Not much to see in this neighborhood, is there? Must be boring for young people."
"It seemed quiet and peaceful—a good place to live."
I answered Marcus with a smile, grateful for his worry that sightseeing might have been dull. It wasn’t politeness or exaggeration; it was exactly how Boston had felt to me. Knowing he had lived here for two years made every sight feel meaningful, and between the excitement and nerves of being with him, there was no room to be bored.
Marcus smiled, fine lines gathering at the corners of his eyes, and patted my shoulder.
"Awi, give Jonas a call, will you. As soon as he heard you were coming he started carrying on. You’re going to have to hear him gripe about how rarely you’ve been in touch."
He said this to the back of the man who was heading toward the kitchen, then winked at me.
I stopped by the kitchen with him to tell Ellen and Margaret we were back and asked if there was anything we could do, but they said the prep was nearly finished and all but shooed me into the sitting room.
While he phoned Jonas from Marcus’s study, I waited in the first-floor sitting room with a glass of wine Margaret poured me, looking around at the family photos arranged here and there on the thick carpet.
"That’s from Kun’s thirteenth birthday party. He was unbelievably handsome even at that age, wasn’t he?"
I turned to see Marcus at the sitting-room doorway, smiling as he pointed at the frame I was holding.
"And no matter how standoffish he acted, you wouldn’t believe how popular he was."
At his words I looked down at Kun’s expressionless face in the photo and laughed soundlessly. It was hard to believe he’d ever had an unripe, green teenage phase, but the boy in the picture was clearly him at a glance. A little paler, with sharper lines than now—Lau Wikun.
"May I borrow Kun for a moment before dinner? There’s something I want to give him, and if not now we may not get the chance."
Of course, I said, and Marcus vanished toward the study with a word for me to make myself at home. In the cozy sitting room looking out on the darkening alley, I took my time with the rest of the photos. Among the family pictures, quite a few also featured him. Not only photos from his boyhood spent here, but a clear track of a boy becoming a grown man, proof of the strong bond they had continued by meeting regularly over the years.
At last night’s dinner, which ran for more than four hours, Marcus told me his childhood nickname: “Never smile.” A boy who never smiled.
Marcus and Ellen talked about it lightly, as if it were long past, and he only laughed off their teasing. But as someone who’d also had a boyhood where smiling didn’t come easy, I couldn’t help feeling for why he would have been "the boy who ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) didn’t smile."
Even if he wasn’t the kind of person who laughs at a leaf rolling by, someone’s laughter or tears—or awe or anger—ought to be most abundant and most expressed at that age; the fact that he suppressed his smile then was, in any form, a bad sign.
Thinking back to his story about how his parents had to get a divorce they didn’t want, for his sake, I picked up another of his photos, next to an old shot of a younger Marcus and Ellen on a white boat. He was dressed impeccably for riding, standing with a gleaming horse. In a time I didn’t know—when he was even younger than I am now—his challenging eyes were speaking to me.
"DD."
"...."
At the calm voice behind me, I turned slowly. He—thirty-two now—was standing in the sitting-room doorway.
I didn’t know what he’d just called me. Maybe he hadn’t called me at all, but pronounced some word. Holding the frame, I turned a little more toward him and smiled.
"I didn’t catch that. What did you say?"
"Diamond Dust... have you heard of it."
His voice was flat, dry. When he finished, he swallowed with effort.
"I know it as: ice crystals in the air catching sunlight and shining... something like that."
"...."
Leaning his shoulder to the open sitting-room entry where there was no door, he nodded.
Diamond dust.
Another name: ice spicules.
A phenomenon where tiny ice crystals—ice particles—float in the air close to the ground and shine in sunlight, different from snow that falls down from above; the name comes from how dust hanging in the air seems to turn into jewels and glitter.
It isn’t as well known as, say, the auroras in Canada or Iceland, or a desert mirage, but ever since reading about it in a book once, I’d thought that if I ever had the chance, I’d like to see it with my own eyes.
"Marcus brought it up out of nowhere. Said a colleague had traveled to Harbin last winter... and that if you’re lucky enough to see a large-scale diamond dust, it can be a mysterious, dreamlike experience."
My curiosity about why the topic had come up was answered, but more than that, his mood bothered me. This wasn’t the light tone of someone name-dropping something from a stray conversation.
He was trying to act as usual, but beneath the calm actions I felt a restlessness, a swell of strong emotion he didn’t know what to do with. I set the frame back where it had been and turned my whole body toward him.
He pushed off from the wall, came close, and cupped my cheek. As the distance closed, I felt the tension filling his whole body more clearly. He seemed to be having trouble containing emotions locked inside him, but he didn’t look like he meant to let them break loose.
"Later... would you like to go see it together?"
"...."
"After the New York opening goes safely... when everything is wrapped up... the two of us, at our leisure."
He was smiling faintly—or trying to—but he looked tired. It felt like there was more he wanted to say, but I knew well it was useless to force it. He was the kind of person who could decide for himself the most fitting time to open his mouth.
I simply nodded and slipped my arms around his waist.
■ ■ ■
As with last night, dinner was lively, warm, and cheerful. They were careful not to let me feel left out for not sharing their past time; they kept the conversation going by telling me their memories. Thanks to—
