The sedan had just come off the airport expressway, crossed Banghwa Bridge, and was now merging onto the Riverside North Road.
Across the Han River, far off, the Yeouido skyline came into view. He’d been gone not even a full week, and yet the scenery outside the window looked different.
Travel had been part of Lau’s life since childhood, but whenever he left for another city and then returned to his home base, this subtly skewed sensation always bothered him more than jet lag.
A feeling like, while he was away, someone had secretly changed a part of the city and slipped off. A change so slight you could barely notice, but enough to make it feel like the city was no longer the familiar place he had known. Or like coming home from an outing and feeling persistently uneasy, as if someone had rifled through your house...
Staring blankly at the cluster of buildings drawing closer, Lau Wikun raked his hair back and clenched it in his hand. He felt a strange stubbornness to find the exact metaphor for this odd sensation he’d felt since he was a kid.
He rubbed at the stubble that had roughened over more than twenty hours of flights, layover at JFK in New York included, and furrowed his brow.
Like... looking at the face of an ex-lover you’d spent a long time with and loved fiercely, but who had now become a thorough stranger. Someone who had once belonged to me so completely it felt inseparable, but who now had no effect on either of our lives...
Thinking the comparison was grandiose and ill-suited, Lau snorted and released the hand holding his hair. It wasn’t as though he’d ever had some long, all-consuming love.
His fingers went to his jacket pocket for a cigarette, then he glanced to the side. Seeing Ihyun asleep, sunk deep in his seat, he set the cigarette back where it was and returned his gaze to the window.
He could no longer think that only a long love could forge a bond you couldn’t sever.
“The only material I could find about the existence you described is this.”
Saying that, Marcus had handed him a diary so old that even “worn” was not enough; it looked at least like a relic from the nineteenth century.
For about two months after he had first told Marcus about Ihyun over the phone, Marcus had strained to dig up even the smallest scrap of information. His personal and academic curiosity played a part, but it was also because he had never seen Lau this confused, this desperate for help and answers, and he knew Lau was in serious trouble and wanted to help somehow.
Marcus was known among Europe’s big-time antique dealers as an eccentric figure—a fervent zealot for Ghost, a legend that remained unpopular—and thanks to that, whenever anything even faintly related to Ghost appeared on the market, Marcus was the first person contacted.
This time, too, Marcus was able to obtain that diary from a dealer in Vienna, Austria, at the relatively decent price of 1,000 euros. To him and to Lau it was precious, concrete material, but to dealers who considered Ghost the fantasy of a tiny handful of maniacs, it was nothing more than an old, low-value novel left by an unknown person.
Marcus supposed the owner of the diary was one of Lau’s ancestors. It was in the mid-to-late nineteenth century that his father’s maternal family—a noble house ruined by political strife—had actually used a member of the Ghost lineage as a means to restore wealth and honor. That period overlapped with the dates written in the diary.
After the vicious medieval climate that treated alphas and omegas like mutants or demons had completely faded, alphas and omegas were wildly popular in the European courts. Across Europe, royals and nobles who wanted to forge favorable marriages of convenience were thick on the ground—people who wanted to turn their sons or daughters into omegas.
According to the family’s claim, their rise owed to a keen sense of the times that read international currents early and to bold initiative that took their socializing beyond Britain into close ties with royal houses across Europe. But to state it plainly, it had been the building of wealth and networks by exploiting another form of prostitution—sex used to create omegas.
Now the family had fully regained its former status, and even if a Ghost were discovered among the lineage, they no longer needed to “sell bodies” as before; but the power to mutate a beta into an omega could still become the subject of discreet trades among the perverse uppermost strata. At the very least, it made a fine motif to brandish as a symbol of power and dominion.
He had been able to tell Ihyun only that it was to protect him from those who wanted a superb Golden alpha as heir, but the real reason Lau’s parents chose divorce was to protect him as a Ghost.
To the world at large, Ghost was a believe-it-or-not legend fit for shows like Truth or Lie, but to his father’s maternal family, Ghost was a clear reality and a quiet pride. They believed that another Ghost could appear at any time among their descendants, and Lau’s parents wanted the assurance that their son was a non-Ghost, free from that possibility. So as soon as he tested alpha, they visited Marcus, with whom they had maintained private contact.
And the test result was the exact opposite of the parents’ wish. The odds that someone who wins the lottery three times in a row and then survives three brushes with death in a row will finally die of something as trifling as tetanus—their son hit that near-zero probability. He was a Ghost.
If that diary really was the trace of his ancestor, as Marcus conjectured, and if the contents Marcus had summarized truly reflected it, then Lau could no longer simply condemn his parents’ choice as excessively extreme defense.
The diary, which wasn’t even filled to the end, recorded incidents sparsely over about a year. Traveling across several European countries “working” for the family, the diarist was dispatched to Austria, which was in a time of upheaval, and there he experienced a powerful pull toward a male beta who was a servant to the target—someone he was supposed to turn into an omega under contract.
A treasured guest from a British ducal house who had crossed the sea for a secret transaction, and a beta from the lower classes—the two of them were an impossible pairing by status alone. Besides, the person the diarist was supposed to change into an omega was that servant’s master.
But the two of them, likely under the influence of pheromones, were swept up in a passion like their bodies had caught fire, and even knowing that if it were discovered the diarist was attempting changing more often with the servant than with the contract target, both of them could lose their lives, they couldn’t muster any reason at all.
When Austria lost the Austro-Prussian War and the family that had commissioned the changing faced collapse, plunging the whole house into chaos so that changing for an arranged marriage ceased to matter—and if they hadn’t been shoved out and left Austria in near disgrace as annoying baggage in a crisis—the diarist would have had to die there, in dishonor, together with the one he had named his “Diamond Dust,” his “Didi.”
The phenomenon Ihyun had mentioned—ice crystals shining in sunlight while suspended in air—hadn’t yet even acquired the name “diamond dust” at that time. Even if the term had existed, that wasn’t why the diarist gave that name to his lover.
“If the diary is accurate, as long as you stay by his side, it’s impossible to resist the force of pheromones that will bind you two. All the more so if, beyond whether pheromones act, you’re drawn to his human charm itself and love him mentally.”
Recalling Marcus’s worried face, Lau looked again at the seat beside him. Ihyun’s eyes were closed, his face peaceful. When he looked at Ihyun turning into an omega because of him, he had to feel both an exultation nothing could replace—like every cell in his body was surging—and a painful tingling like his heart was being compressed and wrung of blood.
He could endure any pain. As long as Ihyun didn’t try to push him away, as long as he didn’t lose him.
Hmmm... With a breath like the groan of a beast with a mortal wound, Lau reached out toward Ihyun’s cheek. He wanted a little more of the warmth and feel of the man who was still by his side, who said he loved him.
Before his hand, which had felt the phone vibrating in his pants pocket, could touch Ihyun’s cheek, it stopped. The caller was Shushu.
[You landed, right?]
The first words the moment he connected were aggressive as expected.
[I have something to say face-to-face. You’ll be tired, but make some time. I’ll come to your place instead.]
“Is it something that can’t wait at least until tomorrow? I’m... really spent right now.”
Lau propped an elbow on the window, kneaded his brow, and lowered his head.
[I didn’t want to ruin your mood, so I waited while you enjoyed your trip in Boston. You had plenty of rest in first class anyway. Just give me a moment.]
The voice on the other end was firm, like he’d been spoiling for this. Knowing this wasn’t something he could avoid by refusing, Lau answered stiffly.
“Then let’s meet outside. I don’t want to... make anyone uneasy.”
Shushu didn’t bother to ask who it was he didn’t want to make uneasy. He didn’t seem interested in that.
He was just turning his tired gaze back to the window when a careful voice came from the seat beside him.
“Who was that?”
He’d tried to keep his voice down, and still he’d woken him. {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} Lau schooled his expression and turned his head. Ihyun was looking at him, face stiff.
“Shushu. Looks like he was waiting for us to get back.”
“Did he... find out...?”
Watching worry deepen in his lover’s eyes, he gave a small shake of his head.
“I doubt it. Hong Sunyu isn’t foolish enough not to realize that, at this point, even if he spills to Shushu, he can’t get anything he wants from me. And telling him would just earn him another round of blame from Shushu, and nothing else.”
Lau slid a hand to Ihyun’s shoulder and kneaded it like a massage, then changed the subject.
“I’ll hire someone to take care of the things we need to bring to New York, so don’t worry about anything—just focus on your drawings. Looked like you did a lot of sketches on this trip.”
Stroking Lau’s arm where it rested on his shoulder, Ihyun managed a faint smile. His expression said it still didn’t feel real that in two weeks they would be leaving this city.
“For work... I think I’ll have no choice but to tell Chief Han in advance. What about Baek Yuni and Kwon Juhan?”
“I’d like to tell them myself...”
“Then let’s all have dinner Friday night. I’ll ask Chief Han not to tell the kids until then.”
“Should we invite Inu too?”
At that name Lau hesitated, wet his lower lip with his tongue, and rolled his eyes. Then, pulling out a long-deferred cigarette as Ihyun slept and putting it between his lips, he said in a light, offhand tone,
“Ah... that guy would just egg Baek Yuni and Kwon Juhan on to go wild, so let’s meet him separately later. First let’s deal with the Phantom family.”
Facing Ihyun’s nod, Lau smiled around the cigarette at his lips. Feeling it grow harder and harder to feign ease and a smile in front of him, he clenched the pack tight in his hand. To the west, behind them—similar yet distinctly different from before he’d left—the autumn sun, suddenly much shorter, was tilting down.
■ ■ ■
Sitting far from the entrance at the very end by the window, Lau looked out at the light autumn rain. In the roughly five days he’d been away, the temperature in Seoul had dropped a lot. The trees in the hotel garden below were already the full colors of fall.
The seasons always changed abruptly. The shift from summer to fall was especially so. Only the day before, the high might have topped 30 degrees despite the date saying September, and then overnight the temperature would plummet to where you needed a trench coat. And before you could properly enjoy the foliage or the high clear sky, winter would blow in in the blink of an eye.
And this time they would leave this city before that short autumn deepened. He hadn’t known they would leave at a time like this and in this way, but it didn’t matter. So long as he could get them out of here safely, the destination didn’t have to be New York. They could decide what came next after. He was ready to swallow any material or temporal loss.
With his arms draped over both armrests of the cube-shaped, clean-lined sofa and his fingers loosely laced on his crossed knees, Lau was about to reach for the rocks glass in front of him when someone came up silently over the dark carpet and stopped at the table.
“Help Sunyu get a solo show with Phantom.”
“......”
He looked up. Shushu stood there, face set. Lau drew his gaze away and took the glass in hand.
“Sit.”
Shushu asked the waiter for a fresh rocks glass, poured himself the whiskey Lau had been drinking, and drained half before the ice had even begun to melt. Unusual for Shushu, who didn’t enjoy strong liquor, but Lau didn’t react.
“While I was in Boston, did Hong Sunyu call you and get pathetic with you or something?”
Since the other side clearly didn’t intend to beat around the bush, Lau put Hong Sunyu’s name on the table at once.
It wasn’t an unexpected turn. In the hotel library in Chicago, Hong Sunyu had “asked” him for a solo show in Seoul like he would sell his soul to the devil, and if he was desperate enough to come find Lau, the next step of going to Shushu couldn’t have been difficult.
Even at Lau’s aggressive start, Shushu sat tight-lipped, lost in thought, eyes fixed on the glass in his hand, then spoke.
“He’s being penalized by the gallery he’s with. They’ve been excluding him from shows in succession, and they’re interfering in the work itself by repeatedly demanding revisions in the pre-work concept stage. That’s insulting interference that infringes on an artist’s creativity—it’s basically pressure to get him to leave on his own.”
Hnh... Lau exhaled deeply without a word. He pressed his eyelids with his palm as if to acupress, but it wasn’t easy to control his emotions.
Sunyu’s moves were well within what he could predict, but he hadn’t expected Shushu to come at him like this. He didn’t want to haul the emotions that were starting to bubble in his heavy head out into the open and flip the table with them. Even without that, he was already emotionally at a dangerous level.
The high-ceilinged lounge bar made an old-world atmosphere with multiple tall rectangular windows easily three stories high. Fiddling idly with the long satin curtain that hung from the top edge where the window met the ceiling, Lau tried to cool his head.
“Do you know how he ended up getting that kind of treatment. Do you even know that and say this?”
Shushu didn’t answer. But even from the way he watched him for a moment and then let his gaze slide away, Lau could easily tell Shushu knew the inside story—and that he knew and was still asking Lau to help Hong Sunyu.
Letting go of the curtain, Lau snorted and shook his head.
“So you know and you’re still saying this. What are we now, a charity? No—charities don’t help guys who sell their bodies to succeed. Set aside the fact that he wrecked his life with his own hands—how does... how does helping that kid even make it up your throat. You some kind of saint?”
As if he regretted letting the emotion show despite his resolve, Lau bit his lower lip hard until it blanched and reached for his glass.
