It was one of the several magazines from his subscription that had been published just yesterday and delivered to the house this morning. Rather than flaunting authority and orthodoxy, it kept a flexible viewpoint, and it was one of the magazines Lau and Seo Ihyeon liked most. As usual, Ihyeon began by carefully reading the “Editor’s Foreword,” then set the open magazine down on his knees and drew a deep breath.
The text never once mentioned the name Hong Seonyu or SEONEW, but as he read on he became more and more certain the piece was aimed at Hong Seonyu.
If that was true, and if the “reliable source” cited in the article was Lau... then Lau was now paying attention even to Hong Seonyu moving his base of activity back to Korea, closing the distance with Shushu by doing so.
Thinking of Lau’s haggard face—these days he was coming home late after personally telling contracted artists, clients, and key industry contacts about Phantom’s New York entry—Ihyeon checked the clock on the wall.
Just as he was about to pick up his phone, he heard the faint sound of a car entering the garage. Ihyeon closed the magazine and set it on the table. His heart was impatient, so he opened the door before Lau could key in the password himself.
“......”
Through the crack he pushed outward, he saw Lau’s face pull back in surprise, hand poised to enter the password.
“I like this. Makes me feel like you were just waiting for me.”
As Lau smiled playfully, Ihyeon’s eyes swept over him from head to toe, and he stepped back to let him in. After a brief kiss, Lau walked into the studio, and Ihyeon watched his back closely and moved toward him with care.
“I heard from your sister. In the afternoon... there was an accident.”
“Ah...”
Lau slowed as he set his briefcase and jacket on the armchair in front of the sofa. Muttering, “I told her not to say anything,” he ran a hand over his eyebrow, then straightened with a light expression.
“Then you also heard it was nothing serious, right? It hardly counts as an accident. I was just finishing a left turn to enter the straight road, and the other car was waiting to make a U-turn, so both of us were moving very slowly. I’m fine, they’re fine. No one was hurt...”
He laid a hand on Ihyeon’s shoulder and bent his head to look deep into his face.
“So relax that expression. Okay?”
Looking at Lau’s face as he tried to reassure him that it was such a minor bump the airbag hadn’t even deployed, Ihyeon did what Lau often did to him, examining each feature one by one, as if searching for any discomfort he might be hiding or signs of strain he might be enduring.
“Even so... you should go to the hospital. They say you shouldn’t take a traffic accident lightly just because there’s no external injury...”
Only after wringing out a promise that he would go get examined did Ihyeon stroke the arm resting on his shoulder. Feeling the warmth of skin below the sleeve rolled up to the elbow, he bit and released his lower lip several times, like someone about to bring up something hard to say.
“And... until you leave, I’d like you to move around with the driver.”
As he expected, Lau frowned, displeased, and averted his gaze, and Ihyeon gripped his wrist tight.
“Lately there’s too much... you’re paying attention to so many things, you’re busy and tired... it’s dangerous for you to drive yourself.”
“......”
“If Awi or the driver isn’t available, I won’t go out. Don’t worry about me... just say you’ll do that...”
Adding, “Please?” Ihyeon took hold of Lau around the waist. Lau, who rarely saw Ihyeon insist on something like this, looked down at his firm face for a long moment without a word. With the hand on Ihyeon’s shoulder he gently kneaded his neck, then slowly pulled him close and held him.
“You’re the only one left who thinks of me now, Seo Ihyeon.”
At the voice that seemed to leak hollowly from an emptied interior, Ihyeon slid his hands up to Lau’s back and held him, stroking to comfort him.
“You know that’s not true.”
“......”
Still silent, Lau stroked Ihyeon’s neck and let his gaze drift slowly. Past the canvases of various sizes turned with their backs to the wall, his eyes came to rest on the small frame on the sofa. It was a small piece Suki Kim had given to Ihyeon in Hong Kong.
After it became clear he was a Ghost, his parents’ divorce proceeded quickly, and for the two years after that, while he lived with Ellen and Marcus and they took care of Lau, Suki Kim did not paint.
Back then Lau knew that his mother and father carried a guilt that was no small weight about the fact that he was a Ghost. They never showed their distress openly in front of him, but parents’ emotions naturally transfer to their child.
It was probably a feeling akin to the self-reproach that haunts most parents of an ailing child. As if everything were their fault.
But their guilt, unintentionally, sickened Lau’s self as a Ghost.
Am I ill? Is this a disease, and am I a carrier who endangers other people? Is that why my parents feel sorry toward me?
It wasn’t only his father’s maternal relatives that were a problem. A power that changed the very nature of the human body could be interpreted as a special ability, but for those who actually touched the person in question, it was a fear to be avoided, at the very least an unease.
If he revealed he was a Ghost, then because he revealed it; if he hid it, then because he hid it; either way he had to live a separated life even within alpha and omega society.
Perhaps, out of guilt toward such a son, she felt she had to sacrifice something. After securing legal custody of Lau and spending two years in Boston, she focused entirely on him. Everyone around her, including Lau’s father who understood most deeply what painting meant to her, tried to persuade her, but it was no use.
Portraits filled with only line and blank space using pigmented ink. Within a structure that at a glance looked as simple as something drawn carelessly by a child, there was a power that would not let your eyes leave it. Like the masters who can face their naked selves head-on and lift it out beyond the mirror to show the world, she needed neither flashy technique nor decoration to package herself.
Lau remembered it too. Starting with that piece, she brought painting back into her life. With those two years of blankness, not in her head but through time and her body, she slowly but fully realized that without painting she could not exist—not only as a mother, but as Suki Kim, as herself.
That work, an important turning point for her, now hung before his eyes as the property of Ihyeon, the artist of Exclusion, and the artist of Exclusion was in his arms as his lover, as a victim of Changing. At that renewed realization, Lau stroked Ihyeon’s hair and smiled silently, a bitter smile.
He felt as if, after a long time circling a great distance, all strength of body and mind had been completely spent, only to return to the place he had first stood.
He rubbed his cheek against Ihyeon’s hair tickling near his lips, cleared his tight throat, and let him go.
“About the materials to send to Bali, I think we can get them within two or three days. Marcus is putting in a lot of care, so when I go to New York I should make time to stop by Boston to pay my respects one more time.”
He worked a joke in as he squeezed Ihyeon’s shoulders a couple of times, but Ihyeon did not smile back. Avoiding Ihyeon’s cautious eyes that were still studying his complexion, Lau rubbed his lower jaw and walked toward the kitchen. It barely deserved to be called a kitchen—just enough equipment to wash cups and boil instant noodles. Like a studio one-room, there was a built-in refrigerator next to the sink; he opened it, took out a bottle of beer, and asked over his shoulder if Ihyeon wanted one, but Ihyeon shook his head.
He stood there in front of the refrigerator, drinking beer, unable to look back at him, uneasy that Ihyeon’s careful, attentive gaze would end up sensing that he was hiding something—that his recent exhaustion was not only from a tight schedule and friction with people around him.
Fingers moving so softly they almost tickled settled on his shoulder. Where Ihyeon could not see, Lau’s pupils quivered slightly. Lately, whenever Ihyeon watched him silently or called him in a low voice, he had to feel the dizzy drop of falling.
“Director.”
“......”
“It’s not that urgent, so you can take your time with it after you’re in New York.”
He set his hand lightly over Ihyeon’s hand on his shoulder. Holding just his fingertips, he turned to face him. Even for something that small, he needed courage.
Looking down at Ihyeon’s face—who, cut off from information he had every right to be given, was instead worrying about him—Lau wetted his lower lip with his tongue.
He had thought he could push ahead far more brazenly. Around the time he left for Chicago, he believed he could look away from all guilt and compunction, at least until he set foot on New York soil with Ihyeon. All of it had been to win him.
But whether the shell around his conscience was not as thick as he had hoped, or simply because as the moment of confession approached he could not predict how Ihyeon would react and it made him anxious, lately his nerves were so on edge that despite extreme fatigue he could hardly sleep.
He set the beer on the narrow counter beside the sink, took both of Ihyeon’s hands, spread his arms wide, and pulled him close. He played at pushing and pulling their interlaced hands as if testing strength. Looking down at the face that finally softened into a smile, he kissed his lips and his cheek.
Ihyeon was not the sort of person who would lean on feelings or moods that had not fully deepened, sink into sweet sentiment, and say that he loved someone.
But the man he loved was Lau Wikun, who had not Changed. The moment he learned the truth, for Seo Ihyeon, Lau Wikun would no longer be the Lau Wikun he knew.
Each time {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} he became aware of that fact, it felt as if the rope barely supporting the soles of his feet was thinning to thread.
He smoked more. He drank more. To reassure Ihyeon he had called it a minor fender-bender, and in terms of scale that was true, but it was also a clear mistake that would never have happened under normal circumstances.
The problem was that, just as his parents’ guilt had been transferred and sickened his self as a Ghost, his own anxiety was now spreading like ash gray into Ihyeon.
Each time he kissed him, each time he held him, each time he reached a peak as an alpha inside him that he had never felt through anyone else before, he feared at the same time that it might be the last... and he even felt the urge to veer off course, tell him everything, bare his neck, and be dealt with according to his judgment.
“Why aren’t you drawing these days?”
“Sorry?”
He jerked his chin toward the canvases turned backward behind Ihyeon.
“It looks like you’re not making progress.”
“......”
Ihyeon parted his lips and lowered his eyes.
“Didn’t you have so many things you wanted to draw as soon as you arrived?”
“It’s just... my mind’s a bit unsettled, I guess... Still, I’m keeping up with drawing practice.”
Lau went back toward the sofa, rummaged in the jacket draped over the chair, and took out a pack of cigarettes. He lit one and drew in deep. He exhaled a long stream of smoke while looking down at some point on the floor. The sight of Ihyeon’s feet in indoor leather slippers slipped into view.
“Do you want to go?”
“Sorry?”
“Paris.”
“......”
At the casually tossed question, Ihyeon looked at Lau’s face for a moment to see if he had misheard. From the profile calmly breathing smoke with all expression wiped clean, he could read no intent or emotion.
How did he know, when did he find out, even if he knew, was he asking why he wanted to go... and so on. Many questions rose in his head, but since Lau had brought it up, they were all just secondary frills. Given that he knew Yuni had received an offer from The Hands, it would be no surprise if he also knew that they had offered to sign Ihyeon.
Instead of a pointless cross-examination, Ihyeon stepped closer to him and shook his head firmly.
“No.”
“......”
His irises, which for some reason looked especially pale today, slowly focused on Ihyeon’s eyes. He had asked whether he wanted to go, but his eyes said he wanted him not to.
“I already have a contract with a competent gallerist.”
Ihyeon plucked the cigarette from Lau’s fingers as Lau let out a short laugh. Looking up into his eyes as Lau held him by the waist, he drew a deep drag. Lau’s long, straight fingers slowly stroked his lips as he clumsily exhaled the smoke.
Ihyeon set the cigarette back to Lau’s lips that looked drier than usual, then hooked a finger over the loose knot of his tie and tugged. The top button came undone...
