Shushu. It was a name I had heard before.
I still remembered how that word sounded sweet, oddly mismatched with the low, husky voice of Phantom’s director.
Feeling a bit thirsty, I drank some more water.
Our group took the window seats closest to the entrance, and since there were five of us, one person had to sit with their chair turned to the aisle. Juhan and Yuni sat on the innermost side, and in the order we came in, I sat next to Juhan. And somehow the potentially most uncomfortable aisle seat naturally ended up belonging to Phantom’s director.
Because he was right beside me with only the table corner between us, I pulled my feet back under the chair, worried our legs might get tangled or I might step on his foot beneath the long tablecloth that hid everything below our thighs.
With one arm hooked over the chair back and the other hand twirling an empty wineglass, he half-listened to the talk passing across the table. He looked like someone uninterested in being here.
Then ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) why did he come at all? If the passenger-seat guy was right, it wasn’t even as if he had asked to come along.
“Writer Shushu is... acquainted with the director, but we hardly have any private contact with her.”
Yuni lowered the playful, slightly flushed tone she’d had until now and spoke a bit cautiously. Maybe it was my imagination, but it felt like she was checking the director’s mood.
The warm-faced owner brought out the wine and the conversation paused. He poured a little dark red wine into each of the five empty glasses. It was my first time having wine.
Once the glasses were filled, no one proposed a toast, but we lightly clinked anyway. There was no formal toast. The wine I was tasting for the first time was more fragrant than beer, but the aftertaste that lingered was stronger than I expected. As I drank, the sense of layered flavor building in my mouth was new.
Realizing I had already emptied about half, I set the glass down. The three others besides the director were still arguing about forms of address. If I didn’t decide, this debate felt like it could last all night.
“I’m not a Phantom employee... If you’re fine with it, I’ll call you bro.”
I said it without much thought, since I didn’t think I’d have many reasons to call him anything anyway.
Yuni and Juhan wore the expressions of people who had lost a bet, while Inwoo... bro looked like a kid who, after a fierce struggle, had finally gotten the toy he wanted.
“Then try it. Say it—Inwoo bro.”
The table wasn’t very wide, so when Inwoo leaned forward across from me, his face was quite close. It was a face that was hard to disappoint, so openly expectant.
“Inwoo bro... your main job is doctor, right?”
He grinned, showing even teeth. The corners of his eyes folded slightly and his pupils seemed to shine—an objectively attractive smile.
“Isn’t that way too uncle-like of you? Why are you so hung up on calling him ‘bro’?”
Shaking his head, Phantom’s director swallowed his wine as if letting it slip into his mouth.
For someone who seemed uninterested in this gathering, he was emptying his glass the fastest of us all.
I wondered if my presence kept him from feeling completely at ease, but I soon erased the thought. With him, at least, I could manage a fairly bold attitude.
“It’s cute. When he keeps going ‘bro, bro’ and begs, it makes you want to give him anything.”
With a dreamy expression, the man from the passenger seat—Inwoo bro—said that. He was a gastroenterology specialist, and at the same time, an artist represented by Phantom.
Though a specialist, he was attached to a small general hospital where his parents served as director and deputy director respectively, which, according to the director, Yuni, and Juhan, made him a layabout doctor who just played every day.
Thanks to marketing the hook of the “doctor painter,” his pieces sold as soon as they were hung—he was fairly popular.
Both his parents were passionate art collectors, so he had been familiar with paintings since childhood; he had drawn for a long time as a hobby and, on the director’s recommendation, entered the art market. Even if not full-time, he was already a professional in that he sold work for money.
Remembering that at the last VIP opening I had recommended one of his own pieces to him, I felt heat rise to my face. I tossed back the wine, and when my glass emptied for the second or third time, Inwoo took a bottle from the steel basket and refilled it.
“About that day, I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was your piece... I’m nearly ignorant about art, so I only said what I felt. If it bothered you, I apologize.”
“No, not at all. Why would it bother me? It’s not like you said something nasty. I did feel a little exposed, like I’d been seen completely naked, but your reading hit me far more than critics who just spout pretension. Honestly, I felt fate.”
If he hadn’t made an exaggeratedly playful face as he said the last line, I might have been at a loss for how to respond.
“Ugh, that fate again... Teacher, you sure have a lot of fate.”
Juhan’s sigh and added jab lightened the mood, thankfully.
“This may sound arrogant, but... I think I see why your work—no, bro’s work—is popular. Most people want to be honest, but it’s hard....”
I didn’t have anyone in mind, but for some reason my gaze slid toward Phantom’s director at the end of the sentence. Feeling self-conscious about where I’d looked, I raised the glass to my lips.
I learned for the first time that alcohol can be a pretty good shield for hiding expression and eye lines.
“Honestly, after hearing you that day, Kun and I both assumed you’d studied art in some way. Then Manager Han told us you hadn’t.”
Kun.
Most people seemed to call him director, but I had heard him called Kun, that exotic nickname, a few times.
Even so, I had helped at Phantom three times up to today and still didn’t know the director’s proper name. I could have found out easily if I wanted, but I didn’t want to ask my teacher, or Yuni, or Juhan anything about him. I didn’t feel like typing “Gallery Phantom” into my phone either. It’s not like anyone would see.
“In any case, thanks to you, I was really happy that day. Anyone can look at a painting in their own way, in the emotion of that moment, but it’s still a thrill when someone sees the ‘me’ I unknowingly melted into it, right?”
What Inwoo said as he smiled sounded sincere, and I smiled back. I thought I could imagine, however vaguely, the delight he meant. Probably a rush, excitement... and maybe a sense of fate. As if you had found the one person who deciphered your private code.
“Hey, Ihyeon. What do you think he’d say about the painting in your living room? Aren’t you curious?”
Lowering his wine, Inwoo tapped the director’s arm. At his question, the director’s gaze slowly turned to me.
From the start until now, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being taken apart and judged under his eyes. They wore a steady, indifferent calm, and perhaps for that very reason his gaze could dissect a person most mercilessly. It stirred in me an awkward discomfort and a thirsty tension.
But at the same time, it drew out a rebellious streak I hadn’t known I had—the kind that says even someone like me will still squirm if you step on him.
The pale, almost light gray-blue eyes fixed on me seemed to plead with delicate emotion that might shatter at any moment, and that image softened the chill his cool words had left so far.
But that was only a visual impression from the color of his irises.
Before his lips, which had just parted, could give any answer, the phone he had set on the table buzzed lightly.
As soon as he glanced down and saw the caller, a smile rose to his lips. It was faint, but genuine.
He made a small apologetic gesture, stood with the phone, and walked toward the entrance as he connected the call.
“Yeah, it’s me... Right, it wrapped up fine. Now? No, I slipped out with Choi Inwoo. I’m at a get-together with the Phantom kids.”
He was turned enough that we could barely see his profile, but I could tell he was smiling. Not the mechanical smile he wore for clients at Phantom, but a sweet one.
A private smile, not a business smile. Like when he said “Shushu.”
“It’s fine. Don’t worry. If you came you’d just get pestered by this person and that, and you’d only get tired. You don’t need to care about that.”
Just then, the dishes we’d ordered all came out at once. The owner personally gave brief explanations of each, but my ears were more tuned to the call happening six or seven steps away than to the talk around the table.
“It doesn’t matter how few pieces there are, so don’t push yourself. It’s Shushu. People are already lining up to reserve before they even see the work.”
Like anyone else—including me—he couldn’t keep exactly the same attitude in every relationship. But as far as I knew, he was the person with the most different faces for dealing with others.
My teacher. Yuni and Juhan. Inwoo. Phantom’s clients. Me. The way he faced each of them had big and small differences.
And now, leaning his shoulder against the open doorframe, face full of smiles, focused on the call—this look completely overturned my impression that he would speak at the same even pitch even to a lover.
Shushu. Maybe the sweetness that name evoked wasn’t just the sound of it.
“Ihyeon, try this. You need to put on a little more weight.”
At Inwoo’s voice calling me, I pulled my eyes away from pretending to sip wine while sneaking glances at the director’s back.
Inwoo served onto my plate a dish of Iberico pork jowl that had been cooked low and slow for a long time.
“Teacher, he doesn’t look it, but he’s solid. He works part-time at a moving company.”
Chewing a melon topped with thin-sliced jamon, Yuni said that.
Inwoo widened his eyes as if surprised and looked at me. Then his gaze slowly traveled up and down my upper body above the table.
In truth, anyone could do moving jobs. The drivers’ builds were ordinary in reality. Most were average-sized and quick on their feet rather than big and burly.
“Did you know? Ihyeon’s working part-time at a moving company.”
Looking up at the director as he returned, Inwoo spoke.
He only gave a shrug, sat without a word, and started drinking again. Maybe Inwoo hadn’t expected agreement or reaction anyway; he soon shifted his focus back to me.
“No matter how I look at you, you’re the artist type... and yet moving work? Your story just keeps getting more interesting, Ihyeon.”
Using the negative phrase “descending into a spectacle” as praise, Inwoo shook his head and laughed.
“Come to think of it, you’ve got a different vibe today, Ihyeon... Last time you looked like a good honor student out at a gallery with mom and dad, but today there’s a touch of decadence layered on.”
At the awkward kind of compliment I’d never heard before, I bowed my head and looked down at myself. I tugged and let go of the hem of my T-shirt.
“Yuni and Juhan gave me the T-shirt as a present.”
“Ah, Old Future?”
The words “Old Future” came right out of his mouth. It was the lettering on the shopping bag Yuni had handed me. I think that’s the title of the site she and Juhan run.
“Now that you say it, Old Future clothes would suit you. Better than something as blatant as what these two wear. Hmm... let’s say it leaves room for imagination.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, teacher?”
Resting a hand on Inwoo’s shoulder, Yuni poked a fork at him in mock threat.
“Honestly, you two just scream punk from the vibe up. No surprise factor.”
“Wow... teacher, that’s harsh. Even if you like Ihyeon, come on. And I don’t remember you being this forward when I first showed up—kind of hurts.”
Juhan joined in ganging up on Inwoo.
Judging from what they said, this wasn’t the first time Inwoo had shown interest in a man like this—whether in earnest or half-joking.
But so far he hadn’t done anything that made me feel threatened or repelled. He had asked for my number in the car on the way, but that alone wasn’t enough to put him on a watch list.
That distinct joking tone and expression that stripped the weight from everything he said also made it easy to treat his interest in me lightly.
Even now, with an exaggeratedly serious face, he lifted a hand and showed his palm to Juhan.
“My aesthetic standards are high. Sorry.”
“And after getting wrecked by Ihyeon that day, you’re still like this. Impressive. If it were me, I’d avoid him.”
Juhan wasn’t about to just take it. Sipping his wine with a straight face, he brought up again how, at the VIP opening, I’d gone on about “honesty” with Inwoo’s painting.
“Not avoid—more like that’s exactly why the teacher got even more interested in Ihyeon, right?”
At Yuni’s words, Inwoo gave an ambiguous smile. Smiling that way, he sent me a look over the rim of his glass. If you said that smiling gaze carried a private signal, it felt that way; if you said it was just the pleasant air of someone drinking, that fit too.
Unless he asked me something that demanded an answer, I had no intention of thinking too hard about what that look meant.
Setting his wineglass on the table, Inwoo spoke as if something had just come to mind.
