A man in his late thirties whose facial lines had begun to sag a little, listless on the border between youth and middle age. There was no way he didn’t know what I knew about my brother.
“My tastes are minor, the whole world knows it, I admit it myself, and even my parents know it.... Director, you... to be honest, you can pick whatever you like. I hate to admit it, but when it comes to looks you’re the very image of a Golden Alpha, and the thought of you tangling with hulking brutes, swapping them out one after another... ugh, my delicate aesthetics refuse to imagine it.”
As if swatting away a vision in front of his eyes, Juhan waved his hand several times and then gulped down his beer.
From the edge of my lowered gaze, where my thumb was wiping the condensation off the bottle, I felt his eyes flick toward me for an instant, but I didn’t lift my head to check.
“Hm. Hulking or not, that’s fine, but... pushing the idea that I fool around with random people is a bit much, isn’t it? Sleeping with someone who isn’t a lover doesn’t automatically make you trashy. What, is an adult my age supposed to take care of his sex drive only by masturbating just because he doesn’t have a partner? Sure, there are people like that, but choosing that for yourself doesn’t give you the right to condemn people who don’t. If sleeping with someone who isn’t your lover is the definition of being trashy... as far as I know, you two aren’t exactly paragons of chastity either.”
He finished with a slightly lewd smile and looked back and forth between my sister and my brother. They nodded, faces saying he had a point, and my brother even raised a hand like he was making a declaration.
“In a consensual relationship, whatever sex life you have is your private business. I agree with that most.”
“Yup, thoroughly a private matter.”
My sister lifted her hand right after him in agreement.
I, whose sex life consisted entirely of masturbation, didn’t look at people who weren’t like me with a negative eye. I also agreed with the Director that sleeping with someone who isn’t your lover doesn’t automatically become promiscuity.
Then what about when it’s someone you like. Even about a person you like, could we—could the people gathered here—keep the same stance and avoid being hurt when that person sleeps with someone who isn’t me?
We wouldn’t be able to condemn the act itself since it isn’t a romance, but it would be hard not to be hurt. Not just sleeping together—probably even seeing that person treat someone else with gentle affection would hurt.
“Calling it bed-sales or whatever and treating me like some slob with a dirty private life is a job for critics and critics alone. Ah... if I’d actually been out there being trashy it wouldn’t feel so unfair, at least.”
I’d assumed he was the kind of person who didn’t care about that sort of thing. But when you think about it, even someone who just shrugs at crude, malicious assessments of himself would obviously find them unpleasant. Being able to tolerate it, being able to keep your cool, doesn’t mean you take no damage at all.
Staring down at the beer label—soaked enough that the lightest push would peel it clean off the bottle—I laughed at my own naivete, at how I’d secretly looked forward to today just for the giddy curiosity of seeing his house.
“But Director, why are you so unusually passionate about defending yourself? You know we’re joking. Between us. Or... was it that you really didn’t want Ihyeon to misunderstand?”
“A handsome man misunderstanding me as trashy? Of course I hate that.”
At my sister’s teasing provocation, he exaggeratedly threw both arms wide, pale blue eyes opening big.
The truth was, all of this was meaningless kidding. We could joke like this because we all knew that we’d happened to shoot the photos in that mood and that he, as far as I was concerned, had zero private interest—if you use my sister’s phrasing, zero ulterior motives.
Feeling myself get chewed up by those harmless exchanges made me seem like an overly sensitive person. Or else there was some special reason I couldn’t help but be sensitive to jokes like these. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to think about it now.
At some point the beer he’d handed me was already down to the dregs. I still didn’t know my exact limit and, if I let my guard down, I had a tendency to drink too fast. Lacking patter, I kept drinking whenever I felt embarrassed or flustered.
I wasn’t drunk, but the faint haze made me want to cool my head for a moment.
“Sis, the shoot is over now, right?”
“Why? Want to change?”
“Yeah, and wash my face a bit....”
I answered, rubbing lightly at the cheek where the freckles were drawn on. I felt his gaze stick to the left side of my face, but I ignored it.
“Go on in, change, wash up. You remember the room you changed in before? The bathroom’s right to the right of it. It’s the guest bath anyway, so use it comfortably.”
“You talk like it’s your house.”
“Then have the Director give him a personal tour. Do one chore for you and this is what I get.”
Watching the easy, effortless back-and-forth between my sister and him, I set my empty bottle down and stood up.
As I passed behind him toward the entryway, he lightly caught my wrist. Tilting his head back to look up at me, he said,
“Use anything in the bathroom.”
It was probably the gentlest tone I’d ever heard from him. Maybe because he’d been in a good mood since yesterday.
I figured it was probably the artist Shushu—who wasn’t here—who had made him this generous. I didn’t bother to ask myself why that thought made me feel an unpleasant discomfort.
“Thank you.”
I murmured it under my breath and headed straight for the entry.
Because he had a slightly arrogant ease and a glamorous air, I’d expected his home to be a mixed-use tower like the Tower of Babel, or a luxury mansion with a unique, modern exterior overlooking the river.
Of course, like the mansions on the hill where Morae’s house was, it was big enough to drop the jaw of someone ordinary like me. But from the stone steps like a little path leading from the gate to the garden, to the exterior walls that kept the red brick as-is, the impression was of a house built quite a while ago.
Inside, though, looked completely remodeled.
The hallway from the entry split left and right. We’d come in through the front gate with the key he’d given us in advance, and to avoid getting in his way we’d been using the back door that led to the kitchen at the rear of the building. Once I found the kitchen, finding that room would be simple.
Trusting my sense of direction, I turned left. What appeared ahead was the living room.
Unlike the dim hallway without windows, the living room, open all the way up to the second floor, was brimming with the slanted light of late afternoon. If I crossed the living room and turned right, I figured I’d hit the kitchen.
But I couldn’t set even one foot into the room.
More than a camera lens that seemed ready to dissect me down to the last detail, more than his gaze that had felt like a lens stepping right up to mid-thigh and “caressing” me like a mouth rather than eyes... I confronted a terror beyond comparison.
In a place I never expected, with no foreshadowing, no hint.
Like turning a corner in an alley without thinking and feeling a knife sink deep into your gut.
I thought I knew better than anyone that life’s malicious pranks could be abrupt and violent, like a bomb dropped into the most peaceful spot for no reason at all.
Once life decides to play a prank, a person has no choice but to fall for the same trick twice, three times.
I’d thought I’d gotten far away from it.
My father, eaten away by his own sorrow, let go of me, but I had Han I and I had Morae. I even offered up five years—a span that, measured against a twenty-two-year life, is far from short—as a sacrifice.
There were times when someone provoked me and I felt the urge not to dodge around them but to stab back and provoke them too. In front of someone else’s work, I felt a fierce desire to pick up a brush again.
Maybe I hadn’t overcome it, but like a lump raised on the skin, like a scar that no longer bled but sat there ugly and warped, I thought maybe I’d learned to accept it as part of me.
What a monumental delusion.
Nothing had changed. I was still a denied child.
From outside the entry, beyond the big front window of the living room, I heard the laughter of three people. I wanted to run out into the world where people with passion, talent, and the toughness to face their wounds lived.
But I couldn’t. The past I thought I’d had taxidermied came back to life in the most vivid present imaginable and tightened around my neck, laughing, and I didn’t have the strength to loosen even a single knuckle of that hand.
“I wondered if maybe you couldn’t find the room, so I followed.”
It was his voice. But I couldn’t turn my eyes to look. I couldn’t turn my head away from myself.
“Ah... do you like it?”
I felt him come a little closer, probably following my fixed line of sight.
“The artist who painted this was sixteen at the time. A monster.”
“......”
“Do you see anything in this painting? I’m curious what Seo Ihyeon sees—the one Choi Inwoo praises to the skies.”
“Alienation.”
“......”
I murmured it in a very small voice, like talking to myself, and his silence grew heavy.
No, silence can’t have weight. I couldn’t deny that he had caught my attention from our first meeting, and that the more time passed the stranger my reactions around him became, but his gaze—right beside me, looking down at me with interest—meant nothing at all in this moment.
“Hmmm. No one’s gotten that right until now. Should I really ask you to write the preface, Seo Ihyeon? How did you know? It’s a bold piece, sure, but you get the feeling the two figures love each other and lean on each other. The colors are warm. Most people take it as love or lovers, that sort of thing. But you... say it’s a painting about alienation. Why do you think that?”
He put a hand on my shoulder and gripped hard, words pouring out; he was more excited than ever.
I turned my head and looked at him. Like someone whose neck itself had been fixed tight by a ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) device, or like someone with a knife aimed at their back and every muscle locked rigid, I left my neck where it was and moved only my face, slowly.
When I focused on the gray-blue of his eyes, his characteristic scent—thickened as much as his excitement—rushed over me, covering me as if to pounce, but even that curious sting couldn’t hook me this time. Why do you think that? I answered.
“Because I painted it.”
