■ Old Future ■
I was lacing up my shoes when the front door swung open from the outside.
“......”
He froze, hand on the handle, then a look of “bad timing” crossed his face and he dropped his eyes.
Only six months ago, he’d beam at me as if he owned the world whenever our eyes met.
“Where’ve you been?” I asked, straightening up after tightening my Converse laces. My tone had grown as dry as his.
“Just... out for a walk.”
In the cramped entryway—barely wider than a flattened ramen box—we shifted past each other shoulder to shoulder and forced out awkward small talk. The night before, we’d argued for five hours under the guise of debate, and when I woke late, he’d gone out without eating.
“Tutoring?” he asked, slipping off his sneakers as he moved into the kitchen.
Since spring, I’d been teaching drawing at my sister’s friend’s house, working with her son. What began as a side gig to ease our finances had, after nearly a year, become the highlight I looked forward to most: watching a child brimming with talent and passion grow before my eyes.
“Don’t wait up. Eat something,” I called as I slipped into my coat and headed out. The outside air was crisp enough for me to clutch my collar tighter—sharp after the suffocating forty-degree heat we’d endured.
■ ■ ■
No sooner had I opened the door than the boy appeared, sketchbooks and pads in hand—an entire week’s work. Thanks to his parents, an oil painter and a comic artist, he had every medium at his disposal: crayon, poster paint, acrylics, oils, markers, colored pencils, even ballpoint. Week by week, his skill soared.
That week’s theme was profiles. One entire sketchbook—over thirty pages—was filled with side-view drawings. Whenever something caught his eye, he’d reproduce it exactly until he was satisfied. Technique emerged naturally from that obsession. Whether hyperreal or abstract, precise depiction is the foundation of any art form—and he had an innate drive for it.
Shy and quiet, yet bright, playful at times, fundamentally gentle—he seemed like any typical eleven-year-old. But each time I saw that fanatical focus, my heart raced at the promise of his talent. The yearning to render the world exactly as one perceives it—to be unable to sleep or eat until that vision is faithfully realized—marks a true artist.
Holding his drawings, I forced myself not to betray my excitement. In an era bursting with prodigies, an eleven-year-old with that level of draftsmanship might not raise eyebrows. Yet what set him apart was not technique alone. Copying alone is not art. He infused his own feelings and interpretations into each piece—true self-expression at eleven.
“How many pages is this? Didn’t your arm hurt?” I asked, concerned. He smiled, rubbing the tabletop as if proud to show me his practice, though his expression betrayed puzzlement—as if someone had asked a ten-year-old if her legs ached after running all day.
In school subjects, effort usually yields results—nothing to compare oneself to prodigies over. But art is different. You choose it because you sense a gift; failing there feels crushing. Practice may improve technique, but there’s always a limit that skills alone can’t cross: the realm of the true masters. When you first glimpse work that lays bare raw truth, you realize your own universe is only a corner of it.
Crudely put, my student-era drawings were “fancy picture diaries”—personal stories that could move no one. Peers with both technique and style were rarer than Omegas in our A/O world.
When I first encountered him—rumored to be a monster in Eastern Painting—hesitant yet suddenly daring, charging forward with paintings that revealed hidden truths, I was stunned. There, skill mattered only after the raw impact. I realized I had a gift not just for painting but for recognizing genius—and I longed to share his work with the world. We once called ourselves soulmates who understood each other’s worlds best. How had we come to this?
He didn’t know it, but I was a married college student then. Against all opposition, an Alpha woman and a Beta man had wed. We left home in near-estrangement, struggled financially—and I believed in our choice and his talent. But beneath our fervent passion lay the reality of accepting each other’s true selves.
His talent was extraordinary, but he overthought everything. More often than he showed excitement, he compared himself to greater artists and sank into gloom. My outgoing nature clashed with his inward retreat. At twenty-one, understanding someone so different felt impossible. I admit we were too young to grasp marriage’s real meaning—barely able to control our own dreams, sometimes crushed by them.
Yet each time I faced this boy’s unique drawings, I recalled that first tremor before his paintings, and it felt like a distant memory.
Pushing away bitter thoughts, I asked with a forced smile, “Where shall we go today? What do you want to draw?”
“Um...” He paused, then grinned and pointed at me.
“Me?” I echoed, surprised. He nodded.
Ten months into teaching him, I became his model. Against a backdrop of plants on the veranda, bathed in that house’s cozy winter sunlight, I read while he sketched me in an 8K pad. For a moment, in that peaceful scene, I dared to dream again.
When he handed me that portrait—two hours straight of drawing with no break—I understood that comfort doesn’t always come from answers. Temporary numbing or sympathetic words aren’t true consolation. His portrait wasn’t painstakingly refined—it would have taken too long to color. Instead, he used bold strokes, warm yet somber hues, and subtle sparks of hope within darkness—his hallmark.
The figure in that painting suffered disconnection and division. The pain was so vivid I frowned. It was me then—yet oddly, it brought solace. Children that age often draw happy scenes to comfort others. But he captured exactly what he saw: unvarnished, unshrunken, honest. He’d noticed every change in me—every emotion, every expression—and cared. Attention and empathy can be the truest comfort.
Before someone who knows all of you and refuses to distort it, you need not hide or feign. That very acceptance is healing. An artist who speaks through drawing. People fated to speak only through their art. Accepting that boy’s painting reaffirmed my mission: to bring their language to the world.
I knew my own limits as an artist and harbored no regrets. Instead, my role was clear: to keep him in front of a canvas, not buried under blankets.
“Thank you, my artist.” He smiled at the title, shoulders shrugging. Quiet though he was, his grin was sincere—art was his true tongue.
About three months later, my husband and I set off for Hong Kong. I believed only in his talent; he, only in my passion. Like our marriage, we defied all objections and ventured to an unknown world with no ties—reckless hope lighting our path.
Everything seemed destined to go well.
■ ■ ■
The teacher lightly shook the can of his drink in his hand. Throughout my story, his gaze remained fixed on the river before us—as if he overlaid passing time upon the flowing water.
“It didn’t work out in Hong Kong either. I got a job at a gallery and worked day and night. At first I thought his creativity would flourish, but he soon started wandering again... We each forced the other to be something we weren’t... Only after we were both worn to rags did we go our separate ways. He returned to Korea; I stayed in Hong Kong.”
Perhaps enough time had passed. His voice, recounting the exhaustion of loving and losing, held no lingering anger—only calm. Yet I /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ could not escape the scratch-like trace of old wounds in his eyes as he watched the river flow.
They’re not the sort to make a scene. They wouldn’t say that to a kid.”
He took a light sigh and sipped his drink.
“You didn’t know we were married, so of course you wouldn’t know we divorced.”
The teacher added that with a light smile, as if trying to ease the weight of talk about parents, but I couldn’t smile back. It had been a long time since I’d heard someone mention my parents—not that that was the reason. My mind was on the teacher himself.
“Back then I was desperate. I was certain. I know now how precarious a twenty-one-year-old’s certainty can be...but what can you do? That’s hindsight. If people could calmly calculate future regrets and skillfully suppress present desire, the world’s population would probably be half of what it is.”
The teacher went on.
“When I got obsessed with something, I didn’t care about consequences. I was young. Everyone begged us to at least wait on marriage and just date, but the feeling couldn’t be satisfied by dating alone. I wanted some way to bind myself to him more completely...”
His words trailed off. He took his gaze from the river and looked down at his lap, gripping the can tightly as he continued.
“If he’d been an Omega, I thought, I could have gotten pregnant. I even thought that.”
He turned and smiled at me, as if embarrassed by the passion of that past. He laughed at the immature emotions of adolescence.
