“Up to now, when you came to Hong Kong on business trips, it sounds like you stayed at the Director’s apartment.”
It felt like the right timing to bring up the question that had been on my mind since the drive to the hotel.
Putting the cap of the pen he’d had in his mouth back where it belonged after drawing a line through item 34, Juhan answered.
“Yeah. This is the first time we’re staying at a hotel. The Director’s apartment is down below Victoria Peak. It’s on a hill and a high floor, so the view is killer. Not far from there he also has a house with a pool. I think that one’s rented out right now. Some famous bank here leased it for their staff or something.”
As if prompting further explanation, he looked down at Yuni, and she picked up the thread.
“They use it as company-provided housing for high-level foreign hires they bring in. The monthly rent is like twenty million won, and the company pays it. How much profit can one person be generating that they hire them while eating that kind of cost? Anyway, it’s a whole other world that has nothing to do with us.”
The talk of a firm paying tens of millions of won a month to house some top hire was one “other world,” and the Director, as the owner collecting that level of rent every month, was another. Because he was someone I knew and someone within the sphere of my life, it only made it feel more that way.
Lau Weikun.
From his name alone, you could guess from the start that he was a Hong Kong national. From conversations with the manager, Juhan, and Yuni, I’d broadly gathered that he was a quarter mixed, with one Korean parent. I knew the city where he grew up wasn’t Seoul, but this was the first I’d heard that in Hong Kong he was wealthy enough to own property on that scale.
Judging from what he’d said in the car just now on the way to the hotel, most of his wealth here in Hong Kong seemed to be inherited. He clearly wasn’t from an ordinary family.
“It’s not the Director’s personal place but his family’s, I think, but they’ve also got a house in Repulse Bay—the crazy rich seaside neighborhood. It’s a vacation place. Last year, after the fair ended, we spent about three days there together as a kind of holiday. Ah... it was really great.”
Juhan trailed his gaze through empty air with a wistful look, like someone of a certain age reminiscing about golden days gone by.
The richest person I actually knew was Morae’s father, Mr. Im. Even “several billion won” a year, which is what Mr. Im earned, was a number that didn’t feel real to me. So for me to grasp the scale of the Director’s wealth in practical terms was asking too much.
“What does all this mean.”
Yuni suddenly even stopped her hands to focus our attention, and answered her own question.
“For the Director, Phantom isn’t about survival. It’s about proving himself.”
“......”
“The real estate the Director owns—that’s not even all of it. The house in Seoul and the gallery are his, but those aren’t even the big ones. As far as we know he’s got mansions in South Kensington in London and on the Upper East Side in New York, and there could be even more properties held as investments. So he didn’t start Phantom to make a living.”
Handing me the thirty-fifth piece, Yuni straightened up for a moment and lightly tapped her legs and back, as if the crouching posture had stiffened her.
“In Seoul he’s a self-made Golden Alpha who climbed from the floor up by himself, but in Hong Kong...”
“He’s just a born prince, basically.”
While Yuni searched for the right phrasing, Juhan delivered the conclusion. She knit her brow for a moment as if she didn’t like that wording, but it seemed she couldn’t find anything more fitting.
“Right, a prince. I like the Director in Seoul much better, though.”
Juhan didn’t answer that. Instead, with a faint smile you rarely saw on him, he hung number thirty-five on the wall. Without a doubt, it was his way of agreeing that he too preferred the Director in Seoul.
They were people who went wild for luxury cars, who couldn’t hide their joy at the chance to stay in a luxury hotel, who were more honest than anyone in front of worldly pleasures—yet even so, they liked who he was in Seoul better.
That might look like a contradiction at a glance, but speaking as someone who’d only spent a few months with them, that friction didn’t feel uncomfortable.
They were certainly worldly, but in some ways, they were also the ones who challenged that worldliness in the roughest way. It sounded like a contradiction, but it was undeniably who Baek Yuni and Gwon Juhan were.
“Wow, it must be pouring in Korea right now. They say today’s precipitation in Seoul is over sixty millimeters.”
While waiting for the next piece, Juhan glanced at his phone and raised his voice. With Hong Kong’s weather now so clear, it was hard to imagine.
“If you’ve got time to stare at your phone, come over and peel some wraps.”
“I’m not slacking—I was checking if the manager will be able to catch the flight safely.”
“If you can’t say anything useful, don’t.”
As we pulled the cover off the thirty-sixth large piece—its height and width adding up to over seven meters—Juhan grinned and tapped Yuni’s shoulder.
“It’ll still be the rainy season when we get back to Korea, but even a few days’ escape is something, right? Here, the AC’s blasting wherever you go.”
Before I knew it, they had returned from the topic of properties in world cities to reality, talking about the small joy of escaping the humid monsoon for a few days thanks to this trip. It was an impressive sense of balance.
About four hours remained until the VIP preview event.
■ ■ ■
(As Yuni and Juhan would put it) Our booth wasn’t that large for the number of works, because we couldn’t pour in a budget like the “rich galleries.”
Since he and the manager would have to be away often, it would be mostly up to Yuni and Juhan to hold down the fort, so too large a booth would have been unrealistic anyway.
The location, however, was pretty good. It wasn’t far from the experimental large installation in the center, and the space between us and the booth across was generous.
Down that aisle, the manager and he were walking side by side. I knew I might look foolish, but my gaze tracked their path all the same—they were an arresting pair.
Juhan’s exaggerated line about the artist Shushu—that he had “nearly fallen prostrate after seeing her in person”—came to mind. It wasn’t a shock on that level, but it clearly wasn’t an everyday kind of beauty. Maybe not enough to make you bow down, but I couldn’t take my eyes off them, as if pulled by gravity.
Since it was a VIP preview, the venue was full of glamorous people in what you’d call party attire—foreign to me—and Juhan, Yuni, and I were also in crisp black outfits we’d prepared, with our hair styled unlike usual, but our presence couldn’t compare to the two of them.
They were Alphas belonging to the upper social stratum—exactly the kind I’d never had occasion to encounter back when I lived in a small fishing village.
“Manager, you look amazing! You’re finally letting the Alpha aura pour out again!”
I must not have been the only one thinking it; Juhan ran out to the front of the booth, hugged the manager, and made a fuss.
“What are you saying I’m like the rest of the time, huh?”
Laughing, the manager grabbed the back of his neck and shook him. Unlike the comfortable everyday look, he was wearing a black two-piece suit with slicing-sharp lines, but his tone and manner were the same as always.
“You look stylish even in jeans and a T-shirt, but dressing up is a different kind of great.”
“Well, that’s true. You too—always in T-shirts and ripped jeans—but when you do suit up now and then, you look a bit sharp.”
Still draping an arm across his shoulder, the manager widened his eyes as he scanned the completed display behind us.
“Wow... look at how capable my kids are. I didn’t think you’d really finish in three hours. Next fair, we can even increase the number of pieces, no?”
“I love Phantom, but this is where I hand in my resignation.”
Everyone burst out laughing at Juhan’s deadpan bit.
All five of us, for our respective scheduling reasons, hadn’t had dinner yet. We started taking the edge off our hunger with food we’d ferried over from buffet tables set up around the venue.
“Simple” wasn’t quite the word; with tickets around four thousand Hong Kong dollars apiece, the variety and quality were excellent. To my eyes the food looked almost too pretty to eat.
“First fair? It’s overwhelming, right?”
The only food I’d touched today was a little of the chicken dish from the in-flight meal, so I must have been hungry, but between excitement and nerves, I didn’t feel it. I just toyed with a cute little dim sum with my chopsticks when he came over and spoke.
He’d said he was starving from flashing a business smile all day without getting to eat, but he too barely touched the food. He only picked a few nuts Juhan had brought and drank champagne.
“A little overwhelming... but it’s fun.”
In a navy suit made of a material that flowed flexibly along the body’s lines instead of forming stiff angles, he looked used to events like this—and suited them. Even while boldly revealing the contours of a solid, well-proportioned frame, the suit was still dignified and elegant.
Visitors of many ethnicities making the rounds of the booths let their gaze catch on him at least once, and that in turn was drawing them to our booth.
“From tomorrow the real event starts, so it’ll be even more hectic. The visitor count will be on another level compared to now. Want to walk around and preview some works?”
With about two hundred galleries from twenty-six countries participating, the interior area was considerable. That vast space was carved into hundreds of booths that formed a complicated maze. I’d picked up a pamphlet with a floor plan, but to be honest I didn’t feel bold enough. Not just because of the complex layout, but because everything about the environment was first-time for me—abroad, a strange city, the language.
“If it’s just that it feels unfamiliar, I can go with you.”
Sensing my hesitation, he gave a slightly crooked smile. Sometimes he smiled like an animated villain; this was one of those times. “Would you rather not go? Would you rather we didn’t go and just got into bed and slept together?”—and when we did sleep together, that time too, it had been like that.
I didn’t demur; I nodded. His eyes, fixed on me over his champagne, paused for a moment and then crinkled at the corners. This time it was a smile that lightly regretted his own teasing from a second ago.
He said we could stroll and skim, and if something drew me in, I could spend as much time as I wanted. He matched his pace to mine and walked at my side.
“Do you like the room?”
As we passed a booth from a Beijing gallery that was mostly hung with East-leaning paintings, he tossed the question.
“I’ve never stayed anywhere like that before... The room is so nice it surprised me. The view is great. If it weren’t for your generosity, Director, I’d never have had that experience... Thank you for everything.”
“Hmm. It wasn’t generosity.”
I looked back at his face at the mutter, playful in tone, as if to himself. His pale blue eyes were gleaming.
“It was ulterior motives.”
“......”
“To get a brush back in your hand, Seo Ihyeon.”
At the word “ulterior,” I don’t know what I thought I’d hear. Afraid he’d sense my disappointment, I yanked my gaze down. But even if he wasn’t in my line of sight, just being in his felt like it would expose everything I didn’t want seen.
Even if that was only a defensive illusion born of how much younger I was, compared to him, I couldn’t stop being bothered by this sense that I was at a disadvantage in front of him.
Rolling the pamphlet with the floor plan into a tube and tapping it against the palm of his other hand, he flipped it around and gave my shoulder a light tap with it.
“For someone who has to live hidden, the conditions seem perfect. I don’t know who you’re running from or why, but if you become a Phantom exclusive, I’ll protect you with everything I’ve got. I’m good at that.”
I gave an awkward laugh at his tone—like a child bragging that he could read and write the alphabet. He was deliberately lightening the weight of the words, but they were probably true. From the way he ran Phantom and his knack, he wasn’t someone who would ever sit back and let what was his be taken.
But what was chasing me wasn’t a simple issue that ended with me alone, and even if he protected me, that would be... only because I was an in-house artist worth investing in. Or, to put it as kindly as possible, a business measure by a dealer in charge of a talented artist (since that seemed to be how he thought of me).
I wasn’t wishing it would be anything more than that. If I wanted anything, it was the guaranteed safety of Morae and my brother, rather than my own safety—something that would be just an appendix even to Morae’s father.
All I did was consider what the words “I’ll protect you” really meant beneath the surface. It was a dangerous way of speaking.
While prodding the psychology of someone being chased—someone who couldn’t help worrying about safety—he pitched me, once more, the advantages of becoming a Phantom artist, but he didn’t °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° force me to answer here. In any case, we’d agreed we’d decide after the trip.
Although the marquee artist Shushu was a photographer and there were a few sculptors under contract, Phantom was basically a painting-centered gallery. Even I—out of touch as I was with art-world news—vaguely knew that contemporary art had long expanded into installation, sculpture, and audience-participation performance.
Thanks to that, the atmosphere of the fair was less about putting on airs of authority and much more three-dimensional and lively. At a glance, the works leaned more toward humor and personality than classical darkness.
Still, I couldn’t bring myself to be very interested in works that weren’t painting.
“Not much interest in recent artists, I see.”
He spoke with interest when I stopped before a piece—a close-up of a woman’s face lying on her side on the floor. The caption said it was from 2002.
We had a lot of art books at home, but like a child who, when given a book, looks only at the illustrations and never reads the text, I had always taken in only the works themselves, barely caring about the artists’ names or the titles. Neither my mother nor my father, nor my teachers, had ever tried to teach me lineages of painters or art history.
