He tapped my brother on the forehead with the back end of a wooden chopstick, then picked up one of the dim sum from the middle and, as if it were nothing, set it down on the plate in front of me. His eyes and mouth were still aimed at my brother.
“It’s on the condition that we absolutely get back to the hotel by twelve. The fair still has two days left.”
“Come on, of course. Why are you acting like a newbie? We’re short on time, so let’s get buzzed fast. First round’s tequila.”
■ ■ ■
The intersection where the cars coming down from the park famous for its monkeys met the cars that had come up from Central’s boulevard via Ice House Street and the cars that had come through Soho along Hollywood Road was overflowing with people.
After we left the restaurant and drank tequila for about an hour at a bar, we blended into that crowd in Soho, wandering the streets to find a decent pub for round two.
By the time I’d had three or four shots of tequila and the other three had put away about twice that, the number of people had swelled so fiercely that no matter where we went there wasn’t a single four-top open for us.
But I didn’t even notice any boredom because of the fun of taking in the exotic scenery and the variety of people.
Signs hung out toward the street in a language and style different from Seoul’s, cramped and shabby yet each building so distinctive it felt like it had its own history and story, luxury cars lined up along roads made absurdly narrow by modernization that happened long ago compared to the neighborhood’s bustle, and against that, the boxy retro red taxis that helped compose a landscape that was uniquely Hong Kong. People standing in the street drinking beer with their group and chatting, people riding the rhythm in the middle of the road to the music leaking from pubs and clubs....
Everywhere my eyes landed was filled with strangeness and vitality.
Maybe because I’d just downed three or four shots in a place that called itself a bar but was basically a club, my heartbeat’s tempo wasn’t its usual. My chest felt light, and I kept laughing for no reason, so whenever I met my brother’s or my sister’s eyes, I grinned.
It wasn’t just us; it was everyone passing by. There wasn’t a single face that looked grim or depressed. If you peeled off a single layer of shell, each person would be carrying their own worries and weight about daily life, but in this time and place it was as if everyone had agreed to numb their awareness of their problems.
Truth is, a flashy street packed with people and noise like this doesn’t suit me. If you told me to come and go through a place like this every day, I really couldn’t. But here I was not a resident; I was an observer. Someone who’d taste a foreign culture for a moment and then return to my original place.
That outsider identity—the sense that my real life is separately located elsewhere—became the emotional basis that let me mix in here without discomfort. Maybe that’s what people call the charm of travel, or the thrill of stepping out of line.
Normally, after leaving Sukhee Kim’s studio, I would have holed up quietly in my hotel room and chewed over the conversation and the sensation as a way of processing the shock. But right now, I was putting that on hold and following impulse.
I wanted to be where he was.
I wanted to talk with him about Alienation, and even if I couldn’t, I still just wanted to be with him. And I moved simply because I wanted to. Maybe it’s nothing to other people, but for me that process itself was already a deviation off the usual route.
Wherever that led me to arrive, at the very least it would be better than the self who used to fear choosing and moving.
It had been that way from the beginning.
When I was with him, my calm got ruffled, my emotions grew ridges and twists, and jagged parts of me suddenly stuck out. Now... I wanted to expose myself more to that stimulus. I was wanting change now, and he was the person who drew unexpected sides out of me.
On our third pass in front of a pub next to a burger joint, the timing matched with a party that was just getting up, and we finally managed to grab a table.
It was the outermost seat facing the street, and because the entire folding door had been thrown wide open, it was a spot where we could soak up the street’s atmosphere as it was. We were lucky.
“What, Seo Ihyeon. Are you actually drunk?”
My sister bent over laughing at me as I fumbled, too slow to get up onto the high stool in one go. Looking at her made me burst out laughing too. All of us were a little strange right now. Well... except for one person.
“Careful. The chair’s high, and if you fall you’ll get badly hurt. I’ve seen plenty of people break their noses drinking in places like this.”
Already seated, he gripped my left arm firmly as if to support me. With some reliance on his arm, I settled onto the stool.
Even though he’d drunk far more than me, he ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) was fine. He was matching my sister’s and my brother’s energy just enough, but there was no trace of drunkenness in his face or voice. I wanted to see him a little drunk, but so long as he and I were drinking together, it seemed impossible that I’d ever see him drunk first.
My sister and my brother didn’t even bother to sit; they were right back in dance-trance beside the table. Each holding a beer bottle, they’d already fallen in with the people dancing on the floor. When my brother Juhan mixed goofy gestures into his dancing, the nearby foreigners burst into laughter and raised their phone cameras. It had been the same back at the bar a little earlier—his sociability was astonishing.
Seeing no sign that those two intended to sit down anytime soon, he ordered drinks on his own and recommended me a beer from Brooklyn, saying it would suit me.
“Director, it seems like there’s nothing you don’t know.”
He suddenly arched a brow and looked back at me with a face that said what’s that supposed to mean.
At the high, narrow round table, he and I were sitting side by side with the spots where my sister and brother had tossed their bags across from us. In truth there was hardly any space between him and me. It was hard to even shift position without our knees and upper arms brushing.
A little laugh slipped out of me even to my own ears at how out-of-the-blue my comment was.
“Never mind.”
I shook my head and leaned an elbow on the table.
“There’s nothing you don’t know”—it was the sort of thing a six-year-old might say while looking up at a middle-school brother. I had no desire to look like a little kid to him, so why did I say that.
The beers in clear plastic cups were served to the table right away, and seeing them arrive, my sister and my brother came back. We made yet another toast—who knows the count by now—and drank. The beer he’d chosen had a slight bitterness with a touch of sweetness, easy to drink and smooth.
Maybe because they’d worked up a sweat dancing, my sister and brother nearly emptied their cups in an instant. Thanks to tequila’s high proof I was floating a bit myself, but under the impulse to get more drunk I lifted my beer to my lips often.
“You folks are the gallery staff from Seoul, right?”
Among the people passing in front of our table, a group raised their voices to us with friendly faces as if they knew us. They seemed to be staff from another gallery participating in the fair.
Sitting with their backs to the street, Yuni and my brother turned around and traded loud high fives with them like they’d run into close friends.
“The staff’s style was distinctive, so we remember. You’re totally stylish even off duty!”
“Ah... thanks for the compliment, but are you sure you’re not remembering us because of our boss’s looks?”
My brother asked playfully, pointing at him.
“Can’t say you’re wrong.”
Laughter burst from both sides.
“Oh, what was it again... Gallery... Ghost?”
The man with the most cheerful air among them scratched his beard with his index finger as he spoke.
“Phantom. Gallery Phantom.”
“Ah, Phantom! Sorry. I remembered it was something with a similar meaning.”
“At that point you basically got it right.”
Yuni patted the bearded man’s back as if encouraging him.
They chatted, mixing in a bit of bragging about how they’d brought about twenty works to attend the fair for the first time as an experiment, and by luck they were already sold out; they seemed excited by the fair’s results. Three friends, each trained in a different art genre, running a small gallery together in Amsterdam—their conversation especially clicked with Yuni.
At someone’s suggestion that they should at least take a commemorative photo, we all took one selfie with one of their phones, then another on his camera. He even stood up and moved out into the street so he could frame the three of us and their three together.
While my sister and brother exchanged social accounts with them after the photos, he leaned against the railing set between the sidewalk and the road, looking our way and smoking. Letting their noisy conversation wash past, I kept sneaking glances at him through the spaces between their arms and shoulders.
“Excuse me.”
Startled by a face that suddenly popped into my field of view, I pulled my upper body back a little. The cheerful bearded man tugged his colleague to his side and slung an arm around his neck. The guy had an endearingly cute look, dotted with freckles. Maybe about my age?
“Actually, he saw you at the venue and fell in love at first sight. Just now he spotted you as we were walking by and recognized you! Do you have a social account you could share?”
The freckled man looked a bit bashful, but he didn’t try to stop his colleague or deny what he said.
Faced with the sudden situation, my expression tightened as I searched for words.
In the world I’d been in, mostly Beta, most people were uneasy not only about same-sex relationships between Betas but also about the very existence of Alphas and Omegas, so this was unfamiliar to me.
Maybe it was a feature of Hong Kong, or maybe it was a common feature of societies with a high proportion of Alphas and Omegas—but both the man at the VIP preview and this man were expressing interest in me, a man, with an attitude that made nothing of it. Reacting awkwardly to this felt like it would stand out more.
“Ah... sorry. I don’t use social media....”
It wasn’t an excuse; it was the truth.
“Well, that’s fine. Somehow I figured.”
The bearded man shrugged for the freckled one and stepped back easily.
When they left they went in for another loud round of high fives, playfully pushing the freckled man forward to prompt one with me. Maybe he was playing it up under the influence of alcohol, but the way he lit up like he’d shaken hands with a favorite celebrity left an impression.
It was probably because, regardless of gender, no one had ever expressed interest in me so directly and frankly. Inwoo was like that to a degree, but he was always playful. In reality it was probably more than half a joke.
After they left, my sister and brother stepped down from their stools to smoke too. Indoors was no-smoking by default, but in Hong Kong the mood was that smoking outdoors was hardly restrained anywhere. He had just finished one, but fell in with them and lit another. Then he stepped back a few paces, camera in hand, to shoot them.
It was exactly the scene I’d seen in the “Old Future” posting.
The background was different, and my brother and sister were dressed differently, but the situation matched the photo marked “Photo by Kun.”
Two people blending naturally into the Soho street and enjoying the moment comfortably in their own way, and him just as naturally catching their moment in a photograph.
Suddenly, all the surrounding noise receded. There were no barriers between them and me, and he wasn’t setting an invisible glass wall between us like at the beginning, yet the mere few steps of distance felt like a clear dividing line separating people who shone on their own from me, who didn’t.
As I reached for my beer in a wave of bitterness, his lens suddenly swung toward me.
And before I could turn my head away, the shutter clicked. He immediately checked the me he’d shot on the screen. Watching him bring the cigarette to his faintly smiling lips, I stepped down from the stool and went over to them.
My sister laughed and threw an arm over my shoulders.
“Seo Ihyeon, your popularity is very international.”
At her amused line, my brother laughed too. But he simply looked down at me while smoking; he didn’t smile.
“I want to try smoking too.”
“......”
All three paused mid-breath and focused on me. I wondered if I’d said something I shouldn’t and looked over their faces one by one. Last, I looked up at his face; he had paused with the cigarette near his lips, then slowly moved his hand again and drew on the filter. The ashen ember flared red at the edge of his lips.
My sister tilted her head a little and grinned.
“Can I ask why you want to?”
