“Before... when I saw your Hong Kong post on the Old Future site. I thought if I ever came to Hong Kong, I wanted to try smoking at least once.”
I swept down my arm and added, “Back then, I didn’t know I’d be coming to Hong Kong this soon.”
My sister unwound the arm she’d had around my neck and nodded.
“Well, it wouldn’t make sense for us to say it’s bad for you while we’re standing here smoking.”
Then she looked up at him and asked, “Can I give him one?”
“Why are you asking my permission? Is there anyone here who isn’t an adult?”
With a face that said she knew he’d say that, my sister gave a quick laugh, then fished in her back pocket. Handing me a cigarette and a lighter, she gave a small shake of her head.
“Ugh, why does this feel like we’re doing something bad? You are twenty-two, right?”
My sister and my brother were the kind of people who didn’t even clearly count as smokers. So I could fully imagine they didn’t feel like encouraging me to smoke. Instead of giving a long explanation that I had no intention of becoming a smoker, I just smiled, and my sister smiled back and ruffled my hair. Then she and my brother dove back into the pub where the music had changed.
Watching the two of them, instantly excited and swallowed by the crowd as if a favorite song had started, I put the cigarette to my lips.
Sparking the lighter and bringing it to the tip of the cigarette, then whoosh, drawing in—the whole process was clumsy even to me.
Unlike the way he’d said there was nothing special about it, he watched each awkward step of my first smoke so openly it was embarrassing. Then he picked up the camera.
“Don’t... take a picture.”
I pulled his wrist down as he adjusted the lens toward me and turned my head.
“Why?”
There was a trace of laughter in his voice as he asked.
“It won’t be any fun to shoot.”
“So you’re saying the photos I take aren’t any fun?”
“......”
I knew he was teasing, but my gaze wavered up at him with the hope he wouldn’t take it that way. In the instant I hesitated, the lens swung back to me. The shutter clicked before I could dodge.
“At least the Seo Ihyeon I photograph is interesting to me.”
Lowering the camera with a satisfied air, he set his hand on the rail beside me. His chest and shoulder, angled toward me, were right in front of my eyes. I wanted to lean into him, blaming the mixed haze of tequila and beer and the dizziness of my first cigarette.
But that was a boldness I couldn’t act on, something I couldn’t do. Just having the thought startled me, and as if to snuff it out with harmless smoke, I pulled again on the cigarette.
The unfamiliar acrid air felt like it was cinching tight around my throat. My tongue prickled, and I felt vividly that I was feeding something bad down toward my trachea and lungs.
Even when I was younger and more foolish, I’d never thought smoking looked cool. I wasn’t suddenly putting on late-blooming affectation either. Like my sister said in her post, I just wanted to share that feeling of letting yourself be a little dissolute, or generous, loosening the tension that kept your everyday self in place and looking around you.
To be more honest, I wanted to get even a little closer to that “strange country” that included my sister, my brother, and him. In the end I wondered if it was just the immature mimicry of copying a movie scene from an actor you want to resemble, and a silly laugh slipped out.
“It really does feel like I’m in a strange country.”
With the world spinning lazily in front of me, my voice went languid on its own.
I focused on him, looking down at me without a flicker in his brow.
“Mr. Rabbit.”
“Rabbit?”
This time one of his eyebrows pricked upward. Mr. Rabbit. The words slipped out before I knew it. To gather myself, I wiped my face with the hand not holding the cigarette and laughed to myself. Looking back, he really was Mr. Rabbit leading me into a strange country.
“I’m sorry. I guess I’m drunk. I keep saying weird things.”
To hide the heat flushing my face, I took one more drag from a cigarette that was already almost burned down. His hand came in, covering the hand that held my cigarette, and took it from my lips. The touch was very gentle.
When I looked up, he was looking down at me as he drew deeply on the cigarette he’d taken from me. Deep enough to hollow both cheeks. Then, with a long stream out through the seam of his lips, he deftly tapped the ash with his index finger.
“Let’s get more drunk, then. That’s what we came out for.”
He flicked the butt into the pub’s ashtray as he said it, and I was just about to leave the railing with him when someone carefully caught my arm.
“Um...”
“......”
It was the freckled man. My eyes went wide at the unexpected turn.
His group was nowhere to be seen. His breath was ragged like he’d hurried back the way he’d come, and his face was flushed.
“Sorry, but I was wondering if we could at least exchange email addresses.”
Shy but smiling, he met my eyes.
There was something like pure energy in his goodwill. It wasn’t like the sticky come-on from the man at the VIP preview who went on about making travel memories. Feeling simple goodwill for someone and expressing it so frankly and cleanly like this... regardless of the fact that goodwill was aimed at me, it just... looked good.
“I’m actually planning a trip to Korea this winter, and I thought if we exchange emails and it works out, maybe we could meet again in Seoul then. And, uh, please forget what my friend said earlier about falling in love at first sight! It’s just, since it’s such a long distance anyway, I thought we could at least be friends...”
As he kept rubbing the back of his neck while talking, he kept darting glances at him. He’s not the kind of person who lacks social antennae, so I don’t know why, but he didn’t step away; he stayed and watched the whole thing.
“Ah... my boyfriend... doesn’t really like that kind of thing. I’m sorry.”
I didn’t find the man’s confession unpleasant at all, and like he said, I was interested enough in his background that I could have been friends, but I couldn’t deny that my heart was somewhere else.
I wasn’t at all used to receiving a confession, and I didn’t know a polished way to back out of this sort of situation, so I fumbled an awkward lie I’d seen or heard somewhere.
“I see. So you do have a boyfriend.”
When the man’s eyes flicked to him with a bitter smile, that’s when it hit me. I hadn’t meant to imply he was my “boyfriend,” but I realized too late it could be heard that way.
“Well then. Have a great trip. I’m glad we got to talk.”
Seeing the youthful face turning away without hiding his regret, I felt bad. I regretted answering someone’s pure goodwill with a pointless lie.
“Hm... I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”
I was also sorry to him, who had suddenly become my boyfriend by implication. But contrary to my worry, he seemed not to mind that misunderstanding at all. If anything, he looked pleased.
“You know I don’t.”
Embarrassment washed over me belatedly at having laid out a confession and a rejection in front of him, and as soon as I sat down I knocked back gulps of beer. My sister and brother had gone so deep into the back of the hall I couldn’t even see them.
“I didn’t know. How would I know? Have we ever talked about that?”
For whatever reason he stayed in a teasing mood that made him look happy.
Wanting to change the subject somehow, I reached for the camera hanging from his neck.
“Can I see the photos?”
“......”
When my hand touched the camera, he went rigid. It was a bold move for me, but I hadn’t touched his body, so I didn’t expect him to startle that much. Normally I would have backed off here, but a slightly mischievous stubbornness rose up. Sometimes I got like this in front of him, even without the alcohol.
“Can’t I?”
I tugged the camera a bit more toward me and asked again.
He wasn’t the type to sling a camera around his neck and hit the streets no matter what city he was in, so when he casually looped the strap over his neck as he got out of the car, it had really surprised me. Because of that one compact camera, smaller than my palm, he even looked a little like an excited tourist, and that was a bit... cute.
“Mm... I probably shouldn’t show you.”
He slipped off the strap, took the camera in his left hand, and held his arm out so I couldn’t reach. Then he said,
“Why not.”
I asked with a hint of complaint. He’d taken all he wanted even though cameras make me uneasy, and now he wouldn’t show me the result. It felt unfair.
“Seo Ihyeon, you’re a fortune-teller. If you see ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ my photos, you’ll read everything.”
“...Read what?”
“......”
Our eyes met. He’d tossed it off without much thought, but he clamped his mouth shut like someone whose core had been seen through. Somehow I had ended up lunging into his space like I meant to snatch the camera, and he had wrapped an arm around my back to hold me off, tugging me backward.
At a very close distance, his eyes carefully traced here and there over my face as if feeling it out. Sometimes he looked at me like this. Maybe because we were close, the scent of his cologne tickled right under my nose.
“How much did you drink that time, with Choi Inwoo?”
“Sorry? When...?”
I was just trying to chase the memory as Inwoo’s name came up at an unexpected moment when my brother Juhan suddenly appeared from behind and grabbed him in a piggyback-like hug.
“Director, I’m dying of thirst. Beer, please, beer.”
“Ugh... what a nuisance.”
He openly pulled a put-upon face and grumbled, but because it was no different from usual, it felt like all of it was a joke. My brother and sister didn’t care at all.
“If you won’t keep your butts in the seats, then just go to a club. I’ll give you my card.”
“As much as I want to, the fair still has two days left, so we have to be back by midnight and sleep. We can party all we want at Sunday’s party.”
Draining the rest of the beer in his glass, my brother fanned his sweat-slick face with his hand.
The taut tension that had been stretched between him and me a moment earlier vanished from our table as if it had been a lie, and like every table around us we were boisterous in an instant.
“Wait. But why are you suddenly trying to send us to a club? We’re absolutely back by twelve until the fair ends.”
From under her thinly narrowed lids, my sister shot him a suspicious look.
“You’re going to send us to a club and then slip off somewhere nice by yourself, aren’t you?”
Wiping his beery mouth with the back of his hand, my brother hopped in next. He scrunched his face and, as if to keep me, looped the strap back around his neck.
“You wouldn’t keep your butts in the seats, so I said if you’re going to do that, just go to a club. Is that really so suspicious?”
“Hm... you’re not that kind of person...”
“If you’re not going, then get up. I need to drop you at the hotel and go pick up Chief Han.”
He looked at the watch on his left wrist and stood.
The manager in charge of Phantom’s sales was at yet another string of parties hosted by other galleries tonight. Since he had to go collect him, even if my sister and brother went to a club, there was no way he could slip off somewhere “nice.”
We left the pub and waited by a nearby crosswalk for the car to come. My sister and brother still hadn’t cooled down; they couldn’t keep still for a moment, bouncing to the music leaking from nearby shops. We needed to head back to the hotel, but Friday night in Soho was still in full swing.
I felt reluctant to leave. With the buzz, my feelings were obviously showing more nakedly than usual. If I wanted to hide even a fragment of them, I shouldn’t look, but my eyes kept seeking him.
Truth is, there was a lot I wanted to say. I’m not glib, so even if I got the chance, I wouldn’t be able to steer the conversation smoothly, but there was a lot I wanted to ask.
What his “alienation” was, the not-common reason that made him connect with Alienation. When he learned Alienation was my painting... how he felt. Disappointed, surprised. Or whether, no matter how dear the painting, for him artist and work were strictly separate, so there was never any such thing as seeing me differently because of the painting.
Those... miscellaneous, trivial thoughts.
With his arms folded firm across his chest, watching me, he sighed and mussed his hair. Then he clicked his tongue, strode in close, and gripped my arms as if to lift me.
“And you’re Beta, like this?”
Not demanding an answer, just talking to himself, he looked straight down at me, sparks in his eyes.
“On Sunday, we won’t be interrupted.”
I didn’t know exactly what interruption he meant, but under the sudden sweep of his scent flooding over me, none of that mattered. The scent I’d only thought of as odd, I was already wanting more.
