The place we arrived in the car he sent was a grand mansion set where you could look cleanly down over Hong Kong’s nightscape. The grounds were so large that it took another two or three minutes by car from the lower gate—where security staff were checking each vehicle—up to the front steps of the main house.
It was a party hosted by a major gallery with huge influence in the Asian art market, one that started in Hong Kong and kept growing at speed, and the year before last opened a branch in Singapore, successfully expanding its reach.
“It’s a gallery the Director and Chief once worked at together.”
My sister slipped a mirror into her small clutch, snapped it shut, and said, “This is probably a place rented just for tonight’s party. Hong Kong’s high society social scene is lively, so there are quite a few places like this. Mansions that are rented out for wedding receptions, luxury-brand events, or for the rich to throw parties.”
It was a world unrelated to me.
Cars were lined up along the road that formed a circle, approaching the mansion’s front door around a large installation piece that seemed to symbolize a pair, a man and a woman. According to my brother Juhan, they had probably invited nearly all the major galleries that took part in the fair and the art lovers who had gathered from all over the world to see it.
“Honestly, it’s showing off. It’s a chance to show art people worldwide that a gallery with this kind of power exists in Asia. It might sound like a nouveau-riche mindset, but if you’re aiming at the global market, your clients are all serious tycoons, so you do need to show a certain level of financial strength or influence. It’s a business of buying and selling works that go for billions, even tens of billions. In a way, it’s all publicity and investment.”
When the car carrying us slowed to a stop, a doorman in a black suit opened the door.
He, who had arrived first, had come out to the entrance to meet us.
It was a suit different from the one I’d seen at the VIP preview. Maybe because it was black, it gave the impression of being dressed much more formally tonight. Even though his whole body was wrapped in restraint, all in black, the feral energy of his physique and his strong sexual allure showed as they were.
Whether you were a kid like me who didn’t know the wide world well, or a polished upper-class person hauled to places like this countless times, anyone had to give him their eyes. Like a male lead who had stepped off a classic Hollywood movie poster, he was both classic and sensual in a suit.
After complimenting my sister’s and my brother’s styles in turn, his gaze finally came to me. The way his eyes swept me head to toe, as if appreciating a work, made me fuss needlessly with my collar.
“Thank you for the clothes.”
“Since you ended up attending on short notice, at the very least I should take care of your outfit.”
When we’d wrapped the fair for the day and gone back to the hotel to get ready for the party, a suit was hanging in my closet. A hotel staffer came to my room in person and said that Mr. Lau had prepared it and told me to wear it to the party. It was the first suit I’d worn in my life.
My brother Juhan even let out a shriek of envy, asking if it was from a brand the fashion-interested among the younger generation go wild for, but to me the design felt more fashionable than the regular suits I knew, and I wasn’t confident I could pull it off; it only felt awkward.
“It looks good on you.”
But the one who had arranged the suit looked satisfied. He even took two steps back so he could take in my whole figure at a glance.
“This seems... expensive...”
“Did Yuni do your hair?”
The suit clung along my body’s lines in a sleek, silky way; even the fabric felt luxurious, like it would slip if I touched it, so the price kept snagging at my mind. But he only lightly smoothed my hair and changed the subject.
“Yes.”
His fingertips skimmed the edge of my neatly set hair and lightly brushed my ear as he smiled.
“With your forehead showing, you somehow look even younger.”
He looked in a good mood, and unusually, he wasn’t hiding it. So I decided to stop prying about the price of the suit and shoes here. It wasn’t money I could settle on the spot anyway, and for now I didn’t want to kill the mood.
We all started up the steps to head inside toward the party, and my sister sidled close, put her nose to his shoulder, and sniffed.
“Huh? What is this, Director, did you put on cologne?”
“......”
Following two or three steps behind, I tangled my feet and nearly missed a stair.
“Well, a little.”
“Mmm, it smells great. That dark note is exactly my taste. But this is custom, right?”
At my sister’s wry question about a cake in a painting you can’t have, he only gave an ambiguous laugh.
Scent is the molecules of a substance diffusing in the air, and of course it can’t select targets to act on. But I realized I had never even considered the possibility that someone other than me could enjoy his distinctive scent.
What a stupid oblivion.
If you were as close as ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) my sister and he were now, anyone could smell his scent equally. Scent is the kind of thing where the smell of curry cooking in one house can make a whole alley hungry.
Even so, I’d focused up till now only on “his scent that I smell.”
The thought of someone else smelling that scent felt... unpleasant. Whether I had any right to that or not was a secondary issue. The fact that such an overreaching feeling was muddling my heart was, in itself, the problem.
It was late evening and completely dark outside, but inside, lights poured down bright enough to dazzle. A golden light that made everyone in the room stand out glamorously.
“Wow... of all the parties I’ve been to, this is the best. How rich was the gallery you worked for, Director? My jaw won’t close.”
Centered on the first-floor hall, the interior had multiple pop-up bars and a grand piano where jazz was being played live, an imposing DJ booth set up though still empty, and perfectly set table seating and couch seating. Not just my sister; my brother and I widened our eyes too.
“I’ll go find the Chief. I’m going to trail him and make sure I hand out cards properly tonight. You never know. If I hustle, maybe someone will check my blog or social and notice my talent.”
With her clutch stuffed full of business cards decorated in sparkling black sequins, my sister pushed up a gold-rimmed chain-frame and vanished toward the center of the hall, and my brother said he’d go to the second floor and pick up some timid Alpha who wasn’t coping in a corner and burn up the last night in Hong Kong.
Just like that, suddenly it was only him and me.
“Mm... let’s go together. It won’t be a fun spot, but.”
Hands in his pants pockets, he shrugged. Thinking of my own lacking English and dry temperament that would only make an unfun spot even more so, I shook my head.
“I’ll just have something at the bar. I’ve never been to a place like this, so I think it’ll be fun just to sit and people-watch. Don’t worry about me.”
“They were kind enough to invite all our gallery staff. Don’t do that—at least you go say hello to the gallery side here. Once we’ve done the greetings to a basic degree, we can leave.”
Seeing the slight trouble on his face as he said it, I couldn’t refuse further.
His former colleagues were gathered at the very center of the first-floor table seating. He introduced me as a staffer working with him from Seoul, and the mixed group of six or seven men and women all welcomed me with polite smiles. Every one of them was dressed both showily and elegantly, and it went without saying they looked used to places like this.
“He’s still very young. So please go easy on him with the teasing.”
“Wow... what is this? Hearing the great Lau Weikun say that makes me want to bully him more for no reason.”
Before I sat, he set a hand on my back and gave them a look as if to ask them to go easy, and at someone’s joke, everyone gave a light laugh.
Sometimes I was freshly struck by the ten-year age gap between him and me. Not that he acted frivolous as a rule, but maybe because even if he could be cold at times, his baseline atmosphere wasn’t authoritarian, or because his looks made it hard to gauge his age, I usually didn’t feel those ten years.
Tonight, being introduced as very young so please go easy didn’t feel purely bad.
“How is it working with Weikun? Not easy, right?”
At the question from his former colleague—currently a first-tier dealer—I answered by looking at him beside me and smiling instead. Everyone seemed already familiar with his working style, and the person who asked didn’t seem to be after a concrete answer.
“Ah... where would that temper have gone. Even back then, plenty cried and quit. Go on, tell us. He still speaks without filtering, says whatever comes to mind, right?”
The voice that cut against the easy atmosphere came from the man on my left.
Compared to the others at the table, he wore looser clothes, a freewheeling blond who was smiling, but I could feel the barbs in his words aimed at him. The smirk at his lips was twisted cold.
“Uh... he treats me well.”
I found myself leaning my upper body back a little as I answered, covering his thinly veiled hostility with a very thin smile. The man didn’t seem about to back off there.
“Come on, when else do you get to bad-mouth the boss to his face. It’s fine. When I worked with him, I had my share of rough treatment too. Everyone here knows what Lau Weikun’s temper is like.”
Whether he didn’t sense the table’s stiffening mood, or he pretended not to for the sake of his aim, on the face of a man who, smiling, masked his goading as jokes, I saw something like a strange impatience.
“No, really... he’s considerate.”
The early version of him—the one who prioritized those dear to him, made me feel alienated, and sometimes drew unfamiliar defiance out of me—had already faded inside me. The surplus disappointment I’d felt at his words and actions hadn’t been only because of his attitude; it had also been my feelings toward him mixed into how I saw him.
“Considerate? Wow... considerate? You all heard that, right? Lau Weikun is considerate to his staff?”
The man, who had been lounging as if he might slide out of his chair at any moment, straightened his torso and raised his voice to the rest of the table. Maybe only an hour had passed since the party started, but every time his jacket flapped, the smell of alcohol billowed.
Someone tried to calm him in gentle words, but he didn’t look like he meant to calm down.
“Considerate, how much? Kind? Or sweet?”
“Stop it. I asked you not to be nasty.”
At the man’s dogged questioning, he finally stepped in himself.
“This counts as nasty at a party? Come on, that’s overprotective. That’s not the Lau Weikun I knew. Since when did you start bothering to care even about staff?”
He whispered low to me in Korean that I didn’t have to engage with him point by point. With an apology too.
“Ah, or is he not just staff?”
Reaching for his glass, the man bent his back exaggeratedly and peered into my face. The pale green eyes, the whites reddened with blood, were full of fierce feeling.
“Right? Do people change that easily? Sounds like you’re doing other kinds of work than just gallery work.”
Mixed into the man’s relentless prodding and jabbing—almost passionate in its pace—was a kind of urgency.
If my hunch wasn’t wrong, the man wanted, even like this, for him to look his way, wanted to pull a reaction about himself out of him. It was a psychology I found hard to understand, but feelings that can be explained only by clear logic aren’t the only ones that exist in the world.
“Even if that were true, I couldn’t blame Kun for it. Anyone can see he’s extremely attractive. Working with him every day, it would be harder not to make a pass. But you really do look young. Kun, what’s the story? He’s not a minor, is he?”
The East Asian man who had briefly called him away at the VIP preview shifted the mood by changing the subject, and while the blond man entered a lull, the table’s topic slid to the cosmetic procedures currently popular in Hong Kong for a baby-face look. It didn’t seem like a subject of interest to me—or to him.
Catching my breath, I lifted my glass to wet my throat with champagne, when the blond man addressed me again, this time personally.
“If I made things awkward, I’m sorry. I was joking, but Weikun has been a bit fastidious about this sort of thing for a long time.”
His voice was lower, calmer than before.
“It’s fine.”
“Is this your first time in Hong Kong?”
“Yes.”
With him behind my back, I turned my shoulder slightly out of courtesy toward the man as I answered.
“You probably didn’t get to sightsee much because of the fair.”
Propping his chin on his hand, he looked overall disheveled, but if you looked closely his face was delicate. Above all, even tousled, his shining blond hair was beautiful. It was the first time I’d seen this kind of blond close up, and it was a little fascinating. It might not fit a situation where he was bothering people around him, but the thin, pale blond with not much yellow to it suited his nervous, willful air well.
“You haven’t even been up Victoria Peak yet, have you? Driving up the hill road at this hour and looking over the night view is really romantic.”
Suddenly his eyes lit as he looked straight at me.
“How about we slip out just the two of us and go right now?”
Since I thought his real interest was clearly elsewhere—in other words, behind my back—the offer was quite unexpected.
He set a hand on my shoulder and leaned in deeply, bringing his lips close to my ear.
