Everyone’s puzzled looks turned to the Chief, but the Chief was happily rolling enoki mushrooms in lamb. It already seemed like a conclusion the two of them had reached after conferring.
As if the meal were truly over, he drank some water, set the glass down, and added,
“Chicago, I’m going with Yuni Baek.”
Aaaaagh!
With a near-scream, my sister shot to her feet. Her chair lost balance and clattered; I grabbed the backrest beside me in a hurry. Practically throwing her chopsticks onto the table, my sister wrapped an arm around his shoulder beside her and shook him, almost in a hug.
“Really? Director, really, really?”
She’s only two years older than me, but my sister has always felt five or six years older—composed, airtight, and never doubting herself. Everyone here knew this noisy reaction wasn’t some forced overacting.
Seeing her express pure joy so honestly—as if everything else vanished from sight—made even the onlookers catch the contagion of it. The satisfaction, excitement, and thrill she must be feeling right now—almost rapture—came through intact.
“Yeah, really. I figure Yuni Baek can handle that much now.”
He exaggerated his own wobble even more than my sister’s shaking, laughing as he did.
“But... without the Chief, just the two of us—will that work?”
Once the first surge of excitement settled, real worries must have kicked in. My sister glanced carefully at the Chief and spoke in a small voice.
“Actually, it was Chief Han’s idea. You practically conducted this art fair and ran the venue; maybe it’s time to trust you with something bigger—that’s what he said.”
“......”
My sister fell quiet.
New, more complicated emotions seeped into the eyes that had been filled only with pure excitement a moment ago.
Joy, gratitude, being moved. And after those passed, something big and solid, hard to name, welled up in their place....
Among people who recognize you and give you a push, maybe she was thinking of family. Wouldn’t she have wanted this support and trust from family before anyone else? It was only a hazy guess.
“You’re going as main staff, not support, so you’ll accompany the Director on every schedule. You’ll have to learn everything from one to ten—it’ll be brutal. Yuni Baek, you’ll do well, right?”
Looking up across the table at my sister, who sat a little way off, the Chief spoke. Instead of bursting, my sister gathered herself and smiled.
“Of course. I’ve waited for this moment for three years like a temple dog.”
“Who’s calling you a temple dog?”
The Chief widened his eyes and made a mock-angry face, and he—arms folded—nodded in agreement.
“Right, absolutely not. The real temple dog is the one still just stuffing his face even now.”
With a jerk of his chin, he tossed the joke toward Juhan. The mood loosened, and Juhan—already busy with his chopsticks again—dipped three or four pieces of meat into the soup and said flatly,
“What, is knowing my place and staying quiet a problem now? I don’t have that kind of ambition in the art world. You know that.”
Then he plunged lamb still pink in places deep into the sauce and chewed with relish.
“Show a little more drive. I’ll recognize you as your skill grows.”
“Well... if the Director gets on his knees and begs that /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ he needs me, I’ll consider it.”
The offer sounded sincere enough, but Juhan deliberately brushed it off with a lazy joke.
“Ah... Chicago in autumn. Lucky you. Lonely, atmospheric—perfect for mood and dates.”
Stretching his arms long over the table like a cat waking, Inwoo murmured toward the air with obvious envy.
“You could go whenever you want if you felt like it. And we’re not going there to play, okay?”
My sister scolded as she sat down, but Inwoo pretended not to hear. He turned his head so far his chin sank into his shoulder and looked at me. His trademark mischievous smile brimmed.
“So, while you’re on the Chicago trip... Ihyeon will be alone, huh?”
“......”
“Why would Ihyeon be alone? He’s got the Chief, and he’s got me.”
Inwoo shook his head at Juhan, who leaned back now that he was decently full and sipped cola.
“Gwon Juhan just acts world-weary—half the time he’s a total blank.”
While Inwoo and Juhan bickered about who had more dating experience, a staffer knocked and stepped in. In uniform, he set two paper bags of our preorder takeout on an empty chair.
My sister asked him to bring the bill, and as we waited for the staffer—with the corporate card—to return, everyone started getting ready to leave.
“We’re going for round two—then why’d we order takeout?”
Peering into a paper bag, Inwoo asked.
“Ihyeon’s crashing at his big brother’s and sister’s tonight. The Director arranged it.”
At Juhan’s answer, everyone looked at me and laughed.
It was in moments like this I really felt like Phantom’s youngest. I was a taciturn youngest with no knack for cute faces or antics that made people laugh, but sometimes, just because I was younger, Yuni and Juhan—and the Chief—would look at me fondly.
And he did too.
Right now he pretended not to hear Juhan’s jokes or the laughter, eyes fixed on his phone screen as if some important message had come in. But I remembered him asking old colleagues to look after me because I was still very young. And the smile he’d shown at my clumsy attempt to comfort him—maybe to lift his mood. It had been unmistakably the generous smile of someone older dealing with someone younger.
So I wouldn’t get deflated just because, at a moment like this, he didn’t turn to me in the mix and smile like I was cute.
There was nothing good in expecting a response from him that matched my feelings. Learning, steadily, how to press down my expectations and let go of hope—that was the only way not to let this get worse. Probably.
“Huh? So you’re not coming to round two, Ihyeon?”
After everyone stood, Inwoo was still in his chair. He grabbed my wrist and shook it, pulling a long, droopy-sad look at the corners of his eyes.
“It’s just... we were supposed to meet the day I got back, but things kept being busy and there wasn’t time. So I....”
“Ah... right. You came back a day late because you were sick.”
Putting a subtle stress on the words, Inwoo flicked his eyes toward him across the table. Maybe I was overthinking it, but sometimes Inwoo chilled me by seeming to know the things I hadn’t said.
“Hey, come on. Boring. Who do you think you’re here for?”
Then he nipped the inside of my wrist lightly and let go.
“Friday night, no notice, whining that you were stuck at the hospital sorting files and playing the pitiable card all by yourself, so I called you out. And now what?”
Juhan—who’d left out his lip piercing for the meal so he could put away four servings of lamb—popped it back in, jabbed his elbow onto Inwoo’s shoulder, and threatened. Inwoo yelped and surrendered.
I lifted my head, sensing his gaze over Yuni’s shoulder as she tucked her things into her bag, but it must have been a mistake; he raised his wrist to check his watch.
The rain sounded much closer the moment we passed out the main door of the restaurant, which sat on the second floor of a building topped by a business hotel. It was still coming down hard.
Juhan stepped right up to the wall of windows filling one side of the elevator hall, pressed his nose to the glass, and peered out.
In Hong Kong he’d been pleased about dodging the monsoon for a few days; now, Seoul was still in the thick of it. The rainy season that had kept us fretting all week about humidity in the underground storage and galleries was peaking today.
“Inwoo and the Chief should call a driver service... Director, you didn’t drink, right? Could you run Ihyeon home? It’s pouring too hard.”
He had one arm in a summer jacket in a near-navy blue. At my sister’s words, he turned toward me.
“No, it’s fine. I can take a bus.”
I shut my mouth at once, thinking I’d refused too fast and too stiffly. But I regretted it, because it must have looked like I was weirdly self-conscious.
“You’ve got a lot of stuff. Just ask for a ride. It’s only dropping you off for a minute—it’s not a big deal, right, Director?”
Before, when the Chief told him to drive me, he’d reacted without much enthusiasm. Now he would probably accept detouring a little to drop me off.
But for the time being, I wanted to avoid being alone with him in a tight space like the car interior. Not so much wanted to avoid as thought it would be better to avoid.
After a long wait in the underground garage, the elevator finally stopped on the second floor. Everyone filed in, and he, last aboard, hit the close button. He took the spot one step from me, leaning on the handrail.
The closeness in the elevator inevitably brought back the Hong Kong hotel elevator. I couldn’t tell if he was thinking the same thing, but the way his eyes rested down at his feet looked perfectly calm.
The tightening of the arm that had come around my waist from behind, the hot breath pouring into my ear—I could still feel the excitement. Not a great sign.
Even as I wished everything would blur, I drifted off several times a day, retracing the memory. Like someone afraid a moment might be exaggerated or fade even a little.
“Go down to the garage and ride with the Director, okay?”
My sister nudged me with her elbow and whispered.
“Then I’ll just take a taxi. It’s not even that far... there’s no need to go out of your way....”
“It’s Friday at this hour and the rain’s coming down like this—do you think a taxi will stop for you?”
Don’t be naive, she said, tapping my shoulder.
“Take him. It’s not far—dropping him off isn’t a big deal.”
He had watched our conversation in silence till then. Now he gripped the bar behind him and looked back at me. I couldn’t stand his eyes; I looked away first again, awkward and sheepish.
Since I’d come back to Seoul, I’d been the only one who felt awkward around him. I’d never exactly felt comfortable with him, but once I knew what I wanted from him, the vague, fluttering agitation I’d called discomfort turned into a dull ache and tightness.
All that time, it hadn’t been that he made me uncomfortable—I’d wanted him.
Attention, affection... desire.
And because I didn’t think I’d get what I wanted, I was antsy, and I mistook that antsy friction in my chest for discomfort.
Maybe that was it. What do I really know right now.
It seemed best not to close the distance with him if I could help it. But the stranger who hadn’t even realized his own feelings and still climbed onto the bed with him—he collapsed my resolve with ridiculous ease.
It seemed best not to be alone together, but I wanted to be alone together.
I bit and released my lower lip, staring at the scuffed toe of my old sneaker, almost touching his dress shoe.
“And I happen to have something to talk about.”
At his unhurried voice, I looked up. He wasn’t looking at me; he was looking at Inwoo. I followed his eyes without thinking and looked at Inwoo too. Across from him, Inwoo just smiled with that unreadable face.
■ ■ ■
“Feels more like a typhoon than the monsoon.”
The moment we drove out of the underground garage, rain hammered the car roof so loudly he glanced out the window and muttered.
“Even if we’d gotten a taxi, we would’ve been drenched getting in.”
As he said, it was the kind of rain that would soak you in the short time it takes to fold an umbrella. I thanked him again for the ride. He chuckled, saying this wasn’t something you thank someone for over and over.
“In Hong Kong, you seemed to have some English.”
As we stopped at the first light after leaving the garage, he brought up an unexpected topic. He’d never said anything about it in Hong Kong, so I blushed only now at the fact he’d been observing me without my knowing.
“No, just... basic level. What I learned in school....”
“You must have studied pretty steadily. With languages, your head can know it and your ear can catch it, but it only comes out of your mouth if it’s in your body.”
“I don’t think I was negligent with school. I didn’t... have much else to do.”
I’d lost the will to tackle anything, but for about the first year, if I didn’t do something I thought I’d go mad. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Classes and studying felt like assigned duties, and getting through them day by day strung the days together. After that, it settled in as habit.
“If you want to study English properly, I can get you a tutor. You could sit in on the lessons Yuni Baek and Gwon Juhan are taking together.”
