With that indifferent look and air of “if it’s what the staff want and decided, then so be it,” the man ate his sandwich and drank his coffee while I received the next day’s schedule.
When we left the office, he only tipped his chin slightly from his seat over other people’s shoulders. His gaze was already withdrawn before I could return the greeting.
As soon as I got into the taxi and shut the door, it was like that was the signal—the real world rushed back in. The song on the radio, the driver up front humming along, the view outside the window—they all demanded energy from me to accept them as real.
If I had the taxi turn back now, I felt like something called “Gallery Phantom” would vanish as if it had never been.
■ ■ ■
The VIP opening began at three in the afternoon.
About the later-than-expected start time, Yuni explained:
“Our gallery’s main clients are mostly heavy hitters in fashion and entertainment. Opening in the morning is pointless—no one comes. Most of them don’t even start their day until noon.”
It made sense. I didn’t know who the hottest celebrity was right now and I’d never flipped through a fashion magazine; I was miles from trends or “sense.” But I had enough common sense to guess at the irregular lives those fields kept.
What puzzled me was that the gallery’s main clients were fashion and entertainment people.
Those two fields are close to each other, sure, but a gallery dealing in fine art didn’t look deeply tied to them. Maybe while I was living like a recluse in the fishing village, the demographic of art buyers had diversified enough that a gallery’s client base could be filled with fashion and entertainment figures.
By a traditional lens, Yuni and Juhan, too, looked far more like models or designers than the kind of gallery staff who would stand before an ink painting and guide visitors on the power and spring of line or the imagination afforded by negative space.
Since it was a day for VIP clients, I wondered if they’d dress neatly like other curators. Not at all.
There were even more piercings and accessories, plus makeup that matched the look; if anything, they’d put in more effort than yesterday.
After carrying all the fresh-from-the-printer pamphlets into the office and separating what was for the main exhibition from today’s handouts, I asked about something I’d been a little curious about since yesterday.
“Phantom must have a very free dress code.”
Coming back from setting the main-exhibition stack on the window ledge, Juhan gave a little snort like he’d expected that question.
“Our gallery?”
When I nodded, he elaborated.
“Our business policy’s a little unique. Since our regulars are in entertainment and fashion, the director’s policy is that to appeal to them, the staff need a certain level of style too. So distinctive looks are actually welcome.”
“If not for that, Gwon Juhan would’ve been cut at the interview.”
Yuni had just come back from checking on the caterers and tossed that over her shoulder as she passed our worktable.
“Who dragged me to an interview I didn’t even want?”
Juhan spun around, bristling in mock outrage, but he didn’t get a rise out of Yuni. Her phone, which had been going off almost nonstop since I arrived, started ringing again.
He quickly turned back to slip pamphlets into plastic sleeves. He gave up fast.
“It’s great for us. We don’t have to split into a ‘work self’ and a ‘post-work self,’ and they even cover clothing costs.”
I could accept that a gallery with fashion and entertainment clients would relax attire—but I still wondered how a gallery’s main clientele had come to be people from those industries.
It wasn’t the kind of question that would keep me up at night if I didn’t get a crisp answer, so I just nodded.
“You know how there are tons of Alphas and Omegas in entertainment, right? You’re gonna have plenty to feast your eyes on today.”
Even among today’s popular celebrities, there were maybe one or two I could match names to faces. Still, if I remembered a few to tell Morae and Han I, it might give us something to talk about over beer.
Juhan told me to look forward to the Alphas and celebrities at the party, but I doubted there’d be anyone more “Alpha-like,” more “Alpha,” than the man from yesterday—the director of Phantom.
Even if he turned out not to be an Alpha—say, even a Beta—to an ordinary person like me, he was the very image of a Golden Alpha.
It wasn’t just the near-foreign features with a slight East-Asian note that gave a mixed-blood air (among mixed-blood, he skewed much more Western. I hadn’t confirmed whether he was mixed or not, but biologically, there was no way those features and those eyes were purely East Asian).
The unique, incomparable atmosphere and presence he gave off were matters of sensation, not logic. Maybe I could draw it, but if you told me to explain it in words, that would be hard.
Greater. Mightier. —It wasn’t that concept. It didn’t feel like a different race. Even if a stunningly beautiful foreigner stands before you, in the end it’s “same species, just very different.”
What on earth is this, then? —The light shock he triggered was of that kind.
If those sensual lips, with the upper lip just a little lifted, parted, he seemed like he’d speak some unfamiliar, beautiful alien tongue that sounded like music.
His personality didn’t seem very easy, but I couldn’t deny the natural curiosity a new being evokes—the gaze you can’t help but send one more time.
Was he truly a “more” special Golden Alpha? Or was that level of presence common among Alphas? Like Juhan said, after seeing the range of Alphas at tonight’s party, maybe I’d be able to tell.
After we bagged all the pamphlets and I carried them to the temporary desk in the upstairs gallery, I came back to the office to find the teacher had arrived and was talking with Yuni. I smiled and went over; the teacher smiled back and lightly brushed my bangs.
“Where’s the director?”
The teacher asked Yuni.
“He’s having lunch with Inwoo and coming straight over with him.”
“So we’re basically set. Ha... with this death schedule I honestly wondered if it was even possible, but somehow it is. We even have more wiggle room than usual! Just one extra body and it’s night and day, huh?”
Hooking an arm over my shoulder, the teacher looked to Yuni and Juhan for confirmation that I’d helped this run. As if they’d been waiting for the question, both of them emphatically insisted the gallery urgently needed more hands.
Once the upstairs catering was done, we were fine for a three o’clock open. We sat around the table with coffees the teacher had brought, taking one last breather before the opening started.
“Yuni and Juhan will have to take turns handling clients. Sometimes we’ve got a client with questions about a work when both the director and I are tied up. If it’s busy, there might be times when both Yuni and Juhan have to leave the desk. Ihyeon, you just hand out pamphlets at the desk.”
I wasn’t practiced, but I wasn’t especially bashful either; I figured I could manage that much.
“Is it okay if I’m not... smiley and super friendly?”
“It’s fine, it’s fine. Clients will like that your blank face is the charm, Ihyeon. Don’t worry about—”
The teacher was encouraging me with the hard-to-agree-with idea that my flat face was attractive when the words trailed off and stopped completely. The smile drained away, and the face pinched up like after a swallow of something bitter.
“I’m out of my mind... Of course. I knew it—‘this time it’s smooth’ was a red flag.”
The three of us fixed our eyes on the teacher, who rubbed their face with both palms and muttered.
“The editor-in-chief of —the book they just published—I think I left it in the bathroom! I had to look like I’d read it, so I was flipping through it until morning. What is wrong with me?”
Before the teacher could finish berating themself, Yuni was already on her feet.
“I’ll grab a taxi and run ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) down to buy it. Thirty minutes round trip.”
“We can’t not have the book, Yuni. No matter how well I say I’ve read it, if the physical copy isn’t there, that won’t fly... He’s the type to sulk and drag it out for months.”
By the time the teacher practically shouted that with a stricken look, Yuni was already at her desk at the back, grabbing her wallet.
I hesitated for a breath, then stood and lightly caught Yuni’s arm.
“I’ll go.”
She looked at me for a moment, then I checked the wall clock hanging from the column by the window. It was almost three.
“If you’re gone, the whole operation jams. If I step out, it won’t be a disaster. I’ll go.”
“...All right, please.”
It was another side of her from last night, when she’d given orders before we’d even exchanged names. Asking an unplanned favor of someone only temporarily helping clearly didn’t sit well; she looked apologetic. I did my best to smile back. I could see what Juhan meant when he called us both shy types.
We decided she’d text me the book info. As I hurried out, I could hear her light nagging and the teacher’s mock-pleading voice asking her forgiveness in the background.
Just as Yuni said, there was a big bookstore ten minutes away by taxi. Back in middle school I’d come a few times with friends under the pretense of buying study guides. The interior had changed a lot—maybe there’d been a major remodel—but I had no time to marvel at the transformation.
It wasn’t hard to find and buy the book, but since it was a holiday afternoon in the city center, getting a taxi back took a bit. Yuni texted that there was still time before the author arrived, so this would be enough, and only then did I lean back and exhale.
The way back to the gallery was more congested than the way down. The nearby streets were dense with chic cafés and restaurants, and the narrow roads and alleys were packed with people out for the holiday.
I checked how far we’d gotten between flipping through the book pulled from the paper bag; inevitably I felt a little pressed for time.
When we were about ten meters from the entrance.
A large car with a solid silhouette turned into Phantom’s front lot. It was not a common sight—an enormous car. But despite the overwhelming size and somewhat formal, straight lines, it was elegant rather than clumsy. Anyone could tell it was a serious luxury car, even without knowing cars.
Import sedans on the road were common, but maybe because its frame was bigger than most SUVs, or because its outline, different from a typical sedan, suggested a motorcade car, it had a way of overpowering the eye.
Maybe I was jumping to conclusions, but I thought I knew whose it was.
I had the driver stop by a small hanok-style café a short way from Phantom.
The person getting out of the driver’s seat after parking in the small lot—room for four or five cars—was, as expected, Phantom’s director.
He stepped out in a shirt with its collar spread wide to bare the rooted length of his strong neck and a light suit in a thin fabric, his hair falling in a soft wave.
Wearing a sky-blue suit a shade deeper than his eye color (he had sunglasses on now), with a hint of cobalt, he looked more flamboyant than yesterday, and somehow more at ease. It was like the men in an old film, Italians going to the countryside for a weekend picnic. A suit, but not stiff; relaxed, but not casual.
“The weather is absurdly good. And we’re supposed to hole up in a windowless gallery and paste on social smiles... You owe me a very expensive meal.”
“You think this is just for me? Don’t whine.”
A second man got out of the passenger seat, grumbling at him; the director shot back, firm. The passenger, also in dark sunglasses, was tall and well-built too, but clearly Korean.
While I stood by the entrance debating whether to slip in first or wait for them to go ahead, their eyes found me. I dipped my head in a short greeting.
“Don’t recognize that face. Who’s this? New boyfriend?”
The passenger showed blatant curiosity, more welcoming than the director, and asked the absurd question. The director’s brows drew together at once.
“I’d need a boyfriend to have a new one.”
“Why, aren’t you Lau Weikun—the guy who becomes a sweet boyfriend in bed no matter who the partner is?”
Needling him, the other man pressed. The director snorted, a dismissive huff, but with the look of someone who’d just heard a genuinely funny joke.
“Who’s been running around saying that, that I was sweet.”
He handed the key to a valet hired just for today and slipped off his sunglasses, tucking them into his breast pocket.
“Then that jerk didn’t sleep with me.”
There was still a smile at the corner of his mouth. It didn’t look pure in motive. The kind of smile a person wears not when they’re offended by rudeness but when they feel they’ve found a leverage point.
There were about ten paces between us. I considered just going in ahead while they chatted about me as if I weren’t there, but in the end he was the owner of the place where I’d come to work.
“So, anyway—not your boyfriend, right?”
Rounding the front bumper toward him, the passenger squeezed the director’s shoulder lightly, then took off his sunglasses and held one temple to his lips, looking at me as if to confirm.
This man also had unusually good proportions and a handsome face by ordinary standards, but he didn’t give off that alien, otherworldly dissonance that made you wonder if he might not be human. At least this one was the same kind of person as me. Someone with better outward assets, someone more polished.
