"Ah... I was just in the shower.... Did you call earlier?"
[When you see the missed calls later, don’t get scared. It’s not that I’m a stalker—on a day like today, you didn’t pick up, so I worried, that’s all.]
"I’m sorry. I told you I got in safely, so I thought we were fine now...."
They had accepted the proposal and wanted to leave tomorrow. I had called him right outside the hotel. He said there was no problem—just pack right away and move to the place he’d prepared.
Morae and my brother, arriving at the penthouse he’d arranged and said was secure because of its tight security after taking the car he sent, started worrying about me now, saying: what if your director’s goal isn’t to hand us to my dad but to win your trust by treating us this well and then sell you off somewhere.
What profit would he make selling me somewhere. Me, whose résumé was basically that I’d once, for a brief moment, made a small splash painting.
Because I texted that I’d arrived even before I sat down, I didn’t think he’d worry just because the call didn’t connect while I was in the shower.
[Saying “I’m going to shower now”... it sounds like I’m asking you to report even that. Now that I say it out loud, I do sound like a weirdo.]
Hearing the sheepish little laugh, as if he thought his worry had gone too far, I shook my head hard though he couldn’t see it.
Considering the time, care, and money he’d poured into this, he had every right to know as many details as he wanted.
"No. I’m just... not used to keeping in such careful contact, that’s all, not that your worrying is... weird, I... don’t... think...."
Maybe he’d tossed the words off without much thought and I was the one getting overheated; toward the end my voice trailed off, smaller.
He was quiet for a beat, then laughed very softly.
[Thank you—for defending me so hard on my behalf.]
The low resonance, like metal vibrating deep in his throat, was a good sound, a good voice.
Hearing his voice through the phone, it felt like the blood in my veins boiled. Biting my lower lip, I shut my eyes, chagrined that my condition was worse than I’d thought.
It wasn’t that he was putting on a special sweetness. I was simply taking in everything about him that way.
[So, are you sleeping between your brother and sister tonight, playing the baby?]
Even the more playful tone felt good. To shake off the illusion of his broad chest touching my bent back, I stood up on purpose and moved toward the window.
[Last night you had such a passionate night, and now you’re playing the innocent kid between your brother and sister? Mm... that’s a bit of a scam.]
He was still teasing, but I didn’t have the practiced ease to answer with blithe cheek. Frustrated by my clumsy lack of room in this relationship, I pressed my forehead to the cool window glass, chilled by the air conditioner. It wasn’t only age or experience; mostly it was my temperament.
Maybe he’d grown used to my un-fun reactions; after a small laugh to himself, he shifted topics naturally.
[How did your body feel today?]
"Better... than before."
The next subject was hard for me too, but this time I didn’t want to play the fool. He was my first for many things, but I was, after all, an adult.
[Hm... good. Still, I wish you’d rested today. Uncomfortable, right?]
"No, really... my body’s fine. The... after...."
[After?]
As if he didn’t know what I meant, he raised his tone at the end. I could almost see that clean face lifting an eyebrow in puzzlement.
When I lifted my forehead and looked ahead, my reflection in the black window—mirroring the city night now completely fallen—was burning red.
"Maybe because we did the aftercare right away... it was much better than last time."
[...]
His silence made my face heat more. I wanted to say it casually, naturally, but I didn’t think I’d pulled it off.
[Is saying “aftercare” that hard for you?]
I could hear a dangerous mischief in his voice.
[When we were doing it, you were so honest, you—]
"Y-you too, Director! You must be... really tired today, right?"
I rushed to cut him off, and my voice cracked; he didn’t laugh or tease me for going off-key. Instead he trapped me with something worse: a silence that felt like suffocation. I could almost feel his gray-blue eyes fixed on me—bold, slow, intent.
Maybe deciding to let me off at this point, he broke the silence with a light snort.
[I went home in the afternoon and slept hard, so don’t worry. Missing a night’s sleep isn’t much.]
It amazed me that, having not slept a wink, he’d still thought about my wet clothes; yet he talked as if everything he’d done today was nothing, so I wouldn’t feel too sorry or too grateful.
Perching on the low ledge beneath the window, I tugged the towel from my neck and worried it between my fingers.
"Thank you... for all of this. On my own, I... wouldn’t have figured out what to do."
He paused. It wasn’t the kind of pause where you weigh the meaning to avoid losing out. It felt like the kind where you leave time empty and let the feeling pool—silence you don’t want to break.
[Then... you’ll wear it for me, right? The sexy underwear.]
His answer swerved somewhere I hadn’t expected; I went blank for a beat, then a small laugh slipped out.
[Uh-oh? Why try to get by with a laugh? I’m serious.]
Even accepting thanks, he gently refused it like this. I had to admit his ability to resolve this hadn’t only been money and connections.
If I said okay here, I wondered, would a new line settle in our relationship—a line that said we used each other to satisfy our desires? Thinking that, I scrubbed my face with the towel.
Do I want to push myself into that kind of relationship, or not? Even that—I wanted to say it was uncertain... but that was hypocrisy.
I couldn’t pretend anymore that, given the chance, I wouldn’t sleep with him again without a moment’s hesitation.
The faint humor drained away, and his voice came again, more serious.
[I should tell Chief Han you’re going to paint. For what’s happening now—how much can I tell him? If there’s anything you don’t want said or want to tell him yourself, I’ll keep my mouth shut. It may feel a bit hasty, but once I decide on this sort of thing, I like to get it clean on paper quickly.]
"Everything I told you—you can pass on exactly as is."
[All right. Then while you’re doing a send-off with your brother and sister, I’ll be busy drafting a contract that says every painting you make from now on belongs to me.]
"I’d be grateful."
I spoke with a soundless smile, trusting he’d catch the faint smile in my voice.
[It’s a hassle, but before bed and again when you wake up tomorrow, send me a quick message.]
"Okay, I will."
Even then he didn’t say we should hang up, and fell silent again. I didn’t close either. Like awkward new lovers, reluctant to end a call out of a sweet unease, we let a pleasant tension pile up in the quiet.
He was the one who gave the silence a gentle ending first.
[It’s your last night and I kept you too long. Have a good time.]
The call lasted close to twenty minutes. Like after a film, his calls left an aftertaste. Not wanting it to dissipate, I sat there holding the phone for a long while, then got curious about the missed calls he’d made while I was showering.
I had been a little more tired than usual since yesterday and enjoyed the slackening warmth of a longer hot shower, but even so it had been only about thirty minutes. In that half hour, he’d left twenty-six missed calls. The most I’d ever had from a single person.
So that’s why he’d offered a preemptive excuse about not being a stalker, I thought, and stood with a crooked smile. I tossed the phone onto the bed, started out of the room, hesitated, turned back, picked it up again, and slid it into my pocket. I didn’t want to make him a stalker again.
In the living room, my brother and Morae had started on beers. Being long and narrow, the living room offered a far more open view than the guest room earlier.
"Seo Ihyeon, this room is seven million won a night."
Sitting pressed to my brother on one end of the sofa and peering at her phone, Morae turned and called out with a worried face. Back when I didn’t know his resources, it would have been unbelievable. Of course, even now, seven million a night didn’t feel real.
"Are you sure you’re not getting sold off to a deep-sea trawler?"
Maybe she’d looked up the nightly rate online; she pushed her screen toward me.
"How much do you think they’d get for selling me to a trawler."
"True. You’ve got more grit than you look, but you’re not exactly the muscle type."
She agreed quickly and grabbed a fresh beer off the table to hand me.
As I twisted the cap, I glanced over and saw two backpacks by the single armchair. Packed ahead for tomorrow, the backpacks holding everything they owned were starkly spare. They looked like people headed on a light two-night, three-day domestic trip, not moving their lives abroad.
I stared at the pair of packs, leaned back-to-back, then turned away and started drinking.
"So what does your director actually do? Running the gallery is a hobby, and he’s really a third-generation chaebol?"
The main sofa was long and deep enough for the three of us to sit in a line with generous space between. Leaning her head back to the rest, Morae, between my brother and me, looked at me.
"I think... something like that."
Considering what Yuni and Gwon Juhan had hinted in Hong Kong about his, or his family’s, wealth, calling him a chaebol heir wouldn’t be far off.
"But he doesn’t run the gallery as a hobby."
To him, Phantom wasn’t just a flashy business card. No one would drag a gallery up from the ground while enduring rumors that he bewitched people with pheromones to sell art, just for a title on a card.
"If he’s that rich, it makes sense he’s sharp about this stuff. I don’t know it well, but this isn’t local-rich scale. With money like that, you don’t grow up sheltered and clueless. There are political fights with outsiders, and even inside the family it’s intrigue; you can’t trust anyone around you. He might have been exposed to ugly scenes from young. From the look of it, his skill is no joke."
She was talking about the escape plan he’d laid out.
While we swung by the What Happened in Bali owner’s house to grab bags and moved here, he had spun up a temporary email and sent over meticulous materials on the plan he’d prepared.
According to it, my brother and Morae would reach Bali after fifteen nights and sixteen days, passing through a total of nine countries—not counting those only transited. It wasn’t all by plane; some stretches crossed borders by boat and bus.
He explained that if you twisted the route that ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) intricately, even hiring a top-notch private investigator, civilians wouldn’t be able to track them. Since it had come to this, he’d built the schedule so they could enjoy the journey too; “have a good time,” followed by a smile emoji.
After reading it, Morae seemed to trust him completely. She even used the word smitten, and for once I saw my brother jealous.
"Hey, where even is Minsk, Belarus? I didn’t know there was a country or city by those names."
Heading to the bedroom for a shower now that we’d packed and taken a breath, my brother raised his voice, and she and I shared a look and laughed.
It had been a day that was anything but light for all three of us. A completely different life would begin tomorrow. Without putting into words the sad fatigue and the vague fear swirling in our chests, we meant to spend the night as we always did.
That was our way. If we dragged everything out and examined it together—if that had been their way—I wouldn’t have held up.
"Your director."
"Huh?"
Staring blankly at my beer bottle, I jumped like a guilty thief at the word director.
"He must be very sure about your talent. I know nothing about art, but it can’t be common to put up that kind of deposit after a single work and help this much. He must be head over heels for Seo Ihyeon’s painting, right?"
It was coming from a third party who didn’t even know him, and it was about my painting, not me as someone to date, but hearing that he was head over heels for a part of me—honestly, it felt good.
Before I’d had the chance to like someone and feel a crush and share a rhythm different from daily life with them—before any of that—I’d dulled my heart, afraid of an emotional experience growing too fast, and ended up with a dry, thin feeling that barely shifted at what I saw or heard.
That wasn’t strong training; it was barren ground, stripping away the very material that could let me feel and savor richly.
So it amazed me that even my dried-out sensibility could be soaked through like this.
All the more since I wasn’t at all optimistic about our future, and didn’t even have the confidence to act toward an optimistic end, I was impressed by my own ability to keep finding reasons, moment by moment, to sustain feeling toward him.
Kneeling on the sofa with her knees up, Morae let her gaze rest meaninglessly on the label of her beer and half-murmured to herself,
"Meeting someone who recognizes your talent is as important as the talent itself. You’re lucky."
It felt like she’d left off, Before we leave, you got to meet someone like that—reminding me of our unreal goodbye looming tomorrow.
"Because we’re moving out before the lease ends, we’ll probably have to cover the brokerage fee to find the next tenant. A little under thirty million won should be coming in. We’ll pay your director back with that first. Once we’re in Bali we’ll pick up work and send a little every month. I’m going to look for instructor spots at a Korean-run surf camp. We’re long-stay, so we’ll probably get preference."
We’re three healthy twenty-somethings—seven tens of millions of won won’t take long; don’t stew about money, just focus on painting. Smiling like she knew exactly what I worried about, she tousled my hair lightly.
She’d stayed by me since the vague, flustered time when I didn’t know what to do with my own existence.
Whether it was years or a born intuition, his words had read me as well as hers; even on second thought, it still amazed me.
"Isn’t that exactly why your director helped us? To give you an environment to paint without worries. Whether it’s because he’s a personal fan of your work or because, as a gallery owner, his business sense says so—either way, he decided you’re worth that investment. So you just think about painting. Oh, and keep it from him that I first wondered if he might be in league with my dad."
I smiled at her last line, but there was something in her words I couldn’t let pass.
I had been tipping the bottle unconsciously when I suddenly wanted to ask her something.
If I asked Yuni or Gwon Juhan, they’d know instantly who I meant; but since Morae didn’t even know him, even if she guessed, it wouldn’t hit as hard. At least I wouldn’t be stuck squirming in front of the two of them together.
"Hey."
Pushing at the label softened by the beads of water with my fingertip, I spoke as solemnly as I could manage.
"If someone... feels guilty because their parents had to go through something hard because of them, then they’re probably... skeptical about romance and love, right?"
I regretted being so direct the moment it left my mouth.
"I mean—maybe they’ll have sex, but draw a line before anything deeper...."
It was as nerve-racking as confessing straight to him; my heart felt jammed in my throat. But I knew it was a meaningless flail. What could I confirm from a third party who wasn’t him.
"I’m like that too. I’m... scared of becoming special with just one person... of sharing everything with them."
That’s why I was scared of my brother and Morae breaking up. The stronger the communion you share together, the more devastating the rupture when it’s cut. I’d taken that force dead center before. The thing that makes you jump in or run away is, in the end, always the past.
"But doesn’t that mean you’re drawn to it even though you’re scared?"
"H-huh?"
"You’re asking because you keep being drawn to him anyway, right?"
"......"
Her face was calm as she asked. I hadn’t said I was drawn to that person, but on that point she was completely certain. Denial felt useless; with my face flushed, I managed a small nod.
"Then couldn’t it be the same for him? Like you—unstable but still helplessly drawn—maybe someone could appear for him too, someone he wants so badly that he topples the line he drew and goes after them anyway."
They say romantic feeling isn’t the decoration you put on top of a tower of logic. He too might get swept by passion even if he didn’t want to. Still, imagining that the person who could shake and undo him that much might be me—that was strangely hard.
"Honestly, I’m scared too."
Her voice dropped suddenly, as if aware someone might hear. I turned to look, unsure I’d heard right, but she seemed deep in thought and didn’t feel my gaze.
"A minute ago I sounded so sure I wouldn’t be swayed by a little mood swing, but like your uncle said, hearts can change, and no one can be certain about the future. I won’t regret the fact that I chose for myself no matter what end waits, but that doesn’t mean I’m not afraid of the pain that choice might bring. Whether that’s the loss from breaking up with Seo Ihan, or guilt toward my family...."
After a few more sips of beer, she looked down at the papers he’d sent—printed and scattered across the table—and went on.
"In the end, I think what matters is learning what hurts you more. For me, handing my choices to someone else without really looking at my inner wants—that itself is pain. For someone else, maybe the greater pain is the uncertainty of not being safe. No matter how many general signposts there are, the real sensation of happiness or pain is different for each person. Maybe it’s not that I’m not scared; maybe I’m choosing the path to escape something even scarier."
Finishing calmly, she suddenly looked over at me and narrowed her eyes with a smile.
"But is this, by any chance, about Mr. Rabbit?"
Heat flared across my face and ears so fast I couldn’t deny it.
If it was this easy for someone who’d never even met him to catch on, I’d have to hide it with my life from Yuni and Gwon Juhan. Just imagining what would happen if they found out made me shiver with a light fear.
"Hmm, I see... so that’s how it is."
She half-murmured something I couldn’t parse and smiled with a sly squint. I didn’t know what she was agreeing to, and I didn’t have the nerve to ask in case it turned into questions about me.
"What a shame. Our Seo Ihyeon’s first love, and we’re leaving without even seeing his face."
After that, she didn’t dig deeper.
But as sweet as her guess was—that he was head over heels for my paintings—the idea that this feeling was a first love just flustered me.
The impression of first love felt different from second or third.
That word conjured something awkward but guilelessly honest, raw and fresh, like a tender leaf that couldn’t sprout from a dried branch. A short, helpless laugh slipped out, like when you face your own ridiculous mistake.
I didn’t want to spout nonsense that a few nights together and some talk had me giddy and in love. The love I meant wasn’t that simple.
But this feeling had the potential to become love. And love was still the change I feared most. Yet I wasn’t controlling it at all—for the foolish reason that it didn’t hurt right this second.
If his eyes and words toward me had stayed as indifferent as at first, I would have dried this feeling out to keep it from growing, just to avoid immediate pain.
He told me to text before bed, but I wanted to call. I wanted to hear his voice and see his face. I wanted to hold him, to touch bare skin, his heat. And I wanted to tell him all that.
I imagine actually doing it—confessing with action. In the next scene, the image that unfolds is his troubled face, forcing a laugh and letting his eyes slide away.
