To someone who knew the Ihyeon of the past, these sketches were like a child refusing to speak.
“To anyone else it might pass, but for Seo Ihyeon this isn’t painting. He isn’t saying anything of his own.”
She’d acknowledged his uncommon insight into artists and art since the time they’d worked together in Hong Kong, but she couldn’t help being surprised that he could read this far into an artist he’d only encountered through a single work so far. She wondered if it was a limited talent that only surfaced because the subject was Seo Ihyeon, but there was no way to check.
While she wavered for a moment, his sunglassed face turned toward her.
“Why did Seo Ihyeon stop drawing?”
Even with the dark sunglasses, at this distance she could faintly see the outline of his eyes.
“Are you... asking me?”
At her counter-question he turned his face away evasively and tapped ash into the crystal ashtray.
“You’re not the type to hear that kind of thing from someone else. You don’t even ask the person themselves. When you found out I was divorced, that was probably the first time you realized I’d been married at all, right?”
“Whether someone I work with is married or not... that’s unnecessary information.”
As an excuse for this string of “things he doesn’t do,” it was flimsy in the extreme. He dragged deep on the cigarette.
“Drawing is what Ihyeon does... so why do you need information about why he quit drawing in the past? Enough to ask me instead of him?”
“......”
What mattered to her was whether he was clearly facing his own change and the reason for it.
While he was silent, drawing on the cigarette, the ice in the plastic cup of coffee melted and clinked against itself.
“Light that doesn’t know its own value is a nuisance.”
When he finally spoke, his lazy voice sounded like he was talking to himself.
“If you don’t know how strong you are, you don’t know how to control it, and you smash everything around you—you’re no different from a superpowered person. There’s a storm around them, but they have no idea the phenomenon in front of them is a result of themselves. As an artist, as a person, that kind of person is hard to deal with. Manager Han knows that too.”
He paused, took a short, deep drag, and tapped ash with a motion that looked a shade impatient.
“Seo Ihyeon has no idea how extraordinary his talent is. Or even if he does, he probably doesn’t care. His relative position doesn’t matter to him. He made a hard decision to take back painting—his language and identity—and he just wants, that way, to exist as himself again. Without crying to anyone, even if it takes a long time, he wants to get up on his own—and he thinks that’s the only way to repay the people who helped him...”
Whether he realized it or not, the way the words poured out without restraint proved how long and how seriously he’d observed and studied Ihyeon.
It sounded like a confession that Lau Weikun himself was having a hard time being swept by the storm wielded by a young light—Seo Ihyeon—who didn’t know his own ripple effect.
“If I’m going to help him find his voice inside the work... I figured I needed to know the past, whatever it is. If Manager Han thinks it’s not her place to tell me, then of course... I can’t force it.”
That was what he said, but the face with which he crushed the short butt showed, drip by drip, a stubborn desire to know at any cost.
“Just—can you tell me one thing.”
“......”
He laced the cigarette-less hands tight and faced her. Even half-hidden by sunglasses, it wasn’t hard to read a worry on his face that was close to fear.
He hesitated, lips moving a few times without sound.
“Was it... abuse? Or did something vile... happen to him... something like that?”
Just voicing the kind of tragedy he was imagining looked painful for him. His face was closer to begging her to say he’d barked up the wrong tree than to asking a question.
The unfamiliar sight of him hesitating and afraid before someone else’s past made her somewhat uneasy. A new side to a close acquaintance you think you know well is more often bewildering than refreshing.
Thinking that his interest in Ihyeon might be thicker and heavier than she’d expected, she wet her lower lip with her tongue. She couldn’t tell whether to be pleased or wary.
With superb looks and intellect and the right background on top, he had lived a life where he’d never needed to be desperate to get anything.
When he first came to Seoul and opened a mere sixty-pyeong gallery, he had strong faith in what his talent and effort would yield, and even as the owner of a small gallery, he always greeted clients with unruffled confidence. You couldn’t find a trace of cringing to sell one more piece or of fretting for immediate gain.
Among consumers of expensive art, some want to be treated with deference and have their vanity filled, but there’s always a group that satisfies their sense of superiority by being associated with someone attractive with a high eye. In truth, during Phantom’s growth to this point, the power of clients who’d become loyal, drawn by his charm, had been great.
And yet here was Lau Weikun, showing agitation out of concern for a past event that might or might not have happened to a twenty-two-year-old artist under contract.
It was almost enough to make her want to blurt out what she knew, just to spare him this mood where he looked like he’d go down on his knees if only he could hear there’d been nothing. But when she thought of Ihyeon, she couldn’t. If he hadn’t told him—or couldn’t—that meant he had his reasons.
She let out a small sigh and shook her head.
“You should hear that from Ihyeon directly. That way there won’t be any fallout between you two later.”
“You’re saying you can’t even answer that much? You know how tight-lipped Seo Ihyeon is. Who knows how long it’ll take to hear from his own mouth what happened... and you want me to carry this weight in the meantime? Don’t do this, Manager Han. You can tell me at least that much.”
Elbows on his thighs, fingers laced and brought to his lips, he shook his head.
“It isn’t the kind of vile thing you’re thinking of. Beyond that... you really need to hear it from Ihyeon.”
With a firmness that said she wouldn’t open her mouth any further, she ended it and picked up her sandwich again, though her appetite was gone. His face was still heavy, but he looked a little calmer than a moment ago.
She knew the difference in temperature between his outward stance toward artists and works and his inner stance, and she knew the real him supported and loved art—and the sincere artist’s drive to put true feeling into it—far more than his own words suggested.
Because she’d recognized that, she’d clicked with him in Hong Kong despite his reputation as a difficult partner, and she’d readily accepted his proposal to open a gallery together in Seoul.
She’d thought his interest in Ihyeon was merely an extension of that same passion for art and artists.
They hadn’t swapped details of their private lives, but as far as she knew, he hadn’t had a real relationship once in the past ten years.
He’d had a few light dates, but hardly any of them developed deeper. Whether that was because he didn’t want it or because those attempts failed, she didn’t know.
Whenever the subject came up, he’d say it was a pity but that was how it was, and that was that. He’d never shown urgency for anyone. It was clear he wasn’t someone who thought a mutually respectful, loving partner was a must for a satisfying life.
That didn’t mean he was immature in romance, or that he was frivolous.
If anything... he was quite skilled at calibrating distance so the other person wouldn’t see the parts he lacked or wanted to hide; in romance, too, he was likely the same.
He and his partners probably hadn’t even raised their voices, much less fought. They’d have dated by the book, had sex at a density appropriate to the number of meetings, and ended with a mannerly breakup that didn’t wound each other’s egos.
Manners, yes; sacrifice, no. Never changing himself for the other, no childish emotional friction... meetings that left no trace and retreats that left no mark. If that’s called mature love, then his love life to date was certainly mature.
But in her personal opinion, that was immaturity. You couldn’t equate the absence of conflict with peace. In a situation with no crises at all, you couldn’t even prove maturity.
Whether or not he felt the lack of a partner, love was the only way to approach most deeply into someone who wasn’t yourself—another human being. The only way to take, with your whole body, the presence of another who wanted to know you was also love.
If, while you lived, you saw nothing but the bottom of yourself, there was no loneliness more brutal—that was how she saw it. Only after revealing each other’s bottom could you prove true maturity. You couldn’t call it strength just because you always smiled when only good [N O V E L I G H T] things happened.
She herself hadn’t passed that stage with maturity, but she still believed it was life’s luck to meet someone who broke your rules, drew out a new self, made you face your unbeautiful self, and let you taste emotions of every kind.
To her eyes, he was now facing a new self that broke his old rules.
As she snuck glances at him—ignoring the sandwich, smoking and drinking coffee—the phone on the desk behind them rang.
He usually used three phones, and when they weren’t on vibrate he distinguished them by different ringtones. With a cigarette in one hand, he stood, went to the desk, and lifted the phone to his face to check the caller. Then he drew on the cigarette and exhaled a long stream of smoke.
“Ah... Zheng Shuiyan. She went quiet for a few days; I thought she’d finally accepted it.”
He pressed a button to silence the ring, came back to the sofa, and leaned the back of his head against the rest.
“Are you going to keep dodging Shushu’s calls like that?”
“Answering will just leave room for her. Phantom’s position was made clear, and we nailed down that crying on the phone wouldn’t change anything... I honestly didn’t think her dependence on you was this strong.”
He took off his sunglasses, pressed the eyelids with his fingers, then put them back on and looked at her.
He’d set the policy at first, but she was the one who’d actually cared for Shushu, so she hadn’t planned to pin the current situation on him.
“Dodging won’t solve it. If she can’t accept it, you need to persuade her. What I say doesn’t—”
“Sorry, one second.”
Another of his phones on the desk rang with a different tone, and he sprang up and went back to the desk.
Seeing who it was and connecting, his lips carried the faintest, soft smile.
“Hey, it’s me.”
She didn’t need to ask who it was. She’d been with him a long time, but never had he felt so easy to read as he did lately. An easy-to-read Lau Weikun was a stranger to her.
“No, I can talk. Tell me.”
With the phone pressed tight to his ear like he was afraid to miss a word, he walked toward the garden and gestured for her to go ahead and enjoy the sandwiches.
“Oh, is it already that time? Lunch? Did you have lunch before you left?”
Maybe the bright sun made it hard to see the hands; he lifted his left wrist all the way to his sunglasses to check the time.
For someone who’d compared Ihyeon to a bothersome light, he looked like he was blissfully sunbathing in it.
“I’m eating a sandwich. ...No, I mean I’m a bit busy today. ...Let’s have something good for dinner. ...Later... I’ll time it and come to you....”
Snatches of the call drifted back in pieces as he kept walking farther away, his occasional laughter mixed in. She set the sandwich down and picked up the coffee instead.
She herself hadn’t been in a serious relationship for quite a while, but if that voice wasn’t a man in love, then Lau Weikun needed to quit running a gallery and switch to acting.
“No, I’ll get off on time. ...If there’s anything you want to eat... okay, see you later. ...Always be careful. ...Then.”
Even after he said his goodbyes, he stood there a moment with the phone to his ear, then slipped a hand in his pocket and smiled with a shrug.
“You hang up first.”
His voice was full of laughter.
Whoever it was, the very fact that he was having that kind of “you hang up first” exchange shocked her.
Both he and Ihyeon were precious to her. She had hoped someone would appear who could knock him off orbit, invade his inner life, and boldly rearrange the things inside it.
But if you asked whether the two of them could keep a balanced relationship through romance... she couldn’t answer with confidence. That was a completely different question.
When he came back to his seat, his expression was darker—as if he were a different person than the man who’d been on that call. She’d been about to feign ignorance and ask, “Who had you grinning ear to ear the whole call? Are you seeing someone?” but she had to change plans. It wasn’t a mood for light jokes.
All she could do was hold a vague, uneasy hunch that something had already begun between them.
She set down her sip of coffee and glanced at him fiddling with the cigarette pack, as if the urge to smoke had returned already.
“Anyway—talk to Shushu properly. No matter how much she leans on me, you’re the director—and Shushu’s the marquee artist. I want you to prioritize this over other things. If you’ve really made up your mind to be ruthless this time, then don’t run. Handle it properly.”
She meant to offer a roundabout warning about the situation where the director himself was paying excessive attention to a just-signed artist who wasn’t yet bringing in revenue, but lighting another cigarette and combing his hair back in an irritable motion, he seemed oblivious to her intent.
This was already his third since she’d come into the study. He was smoking more than usual. Every change he was showing kept her from relaxing. He didn’t look like someone welcoming change and adapting to it steadily.
“Right. You’ve got plenty else to think about; I’ve let this drag too long. I’ll talk it through and wrap it up. Give me about a week on Shushu.”
He sounded tired—as if he’d poured all his energy into that earlier call. Put the other way round, she thought, so even in this unstable state you managed to talk like someone for whom everything was perfectly fine and smooth.
Neither of them touched the sandwiches afterward; instead, they discussed the lineup of artists who’d agreed to join the joint show in the second half and the number of works. He smoked two more cigarettes while they did.
Going down to the underground parking garage to return to the gallery, she thought about the two of them drifting in a direction she hadn’t foreseen.
She had never expected that the man who’d always preferred relationships he could end “with manners,” cleanly and easily, would choose a naive twenty-two-year-old like Ihyeon as a romantic partner. Ihyeon wasn’t someone who wanted superficial ties, and as far as she knew, Lau Weikun wasn’t the sort to deliberately pick that kind of person and try to force his “mature view of romance” through them.
“What about you, Manager? If Director Inwoo is sincere about Ihyeon, and Ihyeon likes Director Inwoo, would you object?”
That was what Yuni had asked. She’d answered like it wasn’t anyone else’s place to butt in, and she still thought that was the correct line... but she couldn’t help the worry.
Lau Weikun and Seo Ihyeon.
When she tried to define them as a romantic pair, what came to mind wasn’t the softness of sweet cotton candy.
If his remark about not knowing how to modulate one’s strength and causing storms around you meant not just the artist Ihyeon—but his own situation, drawn to Seo Ihyeon as a person—
“Hm....”
Leaving the villa’s garage, solid like a fortress no one could breach, she let out a sigh like a groan. As for the ending of a story starring Lau Weikun and Seo Ihyeon, she—for now—couldn’t even guess.
