The front door opened, and a cool draft slipped out from inside like a refrigerator being opened.
The room was cool enough already, but Juhan, who opened the door for me, wasn’t wearing a T-shirt.
“Just keep your shoes on. Western style.”
In ripped black skinny jeans and heavy work boots, he turned his back and headed into the room, stretching wide. He must have just finished a shower; water still clung to the tips of his hair.
“Honestly, it’s just that sweeping and mopping all the time is a pain, so I live like this.”
He added that, glanced back, and snickered.
For the place to draw, I wanted where he felt most at ease, and the place he chose—unsurprisingly—was his home.
The officetel overlooked the Seosomun overpass that links Chungjeongno and City Hall, a rare unobstructed view for Seoul, and even at rush hour it was close enough to Phantom that a thirty-minute commute would do.
“When I became a full-time at Phantom, the director handed this over for me to use as housing. Baek Yuni’s upstairs on the twenty-third.”
He lifted his index finger and pointed at the ceiling. His place was on the twenty-first.
“She wanted to come look around, but I told her not to—might get in the way of your work. Let’s see... drinks... looks like it’s just beer. Want one?”
Peering into a fridge that looked empty at a glance, he turned and asked. I’d been standing awkwardly in the middle of the room; I said I was fine and slipped the bag off my shoulder.
The crack of his beer tab sounded crisp.
“So, what do you want me to do? If I need to hold a pose the whole time you’re drawing, I should loosen up first.”
“Just... stay comfortable, like you normally are. Until I know exactly what I want to paint, I’ll sketch a bunch of different looks.”
Fingering the piercing in his lip, he glanced around the small room and grabbed one of the two guitars resting on stands along the wall by the bed. There wasn’t a speck of dust on them—clearly cared for.
“Then maybe I’ll mess with the guitar.”
It was a studio-style one-room, not very big, but the lack of bulky furniture kept it from feeling cramped. A curtain-style double-deck hanger taking up one wall, a single bed on the opposite side, and a round table in front of the big window with the view—that was basically it for furnishings. Even if he didn’t sweep and mop often, the light load kept it from looking messy.
“Want to sit there and draw?”
He set a little amp—about a handspan square—on the table by the window and plugged in the guitar, then jerked his chin toward the bed.
“Or I can play on the bed and you draw over here? Conditions aren’t exactly ideal for painting.”
He looked around the tight room with a sheepish face.
“I’m just doing simple croquis sketches today, so it’s fine. If I need to, I’ll bring an easel next time. Whatever’s comfortable for you is best.”
“Letting the model do whatever’s comfortable—unusual, artist.”
With a {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} faint grin, he opened a clear file stuffed with sheet music and started tuning. I pulled my sketch tools from my bag and perched on the edge of his bed.
Taking a calmer look around, I noticed there wasn’t a single torn-out magazine photo or poster on his walls. Given his punk-band past and his taste in clothes, I’d imagined a certain vibe for a place he lived in—but there was almost no sense of taste or lived-in personality here. Not quite “neat,” just... a space you sleep in and leave.
“Come to think of it, this is the first time it’s just the two of us like this, huh?”
Pressing chords with long, thin fingers stacked with more than five rings total, eyes down on the guitar, he spoke.
“Other than when we’re working, yeah.”
“Remember when we first met?”
Thinking of that first day, he chuckled, bare shoulders shaking. I laughed too, remembering how I’d startled him into swearing without thinking.
Back then, I had no idea I’d end up working at Phantom for real, and I certainly couldn’t have guessed I’d become a Phantom-affiliated artist and start drawing again.
I met Teacher Sookie Kim, and Morae and he left Korea. I fell for someone, and pushed myself into a relationship too tangled to define.
It was only early spring to midsummer, but so much had changed.
Following the fingers he set down, electronic tones spread through the room. It was my first time hearing an electric guitar up close; the inherently mournful timbre of a stringed instrument, with a delicate shimmer on top, was compelling.
I didn’t know the piece, but it wasn’t punk. Slow, languid notes resonated through the space, expressing something beyond simple feelings like joy or sorrow. I’d expected what he played to be more aggressive, brisk, and direct; I was wrong. In the tension woven by complex tones, a ringtone bled in. His phone.
“Can I take this?”
“Yeah. Move however you like.”
“Generous artist.”
He snorted, stood up, and picked up the phone from beside the sink. One corner of his mouth curled when he saw the caller. A villain’s smile.
“Yeah. I’m modeling right now. No, not photos—drawing.”
He dropped back into the chair and took a long pull of beer.
“Today? Kinda sudden... What time? ...That could work, I guess... If I come over, what do I get out of it?”
His expression turned more suggestive. Whatever the answer on the other end, his shoulders bounced. I didn’t lift my hand; I just watched him.
He was different from the Juhan I saw at work at Phantom, different from when it was the three of us with Yuni, different from when other Phantom folks were around. It felt, literally, like his private life. A face he didn’t make with us. A voice he didn’t use.
I’d asked him to model because I thought I knew him a little better than I knew her—but maybe even that was a fragment, a suspicion crept in.
Proof was in the way the sketch refused to move. Since stepping into this place, I’d lost the thread of what to draw, who to draw.
“Man... I’ve been buried in work stress lately. Lucky day for you, sir. Just wait right there.”
Ending the call with a light laugh, he tossed the phone onto the mattress. Then he picked up the guitar again and flicked a glance at me.
“That’s a shocked face.”
“No, not really... You told me about this before.”
“Right...”
He thought back to that bar in Hongdae where there was a cat, scratched the very short hair he’d cut the other day, and laughed, a bit bashful.
“Didn’t even know you that long and I dumped all that on you—must’ve startled you.”
It was the opposite.
“I actually liked it. Felt like I got to know you and Yuni better... I’m not great at talking about myself.”
I definitely liked Yuni and him, but between the situation then—where strangers had to be met with caution—and my own introverted nature, I probably wouldn’t have made steady efforts to keep that fondness going. I was grateful they came to me first.
He watched me for a moment, shrugged, and looked back down at the sheet music.
“It’s nothing meaningful. Stuff I could blab to a random passerby. I’ve got a loose mouth, you know.”
Maybe so.
He isn’t like me, so even that thing that looked like the worst kind of conflict between parent and child—he might be able to talk about it to anyone, like a scuffle he happened to get caught up in on the street.
But just because his tone was light, or because he told it light, doesn’t make what happened light. At least for me, through that story, the person named Kwon Juhan came into focus.
He hugged the guitar and, after a sip of beer, hesitated into a new thread.
“This is kind of pathetic, but... at first I felt a kinship with you.”
“...”
“People at Phantom all have something, and the artists we meet on the job too, and a weird number of our clients are creators. Gifted, talented, successful... When you live surrounded by people like that all the time, you do get a little cowed, honestly.”
My hand froze. To me, he was one of those sparkling people too.
He stroked the strings downward, smooth, making a sound that was lovely to hear.
“But you felt like an ordinary guy my age, so when you showed up I was a little relieved. It gave me a reason to think you and I were normal, and it was the others who were just ridiculously good.”
He paused to drink, set his fingers on the fingerboard again, and then, shooting me a playful sidelong look, said:
“But turns out you’re a hotshot too. Traitor.”
“No, I still... haven’t shown you anything. I don’t even know if I can really live up to expectations from here on... I’m not confident yet. You’re the one who’s smooth with Phantom work and even runs Old Future...”
“I only started at Phantom because they said it came with room and board, and honestly Old Future belongs to Baek Yuni. I’m just a deviant punk who happened to meet good people and lucked into a role cooler than I really am. And you got picked by the director. If nothing else, trust the director’s eye for spotting potential. She’s dug up plenty of artists and grown the gallery with them.”
A deviant punk who happened to meet good people and lucked into a role cooler than he is. I hadn’t expected someone who seemed so self-assured and unflinching to judge himself that harshly.
Seen that way, I’m the coward who happened to meet good people and lucked into an opportunity. Before, the people who propped me up were Morae and him. Now... many people, starting with the Juhan in front of me, and one person in particular.
I was the one who had felt small among solid people like the director, the general manager, Yuni, and him. He seemed like someone who didn’t need to feel that way, but if he did, I knew that feeling better than anyone.
He repeated a short melody as if something wasn’t quite working. It was a line that touched something deep.
“And about that painting—I liked it too. Your piece in the director’s living room. I might have gotten into Western Painting, but that was just my parents paying a college consultant to get me into a Seoul school—I had no real interest in painting, and especially abstract stuff, which always felt like it was pretending to be something without any core... but that one, I liked. To me, fine art is closer to poetry than literature; you can’t poke at a clear narrative or theme the way you can in a novel. But that painting... looking at it made me feel comforted. Like, ‘hey, life isn’t only hard for you—hang in there!’ That kind of thing.”
He lifted his head and flashed me a grin. Then that same melody cycled again.
Whatever he thought of himself, to me, the way he could be this honest and unvarnished still shone.
His long, thin fingers pressed fast and sure along the fingerboard, making notes. His hands were the most beautiful part of him to my eye... and there was another charm to them, so lean the bones’ movement showed on the backs.
They looked dry and cold, but moved delicately, carrying a fragile plea of loneliness... something like that.
Maybe it isn’t just painting that’s closer to poetry than to prose—maybe music is too. I can’t explain it with logic, being a layman, but I could tell when I listened to him play. He wasn’t, as he said, some shallow, lightweight guy who only got by on luck.
I set aside the full-body croquis and switched to a firmer pencil, focusing on his hands. Practice slowly became performance.
Bars he’d broken up and repeated stitched together into a smooth melody, took on a consistent color, and formed a single flow. Whether he was putting that feeling into it or that was just the piece itself, I don’t know, but even with only melody and no lyrics, it felt like a story.
I paused my pencil and asked:
“What’s this one called?”
“It’s a song called ‘Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers. I’m stumbling through it right now, but the original absolutely kills.”
His face lit up more than at any point since I’d stepped into the room.
“A guitarist named Jeff Beck—one of the big three in the world. Well, people argue about who the big three are, but anyway, it’s his.”
Like a kid talking about dinosaurs, cars, or a favorite anime character, he got flushed and even sent me the guitarist’s name, album title, and track name over messenger.
“Download the album and give it a listen. If you like this track, the others on the same album are good too. Make sure you hear the original.”
We still had about two hours left before the promised six o’clock, but in that time all I could manage was his exterior. A shell no different from a still life. Just like the drawings in the notebook I’d shown him. I’d thought I knew him a little, so I could paint him—but the person I’d come here to paint wasn’t here today.
At six, he said we should head out together, flipped a T-shirt on, and preened in the mirror. Piece by piece he became the Kwon Juhan I knew, a punk brimming with confidence and cheerful defiance.
Standing at the mirror, adding to the piercings in his ears, he said,
“Is the director picking us up?”
