"...Yes."
"Date?"
The question caught me off guard, but I told myself it was just my own nerves and kept my cool.
"Not really. He said there’s an exhibition he wanted to recommend..."
"Two people meeting on a weekend evening to see an exhibition—doesn’t that count as a standard date? Not that I know much about standard dates."
Shrugging as he spoke, he made a lewd face at me through the mirror.
"Good for you, Seo Ihyeon."
"..."
He sounded like he knew something. I chewed my lip, unsure how to react, and while I hesitated, he turned to face me, looking even more put out.
"Hey, when you react like that, you make me more flustered. Don’t tell me liking the director was supposed to be a secret?"
He didn’t even act like he needed to confirm it. He was completely sure.
"How... how did you..."
"How what. On barbecue day, every time I touched the director you made a face like the sky was falling. But... right now your face really does look like the sky fell."
He comforted me that Yuni probably hadn’t noticed—she wasn’t in a position to see my face—and the general manager is dull about dating, so he wouldn’t have caught on. At the same time, he pinched both my cheeks and pulled them wide, saying I was way too blatant for someone pretending to hide it.
"I figured you wanted to shout it from the rooftops the way you kept showing it. Like, ‘I like the director. The director is mine! So Juhan, quit putting your hands on him!’"
It was true I’d envied their easy, familiar skinship that day, but I really hadn’t imagined he’d clock every bit of how I looked at him. That I was someone whose feelings leaked that easily—that was... a shock.
Maybe I just can’t hide it when it comes to him. Even Han sometimes lost his temper at my lack of affect.
"So what, do you seriously like him? Not a star-crush kind of admiration?"
With my face obviously going ashen, his expression turned serious too. He ruffled my hair, folded his arms, and let out a light sigh.
"Well. You don’t seem like the type who even knows how to like someone lightly."
I’d never liked anyone before, so I’d been dull to what I felt for him. Without any info on what state I’d be in if I liked someone, or what I’d want from them, it was even more confusing.
But he, as an outsider, could casually say I’d be like this. I almost wanted to ask him how I would like someone.
"And I didn’t think you’d even consider someone like the director as a romantic partner. That’s the surprise."
"..."
I looked at his back in the mirror, asking with my face why he thought that.
"As a boss and an elder, he’s easy, no grudges, takes good care of people, doesn’t make a show of it, lots to like, a lot to learn from—but honestly, he doesn’t look like someone who’s serious about relationships. So I figured you, of all people, would never fall."
Watching him clip a thin chain from the piercing by his eyebrow to the one in his lip, I pulled my eyes down to my phone in my hand. A message vibrated onto the screen—he’d be out front in about ten minutes.
"He talks well, his manners are polished, and looks... yeah, to be honest, they’re unreal. I admit the director has a way of bewitching people."
He turned toward me with the chain hooked to the ring in his lip.
"Isn’t your type someone more stable and embracing? Or what—did you end up swayed by Lau Wiqun’s externals too?"
Then, maybe to lighten the mood, he came close and shook my shoulder playfully.
I’d found it strange how he and Yuni didn’t like him—how could anyone not like him? I’d even wondered if they were both secretly stuck in fierce one-sided love.
But this made one thing clear: at least Juhan didn’t like him.
If he had, if he’d had more chances to look closely, he couldn’t have described him as lacking in warmth and stability.
Letting my face sit blank, I gave a vague smile and let my shoulders flop limply as he shook me like a doll. He let go with a sigh and dropped down next to me. The narrow mattress bucked under his weight.
"Look, I’m not the type to butt into other people’s relationships. I’m the type who folds my arms and watches, and when things go crooked, I cackle and enjoy it. But you’re not... you’re not someone who talks about love and then gets drunk on the feeling and shoots a drama. I’m saying this because I don’t want you hurt and struggling..."
Like he was confessing a heavy secret, he paused and forced the words out.
"If you’re still at the stage where it’s just fluttery and heart-thumpy, do yourself a favor and wrap it up."
Compared to how he’d hesitated before, the advice to wrap it up came firm, almost like a roundabout order.
It felt strange.
I couldn’t even tell whether I’d passed that fluttery, thumping stage. Just thinking of him set a restless lift in me—call it fluttering—but alongside it was a plunge, a lurch like missing a step from a height.
And I didn’t have enough experience to map all the different paths people’s feelings can take, find a pattern, and sort it into stages.
I hadn’t wanted a pep talk like, he seems to like you too so go for it, you two look good together—but getting told, cleanly and completely, to end it by someone who knew both him and me... for the first time I thought about outside eyes on our relationship.
Maybe... we weren’t a picture that looked good together.
While I wondered whether to tell him about the small changes lately between me and him, Juhan rubbed his short hair, stood up from the bed, and pulled a fresh beer from the fridge.
"From your angle, it looks like me and Baek Yuni are really close to the director, right?"
"..."
Like someone drinking to get the courage up, he chugged the beer and wiped his mouth roughly with the back of his hand.
"But we barely know anything about him. His private life, either. What we do know is that since we started working together, he hasn’t had a proper relationship. He might be picky about who he lets come, but when they go, he doesn’t stop them. Don’t expect it to turn serious."
After saying that, he swallowed several mouthfuls of beer in one go, like someone forcing himself to say what he didn’t want to say.
His guess was right in some ways and off in others.
The old me would have agreed with his assessment of him. But if the man he was describing now—who won’t clearly define a relationship or take responsibility—was laziness, then I hadn’t been much different on the way here.
In bed, he put my pleasure ahead of his own; with long, careful touch he woke every corner of my body, not just sex. After, the aftercare was so tender it was more embarrassing than the sex. The kisses were sweet enough to make me mistake them for something.
There was nothing there that hurt me. That’s how I managed to stay a coward for so long.
I liked him, and yet without saying it clearly, I put off responsibility inside an ambiguous state—and even found a kind of comfort in it.
If he kept treating me just like this, without ever showing me he slept with someone else or treated someone else as special, then... just keeping this as-is would be enough.
So the charge of irresponsibility had to apply to me too, if we were being fair.
Every time he lifted the can, the ring in his lip clicked a little metallic rasp against it. I thought of asking for a beer. I even wanted a cigarette for the first time in a while. But I asked for neither. I just toyed with the phone in my hand.
"He knows about what I do... I mean, how I go around meeting older men and keeping it strictly physical. The director knows. And he never says a word. He talks like he’d hold Baek Yuni back from going abroad, but if the moment really came he wouldn’t say a single thing like do this, do that. He has a pathological aversion to stepping into other people’s lives. He’s kind and gentle. I’m grateful for that, a lot. But... he never tries to go all the way into someone’s depths, and he won’t let anyone in there either. That’s who Mr. Lau Wiqun is."
Draining the last beer in one go, he looked, not like he was talking about my feelings, but his own. It felt like he was voicing resentment at a Lau Wiqun who neither enters others’ true depths nor allows them into his.
When he lifted his head, his face looked like a child worn out and hurt from craving attention from a parent or teacher.
When he told me that Yuni and he didn’t know Sookie Kim was his mother—that had surprised me. Maybe that’s part of the cool distance he’s talking about. But you can’t call what he shows them mere kindness, either.
About Juhan, about me, about him—each of us was seeing a little off, a partial image warped into a whole. I was the same before. Maybe I still am.
But I wanted to know more. I wanted to see him closer to how he really is.
At the same time, I wanted to show myself to him—to these people. Even if the coward who tried to protect himself by cutting off the senses that connect to the world is my true shape, and all I can show right now.
I didn’t want to shut my mouth like my father and sink into a sealed inner world. In whatever way I could, I had to thrash, at least. For the ones who stood by me without a word, and for... the one who told me to pull myself out and find my voice again.
"Hyung."
"..."
"For the next sketch... would you pose nude?"
His eyes went wide. The sudden change of subject made it worse.
"Nude?"
"Yeah. If you’re comfortable."
He rolled the empty can in his hands and worried the lip ring with his front teeth, thinking.
"In the director’s garden... that’s where I want to draw you."
Then he gave a crooked little laugh and looked at me askance.
"Outdoor play, even?"
I laughed with him.
"Sounds like the artist finally has an image. I’m disowned goods—nothing I can’t do. And it’s for art, not smut. Sure. Let’s do it."
He slapped his thigh with a sharp smack and crushed the can flat. He looked even more alive than when he’d been talking about his favorite guitarist.
He didn’t bring up the director’s unsuitability as my romantic target again. He chattered, bright as if he’d never said it, about concepts and poses for the next sketch.
Side by side, we left his officetel. Suddenly I ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ remembered barbecue day—how he’d raised his voice unusually high about how it would be shameless if Inwoo’s interest in me was sincere.
Maybe back then, using Inwoo as a proxy, he’d wanted to talk about me and him.
"Hey, maybe I really am not normal."
In the elevator, he hooked an arm over my shoulder and snorted.
"Why did everything get fun the second you said nude? When you said you were coming to draw today it all felt vague. Now I feel interested, like the blood’s moving."
Maybe that change was perfectly natural. I’d been vague about what to draw; now... it was clear.
Out past the lobby, his sedan was stopped along the curb by the gate. When we slowed at the sight of it, he stepped out of the back seat in a casual rolled-sleeve shirt, jeans, and teal loafers.
Just having him in my sight felt good, so good it was like all my blood was running toward him. In Juhan’s words, that would be fluttering and thumping. At least very close to fluttering.
Watching him relax his face toward me, I felt like he wasn’t so different from me right now.
"All dressed up—where are you off to at this hour?"
He called to Juhan first.
"Off to seduce a certain gentleman."
And he burst out laughing at Juhan’s answer.
"Don’t clown around too much. You’ll get stabbed again."
"I already blew it up with my parents—where else can I get stabbed? There’s no one left to cut off, so I might as well enjoy myself."
At his unfiltered line, the corners of his eyes tightened a touch as he checked on me.
"Ihyeon knows. That I got stabbed and kicked out."
He shook his head like, what am I going to do with you.
