“It won’t work with regular food. I’m going to have them prepare mostly fresh dishes with light seasoning that won’t upset your stomach, and I’m absolutely not going to tell you to force down big portions. In return, promise me you won’t use your appetite as an excuse and that you’ll finish everything. Okay?”
Barring anything unusual, we usually ate dinner together after he got off work, but my breakfast and lunch were prepared at set times every day by the housekeeper who came in. Even just the environment he’d arranged so far was more than I deserved.
Maybe my stomach had gotten a little sensitive from having to adapt to a rapidly changed environment in a short time, or maybe I just had a seasonal dip in appetite. Either way, it was a common symptom that could happen to anyone.
“You don’t have to go that far. It’s already more than enou—”
“Promise me. It’s not hard.”
“......”
All the mischief had vanished from his face.
“It’s been almost two weeks you’ve been eating like this. We need a plan. Wouldn’t that be better for the work, too?”
When I nodded, seeing him give my right shoulder a couple of urging shakes for a firm answer, he finally smiled, stroked my cheek once, and crumpled the fries bag into the paper sack.
Hearing him specify “almost two weeks,” it was obvious he’d been worrying this whole time. He’d probably tried not to show it so I wouldn’t feel sorry.
If this was what it took to put his mind at ease, I’d agree for now... but honestly I was still confused about where acceptance of kindness ended and where I was crossing a line into abandoning my original self.
A world where meals of a different menu were ready at fixed times, where the room was spotless by the time I returned from watering the garden, where the drawers and closet were always full of perfectly laundered clothes—that was his world, not mine.
We decided to leave the icebox up on the roof for now and carried the rest downstairs together. By then the sun had fully set. After sorting the trash and having a cup of tea together, we went down to the studio so I could talk through the direction of the work he was curious about.
There might be changes once I was actually painting, but for now I talked through the image I had in mind, looking at sketches and photos. He listened with a very serious attitude and offered no advice or questions. That kind of distance he kept from other people’s art was very similar to my parents’ and my former chief’s, which made it easier to talk.
“Hm? When did you take these?”
I stopped in the middle of choosing an easel for the first draft sketches and turned to him. Sitting perched on the back of the sofa, he looked down at the little digital camera, then turned the screen toward me with a grin. They were the photos I’d taken of him on the roof a little while ago.
“Earlier... while we were tidying up...”
My ears went hot, but I adjusted the pencil box height on the easel I’d picked and answered like it was nothing, like I was calm. Judging by his expression, though, he had no intention of letting it slide.
He rose from the sofa, came close, and hugged me from behind around the waist. The blend of a few deep perfumes he wore seeped down into my lungs with my breath.
“What is this—why the candid shots? If you asked me to model, I could do it well too.”
“......”
Later. When everything in me had fully ripened, I planned to ask him. I didn’t want to rush anything about him and botch it.
“You shot them well. The way the person behind the camera looks at the subject—full of affection and a little shy—comes through exactly.”
Bending a little and pressing his chin gently onto my shoulder, he spoke like he was enjoying himself. I could picture my reddened ears and nape, but I didn’t bother denying his reading.
“Now do you get it?”
“......”
Instead of answering, I turned my head and looked down at his face. I wanted to run my hand over the lush lashes lifting slowly upward as he looked up at me.
His lips curved into a gentle arc.
“Why I didn’t want to show you my photos in Hong Kong.”
“......”
“Still don’t get it, huh?”
He let go of my waist, then waved the camera right in front of me.
“The way the person behind the camera looks at the subject—it all comes out in here. And you... when it comes to reading that kind of thing, you’re practically a fortune-teller. You would’ve caught me on the spot.”
I couldn’t deny that, in Hong Kong, there’d been a subtle new exchange of glances and tension between us. But I’d thought of it as nothing more than something in the air—insufficient to name as interest or attraction. The kind of thing that would vanish the moment someone else appeared who could spark his curiosity more.
“Back then, you... weren’t very interested in me...”
“Hm. Do I slip out of the middle of a party to be with someone I don’t care about? And at our own gallery’s post-exhibition party, at that?”
With the hand not holding the camera, he stroked down my arm from shoulder to the back of my hand and laced our fingers, speaking like the idea was absurd.
“When... did you?”
Looking up at me with a wounded expression, he lifted our clasped hands and nipped at my knuckles.
“See? I knew you’d be this oblivious. Ah... I figured you might be, so I tried not to give my heart.”
How much of the content hiding in his half-playful tone was true? To me, he’d been the oblivious one, but he’d thought I was like that too—and so he’d tried not to give his heart.
My chest prickled for no reason at a story of him being aware of me that I hadn’t known. I squeezed our interlaced hands a little tighter.
After a beat of hesitation, he tightened his arms around my waist and pressed his cheek to mine.
“The night the five of us—Choi Inwoo, Baek Yuni, Gwon Juhan, you, and me—drank at the Spanish bar. Remember how I went to the gallery with Choi Inwoo after?”
“Yes, but back then...”
It was already months ago. I didn’t remember every scene and moment exactly, but I vaguely recalled Inwoo’s aggrieved face complaining that he’d been dragged there, since you’d said you’d dragged him.
Back then, whether someone had followed someone else or been dragged along—that kind of thing hadn’t interested me much...
“What did you think I followed for, then?”
“Well... because the after-party was... boring...”
—was what I said, but my voice trailed off. Looking back, it wasn’t like him. He wasn’t the type to leave the Phantom group exhibition’s after-party early just to attend a little private drink-up.
At the time, I hadn’t had enough information about Phantom’s operating style or about his personality, so I let it pass. But if Inwoo hadn’t been the one pestering him to come with, then it was all the stranger.
If the detached gaze he wore—like resting his chin in the back seat of a safari truck, looking out at some weak herbivore grazing that could never affect him—had actually been a skilled shell to cover interest and reconnaissance. If he couldn’t ignore me or keep his distance and had made his own chance to stand in front of me...
Then maybe it hadn’t been coincidence that he knew my age—which I hadn’t told him—beforehand, or that he asked this and that about me when he’d seemed uninterested.
“Ah...”
A belated realization escaped me in a dull exclamation.
He craned his neck over his shoulder to look at my face. His expression said, finally get it? It felt strangely awkward to meet his eyes anew. I dragged my gaze down to our linked hands he was fidgeting with and teasing.
He tossed the camera onto the sofa beside us, turned my body, and guided my hands to wrap behind his waist. Chest to chest, his lips were at about my eye level. Greedy for the heavy, rich scent that took over my sense of smell, I drew a deep breath. Even when it wasn’t “that scent,” every fragrance that clung to him carried a certain weighty eroticism.
Letting me hold him with my arms, he wrapped his around me too. He dipped his head and his lips grazed the rim of my ear, tickling.
“I won’t say it was as deep as now. But it also wasn’t something I could ignore. At least... enough that I did something ugly because I minded other men hovering around.”
Had he done “something ugly”? And before that, were there even men around me trying to appeal as romantic prospects?
What popped up quickly was... that evening after meeting Teacher Suki Kim when we all went to a bar in Soho—the freckled guy who said he was from Amsterdam. He’d come back to ask if we could exchange email addresses, and he—who I thought would be quick on that sort of uptake—even in a private setting, hadn’t left and stayed right by my side.
So he meant all that had been because he was conscious of me?
My hands tightened at the hem of his T-shirt near his waist as I slowly shook my head without thinking.
“From the first time I saw a guy with that ‘just stepped out of the shower, with water about to drip from his fingertips’ face standing in my gallery’s exhibition hall, you were like a grain of sand in my shoe—I couldn’t stop noticing. Whether in a good way or a bad way, having one particular person keep tugging at my attention is rare for me... I even tried pretending not ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) to notice out of pointless pride...”
He let go and framed my face in both hands, meeting my eyes. Under the pale light with the lowest color distortion, his blue irises searched my gaze—meticulous and careful, as if hunting for the faintest residue of the past that might linger.
“Say what you will about everything else... but other guys orbiting you—that, I could not pretend was fine. Whether it was that kid from Amsterdam, or that greasy gallery contact who said he was from New York... or even my friend, the one I’ve shown my ugliest sides to and grown up with.”
“......”
Each person he listed was a step in the jealousy he was admitting. And still I couldn’t quite bring myself to accept what he said as reality in one gulp.
“Hm. You really have a face like you knew none of this. Not being hypersensitive to this stuff is one of your charms... but it scares me a little—you look like you wouldn’t even notice if someone made a move. Sometimes there are guys who mistake not cutting them off for giving them a chance.”
I shook my head, catching his wrist and tugging his hands down from my cheeks.
“Say Hong Kong’s one thing... but by the time of the Spanish bar, that was really early days... No. Back then you really weren’t interested in me... if anything you were wary, right...”
Even as I tried to pull his wrists down, he didn’t budge. He bent closer to peer into my face. A face you didn’t see every day, that level of handsome—it could be a force all on its own. I shrank for no reason and my voice went small.
“Why...”
“I was just thinking—why is it I don’t hate it, even on the rare occasions you’re this stubborn.”
His expression as he studied every corner of my face with curious fascination was only serious, so I couldn’t even laugh.
He let my cheeks go and this time set a hand on my crown and tousled my hair.
“Why do you think I kept probing, every time we met, about how things were with Choi Inwoo? Because I was truly worried? Why would I worry about someone I’m not interested in—someone I’m supposedly just wary of?”
“Ah...”
Only a moment ago I’d been insisting that back then he clearly wasn’t interested in me, offering my own argument—but I had to acknowledge that his explanation was far more logical.
It was true. If he had really been indifferent then—or worse, hostile toward me—he’d have had no reason to worry about or be curious about my relationship with Inwoo. If I’d gotten sucked into some worse temptation that could’ve wrecked me, he would have stood back and watched.
At the sigh that slipped between my lips—my sound of conceding the point—he pulled at my cheeks with both hands.
“You really made me say it all, huh. Wouldn’t let me keep a shred of cool, made me bare the bottom of the barrel.”
From the corner of his face, while he merrily played with my cheeks like he found me infuriating, I caught an unexpected shyness about such frank confession of feeling. Even when he showed jealousy, I’d thought he was unhesitating—flexible and adept in everything, romance included—but here was a boyish side that felt fresh.
He didn’t want to look ridiculous in front of someone he liked, but it wasn’t going as he wished, and he was upset—that unripe boyishness flickered under his face.
But whatever pose he might have wanted to strike in front of me, I couldn’t say—because to my eyes, he’d never once failed to look cool. The worry was unnecessary.
After playing with my cheeks for a while, he puckered them into fish lips, pecked them, then flicked his eyes up at the wall clock hanging behind me.
“My confused period—trying to resist the gravity of Seo Ihyeon—isn’t the kind of story to toss off while standing in front of the sofa, so let’s leave it here for now... I won’t get in the way. Work.”
Even when we did nothing much, time always flew when it was just the two of us. When I turned and checked the clock, nearly an hour had slipped by since we’d come down to the studio.
“Send me a message before you go to sleep?”
“I will. But I might be really late...”
I followed him toward the stairs that connected to the first floor and leaned on the railing, looking up. Smiling, he reached out and mussed my hair.
“Don’t wait up—if you get sleepy, just sleep. Don’t worry and focus.”
Leaning far over the railing, he cupped my cheeks in both hands and kissed my forehead, then the space between my brows, then the bridge of my nose in turn. And last he pressed our lips together. Even without tongues, with only the contact of our lips, a light tremor ran through me.
