Juhan swallowed the sandwich in his mouth, washing it down with champagne from a slender, tall glass.
Thanks to the customers who were busy exchanging greetings and being introduced to new people, the temporary desk was very quiet. No one even came to pick up a pamphlet.
“We don’t run articles in art magazines. Instead, we get articles in the best-selling fashion, living, and luxury magazines in the country. Honestly, the gallery scene is saturated in Korea right now. You don’t need a license, and if you have money, you can open a gallery, so the number of galleries, big and small, is enormous. Of course, many can’t last a few years and close down. On the surface, it looks elegant, hanging up paintings and talking about the artist’s unique style or the message of the work, but the competition here is fierce. If you start with the idea of having some money and wanting a fancy gallery owner business card, you’ll quickly be pushed out by people who are desperately trying to survive. And of course, you can’t ignore the power of the already established large galleries. The market is small, so there’s no room to break in.”
After finishing his words, Juhan, who seemed to be choking, pounded his chest, so I offered him my share of the champagne. With a grateful look, Juhan emptied the glass in one gulp and then picked up a cookie and took a bite.
Today, the piercing on his lip and the piercing on his ear were connected by a chain. It seemed like it would be uncomfortable to drink or eat, but Juhan himself looked very comfortable, as if he had already accepted it as part of his body.
“So, our CEO pioneered a new market.”
Juhan’s voice was almost solemn.
“Instead of dividing up the small market and sharing it, let’s get people who didn’t spend money on paintings to buy them.”
After hearing that, I could roughly understand why the gallery’s main customers were people in the fashion and entertainment industries.
“This market is almost entirely based on social connections, so it’s not like you just go to a gallery that has a painting you like and buy it. It’s incredibly difficult to attract customers who already have a gallery they’re dealing with, so we targeted people who have money but haven’t bought many paintings with it.”
Juhan made a gesture of circling his thumb and forefinger, meaning money.
“The result? A huge success. Well, as you can see, we even moved to this building in Samcheong-dong.”
Juhan shrugged his shoulders lightly, as if it was nothing special, or perhaps proudly, and then shook the remaining crumbs of the cookie he was eating into his mouth.
To be honest, I had wondered if Phantom was one of those galleries that started with the idea that Juhan mentioned, “having some money and wanting a fancy gallery owner business card.”
Not for any other reason, but because Phantom’s CEO gave the impression that he was born into a wealthy family enough that he didn’t need to aim for self-made success, and even judging from his attitude towards customers now, I didn’t feel any of the unavoidable business servility that comes from desperation.
The customer was, after all, a customer, so he was polite and kind, and a service smile was always on his face, but that was it.
Rather, the people around him were showing him stronger favor, and people who seemed to have weaker ties with him were looking for a chance to get closer to him. Even to my dull eyes, that atmosphere was very clear.
Putting aside his prickly attitude towards me from yesterday until now, I apologized to him in my heart for the image I had vaguely assumed based on his outward appearance, that of a “young master who easily got everything with his parents’ money.”
I didn’t think it was particularly wrong to start something based on one’s parents’ or family’s wealth, but it was also true that I thought the value was different from the achievements built with one’s own strength.
Whether he had brought Phantom all the way here from scratch, or whether there had been some family assistance. I couldn’t know that far, but it was clear that it wasn’t a sandcastle easily built with huge capital and inherited connections.
For the first time since I came to the desk, someone took a pamphlet. It was a woman wearing large sunglasses that covered half of her face. On closer inspection, it wasn’t that the sunglasses were big, but that her face was small. I didn’t know her well, but maybe she was an actress or a singer.
The woman who took the pamphlet disappeared into the exhibition hall inside, calling out a name in a happy voice as if she had met someone she knew, and Juhan told me her name, saying she was a popular actress these days, but I had never heard of the name either.
“Anyway, because of our CEO’s management style, he’s completely a heretic or a troublemaker in the art world… well, almost treated like Satan. They say that a golden alpha with blue eyes is seducing people with pheromones to sell paintings and lowering the dignity of art to the ground. One critic even spewed the nonsense that he’s a male prostitute selling paintings with his body?”
Juhan, who had started to continue the story from before, raised his fist into the air as if he was going to grab the critic who had said such things by the collar. He looked upset even now.
However, the protagonist of the story, Phantom’s CEO, was surrounded by many people and smiling like a painting.
This was a gallery that exhibited and sold works, but most of the people here were more interested in the man than in the paintings.
A middle-aged woman dressed in a tweed two-piece suit subtly showed off her friendship by lightly linking her arm in his, and in fact, people’s eyes flashed with envy mixed with jealousy. The elementary school days when I tried to get the attention of my homeroom teacher even once came to mind, their expressions of emotion were so direct.
Phantom’s CEO was skillfully and pleasantly adjusting the atmosphere with an attitude that drew in favor, as if he was unaware of the complex desires centered around him.
No, maybe he was accurately grasping the intensity and direction of those desires and adjusting the entanglement itself.
To belatedly point out the comment that he was a “blue-eyed golden alpha who seduces people with pheromones to sell paintings,” his eyes were not simply blue. They were pale blue, as if they had been tanned by the sun, or as if the pigment had faded from crying too much.
It had a clear color reminiscent of a jewel, but it wasn’t a deep blue that didn’t feel as alive, but something that looked more delicate and alive… Yes, it was like the foam of a wave breaking on the sand. Like it was about to break and disappear.
That was actually a color that felt quite contradictory to his impression, which seemed so arrogantly strong.
“But, our CEO doesn’t release pheromones. I don’t know what he’s like in his private life, but he doesn’t at all usually. Even people who are golden omegas can barely sense it, his control ability is max level. Ah, do you know about golden alphas… or anything like that?”
“Not really.”
“Not interested?”
Among the countless beta populations, there are few people who are not interested in the stories of alphas or omegas. Sometimes out of curiosity about those with a second gender, sometimes out of admiration for those who generally have gorgeous looks and outstanding talents. And sometimes out of simple and light interest in the unusual.
I, too, thought that he was a bit ‘annoying’ in the vernacular, but I was curious if he was a golden alpha because of his unique presence, so I replied that I was not uninterested.
Yes. He was indeed a golden alpha. It was a result that matched my expectations so much that it was almost anticlimactic. His appearance was so big, strong, and beautiful that he could work as a mascot for golden alphas.
But he doesn’t release pheromones at all.
Then, was the particle of unique atmosphere that I felt from him just a feeling derived from his appearance, unrelated to alphas or anything like that? Was I the kind of person who was so taken with appearances that I felt the other person’s presence differently because of their appearance?
“Alphas and omegas are ultimately about reproductive ability… well, it’s not something to talk about in detail in a place like this. Anyway, our CEO is not at a level where pheromones are released against his will and he reacts helplessly to other people’s pheromones. There are many betas who discriminate against alphas and omegas as beasts who give up being human because they are dominated by instinct, but golden alphas have pheromone and rut control, so there’s no reason to criticize them for that. But they still criticize him. They close their eyes and plug their ears. When I see them keep talking about pheromone business and stuff like that, I really… I wonder who’s talking about dignity to whom.”
Morae was the only alpha around me, but she wasn’t the type to talk in detail about herself as an alpha. I myself didn’t have enough interest to search for information about alphas and omegas.
The information about what golden alphas are like and what Phantom’s CEO is like must already be well known in this industry, so even if a temporary part-timer who is almost an outsider finds out about the things Juhan is talking about, it was obvious that it would be a topic for killing time at a level that was irrelevant. Nevertheless, more than half of them were information that I didn’t know well.
“It’s amazing. They say that golden alphas aren’t just born that way, but that 50 percent of it is achieved through their own training, so in the end, he’s been steadily training to control his instincts since puberty to reach that level. He’s smiling so leisurely as if everything is easy… but he’s usually not that easygoing.”
After saying that, Juhan drank champagne and fixed his gaze on the CEO over the tilted glass.
Following Juhan’s gaze, the man was still leading the atmosphere as the center of the group. Skillfully, and sweetly.
As the owner and host of the place where this party was being held, his smile was fair to everyone, but it also had a different temperature from ordinary smiles, enough to make someone who was not immune to it mistaken.
Unlike the hostile attitude he had shown me, I imagined the man, who was kindly responding to each and every attendee like the sunlight that shines equally everywhere, pushing himself and repeating lonely internal training in places where people couldn’t see.
I tried to imagine it, but it wasn’t easy.
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