[So, are you going to act all spoiled and sleep between your Hyung and Noona tonight?]
His voice, now with a deeper hint of playfulness, was nice too. To shake off the illusion that his broad chest was pressing against my back, I deliberately stood up and moved to the window.
[For someone who had such a passionate night yesterday to pretend to be so innocent? seems a little deceitful to your Hyung and noona… hmm..?]
His tone was still playful, but I didn’t have the shrewdness to counter with a nonchalant reply. Frustrated with myself for failing to secure even a sliver of composure in my relationship with him, I pressed my forehead against the windowpane, which had grown cool from the air conditioner’s moderate chill. This wasn’t just a matter of age or experience. It was more a matter of personality.
As if he were now used to my uninteresting reactions, he chuckled to himself for a moment before smoothly changing the subject.
[How was your body today?]
“Better… than before.”
The next topic was also a difficult one for me, but I didn’t want to act like a fool this time. Though everything with him was a first, I was, after all, a full-fledged adult.
[Hmm… that’s a relief. Still, it would have been better if you could have rested today. It must have been uncomfortable, right?]
“No, really… my body feels fine. The… after…”
[After?]
He asked back, his voice rising as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. I could almost see his handsome face, eyebrows raised in a quizzical expression.
When I lifted my forehead from the glass and looked forward, my own face, reflected in the black window that mirrored the city’s completely fallen night, was burning red.
“The aftercare… because you did it right away… I felt much better than last time.”
[…]
His silence made my face flush even hotter. I had wanted to say it casually, naturally, but I had failed.
[Is it that hard to say the words ‘aftercare’?]
I sensed an ominous playfulness in his voice.
[When we’re doing it, you’re so honest, you drive a person…]
“Mr. CEO, you too! You must have been… very tired today, right?”
My voice cracked from rushing to cut him off, but he didn’t laugh or tease me for the voice break. Instead, he suffocated me with a silence that was even harder to bear. I felt as if I could feel the bold and intense gaze of his gray-blue eyes scrutinizing me.
As if deciding to back down at this point in my struggle to change the subject, he broke the silence with a soft laugh.
[I went home in the afternoon and slept soundly, so you don’t have to worry. A single day without proper sleep is, well, nothing.]
I was amazed by him, who had even thought of my wet clothes when he hadn’t slept a wink, but he spoke of everything he had arranged today as if it were no big deal. So that I wouldn’t feel too sorry, or too grateful.
I sat on the low ledge below the full-length window, pulling down the towel around my neck and fiddling with it as I spoke.
“Thank you so much for this…. On my own, I… wouldn’t have had a clue how to handle it.”
He was silent for a moment. It wasn’t the kind of silence where one probes, trying to gauge the meaning of words to avoid a loss. It was the kind of silence you didn’t want to break, one that seemed to leave space for time, quietly waiting for emotions to pool.
[Then… you’ll wear it for me, right? The sexy underwear.]
His unexpected reply left me momentarily dazed, then a light laugh escaped me.
[Uh-oh? Why are you trying to get away with a laugh? I’m serious.]
Even accepting a sincere thank you, he was skillfully deflecting it like this. I had to admit that his ability to resolve this situation wasn’t just due to his wealth and connections.
I thought about whether my saying ‘okay’ here would naturally add and solidify the item ‘a relationship for satisfying each other’s desires’ to our dynamic, and I scrubbed my face with the towel in my hands.
Whether I wanted to push myself into such a relationship, or whether I didn’t. Even that was uncertain… I wanted to say, but that would be hypocrisy.
I could no longer pretend not to know that, given the chance, I would try to sleep with him again without any hesitation.
In the place where the faint laughter had subsided, his more serious voice followed.
[I think I need to tell Manager Han that you’ll be painting. Is there a limit to what I can tell him about this incident? If there are parts you’re not comfortable with or want to tell him yourself, I’ll keep my mouth shut about them. It might seem like I’m rushing things, but once I decide on something like this, my personality is to want to get it all sorted out neatly on paper quickly.]
“Everything I told you, you can tell him just as it is.”
[Alright. Then while you’re having a farewell party with your Hyung and Noona, I’ll be busy drafting a contract that says all the paintings you create from now on are mine.]
“I’ll be in your care.”
I said it with a silent laugh, but I trusted that he would notice the faint hint of amusement in my voice.
[It might be a bother, but send me a message before you go to bed, and when you wake up tomorrow.]
“Yes, I will.”
Even after we had said that much, he didn’t say we should hang up and fell silent again. I, too, didn’t offer the first parting words. Like clumsy lovers at the start of a relationship, unable to easily end a call out of lingering attachment, a silence filled with a not-unpleasant tension was building.
It was he who first offered a gentle end to that silence.
[It’s your last night, and I’ve kept you for too long. Well then, have a good time.]
The call had lasted nearly twenty minutes. Like after watching a movie, my conversation with him left a lingering resonance. Unwilling to let it scatter, I sat there for a long while, still holding the phone, and then I grew curious about the missed call he had made while I was in the shower.
I had enjoyed the sensation of my body languidly unwinding under the hot water for a little longer than usual due to the fatigue that had built up since yesterday, but even so, my shower had only been about thirty minutes long. The number of missed calls he had left during those thirty minutes was twenty-six. It was the most missed calls I had ever received from one person.
He had good reason to make an excuse in advance about not having stalker tendencies, I thought with a small laugh. I stood up, tossed my phone onto the bed, and was about to leave the room when I stopped and turned back. Then I picked up the phone again and put it in my pants pocket. I didn’t want to make him a stalker again.
In the living room, Yeehan and Morae were already drinking beer. The vertically long living room offered a much more open view than the guest room I had just been in.
“Seo Yeehyeon, this room costs 7 million won a night.”
Morae, who had been looking at her phone, huddled next to Yeehan on one side of the sofa, turned to me and exclaimed with a worried face. It was an amount that would have been hard for me to believe back when I didn’t know about his wealth. Of course, even now, the sum of 7 million won for one night didn’t feel real.
“You’re not really being sold off to a deep-sea fishing boat or something, are you?”
Morae must have looked up the cost of the room online in the meantime, because she shoved her phone screen at me as I sat down next to her.
“How much would they even get for selling me to a deep-sea fishing boat?”
“That’s true. You’re tougher than you look, but you’re not exactly the brawny type, Seo Yeehyeon.”
Morae was quickly convinced and handed me a new beer she had placed on the table.
As I twisted the cap off the bottle, I glanced over and saw their two backpacks placed next to the single-person sofa over there. The backpacks, containing all their possessions packed for tomorrow, were incredibly simple. They looked like people about to go on a light two-night, three-day domestic trip, not people moving their lives overseas.
I looked down at the pair of backpacks leaning against each other, back to back, then turned my head as if to look away and started drinking my beer.
“Your CEO, what does he do, anyway? Is running a gallery a hobby, and he’s actually a third-generation chaebol or something?”
The main sofa was long and deep enough for the three of us to sit in a row with ample space between us. Morae, sitting between my Yeehan and me, leaned her head back against the backrest and looked at me.
“Probably… something like that.”
Considering the wealth of him or his family that Yuni-Noona and Juhan-Hyung had hinted at in Hong Kong, calling him the son of a chaebol family probably wouldn’t be far from the truth.
“But he’s not running the gallery as a hobby.”
Phantom was more than just a plausible business card for him. No one would go through the trouble of building a gallery from the ground up, even enduring rumors that he bewitched people with pheromones to sell paintings, just for a title on a business card.
“If he’s that rich, it makes sense that he’s so savvy about this stuff. I don’t know much about it, but it doesn’t seem like he’s just your average neighborhood rich guy. If that’s the case, it’s not like you can grow up ignorant of the world like a flower in a greenhouse just because you have money. There are political battles with outsiders, and of course, infighting among family members, so you can’t trust anyone around you. He might have been exposed to a lot of dirty situations from a young age. Just looking at him, his skills are no joke.”
Morae was talking about the escape plan he had arranged.
While we were stopping by the home of the owner of ‘What Happened in Bali’ to get our things and moving here, he had created a temporary email address and sent over detailed materials about the plan he had prepared.
According to the plan, Yeehan and Morae were scheduled to arrive in Bali over the next 15 nights and 16 days, passing through a total of nine countries. That number excluded countries they would only pass through briefly on layovers. The plan didn’t just involve planes; it also included sections where they would cross borders by boat and bus.
His explanation was that by twisting the route so intricately, it would be impossible for a civilian to track them, no matter how competent a private investigation agency they hired. He added, with a smiley emoticon after the message, that since things had turned out this way, he had designed the schedule so they could enjoy the journey in their own way, and to have a good time.
After checking the plan, Morae seemed to have come to trust him completely. She even used the word ‘smitten,’ and I got to see a rare glimpse of Yeehan getting jealous.
“Hey, where the hell is Minsk in Belarus? I didn’t even know a country or a city like that existed.”
My brother, who was heading to the kitchen saying he was going to make some snacks since he didn’t know when he’d get to use such a great kitchen again, shrugged with an exaggerated gesture and said loudly. My Noona and I looked at each other and laughed.
It had been a day that was by no means light for any of us. Starting tomorrow, a completely different life would begin. Without putting into words the sorrowful exhaustion and the vague fear that stirred in our hearts, we were trying to spend this night as we always did.
But this was our way. If we were to dig up all our emotions and try to confirm them with each other… if that had been Morae and my brother’s way, I wouldn’t have been able to bear it.
“Your CEO.”
“Huh?”
Lost in thought while staring at my beer bottle, I reacted excessively to the mention of the CEO, like a thief caught in the act.
“He must have incredible confidence in your talent. I know nothing about that world, but still, to pay such a large sum as a signing bonus and even help with something like this after seeing just one painting doesn’t seem like a common story. It must mean he’s that captivated by your art, Seo Yeehyeon, right?”
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