I was keeping in touch with Morae and Yeehan through the email account he had made for me. The two of them had entered Eastern Europe through Minsk, the capital of Belarus, passed through several Eastern European countries, crossed Russia, traversed Mongolia and China to enter India, and from there, they planned to approach Bali by alternating between land, air, and sea routes. It was a route he had planned and prepared in less than a day.
“They’ll arrive safely. It’s the CEO’s plan, after all.”
My Noona, whose hands were tied up with bags, tilted her head and lightly bumped my temple as she spoke. I could guess her intention was to comfort me, so I looked at her and smiled.
“Hurry up and open the door. This is killing me.”
At Juhan-hyung’s whiny urging, I pressed the password to unlock the door.
About halfway down the corridor connected to the parking garage was a door leading to the studio, and if you passed that door and turned right, there was another door that led out to the garden.
Since I had come, he had been using the parking garage through the door leading from the garden, but there was also a staircase inside the studio that connected to the first floor. When he called me to eat together, I would go upstairs via the internal staircase.
Actually… over the past week, from Monday when I moved my things until yesterday, Friday, there had been skinship between him and me twice.
Once after a meal of sushi he’d brought as takeout, and another time after a meal of oil pasta he’d made, we talked for a bit… and… um… we ended up kissing and caressing each other.
But both times, there was no insertion. All we did was make each other cum with our hands, and one time he rubbed himself between my thighs while we were standing.
“Whoa… this is a basement? In the one-room apartment districts near universities, there are tons of places on the 2nd and 3rd floors that are dark and gloomy because they’re crammed right next to the other buildings! This is super luxurious!”
An excited Juhan-hyung dropped his bags on the floor and began to look around the studio. It was a wildly enthusiastic reaction, quite different from my own when he had first shown me this place.
“It looks even more spacious because it’s an open-plan studio. This side is for work… and that side is the bedroom. I guess?”
My sister, who had placed her bags neatly next to the ones Juhan-hyung had haphazardly dropped in the middle of the room, pointed to the bed barely visible beyond the far corner and said. Juhan-hyung had already run over to the bed and was checking the firmness of the mattress.
The central space in front of the door where my Noona and I were standing was mostly empty, aside from tools for painting.
“No artwork yet?”
Yuni asked, looking with interest at the canvases lined up face-down beneath the window.
“You don’t have to show us if you don’t feel like it. We’re gallery employees, for what it’s worth. We know how to respect an artist’s wishes.”
Juhan-hyung, who had returned to our side at some point, crouched in front of the bags he’d set down, broke off a banana, and peeled it as he joined the conversation.
“It’s not that… I just took such a long break, so I’m still just warming up my hand….”
I was still mostly doing sketches, to the point where it felt like a waste of the tools and materials he had prepared for me. I had only just started to dabble with oil paints two days ago. But the time I spent working was rapidly increasing. I spent almost all my time painting from when he left for work until he returned, but painting wasn’t as painful as I had worried it would be.
It was just moving my hand to draw a subject; I wasn’t putting myself into it yet.
But this wasn’t a situation where I could just keep doing sketches for practice forever. I was in a position where I had borrowed money on the promise that I would paint, so I had an obligation to produce paintings with economic value.
“Um… I’ve been mostly drawing still lifes and landscapes to warm up my hand lately, but if you have time, could you model for me, hyung? I want to try drawing a person, too.”
Hyung, who had been mumbling with a mouthful of banana while flipping through the books, art collections, and exhibition pamphlets tucked into the shelves of the built-in furniture, stopped and looked back at me.
“Me? Not Baek Yuni, me?”
“Uh… your facial contours, like the shape of your eyes, your cheekbones, and your jawline… I thought you have stronger features, so you’d be good to draw….”
I explained myself earnestly, worried Yuni might be disappointed, but she just chuckled and patted my back.
“Why are you explaining so hard? I’m not the type to get upset over something like this, you know?”
As I smiled at my sister, feeling awkward for my needless worry, his voice came from above.
“You’re here, so why aren’t you coming up? Aren’t you hungry?”
He had come down the stairs connecting to the first floor and was leaning his arm obliquely on the railing, looking down at us.
“We’re looking around Yeehyeon’s room. The treatment is different now that he’s a signed artist. I didn’t know the basement was this nice.”
At my sister’s answer, he shrugged and glanced my way as he came down the stairs, but he didn’t say anything in particular and turned his attention to the bags on the floor.
“Why did you buy so much again? You won’t even be able to eat it all.”
“We have to give up our vacation and work all summer anyway, so we have to bleed you dry with things like this at least. And, we’re going to eat all of it, you know?”
Juhan-hyung grinned in a way that wasn’t unlikable and wrapped an arm around his waist. Pushing hyung’s forehead away, he also smiled as if he didn’t dislike it. Hyung was surprisingly natural with physical affection and had a cute side to him. It wasn’t just with him; he was like that with the Director and my sister, too, and he would often sling an arm over my shoulder or lean his head on me.
He and Juhan-hyung, bickering as they carried the bags up to the first floor, looked like close brothers. I followed them, thinking about my own stuffy personality, which didn’t know how to be casually familiar like that, even though I kissed and had sex with him.
“Huh? The painting. Why did you take the painting down?”
As soon as we entered the living room, Juhan-hyung stopped, pointing at the empty space above the sofa, and my startled eyes automatically went to him.
“I was looking forward to seeing what it would feel like, knowing it was Yeehyeon’s painting.”
“It’s a piece whose value is about to skyrocket. I’ve got it stored safely away. If you want to see that painting now, push for an exhibition.”
Glancing at me so the other two wouldn’t notice, he led the way toward the kitchen and changed the subject.
I had told him I was really okay now, but he hadn’t put ‘Isolation’ back in its place. He seemed to think I had some kind of trauma related to ‘Isolation’, but my shock that day had nothing to do with the painting itself; it was because of the past days the painting came to mind.
But I didn’t think I was ready to explain that to him, to another person. I myself hadn’t properly processed it internally and had just been waiting for time to pass and for it to grow dull.
After moving the bags to the kitchen, the real meal preparation began.
Since Yuni-noona and Juhan-hyung had unanimously shouted for meat, today’s main menu was barbecue. He, the one in charge of the meat, seasoned it and then went out to the garden to set up the equipment. The three of us started by taking the ingredients out of the bags and spreading them on the spacious island countertop.
All the classic barbecue ingredients were gathered: Korean beef bought by the cut, lamb chops with the bone still attached, handmade sausages, king prawns, potatoes, and sweet potatoes. There were also vegetables to go with them, fruits and ice cream for dessert, and even a cheesecake that Juhan-hyung had put in the cart because he wanted to eat it. Just as he’d said, it seemed like an amount we could never finish in a single dinner.
Besides the barbecue, hyung planned to make spicy whelks with noodles, and noona was going to make kimchi stew. I, who didn’t know how to cook, was mainly in a supporting role, washing and trimming the ingredients.
“The Director said she’ll be here in 10 minutes. We can start the steaks, right?”
Juhan-hyung, after checking his phone, rubbed his hands together and licked his lips. While we were preparing, hyung had already polished off two bananas, a peach, and a pack of crackers, but he still seemed to be hungry.
“Yeehyeon, take this to the CEO… and you can help him outside.”
Taking the tray Yuni handed me, I went out the front door to find him, having already set up the table and grill all by himself, filling the grill with charcoal. I placed the tray on the table, which seemed convenient for outdoor use as it was integrated with a bench-style chair, and approached the grill.
“The Director will be here in 10 minutes.”
“Then we can start grilling.”
Igniting a torch made to be used with a butane canister, he pushed the nozzle deep into the pile of charcoal that had been stacked at an angle to allow for good air circulation.
The blue flame, which dug between the charcoals with the sound of rushing wind, flared up into a red blaze. The searing heat of midday had passed, but the sun was still out. I thought he must be hot standing in front of the fire and glanced up, and our eyes met.
“Have you ever had lamb?”
“No.”
“Hmm, it’s a meat that can be an acquired taste because of its unique smell… but those two have such refined palates, they probably picked out good quality meat. Give it a try. If it’s not to your liking, we have Korean beef too.”
I nodded, looking down at the process of the black charcoal catching fire and burning red.
“It’s more delicious if you let it marinate for an hour or two, but if the meat is good, it’s delicious grilled just like this. Well, Kwon Juhan would probably find it delicious even if I gave him raw meat to gnaw on.”
“Juhan-hyung said… that the steak you grill is really delicious.”
“He says things like that? I thought he only bad-mouthed me behind my back.”
I let out a small laugh at his exaggerated words, and he, after checking that the charcoal was sufficiently lit, withdrew the torch and spread the charcoal evenly inside the grill.
“My mother is from the States, and she loves barbecue. She often invited friends over for barbecues all year round. As I grew up, I gradually inherited the position of chef. We often had Korean-style charcoal grills, too.”
It was a trivial, small story, and some might say I was over-analyzing and making a fuss, but… it was the first time he had spoken so comfortably about himself like this, so my gaze naturally went to him.
He, who was placing the grate on top of the charcoal ready for grilling, must have felt my gaze because he looked up at me. The contact of our meeting eyes lingered for a little while.
His gaze took on a slightly different light. It was a tense gaze, like the one he had sent me just before we kissed on the living room sofa yesterday. As soon as I detected that change, my body also tensed as if tied by a tight rope.
He glanced behind him once, then took off his gloves and placed them on the shelves that hung like wings on either side of the grill.
And with one hand, he cupped the nape of my neck, and with the other, he touched my lips. To be precise, he gripped my lower lip hard as if pinching it and rubbed it so that the membranous lining on the inside of my lips chafed against each other.
It was sudden, and I couldn’t understand the intention of the unfamiliar skinship, so I just stared at him with wide eyes. His gaze, likewise fixed on me, was reminiscent of the blue flame that had just lit the black charcoal red. As I felt the pain in my lips while looking into his blue eyes that seemed cold but seethed with passion, his hand moved away.
It was a short time, no more than ten seconds, but at the tingling numbness, I unknowingly brought a hand to my lips and fumbled at them.
As he put his gloves back on, he smiled silently, without showing his teeth. It was a sly-looking smile.
“The sensation… isn’t it similar?”
“……”
“You like it when I hurt you, Seo Yeehyeon. Well, I like it too.”
He didn’t mention what it was similar to, but I felt like I vaguely knew.
“You were looking at me with eyes that said you wanted to kiss. But right now… I can’t.”
“Ah….”
A foolish sound of realization escaped me. I pulled down the hand that was fiddling with my lips, but the burning heat, as if I’d been seared by fire, remained.
He spoke as if the recent skinship was a substitute for a kiss, but funnily enough, that sensation ignited a craving for a real kiss inside my body. I started to feel a little… resentful of him for stirring me up like this.
Suddenly, his voice dropped another tone, becoming more secretive.
“Or, should we just do it? I don’t mind.”
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