I, too, fully understood the intention behind his and Noona’s words, but I already had more than what was necessary.
Saying that it would be difficult to work and live in the same space once I started seriously working with oil paints due to their distinct smell, he had already scheduled construction for next week to put up a partition wall and a door between my bed and my workspace.
If there was anything I wanted, it was just to work a part-time job, even for just a few hours. In a situation where it was uncertain when I’d be able to make a profit from my paintings, I wanted to at least contribute to his grocery bills, but when I brought it up, he was firmly against it, citing that he couldn’t guarantee my safety.
“Ah, do you think we could hang Yeehyeon’s painting at the joint exhibition in the second half of the year? Would that be cutting it too close?”
Noona asked the Director as she massaged my shoulders, and the Director answered while looking not at her, but at me.
“It’s a joint exhibition, so we can hang it even if it’s just one piece.”
“Don’t feel pressured. We’re not going to force you to hang a painting the artist isn’t satisfied with. It just means that if you have a finished piece by then, we’ll go with hanging it.”
I nodded at Noona, but just the thought of my painting being hung in an exhibition made my throat feel parched with nervousness.
“The joint exhibition this time will feel a bit empty without Artist Shushu’s work. I suppose everything will be sold out at the Chicago exhibition, right?”
It was Juhan-hyung’s concern.
The joint exhibition was scheduled for after Artist Shushu’s Chicago show, so if all her works were sold in Chicago, it would be difficult to bring them back to Korea.
“Shushu’s works will of course all be sold, but this is also a good opportunity to promote other artists. Plan it out well. An exhibition is more than half about the planning, rather than the works themselves.”
Just as he had in front of Suki Kim, he maintained a confident attitude about the sale of Shushu’s works. He didn’t seem too worried about the joint exhibition either. The problem was Yuni-Noona.
“Haa… But can I really do a good job on the Chicago business trip? Artist Shushu is still in a panic, right?”
Withdrawing her arm from my shoulder with a sigh, Noona leaned her elbows on the table and held her head in her hands.
I knew that Noona was deeply troubled by the fact that the Director would not be accompanying them to Chicago, which was making Artist Shushu anxious. I stared at Noona’s slumped back, unable to offer a single word of comfort, and just kept drinking the innocent wine.
“She needs to start becoming independent from Director Han sooner or later. If Director Han has to follow her around every time something comes up, when will you guys ever get a chance?”
“Aww, come on. Aren’t you just going to cave the moment Artist Shushu calls you, crying?”
As Juhan-hyung drank his wine and snickered with disbelief, he spread his arms wide and said.
“That’s why I’m blocking her calls.”
He said it as if it were a fundamental solution, but to me, it sounded more like he was saying he wasn’t confident he could maintain his current stance if he answered the phone.
“Oh… Looks like you’re really determined this time. You have to be. Otherwise, I’m the one who’ll be in trouble. If the CEO, Baek Yuni, and you, Director, all go to Chicago… what am I supposed to do all alone in Seoul?”
Juhan-hyung shuddered dramatically, his face a picture of horror at the mere thought.
“If you have to go, Director, then I’ll have to stay. Even if we hire new people, they’ll all be rookies. How can you prepare for an exhibition with only rookies?”
At Noona’s dispirited voice, he shook his head firmly.
“That’s not going to happen, so Baek Yuni, you just focus on preparing for the Chicago exhibition. It absolutely will not happen.”
“I appreciate you saying that… but I’m having a hard time believing you. There are very few times I don’t believe what you say, Director, but this is about Artist Shushu. The artist is a bit… to put it nicely, delicate, and to put it another way, sensitive… so I’m not very confident.”
For a moment, the topic shifted to anecdotes about Artist Shushu’s severe shyness, his timidness, and his delicate and sensitive personality.
When Noona first joined Phantom, it was not long after Shushu had started his career as an artist, and it seemed she was more than just shy. He had a strong dark and defensive disposition, showing symptoms close to social anxiety, so events that involved putting him in front of a camera or having him give a greeting in front of people were said to be unimaginable back then.
It was to the point where all interviews were conducted only in print, and to make matters worse, it seemed Juhan-hyung, who joined around the time she had begun to open up to Noona, unfortunately had to go through the exact same process all over again.
“He wasn’t a very sociable person even before the accident… but it did get worse afterward. Still, he’s gotten a lot better now, hasn’t he? Didn’t you see him when he first met Seo Yeehyeon? Think about Kwon Juhan, who you couldn’t even let into the waiting room for six months after he joined. I’m telling you, he’s getting better.”
He tried to reassure Noona with exaggerated expressions and gestures, mixing in jokes. Hyung pleaded that the one who had really given him a hard time right after he joined wasn’t Shushu but the CEO’s bullying, but that story was ignored.
“Shushu doesn’t distrust you, either. He himself says it’s just because he’s mentally weak, doesn’t he? He’ll be fine if you just give him time to prepare herself mentally. Kun is going with you, too.”
With the Director’s encouragement added to the mix, Noona nodded. Her expression still held a trace of anxiety, but her profile as she fiddled with the handle of her knife looked much lighter than before.
“You’re the one coordinating all the opinions with the person in charge over there. Where would we go without you? You’re the one in charge of this event. That won’t change. Ever.”
Speaking decisively as if there was no more room for discussion, he said that since they were more or less done with the lamb, he would start grilling the Hanwoo beef, and took a can of beer from the icebox to return to the grill.
My gaze naturally followed him. To hide that gaze, I reached for my wine out of habit.
The fact that he would be accompanying them on this Chicago trip was one of the reasons that could lessen Noona’s anxiety, but for me, it was not.
I had been feeling an anxiety I had no right to feel about him leaving on a long business trip with Shushu. I had just been pretending not to notice because I found myself so uncomfortable and unpleasant. But my reason’s efforts to deny and ignore it crumbled with futile simplicity.
As I drained the last of the wine in my glass, Hyung stood up from his seat and poured me another.
“Anyway, Seo Yeehyeon has been through a lot of big things recently! Let’s just forget everything and have a good time drinking today! Shall we all make a toast for Yeehyeon’s smooth artistic endeavors? Huh?”
I was flustered by the sudden shift of attention to me, but it wasn’t that I wasn’t grateful for Hyung’s suggestion. He, who had picked up the meat tongs again, also returned to the table and joined in the toast.
Once the meal was more or less finished, the atmosphere naturally turned into a drinking party.
In the meantime, the sun had completely set, and once it did, the temperature of the garden, which was a dirt ground and not asphalt, dropped quickly. The cooled air became a pleasant breeze thanks to the garden trees. A degree of heat that made my back damp with sweat still lingered, but perhaps because of the alcohol, even that felt less unpleasant and more like a hazy, floating sensation.
“That’s why I really started to like Seo Yeehyeon from that moment on, I’m telling you!”
Flushed with drink, Juhan-hyung’s voice and actions were twice as loud as usual. He was excitedly telling the story of how, at the first exhibition I worked with him, I had recommended his own work to Inwoo-hyung.
“Ah, I’ll never forget the look on Inwoo-Doctor’s face back then.”
Hyung pounded on the table, his face triumphant at the memory.
“What was it? You were there, Director. What did Yeehyeon say?”
Taking a sip of beer to wet his throat, he let out a snicker.
“He said, ‘The way it seems to show everything honestly but is not at all like that is a perfect match for you and your paintings.’”
“That… that wasn’t the intention behind what I said!”
I swear I hadn’t said it with any impertinent intention. Just as I had explained to Inwoo-hyung himself at the Spanish-style pub afterward, I had only felt that the way he revealed his own lack of honesty with his characteristic cheerful, joking tone, to the point of being clear-cut, was a work that was just like him.
Now that I was facing a canvas again, I was realizing more keenly than before that that, too, was a process that required the resolve to become shabby in front of one’s own objectified self.
“Then, then what was your intention?”
Everyone burst into laughter at Juhan-hyung’s imitation, which copied my way of speaking. I, too, smiled awkwardly, feeling embarrassed for having been overly serious… but I suddenly found myself bothered by the fact that he remembered the situation at that time so accurately.
As he himself had told Inwoo-hyung in front of his ‘Ghost’ car that morning, it was a time when he had defined me as a ‘temp part-timer’ and showed no interest in me at all, so I hadn’t expected him to remember the conversation in such detail.
“I know, I know. Inwoo-Doctor also knew you weren’t being sarcastic, so he wasn’t offended and actually got more interested in you.”
Noona, who had switched seats with Hyung in the meantime and was now sitting diagonally across from me, said with a slightly slurred pronunciation from the alcohol as she stirred the whelk salad.
“Of course, of course. I know because I’m an S, but Inwoo-Doctor is actually a true M. He probably fell for you even more because you were so direct with him, you know?”
Juhan-hyung, who had moved to the seat next to me, chimed in. As he fished out the last can of beer from the icebox, he seemed to remember something and turned to me, adding.
“Ah, Inwoo-Doctor also knows you signed an artist contract and is really looking forward to it. Have you talked to him on the phone?”
“Yes. He calls about once every two days….”
“Hoh… Really? Could it be that Inwoo-Doctor is unexpectedly serious about Yeehyeon? For the great Inwoo-Doctor to be putting in the effort to call once every two days, this is no small matter.”
Noona said, her eyes shining as she lightly bit the end of her chopsticks, while Hyung, on the contrary, furrowed his brow and wagged his index finger in front of my face.
“What if he is serious? Honestly, Inwoo-Doctor with Yeehyeon? No matter how serious he is… ah, that’s just too shameless.”
“What’s this? Just because he’s an experienced playboy, he’s not qualified to date a less experienced partner? Why are you suddenly pretending to be so conservative, it doesn’t even suit you? What do you think, Director? If Inwoo-Doctor is serious about Yeehyeon, and Yeehyeon likes Inwoo-Doctor too, you wouldn’t be against it, would you?”
The Director, with a look that said he hadn’t expected the arrow of the question to be aimed at him, leaned his elbows on the table and shrugged.
“Hmm, is that… something for others to step in and oppose or what not?”
As if to say ‘see?’, Noona lifted her chin at Hyung, but Hyung, who usually espoused considerable liberalism regarding romance, for some reason did not easily back down.
“I know that too. It’s not something for others to step in and oppose, so he himself should go through a censorship of conscience and exercise self-restraint.”
“Seo Yeehyeon, are you interested in Choi Inwoo?”
“……”
At his question, who until then had been silently letting the two’s debate flow past him and seemed to have little interest, everyone’s attention was suddenly on him.
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