Neither his tone nor the expression on his face as he stared at me held any trace of a high-handed, interrogating attitude. That confused me even more.
Unable to discern the intent of the question, I looked back and forth between the four faces before fiddling with the stem of my wine glass and slowly opening my mouth.
“That’s… Inwoo hyung has never seriously talked about it either….”
“Leave Choi Inwoo’s circumstances out of it. I’m asking if you, Seo Yeehyeon, are interested in Choi Inwoo in that way. Just answer that.”
His face, which even held a light smile befitting the mood of the gathering, revealed the unique, mischievous curiosity of someone observing others’ love lives with great interest.
If our situations were reversed, it was a composure I could never have managed, not even as an act. I gripped the wine glass I had been fiddling with and answered.
“……No.”
He shrugged and looked around at the others.
“See? He says no. Why are you all wasting your energy on an issue he has no thoughts on?”
“Ah… what to do about Inwoo-Doctor. He’s the type who always calls himself ‘an alpha infinitely close to golden’ and believes he can seduce anyone if he just puts his mind to it. But I guess that doesn’t work on a beta.”
Though her words sounded sympathetic, Noona’s face was filled with an amused smile.
“Of course. Seo Yeehyeon might look naive, but he’s not the kind of kid who’d fall head over heels for some worn-out, cliché techniques.”
Juhan hyung, too, grabbed my shoulder with a firm, embracing grip, a satisfied look on his face.
My interest was focused on someone else entirely, yet here I was, answering for a scandal with the wrong person. The situation felt like a clumsy comedy, and I smiled bitterly with my head lowered.
“Huh? Huh? CEO, where are you going?”
But as if I were programmed to react whenever he was mentioned, my gaze automatically turned in his direction at Noona’s voice calling out to him.
“Where do you think I’m going? I’m going to get you more drinks.”
“Ah, then we’re done with wine! We’ll have beer, please!”
Waving a hand in a vague response to Juhan hyung’s request, he turned to leave, only to be stopped by Noona’s outstretched arms.
“What, what is it?”
“Give me a piggyback ride to the bathroom on your way.”
He grabbed Noona’s arm as she climbed onto the bench, as if worried she’d fall, and though he shook his head as if she were hopeless, he offered her his back without a word of complaint. With her arms wrapped around his neck, Noona, her cheeks flushed from the alcohol, made a V-sign.
I had felt it before, but while he could sometimes be an excessively ruthless boss at work, in private settings, especially at drinking parties, he was like a gentle older brother.
Noona and Hyung were also people who prioritized efficiency, never acting childishly based on their private familiarity or getting hurt by his direct way of speaking when it came to work. But when they were drunk, they would cling to him like the much-loved youngest siblings they were.
These things were only possible because he left himself open, allowing the two of them to express their affection without fear of rejection.
Watching Noona’s back as she disappeared into the house, clinging to his back, I was reminded of the experience a few months ago, in this very garden, when I had felt like ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ A lot had changed in my relationship with him since then, and we had even become partners who shared passionate nights in bed, but among them, I still felt like Alice from that other world.
“So, am I the nude model? Has the chance to finally show off this physique arrived?”
I was finally able to laugh at the joke from Hyung, who was pouring his own beer, the last can, into his empty wine glass.
○
The sound of Noona and Hyung’s laughter drifted from the open front door all the way to the kitchen. I had been helping him clear the food, leaving behind things that could serve as more snacks, and my hands paused for a moment at the boisterous laughter created by just two people.
“Ah… those two have a long way to go. They’ll probably be like that until the sun comes up.”
He spoke as he wiped the grease off a plate with a kitchen towel in front of the sink, making it easier for the housekeeper to do the dishes tomorrow morning. He glanced back toward the counter.
The Section Chief, who had come straight here after work, had already left in a designated driver’s car, saying his clothes were uncomfortable and that he should go home and rest. But Noona and Hyung were ramping up their conversation as if the real party was just beginning.
From their vision for ‘Old Future’s’ fall season, to Noona’s impressions on the diversity of the American art market she encountered while preparing for the Chicago exhibition and the management philosophy of the gallery over there that operated according to that market’s characteristics, and even to the stories of the futures they both dreamed of and were preparing for.
The topics were endless, and the two shared a similar disposition where their conversations only deepened as they got drunker.
“It’s only midnight, and they’ll go until morning?”
Placing the last plate in the sink, he now began to wash the grease from his hands with liquid soap.
“It’s an age where you have a lot to say. You want to explain yourself, you want to be understood, and you can talk with hope about even the most uncertain plans. They pretend to hate each other, but they’re a good match.”
He added that I didn’t need to worry about them, as they would find their own way to the guest room to sleep if left alone. He shook the water from his hands and turned toward me, then leaned his body against the edge of the sink.
“But.”
“……”
Just his slanted gaze and the subtle tone of his voice as he tried to change the subject was enough to create a light tension in the air between us.
“I didn’t know you were talking to Choi Inwoo on the phone every other day.”
His voice was soft, and he was smiling slightly as he brushed his bangs back with a wet hand.
“It’s nothing special, just… everyday talk….”
“What everyday talk? About food again?”
I nodded, looking at him as he asked the question playfully.
“Are you sure you don’t have feelings for Choi Inwoo?”
“……”
Hoping to find a hint as to why he was bringing up a topic I thought had been concluded at the drinking table earlier, I stared intently at his face, knowing full well that my own anxiety might be revealed.
Could it be that he was bothered by it?
But to interpret it so favorably… he had been warning me about my relationship with Inwoo hyung from quite early on. From the time when he seemed to have no interest in me, when he treated me as a stranger to be scouted and suspected.
Just as I was frustrated by my inability to read his mind, I hoped that I, too, was at least an unknown territory to him… but when I recalled how transparently I could see into the heart of a twelve-year-old, ten years my junior, the thought became a little bleak.
“Not yet….”
“……”
Perhaps it was a gamble I took out of frustration. There was also the heat of the alcohol warming my cheeks.
He pushed himself off the sink he was leaning on and came toward me. I was the one who had cast the bait, but I was also the one whose lips were going dry from being unable to predict his reaction.
He walked to the front of the clean counter, where the leftover food had been put away in the fridge, and slowly caressed the edge of the shiny marble top, his gaze on his own fingertips.
“When you go out, you’ll be sure to use the car I prepared for you, right?”
“……”
He had completely changed the subject to something unrelated to Inwoo hyung. He lifted his gaze. His eyes, as they looked at me, seemed so pitifully desperate for a ‘yes’ that I met his gaze and slowly nodded. I knew how worried both he and the Section Chief were, and I didn’t want to cause them trouble with unnecessary actions.
As if that was all he needed, he smiled, stuck both hands in the back pockets of his jeans, and spoke in a voice that seemed deliberately cheerful.
“Before you go to bed, could you come up to the study for a moment? Unlike those guys who came to the housewarming empty-handed, I have a gift for you.”
“Ah….”
“That’s not the face of someone who just heard they’re getting a gift. I didn’t prepare it to see that kind of expression.”
Feeling burdened by the idea that a material gift must be reciprocated with a material item of equal value could be a discourtesy to the giver’s heart—that had been my stance until now… but now that I was the one receiving so much while having nothing to give back, I couldn’t escape the feeling of being in debt, the thought that I had to consider it a loan and pay it back.
Hmm….
He looked down at my face, which must have worn the expression of someone meeting a creditor, sighed, and bent over, propping his elbows on the counter. His profile was now lower than mine.
“It’s the same story all over again, but I’m not sacrificing anything for you, Seo Yeehyeon. I’m not supporting you or buying you gifts by straining myself financially, and I give gifts to those two and to Section Chief Han often. So if you would just accept it with a happy face, I think that would be repayment enough for me.”
If it had been Juhan hyung or Yuni Noona, they would have shown a happy reaction to his gift…. In that case, do I consider Noona and Hyung, who accept his gifts without feeling burdened, to be shameless people?
That’s not it… but it wasn’t easy to judge when it came to my own affairs. The only gifts the three of us—Morae, Hyung, and I—had ever exchanged were things like books, pens, or keychains.
“Ah, then you can do me a favor too, Seo Yeehyeon. To be fair.”
“……”
He straightened up from leaning on the counter, his face looking as if he’d just had a great idea.
“I’d like to see the paintings you’ve started since moving here.”
His smiling face tilted slightly, as if urging me for an answer.
“……Now?”
He nodded.
“Now.”
With an expression that said, ‘what’s the problem,’ he spoke.
“If you’re the type who never shows your work until it’s hanging in a gallery, then I can’t force you… but since you’ll be painting Kwon Juhan as a model, that guy is bound to see it anyway… so I’m guessing you’re not the type who absolutely can’t show it. How about it?”
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