His face, wanting confirmation that what had happened to Yeehyeon wasn’t the most horrific kind of incident, was nearly half-hidden by sunglasses, but it held a desperation she had never seen from him before.
With his naturally excellent looks, intellectual ability, and on top of that, his background, he had lived a life where he never needed to become desperate to obtain something.
Even when he first came to Seoul and opened a gallery of a mere 60 pyeong, he had strongly believed in the results his talent and effort would bring, and despite being the owner of such a small gallery, he always treated his clients with a relaxed confidence. There was never any sign of him bowing and scraping to sell one more piece or growing anxious for immediate profit.
Among the consumers of high-priced goods like paintings, there were those who wanted to be treated with deference for no reason, but there were also the type who found their sense of superiority fulfilled by associating with a charming person of high taste. In fact, it was undeniable that as Phantom grew to this point, the power of those who had become loyal clients, drawn by his charm, had been significant.
And now, that same Liu Weikun was revealing his agitation, worried about a past incident that might have happened to a twenty-two-year-old artist under his wing.
His demeanor, as if he would drop to his knees if only he could hear that nothing had happened, was so pitiful that for a moment, she felt the impulse to tell him the story she knew. But when she thought of Yeehyeon, she couldn’t. If he hadn’t told him, or couldn’t tell him, there must have been a reason of his own.
She let out a small sigh and shook her head.
“Ah Wei, it would be better for you to hear that from Yeehyeon directly. That way, there won’t be any trouble with him later.”
“You can’t even answer that much? Manager Han, you know how tight-lipped Seo Yeehyeon is. I don’t know how much more time it will take to hear what happened directly from his mouth… and you want me to carry this weight in the meantime? Manager Han, don’t do this. You can answer that much, can’t you?”
Resting his elbows on his thighs, he brought his clasped hands to his lips and shook his head.
“The awful thing Director Liu is thinking of… it’s not that. For anything more, you really have to hear it from Yeehyeon.”
Concluding her words with a firmness that promised she would not open her mouth again, she picked up her sandwich, though her appetite had already vanished. His face was still heavy, but he seemed to have regained more composure than before.
She knew the difference in temperature between his public attitude and his inner attitude toward artists and their work. She also knew that, in reality, he supported and loved art—and the sincere artistry of those who sought to pour their true selves into it—far more than he let on.
It was because she had recognized this that she had gotten along with him from their time in Hong Kong, when everyone else had implicitly considered him a difficult person to work with, and why she had readily accepted his proposal to open a gallery together in Seoul.
She had thought his interest in Yeehyeon was merely an extension of his passion for his work and his artists.
They had never discussed their private lives in detail, but as far as she knew, in the roughly ten years she had known him, he had never once had a proper romantic partner.
He’d had people he dated casually a few times, but it rarely developed into a deeper relationship. She didn’t know if it was because he didn’t want it to, or if he had failed to develop the relationship.
Whenever such topics came up, he would speak of it as if it were a shame but couldn’t be helped, and that was all. He never showed any desperation for any partner. It was clear he wasn’t the type of person who thought a lover whom one deeply respected and loved was essential for a fulfilling life.
This didn’t mean his approach to romance was immature or that he was a frivolous person.
Rather… he was quite skilled at controlling his distance, preventing his partners from seeing his shortcomings or the parts of himself he wanted to hide, and his attitude in romance was likely not much different.
He and his partners had probably never even raised their voices at each other, let alone fought. They would have gone on textbook dates, had sex with an intensity appropriate for the number of times they’d met, and ended things with a polite breakup that didn’t wound each other’s egos. If that was what one called a mature romance, then his relationships until now had certainly been mature.
Polite, but with no sacrifice; never changing himself for his partner, and with no childish emotional expenditure… encounters and retreats that left no trace.
But to state her personal opinion, that was, in fact, immaturity. The absence of conflict could not be seen as peace. In a situation without any crisis, one couldn’t even prove one’s maturity.
Whether he himself felt a lack due to the absence of a lover or not, the only way to get to the deepest interior of another human being, someone other than oneself, was love. And the only way to experience, with one’s whole body, the existence of another who sought to know you, was also love.
Her thought was that if one could only see the bottom of one’s own self during one’s life, there could be no loneliness more terrible. Only after revealing each other’s bottoms could one prove true maturity. After all, you couldn’t call it strength to be able to smile all the time just because only good things happened.
Though she herself had not navigated that stage maturely, her belief remained unchanged: that it was a stroke of luck in life to meet a partner who makes you break the rules, who draws out a new you, who makes you face the uncool version of yourself, and who lets you taste the full spectrum of emotions.
In her eyes, the man before her was now facing a new self that was breaking his old rules.
She was curious as to how much he had noticed and accepted his own change, but because they had never shown serious interest in each other’s private lives, it was not easy to bring it up.
As she glanced at him, still not touching his sandwich, smoking a cigarette and drinking only coffee, his phone rang from the desk behind them.
He usually used three cell phones, and when they weren’t on vibrate, he distinguished them by their different ringtones. Holding the cigarette in one hand, he rose and walked to the desk, holding the phone right up to his face to check the caller ID. Then he took a drag from his cigarette and exhaled a long stream of smoke.
“Ah… Zeng Shuyan. You’ve been quiet for a few days, so I thought you’d finally accepted it.”
He pressed a button to silence the ringer and returned to the sofa, leaning the back of his head against the backrest.
“Are you just going to keep avoiding Shushu’s calls like that?”
“Answering the phone could just give her false hope. Phantom’s position has been made clear, and I hammered it home that whining on the phone won’t change anything… I really didn’t know her dependence on you was this severe, Manager Han.”
He took off his sunglasses, pressed his fingertips firmly against his eyelids, then put the sunglasses back on and looked at her.
Although he had been the one to set the policy at first, she had been the one to practically care for Shushu, so she had no intention of blaming him entirely for the current situation.
“Still, avoiding her won’t solve anything. If she doesn’t understand, you have to persuade her. What I say is no use….”
“Ah, sorry. Just a moment, I need to get this.”
His phone on the desk rang with a different ringtone, and he shot up as if spring-loaded and returned to the desk.
As he checked the caller ID and answered the call, a faint but gentle smile graced his lips. It was one surprise after another.
“Oh, it’s me.”
She felt she knew who the caller was without having to ask. The years she had spent with him were not short, but never before had he seemed so easy to read. An easy-to-read Liu Weikun was a stranger to her.
“No, I can talk. Go ahead.”
Pressing the phone tightly to his ear as if afraid to miss a single word from the other side, he walked out toward the garden, gesturing for her to eat her sandwich at ease.
“Ah, is it that time already? What about lunch? Did you eat lunch before you left?”
As if he couldn’t see the clock hands clearly due to the strong sunlight, he raised his left wrist right up to his sunglasses to check the time.
For someone who had compared Yeehyeon to an annoying light, his expression was like someone pleasantly sunbathing in that very light.
“I’m having a sandwich… Ah, no, that’s not it, I’m a bit busy today… Let’s have something delicious for dinner… Later… I’ll head over there in time….”
As she half-listened to the snippets of conversation and his occasional laughter, which became intermittent as he walked farther away, she put down her sandwich and picked up her coffee instead.
It had been quite a while since she herself had been in a serious relationship, but if that voice right now wasn’t one of a man in love, then Liu Weikun should quit running a gallery and switch to acting.
“No, I’ll leave on time… If there’s something you want to eat… Okay, see you later… Always be careful… Alright then.”
Even after saying his goodbyes to end the call, he stood there for a moment with the phone to his ear, then stuck a hand in his pocket and laughed, his shoulders shrugging.
“You hang up first.”
His voice was full of laughter.
Regardless of who the other person was, she was shocked by the very fact that Liu Weikun was having such a conversation about who would hang up the phone first.
She had wished for someone to appear who could make him stray from his orbit, who could boldly invade his inner world and rearrange the things inside. Both he and Yeehyeon were precious people to her.
But if asked whether the two of them could maintain a balanced relationship through romance… she couldn’t answer that with confidence. That was a completely different matter.
When he returned to his seat, he looked like a different person, his expression dark. Who was that? Your mouth was stretched from ear to ear the whole time you were on the phone. Are you dating someone these days? She had planned to ask him just that, feigning ignorance, but she had to change her plan. The atmosphere was not one for lighthearted jokes.
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