“I wouldn’t mind, though.”
I couldn’t tell if he was serious or joking.
Frowning as if disappointed, he leaned his upper body forward and loosely propped his chin on one arm. The table wasn’t very wide, so his face was very close. His playful face, chin propped up comfortably enough to press into his cheek, was a little lower than my eye level.
I felt an impulse to reach out and caress his handsome face, but given the place and my personality, it wasn’t easy to act on it.
“Is your desire to have me all to yourself only at this level? Last time, you were so explicit about how I couldn’t do it with anyone else… what was it you said? Kissing, putting fingers inside….”
“Hey, Director!”
Unlike me, who was sitting with my back to the wall and facing the main dining area, he could only see me. Spotting the manager approaching, I was so flustered that I grabbed his hand on the table to cut him off.
His eyes widened, looking first at me, then at the hand I was holding. He glanced back and forth between them.
“The exhibition was really good.”
“……”
A smile soon spread across his face as he realized the reason for my sudden, awkward change of subject, delivered as if a child who had just learned to read was sounding out a book.
Even though I knew he would never make a clumsy mistake like letting others overhear a private conversation, I wasn’t yet seasoned enough in these matters to enjoy the anxiety as a thrill.
He squeezed my hand once before letting go and sitting up straight. As if on cue, the manager stopped beside our table.
“I’ll bring out your appetizer first.”
A salmon salad with cucumber was served, and the manager immediately brought over a tray of glasses in various shapes and colors, letting us choose the ones we liked. Still not over my fluster, which felt like it was about to break me out in a cold sweat, I roughly picked up whatever was in front of me.
“I’m sorry. I went a little too far.”
Once we were alone again, he pulled his chair closer and met my gaze.
“I guess I got carried away because it seemed like you were getting a little jealous, Seo Yeehyeon.”
“……”
I had thought that as a mature adult, he would find immature and draining emotions like jealousy bothersome. That he would find the war of nerves that comes with romantic feelings—the unhealthy desire to bind and possess each other—tiresome as well. The version of him in Juhan-hyung’s stories didn’t stray far from that image.
But the things he was saying now were turning all the perceptions that those around him (at least Juhan-hyung and I) had of Liu Weikun into mere prejudice.
I suddenly became curious. Were these kinds of conversations his usual way of doing things? Or was this an exception?
“Your reaction was so… cute, I couldn’t control myself. You’re not mad, are you?”
I could tell his intention wasn’t to tease me, but that he was enjoying this time. It was impossible not to know, seeing his expression and the look in his eyes. And once I became aware of that, I felt that I, too, could start to enjoy this silly, childish bickering.
Feeling a ticklish sensation at being called cute, I shook my head. The Section Chief, Yuni-Noona, and Juhan-Hyung sometimes said it to me, but it never felt like this.
He gave me a gentle smile as if relieved, then picked up his chopsticks and encouraged me to eat as well.
“So, what did you really think of the exhibition?”
I swallowed the last of the salmon I was chewing before answering a little late.
“It was very… powerful, and impressive.”
His reaction was one of ‘I knew it.’
“You’re the type who wants to see a painting that confronts a self that has poured everything out, that has opened itself up to its limits. The type who can’t just sit in front of an easel with a light heart, thinking, ‘What should I paint today?’… That’s why I thought you’d like this artist’s work.”
“It’s not that I think painting with a light heart is bad…. And I haven’t always painted only about my most private pain…. It’s just that, for me, painting is a means of being honest… so I often end up expressing my emotions or thoughts.”
I wasn’t sure if I was conveying my actual thoughts properly, but I felt I could speak to him without fearing being misunderstood.
He nodded and said, “I know. There’s no need to distinguish which is more valuable; it’s just that every artist has a different style. That’s what makes art so much richer. Though most critics and powerful galleries love to rank things by high and low standards.”
The conversation paused as the drinks arrived. A dish called tataki, tuna seared only on the outside, was served along with chilled sake in a bowl filled with crushed ice.
The sake, which he had recommended and I was trying for the first time, had notes of fruit like strawberry and apple, making it easy to drink. The round, transparent glass with its bluish tint reminded me of his eyes.
After a brief chat about the taste of the sake, the topic returned to ‘Silence and Lies.’
“And the way the theme was so clearly revealed in the paintings was very different from my own work, so that was refreshing too. The artist seemed like someone who doesn’t hesitate to voice their own feelings or thoughts, which I found even more charming.”
“I think your paintings are plenty bold, they just contain more complex emotions.”
“……”
Leaning comfortably against the table, he caressed the bulging bottom of his glass with one hand and sent me a subtle gaze.
“Looking at your work alone, it’s hard to imagine your usual quiet self.”
“In fact, your work is faaar closer to how you are in bed,” he added, and as I watched his inscrutable smile while he brought the half-empty glass to his lips, I too felt a thirst and tilted my own glass.
As the conversation deepened, we tilted our glasses more often than we moved our chopsticks.
Even after the tataki, neat-looking tempura and several kinds of skewers were served in succession, but we both only picked at them enough to taste. Instead, the 720ml bottle of sake was already nearly empty.
In the meantime, the empty table next to us had been occupied, and the restaurant was now filled with the sound and smell of grilling skewers and the lively chatter of people enjoying the weekend.
I could feel glances from the next table, which seemed to be a gathering of old friends, but he didn’t let his attention stray for even a brief moment. Thanks to him focusing his consciousness solely on me, as if we were alone in a quiet space, as if I were the only one in his field of vision, I too was gradually able to erase everything else.
“Between silence and lies, which do you think is more violent?” he asked without looking at me, skillfully separating a grilled scallop with yuzu sauce from its skewer and placing it on my plate.
Then he immediately corrected his question.
“No, personally, which do you despise more?”
It was a topic that anyone who had seriously viewed the exhibition would have pondered at least once. I, too, had been forced to mull it over while looking at the art, so answering wasn’t very difficult.
“I think lies are… better, in a way.”
He looked surprised.
“The value of silence changes depending on the situation… but if it’s the kind of silence about the truth that the artist was trying to express… then silence feels less… violent and more… cowardly.”
Putting my thoughts into words was difficult, as always, and the words I listed haltingly in an effort to be careful seemed to have ended up as a jumbled mess.
After staring at me for a moment with a heavy, pressing gaze, he looked away and poured the last of the sake into my glass.
“Don’t people usually perceive lies as a far more negative value than silence? Especially in Korea, where the influence of Confucian culture is still deeply ingrained, so there’s an atmosphere that silence is golden and the less said, the better.”
“I’m not a very talkative person myself… but if we’re talking about silence and lies as attitudes toward the truth, I think I’d rather have the lies.”
He rested his elbows on the table and covered his lips with his loosely clasped hands as he asked, “May I… hear your reason?”
The people at the next table were busy taking out a cake and putting candles in it, likely for someone’s birthday, but seeing his serious face as he leaned in to listen to my story, I was able to continue without being disturbed.
“A lie itself can certainly be a violence that creates wounds… but it seems that where there are lies, there also coexists a counter-reaction, a movement to uncover the truth. But if the phenomenon on the opposite side of truth is silence… that seems much more bleak… and I feel like a longer, more brutal dark age would follow before the truth is revealed… that’s what I think….”
In truth, I was thinking of my father.
I was answering while thinking about the weapon of silence he had chosen to protect himself, or perhaps, to punish and destroy himself. And about the result it had brought—a present where no one could be happy.
“It’s just my own simple thought… and a very… personal opinion.”
Had I steered the conversation in too heavy a direction? Would he read some sort of ominousness in my expression or tone and start to worry? I tried to brush it off with a laugh, as if it were nothing more than a comment on the exhibition, and brought the glass to my lips.
I had thought my slowing speech was due to becoming more deliberate with the weight of the topic, but it also seemed to be due to the alcohol slowly creeping up on me. It was no wonder, since the two of us had finished a whole bottle at a pretty fast pace.
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