He turned to look at me from the seat beside me, placing the burger he’d been eating down on his tray. I had chosen a Cheese Whopper and he a chicken burger, and both of us had only managed a bite or two.
“If I’m there, it just makes the office more crowded, the new hires feel like they have to walk on eggshells, and I’m uncomfortable too… So lately, I’ve been going to the other place to handle some work. You know the one, Seo Yeehyeon. ‘That’ duplex villa.”
It wasn’t as if he was obligated to share every detail of Phantom’s internal situation with me, nor had I intended to interrogate him. I simply nodded at him as he turned his body toward me, explaining the situation with an earnestness that was a slight departure from his usual composure.
He wasn’t exactly desperate, but I could feel that he was trying hard, wanting me to believe him. There was no reason not to. I hadn’t suspected anything in the first place.
“Oh, come on. It was only occasionally at first, but these days you’re going there more than three times a week. I was starting to think you’d fallen head over heels for some buff bagel boy and were skipping work to go on dates.”
I didn’t know what he was worried about, but my conviction in him was not so weak as to be shaken by such a meaningless comment from his sister.
On the contrary, I was even having the very, very uncharacteristic and conceited thought that if there was a ‘bagel boy he was currently head over heels for,’ it was probably me. The ‘head over heels’ part was just borrowing his sister’s expression, of course, and I was no buff bagel boy.
“It’d be a relief if it were dating. Is sleeping with someone a few times and cutting them off when you get bored considered dating?”
Leaning his head back, Juhan-hyung muttered as if to himself as he dropped a French fry slathered in ketchup into his mouth.
“Ah… why did I suggest we all have dinner here together.”
He tilted his chin toward the ceiling and shook his head.
A laugh escaped me at his exaggerated, theatrical gesture, which was clearly for my benefit. After confirming that I was unfazed, he turned back to me and finally allowed a faint smile.
Juhan-hyung had only noticed that I had feelings for him; he didn’t know that he and I were already bound by a shared responsibility, however loose.
The reason he seemed to be acting hostile toward him was likely not to attack him, but to instill a sense of caution in me.
This man is so cold he doesn’t tell the person he lives with anything about himself. He’s a man who casually discards his partners, a man who doesn’t have a speck of interest in a serious relationship.
My brother, who was shooting me a look from across the table diagonally as if to say, ‘See?,’ probably wanted to say something like that.
The stories about him having only had a string of casual relationships in the past might be true, but it didn’t matter. I could be sure of one thing, at least—that to him, I wasn’t someone he would just get tired of and discard after sleeping with a few times. For now, that was enough. I, for my part, had no intention of pressing him for the official title of a lover.
As I pulled down more of the paper wrapping around my hamburger to resume the meal we had paused, Yuni spoke.
“Are you really holed up there plotting some kind of conspiracy these days?”
His sister, who had come straight here with him after work, must have been starving, as she had already devoured her entire hamburger and was wiping her mouth with a napkin.
“Yeah, I’m plotting world domination. So what? You’re the one who said the atmosphere gets icy whenever I’m in the office. As long as there are no issues with receiving reports and giving feedback, and I’m managing clients properly, isn’t that enough?”
“Well, I guess so.”
At his now slightly irritated reply, Noona shrugged and tossed the crumpled napkin to a corner of the table. Then, she rested her folded arms on the table and stretched her neck toward the straw sticking out of the cup right in front of her.
“Yeehyeon, where are your Noona and Hyung now? Shouldn’t they have arrived?”
“Yes, they arrived safely in Bali a few days ago.”
“Seo Yeehyeon, you should let us know that kind of news in the group chat. This kid has a surprisingly cold streak, I’m telling you.”
At his sister’s chiding remark as she brushed her hair behind her ear with an annoyed look in the cool breeze, I just smiled sheepishly, rubbing the back of my neck.
Morae and my brother, who had arrived in Bali via Denpasar Airport a while ago, had found temporary lodging near Kuta Beach and were looking for jobs. The email had also included two or three photos of the healthy-looking pair, which helped put my mind at ease.
I showed Noona and Hyung the photos I had saved on my phone.
The two of them, already completely tan before even arriving in Bali, were smiling brightly against the backdrop of a Kuta Beach sunset, their eyes and teeth shining white in their faces as they shouldered their backpacks. It was a scene that would have been impossible without his help.
“But how long does Yeehyeon have to live like this? Can’t you do something, CEO?”
His sister, having been handed a bottle of beer by him, asked as she gripped the mouth of the bottle with a napkin to twist off the cap.
“I… I’m fine, Noona. It’s not like I can’t do what I want to do, or can’t go where I want to go. If anything… I’m doing really well these days…”
“Still, you can’t go anywhere without a bodyguard-slash-chauffeur. This is like the life of a top idol or something. Don’t you feel suffocated?”
I glanced at him, but he was just drinking his beer in silence, as if the question wasn’t for him to answer. It might have been my imagination, but his gaze, angled down toward somewhere on the table, seemed to carry a heavy guilt that made me feel down as well.
I was grateful to him for my entire current situation, none of my discomfort was because of him, and he was, in fact, the one trying to protect me from potential danger… It upset me that he felt sorry about it.
“I don’t feel that suffocated…. I wasn’t the type to go out and about much anyway….”
“Wouldn’t it be better for Yeehyeon to just go abroad, too?”
“……”
At Juhan-hyung’s rather bold suggestion, everyone’s eyes, including his, focused on my brother. His face, with the piercings he had taken out for his art project now all back in, looked both flashy and rebellious.
Hyung placed his beer on the table and continued, his face looking quite serious.
“Yeehyeon’s sister’s father, he’s no ordinary man, which must be why you’re being so careful, CEO. But that doesn’t mean Yeehyeon is safe just because his Noona and Hyung arrived safely in Bali. And you can’t just let him continue living a life where he can’t even go to the convenience store in front of his house without worrying, can you? Wouldn’t the problem be solved if Yeehyeon just went abroad too?”
“It’s not a problem that can be discussed so simply.”
Even as he said that, his voice didn’t seem to dismiss my brother’s suggestion as completely absurd.
“Your sister’s father, is his personality that… intense? To the point where he could just kidnap you and threaten you?”
Noona looked as if she couldn’t quite believe that such a character, the kind you’d only see in dramas or movies, existed within a distance where he could affect her own circle.
“If he sets his mind to it… he is someone who could do that, yes.”
「We don’t know what Mr. Lim might do to you, you fool! For his daughter’s sake… he’s the kind of man who wouldn’t bat an eye at crippling a have-not like you.」
I wanted to deny it, knowing everyone would worry, but my grandfather’s terrified voice from the day I left the village, when he had cornered Hyung in the yard, was still vivid in my mind.
“Whether he’s capable of it or not, we won’t just stand by and let it happen. We could communicate our intentions in a more forceful way… we’re just not doing it because that’s not what’s wanted. For now.”
He spoke quickly and firmly as he picked up the pack of cigarettes and lighter he had left on the table. His tone seemed to imply that while they were currently dealing with the situation defensively, they were more than capable of taking aggressive measures if they chose to.
The topic fizzled out when Juhan-hyung knocked over the beer bottle he had stood on the table. Even if it wasn’t for that, it was about time for Hyung and Noona, who were planning to go see a band at a live club for Friday night, to get going.
He and I moved toward the stairs together to see them off.
“Yeehyeon, you don’t want to come with us? I think it might be good to spend time with people in the same age bracket sometimes.”
“Hmm, I think you should say that after you return the card of someone in a different age bracket.”
At his retort, Noona threw her head back and laughed. Then, with a compliment on his wit, she struggled to sling an arm around the shoulders of the man who was more than 30 centimeters taller than her. He subtly leaned away, avoiding her hand, but Noona only looked momentarily puzzled before seeming to think nothing of it.
It wasn’t like I had asked him to avoid even that kind of casual physical contact…. The memory of my own childishness, of revealing my basest jealousy that night, made my face flush.
“Hey, I said let’s go together, why are you looking to the CEO for permission? Does he hound you to hurry up and paint so you can start making a profit?”
Hyung seemed to have interpreted my glance at him as me seeking permission.
“No, it’s not that… I just want to move forward with the painting quickly, while the image is clear.”
“Right, so, call me an old man, call me a ruthless employer, that’s all fine. But return the card first.”
At his posture, holding out his palm with his head tilted askew, the two of them abruptly cut off their conversation and hurried down the stairs.
I watched until the two of them, loudly singing a strange song I didn’t know in unison, turned the corner of the building and disappeared completely from view. For a while, even after they left the main gate, their singing didn’t stop.
On the rooftop, where the last embers of the sunset were fading, it was just him and me. He was over by the railing on the far side of the bungalow, drinking a beer and looking down at the alley. I thought he was probably smiling a little as he listened to Juhan and his Yuni’s receding song.
Suddenly, he turned around. And he held out his arms, loosely spread at about a 120-degree angle.
“……”
I knew what it meant.
Hesitantly, I approached, resting my chin on his broad shoulder and carefully wrapping my arms around his waist. The two arms that had been open tightened around my torso, and his left cheek pressed against my right.
“The sketch.”
“……”
“If it had gone on for a few more days here, I don’t know what kind of pathetic state you would have seen me in.”
“……”
“Thank you for finishing it sooner than I expected. I pretended to understand everything, but… ah… I was actually on the edge.”
I pressed my chin gently onto his shoulder and laughed without a sound.
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