At the voice that seemed to leak emptily from a hollowed-out inside, Yeehyeon’s hand moved to his back, stroking it comfortingly as he entangled their bodies.
“You know that’s not true.”
“……”
Liu silently stroked Yeehyeon’s neck, his gaze slowly shifting. His eyes moved past the canvases of various sizes standing with their backs to the wall, stopping on a small frame on the sofa. It was a small piece Suki Kim had gifted to Yeehyeon in Hong Kong.
After it was confirmed that he was a Ghost, his parents’ divorce proceeded quickly. During the two years that followed, while living with Liu at Ellen and Marcus’s house, Suki Kim had not painted.
Liu at the time had known that his father and mother carried a guilt of no light weight regarding the fact that he was a Ghost. Although they had never openly shown their distress in front of him, a parent’s emotions are bound to be naturally transferred to their child.
It was probably a feeling similar to the self-blame that torments most parents of a sick child. As if everything was their fault.
But their guilt, unintentionally, sickened Liu’s ego as a Ghost.
Am I sick? Is this a disease, and am I a carrier who threatens others? Is that why my parents feel sorry for me?
The problem wasn’t just his father’s maternal family. The power to change the very essence of a person’s body could be seen as a special ability depending on the interpretation, but to those who actually came into contact with the person, it was nothing but a fear to be avoided, or at the very least, an unpleasantness.
Whether he revealed he was a Ghost or hid it, he had to live a life segregated even within the Alpha-Omega society.
Perhaps, out of self-reproach for such a son, she had felt that she must sacrifice something. For the two years she spent in Boston after securing legal custody of Liu, she focused only on him. Everyone around her, including Liu’s father, who understood most deeply what painting meant to her, tried to persuade her, but to no avail.
A portrait filled only with lines and empty space, using colored ink. Within the simple composition, which at a glance looked like something a child might have drawn unknowingly, was a condensed power that made it impossible to look away. Like the masters who have the courage to face their naked selves head-on and pull it out of the mirror to reveal to the world, she had no need for flashy techniques or embellishments to package herself.
Liu remembered it too. Starting with that piece, she had invited painting back into her life. Through that two-year void, she had come to fully, albeit slowly, realize not with her head but with her own time that she could not exist not only as a mother, but also as Suki Kim, as herself, without painting.
The fact that this piece, a significant turning point for her, was now owned by Yeehyeon, the author of ‘Isolation’, and was hanging before his eyes, and that the author of ‘Isolation’ was in his arms as his lover, as a victim of Changing, felt new all over again. Liu stroked Yeehyeon’s head and smiled faintly, silently, bitterly.
He felt as if all the energy in his body and mind had been cleanly exhausted, down to the very bottom, as if he had finally returned to the point where he first stood after a long time of wandering a great distance.
Rubbing his cheek against Yeehyeon’s hair that tickled near his lips, he cleared his husky throat and released him from his arms.
“About the materials to be sent to Bali, I think I’ll be able to get them in two or three days. Marcus has been a great help, so when I go to New York, I think I’ll have to make time to visit Boston again to say hello.”
He added a touch of humor as he squeezed Yeehyeon’s shoulders, which he had pushed away, a couple of times, but Yeehyeon didn’t smile back. Avoiding Yeehyeon, who was still studying his complexion with a cautious gaze, Liu rubbed his lower jaw and walked toward the kitchen. It was a simple setup, hardly a kitchen, just enough to wash a cup or cook some ramen. Like in a studio apartment, he opened the built-in refrigerator next to the sink, took out a bottle of beer, and asked Yeehyeon behind him if he wanted any, but Yeehyeon shook his head.
He couldn’t turn to look at him, anxious that Yeehyeon’s meticulous and attentive gaze would eventually detect that he was hiding something, that his recent fatigue was not just due to a tight schedule and friction with those around him. He stood there in front of the refrigerator and drank the beer.
Fingers moving with a ticklish softness landed on his shoulder. Where Yeehyeon couldn’t see, Liu’s eyes trembled minutely. Recently, whenever Yeehyeon silently watched him or called his name in a low voice, he had to feel the dizzying sensation of a fall.
“Director.”
“……”
“That’s not so urgent, so you can take your time preparing it after you go to New York.”
He lightly placed his own hand over Yeehyeon’s on his shoulder. Gently holding his fingertips, he turned to face him. Even an act as small as that required courage.
Liu looked down at Yeehyeon’s face, who was worried about him, blocked from the information he naturally should have been provided, and unaware of the situation he himself was in. He wet his lower lip with his tongue.
He had been confident he could push things through much more brazenly. Around the time he left for Chicago, he had believed he could postpone all guilt or remorse as if they didn’t exist, at least until he set foot in New York with Yeehyeon. It was all to win him over.
But whether the shell around his conscience wasn’t as thick as he’d expected, or he was just anxious because he couldn’t predict how Yeehyeon would react as the moment of revelation approached, his nerves had recently become so frayed that he could barely sleep despite his extreme fatigue.
He set the beer down on the narrow counter next to the sink, took both of Yeehyeon’s hands, spread his arms wide, and pulled him closer. He played around, pushing and pulling their interlocked hands as if in a test of strength. Only then did Yeehyeon’s face break into a slight smile. Looking down at him, Liu kissed his lips and cheek.
Yeehyeon was not the type of person to say “I love you” based on emotions or feelings that had not yet fully matured, simply indulging in sweet sentimentality. The reason for his anxiety was entirely due to the weight of his own actions, not because he didn’t trust the depth or prudence of his love.
But the person he loved was Liu Weikun, who had not Changed him. The moment he learned the truth, to Seo Yeehyeon, Liu Weikun would no longer be the Liu Weikun he knew.
Every time he became conscious of that fact, he felt the rope precariously supporting him from under his feet become as thin as a thread.
His smoking had increased, and so had his drinking. To reassure Yeehyeon, he had said it was a minor, insignificant fender bender, and while that was true in terms of the accident’s scale, it was also clearly his own mistake that would never have happened under normal circumstances.
The problem was that, just as his parents’ guilt had been transferred to him and sickened his Ghost self, his own anxiety was now encroaching upon Yeehyeon, turning him gray as well.
Every time they kissed, every time they embraced, every time he reached an alpha’s climax within him, the likes of which he had never felt through anyone else, he was afraid that this might be the last time, and at the same time… he would even feel an uncharacteristic impulse to go off the rails, to confess everything before him, offer his neck, and be disposed of according to his verdict.
“Why haven’t you been painting lately?”
“Pardon?”
Liu gestured with his chin toward the overturned canvases behind Yeehyeon.
“It seems like you’re not making any progress.”
“……”
Yeehyeon’s lips parted and he lowered his eyes.
“Didn’t you have a lot you wanted to paint as soon as you got here?”
“Well… I think it’s because my mind is a bit of a mess…. I’m still doing drawings, though.”
Liu, who had returned to the sofa area, rummaged through the jacket draped over a chair and took out a pack of cigarettes. He took one out, lit it, and inhaled deeply. He exhaled a long stream of smoke, looking down at a spot on the floor. Yeehyeon’s feet, clad in leather indoor slippers, came into his field of vision.
“Do you want to go?”
“Pardon?”
“Paris.”
“……”
At the casual, matter-of-fact question, Yeehyeon studied Liu’s face for a moment, wondering if he had misheard. From his side profile as he breathed in the cigarette, his expression wiped clean, no intention or emotion could be read.
How did he know, when did he find out, and even if he did, why was he asking if he wanted to go… and so on. Many questions popped into his head, but now that he had brought it up, they were all just secondary, superfluous questions. From the moment he knew that Yuni had received an offer from ‘The Hands,’ it wouldn’t be strange for him to know that they had also offered him a position.
Instead of laying out an unimportant interrogation, Yeehyeon moved closer to Liu and shook his head, quietly but firmly.
“No.”
“……”
His eyes, which seemed unusually light in color today, slowly focused on Yeehyeon’s. He had asked if he wanted to go, but… Liu’s eyes were saying that he hoped he wouldn’t.
“I’m already under contract with a capable dealer.”
A smirk escaped Liu’s lips, and Yeehyeon plucked the cigarette from his fingers. He looked up into Liu’s eyes, which were looking down at him as he wrapped an arm around his waist, and took a deep drag. Liu’s long, thick, and straight fingers slowly caressed his lips as he clumsily exhaled the smoke.
Yeehyeon placed the cigarette back between his lips, which looked drier than usual, then hooked his fingers on the loose knot of his tie and pulled. He undid the rest of the buttons on the shirt, whose top button was already undone, and buried his lips at the base of his sturdy nape.
Liu tilted his head back deeply to get a better look at Yeehyeon’s face as he slid a hand inside his shirt, stroking his bare skin and kissing various spots on his neck. He stroked his small head, then kissed his hair and muttered heavily.
“We both need a haircut.”
“……”
“I don’t think we’ll have the time. How about we bear with it for a little longer and go get them cut together when we get to New York?”
Yeehyeon, who had been rubbing his lips against his stubbled chin after a long day, nodded as he pushed Liu’s shirt off his shoulders.
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