When it came to Liu’s firmness toward others, Yeehyeon was one of those with the most vivid experience. A dry laugh escaped him as he recalled Liu’s old self, who had drawn a clean line, treating him as someone who would disappear after a brief, unavoidable period of help, and who had revealed his raw hostility to prevent him from ever crossing that line and encroaching upon the network of relationships surrounding him. The situation, the relationship, and the people within it had all changed so much.
He was a man who didn’t bother to actively clear up misunderstandings, nor did he try to show off his acts of consideration or kindness. That night they all drank wine together at the Spanish tavern. At the time, Yeehyeon hadn’t fully understood that the offer to work officially at Phantom was, for Liu Weikun, the highest form of acknowledgment of another’s worth.
“Yeehyeon-ssi and I, when we first met. I think it was the opening day of my solo exhibition….”
Yeehyeon nodded at Shushu, who was squinting, trying to recall the memory. A faint smile appeared on Shushu’s lips, as if he had remembered something amusing.
“I don’t know if you remember, Yeehyeon-ssi, but you had just officially started working not long before that. Because of my shyness around strangers, Weikun asked you to step aside for a bit.”
“I remember.”
“The way he talks is a bit… much, isn’t it? He doesn’t say anything terribly out of line, but he has no tact. No, rather than not knowing how, he has no intention of using any wrapping paper in the first place. He doesn’t apologize even if the other person seems offended, and he doesn’t explain even if it seems they’ve taken it the wrong way. He thinks that guys who are quick to say ‘thank you’ or ‘sorry’ can’t be trusted.”
Shushu spoke while gazing into the air with eyes that seemed to be tracing a distant past, adding that it might be a personality trait formed from being surrounded by sycophants since he was young.
What Shushu said was true. Liu’s remark at the time hadn’t been to exclude him, but was merely an extension of his work. Now that he understood Shushu’s sensitivity better, he could understand that even more clearly.
But if it had been a normal day, or if someone else had said it, those words wouldn’t have left much of an impression on him, given his own personality. The reason his emotions had been stirred… wasn’t just because he had spoken bluntly, without any wrapping. In fact, he hadn’t said anything particularly remarkable. It was because he had already been conscious of him back then, and he knew now… that the words and actions of someone you’re conscious of are bound to feel unusually exaggerated.
Yeehyeon wiped the condensation from the surface of the beer bottle with his thumb and said.
“The CEO, he apologized back then.”
“……”
Shushu tilted his head slightly, his brow furrowed as if in disbelief, or as if it were impossible. Then he soon shook his head slightly and laughed.
In the garden, Liu’s camera lens, which had suddenly intruded on the ‘Old Future’ photoshoot and pushed in as if to dismantle him piece by piece.
The single phrase was spoken in a voice so small that only Yeehyeon could hear it, amidst a tension so thick he could barely breathe with the lens between them.
That it had been Liu’s clumsy apology. That he was someone who wouldn’t have opened his mouth, not even for that one short phrase, if he hadn’t meant it. There were many things he hadn’t known then that he knew now. The more he got to know him, the more his view of the Liu from the past was renewed, a fresh experience.
“Come to think of it, I guess it’s true what people say, that what’s meant to be will be. For a guy like that… who never let anyone get close, to meet an understanding person like you in one go. Inevitable loneliness was Liu Weikun’s only deficiency, but now he has it all, doesn’t he? When it comes to the world being unfair, shouldn’t he at least be the one to agree?”
It didn’t sound like words fabricated to match the mood. Rather, it was closer to a mumble, a soliloquy that excluded Yeehyeon, the listener.
“Weikun hasn’t had many things to regret in his life. Not just because of his financial background, but he was born with outstanding talents, and he’s strict with himself, so he never slacked off on his efforts. As a result, he doesn’t have much experience with failure. As far as I know, probably not even once.”
Having no experience with failure didn’t mean he had lived a smooth life. But it was easy to accept the story that Liu had lived his life conquering most of the things he wanted.
“So he has a strong tendency not to understand people’s clumsy and foolish sides. He’s never wanted someone, never loved someone… so it’s even more natural that he can’t understand the feeling of being swayed by another person, thrown off his original pace.”
Yeehyeon thought he knew what Shushu was talking about. Liu hadn’t told him the details of the situation after returning to Seoul, but he could guess that the severed relationship between Shushu, Hong Seonyu, and Liu had now encroached upon the present.
Perhaps Shushu was hoping for Liu’s understanding of that feeling of being swayed, thrown off one’s own pace, that unavoidable foolishness. And perhaps that hope was tilting toward disappointment.
Guessing that this might be the reason Shushu had come to see Liu today, Yeehyeon quietly tilted his beer bottle, and his gaze stopped on the magazine lying next to Shushu.
It was the only thing he had been holding when he got out of the car and came up. He hadn’t recognized it when he entered the house because it was rolled up, but… it was the magazine from a few days ago, the one that had made Yeehyeon think of Hong Seonyu after reading the ‘Editor’s Review.’
Even though he had been drinking beer just a moment before, his mouth felt parched. He tilted the bottle again, but the beer he had split with Shushu had already been finished.
“So… I hoped that someday, when Weikun found someone he truly wanted, he would fret over a relationship that didn’t go his way, fight with them while revealing their rock bottoms, forgetting all about saving face… the accumulation of such times, which can’t be made into something that never happened in an instant… that foolish, sticky residue of emotion… I wanted him to have it at least once.”
That’s not something you can understand just by having someone explain it to you; you have to experience it.
Muttering this, Shushu drained the rest of his beer, leaving only the ice. Then, with a somewhat bashful expression, he smiled at Yeehyeon.
“When I found out that Weikun was genuinely devoted to you, Yeehyeon-ssi, I actually had high hopes.”
“……”
“I hoped you would make him pine for a long time, make him wait even when he knew it was reckless, keep him from sleeping at night, and… I hoped that, swept up in the desire to be understood, the desire for the other person to accept him as he is, he would reveal everything, leave its judgment entirely in the other’s hands, and tremble in fear… I hoped that through you, Yeehyeon-ssi, he would experience those things… that Liu Weikun himself considered foolish and stupid.”
After saying that, Shushu tilted his glass and tipped one or two small, melted ice cubes into his mouth. Fiddling with the beer bottle as he watched Shushu’s dark face, which looked as if he felt suffocated in a confined space, Yeehyeon gathered his courage and opened his mouth.
“I don’t know about the CEO, but… I think I was like that.”
“……”
“The feelings you mentioned, I think I experienced them through the CEO.”
Shushu stared at Yeehyeon for a long time without a word. Then, placing his glass on the table, he smiled faintly.
“I think I know why it was you.”
“……”
“It’s nothing to be proud of, but I’m really clumsy at dealing with people, yet in front of you, I was just comfortable. It was like that in Chicago, and even now… I’m chattering away as if my shyness is a lie. I understand why it was you, no, why for Liu Weikun it had to be you. Because you’re that kind of person… you were able to fill A-Wei’s only deficiency, his all-too-long loneliness.”
If Liu’s closest acquaintance said so, if he said that he was filling his deficiency and loneliness, then that was a relief. But Yeehyeon couldn’t be sure if he was truly filling him up as much as Shushu thought. He wasn’t confident. Thinking of the current Liu, who was enduring while shouldering so many problems, made him even less so.
He was still not close enough to his core to pinpoint exactly what his only deficiency, which Shushu had just mentioned, was. He could only vaguely guess that it might be related to the environment he had learned about in Boston.
“It’s a big deal, and… you’re still young, Yeehyeon-ssi, so I was worried that maybe… you made an emotional decision while completely infatuated with him… but I guess that was a needless worry.”
Shushu smiled with a relieved face, but Yeehyeon couldn’t understand the meaning of his words, nor the meaning of his smile.
“You must have fully understood A-Wei’s situation and his loneliness all this time, and carefully considered the changes that will happen in the future… and then decided to become an Omega, right, Yeehyeon-ssi?”
“……”
Yeehyeon mulled over his words for a long time. But no matter how long he thought, it seemed to be something he couldn’t understand.
“……Pardon?”
Despite his long deliberation, all he could do was ask Shushu back.
“The thing about being a Ghost, until now, for A-Wei, it was like a distinct brand visible only to his own eyes, something that forced him to separate himself from others. But if at least the one most precious person accepts it….”
“No…. No, I, I don’t understand what you’re saying at all….”
Yeehyeon shook his head forcefully, as if trying to shake off the confusion that was rolling in like a dark cloud, cutting Shushu off. It felt like even if he heard more, he wouldn’t be able to digest any of it.
The expression on Shushu’s face, who had stopped talking, gradually faded. As people who have heard something unbelievable often do, Shushu blinked his eyes rapidly several times, a forced smile on his face as if denying the situation.
“Yeehyeon-ssi… what is this.”
“……”
“Don’t tell me you have no idea what I’m talking about… right now?”
The skin under Shushu’s eyes and on his cheeks twitched minutely as he asked cautiously.
“In Chicago, on the last day, A-Wei’s eyes were clearly….”
His words broke off, failing to form complete sentences. Shushu’s gaze, which had been wandering around in the air, frantically sought out Yeehyeon.
“Yeehyeon-ssi, you were with A-Wei until that morning, weren’t you.”
Shushu was talking about the day before they left Chicago. The day Liu and Shushu had attended Chloe Kent’s luncheon, and Yuni and Yeehyeon had gone sightseeing in Chicago by themselves…. Yeehyeon tried hard to recall the memory of that morning. But his mind was a tangled mess, and it wasn’t easy to pull anything useful from it.
“That day. Didn’t you see Liu Weikun’s eye color?”
“Eye… color?”
“You must have been with him until morning, no, it probably wasn’t just that day… you really didn’t see his eye color?”
“That day, he was very tired….”
It was Yeehyeon himself who truly knew nothing, who still didn’t even know what it was he didn’t know, but Shushu, in front of him looked like the one who was suffocating more. His already pale face was even more drained of color, completely dry.
「You must have decided to become an Omega.」 Only those incomprehensible words faintly beat against Yeehyeon’s chest like an ominous drum from a distant place.
They stared at each other, forgetting even to blink, as if they were holding a bomb that would explode the moment they broke eye contact.
“How could you….”
Shushu muttered, barely moving his lips as if performing ventriloquism, and swallowed dryly, like someone with a needle in their mouth.
“Yeehyeon-ssi.”
“……”
“Go to a hospital.”
○
*Note from author during publishing*
Hello, this is Kim David, the author of <Diamond Dust>.
I’m borrowing this space at the end of the novel for the first time to briefly inform you that <Diamond Dust> will be going on a two-week hiatus starting from May 20th. I’m more nervous than when I’m writing the main text.
The novel now has only the climax and conclusion remaining, and the entire plot up to the ending is already laid out. I made the difficult decision to take a hiatus in order to have more time and be fully prepared for the ending, which may be the most crucial part of the novel.
I sincerely thank all the readers who have followed this long series for such a long time, and I promise to return in two weeks with a meticulously prepared story and resume serialization diligently.
I will be waiting to see you all again on June 3rd.
Thank you very, very much.
Leave a Reply