To avoid the crowds that would rush out all at once, they left the Champs-Élysées almost immediately after the fireworks ended, but the entrance to the subway station was already so packed with people that they couldn’t even think of approaching it. Only after passing several stations and walking for over thirty minutes were the three of them finally able to make it inside a station.
Michel, who lived in the 6th arrondissement, better known as the Latin Quarter, was on a different platform. Yuni and Michel waved at each other across the tracks until the very end, expressing their reluctance to part. Yuni chuckled at Michel’s exaggerated, playful antics, but she didn’t seem embarrassed.
Michel’s train arrived first, and a train pulled into their platform right after. The inside of the subway was also bustling with people who had enjoyed the New Year’s countdown not just on the Champs-Élysées, but all over Paris.
“Ah… I’m glad we went. Right?”
As if the tension had left her after parting with Michel, Yuni leaned her head against the subway door and spoke as if letting out a sigh. Yeehyeon nodded.
“But I don’t think we need to go a second time. Once was enough of an experience for me.”
As if recalling the cold, the waiting, and a few young Parisians who had been excessively drunk and unpleasant, Yuni now shook her head slightly with a tired expression.
“You would have preferred spending it alone with Michel in your room, right?”
At Yeehyeon’s rather mischievous joke, Yuni poked his cheek with her gloved hand and gave him a playful glare.
One of the things that had changed since coming here was that he no longer used formal speech with Yuni. Not long after they met, Yuni and Juhan had told him to drop the formalities, but since they had started out that way, it hadn’t been easy to change. But as they saw each other every day here, at some point, ‘Noona, would you like to have lunch together?’ had naturally turned into ‘Noona, want to get lunch together?’
Even if they had met people they were attracted to, even if they had an environment with no shortage of resources for painting, there was no need to spell out how much they relied on and were grateful for each other in this unfamiliar city.
Escaping the excited fervor of the cafes and pubs lining the area around Canal Saint-Martin, the two turned into an inner alley. They held hands, swinging them widely back and forth as they slowly headed for ‘The Hands,’ for home, as if enjoying a night stroll.
The first-floor lobby, which housed the exhibition hall and offices, was dark and silent, but a boisterous noise could be heard from the communal living room upstairs. It wasn’t an official party like the one at Christmas, but since most of the artists were not from Paris, it seemed they were having a small beer party.
“How was the Arc de Triomphe? On TV, it looked like the crowd was insane again this year.”
Ben, a German artist and one of the current longest-staying residents at ‘The Hands,’ was the first to spot Yuni and Yeehyeon and raise his hand high.
“It was amazing. The waiting was a bit boring and my legs hurt, though.”
“Still, if you’ve come to Paris, it’s not a bad thing to experience at least once. We all spent our first New Year’s at either the Arc de Triomphe or the Eiffel Tower.”
The advance explanation from ‘The Hands’ that there would be no major inconvenience even without speaking French was true. As long as one didn’t have a job and had to dive into the front lines of daily life, Paris was a city where English was sufficient for communication like buying things or ordering at restaurants.
Besides, ‘The Hands’ also offered classes that taught basic conversational French to its resident artists.
“Would you like to… join us? There’s still a lot of pizza and beer left.”
June, who cautiously made the offer with a hesitant attitude, was one of the artists who attended the French conversation classes most enthusiastically along with Yeehyeon. Tall and thin, he looked much more like a boy than a young man, and even by Korean age, he had been nineteen until just a few hours ago, making him the youngest at ‘The Hands.’
“Uh… I’d like to, but I’m a little tired. I’m also pretty sleepy since it’s way past my usual bedtime.”
At Yeehyeon’s gentle refusal, June smiled and nodded, but he couldn’t hide his look of disappointment. Unlike with Yuni and Michel, where there was no need to hide one’s own feelings or pretend not to know the other’s, Yeehyeon pretended not to notice the reason for his disappointment, offered a brief New Year’s greeting, and left the living room with Yuni.
“Are you sure it’s okay to be so nice to him?”
As they turned onto the stair landing, Yuni lowered her voice and nudged his arm.
“June likes you. If you’re so sweet to him, you might give him false hope.”
Yeehyeon smiled and shook his head.
“He won’t.”
“What do you mean, he won’t? You’re being surprisingly cruel.”
“That’s not it. I told him I have a boyfriend.”
“……You did?”
“Yeah.”
Yuni’s expression showed she was curious about the details, but she didn’t try to pry.
It wasn’t that he had gone around telling someone who hadn’t even asked that he had a boyfriend. He had just naturally let it slip to June, who was from Hong Kong, that his boyfriend was also from Hong Kong, of British, Korean, and Hong Kong descent. He had sensed June’s faint interest and had said it with the intention of stopping him from developing deeper feelings, so he couldn’t be sure if it had actually seemed natural.
In fact… he couldn’t even be sure if the statement that he had a boyfriend, that his boyfriend was from Hong Kong, wasn’t a lie in itself.
After parting with Yuni, Yeehyeon went up to the fourth floor and dropped his bag on the floor as soon as he entered his room. Without turning on the light or taking off his coat, he flopped down on the bed. He had told June he was tired, but only now that he was alone in his room did he feel the real fatigue.
He rubbed his neck and glanced around, then, as if remembering something, he took the card Bobo had given him out of his pocket. Staring at the brief text introducing the purpose and website of the ‘Late Bloomers’ group, Yeehyeon tapped the corner of his lip with the edge of the card, then leaned back and lay down.
As if someone had told a funny joke in the living room below, the faint sound of laughter seeped through the crack under the old door. Lying down, Yeehyeon fiddled with his lower lip and gazed up at the shadow of the window frame on the ceiling.
The window was closed, but for a moment, Liu’s scent drifted under his nose with a wisp of wind. Knowing it was a hallucination brought on by an ingrained memory, Yeehyeon focused his consciousness, trying not to lose the faint afterimage of the scent.
Seeing his apparition or hearing his voice… nothing like that had ever happened. But even without any trigger, his scent would suddenly come alive from memory and stimulate his actual sense of smell.
He couldn’t count the number of times he had stopped in his tracks while walking, or even while engrossed in his work, and looked around like someone who had just been jolted from a dream.
Like the kisses he had given him, like he had sometimes done when they couldn’t kiss. And like he had often done when he was alone, reminiscing about their kisses. Yeehyeon twisted his lip hard between his fingers. Feeling a stinging pain, he turned over on his side. He curled up, gazing at the window where the blue, red, and white lights of small fireworks set off from the canal flickered, and muttered.
Happy New Year.
……A Wei.
○
The dry monsoon, which hadn’t even felt like a proper rainy season and had passed by early July with only a few cool downpours amid the humidity, was already over. He thought he’d heard something about a typhoon coming this time; the sound of raindrops hitting the window was quite solid.
Liu, who had been sorting through materials scattered around the room—books, art collections, printed reports, pamphlet samples—and piling the ones he would take home on his desk, stopped and turned around at the brief commotion from the office outside his open door. Choi In-woo, holding shopping bags full of lunch boxes in both hands, was receiving a fervent welcome.
Liu chuckled, unable to tell if the staff’s reaction was to welcome In-woo or the lunch boxes, and placed the Nyoman Gunarsa art book he had been flipping through on top of the pile of books he had already selected.
Even though the New York branch opening had been canceled, they had hired the director they had decided on anyway, so despite Yuni’s departure, Phantom had ended up with two more employees than before.
Thanks to that, Liu found himself working more often in his own room at the very back of the office, which had previously been rarely used. Sitting behind a large desk with a sofa set in front of him, putting a physical distance between himself and the other employees, was not his preferred way of doing things, but he couldn’t deny that he was more comfortable being alone.
Truthfully, he no longer had the passion he’d had when he first opened Phantom, to hang out together after work and build personal connections. There were no more employees who would barge into his house on a holiday morning, declaring they would use his garden as a filming location.
The ‘Old Future’ website was still live, and Yuni’s posts about her life in Paris were updated from time to time, but clothing sales had been suspended for nearly a year.
It wasn’t that his affection for Phantom or his passion for his work had cooled—in fact, it was the opposite—but it felt like he had to accept that a certain period had passed. That it was bound to become a memory, steeped in a vague nostalgia and tender sentiment.
“They all look pretty excited, huh? Said they’re all going for drinks after work?”
In-woo, who had come into the room, gestured toward the office with his chin as he set his and Liu’s lunch boxes on the sofa table. Liu also stopped what he was doing and helped open the boxes. At a glance, the lunch boxes were lavishly arranged with at least five or six side dishes. It was no wonder the staff had cheered.
“What are you smirking about now?”
As he was getting two small water bottles from the fridge, he caught In-woo glancing his way and laughing to himself. Not liking his expression, Liu nudged his shoulder instead of handing him the water.
“I guess they don’t invite you anymore?”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but I have an early flight tomorrow morning, so I declined.”
Tossing the water bottle to him, Liu plopped down on the sofa and twisted the cap off his own water.
“Isn’t this the first time since you opened that the entire gallery is closing for a two-week break?”
“Last year… I couldn’t give them a proper vacation.”
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