“Anyway, I was really happy that day, thanks to you.” Art is something everyone appreciates in their own way, according to their feelings at the time, but it’s still nice to have someone see the ‘me’ that I unknowingly melted into it, right?”
Inwoo hyung’s words, spoken with a smile, seemed sincere, so I smiled back. I felt like I could vaguely imagine the joy he was talking about. It would probably be overwhelming, exciting… and maybe even feel like destiny. Like discovering the one person who deciphered my secret code.
“Ah, what about Yeehyeon-ssi, what would you say about the painting in your living room? Aren’t you curious?”
Inwoo hyung put down his wine and nudged the CEO’s arm. At Inwoo hyung’s question, the CEO’s gaze slowly turned to me.
From the beginning until now, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being dissected and evaluated under his gaze. It held a dispassionate indifference, but that was precisely why his gaze, which could ruthlessly dig into the other person, caused me an awkward discomfort and a thirst-inducing tension.
But at the same time, it was also a stimulus that drew out a quality I didn’t know I had, the ability for even someone like me to squirm when stepped on.
The pale, almost grayish-blue eyes staring at me seemed to plead with delicate emotions, as if they would break at any moment, blurring the chill left by the cold words that had come from his mouth until now.
But that was just a visual image caused by the color of his eyes.
Before his lips, which were slightly parted, could utter any answer, his phone, which was placed on the table, vibrated lightly.
The moment he lowered his gaze to check the caller, a smile appeared on his lips. It was a very faint smile, but it was genuine.
With a simple gesture of apology, he picked up his phone, got up from his seat, and walked towards the entrance, connecting the call.
“Yeah, it’s me…. Yeah, it went well. Now? No, I slipped out with Choi Inwoo. I’m at a get-together with the Phantom guys now.”
He was standing with his back to us, barely showing his profile, but I could tell he was smiling. It wasn’t the mechanical smile he wore when dealing with customers at Phantom, but a sweetly smiling face.
Not a business smile, but a private one. Like when he pronounced the word ‘Shushu.’
“It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Even if you came, you’d just be bothered by this person and that person, and you’d just get tired. You don’t have to worry about that.”
Just then, the dishes we had ordered were served all at once. The owner briefly explained each dish, but my hearing was more attuned to his conversation taking place six or seven steps away than to the conversations going on at the table.
“It doesn’t matter how few pieces there are, just don’t overdo it. It’s Shushu. People are already lining up to make reservations before even seeing the work.”
Just like me, no human being could maintain the same attitude in all human relationships. But as far as I knew, he was the person who treated others with the most different faces.
Teacher. Yuni noona and Juhan hyung. Inwoo hyung. Phantom’s customers. Me. There were big and small differences in how he treated all of them.
And the sight of him leaning against the doorframe of the open entrance, his face full of smiles as he concentrated on the call, completely changed the impression I had of him, who I thought would be indifferent even when dealing with a lover.
The sweetness that the name Shushu evoked might not just be the sound of the word.
“Yeehyeon-ssi, try some of this. You need to gain some weight.”
At Inwoo hyung’s voice calling me, I averted my gaze, which had been glancing at the CEO’s back while pretending to drink wine.
Inwoo hyung placed a dish of Iberian pork jowl, which had been slow-cooked for a long time, on my plate.
“Teacher, he may look like this on the outside, but he’s got substance. He works part-time at a moving company.”
Noona said, munching on a piece of melon topped with thinly sliced jamón.
Inwoo hyung widened his eyes in surprise and looked at me. Then he slowly scanned my upper body, which was exposed above the table, up and down.
In fact, anyone could work part-time at a moving company. In reality, the drivers were of average build. More often than not, they were of average build with nimble movements rather than being large.
“Did you know? That Yeehyeon-ssi works part-time at a moving company.”
Inwoo hyung said, looking up at the CEO, who was returning to his seat after finishing his call.
He simply shrugged his shoulders and sat down to drink his wine again without giving any particular answer. Inwoo hyung, too, didn’t seem to expect any agreement or reaction from him, and soon turned his gaze and attention back to me.
“No matter how I look at it, he’s the artist type…. A moving company part-timer. How does it keep getting more and more interesting, Yeehyeon-ssi.Using the negative term ‘getting more and more interesting’ as an expression of affection, Inwoo hyung shook his head and laughed.
“Come to think of it, Yeehyeon-ssi, you have a different vibe today…. Last time, you looked like a good, exemplary student who came to the gallery holding his mom and dad’s hands, but today, you have a bit of decadent beauty added.”
At the awkward compliment I was hearing for the first time, I lowered my head and looked down at myself. Then I pulled and released the hem of the T-shirt I was wearing.
“Noona and hyung gave me the T-shirt as a gift.”
“Ah, Old Future?”
The word ‘Old Future’ came straight from his mouth. It was the phrase lettered on the shopping bag that Yuni noona had handed me. That seemed to be the title of the website that noona and hyung ran.
“Come to think of it, Yeehyeon-ssi, Old Future clothes would suit you well. It’s better than something too blatant like you guys? Hmm… it leaves room for imagination, shall we say?”
“What does that mean, Teacher?”
Yuni noona put her hand on Inwoo hyung’s shoulder and threatened him with a fork.
“Honestly, you guys’ vibe is just outright punk from the start. There’s no unexpectedness.”
“Wow… Teacher, you’re really too much. Even if you like Yeehyeon-i, you didn’t come on to me like this when I first came, I’m really disappointed.”
Juhan hyung also joined in on driving Inwoo hyung into a corner.
Judging from what noona and hyung were saying, it seemed that this wasn’t the first time Inwoo hyung had shown affection to someone of the same sex in this way. Whether that affection was sincere or half-joking.
But so far, he hadn’t taken any actions that would make me feel threatened or rejected. He did ask for my phone number in the car while we were moving here, but that alone wasn’t enough to classify him as someone to be wary of.
The unique playful tone and expression that erased the weight from everything he said also served as a reason to dismiss his expressions of affection for me lightly.
Even now, Inwoo hyung raised his hand with an exaggeratedly serious expression and showed his palm to Juhan hyung.
“I just have high aesthetic standards. Sorry.”
“Seeing you act like this even after being treated like that by Yeehyeon-i that day, you’re really something. I’d avoid him if I were you.”
Juhan hyung wasn’t one to just take it. With a nonchalant expression, hyung drank his wine and once again mentioned the incident at the VIP opening when I had said something about ‘honesty’ regarding Inwoo hyung’s painting.
“He’s not avoiding him, but because of that, Teacher is probably even more interested in Yeehyeon-ssi, right?”
At Yuni noona’s words, Inwoo hyung smiled ambiguously. Smiling ambiguously, he sent me a look over the wine glass that touched his lips. The gaze, which was tinged with laughter, seemed to contain a secret signal, and it also seemed to be just a pleasant attitude at a drinking party.
Unless he asked me a question that required an answer, I had no intention of seriously considering the meaning of that gaze.
Putting his wine glass down on the table, Inwoo hyung said as if he had remembered something.
“Yeehyeon-ssi is an alpha, right?”
It was a tone of voice that asked once in passing, even though it was a definite fact that didn’t need to be answered. Inwoo hyung was so sure when he asked that it took me a while to answer.
“…No, I’m not.”
At my answer, the smile disappeared from Inwoo hyung’s face, and the CEO of Phantom was amused. Laughing with a sound like air escaping, he drank his wine with the most cheerful face I had ever seen him make.
And as if to say, ‘See?’, he said this.
“I told you he wouldn’t be.”
Had the two of them been talking about me? Following whether or not I majored in art, whether or not I was an alpha?
“That’s strange…. Even if I’m suppressing my hormones, there’s no way I wouldn’t recognize an omega…. Then Yeehyeon-ssi, maybe you’re a diamond omega, one level above a golden omega or something? Someone who can make it so that no one can notice you’re an omega if you set your mind to it?”
“There’s no such thing as a diamond omega,” Yuni noona scoffed, and Inwoo hyung retorted, “Can’t you tell the difference between a joke and the truth?”
It seemed necessary to correct Inwoo hyung’s conviction that I was definitely an omega, based on the premise that I wasn’t an alpha.
“I’m… not an omega either…”
“……”
This time, his expression was even more rigid than when I said I wasn’t an alpha. Even the CEO, who had been leaning back with a relaxed winner’s smile, tapping the front legs of his chair, stopped moving and turned to look at me.
Inwoo hyung narrowed his eyes and asked.
“Then, a beta?”
“Yes…”
Inwoo hyung and the CEO looked at each other. And the next moment, the CEO turned his head and his eyes, which were directed at me, were filled with suspicion and wariness, as if he were looking at an unidentifiable creature. It was the kind of expression that said, ‘There’s no way something like this could exist on Earth.’
“Are you sure?”
I wanted to ask him instead. On what basis was he so strongly convinced that I was an omega?
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