Perhaps I stared up at him a little too intently, because he bit his lower lip as if to hide his bashfulness while pulling my hand toward ‘The Hands’. Even the smile trapped between his lips was more reminiscent of a less-seasoned boy than a worldly adult man.
A chuckle escaped Yeehyeon’s lips as well.
“Why? Why are you laughing, huh?”
He pulled my arm abruptly and wrapped his arms around my waist as if to tickle me.
“Because you… laughed first, Director.”
Yeehyeon twisted his side and grabbed his shoulders. It tickled. It was late at night, so he bit his lip to keep from laughing too loudly. Bending his upper body all the way, Yeehyeon finally escaped his arms, readjusted the shoulder strap of his fallen tote bag, and started walking backward toward ‘The Hands’, pulling his hand. He followed obediently. They didn’t take their eyes off each other’s faces for even a moment.
“Seo Yeehyeon! Director!”
“……”
The voice was familiar, and at the same time, the situation was unexpected. Yeehyeon stopped walking and turned his body toward ‘The Hands’. Standing on the steps was Yuni, waving her hand. Michelle was with her.
His mind momentarily in a jumble, Yeehyeon looked back at the man behind him. He seemed a little… too big to hide. He instinctively tried to let go of the hand he was holding, but Liu only tightened his grip, pressing their palms together. Then he pulled Yeehyeon along and took the lead.
It wasn’t as if they had committed a crime, nor was Yuni completely unaware of their past relationship, but… the story that needed explaining was too long.
Liu had definitely said that no one knew he had been traveling between Paris and Seoul all this time. Besides, Yuni must have thought that his and Liu’s relationship had been, at the very least, temporarily suspended.
He was at a loss as to where and how to begin explaining this situation, where he was suddenly found fooling around on a night street (he knew it would look like nothing else in others’ eyes) holding hands with the man who had just appeared.
“Are you on your way back from ‘Ttou’?”
“Uh… y-yeah.”
But as she grinned at Yeehyeon as if she knew everything, or as if she was happy for them, she seemed to already know the whole story. She showed no sign of surprise at Liu’s sudden appearance either. She was reacting as if he often brought Yeehyeon to the front of ‘The Hands’, just as she and Michelle did.
“You must be Michelle?”
“Yes, hello.”
“I wanted to arrange a formal meeting, but we ended up meeting like this. It’s a pleasure.”
Without needing an introduction, Liu and Michelle greeted each other and then laughed, exchanging a few jokes about Yuni. They weren’t malicious jokes, but perhaps worried that a mischievous Liu might reveal her hidden past to Michelle, Yuni pushed Liu’s shoulder to turn him around and then shoved his back toward the top of the stairs.
“Alright, let’s not disturb each other’s dates. You go on in first.”
Chuckling at the two of them, Yeehyeon exchanged bises with Michelle and climbed the stairs. He was bewildered by how things were unfolding, but for now, he was relieved that the situation had passed without awkwardness.
With Liu standing beside him waving at Michelle below, Yeehyeon opened the door with his key. While many old apartments in Paris were installing door locks on the ground floor entrance, ‘The Hands’ still stuck to keys.
Pushing the heavy ground floor door inward, Yeehyeon held it open with his back and gestured for him to come inside. He entered the lobby with a slightly tense expression. Walking slowly toward the center of the dimly lit hall, he looked around cautiously. It was late at night, so all the exhibition hall doors were locked, and it was a small lobby with not much to see.
Yeehyeon, with his hands in his coat pockets, tugged at the elbow of the man who was staring blankly at the closed door of the main exhibition hall.
“There’s nothing to drink in my room. There’s a communal kitchen on the second floor. Let’s stop by for a moment.”
Because two or so rooms had been knocked down for expansion, the unheated kitchen was as chilly as the outdoors.
While Yeehyeon, who had turned on the light, took a Post-it and a pen from his tote bag to leave a note that read, ‘Ben, borrowing two beers,’ Liu carefully looked around the simple kitchen.
After finishing the note, Yeehyeon took two cold beers from the refrigerator and stuck the Post-it next to the handle.
“You seem to be quite close with people.”
The man, who had been reading the kitchen rules posted on the wall, had sidled up next to him at some point and said this as his eyes scanned the note.
“We’ve gotten close. I’ve been here for over a year, after all.”
“Hmm.”
Perhaps he had even been worried about Yeehyeon’s unsociable personality. Although Yuni had come here with him, she couldn’t follow him around like a guardian all the time. He might have tormented himself more, imagining Yeehyeon unable to mix with people, unable to be absorbed into this city, lonely and on the fringe.
The worry was just a worry, and he seemed considerably relieved by the fact that Yeehyeon was doing well enough to show the flexibility of leaving a note to borrow beer. The Yeehyeon of the past would have chosen to drink nothing at all instead. That was a fact.
But as his gaze lingered on the note for quite a while, he also wore a slightly complicated expression. It wasn’t bitterness that Yeehyeon had adapted well on his own, but rather, it must have been regret for not having shared that time.
Despite the long gap, the emotions the other person was feeling were transmitted more intimately than before. That was why Yeehyeon didn’t try to comfort him out loud.
“Let’s go up.”
Tugging at the sleeve of his coat as he hesitated to move, Yeehyeon said in a whisper.
The apartment was quieter than usual. While Yeehyeon opened his door, Liu stood pressed close beside him, holding two beer bottles in one hand and resting the other on Yeehyeon’s shoulder. He felt like a college student who had secretly brought a date into the dorms. No, he was more nervous than that. Because his partner was him.
“It’s shabby and small, nothing compared to the studio you prepared for me in Seoul.”
“……”
“But it has everything I need, and I’ve been perfectly fine here… so after you see it, please don’t be heartbroken.”
With his hand still on the doorknob, having pulled it slightly forward, Yeehyeon looked up at him to get a promise beforehand. His lips twitched as if to make some excuse, but he soon relaxed his shoulders and nodded.
As they entered the room together, the floorboards creaked under the weight of two people. The room was a long, narrow rectangle from the door to the window on the opposite wall, making it possible to see the entire space at a glance from the doorway.
“Is it because there isn’t much furniture or stuff? It’s bigger than I thought.”
He was deliberately using a cheerful voice as he wandered around the room without even taking off his coat, but Yeehyeon couldn’t help but notice that he was upset.
“So this was the room.”
Standing in front of the desk, he bent over to look down at the street below the window and muttered as if to himself. Standing in the alley to avoid being seen, looking up at this building, he might have tried to guess which window was Yeehyeon’s.
Yeehyeon brought over a backless stool that had been propped against the wall, and they sat side by side, using the desk as a table. Since there were no coasters, a round water ring quickly formed on the wooden desk in the shape of the beer bottle.
“Actually, I met Yuni first before I went to Le Marais to pick you up.”
“Ah…”
“I was going to tell you beforehand, in case a situation like the one just now happened and you got flustered. But I didn’t know such a situation would come up so quickly.”
Smiling as he looked back at Yeehyeon, he took a sip of beer and cleared his throat. Yeehyeon fixed his gaze on his long, neat fingers stroking the surface of the beer bottle and waited for him to continue.
“The moment we met after a year, she skipped the greetings and the first thing she asked was what on earth happened with you and me.”
Clasping the beer bottle in one hand and stroking its neck with his thumb, he let out a small laugh.
“That kid, she definitely couldn’t ask you anything. In case she ended up touching a wound. Even when we talked on the phone sometimes, she would ask indirectly if I was really not coming to Paris, but she could never dig into our relationship head-on.”
He was right.
“I didn’t go into the detailed… story about the Changing. I thought it was right to talk about that after getting your consent. I just briefly… told her that I had done something terribly wrong to you and didn’t have the right to come see you.”
Yeehyeon nodded heavily. He could understand his intention in correcting himself from the vague ‘detailed story’ to the precise ‘Changing’—a resolve not to downplay his own wrongdoing.
He took his hand off the beer bottle and roughly rubbed his face with his damp palm. Then he let out a sigh and let his hand fall.
“Yuni asked if we were dating again now…”
“……”
“That question made my heart flutter.”
Scoffing at himself, he seemed to feel guilty for even feeling a flutter of excitement.
His conflict was palpable right beside him. Yeehyeon hesitated before opening his mouth.
“This might sound a bit… like I’m full of myself, but…”
“……”
“I know how much you must have wanted to come find me, Director.”
Liu turned his head toward Yeehyeon, leaning his upper body slightly.
“And that you would have wanted to see the paintings I drew here for yourself, and to own them. Because before you were someone who loved me, Director… you were the deepest understander of my art.”
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