“Juhan hyung’s trademark is his bangs. They’re so long they look like they’ll poke his eyes, but they’re cut straight across like they were measured with a ruler. But it suits him really well. When he’s busy, he pins his bangs up with a plastic clip, and then he looks kind of cute.”
I drew Juhan hyung with his straight bangs on the spring notebook Morae gave me. I add the ribbon-shaped yellow plastic pin he sometimes uses on top.
I don’t know where he got that hairpin that’s obviously for kids, but when he has to revise the catalog proofs until the next morning or when he has to quickly eat jajangmyeon in the office for a late lunch, he takes it out from somewhere and pins up his bangs. Once, he went out to deal with visitors with it in his hair and then ran back into the office cursing himself.
“Yuni noona… has a bob. A very black bob, and I thought she dyed it, but it’s just her natural hair color. And she has big eyes and very clear pupils. She’s short and petite, but… she doesn’t look small. You only realize, ‘Ah, Noona isn’t that tall’ when you stand next to her. Her presence is so big that she doesn’t seem small. Phantom would be paralyzed without noona. Even the director gets anxious without Yuni Noona, so Juhan hyung teases him about having separation anxiety.”
Morae, who is sitting next to me with her chin resting on her hand, is staring at the image of Yuni noona that I’m creating with an interested expression. The lip piercing of Yuni noona is just being completed at the tip of the three-color ballpoint pen. I drew two or three stars in her pupils in the style of old manga drawings.
“The two of them… are like fraternal twins. More precisely… Juhan hyung is like the male version of Yuni noona, and Yuni noona is like the female version of Juhan hyung… that kind of feeling. But if you told them that, they probably wouldn’t like it. They’d get angry, right?”
I can see and hear the expressions and voices of the two of them showing their displeasure, saying, “How am I similar to that person?” so I draw lightning between the two people on the paper and laugh foolishly.
“This is… complicated feelings.”
“What is.”
Morae, who has her chin propped up, tilts her head and narrows her eyes as she looks at me and shakes her head.
“It’s admirable to think that Seo Ihyeon has grown up so much, but it’s also a little sad.”
I chuckled at her words as if they were bland, but I knew best what she meant by them. She was the one who opened up the opportunity for change for me, who had tried not to get along with people other than Morae and hyung, who couldn’t get along, and who had refused even the smallest changes, without any nagging or persuasion, just by being there for me with sincerity and persistence.
Not because I was her boyfriend’s problematic cousin, but simply because she herself was someone who didn’t treat other people’s wounds, just because they were other people’s wounds, more lightly than her own. She would have done the same if someone else had been in my place.
I wouldn’t be who I am now if it weren’t for the unchanging, steady, and weighty kindness of a stranger who wasn’t related to me by blood. She and Han hyung had spent a long time creating a new playing field for me.
“You don’t have to worry about me anymore.”
“You’re very conceited, aren’t you? You think you’ve grown up that much already? Huh?”
Morae put her hand on my shoulder and tapped it. I laughed at her swaggering expression like a gangster trying to steal money.
“It’s not that I can do well, but that it will work out somehow.”
If there’s one thing that’s changed the most since I came to Seoul, it’s that. I had been afraid to take a step in either direction because I was afraid that something would change, but even if I did take a step, the world wouldn’t collapse or I wouldn’t be transformed into a different being, nothing like that happened.
I looked at Morae, who was staring at me, and added, seeking her agreement.
“That’s how other people live too, right? Isn’t it?”
“That’s right. Because there’s not enough time or anything else to wait until you’re perfectly ready.”
I applied her words to herself.
I knew that the time she was spending here wasn’t a completion or a destination for her. She’s not the type of person to reveal her anxiety to others, but she’s still probably staying up late thinking about her next journey.
“What about that person? What’s the director like?”
She asked in a cheerful voice, changing the subject. I was taken aback by the unexpected question and unconsciously leaned back, pressing the tip of the pen against my lips.
“He wears… a very nice perfume. It was a scent I’d never smelled before. It was very unique.”
“Huh? That’s it?”
Morae looked disappointed, and I laughed.
But I really didn’t know what other words to use to describe him. The color of his eyes, which seemed mysterious to me, who is of pure Korean descent, the special trait of being a Golden Alpha, his exotic appearance, the unique way he runs the gallery… So many characteristics came to mind at once, and none of them seemed sufficient to define him.
The image that came to mind the moment I was asked the question was, ridiculously, his scent.
However, the scent, which had captured my sense of smell so intensely and impressively, was like an elusive phantom that only lingered at the tip of my nose when I tried to recall it specifically, and I couldn’t recall it exactly.
I felt like I could draw it, but it was impossible to express it with a three-color ballpoint pen on a spring notebook.
A new group of guests entered ‘Something Happened in Bali’, and Morae left my side for a moment. I flipped through the pages of the spring notebook to draw the director’s appearance for her. There weren’t many blank pages.
Bali. Kuta. Surf camp. 5th anniversary promotion. 1-year long-term program. 15 million won per person.
My hand stopped at the brief memo that seemed to have been copied from somewhere. Each word was marked with circles or underlines, as if it had been pondered over.
The memo, ‘2 or more people required’, was underlined and had the comment, ‘Do they give a discount because they only accept 2 or more people?’ Two different handwriting styles were scattered like graffiti throughout the page, as if Morae and Han hyung had discussed it together with the notebook between them.
I got a rough idea. It was information about a promotion at a surf school in Kuta, Bali, that offered a drastically reduced price on the condition of a long-term contract of 1 year for 2 or more people. It was probably a price that included all costs, including accommodation and lessons. I had been eavesdropping on Morae and hyung’s conversations for years, so it wasn’t difficult to guess that much.
They were already quite advanced surfers, so the lesson fees alone were considerable. If it included accommodation for a year, it was definitely not a bad price. A long-term surfing trip had always been their dream, and it would be a good opportunity to stay in Bali for a year and get a sense of what it would be like to settle there completely.
I glanced at Morae’s back. She was talking cheerfully with the guests, who seemed to be regulars she had become acquainted with, and as I looked at her profile, I suddenly became afraid.
It was only five minutes ago that I said they didn’t have to worry about me anymore, but just imagining parting was daunting. It felt like I had lost everything in the desert at night and was standing alone.
It was the name written in the corner of the notebook that made me realize that I had to slap myself on the cheek and read the direction even through the constellations, because I was standing there dumbfounded with my arms hanging down in despair.
Seo Ihyeon.
And the round border drawn several times around that name.
The name that always makes them hesitate before making a choice. Seo Ihyeon.
Morae, who had taken orders from the guests, was clearing the menus. I quickly turned the page back.
“They’re regulars, and they even brought us gifts from their trip to Hong Kong this time? Try it.”
She handed the order to hyung in the kitchen and placed a metal box on the table. When I opened the lid with a bear doll on it, it was full of butter cookies.
“Didn’t your gallery say they were going on a business trip to Hong Kong too? When was it?”
Morae picked one up and sat back down next to me, sticking her hands in her pants pockets and stretching her legs out.
The entire staff was scheduled to go on a business trip to an art fair in Hong Kong in early July. But it hadn’t been decided yet whether I, who was practically an intern, would be joining them.
“It’s after this exhibition… probably in two or three weeks. But I don’t know if I’ll be going yet.”
“It would be nice if you could go. It’s a good opportunity.”
“But, wouldn’t it be bad if there was a record of entry and exit?”
Morae, who had put the remaining half of the cookie in her mouth, said, sticking her hands in her pants pockets and stretching her legs out.
“Don’t worry about things like that. It’s difficult to find someone’s location just by looking at their entry and exit records… and they could probably find you right now if they wanted to. The reason they haven’t contacted you yet is just because they’re waiting for the right timing. So just do what you want to do.”
Then she turned to me and smiled.
“It’s me and Seo Yeehan that your dad wants to take out his anger on, not you, so you have nothing to do with this. You don’t have to worry about protecting yourself.”
I was just looking at her profile. Morae took a cookie out of the box and put it in my mouth. Crunch. I bit it in half with my teeth, and the other half disappeared into her mouth.
“Hmm, it’s delicious. Let’s eat it with coffee. It’d be perfect with an Americano.”
I compulsively clicked the pen in my hand as I followed Morae’s back as she walked behind the counter where the coffee machine was.
I wanted to tell her that too.
That it was okay, that I would somehow make it work, that they didn’t have to hesitate to make a choice because of me anymore, with Seo Ihyeon’s name circled. I wanted to tell Hyung and Morae with confidence.
Morae was someone who could stand up perfectly while balancing on the foam of a precarious wave, but it was never a reckless act of letting things take their course. I didn’t know anyone else who was as honestly devoted to life as she was. Even if I hid my fear and said I was okay, I wouldn’t be able to fool her.
That the current peace was just a temporary sandcastle built on the edge of a beach where the waves could crash at any moment. That the days I was working at Phantom surrounded by works of art and getting paid, living comfortably at the director’s house, and studying illustration and Photoshop were made possible by the kind concern and understanding of grateful people.
I erased the sketch I had been outlining to draw the director’s face with zigzag lines.
I have to come to my senses. For the sake of the people who look back at me even in the face of the path they want to take, because they can’t leave me alone. I had to come to my senses and move my legs to move on my own.
Because I knew for sure now that not choosing anything wouldn’t maintain the present.
Leave a Reply