Unlike Yeehyeon’s father, she didn’t hide her passion during her middle and high school years, but her parents tried to confine her to just considering comics as a hobby, even pouring her collection of comic books, gathered one by one since the 2nd or 3rd grade of elementary school, into the bathtub and pouring water over them.
They tried to shake off their anxiety by clinging to the fact that she was enrolled in the painting department of the university they had longed for, forcing her to become a Western painter representing Korea, succeeding her great-grandfather in the future.
The environment makes the person, they said. Since she was being mentored by famous professors at a prestigious university, they believed that once her immature wandering was over, she would enter the world of sublime art.
Such foolish self-deception, seeing only what one wants to see and believing only what one wants to believe, was happening everywhere, regardless of the degree of wealth.
Contrary to her parents’ wishes, she started a comic book club with a classmate she met in that very department and focused more on club activities than on her studies. The classmate, who had already joined a comic book circle in middle school and had been publishing personal magazines since the 2nd grade of high school, became the president of the club, and she became the vice president.
The classmate, who said that a career from a prestigious art college would be helpful for his future activities as a cartoonist, had already declared that he would live as a cartoonist and had become independent, so he was not very well off.
While watching her classmate, who was working as a middle school instructor at an art academy in front of the university to cover living expenses and material costs, while also juggling his studies and club activities, she objectively saw her own weak self, who was not fully faithful to her dreams. And she began to compensate for that self.
She drastically increased the time she spent drawing and seriously prepared for contests. She strengthened the plot and studied books and movies to add depth to her characters.
Since she didn’t need to work part-time, she handled the club’s practical tasks on behalf of the president, and she frequented the art academy where the president worked, building friendships with the head instructor and the director, and was even able to earn additional income by working as an assistant instructor from time to time.
It was there that she met a man known among the academy students as “Drawing Julien.”
A person who locked himself in the academy for more than 10 hours every day and drew an enormous amount of pictures. He had a handsome appearance that the vice director jokingly said that new students were registering to see him, but he didn’t have even a speck of desire to enjoy his youth using it.
And after talking to him, she realized that he was also someone who was trying to abandon his parents’ expectations for that department of that university, which was like a cumbersome sandbag tied to his ankle.
From the perspective that one person desperately wants what another person is trying to throw away, the two people could be said to be in opposite situations, but they were also extremely similar in that they yearned for something beyond their forced lives.
Sharing information, understanding each other, and giving and receiving positive influences, the two people quickly became close.
She looked at his paintings, and he gave her honest reviews of her comics. Most of the time, the three of them, including the club president, spent together gradually became time for just the two of them, and it was not just the impulse of youthful ardor that urged them to desire not only each other’s passion but also their bodies, minds, and futures.
They could not imagine anyone other than each other as a colleague who would support them so that their will would not collapse, as a lover they wanted to lean on during beautiful nights, and as a companion who would be with them forever in their remaining lives.
If they didn’t have each other.
Perhaps he, burdened by the guilt towards his poor parents who went out to fish from dawn with hands that never lost the fishy smell no matter how much they washed, would have returned to his original university and studied with the goal of becoming a civil servant or joining a large company.
Perhaps she, exhausted by the conflict with her parents that didn’t seem to subside and the unfamiliar financial difficulties, would have chosen the path leading to a safe future that had been predetermined. It wasn’t that she hated painting; she just yearned for comics even more. If they didn’t have each other, such a decision would have been entirely possible.
Because they had each other, the two people were able to not give up on themselves and not waver in their determination to devote everything to the values they most truly desired. They were able to not forget that life is finite and that the end does not not come just because they cannot imagine it.
They, who chose each other as spouses at a socially young age, had to give up everything they had, whether much or little, and had to turn away from someone else’s hopes that they were carrying. It was not something that was nothing to both of them, something they did lightly, like throwing away a bothersome burden. Disappointing their parents was probably one of the things that humans fear the most.
The two people often joked about the fact that their two families, so different in circumstances, showed consistency in opposing the marriage, both in her wealthy home and in his home where financial hardship was a natural part of everyday life.
These were things that happened before Yeehyeon was born.
The fact that his mother spent time with his family at the villa on weekends and enjoyed long and short overseas trips three or four times a year, appreciating various outstanding works from the East and West in person, and the fact that his father, until he came to Seoul, shared a room with Hyung while still getting high grades and ate flawed fish that could not be sold as side dishes all year round, were just “old stories” that Yeehyeon had gradually heard while growing up.
He had never met his grandparents on either side, but he had never questioned it or felt a sense of deprivation.
No matter what the content of the “old stories” was, Yeehyeon could not find any trace of regret or resentment in his parents when they told those stories. They were always parents who listened to Yeehyeon’s feelings and expressed their trust and affection for each other, making young Yeehyeon jealous.
To Yeehyeon, his mother was represented by the image of sitting at the table in the living room or at the desk in the small room used as a studio, turning on the radio and drawing comics. That was his mother.
Her father, who worked at a nearby mobile phone factory for only 30 hours a week and devoted the rest of his time to oil painting with the goal of becoming a full-time painter, was the father Yeehyeon knew.
The studio that the two of them shared looked like their own secret base in young Yeehyeon’s eyes, and regardless of their warm affection for her, that space felt like a space solely for the two of them to connect, excluding her.
Yeehyeon was a child who rarely threw tantrums, but she hated it when his parents were in the studio together, so his mother used the studio during the day, and his father used it after work, taking turns.
It was a rule that had been established even before Yeehyeon entered elementary school, and at the time, both parents found Yeehyeon’s jealousy cute and sometimes deliberately hid in the studio to make Yeehyeon cry.
As Yeehyeon became a high-grade elementary school student and a middle school student, and began to express the world she saw in pictures, and gradually broke away from his parents’ shadow and began to build his ego, he wanted to be between his mother and father as before, but whenever everyone around him envied them as a couple who were still like lovers, Yeehyeon’s heart grew heavy.
However, it was a common depth of flaw that existed in every family, and Yeehyeon himself was deeply satisfied and grateful for his parents’ optimistic and gentle personalities and their educational policies that respected his will, compared to his peers.
The green freshness of the small jungle created on the veranda of the old villa.
Old pop songs flowing softly all day long from the radio that his mother had turned on.
The day’s worth of sunlight slowly dragged its hem from the bookshelf to the front of the sofa.
Posters made with his mother’s illustrations and the smell of oil paints.
These were peaceful days that seemed like they would continue forever without ever ending.
In the summer of his sixteenth year, Yeehyeon won the Special Jury Prize at a contest hosted by a large gallery, and Yeehyeon’s maternal grandparents invited the three of them to dinner.
It was the first meeting in about 17 years since Yeehyeon’s mother had declared that she would become a cartoonist and had left home as if running away, or rather, as if being kicked out.
It was a contest that was constantly embroiled in controversy over its authenticity due to its unconventional nature, with no age limit, no distinction between amateurs and professionals, and no restrictions on subject matter or style, but it was also a contest whose influence could not be denied, as the gallery hosting it was one of the top three largest galleries in the country.
Also, regardless of the controversy, the artists who won awards at the contest, if they were amateurs or newcomers, instantly became the talk of the town and received offers for exhibitions or opportunities to sign contracts as full-time painters, and if they were established artists, their value would jump by as much as four or five times.
The contest, which was in its 7th year at the time, was famous for attracting internationally renowned judges, and ‘Suki Kim,’ a Korean-American Oriental painter of the 2nd generation who was internationally influential, especially praised Yeehyeon’s work and left an impressive review, and it became even more of a hot topic when she later personally purchased Yeehyeon’s work.
Of course, Yeehyeon’s young age of sixteen also played a part in attracting the attention of the art world. Yeehyeon was the youngest winner in the entire history of the contest up to the 7th edition, and she was also the only teenager to win an award with a style belonging to abstract art.
Although the art world was an area that was far removed from public interest, so it was not an issue that was known to the general public, the gallery often contacted them, saying that they were receiving quite persistent requests from various media outlets to publish interviews including photos for a while.
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