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(According to Noona and Hyung’s phrasing,) since we couldn’t pour in a budget like the ‘rich galleries’ did, our booth wasn’t very spacious for the number of works we had.
Excluding him and the Director, who had to be away often, Noona and Hyung had to manage the booth almost entirely by themselves, so a booth that was too large would have been unmanageable anyway.
The location, however, was quite good. It wasn’t far from the large, experimental sculpture installed in the center, and the space between our booth and the one across from us was generous.
The Director and he were walking down that corridor side by side. They were such a captivating pair that my gaze followed their path, even though I knew I might look foolish.
I was reminded of Juhan-hyung’s exaggerated expression when he once said of artist Shushu, ‘I almost prostrated myself after seeing him in person.’ It wasn’t quite that shocking, but it certainly wasn’t an everyday kind of beauty. It might not have been enough to make me prostrate myself, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from their magnetic pull.
As it was the VIP preview, the venue was filled with stylish people dressed in what I could only call party attire, all unfamiliar to me. Hyung, Noona, and I were also wearing the clean, black-toned outfits we had prepared, our hair styled for a change, but the presence of those two was in a league of its own.
They were the very picture of Alphas belonging to the upper class, something I’d never encountered during my days in a small fishing village.
“Director, you look amazing! It’s been a while since you’ve let your Alpha appeal shine like this!”
It seemed I wasn’t the only one thinking that. Juhan-hyung ran up to the front of the booth and made a fuss, hugging the Director.
“What am I usually like? Huh?”
The Director laughed, grabbing the back of Hyung’s neck and giving it a shake. Unlike his usual comfortable attire, he was wearing a black two-piece suit with a pattern as sharp as a knife’s edge, but his speech and actions were the same as always.
“You’re stylish even when you’re just in a t-shirt and jeans, but the coolness of dressing up is a whole other thing.”
“Well, that’s true. You look pretty sharp yourself when you occasionally ditch the t-shirt and ripped jeans for a suit.”
The Director, who had been shaking Hyung’s neck, slung an arm over his shoulder and scanned the completed display behind us, his eyes widening.
“Hey… look how capable our kids are. I really didn’t think you’d finish in just three hours. Maybe we can increase the number of works for the next fair?”
“Hah… I love Phantom, but I’m submitting my resignation right here.”
Everyone burst out laughing at Juhan-hyung’s earnest jest.
For various scheduling reasons, none of the five of us had eaten dinner yet. We began to briefly sate our hunger with food we had brought over from the buffet tables set up around the venue.
I say ‘briefly,’ but since a single admission ticket to the event cost around 4,000 Hong Kong dollars, the variety and quality of the food were excellent. To my eyes, the dishes were almost too pretty to eat.
“It’s your first fair, so it must be overwhelming, right?”
The only thing I’d eaten today was a small bite of the chicken dish from the in-flight meal, so I should have been hungry, but the excitement and nervousness made me feel no hunger at all. I was just fiddling with a single, adorably shaped dim sum with my chopsticks when he approached and spoke to me.
He had said he was starving to death from having to flash business smiles at people without even getting a chance to eat, yet he too was barely touching the food. He was just sipping champagne while nibbling on a few nuts Juhan-hyung had brought over.
“A little, but… it’s still fun.”
He wore a navy suit made of a material that flowed flexibly along the lines of his body rather than being stiffly tailored. He looked accustomed to this kind of setting, and it suited him. While boldly revealing the contours of his firm, well-proportioned body, his suit remained dignified and elegant.
The visitors of various ethnicities who were looking around the booths would, without fail, let their gazes pause on him, and this in turn served as a factor in drawing them to our booth.
“The main event starts tomorrow, so it’ll be even more hectic. There will be incomparably more visitors than there are now. Do you want to take a look at some of the works beforehand?”
With about 200 galleries from 26 countries participating, the venue was enormous. That vast interior was divided into hundreds of booths, forming a complex maze. I had received a pamphlet with a layout map, but it was true that I couldn’t quite muster the courage to venture out. It wasn’t just because of the complicated layout; I was a little intimidated by an environment where everything—a foreign country, an unfamiliar city, the language barrier—was a first for me.
“If it’s because it feels unfamiliar, I could go with you.”
Noticing my hesitation, he spoke with a slightly crooked smile. He sometimes smiled like a villain from a cartoon, and this was one of those times. 「You don’t want me to go? You want me to not go, and get into bed and sleep with you instead?」—He had smiled like that when we slept together, too.
I didn’t refuse and nodded. His eyes, which had been fixed on me as he drank his champagne, faltered for a moment, then he smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. This time, it was a smile that seemed to lightly regret his own playful joke from a moment ago.
We could stroll around as if on a walk, and if a piece caught my eye, I could spend as much time as I wanted with it. He said as much, matching his pace to mine as he walked beside me.
“Do you like the room?” he asked casually as we passed a booth from a Beijing gallery, decorated mainly with East Asian paintings.
“It was my first time in a place like that… I was surprised by how nice the room was. The view is amazing, too. I wouldn’t have had this kind of experience if not for your kindness, CEO… Thank you for everything.”
“Hmm, I didn’t do it out of kindness.”
I turned to look at his face as he muttered to himself in a playful tone. His light-colored eyes were now sparkling.
“I’m full of ulterior motives.”
“……”
“To get you to pick up a brush, Seo Yeehyeon.”
I don’t know what I was expecting. I quickly lowered my gaze, afraid he would notice my disappointment. But even if he wasn’t in my line of sight, it felt as if just being in his would expose everything I wanted to hide.
Even if it was just my own defensive delusion, being relatively so much younger than him, this feeling of being at a disadvantage in front of him kept bothering me.
He had been tapping the palm of his other hand with the rolled-up pamphlet that contained the layout map. He changed its direction and tapped my shoulder with it.
“Seems like the best possible conditions for someone on the run like you, Seo Yeehyeon. I don’t know who you’re running from or why, but if you become an exclusive artist for Phantom, I’ll protect you with all I’ve got. I’m good at that kind of thing.”
I gave an awkward smile at his tone, which was like that of a child bragging about knowing how to read and write the alphabet. He was deliberately lightening the weight of his words with a casual tone, but what he said was probably true. Seeing the way he ran Phantom and his resourcefulness, he was by no means the type to stand by and let what was his be taken.
But the matter of being on the run wasn’t a simple problem that ended with just me, and even if he were to protect me, it would only be because… I was an affiliated artist with investment value. Or, to put it in the best possible light, it would be a business measure taken by a dealer for a talented artist (as he seemed to think of me).
I wasn’t hoping for anything more than that. If there was anything I wanted, it was for the safety of Morae and Hyung to be guaranteed, not my own well-being, which was nothing more than a freebie to Morae’s father.
I had merely thought about the true meaning behind his words, ‘I’ll protect you.’ It was a dangerous way of speaking.
He was stimulating my psyche, which couldn’t help but worry about safety in a situation where I was being chased, and appealing once more to the advantages of becoming a Phantom artist, but he didn’t press for an answer on the spot. After all, we had both agreed that the decision would be made after the business trip.
Although its flagship artist, Shushu, was a photographer, and it did have a sculptor on its roster on rare occasion, Phantom was fundamentally a gallery focused on painting. But even for someone like me, who had been ignorant of the art world, I was vaguely aware that modern art had long since expanded its domain to include installation art, sculptures, and performances that encouraged audience participation.
Thanks to this, the atmosphere of the venue was quite three-dimensional and vibrant, rather than being authoritatively prim. Works with humor and personality were predominant over classical and dark pieces. That was my impression from a quick look around.
But for some reason, I wasn’t particularly interested in works that weren’t paintings.
“You don’t seem very interested in recent artists.”
He spoke to me with interest as I stopped in front of a piece that was a close-up painting of a woman’s face, lying on her side on the floor. I checked the caption; it was a work from 2002.
There were many art books at home, but like a child who is given a book and only looks at the illustrations without reading the text, I had always just taken in the works themselves, paying little attention to the artists’ names or the titles of the works. Neither my mother, my father, nor my teacher had ever tried to teach me about the lineage of painters or art history.
“I don’t… know much about artists.”
“From what I can see, you only stop in front of works by older artists. At the very least, artists who were prolific in the 1990s. This piece is relatively recent, though.”
“Is that so?”
I turned my head back toward the work.
The woman in the painting seemed to be in a painful situation, but strangely, what emanated from it was not despair, helplessness, or encroachment, but a life force like a throbbing heart. Yet it was different from hope or dreams. Even if someone were to harm her, even if they were to bring her to the point of death, they would never be able to dominate her spirit… What I felt from it was, rather, a maniacal struggle. A refusal to stop being herself even in the most extreme circumstances, a humanity of flowing blood and hot flesh.
I couldn’t know what intentions the artist actually had, or what had driven them to paint the work, but in this moment, that was the impression I received from it.
The more I looked, the more the work captivated me. To the point that, if I could, I wanted to place my hand on the hardened texture of the paint and vaguely feel the artist’s breath and energy.
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