I reached out and touched the camera hanging around his neck, changing the subject.
“The photos, can I see them?”
“……”
The moment my hand touched his camera, his body went rigid. It was a bold move, uncharacteristic of me, but I hadn’t touched his body, so I didn’t think he’d be this surprised. Normally, I would have backed off at this point, but a slightly mischievous stubbornness took hold. Even without the buzz from the alcohol, I sometimes got like this in front of him.
“No?”
I asked again, pulling the camera a little closer toward me.
He wasn’t the type to walk the streets of a new city with a camera around his neck, so it had been quite a surprise when he’d slung the strap over his head as if it were the most natural thing in the world while getting out of the car. This one compact camera, smaller than my palm, made him look like a tourist excited about his trip, and that was a little… cute.
“Hmm… I don’t think I should show you.”
He slipped the strap off, held the camera in his left hand, and playfully stretched his arm far away so I couldn’t reach it.
“Why not?”
I asked, a hint of complaint in my voice. It seemed unfair that he had taken all those pictures, even though I was uncomfortable with the camera, but wouldn’t show me the results.
“Seo Yeehyeon, you’re a fortune teller. If you see my photos, you’ll read everything, won’t you?”
“…Read what?”
“……”
Our eyes met. It was a thoughtless remark, but he clamped his mouth shut for a moment, like someone whose secret had been exposed. I somehow found myself in a position of lunging toward his chest as if to snatch the camera from him, and he had an arm around my back, pulling me toward him to stop me.
From an extremely close distance, his eyes meticulously scanned my face, as if tracing every feature. He looked at me like this sometimes. Perhaps because of the proximity, the scent of his cologne tickled my nose.
“That day, how much did you drink with Choi In-woo?”
“Huh? When….”
Just as I was about to search my memory at the unexpected mention of In-woo hyung’s name, Juhan hyung, who had suddenly appeared from behind, threw his arms around him as if piggybacking.
“Ah, this is awesome! I love Hong Kong! Sir, I’m dying of thirst! Beer, give me beer!”
“Ah… so disruptive.”
He grumbled with an openly annoyed expression, but since it was no different from his usual attitude, it all felt like a joke. Hyung and noona didn’t pay it any mind either.
“You can stay out later, so go play somewhere else. Don’t you want to go to a club? I’ll give you my card.”
“As much as I’d love to, we still have two days of the fair left, so we should be in bed by midnight for some quality sleep. As for partying, we can do that to our hearts’ content at the party on Sunday.”
Downing the rest of the beer in his glass, hyung fanned his sweat-drenched face with his hand.
As if the tension that had been stretched taut between him and me just a moment ago was a lie, our table instantly became as boisterous as all the tables around us.
“Wait a minute. But why are you suddenly trying to send us to a club? The rule is to be home by midnight before the fair ends, no matter what.”
Noona sent him a suspicious look from under her narrowed eyelids.
“You’re trying to send us to a club and sneak off somewhere nice by yourself, aren’t you?”
This time, hyung jumped up, wiping his beer-moistened mouth with the back of his hand. His expression crumpled as he put the strap he had taken off to protect the camera from me back around his neck.
“You can’t sit still, so I was just telling you to go to a club if you’re going to be like that. Is this something to be so suspicious about?”
“Hmm… that’s not like you….”
“If you’re not going, then let’s get up. I have to drop you guys off and go pick up Director Han.”
He glanced at the watch on his left wrist and rose from his seat.
The director in charge of Phantom’s sales was attending parties hosted by various galleries today as well. Since he had an obligation to pick up the director, it wasn’t a situation where he could sneak off to a ‘nice place’ even if noona and hyung went to a club.
We left the pub and waited for the car in front of a nearby crosswalk. Noona and hyung, their excitement yet to subside, couldn’t stay still for a moment, bouncing to the music flowing out of the nearby shops. It was time for us to return to our lodging, but the Friday night in Soho was still in full swing.
I felt a sense of longing. The buzz from the alcohol was surely making my feelings more transparent than usual. To hide even a part of my emotions, I shouldn’t look at him, but my gaze kept searching for him.
The truth was, there were many things I wanted to say. I’m not a smooth talker, so even if given the chance, I wouldn’t be able to navigate the conversation skillfully, but there was so much I wanted to ask.
What was his ‘alienation’ that made him empathize with ‘Isolation’, the kind he must have felt for an uncommon reason? When he found out that ‘Isolation’ was my painting… how did he feel? Was he disappointed, or surprised? Or was it that no matter how much he cherished a painting, the artist and the art were completely separate entities to him, so there was no such thing as seeing me in a new light because of the painting?
Those… jumbled and trivial thoughts.
He, who had been watching me with his arms crossed firmly over his chest, sighed and ruffled his hair. Then, with a click of his tongue, he strode closer and grabbed my arm with a force that felt like he might lift me up.
“On Sunday, we won’t be interrupted.”
It was ambiguous what he meant by interruptions, but in the sudden onslaught of his scent that seemed to envelop me, none of that mattered. The scent I had only thought of as peculiar, I now found myself wanting more of.
○
The car he sent took me to a grand mansion situated with a clear, sweeping view of the Hong Kong nightscape. The grounds were so vast that it took about two to three minutes by car from the lower entrance, where security guards were checking and admitting each vehicle, to the stairs in front of the main building’s entrance.
It was a party hosted by a major gallery that held great influence in the Asian art market—one that had started in Hong Kong, continued to grow at a rapid pace, and had successfully expanded its influence by opening a branch in Singapore the year before last.
“This is where the CEO and the Director used to work together.”
Noona said as she placed her mirror into a small clutch and snapped it shut.
“This place was probably rented just for tonight’s party. Hong Kong has a vibrant social culture among the upper class, so there are quite a few places like this. Houses built just for renting out for wedding receptions, high-end brand events, or the private parties of the rich.”
The description alone sounded like another world.
Many cars were lined up, waiting along the road that circled a large installation piece, seemingly symbolizing a male and female pair, to approach the mansion’s main entrance. Juhan hyung’s explanation was that they had probably invited almost all the major galleries that participated in the fair and the art lovers who had gathered from all over the world to see it.
“Honestly, it’s a show of force. It’s a chance to show art world insiders from all over the globe that a gallery with this much power exists in Asia. It might seem like a nouveau riche mindset, but for a place aiming for the global market, the clients they deal with are all incredibly wealthy, so they need to assert their position to some extent. It’s a business of buying and selling works that cost tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions of dollars per piece. In a way, this is all promotion and investment.”
As our car slowed to a stop, a doorman dressed in a black suit opened the door for us.
He, having arrived earlier, had come to the entrance to greet us.
It was yet another suit, different from the one I’d seen at the VIP preview. Perhaps because it was a black suit, it gave the impression of being much more formally dressed today. Despite being wrapped from head to toe in a restrained, all-black suit, the wild energy and sexual appeal of his physique were on full display.
Whether you were a kid like me who didn’t know much about the wider world, or a sophisticated and stylish member of the upper class who had been invited to countless events like this, you couldn’t help but fix your eyes on him. Like a leading man who had stepped out of a classic Hollywood movie poster, he was classic yet sensual in a suit.
After complimenting noona’s and hyung’s styles in turn, his gaze finally landed on me. The way his eyes scanned my entire body, as if appraising it, made me fidget with my collar for no reason.
“Thank you for the clothes.”
“You must have been in a bind, having to attend so suddenly. Providing party wear is the least I could do.”
When I had returned to the hotel to get ready for the party after finishing up at the fair for the day, a suit had been hanging in my room’s closet. A hotel employee had come to my room personally to deliver it, saying Mr. Liu had prepared it and that I should wear it for the party. It was the first suit I had ever worn in my life.
It was from a brand that people with an interest in fashion, even among the younger generation, raved about, so Juhan hyung had even let out a shriek in envy, but the design felt more fashionable than the conventional suits I knew, so I had no confidence in pulling it off and felt utterly awkward.
“It suits you well.”
But he, the one who had provided the suit, had a satisfied expression. He even took a couple of steps back to take in my entire figure at once.
“This seems expensive….”
“Did Yuni do your hair?”
The suit, which clung to the lines of my body, was made of a fabric so supple and luxurious it felt like it would slip through my fingers, so the price kept weighing on my mind, but he simply changed the subject, lightly touching my hair.
“Yes.”
His fingertips, after tracing the edge of my styled hair, lightly brushed against my ear as he smiled.
“You have your forehead showing, but somehow you look even younger.”
He seemed to be in a good mood, and was, for once, not hiding it, so I decided to stop interrogating him about the price of the suit and shoes right then and there. It wasn’t money I could pay back on the spot anyway, and for now, I didn’t want to spoil the mood.
As we all started up the stairs to move inside the party venue, noona moved up close beside him and sniffed at his shoulder.
“Oh? What’s this, did you put on cologne, sir?”
“……”
I, who was following a few steps behind, almost tripped and missed a step on the stairs.
“Well, a little.”
“Mmm, it smells good. It’s dark, totally my type. But this is custom-made anyway, right?”
To noona’s bittersweet question about the unobtainable, he only gave an ambiguous smile.
I realized then that I had been completely unaware of the possibility that his unique scent could be enjoyed by anyone other than me. A scent is, of course, molecules of a substance that spread through the air, unable to pick and choose its targets.
Could there be a more foolish oversight?
Anyone who was as close to him as noona was now could smell his scent just as fairly. A smell was something like the scent of curry cooking in one house that could make an entire alley hungry.
And yet, until now, I had been focused only on ‘his scent that I was smelling.’
The thought of someone else smelling that scent felt… unpleasant. Whether I had the right to feel that way or not was a secondary problem. The problem was the very fact that such an presumptuous emotion was throwing my mind into disarray.
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