“If you’re going to Chicago, I guess the joint exhibition in the second half of the year will be difficult?”
Picking up his chopsticks for the first time, Inwoo hyung finally changed the subject. But what he showed interest in wasn’t the meat or seafood that could fill his stomach, but the limp, cooked cabbage.
“It will proceed as planned.”
This time, he put down his chopsticks and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin as he spoke.
“How? You and Manager Han will be away, how is that possible?”
At Inwoo hyung’s words, spoken as he fished out a fishball floating around the bubbling hot pot, Juhan hyung and Yuni noona stopped their chopsticks and simultaneously shot him sharp glares.
“Hey, babies, why are you looking at me so scarily? I’m not ignoring you guys, but it’ll be a lot for you, no matter how excellent you are, to proceed without a single person in charge. And have we ever done things that way before? That’s what I’m talking about.”
A small smile crept onto my face at the sight of Inwoo hyung, uncharacteristically flustered and earnestly making excuses.
“Manager Han will be staying.”
“……”
At the unexpected declaration from his lips, the room fell silent. There was only the sound of the partitioned hot pot boiling and the low-volume noise seeping in from outside the private room.
Everyone’s puzzled gazes now turned to Manager Han, but she herself was cheerfully wrapping an enoki mushroom with a slice of lamb. It seemed the two of them had already come to a decision after discussing it.
As if he was completely done with his meal, he took a sip of water, set down his glass, and added.
“I’m going to Chicago with Baek Yuni.”
Aaaaaaack!
With a scream that was almost a shriek, Noona shot up from her seat. The chair lost its balance and rattled, and I, sitting next to her, quickly grabbed its back. Tossing her chopsticks onto the table, noona wrapped her arms around his shoulders, almost in an embrace, and shook him.
“Really? CEO, really, is it for real?”
Though she was only two years older than me, Noona had always felt five or six years my senior—she was calm, flawless, and had no doubts about herself. Everyone here knew that the loud reaction she was showing now was by no means a forced overreaction.
The way Noona expressed her pure joy, as if everything else had momentarily vanished from her sight and mind, made even the onlookers feel infected by her happiness. The satisfaction, excitement, and thrill, bordering on ecstasy, that she must be feeling right now was transmitted to me in its entirety.
“Yeah, for real. I think Baek Yuni can handle that much now.”
Letting his body sway more dramatically than the force of her shaking, he too was smiling with pleasure.
As I watched the two of them, I suddenly felt a parched-throat anxiety and reached for the water glass in front of me. It wasn’t because I was bothered by his and Noona’s closeness.
Like this, Noona was once again increasing her own brightness. That steady, passionate growth of hers was making me anxious. Perhaps it was more so because I was at a point where I had an important decision to make. It wasn’t the unpleasant kind of anxiety that soaked my back in a cold sweat.
Until now, I had only been interested in a situation where no changes occurred, in maintaining the present, but now, I too was cautiously beginning to want progress, or at least an escape from my current position.
“But… will the two of us be okay without Manager Han?”
Once the initial excitement had subsided to some extent, realistic worries began to set in, and Noona spoke in a small voice, cautiously glancing over at Manager Han.
“Actually, it was Manager Han’s suggestion. She said you practically directed this art fair and were in charge of the venue, so shouldn’t you be entrusted with something bigger now.”
“……”
Noona was silent. Her hand, which had been gripping the back of his chair, was clenched tight.
In Noona’s eyes, which until a moment ago had been filled with one hundred percent pure excitement, more complex emotions were beginning to pool.
Joy, gratitude, being deeply moved. And in the place where all those things passed in succession, a large, hard lump that was difficult to describe in words washed over…
It was a feeling that seemed to resemble sorrow. Of course, the substance of that emotion was surely not sorrow or sadness, but for a moment, Noona’s face as she looked at Manager Han seemed so sad, as if she were about to cry.
I remembered the story I once heard about how noona and Juhan hyung met. Within it, a mention of Noona’s situation, which had passed by in a flash, was pulled up from my memory.
The story of her parents, who had crushed her dream of getting into a top university by saying they wouldn’t pay her tuition unless she went to a college of education. It was also the reason why what noona had achieved now and what she was trying to achieve in the future was all the more amazing.
Surrounded by people who acknowledged her and pushed her forward, perhaps noona was thinking of her family. Wouldn’t she have wanted to receive this kind of acknowledgment and trust from her family more than anyone else? I could only vaguely guess as much.
Noona bowed her head to swallow her emotions.
Everyone, even Inwoo hyung, had stopped their chopsticks.
“You’ll be going as main staff, not sub, so you’ll have to accompany CEO Liu on all schedules, and you’ll have to learn everything from one to ten, so it’ll be incredibly tough, but, Baek Yuni, you’ll do a great job, right?”
Manager Han said, looking up at noona from a distance across the table. Her expression and voice were gentle, tinged with affection.
The next moment, when she lifted her head, Noona had completely returned to the usual self we all knew so well. And she grinned.
“Of course. I’ve been waiting for this moment for three years, like the dog at the village school.”
“Who called you a dog at the village school?”
Manager Han’s eyes widened as she feigned an angry expression, and he, with his arms crossed, nodded his head emphatically in agreement.
“Right, absolutely not. The real village school dog is the one still stuffing his face like that even in this situation.”
He gestured with his chin toward Juhan hyung and threw out a joke. As if the mood had lightened, Hyung, who had started busily moving his chopsticks again, spoke nonchalantly while dipping three or four pieces of meat into the broth.
“What, is it a problem to know my place and stay quietly in a corner? I don’t have that much ambition in the art world. You know that.”
Then he dipped the lamb, still pink in spots, deep into the sauce and began to chew it deliciously.
“Show a little more drive. I’ll acknowledge you as much as your skills improve.”
“Well… if you get on your knees and beg me, saying you need me, I’ll think about it.”
His offer seemed serious, but hyung deliberately acted a bit cocky and passed it off as a joke.
“Ah… Chicago in the fall. That’d be nice. Lonely and atmospheric, perfect for a mood-setting date.”
Stretching his arms out long, hands on the table as if stretching, Inwoo hyung stared into the air and muttered enviously.
“You can go whenever you want if you just put your mind to it. And we’re not going to play, you know?”
Noona chided him as she sat down, but Inwoo hyung pretended not to hear, turning his head so deeply to look at me that his chin was buried in his shoulder. His characteristic mischievous smile was on his face.
“So, while you’re on your business trip to Chicago… Yeehyeon-ssi will be alone?”
“……”
“Why would Yeehyeon be alone? Manager Han is here, and so am I.”
Inwoo hyung shook his head as he looked back at Juhan hyung, who was now leaning against the backrest and drinking a Coke, apparently having eaten his fill.
“Kwon Juhan just pretends to be worldly-wise, but sometimes he’s a total simpleton.”
While Inwoo hyung and Juhan hyung were bickering about who had more dating experience, an employee knocked and came in. The uniformed employee placed two paper bags containing the pre-ordered takeout food on an empty chair.
Noona asked to pay the bill, and while the employee went to get the corporate card and come back, people began to prepare to leave the restaurant one by one.
“We’re going for a second round, what’s the takeout for?”
Inwoo hyung asked, peering into the paper bags.
“Little Seo Yeehyeon is going to sleep over at his hyung and noona’s place today. The CEO got it for him.”
At Juhan hyung’s answer, everyone looked at me and laughed.
It was at times like these that I truly felt like the maknae of Phantom. I was a blunt maknae with no talent for making people laugh with cute expressions or actions, but Yuni noona, Juhan hyung, and Manager Han sometimes saw me as cute just for the reason that I was young.
And he was like that, too.
Right now, he was pretending not to hear Juhan hyung’s joke or the others’ laughter, concentrating on his phone screen as if an important message had arrived. But I remembered him asking his old colleagues to cut me some slack because I was still very young. Along with that, the smile he had shown at my clumsy attempt at consolation, asking if I was trying to cheer him up. It was clearly the generous smile of an older person toward someone younger.
So I wouldn’t get dispirited just because he didn’t join the others in smiling at me as if I were cute at a moment like this.
Expecting a reaction from him that corresponded to my feelings would do me no good. The best way to keep things from getting more serious from here was to consistently learn how to suppress my expectations and give up hope.
That had been my thinking so far, after returning from Hong Kong.
“Huh? Then Yeehyeon-ssi isn’t coming for the second round?”
Inwoo hyung, who was still sitting in his chair after everyone else had stood up, grabbed my wrist and shook it with a sad expression, the corners of his eyes drooping all the way down.
“Well… we were supposed to meet on the day I got back, but I’ve been so busy I couldn’t find the time.”
“Ah… right. Yeehyeon-ssi was sick and came back a day late.”
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