■ ■ ■
As the two entered the foyer, the sensor overhead turned on the light.
“How far are you going to follow me?”
Liu, who had been leading the way, looked back with a displeased expression. His tall frame, standing so close, cast a shadow over Choi In-woo’s face.
“My orders are to see you safely home.”
“Orders? From whom?”
“Manager Han.”
“……”
As if he himself knew the gravity of the commotion from earlier, Liu gave an awkward smile as he took off his shoes and changed into indoor slippers.
It had been a long time since Choi In-woo had visited Liu’s home.
There was a time when he had come and gone often, spending boisterous hours in the garden, the living room, the kitchen. The days when Liu Weikun had been the most human. When Seo Yeehyeon had been here…
He could have entered the house directly from the garage through the basement. And yet, after parking the car, Liu had taken the cumbersome route of exiting the garage, crossing the garden, and coming in through the front door.
The reason was obvious. There was no need to ask.
He must be preserving the basement where Yeehyeon had stayed, just as it was.
Following Liu into the hallway, Choi In-woo surveyed the dark living room and frowned.
“What is this mess?”
“It’s perfectly clean. What are you picking a fight for?”
Liu retorted in a tired voice as he crossed the living room and entered the dining area.
“I’m saying it’s too clean. It doesn’t feel like a place where someone lives.”
This time, Liu didn’t even bother to reply. Standing in the dark kitchen, he took a bottle of water from the fridge and drank straight from it without pouring it into a cup. Then, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he asked if Choi In-woo wanted some water too.
“Want some?”
“Not water. Give me a drink.”
“You’ve been drinking this whole time, what more do you want?”
“Should I sleep over?”
“Don’t say such disgusting things and get out.”
“Who said I’d be sharing a bed with you? A muscular Alpha bigger than me isn’t my type, you know?”
“……”
“If you have any good wine hidden away, bring it out. Let’s drink until morning, just the two of us, for old times’ sake.”
“I’m tired. And I’m not in the mood.”
Waving him off, Liu passed Choi In-woo and trudged back the way he came, heading for the stairs. It was a completely different image from the Liu he knew. He looked like a ghost, dragging a heavy iron ball and chain shackled to his ankle.
“…Liu Weikun.”
He had never called him in such a hesitant voice before.
Facing Liu, who had turned around, Choi In-woo couldn’t bring himself to say what he had intended to.
Go to Yeehyeon. If you really lose Yeehyeon, you’ll end up in a state more terrible than you are now, living a life worse than death. Wouldn’t it be better to at least get on your knees and beg before that happens?
He couldn’t say it.
Because the eyes that looked back at him already desperately wanted to do just that.
His own insides must be the blackest, wanting so badly to do something yet being unable to.
“Never mind. Go to sleep.”
After Choi In-woo left, Liu’s heavy steps up the stairs grew slower and slower, then stopped. He stood there in the darkness for a moment before turning around and heading for the basement.
He went down the stairs and turned on only the minimal indirect lighting.
It felt as if Yeehyeon, who had been getting ready for bed next to the bed, would turn to look this way and smile shyly. As if, were he to ask, ‘Can I sleep here?’, Yeehyeon would silently lift a corner of the blanket.
Or, he felt he might see the back of Yeehyeon sitting before his easel, paintbrush in hand, oblivious to the late hour.
As he watched Yeehyeon’s absorbed figure for a long time, Liu would suddenly feel afraid and lonely. There were times he trembled with a sense of “Isolation” as if Yeehyeon, swimming freely and uninhibitedly in his own world, would never return to this world where Liu belonged.
The nights of sweet anxiety… when he would make his presence known and approach Yeehyeon from behind, place his hand over the one holding the brush, force him to look this way and press their lips together, tear him away from the painting and trap him in his arms.
Liu slowly approached the large, H-frame easel. He pushed and pulled it, pointlessly rolling its wheels.
The tools and materials Yeehyeon had used were gone, but the easel, chair, and trolley remained. The furniture, three or four potted plants, and minor daily necessities were also as they had been.
Through the window overhead, the yellowish light from the garden lamps slanted in. He stood blankly on the stage of dim light and looked around the empty room. As if searching for the room’s owner, even though he knew he was already gone.
His head bowed low, he rubbed the back of his neck and approached the bed. It was a spot he had tidied with his own hands just a few days ago. He perched on the edge and swept his palm over the sheet. The bedding, too, was all the same as what Yeehyeon had used.
When it came to this basement, he didn’t entrust the work to the housekeeper. He took care of every single thing with his own hands.
That was how it was now, but for a long time, he hadn’t even dared to come down here. It was only after meeting Lim Morae and Seo Yeehan in Bali last summer that he was able to set foot in this place for the first time.
But even now, he still couldn’t bring himself to sleep here.
He knew that everyone who knew about his relationship with Yeehyeon was concerned about him. Whenever the name Seo Yeehyeon was mentioned, they would all glance at him with faces of near-horror, as if a bomb had been dropped.
Today was no different. The faces of Manager Han, Kwon Juhan, and Choi In-woo, which had stiffened for a moment when a client mentioned Yeehyeon’s name. And the furtive glances that followed, checking his expression.
Liu let out a bitter, empty laugh and clasped his hands on his lap.
Even if he wanted to tell them about his current state, he couldn’t. He couldn’t share this feeling with anyone.
Trying to explain his current self was like attempting to move the ocean with his hands.
Even if you scoop up seawater in your hands, you cannot show the ocean with it. Nothing is explained. So, he had simply decided to keep his mouth shut instead.
Just as he had lived his life without sharing this peculiar trait, no, this deformity called Ghost with anyone, this state of sedimentation, born from his love with Yeehyeon, was also his burden to bear alone.
He showered in the basement bathroom. The closet was stocked with a fair amount of underwear, pajamas, and loungewear that Liu could use.
And, striped T-shirts were hung neatly on hangers.
After Yeehyeon left, he had bought them whenever he happened to see one, and now there were over ten. He flipped through the neatly hung shirts one by one, then closed the closet door.
Towel-drying his wet hair, he stood before the bookshelf. It was the one where he kept the print media featuring Yeehyeon. Even though he had bought every single one, including overseas art magazines, it was only enough to barely fill a single shelf.
He took out the most recently published magazine and went to the bed. It was an experimental art magazine based in Berlin. He opened it to the page marked with an index tab.
It was an article by an editor who had personally visited ‘The Hands’ in Paris to cover Yeehyeon’s new work. It was the seventh piece in the ‘Colorful Ghosts’ series, the latest work by Yeehyeon that the clients at Phantom had been talking about.
Though not quite an interview, the article, which also included a brief account of meeting and talking with Yeehyeon, went on for four pages, covering other artists from ‘The Hands’ as well.
He had already read it dozens of times. Yet, as always, he read it as if for the first time, engraving each and every letter. Liu, letting the towel that had been covering his head slide down onto his thighs, devoured the article.
When asked to introduce his work, Yeehyeon smiled as if at a loss. It was a smile that seemed to ask what more was needed when he had already said everything he wanted to say through his work. The neatness of his hands, folded together, might evoke the common stereotype of a shy young Asian man, but his firm eyes were a reminder that while he was quiet, he was by no means a weak being.
The Yeehyeon he met in person was a man who was his work itself.
The eye of the storm.
For a while, the critics had clamored that what he sought to express was chaos and anxiety, but as the series progressed, a different story emerged. Perhaps he was, in fact, speaking of something that remains unshaken even amidst chaos and anxiety. Just like Yeehyeon himself.
Yeehyeon had never agreed to be photographed for the media, and this time was no exception. Instead, a proper photo of his work was included.
In his work, the figures, whose individual characteristics were exaggeratedly highlighted, were literally colorful. For that reason, they could easily appear chaotic at first glance. But, as the article he had just read expressed, there was certainly an unshakable core within it.
The artist’s gaze, observing the chaos.
That gaze was accepting the motley ‘ghosts,’ which seemed not to belong together, just as they were. The ghosts did not clash with one another; rather, they harmonized.
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