Although ‘Phantom’ had undergone a massive remodeling, its basic structure remained the same. As he ascended the stairs hand in hand with Liu, who wore a matching ceremonial suit, Yeehyeon felt as if the spring of time was winding backward.
He was returning to the moment he first saw the man standing beside him.
He had appeared, stepping onto these very stairs. From his pretty, lightly tousled hair to his exotic features and stylish suit. In any case, a large and glamorous man. The one who had made him think for the first time, Could this be what a Golden Alpha is like?
He also remembered the first words the man—sharply on guard at the appearance of an outsider—had thrown at him.
「How do you know Director Han?」
Just as Kwon Juhan had said, the Liu of that time was certainly a very prickly person.
It wasn’t that he particularly disliked Seo Yeehyeon, but that he was like that with everyone until he had fully accepted them as one of his own. That they had all gone through that phase too. That was how Baek Yuni and Kwon Juhan had comforted Yeehyeon back then. He now knew very well that they were telling the truth. But at the time, it had been no comfort to Yeehyeon.
He wasn’t the type to care if someone treated him coldly or kept their distance. Yet every time that man’s gaze passed over him, he had felt like an abandoned puppy. He had wanted him to look at him with affection, as he did with Juhan or Yuni, to take care of him while pretending to be annoyed, to joke around with him.
Because he had liked him.
Because, at the very least, he had already developed a romantic interest in the man.
“Why are you smiling?”
“I was thinking about the day we first met here.”
“Ah… if we’re talking about that time, I’m afraid I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.”
Looking at Liu, who was already making excuses, Yeehyeon smiled too. And he thought back on the path he had walked with this man.
Liu no longer put up his guard or became wary just because he was meeting someone for the first time. He wasn’t cold. If he stood on the street, elderly people would approach him to ask for directions, and in the supermarket, children would come up and ask him to get cereal from a high shelf. Despite his tall and sturdy build, he wasn’t intimidating. He was a kind-looking person who seemed like you could ask him for anything. The journey of love they had traveled had remained on his face as a change in his expression.
“I haven’t lived that long, but it makes me think that life is truly unpredictable.”
“Tell me about it.”
Having reached the top of the stairs, the second-floor hall came into full view. In the center of the circular hall, where light poured in, a low dais where the two would exchange their vows of love was surrounded by an arch decorated with flowers. It looked somewhat like a magnificent birdcage.
They stood side by side at the railing, looking down at the empty hall. It didn’t feel real that this was the place where their wedding would be held. It felt like they were attending someone else’s wedding together.
“What do you think would have happened if we hadn’t found each other?”
Yeehyeon asked in a dazed, murmuring voice.
“That would have been impossible.”
Liu’s answer was firm. Yeehyeon had expected that Liu would say something like that.
“How can you be so sure? At first… you weren’t even interested in me….”
Yeehyeon’s gaze dropped to somewhere around Liu’s chest. To the floral decoration on his lapel, marking him as one of today’s grooms.
“How many times have I told you? The only time I was truly not interested in you was that very first meeting.”
Liu cupped Yeehyeon’s cheek, gently lifting his face. His gray-blue eyes, tender yet full of conviction, looked into Yeehyeon’s without hesitation.
“I may not have fallen in love at first sight. But you slowly started to weigh on my mind, and the more I got to know you, the more curious I became. Do you dislike a love that started like that?”
Rubbing his cheek against the man’s palm, Yeehyeon shook his head. The only person to whom Yeehyeon would ever show this kind of sulkiness was Liu Weikun.
“I had never once failed to control my pheromones. But even after I’d downed dozens of suppressants, I was powerless before your pheromones. That’s the kind of gravitational pull that works between us.”
His husky, weighty voice spoke of inevitability.
“Through countless coincidences, the distance between us would have kept shrinking, and we would have met in the end.”
As he listened to his words, a conviction grew within Yeehyeon as well that it really would have happened that way. Liu smiled secretly, without showing his teeth.
“There’s proof that this pull began long ago, even before we met.”
“Proof?”
“‘Isolation’.”
“Ah….”
“You painted that picture in Seoul when you were sixteen, and I, residing in Hong Kong, became its owner. Without knowing who the artist was, or that it was Diamond Dust.”
“……”
“Our connection had already begun.”
Liu’s thumb caressed Yeehyeon’s cheek. Liu’s expression as he lowered his eyelids and drew closer looked almost solemn. Yeehyeon wrapped his arms around his waist and gently closed his eyes. He could feel a pulse in their carefully touching lips.
This moment of giving thanks for each other’s existence and piously vowing for the future was their true, private wedding.
Tears streamed from under Yeehyeon’s tightly shut eyelids. It was just a kiss, a soft pressing and parting of lips, yet Liu’s lips were trembling. He gently drew Yeehyeon’s shoulders into an embrace. Their cheeks and ears touched. Their suits would get wrinkled, and Javier would nag them, but they didn’t care.
“Yeehyeon, it’s okay if he can’t make it.”
Yeehyeon’s hands, which were wrapped around Liu’s waist and clutching the back of his jacket, flinched.
“We can go to Donghae and visit him after the wedding.”
“……”
“We can show him the wedding photos, go for a walk with Father, and visit Mother’s columbarium. Okay?”
No one had noticed what was in Yeehyeon’s heart. Everyone had simply assumed that today’s Yeehyeon was perfectly happy. That he had already given up on his father’s attendance.
Only Liu understood Yeehyeon’s feelings.
How did you know what I was feeling? Yeehyeon didn’t ask. That would have been a truly foolish question. He simply nodded, swallowed his tears, and tightened his arms around Liu. It was then that Seo Yeehan appeared.
“Yeehyeon! Seo Yeehyeon! Seo Yeehyeon, where are you?”
The heavy main doors opened, and Seo Yeehan’s urgent voice called for Yeehyeon. Yeehyeon pulled away from Liu’s embrace and answered toward the floor below.
“Yeah, I’m here, hyung.”
In that brief moment, Liu wiped away Yeehyeon’s tear tracks.
“Hey, hurry and come down! Uncle is here!”
Liu and Yeehyeon looked at each other.
Seo Yeehan’s uncle was Yeehyeon’s father.
Without a word about who went first, they ran down the stairs. Yeehyeon was faster. He ran out through the main doors that Seo Yeehan had left open. He had to squint for a moment in the unfiltered April sunlight.
The guests who had been spending time in the garden all flocked to the entrance of ‘Phantom.’ His uncle and aunt were surrounding someone. Yeehyeon, who had paused at the entrance, unwittingly took a step forward.
Spotting Yeehyeon, his uncle and aunt stepped aside.
It was his father.
His father was holding a canvas wrapped in kraft paper and tied with string under his arm.
Seeing him dressed up in the new suit they had sent, his hair neatly, if awkwardly, combed back, Yeehyeon burst out laughing and crying at the same time. No explanation or conversation was necessary.
“Father!”
He simply ran without hesitation and threw himself into his father’s arms.
He couldn’t even fathom how many years it had been since he was last held in his father’s embrace. Yet he was surprised at himself for not hesitating at all.
Even though Yeehyeon had grown into a young man, his father was still taller. The passionate art student with a towering height and handsome looks, once called ‘the painting Julien Sorel,’ who had given up everything to love Yeehyeon’s mother with a fiery passion.
“I thought you wouldn’t be able to come alone, but I kept feeling like you would appear….”
Rubbing his cheek against his father’s shoulder, Yeehyeon burrowed into his embrace like a child.
“Thank you. I was waiting.”
Though he didn’t say it out loud, his father hugged him back just as tightly. He patted Yeehyeon’s back, just as he had when Yeehyeon was a very young child.
It was the moment all preparations for the wedding were complete.
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