[But you’ve been going out every weekend lately, haven’t you?]
“You told me not to just stay at home. I’m getting some air.”
[Well… that’s better, I suppose. Where are you, out in the provinces? The connection sounds like you’re really far away.]
“Maybe my phone’s just not in good shape? Enjoy your dinner, and I’ll see you at Phantom tomorrow.”
I ended the call in a hurry, pretending I had something urgent to do.
Manager Han had seemed a bit persistent with his questions today, but I felt I’d dodged them well. Along with my stalking, my skills at making excuses were improving by the day.
There was no particular reason for keeping my trips to Paris a secret. I just wanted to prevent the people around me from letting their imaginations run wild over this one fact.
Liu knew very well that they hoped for him and Yeehyeon to get back together. He was grateful for it.
But there were many sensitive and complicated parts that were difficult to explain to them. The delicate exchange of emotions that only happens in a romantic relationship, that only Liu and Yeehyeon, the parties involved, could know.
For now, he wanted no part of any speculation or premature excitement. This was the punishment Yeehyeon had handed down, and he wanted to bear its weight entirely on his own.
Liu, who had put down his coffee, stubbed out the shortened cigarette butt and picked up the pack again. As he brought a new cigarette to his lips, his eyes suddenly narrowed.
“A guy who can’t even produce results can’t just keep squatting here. I feel like I’m being watched, and it’s stressful… I’m looking for another way.”
English mixed with a strong German accent. It was not an unfamiliar voice. Liu slowly raised his head.
A man with shoulder-length hair tied back tightly, striding past the café with a frown on his face.
It was Ben, a painter from ‘The Hands.’
Liu had been meticulously checking ‘The Hands’ webpage every time it was updated with introductions of their affiliated artists. Since they were colleagues living with Yeehyeon, he wanted to know what kind of people they were. In fact, since he was monitoring the communal entrance of ‘The Hands’ every weekend, he knew the faces of not only the resident artists but all the office employees as well.
The man’s expression and gait seemed hasty and anxious, as if things weren’t going his way.
In Liu’s memory, the man had always been carefree when with his colleagues. The type to take a step back from everything and act nonchalant, avoid serious conversations, and be full of mischief. But it seemed even a man like that had his worries. He just didn’t confide in others.
As far as Liu knew, that man, Ben, hadn’t released a work in several months.
While running a gallery, he had seen many artists fall into a slump. Some would overcome it and produce even better work, but that wasn’t always the case. If it wasn’t a temporary slump but a complete depletion of the inspiration needed to create something, then a comeback was, regrettably, difficult.
The world Yeehyeon had stepped into was this cold and harsh. It was a battlefield where monsters equipped with both talent and effort vied for supremacy. If you couldn’t continuously present noteworthy work, you were immediately ignored.
The art world of today was as rapidly changing as the fashion world, which was commonly thought to be fast-paced. A host of new stars emerged, and just as many were pushed aside. There were also many artists who, despite their talent remaining, couldn’t endure it mentally and left of their own accord.
Watching the man’s back as he crossed the bridge leading to Rue de Crimée and disappeared on the other side of the canal, Liu let out a heavy sigh.
It was a bitter pill, but it couldn’t be helped. ‘The Hands’ was probably trying to help its affiliated artist overcome his slump. He stubbed out the briefly smoked cigarette in the ashtray. His mouth tasted bitter.
As he lifted his cup to finish the rest of his coffee, something flickered in his vision. His gaze landed absently on a white object lying on the floor beneath a chair. What he thought might be a pebble was an eraser.
“……”
Liu picked it up.
It was a product from the Faber-Castell company, which Yeehyeon favored.
The paper sleeve wrapped around it had been peeled off, and there were signs of use that had worn all four sides down into smooth, rounded edges. It was exactly Yeehyeon’s habit. It must have fallen out when he was putting things in or taking them out of his pencil case.
Like someone who had discovered a jewel on an empty street at night, Liu clutched it tightly, lest anyone see. His clenched fist unknowingly moved to his left chest, to his heart.
His heart pounded at the accidental stroke of luck.
It was a good day. He had been able to see a new side of Yeehyeon playing with a dog, and thanks to that, he had seen him smile a lot. And on top of that, to have obtained a piece that had fallen from Yeehyeon. He was grateful to Yeehyeon for making the mistake of dropping his eraser.
He thrust the hand clutching the eraser into his trench coat pocket and finished his coffee.
Even if they couldn’t be together, he wanted to stay a little closer to Yeehyeon’s side.
He didn’t want to go back to Seoul.
■ ■ ■
The Seoul-bound flight he had booked was scheduled to depart at 1 PM, Paris time.
It was the last flight that would get him to Phantom just in time for his 10 AM shift. He had to leave the 19th arrondissement by 11 AM at the latest to board the plane without rushing.
The plan was to leave after taking in the sight of Yeehyeon returning home from his morning walk. But for some reason, it was hard to leave the front of ‘The Hands’ that day. Just 10 more minutes, 10 more minutes… And then it was 11:30 AM. Thirty minutes to Charles de Gaulle Airport. It was now the time he really had to leave.
But just as he was about to turn the steering wheel, Yeehyeon appeared again.
Liu had no choice but to take his hands off the wheel.
Yeehyeon, in the same clothes as the morning, was with several colleagues. It was a group of six or seven, including Baek Yuni, her girlfriend, and Ben, whom he had seen that morning. They seemed to be heading out for lunch together.
The group, mostly in their twenties, was boisterous, seemingly excited for their Sunday outing.
When his colleagues made silly jokes, Yeehyeon would just look at them and smile. Within that group, Yeehyeon looked like a university student his own age. Someone who worked hard toward his dream but also worried about his future, and spent his weekends hanging out with friends… a sincere and ordinary twenty-three-year-old.
His hands thrust into his coat pockets, his jeans that looked ordinary but fit him perfectly, his small, slender face with clean-cut features as if delicately drawn with ink. And atop it all, the introverted and shy smile that would surface from time to time.
“Ugh…”
Liu let out a groan and hunched his upper body forward. The emotion was so overwhelming that he felt an actual pain in his chest.
He knew the happiness of when that loveliness had once been his.
The privilege of being able to hold him, to stand by his side, to touch his cheeks and lips, to enjoy his pheromones.
Someone in the group bent over to tie their shoelace, and Ben vaulted over his back as if it were a pommel horse. Yeehyeon shook his head as if to say he was incorrigible, but he smiled brightly, revealing his teeth. The laughter of the young group floated like colorful balloons in the leisurely Sunday alley.
Yeehyeon’s smile, directed at another, while by another’s side, seized Liu’s heart and twisted it. Swallowing his pain, he barely managed to open his mouth.
“Are you happy?”
It was a voice like a small whisper.
He couldn’t tell if he wanted Yeehyeon to be happy here, or if he wanted him to suffer from longing and seek him out every night. Perhaps it was a question directed at Liu himself.
He wanted to jump out of the driver’s seat right now and call out to him.
Yeehyeon! If he called, he would stop and look back, wouldn’t he? And then, he would run over with a smile that was many times brighter than the one he showed his colleagues, a smile that seemed to light up his entire face and heart.
He would embrace that Yeehyeon tightly, inhale deeply the scent of diamond dust that only he could enjoy, and confess his true heart.
For a moment, he was completely captivated by the thought that all their problems could be solved that simply.
But there was no way he could dare to do such a thing.
If he appeared before Yeehyeon now, he surely wouldn’t be able to treat him harshly. After all, they hadn’t broken up because they no longer loved each other. He might even fall into his arms, his eyes welling with tears, a mix of hate and longing, resentment and desire.
But was getting back together like that really what Yeehyeon wanted?
Was Yeehyeon enduring his time here all for such a wishy-washy reunion?
A clear knot needed to be tied. And the one to tie that knot, and the one to cut off the loose ends after the knot was tied, signaling the end of that time, had to be Yeehyeon. Only then could they bury the past in the past and move forward into the future together.
The best he could do now was to respect Yeehyeon’s choice.
And to wait.
Yeehyeon turned the corner with his colleagues. The tail end of the light that had been illuminating the alley seemed to vanish along with him. The alley suddenly felt dark.
It was so hard to breathe, as if Yeehyeon had taken all the oxygen with him.
Liu collapsed, burying his forehead on the steering wheel.
A short honk of a horn echoed through the deserted alley where most of the shops had their shutters down. It sounded like a heavy scream.1
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