He knew that after losing his wife, the man had turned his back on Yeehyeon and completely given up painting. And Yeehyeon had said that when he left this town for Paris, he had left all the art supplies he’d brought with him behind. Just in case. He’d said it was still frightening not to know whether disappointment or hope would take the bait he’d cast, but it wasn’t as dreadful as the silence, so he’d decided to cast something, anything. That’s what Yeehyeon had told him during a date in a dimly lit café in Paris, over a round of cocktails.
A pile of trivial household items and fishing gear in a corner of the yard, a seascape as if viewed from a cliff, a corroded gate, a scratched fish, a puppy scurrying about….
The man had shown his wife the fragments of the narrow world he had seen, those crude and pitiful cross-sections.
“……”
At the sound of the man opening the passenger-side door, Liu abruptly lifted his head like someone waking from a dream.
The man, having gotten out of the car, was looking at him with eyes where the line between iris and sclera was blurred. They looked like the eyes of a mermaid snared in a net and forcibly dragged ashore, or like those of a stag that, after searching a snowy field in midwinter for its mate and fawn, had come face-to-face with a hunter’s gun.
Liu bit down hard on his dry lower lip, until it hurt. The man, who had been standing there looking at Liu for a moment, closed the door and disappeared into the rain, climbing the stairs that led to the house.
Liu curled his left hand, which was gripping the sketchbook’s cover, and stroked his ring as if searching for a painkiller. He missed Yeehyeon so much it was unbearable.
■ SEOUL ■
Director Han fiddled with the handle of the large mug, picking it up and putting it down several times. Her cup was still about half full of coffee, but it must have already gone cold, as she had barely touched it while listening to Liu’s story.
“Coffee, should I make you a fresh cup?”
“……”
At Liu’s question, she suddenly raised her head. She met his gaze with a blank expression, as if she’d heard an unexpected question, then slowly shook her head. Then, as if not wanting her thoughts to be disturbed, she dropped her gaze back to the mug. Liu swiped a hand down his face, from his forehead, then drank his beer and lit a cigarette.
Director Han’s silence continued for a long while after that. A few times, she parted her lips as if to say something, but she would quickly shut them again, even more firmly than before.
By the time Liu’s newly lit cigarette had burned down by about half, she finally spoke, as if she had sorted out her thoughts to some extent.
“Does anyone else know besides me?”
“Shushu and Choi Inwoo… Suki Kim.”
Director Han’s eyes narrowed at the last name. Liu thought he knew the reason for her reaction.
Although he had kept quiet about Ghost, he had once confessed to Director Han about Suki Kim’s efforts, how she had even set aside her painting for a time to focus solely on making him a Golden Alpha, free from the control of pheromones.
Given that, Director Han was anticipating just how disappointed Suki Kim must have been to hear Liu’s confession, and she was horrified.
Liu gazed at the cigarette sending up smoke in his hand and added an explanation.
“Shushu thought we were proceeding with the changing by mutual agreement, and Choi Inwoo… I had asked him to play along to buy me some time. I ended up telling him in the process.”
“……”
“As for my mother-in-law, I went to see her on my way back from Paris this time and told her myself.”
“Then you didn’t intend to tell Shushu or Inwoo yourself, did you? Why are you telling me this?”
Her tone wasn’t accusatory, as if to say she hadn’t wanted to know about this ugly side of Liu, her business partner and friend. She was simply curious.
“At the time, I just wasn’t thinking about what would happen later. It wasn’t that I had a plan to keep it a secret or anything… there was no plan at all. Now… I thought Director Han also has the right to know that I’m the kind of bastard who did something like this.”
Director Han shook her head, an almost imperceptible movement. It seemed less a gesture of negating Liu and more that she still couldn’t believe the situation. It was beyond her capacity to accept. It seemed she was trying to postpone making a final conclusion right here and now.
“What did… the Teacher say?”
Liu stubbed out the cigarette he had only been holding without taking a single puff since she had started talking. Then he just repeated the meaningless motion of clenching and unclenching his empty hand. He considered voicing the answer she was curious about, but it seemed she could guess the situation well enough from Liu’s downcast eyes and bitter smile alone.
“Does Yeehyeon know you told the Teacher?”
Liu bit his lower lip gently and nodded.
“Regarding my mother-in-law, we decided to take our time and work on it slowly, together. Right now… her disappointment is too great….”
Director Han sighed and slumped back against the backrest. Relaxing her shoulders for the first time since Liu’s story began, she glanced around with an unsteady gaze, like someone seeing the place for the first time.
“I can completely understand how the Teacher feels. To be honest, I don’t know how I should take this right now either. Ghost…. On top of that, Yeehyeon is….”
Unable to finish her sentence, she scrubbed her face roughly with both hands. She also shook her head hard several times, as if to clear it.
The information Director Han had on Ghost wasn’t much different from what Choi Inwoo had. She had only vaguely heard the name. To them, Ghost was a legendary being, like a vampire or a yeti. So there was even less to say about Diamond Dust.
For a moment, her firm gaze turned to Liu.
“If you’re thinking of telling Yuni and Juhan too, I’d rather you didn’t.”
Unlike before, her tone on this matter was calm yet resolute, as if she had reached a definite conclusion.
“I get why you want to confess. But if you think about it from the kids’ perspective… I don’t think it’s right. It’s too much for them to handle. Just… stay as the Liu Weikun they’ve always known. And I’m sorry to say this, but the guilt of having a secret is something you’ll just have to live with, CEO Ryu.”
“……”
As Liu fell into thought, stroking his ring, she asked for a beer. She seemed to be feeling a sudden, urgent thirst. Liu, bringing two bottles for her and himself, twisted off the cap and handed one to her. As if she had been extremely thirsty, she downed about a third of it in one go. Then, scratching the surface of the bottle with a fingernail, she spoke in a low voice, as if sharing a secret.
“Being so deeply into someone that you can’t see anything else, I’ve experienced that too. My partner was also a Beta.”
When they first started working together at ‘The Face,’ the two had quickly recognized they were of a similar kind, but because they were similar, they neither asked nor were curious about each other’s private lives.
Liu only found out that she had moved to Hong Kong with her painter husband after the divorce had already been decided and her husband had returned to Korea. Even when she told him that story, she hadn’t gone into the details of their love story or the reasons for their divorce.
“The reason we didn’t work out had nothing to do with the gender difference between an Alpha and a Beta, but… when I was at my craziest, I wanted to turn my partner into an Omega if I could.”
Her voice was placid, but the bitter sneer on her lips conveyed that she wasn’t just saying it for the sake of it.
“Of course, I didn’t have the pheromones to do that, so thankfully… it stopped at a vague desire.”
She let out a low snort and slid her hand down the neck of the bottle she was holding. Her gaze was on the translucent green bottle, but her real eyes were looking elsewhere.
“Even though I lived without being particularly conscious of the fact that I was an Alpha, I don’t know if it’s instinct or what, but the fact that my partner wasn’t an Omega made me so anxious I thought I’d go crazy. No matter how attracted you are as human to human, it’s physiologically difficult for Alphas, Omegas, and Betas to understand each other’s very way of being. Well… I guess that’s true even between Alphas and Omegas.”
Chuckling, she took another cool swig of beer. There was nothing Liu could do but listen earnestly, so he followed her lead and drained his beer.
“Being in love. Maybe it’s about wanting the other person to be by your side in the form you desire. At the same time, it’s also the desire to remain in the form the other person wants so you can continue to be loved. I guess those two desires have to be in balance….”
Her eyes, tracing a past relationship that had lost its balance, held neither regret nor longing. One could only tell that a faint ache remained around the scar.
In her, he saw an overlap of Shushu. He could now vaguely understand that feeling pain from a past love wasn’t necessarily the same as having lingering feelings. Instead of condemning their emotions as foolish, he could nod and clink glasses with them. Only after he had nearly lost his own love.
Director Han’s eyes, which had been lost in reminiscence, suddenly narrowed.
“Don’t tell me you were keeping your distance from the Phantom work because you felt awkward seeing my face because of that?”
“That’s not it.”
Shaking his head in a clean denial, Liu placed a shopping bag he had prepared and set on the seat next to him onto the table.
“What’s this?”
“A souvenir from Paris.”
“You prepared something else besides that bombshell from a minute ago?”
At her teasing glare, Liu rubbed the corner of his mouth and smiled sheepishly.
“They’re digital prints and an eco-bag produced by ‘The Hands.’ They were sold as a special event during the exhibition.”
She took the items out of the shopping bag, spread them on the table, and examined each one meticulously.
“These are made with Yeehyeon’s work, aren’t they?”
A look of pleasure and pride spread across her face. Liu drank more beer to summon his courage. It didn’t help much.
“I was thinking, how about you take over Phantom, Director Han.”
“…What do you mean.”
Director Han’s face hardened slightly as she placed a small notebook printed with a collaborative piece with Ben down on the table.
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