“I want to properly help talented artists who struggle to find a gallery they can trust with their work. It’ll be an organization similar in nature to ‘The Hands,’ but it will probably be run more like a sponsorship foundation. I’m planning to completely step away from Phantom and focus solely on that. Of course, that’s only if you want to take over Phantom, Manager Han.”
Listening to Liu with a heavy gaze, Manager Han’s eyes turned to the items spread out on the dining table. Recently, most of the small and medium-sized experimental galleries around Phantom had been producing this kind of merchandise on the side.
Contemporary art was no longer the exclusive domain of a few wealthy, older individuals who stood with their hands behind their backs, putting on airs. Not only was the demographic that appreciated and consumed art getting younger, but so was the age of those establishing small galleries or artist collectives. While that change in itself was welcome to Liu, he had long maintained a negative stance on commercializing artworks and mass-producing them.
“If I step away, you and Kwon Juhan will be able to lead Phantom into becoming a more contemporary and dynamic gallery.”
Liu added with a forced smile.
It wasn’t that he had concluded one way was more correct than the other. Nor did it mean that the way he had adhered to until now was wrong, or that he was surrendering to the flow of the times.
Unlike Manager Han, Yuni, and recently, Juhan, there was always a part of him that observed from a step back. Whatever he did, he wasn’t fierce, nor was he desperate. So it was only natural that everyone had found it strange when he had rushed to open the New York branch as if he were being chased.
It was a habit he had previously thought little of. But after Yeehyeon left and Liu began to look at himself with strict scrutiny, he could no longer ignore that lukewarmness. He had thought he’d bet his all on Phantom, but he had never even drawn out his all from within himself.
He intended to hand over the management to those who had devoted a more ardent affection to ‘Phantom,’ and to figure out what it was that he could throw himself into with fanatical passion—to properly, this time, immerse himself fiercely and desperately.
“You did… discuss this with Yeehyeon, right?”
Manager Han asked, as if cautiously confirming. The thought that he deserved such a worry, being the bastard who had unilaterally gone through with the Changing, made Liu smile bitterly and nod.
“Then, is Yeehyeon going to join after he leaves ‘The Hands’?”
“Nothing’s been decided that far. Whatever choice Yeehyeon makes, I’m going to execute this project. And if you say you’ll take over Phantom, Manager Han, I’ll have to start moving forward with the specifics.”
“I had a feeling your heart had left when you gave him permission to run the café….”
Manager Han’s voice trailed off as she let out a sigh. Even though she had expected it, her expression was dazed.
“Take your time to think about it. I’ll wait as long as you need.”
Her gaze, which had been fixed on Liu’s left hand with the ring, lifted. It was a complex gaze that couldn’t be clearly defined as contempt or anger, pity or empathy.
Nodding silently, she gathered the scattered gifts and rose from her seat. As they waited together at the front gate for the designated driver to arrive, the two of them talked about their time working in Hong Kong. As if in reaction to the burden of the complicated matters they would have to decide, handle, and bear, they laughed and chatted with even greater exaggeration.
Still, what they both had to agree on was the fact that their lives now were more precious than those days.
After seeing Manager Han off, Liu crossed the living room and returned to the dining room, carrying the mug she had used and the empty beer bottle to the kitchen. As he was finishing tidying the dining room to go up to the bedroom, Liu’s hands suddenly stopped. He looked around at the silent surroundings.
“……”
Even before Yeehyeon had entered his life, this place had held the clamor of people who cared for one another. But he had always stood a couple of steps back from even that lively exchange. It wasn’t on purpose. He just didn’t know how to get any closer, and having never experienced deep intimacy, he had never felt the need for it.
He had a trustworthy friend and business partner, smart and diligent employees he was happy to support, a friend he grew up with like a brother, and even a friend with whom he could trade a reasonable amount of snide remarks. For someone who had lived a moderate life, he had assessed his own life as being quite fortunate.
But after Yeehyeon appeared in that landscape, everything changed.
The balance was broken, a gap opened up, and suddenly, the empty void in his life was thrown into sharp relief. And into that void, Yeehyeon’s presence had surged, warm and fulfilling.
The first thing he had ever wanted fiercely and desperately. The one to whom he had given a wound that couldn’t be mended with the excuse that it was his first time and he was clumsy….
Gazing blankly at the area around the dining table with its eight empty chairs, Liu found his phone and picked it up. He pressed a button to check the home screen, then went down to the basement.
Even without turning on the lights, the garden lamps and moonlight seeped in, providing just enough light. He sat on the mattress, stripped of its pillow and sheets, and fiddled with his phone.
He remembered the moment he had sat in this very spot, basking in the afterglow of sex, and taken a picture with Yeehyeon for the first time. It felt as if Yeehyeon might come down the stairs at any moment, smiling and approaching him, and at the same time, he grew anxious that everything that had happened here might have been nothing but a daydream.
He had said that this project would proceed regardless of Yeehyeon’s decision, and that was the truth, but he had no intention of denying that it was preparation to one day handle Yeehyeon’s work, even if not right away.
He knew well that, like Manager Han, like his father, he was the type whose talents lay more in seeing than in painting. His affection for art was beyond doubt, and his confidence that he was the partner who best understood Yeehyeon’s artistic world and could create the most suitable conditions for it remained unchanged. But he would not be impatient any longer.
Resting his elbows on his knees and cupping his chin, Liu stared into the silent space, then checked his phone once more. It was a little past 3 PM in Paris.
He didn’t want to disturb his afternoon work, but on the other hand, he knew Yeehyeon would be waiting for his call, wondering how the conversation with Manager Han had ended. As expected, the call connected before the second ring.
Yeehyeon was in apartment 601, practicing his sketching. He said he didn’t think he’d be able to concentrate, so he had holed himself up in a place where he could be completely alone. It had been the same a few days ago, on the day Liu had visited the columbarium.
He relayed Manager Han’s opinion that it would be best to keep it from Yuni and Juhan, and Yeehyeon didn’t state a position on it one way or another. He reacted more sensitively to how Manager Han had taken the news of him wanting to hand over Phantom. He was worried that she might have been hurt by his intention to officially leave Phantom for good.
“I think Manager Han had some idea. We’ve known each other for a long time, after all.”
Liu wiped his face with his free hand. The room was chilly without the heating on, but it was still, undeniably, indoors. Winter was already at its very end, yet his nose had quickly grown cold in just this temperature.
[You must have been very nervous. You did well.]
Feeling he wasn’t in a position to hear such words, he let out a soft laugh and swept his hair back.
From over the phone came a series of small noises, like something being set down on a table and a chair being pulled out. He was probably sitting at the table with a mug of coffee. His movements and path were vivid in Liu’s mind.
Liu closed his eyes and focused his senses on every sound he transmitted. After the sound of a liquid being swallowed, Yeehyeon’s pleasant, calm voice followed.
[I spoke with Reed yesterday. He said the thirty thousand dollars will likely be collected soon…. It looks like I’ll be leaving ‘The Hands’ a little earlier than planned.]
“…Is that so?”
His closed eyes opened. Suppressing his tone so as not to reveal his agitation, Liu responded as calmly as possible.
[When you said you wanted to establish a new organization, I didn’t answer right away, but… you know it wasn’t because I was deliberating, right?]
“……”
In truth, he hadn’t been confident. He had thought Yeehyeon would choose him someday, but he had turned away from the hope of when that might be. It wasn’t because he was unsure of Yeehyeon’s affection, but because he still had doubts about his own qualifications.
[The person I want to entrust my paintings to… has always, only been one person.]
“……”
Yeehyeon’s voice was a far cry from the confident, eloquent tone people often say can reassure the listener. And yet, his words always had more power than any silver tongue. Each carefully uttered syllable, never spoken carelessly, was filled with a solid promise that would never be broken.
He wanted to smile to convey how much happiness those words brought him. He wanted to, even if Yeehyeon couldn’t see him. But it wasn’t easy. The most he could do was steady his breathing without a sound, so as not to reveal his rapidly unraveling breath. It felt as if he’d been swept up by an unexpectedly massive wave, lost his balance, and fallen off his board.
Embracing this man who had endured life’s harsh beatings in silence could not be purely sweet. Nor did he want to covet only the sweetness among the emotions he experienced through him.
Rather, he wanted all of Yeehyeon.
So much so that he wished all the pain he had felt would pass through him and be reproduced once more. So much so that he wished the marks left inside this artless man, who neither exaggerated nor complained about the tragedies that befell him, would be carved onto him just the same.
If he were to say such a thing, Yeehyeon would probably smile and say that wasn’t the kind of love he wanted.
Hoo— Liu let out a long breath. It was an exhale that seemed to expel every last remnant from the deepest part of his lungs. He caressed the ring on his ring finger with his left thumb, vowing to himself again and again. That even if he couldn’t take back the pain he had been through, he would never again, ever, be on the side that hurt him.
“From the moment “Isolation” was first hung in my room, maybe I wasn’t so different.”
He tried not to cause worry, but a tremor remained in his voice. If that helped convey his sincerity to Yeehyeon, then that seemed fine in its own way.
He closed his eyes. In his mind’s eye, Yeehyeon was waiting, sitting at the table in apartment 601, the afternoon sun slanting in. The waves calm, and the board that had sunk resurfaces.
“The person I want to bet my life on, there’s only one. There’s only ever been one, and in the future… I’ll only love that person.”
Liu said, in a voice that didn’t hide its trembling. Yeehyeon’s smile, with a warmth softer than sunlight, formed before his eyes. The gentle breeze carried his familiar and missed scent.
He glides over the clean waves again, heading for the shore. Like his painting, the language Yeehyeon gave him, ‘Colorful Ghost’.
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