He still couldn’t read Seunggeon’s thoughts. However, seeing his brow furrowed, he seemed to be in a bad mood. He had to rack his memory wondering if he’d said something wrong.
Why?
Chaehun mouthed the word silently, his lips moving. But Seunggeon didn’t answer and turned his head away. He felt oddly uncomfortable, but Chaehun didn’t press further to ask what was wrong. He simply quietly watched the rainy road.
Then he snapped back to attention because of a car making a left turn. They needed to turn right to get to the H Hotel. He wondered if maybe they were going around because of traffic, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
“Um, where are we going? This isn’t the way to the H Hotel, is it?”
Chaehun sat up straight again in his seat and asked Seunggeon. It was only 5 o’clock, so it was too early for dinner.
“I moved.”
It had already been a month since the unwelcome guests had raided Seunggeon’s apartment. Seunggeon had been living in a hotel due to security issues while looking for a new place and doing renovations. It seemed all that was finished.
“You moved? When? You said it was a house, right?”
“A house, right. I moved in yesterday.”
“Uh…”
Chaehun, who had been thinking about what would make a good housewarming gift, was at a loss for words. For an ordinary friend, he would have at least gotten something small like toilet paper rolls or a small appliance, but since it was Seunggeon, there was no need for that.
“Why did you stop talking?”
“Yeah. I was going to say congratulations, but it felt kind of weird. How’s the house?”
“The yard is big.”
“Oh.”
“I built a court there too. A squash court.”
“Isn’t that played indoors? Does that work?”
“It took time because I had to get separate building permits.”
Seunggeon’s excited voice had a clearly different temperature than usual. Only then did Chaehun realize that the reason Seunggeon was in a better mood than usual was because of the squash court. He could also tell that he wanted to show it off.
Oh my. Isn’t he cute.
It was difficult to figure out the inner thoughts of this guy who was so indifferent and cold to the world. Sometimes he wanted to flip him upside down, whether his head or his insides. But today he was acting like a child who’d received a favorite toy as a gift.
Even when hurt by his indifferent words and actions, moments like this made him feel good. Because it might be a side of him shown only to Chaehun. Or even if he was among a very small group of people, it was the same.
“Let me see it. I’m curious how well you had it done.”
Chaehun responded to Seunggeon’s expectations. Then Seunggeon told him to learn squash too, which led to them bickering for quite a while.
* * *
It was an ink wash painting.
On the horizontally long rice paper, a countryside road scene shrouded in fog was painted. It was neither grand nor colorful—a common painting, if you could call it that.
Nevertheless, Chaehun stood in front of it, unable to leave, continuing to stand there.
The painting, longer vertically than the average height of an adult male, completely occupied one side of the wide wall. The empty spaces above and below transformed along with the painting into a special space.
Chaehun was seized by the feeling of being inside the painting. It was as if he were walking alone, pushing through damp silver grass.
As he stood still for a long time looking at the painting, Seunggeon, who had approached at some point, asked.
“Do you like the painting?”
“Yeah. It’s like being in the morning fog.”
Chaehun answered with the feeling of waking from a dream. It was the first time he realized a single painting could make him feel this way.
It had been a long time since he’d made an outing to the suburbs on a weekend. And it was the first time he’d visited an art museum for no reason at all, not because of a school assignment.
Seunggeon said that visiting art museums and museums was his hobby. About a month ago, they had planned to go to an art museum but it fell through, and they’d only managed to make time today.
Chaehun, who enjoyed sports that involved physical movement, was an outsider when it came to paintings. In fact, he’d been touring the art museum with the mindset of experiencing something new. It wasn’t without a sense of boredom, but when he discovered this painting, he simply lost himself in it.
“Should I give this to you?”
Chaehun thought that lately he often suspected whether something was wrong with his ears, or whether there was a problem with his comprehension.
Give me that?
Just in case, he turned his head toward Seunggeon, and his expression looking this way was nothing but serious. He meant it.
“…What? This? Is this painting yours? No, it’s not. Doesn’t this belong to KL Group?”
“I can buy it. Or exchange it for something else.”
“Buy it? It must be expensive. No. You don’t have to give it to me. I don’t need it. Even if you gave it to me, I don’t have a place to put it.”
Chaehun quickly tried to manage the situation in case Seunggeon really decided to give him the painting. He’d thought this before, but the guy kept trying to give him things. It was Chaehun who had said he wouldn’t refuse what was given, but still, Seunggeon was excessive about it.
So when they rewrote the contract, they added a few more clauses. One of them was that what Seunggeon gave should be limited to movable property. Real estate could reach astronomical amounts.
The painting was clearly movable property, but Chaehun had no space to hang a painting. Chaehun made this point clear.
“I’ll give you a house where you can hang the painting.”
“Why do you keep trying to give me things. And I said I won’t accept real estate.”
“Think about what it would be like if that painting was hanging in your house.”
It was a rookie’s attempt at persuasion. Chaehun, who didn’t have much material desire to begin with, didn’t fall for it.
“If it’s the painting, I can just see it here.”
“I thought you’d say that.”
Fortunately, Seunggeon didn’t say he’d give it anymore. Chaehun looked at the painting again.
“Until now, I didn’t know why paintings were good, but seeing this, I get it. But you know what’s funny? Other ink wash paintings don’t really make me feel anything.”
“You’d know if you saw other paintings by Kim San. You might be compatible with the artist.”
“That could be.”
Kim San was the artist of the painting Chaehun had been looking at. Chaehun nodded and looked at Seunggeon again.
“What kind of paintings do you like?”
“If I had to choose, still life and historical paintings. I especially like historical paintings where you can understand the times.”
“So that’s why there were still life paintings in every room.”
Chaehun recalled the paintings hanging in Seunggeon’s house. In Seunggeon’s utterly empty house, the only thing that could be considered interior decoration was the paintings. Chaehun smiled, recalling that most of the large and small paintings were still lifes.
It seemed both unsuited to Seunggeon and yet somehow fitting.
“Let’s go get coffee. Coffee. I’m thirsty.”
They’d already made a full round of the art museum. They couldn’t keep standing in front of the painting. It was time to go back now.
*
*
The sight of drizzling rain falling on the large lake surrounded by greenery resembled a painting. Chaehun, who had been sitting by the large terrace window of the cafe located in a small building attached to the art museum, watching the rain fall, felt strange.
The fact that they’d come to an exhibition Seunggeon wanted to see, not attending a public event to show off to others, definitely resembled that of a date. This time it wasn’t just his own wishful thinking—it was a real date.
It’s a contract relationship, but since it’s a relationship, it’s a date, right?
Chaehun came to his own conclusion. Worrying about whether this was right or wrong was a waste of energy. Since he liked him, it was only natural to have these kinds of delusions.
After swallowing a sip of warm coffee, he followed Seunggeon with his eyes as he stood on the terrace outside the cafe. Even though it was Saturday, he still had to take work calls—he was still busy. He said he had someone work-related to meet for dinner tonight too.
To Chaehun, an ordinary office worker who needed to recharge his batteries on weekends to get through the week, Seunggeon’s busy life seemed pitiful. He thought he understood why Seunggeon found the power that others desperately longed for bothersome even while holding it in his hands.
Thinking that not just anyone could live like that, Chaehun continued to look at Seunggeon.
Seunggeon, wearing a slightly more comfortable casual suit instead of a rigid classic suit, was handsome even in profile. A woman they’d encountered at the art museum had even asked if he was a rookie actor, asking for his name. Seunggeon’s beauty was definitely enough to invite such misunderstandings.
However, if there was a flaw, it was the vivid blue bruise positioned below his handsome chin. Chaehun swallowed a bitter smile as he reflexively recalled the process of how the bruise was made.
“I’m sorry.”
The bruise on Seunggeon’s chin was Chaehun’s work. No, to be precise, it was a collaboration between Chaehun and Seunggeon.
