Define The Relationship Novel - Chapter 55

Ash smiled, his eyes pained yet awkward.

“I don’t know what he thinks of me, what he’s thinking. Being perceptive doesn’t mean you know everything, does it?”

He ran a hand through his hair. His mouth was dry.

“So, thank you for telling me.”

Kyle was Karlyle’s family. It was perhaps natural for him to dislike someone who had upset his family. More important than the hostility directed at him was Karlyle’s situation, contained in Kyle’s words.

“There’s a lot I haven’t said. I realized it a little late.”

Kyle replied with doubting eyes. His voice was full of distrust.

“I remember it wasn’t the time for Nick to do that…”

At the mention of an uncomfortable past, Nick intervened, hugging Kyle from behind. Wrapping his arms around Kyle’s waist and pulling him into his embrace, Nick spoke instead.

“Everyone has different ways of approaching things, Kyle.”

“…Did Nick too?”

“No, I only love you, so I don’t know anything but your approach.”

Nick, who had skillfully appeased Kyle, smiled at Ash. Then he added a remark.

“Why don’t you join us at a party this weekend?”

“Nick!”

Kyle turned his head, calling Nick’s name in surprise. Nick shrugged, driving the point home.

“It’s Karlyle’s engagement party.”

Ash blinked. It was a little hard to understand what he had just heard.

“Engagement…?”

Engagement?

“I heard it’s a party held with the family he’s going to be engaged to, to be exact. Right?”

When Nick asked Kyle for confirmation, Kyle briefly assessed Ash’s expression this time. His icy face visibly flushed with embarrassment.

Unlike when he looked at Ash, Kyle showed many expressions in front of Nick. In that appearance, Karlyle kept overlapping. A smile and tears, both lingering on an expressionless face, were visible together.

“Nick… your boldness is very lovely, but isn’t it a bit… too fast an approach?”

“Anyway, if it works out, it’ll be as if it never happened. Didn’t you want that too?”

“It’s not certain yet. My will, anyway…”

Kyle closed and opened his eyes with a sigh. Kyle’s diverse expressions, which couldn’t have been guessed from their first meeting, which was so sharp it was murderous, didn’t even register in Ash’s eyes.

Ash’s thoughts had been fixated on the word “engagement” since he heard it. All sorts of thoughts came to mind, starting with whether it had been planned all along. His mother’s situation also came to mind.

What he had vaguely thought about when he heard the word “aristocrat” was actually happening. His heart swayed chaotically. The thought of losing Karlyle forever and the uncertainty of whether he should interfere clashed, sinking him.

Was it too late?

He felt so hollow, so much so that his own self from a few minutes ago, who had replied to Kyle’s words with “I don’t think so,” seemed foolish. At the same time, he was afraid of ruining someone else’s perfectly fine life, and then anger rose towards the unknown person. It must be jealousy.

But he didn’t want Karlyle’s life to be ruined because of Ash himself. It was because he knew the story of Philip Gordon and his mother, who had gone through countless conflicts while breaking off an engagement. It was difficult to come to an easy answer. He felt as if he was trapped in a darkness where he couldn’t see the end.

Kyle, who had been staring at Ash’s expressionless face, spoke quietly.

“My brother had something to give you.”

Before Ash could reply, Kyle turned around. His eyes followed Kyle as he walked into the living room. Then something caught his eye. It was something so beautiful that it was strange his gaze hadn’t immediately gone to it.

It was Philip’s painting.

Time seemed to stop. All the surrounding sounds seemed to be muffled, slowly seeping into his ears. The moment his eyelids closed and opened felt long and heavy. He couldn’t comprehend the situation where the trace he had longed for his entire life was right before his eyes.

The painting was still beautiful. His mother was in the painting, more intense and radiant than any other artist’s work. Her quiet smile, which had smiled at Ash, was depicted. Her fading face became clear. A hot, painful emotion, like a clot of blood, welled up.

“He spent nearly a month searching for it, to give it to you.”

Kyle’s words came a beat late. It was as if he had been plunged into water and then instantly came back to his senses, his senses expanding. He felt so awake he could hear his own heartbeat. Kyle’s words were etched into his mind like a tattoo.

Ash looked at the painting held out before him and smiled. He smiled, his eyebrows painfully drawn. He struggled to compose his crumbling lips into a semblance of a smile.

Otherwise, he felt he would cry. It was because the sentiment contained in the painting was so precious. He couldn’t even begin to guess how deep the feeling was, that Karlyle had found the painting Ash had searched for so long, and intended to give it to him. His heart crumbled and kept crumbling.

So many questions surged forth. He wanted to ask what Karlyle was thinking when he intended to give him this. How much it had hurt when he said they should stop meeting, and what his heart felt like when he cried in Ash’s absence—he wanted to ask it all. The questions filling his mind became painful needles, piercing his heart.

Ash took a breath. He exhaled a thin breath, barely managing a smile. He reached out a slightly trembling hand and touched the frame of the painting. His vision, which had been blackened by the word “engagement,” felt like it was clearing. Finally, he felt complete certainty.

Karlyle Frost undoubtedly loved Ash Jones.

Money wasn’t the issue. The time and effort Karlyle must have put into acquiring this painting, and the moments he spent thinking of Ash, proved it. Here was clear evidence.

“Thank you.”

Ash rubbed the frame of the painting. Ash, who had parted his lips several times, then pushed it away with force. Kyle looked at him in confusion.

“Could you hold onto this for a little longer?”

“Why?”

“Karlyle intended to give it to me, so I’ll receive it directly from Karlyle.”

And he wanted to tell him. That the feelings Karlyle felt were not his alone.

Ash Jones also…

He wanted to let him know that he desired him in an unprecedented, never-before-experienced way.

Kyle, who had been looking at him with a slightly furrowed brow, let out a low sigh. His long eyelashes trembled faintly, then Kyle spoke as if he had made up his mind.

“I trust you know the dress code. You’ll need an invitation, so you’ll have to accompany me…”

Kyle took the painting and added one last thing.

“You can come here by five in the afternoon.”

“Alright.”

It was Nick who stopped Ash from thanking him again.

“You don’t need to thank me, Ash. Since I was the one who brought you two together, it’s my responsibility… and Kyle is my fated partner, so we have to take responsibility together.”

“That’s why I’m thankful.”

Ash smiled, his face more relieved than before.

“For giving me the chance to know Karlyle.”

Nick didn’t seem to empathize. It didn’t matter. The fact that people didn’t know the Karlyle he knew rather pleased Ash. It was enough for him alone in this world to know how beautiful and lovely the man was. He didn’t want to show him to anyone.

So Ash had to move for that now.

The party Nick mentioned was held at the Frost family’s mansion in Mayfair. Starting at six-thirty with a dinner banquet, followed by entertainment, Kyle explained that it was essentially not much different from a social gathering.

Yet, Nick called it an engagement party because, it seemed, the two families would meet and make various arrangements there today.

Nick, who had heard from Kyle that the process was not yet in full swing because Jonathan Frost, the father, had suggested thinking carefully and postponed the proceedings, explained this to Ash.

“You don’t seem very surprised.”

Nick, observing Ash’s reaction as they entered the mansion, spoke. Kyle had gone ahead, saying he would look for Karlyle. Before leaving, Kyle looked back and forth between Nick and Ash, gave Ash a cold stare, and then left, not forgetting to earnestly tell Nick to call him if anything happened.

Ash, who had been walking forward with his usual expression, turned his head. Nick gestured with his chin towards the inside of the mansion.

“I was incredibly surprised when I first came. It was partly because I was young, but I probably would have been similar even if I were older.”

As Nick said, the scale of the mansion was magnificent. The very fact that the Frosts owned a mansion of this size in the heart of Mayfair proved how different a world they lived in. Ash smiled habitually and said calmly.

“It’s impressive, indeed.”

However, such a sight was not particularly surprising to Ash. His mother’s ancestral home in France was similar.

Ash’s grandparents had accumulated wealth through architecture and jewelry businesses. They weren’t aristocrats, nor were they among the richest, but thanks to having well-traveled grandparents, Ash had seen and experienced many things from a young age. It was also his grandparents, not his father, who supported his education.

Nick said, watching Ash express admiration in a tone that showed no surprise at all.

“It seems I was the only one surprised, after all.”

“Nick, you haven’t changed.”

Ash let out a low laugh at Nick’s slightly biting joke. He seemed to have liked that about him. Someone who was fun to banter with, who spoke his mind without hesitation, and who was interesting to clash with.

Not just Nick, but other people he had been with were also extroverted. Kind people who laughed heartily, bold personalities who were direct and unrestrained, or those who were completely unpredictable and erratic in their actions.

Mostly, they were like that. Ash tended to adapt easily to either type and found the stimulation he gained in the process interesting.

But Karlyle was an exception from beginning to end. He had never seen or even thought of meeting someone so quiet and unreadable. Time with Karlyle was always calm.

However, thinking about it, Karlyle always accommodated Ash. He was swayed by Ash’s lead and yet never showed any sign of dislike.

Ash had always been the one to adjust, so he thought he was doing a lot of adjusting himself while maintaining the relationship, but looking back, Karlyle was also following Ash’s lead.

Even while thinking that Karlyle was cuter, lovelier, and prettier than expected, Ash implicitly held onto his initial prejudices about Karlyle.

His expressionless face stating his demands, or their first encounter where he ignored and passed him with an almost arrogant air, seemed to have remained in his mind. Karlyle’s firm and cold declaration that Nick and Ash were “nothing” must have also played a part.

There were many other reasons. His aristocratic background also solidified the prejudice. He couldn’t imagine that someone from such a class, a type rarely found in reality, would genuinely get involved with him.

Take Philip Gordon, for example. His mother ultimately couldn’t be with Philip Gordon. So, in Ash’s memory, aristocrats were beings from a completely different world, unable to be with ordinary people.

But apart from a few significant scenes, Karlyle took everything Ash gave him seriously.

He could tell from the way Karlyle showed him around the mansion, holding a bouquet of roses in his arms, or the faint smile on his lips when he accepted something as trivial as an Oyster card.

Recalling those things, his heart ached, and a thick longing surged within him.

The white hand offering him a bouquet full of purple flowers, the gaze that subtly avoided him when he kissed, the firm body that flushed red with heat—the myriad things that made up Karlyle filled his mind to the point of dizziness.

He wondered how he had spent a month without seeing those things. The belatedly realized emotion burned quietly and blue like an inextinguishable fire, enveloping him.

He missed Karlyle terribly. Then, impatience subtly crept up.

“Ash, you seem to have changed a bit.”

When Nick’s words reached him, Ash barely managed to pull his thoughts back from where they had wandered. This had happened often since he sent Karlyle away. What he thought was not thinking about anything was, in fact, unconsciously longing for Karlyle.

“Me?”

“Yes. I felt it when you came to my house, but that relaxed feeling seems to have disappeared.”