Diamond Dust Novel - Chapter 11

It was unimaginable, looking at his current self, overflowing with the composure of a Golden Alpha, a person who seemed to have owned everything from birth.

The man, still standing with his legs casually crossed, a champagne flute in one hand and a smile on his face, looked, to put it mildly, like a born ruler.

I tried to envision him striving fiercely beneath the water’s surface, but instead, an image of him pedaling a duck-shaped paddleboat, the kind common at amusement parks, popped into my head. Even that was an unsuitable image for him, but somehow, it was easier to imagine.

My directionless imagination was briefly interrupted by the arrival of Yuni-ssi, who approached the desk almost stumbling in her high platform sandals.

“Here. Two pieces sold out.”

She tossed a small notebook onto the desk with a deeply fatigued expression. Juhan-ssi lit up, snatching up the notebook.

“Already? You’re a powerhouse, as expected. Should we switch?”

“Yeah. My mouth is cramping.”

“Okay.”

Juhan-ssi, full of motivation like a substitute player who’d been waiting on the bench for his chance, took Yuni-ssi’s place and headed out to the exhibition floor.

It seemed Yuni-ssi had successfully sold two artworks after engaging with customers until her mouth literally cramped. Since I had worked with her on the captions yesterday, I had a rough idea of the high prices of the pieces displayed here. Selling two such expensive artworks in less than an hour, she truly was a powerhouse, as Juhan-ssi said.

“Should I get you something to drink?”

Yuni-ssi, who sat down in the chair behind the desk, rubbing her legs, simply nodded, seemingly too exhausted to speak.

“There’s juice, and many other kinds.”

“Alcohol. Please bring me some alcohol.”

“Is champagne okay?”

“Fill a water glass, not a flute.”

As instructed, I returned to the desk with a large glass full of champagne. About ten to sixteen steps from the desk, the teacher, who was attending to a client, raised his voice slightly toward us. The entire exhibition hall was buzzing, so the tone wasn’t particularly jarring.

“Yuni-ssi, could you bring the editor-in-chief’s book from the office? It should be in my bag.”

I gave Yuni-ssi the glass, stopping her as she almost reflexively stood up.

“I’ll get it. I know where it is.”

I hurried downstairs and retrieved the book from the spot where I had placed it earlier. As I returned the book to the teacher and headed back to the desk, I felt like a child presenting a copied homework assignment to the teacher. I wasn’t pulling off a major fraud, but I was so unnecessarily nervous that I found it hard to turn my head that way.

“Director Han, you even read it with underscores? You’re truly amazing. That’s a crucial difference. Plenty of people buy a book to get it signed to look good, but do you think I don’t know? Most of them just buy it and don’t even bother to read the contents. But our Director Han doesn’t treat people that way. He’s sincere. That’s why I can’t help but open my wallet at Phantom!”

Fortunately, the ‘teacher’ didn’t seem to notice the ‘copied homework.’ He even complimented the assignment.

Yuni-ssi, who had finished half of the champagne as if it were grape juice, looked up at me with wide eyes, just as Juhan-ssi had done a moment ago.

“You underscored it in the meantime?”

When I nodded to her whispered question, a refreshing smile returned.

Whether he had intended to buy from the start or if it was an impulsive decision driven by his elevated mood, the editor-in-chief of the powerful magazine expressed his active intention to purchase, asking for recommendations for a painting suitable for his recently promoted daughter’s office.

“It’s nothing major, but it’s funny how happy he gets over something so small, right? But that’s how it is here. Even though we’re selling paintings, sometimes it feels like we’re just managing people’s feelings. To put it nicely, it’s a field where sales are crucial; to put it more directly, our job is to keep people happy. Sometimes to the point of feeling slightly disillusioned.”

Yuni-ssi smiled bitterly, watching the editor-in-chief move to another section with the teacher to check the recommendations.

Before I could ask for a more detailed reason for that smile, she was called back out to the exhibition floor. The time for socializing had passed, and it was officially time to promote the paintings, the true stars of the day.

Left alone at the desk, I felt awkward with nothing to do. I cleared the empty glasses we had used and rearranged the remaining pamphlets for no reason, when a shadow suddenly fell over the desk.

“Could I get a pamphlet?”

I looked up and saw the man from the passenger seat smiling.

The smile itself was refreshing, but strangely, it had an aspect that made the observer feel defiant. This was probably due to his characteristically flippant tone and casual demeanor.

I picked up a pamphlet and handed it to him, but he didn’t seem particularly interested in the pamphlet itself.

“I recently moved to the 32nd floor. Moving from a detached house with a garden to a high-rise building makes me feel trapped and very desolate. Could you recommend a painting? Your name is…”

The man looked around my chest as if searching for a name tag.

“Seo Yihyun.”

The man, who was looking intently at me with eyes full of amusement, lightly shook his head.

“Even your name is exactly my type.”

He muttered to himself, the nuance suggesting he found this frustrating.

Ever since I saw him at the front door, he was… how should I put it… adopting a flirtatious attitude, but more than half of it seemed like a joke. Since I hadn’t received any direct proposition, I didn’t see any reason to react specifically. He didn’t seem to expect a reaction from me, either. From the beginning until now, the man had been talking and amusing himself alone.

“I’d like you to recommend one piece, Yihyun-ssi. What would be good? Something that can help me relax.”

“I’m just a temp helping out for today…”

“It’s fine, just recommend one. I’ll only use it as a reference.”

The Director and Yuni-ssi were already attending to customers. The teacher and Juhan-ssi were nowhere in sight, possibly dealing with clients in other sections. I was reluctant, but since he asked for a recommendation even knowing I was a temporary worker, it seemed unlikely that there would be a problem if I indulged him.

“Where are you planning to put it?”

“Hmm… if Yihyun-ssi recommends it, I’d like to hang it in the bedroom…”

The man laughed, placing significant emphasis on the word ‘bedroom.’ I looked at his lighthearted face, which smiled like a stereotypical playboy from a TV drama, and walked out from behind the desk.

There were roughly 50 artworks displayed in the exhibition hall.

This exhibition was a joint show featuring six or seven artists belonging to the gallery, with some artists exhibiting as few as two pieces and others more than ten. Since I had helped prepare late into the night yesterday, I had the images and general locations of those paintings organized in my head.

I walked forward without hesitation and stopped in front of a piece painted on a square canvas, 53 centimeters wide and high.

It was a painting with a dark and heavy color palette, but executed with a bizarre Cubist interpretation and a pleasant, cheerful cartoon style.

“This one? This painting?”

The man asked repeatedly, as if he didn’t understand why I was recommending this piece. I nodded twice.

The man looked back and forth between the painting and me for a moment, then looked around as if searching for someone, and called out to the Director, who was chatting with three or four people in front of a large Pop Art-style piece.

“Kuhn, come here for a moment.”

The Director excused himself from the people he was talking to and approached us.

Although I wasn’t extremely tall, I was by no means short. The passenger’s lips were roughly at the tip of my nose, and the Director’s lips were roughly at the tip of the passenger’s nose. He must have been easily over 190 cm tall.

Approaching us, he was once again wearing an expression of being bothered by everything. Well, a sweet smile, like a lover to all, would be an unnecessary option in front of the passenger and me.

He stood leaning slightly to one side, with one hand stuffed into his pants pocket, urging the passenger to get straight to the point.

“I asked him to recommend a painting for the bedroom, and he recommended my artwork. What do you think about this?”

The Director’s gaze shifted to me. It was the longest his gaze had lingered on me in the two days we had known each other. It was also the first gaze that was neither indifferent nor hostile.

It wasn’t the look of a dominant lion watching the movements of a strange animal circling its territory to see if it posed a threat to its pride, but eyes that were simply looking at me as an individual.

As his gaze, which seemed to be meticulously examining me as if receiving information about me through my eyes, finally moved away, the surprise of the coincidence finally hit me: the painting I recommended was the work of the passenger.

“How do you think this painting suits me?”

“I didn’t know you were the artist of the painting…”

“You wouldn’t have known. I’m not criticizing that; I’m curious why you recommended this painting to me.”

The passenger seemed thoroughly amused by the situation.

“Can you be honest? Please.”

Was he so starved for honest feedback that he added please? I looked at the painting once more, over the shoulder of the passenger, who was clasping his hands together like he was praying and staring at my lips. Considering my experience of receiving feedback after winning a single award, I could understand the man’s feelings now.

“It seems like it shows everything honestly, but there are aspects that don’t…”

“Aspects that don’t?”

“They feel similar, somehow.”

“Me and this painting?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not honest? Me and this painting?”

I found myself taking a step back as the man leaned his face close, relentlessly questioning me.

“It’s a little different from that… It’s more like a state of wanting to be honest but being unable to be… To look at it that way, in that it exposes that state without reservation, that could also be considered a kind of honesty…”

The playful look vanished from the passenger’s face at my supplementary explanation. Conversely, the Director laughed out loud. It was a very brief laugh, but a laugh nonetheless.

“I’m sorry. I don’t express myself well… And it’s just my personal impression, so please don’t worry about it too much.”

The passenger, who seemed slightly flustered for a moment, immediately leaned in closer to study my face with an intrigued expression. He had already returned to his usual lighthearted look.

“What are you doing after today? I heard you finish at 6.”

The sudden change in conversation was hard to follow.

“I have to clean up…”

At my answer, the man, for the first time, dropped his exaggerated giggling smile and looked disappointed. He nudged the Director next to him, seeking agreement.

“That’s a wall, isn’t it?”

The Director looked at me with a serious expression, as if seeking the answer to that question on my face. I did not avoid his gaze.

The color I was facing was profoundly beautiful. For a moment, I forgot they were human eyes and simply enjoyed the living beauty of that color, slowly appreciating the left eye first, and then the right.

The next moment, the man’s focus broke away from my gaze without lingering.

“Wall or no wall, do you really feel like doing that to someone ten years younger than you?”

Clucking his tongue, the Director turned his back and returned to his original spot.

I let the passenger’s words about knowing the best mandu-guk (dumpling soup) place in Seoul and asking me to make time, even if not today, wash over me as I thought: Had I ever told the Director my age?