Diamond Dust Novel - Chapter 28

I slowly walked toward the rightmost exhibition hall. Unlike the previous group exhibition, the wide spacing between the artworks was the first thing that caught my eye. It was an environment that allowed for much greater concentration on each piece.

Body to Soul.

Reality and unreality. Dreams and terror. Freedom and constraint. Ascent and comfort. Pity and contempt.

The body, expressed only through black silhouettes against a white background.

The body, which had lost all expression and contour, existing only as a black outline and the black filling it, was something other than a body.

Boundaries fade, eventually becoming meaningless. Whether it’s a black silhouette against a white background, or a white silhouette stamped onto a black background. Whether experience forms the nature of a human being, or whether the quality changes depending on the person the same experience passes through.

It becomes unknowable. Ambiguous. It becomes something that is no one’s fault, where everything becomes monumental, and everything becomes nothing.

What remains in the space that constantly expands and contracts like breathing is… what is seen when nothing is important anymore is…

“What do you think?”

A voice suddenly came from the left, near the entrance of the exhibition hall. But I was strangely not startled. It was as if someone had told me that he would appear around this time and utter exactly that line to me.

I slowly turned my head.

He was leaning against the partition wall at the entrance, his hands in his pants pockets, watching me. I didn’t know how long he had been standing there. It didn’t matter.

He pushed off the wall and began walking closer toward me. His footsteps echoed like black dots punctuating the all-white space.

“Choi Inwoo says Mr. Seo Yihyun’s eye for art is better than most critics. I’m curious about your thoughts.”

No matter what Inwoo Hyung had said, or how much sincerity was contained in those words, I had no eye for art. At the very least, I lacked the objective discernment to convince industry professionals. Even during the time I was actively drawing, I was only engrossed in expressing the world I saw in my own way, without any interest in anything else.

But if he wanted to hear my thoughts, there was no need to pretend I hadn’t felt anything.

I turned my head back to face the artwork in front of me.

Whether the body contained within the black silhouette belonged to one person or two. It was a photograph whose product alone couldn’t tell. In terms of volume, it looked like the shadow of one person, but the angle of the hands and neck made it look like a posture that couldn’t be achieved alone.

What mattered wasn’t whether there was actually one model or two. It was about what I, standing in front of this artwork, wished to see the subject as. I only needed to focus on that.

“The artist… isn’t visible in the work.”

“……”

I deliberately didn’t look back at him.

He had demanded my thoughts, lightly provoking me, as if challenging me to speak my opinion on the work. But I felt he wouldn’t be able to maintain his composure after hearing my thoughts.

Because the works filling this space were ‘Shu-shu’s.’ The works that tormented him, forced him to face life, and compelled him to confess those things.

“Instead of the artist, I see myself.”

“……”

“When I look at it, I want to draw.”

Only after saying that did I turn to look at him. His eyes were fixed on me, not the artwork.

My first encounter with him was also in this exhibition hall. His gray-blue eyes, like the foam of a breaking wave, were impassively questioning my identity. Eyes that held no curiosity. Eyes that I thought would show more expression if they discovered a new plant placed in an empty spot.

But now, it was different. His eyes were looking deeply into me. As if he wanted to find a hint to some question within my eyes.

The confession that I wanted to draw, a confession that held immense meaning for me, though he didn’t know it, was shaking him more profoundly than my false declaration of being gay or my factual declaration of being a Beta, causing a crack in his eyes.

His eyes left mine, scouring every part of my face: the tip of my nose, my lips, my cheeks, my eyebrows, my forehead… As I surrendered myself, allowing him to examine me, finding his scrutiny intriguing, the scent was sucked in with my breath.

A scent that felt heavy and grounding yet would suddenly and intensely grab my ankle or wrist like a sudden snatch. A scent that seemed to spread languidly yet pressed down strongly.

Drawn by instinct, I stepped closer to him. I leaned my upper body forward until the tip of my nose was almost touching his shoulder, then stood up straight, looking up into his eyes.

“Your cologne… is very unique.”

What kind of expression would he wear in front of my painting?

What kind of introduction would he write about my painting? I became curious about that.