Diamond Dust Novel - Chapter 29

“Juhan Hyung’s trademark is his bangs. They’re so long they look like they’re poking his eyes, and they’re cut perfectly straight, like he used a ruler. But they suit him very well. When he’s busy, he clips his bangs back with a plastic pin, and then he looks a little cute.”

I drew Juhan Hyung with straight bangs on the spring notebook Morae had given me. I added a yellow, ribbon-shaped plastic pin that Hyung sometimes uses on top of the drawing.

I don’t know where he got that hairpin, which was clearly for a toddler, but whenever he had to revise the mock-up catalog until morning or hastily eat jajangmyeon (black bean noodles) in a corner of the office for a late lunch, he would pull it out from somewhere and pin his bangs back. Once, he even rushed back into the office, cursing himself, after going out to attend to visitors while wearing it.

“Yuni Noona… has a bob. A jet-black bob that I initially thought was dyed, but she says it’s her natural color. And her eyes are big and her pupils are very sharp. Even though she’s short and petite… She doesn’t look small. I only realized, ‘Oh, Noona wasn’t that tall,’ when I stand right next to her. I think her huge presence makes her not look small. Phantom would be paralyzed without Noona. The Director even gets so anxious without Yuni Noona that Juhan Hyung teases him about separation anxiety.”

Morae, who was sitting next to me with her chin resting on her hand, kept her eyes fixed on the image of Yuni Noona I was completing, her expression intrigued. The lip piercing on Yuni Noona’s lips was just being finished with the three-color pen. I dotted a couple of stars in her eyes, in the style of old comic book illustrations.

“The two of them… are like fraternal twins. More accurately… It feels like Juhan Hyung is the male version of Yuni Noona, and Yuni Noona is the female version of Juhan Hyung… that kind of feeling. But they probably wouldn’t like it if I said that. They’d get angry, wouldn’t they?”

I drew a lightning bolt between the two figures on the paper, laughing faintly, as I could almost see and hear the two of them expressing displeasure, saying, ‘How am I similar to this person?’

“This is a complex feeling.”

“What is?”

Morae tilted her head, resting her chin on her hand, and looked at me with narrowed eyes, shaking her head.

“I feel proud that Seo Yihyun has grown up now, but also a little sad.”

I chuckled faintly at her words, but I knew best what she meant by that. She was the one who, without any prodding or persuasion, but with sincerity and patience, merely remained by my side, opening the door for change, even though I had resisted socializing with anyone outside of Morae and Hyung and struggled with even the slightest changes.

She did it not because I was her boyfriend’s problematic cousin, but simply because she was a person who didn’t dismiss someone else’s pain as trivial just because it was someone else’s. She would have done the same for anyone in my place.

I wouldn’t be who I am today without the consistently steadfast and weighty kindness of a person unrelated by blood. This was a new slate that she and Han Hyung had worked hard and long to create for me.

“You don’t have to worry about me anymore.”

“You’re awfully cocky, aren’t you? Do you already think you’ve grown up that much, huh?”

Morae put her hand on my shoulder and patted me. Her swaggering expression, like a thug trying to extort money, made me laugh.

“It’s not that I can do well; it’s that I’ll figure things out one way or another.”

If there was one thing that had changed the most since coming to Seoul, it was that. I used to refuse to take a step in any direction out of fear that something would change, but when I finally took a step, the world didn’t collapse, and I didn’t transform into another being.

I sought agreement from Morae, who was watching me silently, and added:

“Everyone else lives like that, don’t they? Or am I wrong?”

“That’s right. Because they don’t have enough to wait until they’re perfectly ready. Whether it’s time or anything else, everything.”

I applied her words to herself.

I knew that her time here wasn’t a culmination or a destination for her. She wasn’t the type to show her anxiety to others, but she was likely still losing sleep, planning the next step of her journey.

“What about him? What about the Director?”

She asked in a cheerful voice, changing the subject. Surprised by the unexpected question, I involuntarily leaned back, pressing the tip of the pen to my lips.

“His cologne… it’s very cool. It was a scent I had never smelled before. Very unique.”

“Huh? That’s all?”

Morae looked disappointed, and I laughed.

But I truly didn’t know how else to describe him. The color of his eyes, which seemed mysterious to me, was of pure Korean descent, his special trait as a Golden Alpha, his exotic looks, his unique way of running a gallery… So many characteristics popped into my head at once, and yet none of them seemed sufficient to define him.

The image that came to mind the moment I was asked was, laughably, his scent.

However, the fragrance that had captured my sense of smell so intensely and memorably only lingered at the tip of my nose like an illusion, elusive the moment I tried to recall it precisely.

I felt like I could draw it, but it was impossible to express it with a three-color ballpoint pen on a spring notebook.

A new group of customers entered ‘A Scene in Bali,’ and Morae briefly left my side. I flipped through the pages of the spring notebook to draw his profile for her. There weren’t many blank pages left.

Bali. Kuta. Surfing camp. 5th-anniversary promotion. 1-year long-term program. 15 million won per person.

My hand stopped at the concise memo, which looked like it had been copied from somewhere. Circles or underscores were marked around every single word, like traces of deliberation.

The note ‘2 or more people required’ was accompanied by an underline and a scribbled comment that read, ‘Is it cheap because they only accept 2 or more people?’ Either Morae and Han Hyung had discussed it together across the notebook, or two different handwriting styles were scattered like graffiti across the page.

I could roughly piece together the picture. It was information about a promotion at a surfing school in Kuta, Bali, offering a remarkable price for a one-year long-term contract, conditional on having two or more participants. It was probably a price that included all costs, including accommodation and lessons. Having listened to Morae and Hyung talk about it for years, that much deduction wasn’t difficult.

Since they were already highly skilled surfers, the cost of lessons alone would be substantial. A price that included accommodation for a year was certainly not bad. A long-term surfing trip had always been their dream, and living in Bali for a year, settling into the place completely, would be a great opportunity to gauge their life there.

I glanced at Morae’s back. Watching her profile as she cheerfully chatted with customers she seemed to have befriended from previous visits, I suddenly felt scared.

It had only been five minutes since I told her not to worry about me anymore, but just imagining our separation felt overwhelming. I felt like I was standing alone in a night desert, having lost everything.

The name written in the corner of the notebook made me feel like I needed to slap my face and read my direction from the stars, rather than stand there dumbfounded, my arms hanging limp.

Seo Yihyun.

And the circular outline is drawn several times around the name.

The name that always made them hesitate in the face of a choice. Seo Yihyun.

Morae, who had taken the customers’ orders, was collecting the menus. I quickly turned the page back.

“These are our regulars. They even brought us a gift from their trip to Hong Kong. Try some.”

She handed the order to Hyung in the kitchen and set a tin box on the table. When she opened the lid, decorated with a teddy bear illustration, it was full of butter cookies.

“Didn’t you say your gallery was going on a business trip to Hong Kong? When was that?”

Morae picked up one of the cookies, ate it, and sat down next to me again.

A full staff trip was scheduled for an art fair in Hong Kong in early July. But whether I, who was essentially an intern, would participate was yet to be decided.

“It’s after this exhibition ends… maybe two or three weeks from now. But I don’t know yet if I’ll be able to go.”

“I hope you can go. It’s a good opportunity.”

“But, wouldn’t leaving an entry/exit record be bad?”

Morae finished the remaining half of the cookie, shoved her hands into her pants pockets, and stretched her legs out as she spoke.

“Don’t worry about that kind of stuff. It would be hard to find where we are just based on entry/exit records… and they could probably find us right now if they really wanted to. The only reason we haven’t heard anything yet is that they’re just waiting for the right time. So, just do what you want.”

Then she turned and smiled brightly at me.

“The people my father wants to find and take out his anger on are Seo Yihan and me; you have nothing to do with this. Don’t feel like you have to hold back.”

I just watched her profile. Morae took a cookie out of the tin and fed it to me at my lips. Crunch. When I bit off half with my teeth, the other half disappeared into her mouth.

“Hmm, that’s good. Let’s have it with coffee. It would be perfect with an Americano.”

I compulsively clicked the ballpoint pen in my hand, tracing Morae’s back as she headed toward the counter behind the coffee machine.

I wanted to tell her that I was okay, too.

That it was fine, that I would manage somehow, and that they no longer needed to hesitate over choices because of the name ‘Seo Yihyun,’ which they had circled. I wanted to tell Hyung and Morae with confidence.

Morae was a person who maintained perfect balance even on the fragile foam of a dangerous wave, but that had never been a reckless come-what-may attitude. I knew no one else who was as genuinely faithful to life as she was. Even if I hid my fear and said I was fine, I felt I wouldn’t be able to deceive her.

That the current peace was merely a temporary sandcastle built on the edge of a beach where a wave could crash at any moment. That my daily life now, working at Phantom surrounded by art, getting paid a salary, and living comfortably at the Director’s house while studying Illustrator and Photoshop, was built on the kind concern and understanding of people I was grateful for.

I erased the sketch where I had been outlining the Director’s face with zigzag lines.

I had to pull myself together. For the sake of the people who couldn’t bear to leave me alone, who still looked out for me even on their chosen path. I had to pull myself together, move my own two legs, and move forward on my own.

Because I now clearly understood that choosing nothing could not maintain the present.