Diamond Dust Novel - Chapter 8

The piece was a hyper-realistic depiction of old books stacked in layers. Judging by the texture of the cross-section, it didn’t seem to be made only with paint.

“Over there. See the paper marked ‘1’? It needs to be hung on that wall. Help me lift it.”

She wasn’t particularly large in stature, but she seemed to have a complete grasp of how things worked here. Thus, she seemed unlikely to make a mistake in judging whether she could lift the canvas size herself.

Indeed, there was no problem for the two of us to lift the artwork, which was about as tall as I was. As the team leader had said, to a certain extent, this was more a matter of knack than brute strength.

“Baek Yuni… you’re still a powerhouse… When did you hang all of Section B by yourself? I told you to leave it.”

Juhan-ssi, still lying flat on his back facing the ceiling, only turned his head to watch us hang the painting. Now that he mentioned it, the chaos in the neighboring section, where she had been working when we arrived, was neatly organized.

“I only did what I could. You two handle the rest later. Now I have to match the captions for the Section B pieces.”

“Okay.”

Juhan-ssi, who had declared he couldn’t do any more, seemed somewhat recharged as he abruptly stood up, grabbed one of the ion drinks on the temporary workstation, and twisted the cap open. I wasn’t particularly thirsty, but I drank a couple of sips when he offered one to me.

“By the way, did you two introduce yourselves, Yihyun-ssi? You didn’t, did you? You probably rudely told him to do this and do that as soon as you saw him, right?”

“Is it a problem to ask to work when we met to work?”

The woman, who had been arranging the captions, listing information like the artwork’s title, materials used, and year of creation, on the workstation according to her own sequence, stopped her hands for a moment and looked back at me, despite her words. I might have been mistaken, but her expression seemed slightly apologetic.

“I’m Baek Yuni.”

“Seo Yihyun.”

Juhan-ssi, who had been watching our bland introductions, like the frequently used example sentences when first learning English, ‘This is a pencil, and that is a desk’, snickered, his shoulders shaking from the opposite side.

“It’s quite a sight, watching people who are socially awkward interact. You two should call each other Yuni-ssi and Yihyun-ssi. That’s what I agreed to do with him.”

It wasn’t surprising that he judged me to be socially awkward. I probably didn’t look like an outgoing person to anyone. I had that much self-awareness. However, Juhan-ssi’s assessment of her was unexpected.

Does someone like her, who gives off the impression of bold, Gothic lettering meticulously written by a hand with great force, ever feel like she’s on the periphery, alone among others, like I do? It was hard to imagine.

“Shut up. If I put my mind to it, I can transform into the god of sociability.”

“That’s true. Except you’re not a god, you’re a machine. You’re totally soulless when you’re making a sale.”

Yuni-ssi was looking down at the captions, and the two of them were too engrossed in conversation to notice, but I, standing facing the stairs, couldn’t miss the new presence.

Starting with fine, light hair, a face with clear, deep features was revealed, and a man in a sophisticated suit quickly ascended to the second-floor lobby. He was very… very tall and striking.

“What’s the point of putting your soul into sales? Souls belong in the artwork, carried by the artists.”

Yuni-ssi said scornfully as she placed the last caption in its spot. The tall man had, by then, arrived right in front of the workstation where we were gathered.

“A fair point.”

The man chimed in abruptly, a smile on his face.

“Director!”

Yuni-ssi’s face and voice, calling the man that, were full of welcome.

Ah, that must be the gallery Director Juhan-ssi was talking about. The one who scared Juhan-ssi by saying there were ghosts in the basement storage.

He was very tall. His physique was excellent, but his sleek frame made him look far from clumsy despite his intimidating height and broad shoulders. His exotic face, which I had initially thought might be foreign, showed a subtle mix of Eastern features up close.

“Oh, seriously, why did you only just arrive?”

“You know those two. They wouldn’t let me go, using the reservations as an excuse.”

He was a very big, very handsome man. His exotic looks, so unusual it was impossible he wasn’t mixed-race, gave him a flashy and special aura. It seemed to set him apart from his surroundings. A person who existed not to look at others, but to be looked at by people, like that.

It was the first time I’d ever thought that.

Could this person be a Golden Alpha?

“So, did you secure the reservations?”

Yuni-ssi sounded like she would physically restrain him if he answered that he hadn’t.

“I got three pieces. Here’s the reservation list, please put up the ‘Sold Out’ cards.”

Yuni-ssi took the list from the man, delighted as if the sales profit for those pieces would go directly to her. She tucked the memo into her notebook, which seemed twice as thick as it should be with various receipts and documents.

“Juhan and I were practically dying. We haven’t even moved all the Section C paintings yet. And Artist Yoon is going crazy because he doesn’t like the pamphlet order.”

“Right, right, I heard. You’ve worked hard. Director Han will handle Artist Yoon, so let’s wrap this up here. Hmm… let’s finish in three hours.”

The man, who checked the time on his wrist, suddenly looked at me. His gaze seemed to say that the important conversations were over, and now he needed to know the identity of the outsider who had been here the whole time.

My gaze, which had been subtly stealing glances at him as one would an unfamiliar and intriguing species, dropped instead to the vicinity of his neck.

“Director Han brought him a little while ago. To help out just for today. Yihyun-ssi, this is our Director.”

Even though we weren’t facing each other, his stare was unbearable. A gaze that didn’t consider how I might feel. A gaze that explored me fully, from any angle it wished, pressed uncomfortably tight across my entire body.

“Hello. I’m Seo Yihyun.”

I forced out a voice that was fighting not to be subdued, and offered a greeting.

I wasn’t an outgoing person, but I usually just felt awkward in new relationships; it was different from being intimidated. But now, I was shrinking.

Assuming the man was an Alpha, I couldn’t tell if this unfamiliar contraction was due to an Alpha’s pheromones, which a Beta like me shouldn’t be able to sense, or his human presence, built upon his accumulated experience and confidence.

However, as far as I knew, it was impossible for a Beta to detect the pheromones of an Alpha or Omega.

If I were still in that fishing village, I wouldn’t have immediately assumed someone with such exceptional looks and commanding presence was an Alpha. But here, it was entirely plausible.

I desperately wished for the ion drink Juhan-ssi had given me. I held it in my hand, yet I couldn’t bring myself to open it and drink.

“How do you know Director Han?”

The question was thrown out at the end of a gaze that felt like a hand slowly tightening its grip, squeezing me.

It was a completely different voice from the one he had used with Juhan-ssi or Yuni-ssi, impassive and stiff. I could even sense a slight, unconcealed hostility.

“I work as a housekeeper at the Director’s newly moved house.”

The man’s lips, barely visible at the edge of my sight, twitched. It seemed my affiliation was unsatisfactory to him. Fortunately, the questions ended there.

The man turned his gaze away from me, took off his jacket, and draped it over the chair in front of the makeshift workstation. While rolling up his shirt sleeves, he received a brief status report from Yuni-ssi. The task assignments changed: the man and Juhan-ssi would handle the transport of the artworks, and I would assist Yuni-ssi on the second floor.

As the man disappeared down the stairs with Juhan-ssi, the contracted atmosphere relaxed, and it felt as though sufficient oxygen was being supplied. I noticed my shoulders dropping and realized that my muscles had been tense.

After chugging half of the ion drink, Yuni-ssi held out a roll of thick double-sided tape toward me.

“Shall we try to work well together, fellow socially awkward person?”

The work proceeded smoothly. We finished attaching all the captions next to the Section B artworks and hung the pieces in Section C as soon as they were brought up from the basement. After finishing the display up to Section D in that manner, all sorts of trash were scattered across the floor of the exhibition hall. I took charge of the cleanup while they made other preparations to welcome guests tomorrow.

The teacher returned with late-night snacks just as the first light of dawn was about to break. It was closer to early breakfast than a midnight snack.

We all gathered around the large table in the office on the first floor to eat sandwiches and coffee. Everyone was noisy, discussing who would eat which sandwich.

Even with the teacher, my sole acquaintance in this gallery, present, I didn’t feel any more comfortable than before. This was likely due to the man who spoke and moved with a presence several times greater than anyone else, making me feel excluded from the space.

Such a person existed. Just by not meeting someone’s eyes, by not speaking to them, he could make me feel… as though I were trapped alone in a glass case.

It wasn’t that he was ignoring me. He was constantly conveying a brittle, uncomfortable distance to me.

“Director, Yihyun-ssi works well. If you compare him to when Kwon Juhan first started, you’d think he’s a veteran.”

Yuni-ssi’s compliment, which felt genuine, was at least a small comfort.

“Baek Yuni, didn’t you ever have a tadpole phase?”

“Nope, I was a frog from the beginning. Right, Director?”

“Hmm, Yuni didn’t have a tadpole phase. That’s why I stole her.”

The man nodded, munching on an avocado sandwich. He was a kind boss to his employees.

Due to nearly five hours of labor, the man looked considerably more dishevelled than when he first appeared in the second-floor hall. His hair, which looked particularly soft, wouldn’t stay fixed as it had before and kept falling down. His shirt and pants were wrinkled, and there were clear signs of fatigue around his eyes and cheeks.

Still, he didn’t look shabby. Just a little tired. A little sensitive, and a little fierce.

“Thank you, Yihyun-ah. If it weren’t for you, we might have stayed up all night here and opened the exhibition right after washing up at a nearby hotel. What would I have done without meeting you in so many ways?”

The teacher, sitting next to me, leaned her temple on my shoulder and feigned crying. I might have imagined it, but the man’s gaze from across the table felt sharp.

“You must be tired, right? Would you like to take the sandwich home and eat it there?”

Perhaps due to mental tension, I wasn’t sleepy even though it was long past my bedtime. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t physically exhausted. I was too tired to refuse the teacher’s offer.

I had just finished putting the sandwich in my bag and was about to say goodbye when Yuni-ssi, who was sitting at the head of the table next to the man, suddenly jumped up.

“Yihyun-ssi! Could you possibly come one more time for the event tomorrow?”

Yuni-ssi seemed surprised by her own words, as if she had immediately voiced a thought that had just occurred to her. Her black eyes, which she had taken off and placed on the table, were sharp despite the all-night work.

“Why? We’ve managed fine with this group until now.”

She decisively turned her head toward the man, her bob flying dramatically. From my angle, I could only see her cheek, but she seemed to be glaring intensely at him.

“We’ve only been getting by through sheer grit, you know! And Director, I think this current schedule is quite inhumane!”

“……”

The man pursed his lips and shrugged, as if to say he couldn’t help it. The expectant glances of everyone but the man turned toward me. I paused with the strap of my bag half-slung over my shoulder, unable to answer, and looked at the three faces in turn.

Juhan-ssi, sitting next to the man, had his face contorted in a pleading expression, with one index finger raised. The teacher was watching me with a faint smile.

“You can comfortably refuse if you’re tired or have other plans. But if, if you are possibly okay with it…”

“As long as I don’t have to deal with guests… I can help. I’m not good at that kind of thing…”

I didn’t exactly know why I agreed.

It might have been nostalgia for the past, seeing the teacher’s face. Or perhaps the excitement of being surrounded by art and helping with art-related work, after so long, was unconsciously at play. It might just be the simple pride of a twenty-two-year-old, feeling useful and needed, even if only for simple tasks.

However, there was one reason that was clearly undeniable, preventing me from deceiving myself.

The moment I looked at the man, who was eating his sandwich with an expression that suggested he was indifferent to whatever decision I made, something akin to defiance flared up. It wasn’t a strong outburst, but it wasn’t a vague feeling that I could easily deny had existed.

While I was receiving the schedule for the next day, the man ate his sandwich and drank his coffee, wearing a nonchalant look and atmosphere that implied that whatever his employees decided was unavoidable.

When I left the office, he merely gave a slight nod over the shoulders of the others, remaining seated. His gaze had already been withdrawn before I could even return the greeting.

When I got into the taxi heading home and closed the door, reality rushed in as if on cue. The song playing on the radio, the driver humming along, and the scenery outside the window, all demanded energy from me to accept them as real.

I had the irrational feeling that if I were to turn the taxi around and go back now, Gallery Phantom would have vanished.