It took about two hours to slowly tour Harvard University. Under a clear mid-September autumn sky, we strolled leisurely through the campus, which felt more like a rural village than a university.

There were, of course, many people who looked like students, but residents out for exercise or a walk were not uncommon either. The layout didn't sharply divide the university from the surrounding neighborhood with walls or fences, which made it feel surprisingly community-friendly — contrary to the imposing, austere image that a world-renowned institution's name might suggest.

After having breakfast with Marcus and Ellen, we left their house around eleven, enjoyed Edward Hopper's Room in Brooklyn and other works in the collection at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and then took the number 1 bus across the Charles River to Harvard.

That's right. We took the bus together. He had deliberately arranged not to have a car waiting in Boston so our trip would feel a little more like something familiar to me.

Yesterday, when we traveled from Chicago to Boston, we took a chartered plane.

Travel by bus and chartered plane.

He explained that domestic flights in the U.S. often lack proper business-class seating, let alone first class, which is why he usually charters a plane when traveling within the country. He tried to reassure me by saying that chartering in the U.S. was quite common — like rental car companies stationed at every airport, in his words — and wasn't "as expensive as people think." His reasoning was that he would have chartered a plane even without me, and since the cost was the same whether there was one passenger or two within the standard limit, it wasn't an extra expense on my account. Still, I couldn't quite feel comfortable with the situation.

Upon arriving at the airport, we took a taxi straight to the neighborhood called Beacon Hill. That was where he had lived while being homeschooled from age thirteen to fifteen — the home of the person who had guided him toward becoming the near-perfect Golden Alpha he was today.

Marcus, a world authority on pheromones and Alpha pheromones in particular, had spent many years researching and teaching at a university in Boston. He and his wife, Ellen, had been living in that house for thirty years.

Marcus and Ellen were kind and warm — as much as I had imagined, and then more. Their welcome wasn't courtesy or social obligation; it was genuine. The words that might have carried resentment for years of absence instead spoke of their joy at seeing his face again after so long.

They extended the same warmth to me, introduced as his partner. Just as Jane, who had heard him describe me as "my precious person," had offered me a tender smile, as if I were her son.

Our accommodations in Boston weren't a suite at a five-star hotel, but Marcus and Ellen's house — the room at the very end of the second floor, overlooking the alley in front, preserved exactly as it had been when he was a teenage boy.

Yesterday we arrived in the afternoon, enjoyed a meal Marcus and Ellen had prepared for us with good wine, and the evening passed in lively conversation. Today, we had the time until dinner to go sightseeing together. It was the only day on this entire trip to America allotted for just the two of us.

Perhaps because he wasn't wearing the tailored suits or smart casual outfits he usually favored in Seoul, or perhaps because he wasn't behind the wheel of a luxury sedan or sitting in the backseat, he looked much younger than usual — and even a little... casual, almost careless in a way that suited him.

Black pants, black shoes, a black t-shirt, a leather jacket, hands tucked into his back pockets or jacket pockets — or his arm slung over my shoulder. Even his gait and expression were slightly different from usual.

While telling me the legend that touching the left foot of the John Harvard statue would ensure one's descendants got into Harvard, he reached out and touched the worn, shiny foot, then pressed his lips close to my ear and made a mischievous joke: "When we get back to Seoul, I suppose I'll have to start working hard on making descendants who can get into Harvard first."

In front of the statue, he and I took our second selfie together. We were still awkward in the photo. Even he — usually so comfortable in front of a lens pointed his way — seemed thoroughly unaccustomed to selfie mode. Looking at the photo, he ruffled my hair and let out a soft laugh.

After the awkward commemorative photo concluded the tour, we stopped by the souvenir shop to buy gifts. Watching his profile as he complained, with that air of faint annoyance, that Boston had no particular specialty worth buying — just like Chicago — so we should grab a few Harvard T-shirts and be done with it, I smiled quietly to myself. If he were truly that bothered, he could have just left without buying anything.

The store, marked with a sign reading "COOP," was enormous. It seemed as if every conceivable everyday item had been fitted with a Harvard logo. He looked uninterested, as though he intended only to fulfill his gift-buying obligation and leave immediately, yet in the clothing section he urged me to try on a gray hoodie with "HARVARD" embroidered across it in brick red.

"Hmm... how does it look?"

I asked him after stepping out of the fitting room, though it was a completely unremarkable piece — neutral enough to suit anyone, with nothing particular to say about it either way.

He tilted his head toward his shoulder, looked at me for a moment, then rolled his eyes, made a playful face, sighed, and looked up at the ceiling. Unable to understand his reaction, I stood there quietly. He walked over, wrapped his hand around the back of my neck, pulled me close, and pressed his forehead against mine.

"People are going to think I'm dating a minor."

"It's not that bad..."

"It is that bad."

He muttered, lowering his voice and glancing around. His expression was serious, but this was how he joked.

I went back into the fitting room and changed. When I came out he took the hoodie from me and, instead of returning it to its spot, dropped it into the shopping basket.

Noticing my puzzled look, he picked up one of the many mugs crowding a three-tiered display stand, turned it over in his hands, and explained.

"I wasn't saying don't wear it — or that we weren't buying it. I said you look young. I didn't say it doesn't suit you. That's a different thing entirely."

I shook my head and laughed. He looked over at me with a faint smile, then went back to repeatedly attaching and detaching a Harvard magnet from a metal pillar.

"How about getting something for Yeehan and Morae too?"

"We already bought a T-shirt, mugs, notebooks... and pencils," I said, pointing to the already overflowing basket he was carrying.

"No, Bali."

"......"

My gaze dropped without meaning to. I was on this trip because of his generosity and consideration, and it wasn't as though I felt no guilt or burden alongside the gratitude. Even setting me aside, he was generous to the people around him — especially those younger than himself — but what he gave me far surpassed ordinary generosity, favor, or kindness. Even accounting for the fact that we were together.

He had even prepared a separate allowance for me before we left Seoul, for personal use on the trip. With it I'd bought popcorn and coffee for nuna, eaten a muffin at a café, paid museum entrance fees, and bought a tumbler for Inwu hyung. I could have used it for gifts for Morae nuna and Yeehan hyung too, but it was still his money at the end of the day. I was trying to spend it carefully, planning to return whatever was left over.

"Seo Ihyeon, aren't we dating?"

He'd probably seen right through the meaning of my silence. He stuck the magnet against the metal pillar like a dart and turned to look at me. Then he walked over to where I stood holding the edge of the mug display and draped an arm over my shoulder.

"It's not just dating... we said we love each other. We've even talked about marriage."

He continued, bumping his temple lightly against the side of my head.

"Ah — though I was the one who got turned down when I brought up marriage."

I laughed. He lowered his head, brought his lips close to my ear, and dropped his voice.

"That measly hundred million won — you'll clear it in no time."

"......"

"And then you'll be free of me."

He slipped his arm from my shoulder and walked ahead, stopping in front of a wall hung with rows of keychains bearing tiny animal character plushies.

"And even before you clear the hundred million — if you go to New York, you could get a part-time job."

"......Is that really okay?"

I moved up close to him and grabbed his right hand as I asked. He turned his head and looked down at me, his gaze tracing every corner of my face. Only then did I realize my eyes were bright and my lips were smiling. He glanced down at the hand I was holding without quite meaning to, then rubbed a little bear keychain against my nose.

"Your reaction to this is better than when I brought up marriage, which is unsettling."

"......"

He laughed, stepped back, and hung the keychain in its place.

"You asked if it's okay, but this isn't a question of whether I permit it or not. Mr. Lim isn't the type of person to send someone all the way to New York to tail you or drag you off somewhere. It won't be dangerous for you to work there."

I tried briefly to recall if I had told him that Morae nuna's father was called "Mr. Lim," but I thought that if it were him, he would have looked into a few more things to be certain.

After finishing our purchases — including gifts for Morae nuna and Yeehan hyung — we left the store and took the bus back across the Charles River. There was still time before the seven o'clock dinner with Marcus and Ellen, and though it wasn't much, we decided to spend every minute of it just the two of us.

"Is this too shabby?"

He asked, leaning his arm on the table.

"I like it. It feels like the America I've seen in movies."

I answered, looking around the pub while holding a single-page menu — densely packed with text on paper roughly the size of a small sheet — in my hands.

The pub, on the second floor of a corner building in downtown Boston, had none of the refined or upscale atmosphere of the other restaurants and bars he'd taken me to. He had suggested we stop by, saying that since we were in America, we should try the most genuinely American pub we could find. It was worn and unpretentious, but comfortable for it, and I felt more keenly aware of being in America here than I had visiting the art museum or gallery.

Despite falling in that awkward stretch between lunch and dinner, the pub was bustling, and dim despite the windows. There was a comfortable-looking semicircular booth near the window, but since there were only two of us and we weren't planning to stay long, we settled at a standing table against the right wall near the entrance.

To keep our appetites for dinner, we ordered two beers and onion rings. The food arrived quickly.

"Since we were talking about New York earlier..."

After taking his first sip of beer, he leaned forward and rested his upper body on the table, which came up to roughly his navel.

"It looks like things can move faster than expected."

He explained that the lunch with Chloe Kent had progressed much further than anticipated. H&W New York had expressed strong interest in an exhibition by the artist he'd mentioned to Chloe at the party, and he had essentially reached an agreement to loan works from his and his father's collection at favorable terms.

"And of course, in return, the opening of Phantom's New York branch will proceed smoothly."

After a few more sips of beer, he leaned in closer.

"If we prepare quickly, it looks like we could open in time for next spring."

He went on to say that among the contacts Chloe had introduced him to were several suitable partners who could provide real, practical assistance with the branch opening — which would save them a considerable amount of time.

It was already past the middle of September. Even if I were a naive child with no understanding of the world, I could see that opening a gallery in a city like New York wasn't a simple matter. I also knew there were limits to handling something like that from a distant place like Seoul, through emails and video calls and phone calls alone. And he didn't want to hire someone to manage it in his place. To borrow a phrase Yuni nuna had once used — for him, Phantom wasn't a matter of survival. It was a matter of self-affirmation.

"Which means I'll probably need to be in New York a bit sooner than expected..."

He said it with a hesitant expression, then straightened up and drank his beer. He glanced at me where I stood silently turning the neck of the beer bottle between my fingers, then adjusted his posture and placed both hands on either side of the round table.

"I'm not planning to move there permanently right away — but for the preparation, staying there would be far more efficient than going back and forth."

"......"

"Think of it as a slightly longer trip... I'd like you to come with me. We can visit overflowing museums and galleries. You can work part-time, paint... You can decide whether to move there permanently after the gallery is up and running."

His uncertain gaze lingered on my face.

"By when... roughly..."

He pressed his forehead with his long middle finger as though applying pressure and answered.

"As soon as I get back to Seoul I'll need to speak with Manager Han, but if everything wraps up as expected, I'm planning to go to New York within two weeks. I already have an apartment there, and since I only need to pack my personal things, moving itself won't be too much of an ordeal."

I remembered nuna mentioning that he owned two expensive properties in Hong Kong alone, two in Seoul that I knew of, plus apartments in South Kensington in London and the Upper East Side in New York.

He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket for his cigarettes, muttered a quiet curse, and put them back. The pub was non-smoking. Instead, I watched him tilt back his beer and drain it quickly, the way a person drinks when they're thirsty, and finished my own as well.

If Phantom wasn't a matter of livelihood for him but a means of self-affirmation, why was he suddenly rushing the New York branch opening, making such a sharp break from his previous approach? I needed to understand that. Especially if I was going to go to New York with him — it was something I absolutely needed to clarify.

I edged closer to him along the wall and bit my lip several times before speaking.

"I'm already receiving so much from Director... Kun... but I really hope that because of me, Awi hasn't had to sacrifice anything important... or change who he is."

His calm gaze rested on me, unmoved by the growing noise around us.

"I... have enough already. I lack nothing. So... please don't push yourself for my sake, or sacrifice anything..."

I looked down at the beer bottle in my hands, then raised my face again. His eyes were the same as before — like the sea on a windless day, peacefully reflecting the light.

"Maybe I'm overthinking this..."

"......"

"...Is rushing the New York branch opening perhaps... because of me?"

He held my gaze, then leaned back against the wall and drew closer. In the dim corner where the light barely reached, we ended up standing side by side against the wall, looking out over the bar. I turned my body slightly toward him. He turned slightly toward me.

Resting the back of his head against the wall, he reached out his right arm and swept my long hair back, tucking it behind my ear. A group somewhere in the pub erupted in loud cheers and laughter — they seemed to be in the middle of a bet. But I couldn't take my eyes off his face.

"I have no memory of ever showing kindness to anyone. So how did I end up meeting someone like you?"

I couldn't tell from his expression or tone whether he was twisting the situation or speaking sincerely. But even if the words were pointed, I could see that their edge was aimed at himself, not at me.

I watched his profile as he slowly dragged his tongue along the inside of his cheek, pulled away from the wall, and drank his beer — then I spoke, heavily.

"Yuni nuna and Juhan hyung both rely on you and respect you — as a senior, as someone they look up to. And... they think of you as someone they owe a great debt to."

"......"

"You probably already know that."

A belated anxiety crept over me — that I might have overstepped by speaking about their relationship, one that had existed long before I came along. My gaze dropped to my hands, which were fidgeting with the beer bottle.

He leaned his crossed arms on the table and stared out blankly at the room, then roughly swept his hair back with one hand.

"Whatever I've done for other people, whatever I've given — it was all shallow kindness that operated within limits where my own life stayed untouched. That's how I've always lived... You're the only person for whom I could tear down every boundary, give anything without limit."

His eyes came back to me. They were no longer calm — there were waves moving in them now.

He pushed himself upright from the table, reached out, and wrapped his hand around the back of my neck, pulling me in. The strength in his hand was gentle, but the lips that found mine were passionate. During the time we'd spent wandering around Boston today we had held hands, embraced, and even kissed, but this was different from the brief kiss we'd shared coming down the museum steps. This was a real kiss — lips pressing, inner walls rubbing together.

"It's fine. They'll just think we're an Alpha and Omega couple."

Sensing my tension about the people around us, he whispered quickly, his forehead still against mine.

"Or they can think whatever else they want."

He added, and pressed his lips to mine again. He didn't use his tongue, but it was a deep kiss — his whole mouth working to lick upward, grind flesh together, shift angles as they overlapped.

I don't know how he interpreted my tension, but it wasn't that I lacked the boldness for this kind of contact in a place like this — it was more that I simply didn't care what anyone thought of us.

With a wet sound of friction our lips parted, and the hand that had been cupping the back of my neck slowly slid down my shoulder and upper arm. Finally he lingered a moment, his fingertips grazing my skin, before letting go. He worked his lips — the ones that had just been on mine — and tapped the tabletop with his index finger.

"But no matter how much I've felt that way... it seems like there's been nothing for me to sacrifice for you."

"......"

"Money, time, affection. If you pour those kinds of things into someone and no loss comes of it — people don't call that a sacrifice, do they?"

I couldn't say anything as he smiled his brief, bitter smile and drank his beer. If I didn't consider the time I spent with him, or the affection I gave him, a sacrifice — then I had no ground to insist that what he gave me was one either.

And the money.

If the amounts he spent on me had no impact on his finances whatsoever... then regardless of how large those figures felt to me, it was true that they weren't a sacrifice on his part. At the very least, I had no basis to argue against his belief that they weren't.

He had been holding a deliberate cynical distance, and now he went quiet and exhaled a heavy breath. Then, one hand still around the neck of his beer bottle on the table, he looked at me.

"Whatever I give you, whatever I do — you don't have to worry about me or feel sorry. In fact, you don't even need to thank me. Because I'm not sacrificing anything."

He slid his long, straight fingers down the side of the bottle. His gaze followed his hand downward, and the delicate shadow of his lashes fell across his cheek.

"In Chicago, I told you that you had plenty of time to think things over at your own pace. But the truth is, I never had any intention of going to New York without you — and even when it seemed like you were being included in the decision, the real motive behind it was selfish and calculating."

He laughed, a sound like the click of his tongue, then released the bottle and looked at me directly.

"So, Seo Ihyeon-ssi."

"......"

"You will come to New York with me. That's the only answer I want."

His eyes held certainty and confidence — but beneath that, a plea so fierce it nearly resembled desperation.

I, for my part, had no real attachment to life in Korea or Seoul. My work wasn't there, and neither was anything I'd built. Morae nuna and Yeehan hyung had already left. If there was anything precious to name, it was only the few relationships tied to Phantom.

If his home was to shift to another city, and he wanted me with him, I had no intention of refusing and staying behind in Seoul. I was only worried about the motive — why he was abandoning his principles and rushing the New York opening, just as Yuni nuna had said.

I vaguely remembered nuna telling me to discuss Reed's proposal with him, but that had never been part of my thinking. If he was going to New York, there was even less reason for me to stubbornly go to Paris — away from the person who understood my paintings most deeply.

I looked into the depths of his eyes and slowly nodded. He smiled with his lips alone, without showing his teeth.

He wrapped his arm around the back of my neck as if cradling my head, swept my bangs back, and pressed his lips to my forehead. Then he kissed my eyelids, my cheeks, and finally my mouth. Ignoring the awkwardness and embarrassment of letting others see us like this, I closed my eyes and responded to his lips.

Maybe people would think exactly what he said — that we were an Alpha and Omega couple. It didn't matter what else they thought.

· · · · ·

Dinner preparations were in full swing at Marcus and Ellen's house. Not only Margaret, who managed the household in the couple's place, but Marcus and Ellen themselves had gone into the kitchen. They were genuinely delighted by the visit of their second son — who happened to be older than their first — even though his schedule was brief: arrived yesterday, leaving tomorrow.

When Marcus opened the front door in his apron, the smell of cooking that had already been drifting through the yard grew stronger. Since we had left the onion rings almost untouched at the pub, the scent of food set off a light twinge of appetite.

Ted — Marcus and Ellen's nine-year-old chocolate Labrador Retriever — came to the door with Marcus, tail wagging, welcoming us home.

"Not much to see in this neighborhood, is there? Must be dull for young people."

"It seemed like a good place to live — quiet and peaceful."

I answered with a smile, and it wasn't an exaggeration or politeness; it was genuinely how I felt about Boston. Knowing that he had lived in this city for two years made every landscape that caught my eye feel meaningful, and between the excitement and the quiet tension of being with him, I hadn't had a single moment to be bored.

Marcus smiled, fine wrinkles forming at the corners of his eyes, and patted my shoulder.

"Awi, give Jonas a call. When I told him you were here he was making such a fuss. You'll need to hear some complaints about being out of touch."

He said it to the retreating back of the man heading toward the kitchen, then winked at me.

After stopping by the kitchen to greet Ellen and Margaret and ask if there was anything I could help with, I was practically shooed back into the drawing room — preparations were nearly done. While he spoke with Jonas in Marcus's study, I waited in the first-floor drawing room, sipping a glass of wine Margaret had poured me and taking in the family photos decorating the room from its thickly carpeted corners to its walls.

"This is from Kun's thirteenth birthday party. Impossibly handsome even at that age, wasn't he?"

I turned to find Marcus standing at the drawing room entrance, smiling, pointing at the framed photo I was holding.

"He had so much popularity even while acting so standoffish."

At Marcus's words I looked down at the unsmiling face in the photo and laughed quietly to myself. It was hard to believe he had ever been an awkward teenager, but the boy in the picture was unmistakably him at first glance. Liu Weikun, with a slightly paler complexion and sharper edges than he has now.

"Mind if I borrow Kun for a moment before dinner? I have something to give him, and I think now might be the only time."

I said of course, and Marcus disappeared toward the study, telling me to make myself at home. In the cozy drawing room overlooking the darkening alley, I leisurely looked through the remaining photos. Among the family pictures there were quite a few of him — not only from his boyhood spent here, but spanning years of continued meetings that proved the depth of their bond, clearly tracing the arc of a boy growing into a man.

At dinner last night — which had stretched past four hours — Marcus had mentioned his childhood nickname: "Never Smile." A boy who never laughed.

Marcus and Ellen spoke about it lightly, as though it were all safely in the past, and he had simply laughed off their teasing. But as someone who had also lived through a childhood where smiling wasn't possible, I couldn't help but feel a heaviness about why he "couldn't smile."

It didn't need to be as extreme as laughing at a tumbling autumn leaf, as someone once described. But suppressing laughter — or tears, or joy, or anger — during the years when one should feel and express emotion most richly was a bad sign, in any form.

Recalling the story about how his parents had to divorce against their own wishes for his sake, I picked up another solo photograph of him, next to a picture of a younger Marcus and Ellen on a white boat. He was handsomely dressed in riding gear, standing beside a magnificent horse with a glossy coat. From a time unknown to me, someone younger than I am now was looking out at me with a challenging gaze.

"DD."

"......"

I turned slowly at the calm voice behind me. The thirty-two-year-old him was standing at the entrance to the drawing room.

I couldn't tell what he had called me. Perhaps he hadn't been calling me at all — perhaps he'd simply said a word. Holding the frame, I turned my body a little more toward him and managed a smile.

"I didn't catch that. What did you say?"

"Diamond Dust... have you ever heard of it?"

His voice was flat and dry. After speaking, he swallowed hard.

"I know it as the phenomenon where ice crystals in the atmosphere sparkle when they catch sunlight..."

"......"

Leaning his shoulder against the wall at the entrance — there was no separate door — he nodded.

Diamond Dust.

Its other name is sebing — fine ice.

It's a phenomenon where tiny ice crystals, suspended in the air near the ground, catch the sun's rays and shine. Unlike snow falling from above, it looks as though the dust floating in the atmosphere has transformed into jewels and begun to glitter — which is how it got its name.

Not as widely known as the aurora in Canada or Iceland, or the mirages of the desert, but I had read about it in a book once and always thought that if I ever had the chance, I'd like to see it for myself.

"Marcus brought it up just now. A colleague of his traveled to Harbin last winter, apparently... and said that if you're lucky enough to encounter a large-scale Diamond Dust phenomenon, it's an incredibly mysterious and fantastical experience."

My curiosity about why the subject had come up was satisfied, but his demeanor concerned me more than the story itself. He wasn't speaking with the easy lightness of someone mentioning a topic that had simply come up in conversation.

He was trying to act normal, but beneath the calm surface I could feel a restlessness — an unsettled, deeply stirred emotion, as though something in him didn't know where to go. I set the frame back in its place and turned fully toward him.

He stepped away from the wall, came closer, and cupped my cheek. As the distance closed, the tension filling his entire body became more palpable. It seemed as though containing the emotion locked inside himself was difficult — but he showed no intention of letting it break free.

"Later... would you like to go see it together?"

"......"

"After the New York branch opens without a hitch... once everything settles down... just the two of us, taking our time."

He smiled faintly — or tried to. But he looked exhausted. There was something more he seemed to want to say, yet I knew it would be useless to press him. He was someone who could decide for himself the most fitting moment to speak.

I simply nodded and wrapped my arms around his waist.

· · · · ·

Like the night before, dinner was lively, warm, and full of easy warmth. They were considerate enough to make sure I didn't feel left out — I hadn't shared those years with them — and kept the conversation going by telling me their memories. Because of that, I was able to hear many stories about his two years in Boston: stories that perhaps no one at Phantom, not even Inwu hyung or Shushu, had ever heard.

His popularity back then, even while being homeschooled and not attending school — letters and gifts never stopped arriving. Ellen said it felt like living with a superstar, and that she felt strangely empty for a while after he left. The story of how the "Never Smile Boy" finally broke into a bright, open smile after completing a half-marathon, having been talked into entering by Ellen and Marcus, both devoted to running. And the ten-line letter he left behind on the day that stoic boy finally returned to Hong Kong for good.

As Ellen and Marcus told these stories, he would occasionally scratch his brow, sigh, or drag a hand over his face, clearly uncomfortable. He tried several times to steer the conversation somewhere else, without success.

Knowing him as well as I did — knowing how skillfully he could guide any conversation toward where he wanted it to go, and how he could shut one down if he disliked the direction, even using blunter or more provocative means if necessary — I found it new and quietly remarkable to see him willingly offering his past as material, even while visibly reluctant.

To Ellen and Marcus, who were now in their mid-sixties, he seemed like both a son and a grandson. And though I couldn't know for certain, I thought that most ordinary grandparents would feel exactly as happy as they did now — reminiscing about their grandchild's childhood during a long-awaited visit.

"Jonas had a particularly hard time after Kun left. Even though he'd initially called him arrogant and unsociable and resented him for it, within a month they were practically inseparable — like brothers."

Marcus said it with a calm smile, looking down at the table as if revisiting good days gone by. Ellen lightly teased him while patting the glossy back of Ted, who was weaving through the legs of everyone gathered around the table.

"You had a harder time of it than Jonas. What are you talking about? You moped around for a whole month like someone who'd just been dumped."

Jonas was Marcus and Ellen's son.

When I first heard about Jonas over dinner the night before, I couldn't help but feel a kind of excitement. Jonas — two years younger than him, now working as a researcher for a pharmaceutical company in a city called Pittsburgh — was, in the most literal sense, a miraculous being, born between Ellen, a female Alpha, and Marcus, a male Beta.

The uterus, ovaries, and eggs of a female Alpha are usually not as fully developed as those of a Beta woman, I had learned for the first time last night — but the degree varies from person to person, and while the percentage is very low, pregnancy is sometimes possible, and with medical assistance that possibility can be increased further.

Marcus and Ellen had wanted a child, and Ellen was fortunate enough to have mature eggs. After several difficult failures, they miraculously had Jonas without a surrogate.

Of course, the conditions Ellen had at the time were exceptional — but even nearly thirty years after Jonas's birth, the procedure still came with high barriers: success rates remained low, and the cost was enormous. Ellen and Marcus explained that its development and wider adoption had inevitably been slow, due to limited demand.

I didn't know yet whether Morae nuna and Yeehan hyung were aware of this procedure, or what they would think if they learned of it — I didn't even know whether the two of them wanted children. But as soon as I returned to Seoul, I planned to email them whatever materials I could put together, with help from Ellen, Marcus, and him.

I didn't think having children was the completion or proof of love. But the fact that even a slim chance might exist as an option for them made something in me light up.

If the procedure were to go forward, it would cost a great deal. But if they wanted to know — even just the probability, through testing — Mr. Lim should be the one to pay for it, willingly. That thought settled into me with the solidity of a decision. It was close to something harsher: a clear, fierce will rooted in resentment and the desire to make him answer for something. Whether or not it was like me to think that way, I had no intention of revisiting it or pulling back.

After walnut pie for dessert, several bottles of wine had been emptied, and the candles scattered across the table had burned low — a few had gone out entirely — when Ted began whimpering anxiously and circling the same spot. Ellen stood, saying he needed to go out, while Marcus was too deep in the wine to manage it, and he volunteered to go with her.

He glanced my way briefly — perhaps uneasy at the thought of leaving Marcus and me alone while the conversation was rolling along so freely — but soon set down his wine glass and got up, adding a mild concern that Marcus might want to call it on the wine for the evening.

"Ah... I've become an old man now. When Kun first came to this house I was a vigorous forty-something — I could carry on past midnight without feeling a thing."

Marcus watched the broad, steady line of his back disappearing into the dining room with Ellen, and smiled a smile that held both warmth and a quiet sadness, shaking his head slightly.

"Both Kun and Jonas — when did those teenage boys, the ones still trying to figure out who they were, turn into fully grown young men like this? They're not even in their twenties anymore. They've grown up."

"......"

"I never thought I'd live to see Liu Weikun bring someone home to meet us."

Marcus leaned forward from his relaxed posture, putting emphasis on the word "someone" in a teasing tone, and went on to describe how remarkable an occasion this was, given what he knew of his personality. He added that having me visit alongside him brought him several times more joy than if he'd come alone.

I smiled quietly to myself — at least the people around him all seemed to hold the same view of his romantic life — and drank a little more wine.

Recalling the conversation from the previous evening about Jonas, Marcus asked me a few questions about Morae and Yeehan. He didn't probe for details, since it concerned people not present, but Marcus was the kind of person whose experience and wisdom ran deep enough to grasp the heart of a situation from just a few brief hints.

"Ellen and I didn't have it easy either."

Tracing the base of his wine glass with one hand, Marcus lowered his voice a little.

"To have had a son with her, and then to have stayed with her for decades — until we've gotten this old — even now it sometimes feels unbelievable. There was a time when I had no confidence in our future."

Watching Marcus smile as though walking through a dream, speaking about his spouse of decades not like a long-married man but like someone newly in love, I felt a quiet smile settle on my own lips.

"Was your decision to study pheromones... also heavily shaped by Ellen?"

I gathered the nerve to ask, and Marcus nodded slowly, still smiling.

"As a Beta, I can never experience the influence of pheromones firsthand... but I wanted to know her. To understand her, even if only through theory."

In the quiet room, punctuated only by the occasional soft pop of a candle dying, Marcus's voice continued, low and steady.

"From the time we first met in high school, she was already a Golden who could control her pheromones almost perfectly — so I never needed to be conscious of their existence while I was with her. But the more I studied... even while I loved her... I came to realize that because I couldn't feel them, and because she never complained, I had been treating her pheromones as though they were a fantasy. As though they simply didn't exist."

Marcus paused for a moment and drained the small amount of wine remaining at the bottom of his glass. I looked down at the candle in its holder — the flame guttering, not long for this world — and waited for him to go on.

"Becoming a Golden doesn't mean pheromones disappear. It only means they're being suppressed. Even though I couldn't experience them directly... as a Beta, I could imagine and empathize with the stress and weight of having to forcibly hold back a drive — like hunger, or the need to sleep."

"......"

"I came to realize I had been treating her with an outlook that was thoroughly, completely Beta-centric."

Marcus's words hit me like a blow to the skull. I felt dizzy — disoriented and ashamed. My gaze couldn't settle on Marcus across from me and drifted restlessly through the air.

"It took about a year to find my footing again. Suddenly she felt like a being from another dimension, another planet — someone I could never truly understand — and I had no confidence I could make things work. Looking back now, I was pitiably weak and emotional. I had never really thought about her as an Alpha before that point, which made everything that much more disorienting."

I bit lightly on my lower lip. I stared at the traces he had left in the empty chair beside me — the plate neatly cleared of food, the knife and fork placed just so, the napkin folded on the empty seat. Every small detail reminded me of him.

He had never once asked me to understand him as an Alpha.

"If I had been an Omega, we could have been a perfect match. Even if I had been an Alpha, I could have at least understood and empathized with her on the subject of pheromones — not only in theory, but in practice. Why am I... just one of countless, ordinary... Beta motes of dust? In the end, I even sank into that kind of ugly self-denial."

I lifted my half-full glass and drank the wine like water. The hazy warmth of the alcohol seemed to vanish all at once, leaving my mind sharply clear — which meant I needed more.

"Among Betas, only the animalistic urgency of pheromones — their negative side — gets emphasized. But that's really only the story of a few irresponsible Alphas and Omegas who neglect pheromone management. Most Alphas and Omegas, unless they're Goldens, spend their entire lives taking medication to keep their pheromones in check."

For a Beta, it's like having a chronic condition — asthma, diabetes, that kind of thing.

Whether the alcohol or the fatigue was catching up to him, Marcus rubbed his face with his palm and added that in a dry voice. His light brown eyes, edged with gentle lines, looked a little bloodshot.

"When I came to understand that pheromones aren't simply dangerous — not just a drug that invites assault — but that between two people who love each other, an Alpha and an Omega, they can serve as the conduit for the deepest kind of connection, something close to liberation... it became even harder to bear. Even knowing she wasn't sharing that connection with anyone else, the mere fact that a world of closeness existed within her that I could never reach — and that I had no possibility of sharing it — was enough to send me reeling with groundless jealousy and a sense of inadequacy."

I reached for the half-full wine bottle nearby and refilled my glass. Marcus extended his empty glass as well. I remembered his words of concern, and hesitated — but I couldn't refuse to pour.

Ted barked twice from the backyard. It sounded as though Ellen and he were making the most of their first stretch of time alone together since yesterday, taking it slowly. Marcus and I focused on our wine in silence for a moment.

Everyone around him had described him as a Golden Alpha who could control his pheromones perfectly — a rare Alpha who deeply disliked and disdained any pheromonal influence.

He had never once expressed a wish that I might have been an Omega instead. Because of that, I had been entirely at ease. I had forgotten he was an Alpha. Or at least, I hadn't taken it seriously. With a Beta-centric way of thinking, just as Marcus described. The same way I had been with Morae nuna.

I hadn't tried to understand what it meant to be an Alpha — what kind of suppression was required, or how much of a burden it was. I had simply assumed that since they didn't complain, pheromones must not be a significant part of their lives as long as they didn't interfere with daily routines.

And yet — on some level — the existence of an Omega who could freely enjoy his pheromones, who could reach the depths of him through them, had bothered me. Just as it had bothered Marcus, once.

But it wasn't because he had shown me any ambiguity. When you desire someone who isn't you, the weak anxiety that rises from within can feed absurd imaginings. That is perhaps an ugly facet of instinct difficult to avoid even for someone with a mind as mature as Marcus's.

"The thought that if she remained with me — a Beta — she would spend her entire life denying and suppressing her natural self as an Alpha, losing every opportunity for free connection... I concluded I was a flawed being incapable of loving her completely, and for about a year, we were apart."

Marcus rubbed his mouth and laughed at himself. His neatly trimmed silver beard glinted in the candlelight. Gently swirling the glass — refilled, and already more than half empty again — he smiled at me across the table.

"But now — perhaps because we were an Alpha and a Beta — even after daily life together became routine, we never lost the awareness that happiness wasn't guaranteed, and we were able to go on being grateful for each other's presence for a long time. That's how I've come to think about it. Because we can never forget that being an Alpha and a Beta together requires constant effort — to keep choosing each other, to understand each other more fully."

Marcus looked down briefly at Ellen's empty chair beside him. He smiled gently, as though she were sitting there, then stretched his arm across the table and offered a toast. I gladly extended my glass.

A love that doesn't take the happiness of each day together for granted. That is perhaps the most difficult form of love to actually practice. Like the way we don't consciously register the preciousness of the sky, the earth, the air, every single day. And yet it wasn't impossible. Or rather — it was perhaps something worth striving for willingly, for the sake of the person you love most. Far more than filling special anniversaries with occasions.

The sound of the back door opening and closing drifted through from the hallway, followed by Ellen's and his voices. Marcus quickly drained the rest of his wine, destroying the evidence. We looked at each other and smiled without a sound.

"What were you two talking about? Badmouthing me again?"

He bent down from behind me, wrapped his arms around my waist, and kissed my cheek. At that display of affection, Marcus and Ellen both widened their eyes and looked at each other. Marcus in particular gave a dry cough and reached for water instead of wine.

"I'm terrified I'm going to get a breakup notice the moment we get back to Seoul. Please, no more badmouthing — for real."

With his joke, the long dinner came to its end. We all carried the dishes to the kitchen together so that Margaret would have an easier time cleaning up the next day, and then left the dining room. Marcus, who had seemed fine while seated, staggered slightly as the alcohol caught up with him the moment he stood. By the time we reached the hallway, his face was flushed a deep red. He tried to support him toward the bedroom, but Marcus waved him off, insisting he was fine, and disappeared into the bedroom on the first floor with Ted.

I was watching Marcus's retreating back with a flicker of worry, about to head up to the second floor, when Ellen lightly took hold of my arm. He turned to look, said he'd go up ahead, and gave the back of my neck a gentle brief squeeze before heading upstairs. Ellen, watching him go with an expression that mingled playfulness and something softer, stroked my arm from where she stood at the foot of the stairs.

"I was always worried I might never see that boy pour his heart into someone — and want that feeling returned. He was so stubbornly set against letting anyone into his life..."

She told me this visit was the most precious gift for both her and Marcus, and kissed my cheek with the words. It felt like far too much gratitude for someone who had done nothing but be loved by him — but I smiled back at her.

He was organizing his things in the room. I tried to help, but he said it was nearly done and nudged me toward the bathroom to wash up first. When I came out from the shower, everything had been tidied and even the lighting had been dimmed to make sleep easier. He told me it was fine to go ahead and sleep as he went into the bathroom, but instead of lying down on the bed, I settled at the table by the window and opened my drawing notebook.

I had taken some photos with my phone, but I wanted to capture the feeling of this room in sketches. Next to the ones I had drawn last night and this morning, I added glimpses of the street visible from the window — the dry, intertwined branches of the roadside trees, the old buildings of red brick, the soft glow of the gas streetlamps that had become a symbol of Beacon Hill. Landscapes that made it feel as though I had stepped back into the early twentieth century.

I was moving my pencil and imagining the gaze of a thirteen-year-old boy who must have sat in this very spot some twenty years ago, looking out at this same street — when he came back into the room.

He had just finished showering. Thin indoor trousers, bare chest. As he came closer, I felt the cool dampness coming off his skin.

"Aren't you tired? We have to be up early tomorrow."

He stood behind me, hands beginning at my shoulders in a light press before sliding down to my chest as he lowered himself. He rested his chin on my shoulder, looked down at the sketch, then turned his head and pressed his lips to the nape of my neck. The lips felt briefly cool on first contact, then warmed.

"What are you thinking about so hard?"

I stroked the solid arm wrapped around my chest and turned slightly toward him.

"Just... what Awi must have been like during the time he spent in this room. Something like that..."

He gave a dry laugh near my ear. Keeping one arm around my neck, he knelt on the floorboards to my left and softly stroked my lower belly and chest with his other hand.

"I think you've already heard enough from Marcus and Ellen over the past two days."

But there were stories I could never have heard — stories too heavy to share with a laugh. Those kinds of stories weren't for a dinner table, not with people you'd been apart from for years and only had two days with before saying goodbye again.

"Did you... train with Marcus here to become a Golden Alpha?"

"......"

In the low light, he looked up at me without speaking, then let out a long breath, rose, and settled into the chair across from me.

"I did. I lived here with my mother for two years. So much changed at once back then, and I was a typical bad adolescent about it — expressing all my dissatisfaction and confusion through silence and refusal."

He said it as though he'd made a joke, looking at me with a faint smirk, but I couldn't smile. Seeing that, he shifted his posture, leaned his back against the window frame, and swept his bangs aside.

"As you've seen, Ellen and Marcus are good people, and Jonas followed me well — so it isn't entirely a grim memory. But if you look only at the problems that were mine and mine alone, setting aside relationships — you could say that period was when the foundation for my current, obnoxiously twisted personality was laid."

He rested his right arm on the back of the chair, his left on the table, leaned his head back against the window, and looked at me again. And he smiled again. And again I couldn't. He watched me quietly for a moment, then turned his gaze toward the darker end of the room.

"Some people want to be special. To stand out from others through exceptional ability or a distinct way of being — to be placed above them, even. That desire tends to run strongest during the period when a sense of self is just beginning to form. But when that specialness isn't about superior ability or unique personality — when it involves a kind of power that goes beyond those things — for some people, being special is simply another word for isolation. Like being pushed past the boundary, separated from the group, severed from it..."

Without meaning to, I let the pencil I'd been gripping go slack and set it down, wiping the sweat from my palm against my pants. He picked up the pencil I had put down with his left hand and spun it between his fingers with practiced ease.

"Just as it isn't a child's fault to have been born into a household full of violence — my being who I am isn't anyone's mistake or crime. No matter how many times I told myself that, though, everyone around me kept saying I would need to control myself strictly from now on... and so my thoughts inevitably turned negative. And on top of that, my parents — who genuinely loved and respected each other — had to divorce because of me. A thirteen-year-old had every reason to hate himself."

"May I ask... why your parents had to get divorced?"

He lifted his head from the window and looked at me for a moment longer than usual.

"...Why?"

"I never imagined Seo Ihyeon would be the one to ask about this first. I'm glad you've become curious enough about me to want to know..."

Glad, and on the other hand — what else? He left the thought unfinished and smiled with a vagueness that gave nothing away, tapping the eraser end of the pencil lightly against the tabletop.

"It was a precautionary measure. For something that hadn't happened yet."

"......"

"My father's maternal family is a quite prominent family in England. My father's maternal grandfather held a dukedom — one of only about thirty remaining in England at the time — and now my father's eldest maternal uncle, my maternal grandfather's first son, has inherited the title. Modern noble titles are largely ceremonial, but not entirely so at the level of a dukedom. In European society, including England, and in high-society circles around the world, the title still carries real weight — and in fact, my father's maternal family accumulated enormous wealth and influence precisely by maintaining it."

He was rubbing the pencil eraser across the tabletop now, though there was nothing there to erase. I just stared at him, lips parted, forgetting to blink, completely unprepared for the direction this story was taking.

"Simply put — you can think of it as my parents divorcing to protect my custody and guardianship from them. They wanted to make the most perfect Alpha — a 'Special Alpha' — the heir to the family. And they were ruthless enough to pursue that regardless of the wishes of any of the parties involved, meaning me and both of my parents."

To fully protect him from them until he came of age, his parents had decided to divorce. His father's supposed infidelity was used as the grounds, so that custody would be granted to his mother. His father had, of course, never been unfaithful — it was all a plan the two of them had agreed upon together.

He couldn't help feeling guilty about his parents' divorce. The story he had told me a long time ago came back to me now with the force of something just said. His words — that he had had to constantly ask himself whether he was worth such a price — felt as vivid as though I had heard them yesterday. With this as the reason behind it all, no one could have forced happiness on him.

When he finally spoke again, after a long silence in which he seemed lost somewhere inside himself, the detached, observational tone he had been using — as though recounting someone else's experience — had disappeared.

"I've always chosen to be alone, telling myself that showing who I was, or knowing the hidden side behind other people's faces, was too much trouble, too much of a burden. But the truth is..."

He gripped the pencil so tightly that the veins along the back of his hand stood out more sharply, and lowered his voice.

"I was afraid."

As though he couldn't quite believe the words he had just let out, he gave a short, dry laugh and shook his head. Then, in a voice so parched it seemed it could go out at any moment, he struggled to add:

"Because I thought that someone like me — different, outside the lines — could never be accepted by anyone."

Everyone admired Golden Alphas and Golden Omegas. Even Betas did. They were always portrayed in films and dramas as the attractive elite. But as he said, for some people, being special was simply loneliness. Specialness was ultimately a relative thing, and how it was received was bound to differ from person to person.

I bowed my head, thinking that if I hadn't heard Marcus's story first, I might not have understood even half of what he was saying now.

"You said it before, Director... that new stories would come to me — ones I'd want to paint."

His gaze, which had been fixed on his own hand holding the pencil, slowly shifted to me.

"I was young then. I'm still young now. And because everything that happened was too heavy, too overwhelming for me to handle — I felt entirely crushed, unable to offer any resistance. I had resigned myself. Accepted that the bleak, inhuman daily life of barely staying alive was what the rest of my life would look like."

I drew a deep breath, letting my chest fill. Under the table I clasped my hands tightly together. Not even a dog barking — not a single car had passed since I entered this room — and yet outside, a man and a woman were making their way down the silent alley, talking warmly. Their voices approached from the east and faded westward, behind where I sat. When their footsteps had grown faint, I spoke again.

"But after meeting people at Phantom, and learning about their different lives... strangely, even just that made the weight pressing down on me feel lighter."

Putting my thoughts into words was still not easy for me, and I worried that I was rambling incoherently, but I didn't stop. As far as I knew, he was a very patient person in conversation. At least with me.

"That cliché phrase — that the best way to comfort someone else's wound is to show your own. Before, it just sounded like selfish relief, like knowing you're not the only one struggling. But now... I think I can understand it as being about empathy and encouragement."

"You mean you want to deal with wounds. Through painting."

I relaxed my shoulders and laughed softly at his clean, precise summation. Then I slumped a little further into my seat and rubbed the back of my neck.

"But... right now, I'm someone who can't even properly face his own wounds. What I really need to paint isn't Juhan hyung, or the impressive landscapes I encountered while traveling. And yet right now — I don't think I can paint anything beyond that."

He had been sitting nearby with his head slightly tilted, listening. Now he got up. He rummaged through the Boston bag where he'd packed his things and produced cigarettes and a lighter, offering me one as well. I looked up at him standing there — larger than usual in the dark — for a moment, then took a cigarette from the open pack and put it between my lips.

He cracked the window to let the smoke out, then sat back down in his original spot, and I watched his profile for a long time as he lit his cigarette with the practiced ease that I lacked. I tried to imitate the way he pulled the smoke in short and deep, then exhaled in a thin stream through a barely parted mouth — but it wasn't easy.

He inhaled, deepening the hollows in his cheekbones — sharper-seeming than when we first met — and spoke with the cigarette held between his fingers.

"I don't know how Seo Ihyeon evaluates himself, but he's someone who tries — however slowly — to face himself and his surroundings honestly. Don't talk about painting as though it's a hurdle that has to be cleared."

"......"

"Even if you haven't overcome anything, try touching the wound. A wound is like a fingerprint — it belongs only to you. What gets painted by touching it can't overlap with anyone else's work. Instead of waiting for wounds to heal on their own, you keep pressing on them, keep aggravating them, keep transforming them into something that can be seen or heard — and then you put them in front of people. Isn't that the role of art? No matter how much times change — even if serious contemplation is no longer the only meaning art can carry — I believe that what ultimately reaches the deepest part of people, what forces them to expose and confront what they don't want to see, isn't the destruction of form or mockery of art's traditional meaning."

When he tapped ash onto the small decorative dish he'd brought over in lieu of an ashtray, a groove like a dimple appeared along the edge of the bare muscle of his shoulder.

He turned his body — which had been sideways through all of this — and rested his elbows on the table, passing the hand holding the cigarette over his brow.

"The wounds and flaws we most want to hide and deny... may in fact be the individuality and identity that make us unique — distinct from everyone else."

"......"

In the silence, smoking slowly, we traced each other's eyes and lips with our gaze. He broke away first — lowering his head with a heavy, quiet laugh.

"I never imagined a day would come when I'd be having a conversation like this in this room, with someone I love. The me back then probably wouldn't have believed it if you'd told him."

The September night wind coming in through the open window in Boston was not entirely gentle. He stubbed out his cigarette, stood, and leaned over with one hand braced on the back of my chair. He took the half-smoked cigarette from my hand, pressed out the ember, and kissed me. His lips were dry, but the tongue that parted into me, filling the inside, was hot and wet.

Right there, I cupped his cheek — thinking of him at thirteen, buried under the particular loneliness of being special, the alienation of being something outside the universal. I hoped that someday I could offer him a comfort deeper than Alienation. That I could help bring about a maturity in which wounds were accepted as part of what made him himself. If not for my sake — then for his.