Visitors

I hadn't expected the number of visitors to keep increasing right up until the final day of the fair. If anything, it seemed like the largest crowd came flooding in on that last day.

Until then, I'd barely needed to help with customer service, but on the final day I had to assist with basic guidance — and sales were highest that day, too. Since the prices of the artworks weren't trivial, many general visitors seemed to have spent the whole fair carefully comparing pieces before finally making up their minds on the last day.

Phantom's performance at the fair was excellent.

We hadn't quite hit the target, but only because the other members were such ambitious people that they'd set the bar high to begin with; the results were still more than impressive. Even the members who were ideally a little disappointed seemed realistically satisfied.

With five or six hours left until closing, out of roughly 120 pieces, all but about ten had been sold — excluding the works by Shushu, who had an exhibition contract with a Chicago gallery.

"Are you tired?"

Yuni nuna slipped over and tapped my shoulder as I kept checking my old sports watch. I must have looked like I was counting down until it was over, so I gave an embarrassed smile and scratched the back of my neck.

"No. I'm waiting for someone…."

Nuna gave me a curious look but didn't press for details. A visitor showed interest in one of the ten remaining pieces, and she quickly put on her professional smile and moved toward them.

The person I was waiting for was the family that had visited our booth on the second day of the fair.

The father appeared to be of Northeast Asian descent, the mother Western with a hint of Latin heritage — a fairly large family with four children. The eldest son looked about my age, and the youngest seemed around ten. Despite their casual clothes, they had visited our booth with the serious faces of critics, their children spanning a wide range of ages and personalities.

Their expressions while examining the artwork were so grave that at first I wasn't certain they were even a family. But if they weren't, that unique combination — transcending race and age — couldn't be explained any other way.

"We're looking for a new painting to hang in our living room."

It was the youngest of the family who turned and spoke to me as I waited behind them. The child had lovely curly hair like the mother and rosy cheeks, with dark eyes like the father.

I was worried about my clumsy English, but with Yuni nuna and Juhan hyung both busy attending to other customers, I had no choice. My smile was probably stiff and awkward, but I forced myself to smile and stepped closer.

"This fall I'm turning eleven. I want to change the painting in the living room to celebrate."

"Oh, really? That's wonderful. Happy early birthday."

Even just the birthday wish made the child beam as if they'd received a splendid gift.

"This painting is a candidate too."

The small finger pointed directly at Inwu hyung's work. It was the only piece of his we had brought to this fair.

"So far, this one is in first place."

Inwu hyung's work had a simple, clear form at first glance — almost cartoon-like — but its colors were dark and heavy, and parts rendered through techniques of separation and disassembly gave it a grotesque quality. It wasn't the sort of painting you'd expect a young child to choose.

"May I ask what you like about this painting?"

"I have secrets too. When I don't want to talk about something but my family keeps prying and it stresses me out — it felt like my heart in those moments. So we connected."

The child's clear answer made me look at hyung's work again. The cartoonish figure in the painting certainly appeared to be suffering from unwanted attention and coercion. The suffering was just caricatured as if it were no big deal.

Exposing the raw face of pain by digging all the way to the end could be art — but so could an honest confession of one's own weakness, the admission that one lacked the courage to do so. That was why I didn't dislike Inwu hyung's work.

As the child put it, we'd connected — and I felt it too, through this piece, and smiled in understanding.

"Even at ten years old, I have secrets, you know."

The child said it emphatically, glancing around at the family as if making sure they heard, and the family laughed heartily, utterly endeared.

"I think I understand what you mean. I relate to that, too. I really hope this piece gets chosen."

Children past their early teens have their own plans for their free time, so it wasn't easy for a family of six to coordinate schedules and visit an event like this together on the same day.

The mere fact that they had all gathered and were seriously discussing which painting to choose for their shared living room was a mild shock.

No — more than a shock, it became an opportunity to reflect on a dimension of art I had never considered before: the perspective of the people who look at paintings, who buy them and live with them.

I had never been an artist, and I'd stopped painting long before I even concretely dreamed of becoming one, so I had never really thought about the concept of someone else owning my work. For the past version of me, painting was an act focused entirely on self-expression: I paint.

But that day, through that family, I could finally envision what it would actually mean if I accepted his offer and became an artist under Phantom: my paintings could become someone else's property. I might meet people who would assign their own meaning to my work, bring it into their everyday spaces, and weave it into their lives.

Suddenly, that felt like the only way a painting could stay alive instead of dying.

"What if someone had signed a contract in the meantime?"

"It didn't sell, so we're fine. I really did leave right on time."

I turned toward the sound — the kind of ordinary bickering that could pass between any family members. It was the guests I'd been waiting for.

Amidst the squabbling of what appeared to be the eldest and second eldest, the family returned to Phantom and ultimately purchased Inwu hyung's work. Rather than arranging delivery, they took the painting with them on the spot.

Watching their backs disappear into the bustling crowd, the artwork tucked carefully under one arm, I felt envious of Inwu hyung.

While honor or financial success might take priority for some artists, wouldn't it be the greatest happiness for most artists to have their work chosen by someone who truly understood it? That presumptuous guess kept knocking at the shell of my dull, neglected heart.

And it wasn't just them.

Teenagers with backpacks who came laughing and attached their own strange interpretations to the works; couples strolling through the venue on a casual date; affectionate-looking parents and children; even an elderly couple conversing about the artwork with considerable insight and knowledge...

Throughout the entire fair, I was deeply struck by the atmosphere itself — one where not only art industry professionals, but a wide variety of general visitors could freely enjoy and comfortably embrace art.

If I could paint works that would share in people's ordinary days and special occasions — resting on their sofas, placed in their entryways, beside their beds — becoming a part of their lives rather than being solemnly appreciated as objects of admiration and awe... couldn't a new era open up, different from what painting had meant to me before?

If that was too grand a sentiment, perhaps I could still discover a new meaning, different from before.

I couldn't be sure whether the power to speak through painting still remained in me.

But the thought of a painting's potential — to be reborn not merely as a painting I made but as someone else's painting, by becoming part of someone's life — felt like a chisel and hammer grinding and striking against my numbed heart. It was undeniable excitement.

I don't know whether this was the strategy he had planned and intended.

But even for Golden Alpha Liu Weikun, he couldn't have anticipated the exact situation where such a family would visit our booth and create an episode like this.

However, if he had been aiming for the shock and stimulation I would receive through people who freely enjoy and love art in their own ways... then I would have to acknowledge the effectiveness of his strategy in bringing me along on this trip.