D.D.

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 Yeehyeon 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 Yeehyeon 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.