Fiancé (2)

Being half-pulled along by Liu, Yeehyeon asked in an anxious voice.

"Didn't we just finish the final check?"

"Come here."

Liu pressed the heavy main door open with his shoulder, pulling Yeehyeon's hand — looking exactly like a mischievous boy slipping away from the group to find a quiet corner alone with the person he loved.

"Did Javier really call for you?"

"No. I just said that."

The interior of the building was as richly decorated as the garden — Jana roses, lavender, ranunculus, and eucalyptus. The banister of the gracefully curving staircase was a cascading bed of flowers from base to top.

The lower floor was deserted. Only Javier's voice and a few others drifted down from the second-floor hall above. Liu stood facing Yeehyeon and gently lifted the tip of his chin.

"You looked too nervous. I brought us out here for a moment to breathe."

"How did you know I was nervous?"

Liu let out a low laugh.

"I'm the man you're marrying today. What would I be worth if I couldn't tell that much?"

Keeping his hand beneath Yeehyeon's chin, he gave him a quick, light kiss.

"Hey, grooms! What are you two doing down there? Save the kissing for the ceremony."

Javier's voice called down from the railing above.

Liu had asked him for ten minutes alone with Yeehyeon. Since all the preparations were complete, Javier ushered the waiting staff away and left them to it.

Silence settled around them. It felt as if they were the only two people left inside this grand, still space.

Liu fiddled idly with Yeehyeon's bowtie, a contented smile spreading across his face.

"My husband is just too charming."

The two had chosen elegant, creamy white tuxedos for their wedding attire. Neither wore black while the other wore white — the color and fabric were the same, only the cut different.

Liu had emphasized a classic formality with a double-breasted jacket and wide satin lapels, while Yeehyeon had chosen a single-breasted cut that suited his long limbs and composed manner.

"That's not the first time you've said that today."

"Saying it this many times isn't nearly enough for how I feel right now."

"......"

Yeehyeon's chin dipped down again, and Liu gently tilted it back up until their eyes met.

"Are you really becoming my husband now?"

"I really am. If I weren't... it would be embarrassing for me too."

Liu smiled at Yeehyeon, who wore shyness and sweetness in the same breath. He touched their noses together lightly and spoke in a voice that came out like a slow exhale.

"Does it feel real? That in thirty minutes, we're getting married right here."

His lips hovered close enough to touch, then slid toward Yeehyeon's ear. The warm breath pierced through, and Yeehyeon's shoulders tensed.

"Tonight, we're having our first time as a married couple."

At the whispered words, Yeehyeon bit down lightly on his own lower lip.

"Sleeping with Seo Yeehyeon as a married man. I'm genuinely looking forward to it."

Rather than scolding him out of embarrassment, Yeehyeon laughed and gave his shoulder a light shove. Liu, pushed back with a smile that was somehow boyish and assured and happy and a little dangerous all at once, returned to his side and held out his hand.

"Shall we go up the stairs first — just the two of us?"

"......"

Yeehyeon looked up at the grand, curved staircase leading to the second floor.

Unlike usual, the two of them would be walking up the carpeted stairs together today. Guests would be waiting on the second-floor balcony to celebrate their arrival. At the top, in a hall flooded with light from the skylight — in the very place where they had first met — they would exchange their vows and kiss. They would become husbands in front of the people they loved most.

Yeehyeon understood what it meant to go up these stairs first, just the two of them — and what Liu intended by suggesting it. A rite that belonged to only them.

Yeehyeon smiled at Liu and clasped his hand in return.

Holding hands, they began climbing together, matching their pace.

Though 'Phantom' had undergone extensive renovation, its bones remained the same. As Yeehyeon climbed hand in hand with Liu — both of them dressed in the same cream-white formal wear — he felt as though the spring of time was being wound backward.

He was returning to the moment he had first seen the man beside him.

He had appeared on these very stairs. From his perfectly styled hair that seemed to float lightly, to his striking features and sophisticated suit — he had been a grand and dazzling figure. He was the first person who had made Yeehyeon think, perhaps this is what a Golden Alpha looks like.

He remembered the first words Liu had spoken to him — issued with the guardedness he showed toward any outsider.

"How do you know Manager Han?"

Just as Kwon Juhan had said. Liu back then was undeniably prickly.

Not because he had particularly disliked Seo Yeehyeon — he treated everyone that way until he had fully accepted them as his own. Baek Yuni and Kwon Juhan had comforted Yeehyeon at the time, saying they had all gone through the same thing. He understood now that this was true. But it hadn't been comforting to hear then.

It wasn't as though Yeehyeon was typically the kind of person to be bothered by coldness or distance. Yet every time that man's gaze swept past him without pausing, he had felt like a puppy that had been entirely overlooked. He had wanted Liu to look at him with warmth — the way he looked at Juhan, at Yuni — to look after him even while pretending to be annoyed, to joke with him.

Because he had liked him.

At the very least, because he had started to feel something for that man.

"Why are you smiling?"

"I was thinking about the day we first met here."

"Ah... if we start on that particular chapter, I wouldn't have enough mouths to apologize."

Yeehyeon smiled at Liu, who was already wincing preemptively. And he thought back over the path they had walked together.

Liu no longer put up walls with strangers. He wasn't cold. Elderly people stopped him on the street to ask for directions; children in supermarkets tugged on his sleeve asking him to reach cereal from the high shelf. Despite his height and build, there was nothing intimidating about him anymore. He looked like the kind of person you could ask anything of. The journey they had made together had left its traces on his face, in the subtle warmth of his expressions.

"I haven't lived very long — but I think life is truly unpredictable."

"Tell me about it."

As the two of them reached the top of the stairs, the second-floor hall opened before them. At its center, light poured down from the skylight onto a low platform surrounded by a flower-covered arch. It also looked, somehow, like a magnificent birdcage.

They stood side by side at the railing and looked out at the empty hall. It didn't feel real that this was where their wedding would take place. It felt more like arriving early to someone else's ceremony.

"What if we had never found each other?"

Yeehyeon murmured the question in a dazed voice.

"That couldn't have happened."

Liu's reply was resolute. Yeehyeon could have predicted it.

"How can you be so sure? At first... you weren't even interested in me..."

Yeehyeon's gaze drifted down toward Liu's chest — toward the floral boutonnière marking him as one of today's grooms.

"How many times do I have to say it? The only time I wasn't genuinely drawn to you was that very first meeting."

Liu gently cupped Yeehyeon's cheek and tilted his face up. His steel-blue eyes — full of tenderness and certainty both — met Yeehyeon's without flinching.

"Maybe it wasn't love at first sight. But I became more and more aware of you, and the more I came to know you, the more I wanted to know. Do you dislike a love that started like that?"

Pressing his cheek into his palm, Yeehyeon shook his head. Liu Weikun was the only person to whom Yeehyeon would ever show this kind of vulnerability.

"I have never once lost control of my pheromones. And yet, even after taking dozens of suppressants, I was helpless before yours. That is the pull between us."

His voice, low and weighted, carried the feeling of inevitability.

"Through countless coincidences stacking one on another, the distance between us kept closing. We were always going to meet."

Listening to him, Yeehyeon found himself believing it. Liu smiled quietly, without showing his teeth.

"I have proof that this pull existed long before we ever met."

"Proof?"

"Alienation."

"Ah..."

"You painted it in Seoul when you were sixteen. And I, living in Hong Kong, became its owner — without knowing who painted it, or that it was Diamond Dust."

"......"

"Our story had already begun."

Liu's thumb traced Yeehyeon's cheek. His expression grew solemn as he drew closer, eyelids lowering. Yeehyeon wrapped his arms around Liu's waist and gently closed his eyes. He could feel the pulse beating in their lips as they met.

This moment — giving thanks for each other's existence, solemnly swearing their future — was their true wedding, the one that belonged only to them.

Tears slipped from beneath Yeehyeon's closed eyelids. It was only a soft kiss, barely more than lips touching and then parting — yet Liu's lips were trembling. He drew Yeehyeon carefully into his arms. Their cheeks and ears pressed together. If it wrinkled the tuxedo, if Javier nagged him later — he didn't care in the slightest.

"Yeehyeon — it's okay even if he can't come."

Yeehyeon's hands, wrapped around Liu's waist and clutching the back of his jacket, gave a small flinch.

"After the wedding, we can go to the East Sea together to visit him."

"......"

"We can show him the photos of the wedding, take a walk with Father, and visit Mother's columbarium. Okay?"

No one had noticed what Yeehyeon was feeling. Everyone had assumed that today, Yeehyeon was entirely happy — that he had already made his peace with his father's absence.

Only Liu understood what was moving through him.

Yeehyeon didn't ask how he knew. It would have been a foolish question. He simply nodded, swallowed his tears, and tightened his arms. It was then that Yeehan appeared.

"Yeehyeon! Seo Yeehyeon! Where is Seo Yeehyeon?"

The heavy main door burst open, and Yeehan's urgent voice rang out from below. Yeehyeon pulled back from Liu's arms and called down toward the first floor.

"Yeah, I'm here, hyung."

As he did, Liu quietly wiped the traces of tears from Yeehyeon's face.

"Hey, get down here! Your father is here!"

Liu and Yeehyeon looked at each other.

Yeehan's uncle was Yeehyeon's father.

Without a word between them, they ran down the stairs together. Yeehyeon was faster. He burst out through the front door Yeehan held open. The unfiltered April sunlight made him squint for a moment.

The guests who had been in the garden were all gathered at the entrance of 'Phantom.' The uncle and aunt were surrounding someone. Yeehyeon, who had paused just inside the main gate, took a step forward without thinking.

His uncle and aunt saw him and stepped aside.

It was his father.

His father stood with a canvas wrapped in kraft paper and tied with twine tucked under his arm.

He was wearing the new suit that Liu and Yeehyeon had sent him, his hair combed back somewhat neatly. At the sight, Yeehyeon laughed and cried at the same time. No explanation was necessary. No words were needed.

"Father!"

He ran straight to him without a moment's hesitation.

He couldn't even guess how many years it had been since he had last been held by his father. And yet he was surprised by himself — that there had been no hesitation at all.

Even now that Yeehyeon had grown into a young man, his father was still taller. Once called Julien the Artist for his striking height and handsome looks, he had been a passionate art student who had given up everything to love Yeehyeon's mother fiercely.

"Even though I knew you probably couldn't come alone, I kept feeling like you would show up..."

Yeehyeon pressed his cheek against his father's shoulder and burrowed into his arms like a child.

Thank you. I was waiting for you.

He didn't say the words aloud — but his father pulled him close in return, arms tightening around his back. He patted the back he held, just as he used to when Yeehyeon was very small.

It was the moment all the preparations for the wedding were complete.