Desires Chapter 2.4 - II. Coldness and Desire (3)

“There was something you did not tell me.”

Yoon Jioh showed a hint of puzzlement.

“Song Yeongin….”

Yoon Jioh feigned a detestable hypocrisy towards his superior.

“What do you mean by that?”

“That child’s painting.”

From the blade-like, resolute gaze and the intimidating tone, Yoon Jioh could guess that Cha Woojin had come to him knowing everything.

“It seems you have a misunderstanding. I have never specifically hidden that fact from you, Director.”

“Is that so?”

A meaningful smile brushed across the face of the languid and indifferent man of power.

“It is just that I did not know that the Director would be curious about the talent of a mere low-level employee.”

Cha Woojin’s face, growing bold, wore an arrogant sneer.

“It was not that you strategically hid it?”

Yoon Jioh replied with a sly smile.

“If I had intended to pursue my own personal gain, I would have leaked this information to Mateo, who drove me into a corner and interrogated me.”

Cha Woojin furrowed his neat brow and narrowed the corners of his long, thinly opened eyes.

“You must be aware of how persistent Mateo is, and how many times I was almost put in a difficult situation.”

“I know, you endured it to the point that your patience was commendable.”

Yoon Jioh continued.

“Have you not already seen that child’s painting yourself?”

“…….”

“You were the very first audience. Before anyone else, the very first….”

To Yoon Jioh’s riddle, Cha Woojin responded with a cold indifference, without any rise or fall in his voice.

“Guide me.”

🌫️

It was as Cha Woojin said. Yoon Jioh had kept the fact that the child had come to Asyut of his own accord to sell his painting a secret from everyone. In order to present this stage he had designed with his own hands.

It was the most decisive moment. Yoon Jioh had been looking forward to the thrill of this moment.

Yoon Jioh, the director of Asyut, led Cha Woojin to Asyut’s hidden gallery where Song Yeongin’s painting was hung. And finally, the two men stood before Song Yeongin’s painting.

The sharp, straight profile muttered the title of the painting.

“<The Dead Mother’s Ear>….”

Yoon Jioh wore an inscrutable smile.

“I remember now.”

Cha Woojin recalled his first meeting with Song Yeongin, who had snuck in here like a stray cat on the day he first saw the painting in the gallery. It was just that his impression of Song Yeongin was so intense that he had forgotten his thoughts on this painting.

‘He was the one who painted this picture?’

That was why he had secretly hidden in this gallery and encountered him in this very spot that day.

Cha Woojin recalled his unforgettable first encounter with Song Yeongin. The pure and delicate face that had been startled to see him. The precarious and profane sentiment that, though feigning composure, incited and provoked lust beneath a clear face.

The clean and delicate lines, free of any superfluities, were certainly more impressive, enough to remain in his mind even more than the painting itself. Cha Woojin once again rested his chin on his hand and scanned Song Yeongin’s painting.

“What do you think?”

The reason Yoon Jioh acknowledged Cha Woojin was because he possessed an independent eye.

An eye that reads the essence of a work and its contemporaneity without being swayed by critics or empty formalities. He was the legitimate son of the family that had not only sponsored the independence movement of artists since his great-grandfather’s time but had also supported the souls of the major art world from behind the scenes for generations, having received the blood of Kang Hwaryeong and Lady Kang Munhui.

It was not just his perfect background. Cha Woojin possessed an innate taste that money could not buy and an eye for art engraved in his genes. Their heir’s life, from birth, was intertwined with art through what he had seen, grown up with, and enjoyed.

The prince whom Yoon Jioh acknowledged had to be so. Having an eye for the real thing was the greatest virtue among the reasons Yoon Jioh acknowledged Cha Woojin.

Song Yeongin was the only child that Kang Hajong, the younger brother of the empress of this country’s cultural world, Kang Munhui, had personally acknowledged and sent to him.

‘Kang Hajong’.

He was the one and only teacher whom Yoon Jioh acknowledged, and the very person who had made him hold a faint yearning in his heart in his youth. From abandoning his family as if leaving home to become a monk, to his life as a sublime saint practicing non-possession, his life was noble and perfect like a work of art until the very end. His uncle, Kang Hajong, was the benefactor who had planted the seeds and nutrients of art in him in his youth.

If he had intended to sell a painting where the price is whatever is asked from the beginning, Mateo might not have been a bad client. However, finding someone who knew how to look at paintings, someone who would be a flawless patron for that child, was not easy.

However, with Cha Woojin, it was a different story. As a suitable candidate with perfect conditions, he was flawless in every way. If the first owner of this painting were the crown prince of the elite, Cha Woojin, whom the prominent figures of the upper class admired and longed for, it was as clear as day that it would bring Yoon Jioh an even greater profit.

However, it must never be a visible coercion. It had to be as discreet as gently scratching the back of someone who was dying to have it.

If Yoon Jioh’s side had revealed their hand from the beginning by saying this was that child’s painting, this decisive moment where he himself would come and ask Yoon Jioh to show him this painting would not have existed.

Yoon Jioh knew from his long experience of trading works of art that for him to walk in on his own and ask to see the painting himself was no different from saying he would take the painting. You do not sell things, you make people buy them. The one with the will to acquire must walk in on their own with a bundle of cash.

Yoon Jioh observed Cha Woojin’s intrigued expression. He waited silently. For Cha Woojin to open his cautious and arrogant mouth and confess his desire.

“It resembles him.”

“…….”

“The painting resembles that child.”

Yoon Jioh, as if caught off guard, just laughed silently.

It was the most concise and accurate assessment. The rakes with money and power who frequented the back room as if it were their own home, that child they so desperately wanted to have, and that child’s painting, they resembled each other as if they were cast from the same mold.

What lay before his eyes was a painting in which Song Yeongin had captured his own pain. However, this pitifulness and sadism struggling in pain, that desperate and transcendent composition, the desperate and primal painting disguised in a religious and lyrical style, it carried a light of pure sensuality blooming strangely beneath it.

The intense and primary colors, a stark contrast to the lyrical and religious style of a sacred painting, the bold expressiveness that could be called desperate and unconventional, resembled the image of that child who accepted pain with a composed face, detachedly. It was clearly an uncalculated part. There, Yoon Jioh caught a glimpse of that child’s marketable genius.

Cha Woojin asked Yoon Jioh in a low voice.

“Why did you not leak the information to Mateo or Woo Taekyung?”

“…….”

“They would have paid a high price. They might have even offered a price so expensive you could not handle it.”

“You have not forgotten, I hope. That child is the one whom Father Kang Hajong sent himself.”

“…….”

“I have received a favor from my uncle Kang Hajong. That sentiment still remains unchanged. My uncle, with whom I had lost contact for years, earnestly asked me for a favor, so how could I possibly push that priest’s child into a mire?”

“…….”

“You still do not know me. That I am by no means on the side of evil…. Why do you think I am serving you, Director.”

“…….”

“I cannot hand that child over to those who intend to pay a ransom for his body, not the price of his painting.”

The heir’s composed eyes and straight lips let out a bold laugh.

“Then, what about me?”

“…….”

“Do you think I am different from them?”

Yoon Jioh smiled as if in response.

“Do you want the painting? Or, do you want the child?”

Cha Woojin remained silent and did not answer.

“They say Song Yeongin’s mother was deaf. Song Yeongin lost his mother in an unexpected accident and witnessed his mother’s death on the spot. This painting is a work in which Song Yeongin has been confined for several years, capturing that desperate pain in its entirety.”

The continuous violence of a drunkard father, witnessing his mother’s accident and death on the scene, having to take on his deaf younger sister and his dead brother’s child, Song Yeongin was an irredeemable tragic seed who had inherited every misfortune. It was no exaggeration to say that a series of countless misfortunes had made it possible for him to paint such a transcendent and desperate picture.

Cha Woojin knew that he should not show too many of his cards to Yoon Jioh. Cha Woojin wore a leisurely sneer. He spoke to Yoon Jioh with a cold and impassive face that held no emotion whatsoever.

“I will hold off.”

“Does that mean you do not mind if I leak the origin of this painting to others?”

Cha Woojin had never completely trusted Yoon Jioh from the moment this merchant bowed his head and came under him. Yoon Jioh had only feigned loyalty and obedience to him; he was a person who possessed all the qualities that made it impossible for him to be a loyal subject by nature. Those who like schemes and have complicated thoughts can never attach themselves to another’s body and become an arm of another head.

Yoon Jioh did not stop and was leaking another of his schemes.

“Even if that is Mateo, or James Han… you are saying you have absolutely no relation to it?”

Yoon Jioh was even mentioning James Han.

“Ha, this is why merchants are….”

“That child needs a guardian. We cannot let him put down his brush because he is struggling to make a living. You must know this well, right? Genius is like a fleeting moment, and a single hiatus can take everything away. The art world is already littered with those who have fallen into being unfortunate mediocrities, so much so that you could trip over them.”

“…….”

“They say that child has currently given up on painting. He did not receive a single penny of compensation for the incident caused by Mateo last time.”

He was supporting his dead brother’s child on top of his own struggling livelihood.

“We cannot let that pure talent rot away. That child’s paintings stimulate desire. On top of his innate genius talent, he also has the qualities to paint pictures that sell. If you decide to support him, it will be an investment you will not regret.”

“Keep it a secret from Mateo and the others. This is not a request, it is an order!”

The reigning, intimidating voice and the frost-like sharp eyes carried a ghastly killing intent.

“By that, you mean….”

“Both…. I want both the painting and the child. However, I need more certainty about how much I desire it.”

Yoon Jioh once again wore a faint, inscrutable smile. How could I not know the desire boiling under that cold-blooded skin.

My dear younger brother, I have watched you grow up from your side since you were young. How could I not know that cautious nature of yours, which blames even the succession of the elite on your own sister’s ambition, not your own desire.

“Until I am certain, I will hold off on the decision.”

Yoon Jioh smiled. To belittle him as a merchant was no different from slapping his own cheek.

Cha Woojin was fundamentally an ambitious man. Who was the merchant who stood above him and reaped the profits?

However, Yoon Jioh knew that Cha Woojin was of a different class from the low-life, despicable thugs. That was also the reason why Yoon Jioh was serving Cha Woojin. He was just a cautious ambitious man who did not reveal his hand. He was someone who moved everything from behind the scenes under a meticulous and careful plan.

That was why there was no one more suitable to hand over Song Yeongin’s painting to. Song Yeongin’s intention was not important. He, himself, could make it so. Yoon Jioh wore a fleeting smile. Instead, he reassured the one he had decided to serve in his own language.

“Could there be any question.”