Work Text:
CHOI & KIM GALLERY
formally invites you to the showcase of
MARK LEE
from 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm
Lee Jeno was not jealous.
The invite mocked him from his coffee table, the corner rimmed with spilled coffee. The envelope that it had come with was torn apart, the remnants of Mark Lee’s messy, dominating scrawl spilling across the back- an invitation for Lee Jeno.
Jeno wanted to hate him so much he could seethe. He could see his smile now, unintentionally wide but purposefully smug. Mark Lee, a man who was adored by every wealthy divorcee, each clamoring to bid for one of his paintings. The trace of envy he had Mark Lee sparked in his throat briefly, thickly in want of what Mark had in the art world.
He was transcendence , they claimed. Mark Lee’s art was a god-brought gift.
Jeno had seen his art when he could steal looks at it anyway. He had studied art with him, with the same teacher. The only transcendence he’d ever seen was at 3 am when Mark Lee had come close to insanity after his four-day no-sleep streak. The studio had been a mess long before Jeno stepped foot in it to take his canvas to his room- their room since their teacher had four students and only two rooms to provide their boarding- but somehow it had become worse.
Mark stopped being around anyone on day three, preferring anything else. He looked ghostly then, turning slowly towards Jeno’s looming figure in the doorway. Jeno could tell the state of his mind by the intensity of his eye bags and the patchy, awful dye job on his hair. The fabric of his sweatpants was covered in a thick mess of acrylic paint, some splatters fresher than the paint on the canvas he was sitting in front of.
Jeno glanced past him to take a glance at it, knowing it would annoy him. He saw the dark, furious shape of a body, pulling upward as if trying to escape the painting, a face of happiness and gruesome horror that seemed to switch between each other. Mark played in illusions, he knew that. Jeno argued every side of the discussion when Mark would unveil his paintings at their monthly critique circles. It was beautiful, it was horrific, it was wrong, it was revolutionary, it was amateurish, it was purposeful, masterful, ugly, it was transcendence . He was so curious, and thereby too late to notice before Mark threw an open bottle of red paint at him.
“I told you, stop looking,” he growled. “Stop comin'-” the paint landed on Jeno’s pajamas and Mark Lee paused. Jeno slowly wiped the splatters of paint off his face. “... in here.” There were words unspoken, words that would sound like you’re not a hallucination .
“You know, if you took your meds, I wouldn’t have to make you Venmo me every month,” Jeno drawled. “Remember to contribute to my pajama fund. It’s ten dollars this time.” He snatched his half-finished canvas from the drying rack and walked out of the studio, paint sliding down his pants.
There wasn’t much he could do to save his clothes. Jeno had gone through all of his old clothing to be used as pajamas and had finally given in and gone to buy the worst pairs of clothing he could find at a thrift shop to use as such a year ago. The owner knew him by name now. Jeno purposely avoided the owner’s work hours for that sole reason.
He was lucky this time, with the paint. Jeno took off his shirt and streaked the ruined fabric onto the edges of his canvas, spraying the shirt with water every few dabs, working the bright red into the dark red that had dominated the piece, save for the distorted body stretched over the muddy tile, faceless, inhumane. He would save the red on his pants from the pooling blood.
They were both artists, one who dealt with the inhumane and uncanny, one that dealt with abstract holiness. Sin and virtue, nightmares and daydreams, all man-made.
So when they graduated from their teacher’s tutelage, they were presented to the art world as a contradiction, two opposing forces but twins in their technique, their instruction, their horror, one blunt and one subtle. It was a novelty at first, but you know what they say: a mountain cannot hold two tigers.
One of them was doomed to careen to their death.
Their teacher prepared them for their debut five months ahead, even when even among the students, everyone whispered that Mark and Jeno’s cold war would never be resolved, that they would both forever have broken their thread of fates with each other, trying to escape the shadow of each other’s art. They shared a room, but one would never see Mark in it, finding him always with a blanket over him and a thin mattress in the common room, where he slept for the six months that the two had stayed around each other.
Until debut , their teacher promised, as a last-ditch hope for them to makeup, you two share that room until then and you can move to the opposite sides of the country for all I care .
So Jeno claimed the room and Mark claimed the uncomfortably humid common room, never to be caught in the room at the same time, even though Mark’s clothes and daily belongings were still stored in there.
Mark was slower to move on after their debut, but Jeno had already sent his belongings on a journey on the highways to Busan, where he’d found an apartment that his parents were willing to co-sign. He showed up to their debut gallery, alternating paintings contrasting each other, with his fakest smile and the exact shade of black in his clothing as their teacher had requested from him.
They had been eighteen then. Mark spoke of his artistic vision first, then Jeno, who sounded far gentler than his image, speaking half-bashful and half-tremoring calm. The paparazzi snapped hundreds of photos of them that day, shouting questions about their relationship and why their art seemed so similar. Mark pretended to not see the clenching of Jeno’s fist as they took turns answering the questions.
Twin stars, their teachers wanted them to be known as. Two different identities who were just as skilled as each other. In hindsight- it was a cruel curse.
The next day, the news officially came out, all praise at first, before they started to blatantly compare the two. It was all talk, and the two had already moved out; Mark stayed in Seoul, and Jeno turned to Busan. Neither of them paid too much attention to the ruthless talks of who was the better artist.
Until one particular article surfaced: “Lee Jeno’s Perverted And Twisted Mind: Should We Let Someone Like That Represent Art Culture In Korea?” it was written anonymously, and published by a mid-sized news company that was operated by a bigger chain of corporate powers.
Everything seemed to explode that morning- the article passed through every sector of the country, printed, posted, and reposted. Mark was bombarded with requests for comments, for interviews, anything for a morsel of Lee Jeno. Did he kill kittens? Bully the other students? Was the rumor he used human blood for his art true? Has Mark ever been in danger in his presence?
It was a violent witch hunt. That was all Mark could see.
He called. Ten, twenty, a hundred times. Jeno had to have known because Mark’s phone would ring the entire time before it dropped to voicemail, which was still set to Jeno’s younger voice, pleasant as he spoke: “This is Jeno! I’m in the studio right now, I’ll text you when I hear the message! Bye bye~”
Halfway through the perversion scandal, his voicemail changed: “This is Lee Jeno, and don’t even fucking bother.” Mark jumped when he heard it the first time, but he could imagine Jeno, phone in his hand, sitting at a half-finished painting, spitting anger into his phone without looking away from the blocky shape of his first layer. By then, Mark had stopped leaving voicemails in his inbox, but he didn’t stop calling, wondering if he would answer one day, if his calls just sounded like any other journalist hunting for a fresh, bloody story.
But Jeno had said nothing for months. The press saw silence on both sides of the newly debuted boys so they did what they did best: turn to making wild speculations.
It was partly true at first, comments on how Mark and Jeno must’ve hated each other, that they didn’t get along. Then it turned to internal bullying, exaggerating the cold war that happened in the last six months. They wondered why Mark dressed so conservatively for a young man, concluding that Lee Jeno must have marred him over the years, claiming terrible scarring and burn marks.
Mark simply sued for defamation and emotional distress, ignoring any immediate pleas of settling it out of court. The case went viciously public, a popcorn show for the masses, who hadn’t really paid attention to the turmoil in their world until now. In the end, the judge granted Mark his disproportionate settlement: 28 million won and the publication was nearly in dire straits. He never heard of that journalist again.
Two days after the lawsuit was settled, Lee Jeno made his first voluntary headline since the perversion scandal: Young And Controversial Artist Sells His First Paintings for 30 Million Won To An Anonymous Collector .
That day was the first day that Jeno had picked up one of Mark’s calls in nearly a year.
“What do you want?”
There it was, Jeno’s voice, aged a year, lower and scratchier. He sounded distracted. For a moment, he didn’t know what to say.
“I saw the headlines.”
Mark could hear the scratch of a pencil on paper over the phone, “The one where I’m a pervert or the one where I sold paintings for 28 million?”
Mark swallowed, “Both.”
Jeno hated people in cold distance, far away and unreachable no matter how far anyone stretched toward him. It was irritating, frustrating, something Mark had learned that would probably never change. His Jeno was no longer tinted in sky blue, but the same as any other stranger that he didn’t even realize might not be real.
“So?”
So? So there was a deep guttural intuition that Lee Jeno would become unassociated with the name Mark Lee in the future, that the poor attempt their teacher made to tie them together would fall away to dust, that the strings that tied them together would cease to exist in a few years, nonexistent even in the whispers of the internet, viewed only as a failed marketing scheme.
“Well?” Jeno snapped. “Hang up. Stop blowing up my phone.” Mark’s hand clenched around his phone. He didn’t listen.
“Why?” he asked, softly, to avoid giving away the anger in his trembling voice. Why are we two different people and not two pieces of a whole? Why do you look like every other hallucination, why , did we ever fucking meet?
Jeno scoffed, but there was no answer except the disconnected tone. Mark let the phone skip over the carpeted floors to land harshly against the leg of his dining chair, hands pressed to his eyes.
Fine. Fine. Mark needed no eccentric marketing scheme. He would be better, more successful, more sought after. He would make Mark Lee a fucking household name, impossible to ignore.
“Are you coming to the opening?”
Mark had called him six times before Jeno finally picked up, pressing the speakerphone because he couldn’t be bothered to step away from his canvas to talk to Mark Lee. He had tried to unlearn picking up Mark’s calls after they left their teacher’s wing, but the habit was hard to shake. Mark’s persistence hadn’t changed either, unsurprisingly.
“Why would I come?” Jeno asked, cold.
“I come to yours.”
He was a liar. “I don’t have gallery openings,” Jeno snapped. Mark knew that. Everyone knew that. “They go straight to the auction house.” The quick hour of gallery walking was hardly comparable to Mark’s display. Jeno put his painting up for viewing to entice his audience, Mark did it for the prestige and artistry of it all.
Mark laughed low, mockery in his following words, “Right, infamous Lee Jeno, displaying his art to the richest eccentrics in the world for the comfort of money.”
“Infamous me,” Jeno scoffed back, “Are you much better? Kissing the asses of corporate billionaires looking to feel intelligent?” Same world. Why did Mark get to act like he was better?
“You can argue all you want,” Mark’s voice was far like he’d set down the phone. His voice echoed in the speaker of Jeno’s phone, syllables rushing into each other, backed by wet thumps. He was painting. “The difference is that one of these is more accepted by the mainstream, and it’s not yours.”
It was meant to be an attempt to rile Jeno up, and he did bristle, biting back fighting words, “How long since you’ve slept? I’ll guess at least four since you sound fucking delusional.”
Mark laughed low over the phone, “So smart,” he said and made no further comments. Jeno hated talking to Mark solely for this. He could ignore his calls, but they would rack up, hundreds of missed calls slamming his phone until he picked up. Mark never cared where he was; he would keep calling him until Jeno picked up.
“Did you forget to take your medicine again?” Jeno asked hotly- before he realized what he’d said. Thin wood clattered to the floor over the speaker.
“They don’t work,” Mark replied finally.
“Get new ones,” Jeno yawned. “And quit fucking calling me.” He knew Mark wouldn’t listen. This limbo had continued for years, even after the bulk of their hate, their trauma, Jeno’s public discretion. Even before all of this, he would call him constantly, especially when Jeno went home for the holidays. Now, Mark called him when he couldn’t sleep. For what? Jeno said the same things every time: no, stop calling me, get new medication . Mark would stay on the call as long as Jeno was on it, never the first to bring up leaving the call. Jeno was always the first to disconnect.
In the past, Mark liked Jeno’s voice because it helped him in the early stages of his insomnia, drawing him back down and away from the hallucinogenic properties of his sleepless haze. He would curl up on Jeno’s bed and listen to him mutter his way through the base layers of his painting in the late hours, a self-portrait commentary of his process. Mark would call him from the studio when the hallucinations were bad and ask him if he could see the monsters. Jeno never could and a few hours later, he would find Mark still in the studio, pouring over the thinnest bits of detail on a canvas twice the size of his sitting, shrunken body.
Jeno didn’t like details the way Mark did, patient and time-consuming. He did his underpainting in a hurry, did his color blocking in a rush, yet he would always manage a proper piece for art class, even if his brushwork always seemed to be running late. Only Mark knew Jeno worked mostly on one particular painting outside of their teacher’s assignments, a painting with a test of Jeno’s endurance. Compared to this one, all of his other practices looked worthless- at least, that was what Mark claimed.
It was a portrait of a man, turned this way and that unnaturally, as if he was a ribbon to manipulate. Maybe, in Jeno’s hands, he was, but Jeno loved it. He liked the play between inhumane and fiction, wondering which one would become the dominant player on the canvas. His hair was wild and his back was arched just a bit too much to be true, only the white of his showing, blood bleeding out the tear ducts, skin changing from bits of sickly pale to mortal black in patches. He was suspended by wire cords that protruded from his joints, swollen and angry and infected.
Mark liked to watch him paint it. He would laugh at Jeno’s complaints of his hand cramps and the strain it put on his eyes to create every thin piece of peach fuzz on the face, commenting on nothing but how Jeno finally knew how he felt doing his art.
Now, Jeno wasn’t sure why Mark still called him. Surely, he could find someone else to scold him for calling, someone else to scowl at him. He didn’t need Jeno. Jeno didn’t need him.
Mark Lee didn’t need him.
After the perversion scandal, even as Jeno seemed to burn, even as his art morphed and changed. He sold pieces, collections of uncanny valley horror and sinister humanity to collectors with eccentric tastes. He made money, so he shouldn’t have felt cheated, but he did, because with each painting sold, the more the media turned on him, comparing him gruesomely to Mark Lee, whose art was more pleasing to the privileged whims of the normal, wealthy art collector.
But Lee Jeno could not be Mark Lee, so with each new article, he became even worse, proven by the next collection that went public.
When it did, it was as if the media collectively held their breaths for a day.
There were ten paintings in total, three of Lee Jeno himself, twisted and malformed and ugly in three different ways, paranoia in his body, anger in his eyes if he had them. The rest were detailed hyperrealistic portraits of the new reporters that most often crowded around his house, sitting serenely on intimate spots of what was his apartment: the bed, the desk, the couch, the dining table, the closet, the kitchen. In the background, a body would be dead in a gruesome, painful way, serving as a reminder of the cost of their coverage on Jeno’s life, the floors always pooling with blood.
Was this a threat or a last public hanging? Even without the news scrambling to criticize his work, the public still noticed. After a few exchanges of stories and shared posts on Jeno’s digital reveal of the paintings and suddenly there was an uproar, spreading like wildfire across the internet. The name Lee Jeno was passed around like a soccer ball, dropped in conversation without meaning.
After all, what position could one take on this? He was out of line, those reporters deserved it, it’s a threat to those reporters, did he get their permission? Well, did they get his permission to slander him all over the media? Every article that came out was carefully neutral, as if terrified to have their reporter show up as the next subject in Lee Jeno’s paints, covered in too close detail.
For a brief moment, he was far more known than Mark Lee.
But Lee Jeno became infamous after this stunt of a collection, slinking into privileged, private obscurity. He retreated into his studio apartment, especially rented for its daylight view and large living space, perfect for his canvas that barely fit through the front door.
He thought he’d separated himself from Mark’s shadow, turning the twin reputation on its head- to be infamous was better than being seen as lesser, especially if it was lesser than that stupid Mark Lee.
Yet somehow, it always came back around to him.
Jeno went to the gallery showcase despite his best judgment.
It was 8 o’clock, rainy, and the worst idea Jeno had had in a while, something he realized as the cab pulled up at the venue. He stared at the neon signs welcoming people into the gallery, flashing photoshoot pictures of Mark staring emotionlessly into the camera. Jeno looked away from it as he crawled out of the cab, landing on the curb before the driver sped off with the fare and a hefty, absent-minded tip.
He was aware he looked oddly casual in his hoodie and raincoat amidst the collection of people coming in and out of the gallery with formal clothes, but Jeno hadn’t attended anything particularly formal in years. He didn’t fit into the only suit he did have, so here he was, without a proper suit, smack dab in a crowd of the pretentious. What did they know about Mark’s art?
Jeno stood there at the entrance while the security detail looked at his invite with the slightest traces of doubt, getting more impatient with every raindrop that landed on his head. Finally, after a minute of silent inspection, Jeno snapped, “Just fucking ask him. It can’t be that hard to use your two-way radio.”
One of the security guards glowered at him, but pulled out his walkie-talkie anyway, “Mr. Lee?”
The audio crackled, “Yes?”
“I have a Lee Jeno at the entrance who-”
“Let him in.”
The two security guards shared a blatant look in front of him, but Jeno couldn’t care much. Jeno tossed the invite into the trash after they begrudgingly let him in, following the flow of the thin crowd into the exhibit, raking his eyes over the paintings displayed simply on the walls.
“You’re sky blue when I have my hallucinations. That’s how I know you’re real.”
He was back at their teacher’s private study school, as the world tilted off-kilter, the scenery of it presented to him in horrifying, shaky unsureness- walls that melted and inhumane figures in the corner of the visions, the bodies of their peers stretched and distorted, the furniture warped, the coloring distressed. Jeno barely saw the ghosts of their teacher’s studio in those paintings, disproportionate and fleeting. Everything about the paintings screamed.
Except for the blue figure standing undistorted in the chaos: still, opaque.
The eye went wherever the figure was placed, the lines seeming to re-organize themselves near its presence. At first, the figure was close, close enough to see the details of his face- Jeno swallowed as he saw his younger self in them, staring into the audience, head tilted. Was that how Mark saw him? Young and tender and all faux calm?
He was not that boy that Mark saw in his rose-gold mind. Lee Jeno lived his days with their teacher in Mark Lee’s shadow, too much like for anyone to bother to tear the microtears between them and see them as different vessels for their individual arts, one divine, one ghastly.
Still, Jeno’s life had been filled with Mark Lee’s presence, tagging behind him as the days dragged on, like a lost puppy who couldn’t memorize the routes. Mark had never seemed to mind how Jeno’s paintbrush dipped into his genre of abstract horror and made it his own, always sitting together in studio anatomy classes, charcoal dust settling into the line of their palms, impossible to scrub out in one wash.
So the first time Jeno overheard Mark’s conversations with another student about him, his views of their friendship shattered into nothing, into dust. His lungs filled with sharp little pieces of sand, weighing his breath. The words seemed to lodge awkwardly in his diagram, forcing him to breathe around them, performing a tiresome act of pretense.
Him, a copycat? Lee Jeno had never been an angry person, nor was he unforgiving, but this felt like a betrayal, a burning of their attachment. He didn’t understand why Mark would see him, see Jeno’s soul in his art, and think that he and Mark had become carbon copies as if Jeno was a parasite leeching off of him.
How much more distinct did Lee Jeno have to be?
He knew when Mark figured out that Jeno had found out by the flashing guilt on his face before slamming the dorm door in his face. The two of them, Mark and Jeno, Jeno and Mark, the concept of them shattered into sharp glass pieces that would make them bleed when the other students mentioned it- Mark stony and Jeno vengeful. Everyone cowered at their polar opposite reactions to their quick, violent fallout. They seemed brutish then, but he hadn’t been able to care about the wreckage he’d caused within the students. Jeno cared little about the opinions of the other students. If Mark wanted him to be a copycat, he would rip apart any similarities in their works- Jeno would become mark’s antithesis, the twisted version of his holiness.
He would be the worst thing to happen to Mark Lee.
But that was then and this was now.
Jeno walked further into the gallery, and the figure- him- became further away with each painting, until he was more a cartoon, symbolizing reality rather than the grounding anchor. Jeno no longer saw himself as himself in painting five, only the red on his pajama pants becoming the last defining detail. A reference that no one but they would understand, leaving the people swirling around him clueless.
He saw Mark standing at the last display, where the figure no longer existed, and the world inside the painting seemed to fight to collapse itself. Mark was signing autographs, talking to the audience cerulean sky blue staining his fingertips. Once, Jeno would have been angry, envious. Once, he would want that: to stand there signing autographs who came especially for his work, just as well-loved as Mark Lee inside cast aside, forced to create his twisted niche where his art was never really his, even if his soul broke into pieces in them.
This Jeno followed the flood of the line, walking on clouds, half disconnected from his body until he came to a stop in front of Mark, who was saying goodbye to the person in front of him with a bright, tired smile, half-loopy.
Mark’s smile thinned smugly when he made eye contact with Jeno, head drooping to the side, “I didn’t think you’d come so late.”
“Be fucking grateful that I even came,” Jeno snapped back. Mark tapped his open marker on the table but said nothing. It had to be a paint marker because the color bled out into the wood. “Why did you even invite me to this showing? Pity?”
Mark pressed the marker into the table for a tense moment, then put the cap back on, “I don’t need pity from you, Jeno. I just want you to see the paintings I’m going to auction off in three days.”
Silence.
The world had not turned off its volume, but blood roared into Jeno’s ears and he could no longer hear the impatient shifting of the people trying to meet and greet Mark Lee.
“What?”
“I’m auctioning off these paintings in three days,” Mark repeated, patiently, as if he were speaking to a child who barely understood how to count. He seemed so steady, in charge, but Jeno saw the details. The sloping of his shoulders, the slight tremors in his hands, the cracking calluses, the drape of his clothes.
Mark never sold his paintings. It was known. He lent them to museums, to galleries, sure but he’d never put them up for sale for any private collection. There was no doubt he’d been inquired about it countless times before, but Mark had stood firm, before now. He’d been raised for his accessibility once, and Jeno had laughed in his Daegu apartment.
Jeno itched to grab the man in front of him by the collar and pull him close, “You’re auctioning your shit off to people who don’t understand them? What, did you gamble away your wealth?”
“And you do? Might I remind you that you auction off everything you’ve ever painted, regardless of what it is?” Mark replied, adopting Jeno’s false tranquility. He looked at him, searching Mark as if he could find the answers to his out-of-character behavior beyond his dumbassery.
Finally, he said, “This is about me, huh.”
Mark’s hands curled white on the table. The affirmation no one but Jeno saw.
Jeno.
Jeno.
Jeno.
Mark wanted to be sick of his face.
He was all over his sketchbook pages, even his most treasured, more expensive thick watercolor pages. In every face he drew, they would all morph into Jeno’s face somehow without him realizing it. From the eyes, lips, shoulders, and body- Mark seemed to know no one else in his work. Every portrait looked like him, every figure had his silhouette. He thought about switching to landscape, or maybe abstract for a while, but his paintbrush would move and once again, Lee Jeno’s presence filled his canvases. He couldn’t help but see him in every curve of his brush and flick of colors, in the tubes of paints he’d chosen.
He couldn’t escape, so Mark defaulted to faceless bodies for a while. No one needed to know whose body his paintings were modeled after. No one needed to see the stack of finished sketchbooks, all drawings of Lee Jeno in some capacity. He was spiraling, yet the world called him a genius, clawing after him. He felt like an imposter, like a fraud.
Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t- maybe it was the audience who were the posers, clamoring to be seen as intellectual, as proper art critics with the “right” opinion; Mark had looked across his displayed art and saw nothing but the fraudulence of his obsession, seen by millions but not once did Jeno call him to say something about the paintings that had landed on every digital magazine, to scoff or yell at him.
Mark knew he wouldn’t, maybe because the Lee Jeno of the present didn’t care what the papers said, but it didn’t stop his reflexive glance at his phone each time it buzzed too long, hoping to see his name on it- each time, he was disappointed by the caller- another gallery, another collector, wanting to put him on display somewhere. He agreed when he could, and rejected them politely when he couldn’t. All the appointments were added to his assistant’s calendar, forgotten until she would bring them up. Mark had long stopped caring about the places he was displayed at, unaware of how long the list went. He only looked into the audience hoping for a glimpse of the person etched into the face and figure that made his way into every painting.
Jeno never seemed to see him, but Mark saw him. Too late, but every bit of news of Jeno, Mark had. Every news article, every photo, every venue for his auction, every collector who had his pieces in his collection. He could recognize his paintings at a glance, even if they had just been released for auction. Mark knew Jeno better than anyone, so of course he knew all the details and tells that made Jeno’s art his, even if he’d never seen a work before.
Despite that, Jeno never showed up. Mark never gave up looking for him.
But he was here now, angry. Jeno reached out before he thought about it, hand wrapping a fistful of Mark’s knitted sweater and pulling him away from the stunned crowd. Did they recognize him? Jeno couldn’t care less if they did- he just had to keep Mark in his hands.
When they slowed into some dark, unused hallway, Jeno finally let him go, turning to him, “What’s wrong with you? Mister Mark Lee, publicly pleading for disgraced Lee Jeno’s attention? I can’t tell if you’re just that pathetic or if you’ve truly gone off the rails.”
“You don’t get it,” Mark leaned against the wall as if all of his life force had been sucked out of him, “You just don’t.”
“What the fuck don’t I get, Mark?” Jeno snapped. “Good for you, picture perfect Mark Lee, is that what you want? Good for you, you still care about some fucking guy who fell off mainstream years ago for nostalgia. Let’s not fucking pretend for nearly a year before we debuted with some shit marketing scheme you slept in the commons and we made it our entire life goal to never lay eyes on each other. Let’s not fucking pretend you were so arrogant that you called me your copycat to everyone else when I wasn’t around. Do you remember? Because I fucking remember every time I have to see your fucking number on my phone because you’re so selfish you want it to be all. About. You.
You’re right, I don’t fucking get it. I don’t get why you want attention so badly that you’ll associate with someone you spent four years after everything distancing yourself from. Of course, I don’t get it, Mark Lee. I’m not the attention whore you are. Is this enough attention for you?”
Jeno seemed raw at the moment, with cold eyes, clenched fists, and puffing breath, as if something buried away in him had been set free again, pressing to get out, to burn the world around him. His rigid and curvature were made by the same aggressive swipe of his paintbrush, an oil painting so uncomfortable.
“Yeah, I did,” Mark said, after a long silence where tension hung in suspended animation between them, as if fighting not to crash to the ground. “I did my best to separate myself from you, but I spent every waking moment thinking about you,” Mark let out a scoffing laugh. “Do you know what that was like? You consumed the first four years of my debut and even when I thought I was over it, I would see some stupid little article on the internet about some painting you sold at another auction and I was consumed again. Even in my dreams, I thought about you. I ran from it for six years and I’ve burned so many sketchbooks because they were all just portraits of you from memory. I couldn’t progress or change, but people kept praising me for the bullshit I put out. I-” he paused, exhausted. “I’m tired of fighting you one-sided.”
Jeno stared at him with his pitiless stare.
After what seemed like a long time, Jeno spoke, this time his voice closer, “You really are crazy.” He was closer to Mark Lee’s face, having stepped towards him without a sound. “Or maybe pathetic is better.” They were close, maybe too close. The light in Mark’s eyes shifted darkly. It was subtle, but Jeno pulled back anyway. He wasn’t quick enough.
Mark pulled him in by the nape of his neck, fingers entangling themselves in Jeno’s hair. Their mouths made contact, teeth bared, muscles straining. Mark pushed Jeno into the wall with nothing but his arm as a cushion, weighing him against it. Jeno had one hand on Mark’s chest, pushing at him half-heartedly while his other wrist was pinned to the wall. Mark was all aggression, as if he was desperate, braced only by his elbows. Their bodies were so close that Jeno shuddered slightly every time they brushed together, every time Mark pressed closer unrelentingly, tongue swiping into the crevices of his mouth.
He’d never expected Mark to be an aggressive person or kisser, but Jeno fell into a jittery mess under him, without escape in sight unless facilitated by the very person with his hands on Jeno’s body. When Mark finally pulled away, Jeno gasped, grasping for breath. His lips were red, swollen, and bruised. Under Mark’s eyes, he looked ravishing .
Mark loosened his grip on Jeno's hair, cupping his cheek instead. Jeno stared up at him, “What the fuck was that?” He hauled Mark off his body but collapsed back on top of him, knees weak. His face was definitely red. Mark watched him like he regretted nothing.
Adrenaline surged violently through Jeno’s veins like a drug, hammering his heart into picking up speed. He leaned in silence on Mark’s chest, head on his shoulder for a few moments before he finally said, “You know what? I hope your paintings sell like crazy, so all it will do is affirm that your career is nothing without me .”
“I already know that,” Mark replied, grabbing the side of Jeno’s forcing him to look him in the eyes. They were inky dark, wolf-like. No longer were they the students of yesterday, whose falling out was quick and violent. “You think I’m not aware of that?”
Jeno scoffed, “I know. I want the knowledge to bury you. I want it to kill you. Do you want a new muse, Mark? Because I hope the fact it will always be me will be the death of you.”
Mark knew better than to look for salvation in Jeno’s revenge-starved eyes.
Jeno left the gallery shortly before nine o’clock, lips swollen, jaw still imprinted red with Mark’s grip. He disappeared into the night with the crowds that never quite escaped a city’s streets, never once looking back at the boy who returned to his show with an apologetic smile and forgivable charisma.
In the next three days, the art world seemed to hold their breaths to see if Mark Lee was truly going to put his new collection on auction. Jeno had no doubts; he’d already had another invite come in the mail, in the same fancy, heavy paper and script, asking him to come to witness the auction.
He could still feel the phantom burn of Mark’s lips on his three days, a ghost following him. He still looked far more lackadaisical than the other people lining up, a crowd of expensive, private boutique clothing that rivaled mainstream luxury brands in their exclusivity. He garnered looks, but Jeno handed over his invite and the security guards stiffened faintly at the sight of his eyes boring into them. He was guided to a lonely, secluded balcony, with a perfect view of the stage, where Mark would stand as his paintings would be sold, one by one.
Jeno watched the seats below him fill out slowly, a constant trickle of the wealthy settling into their seats, an auction paddle in every hand. He was in a bored, floating daze until he heard the door of his balcony groan open, footsteps approaching his couch.
“You came.”
Mark’s voice came low over his head, his breath hot on Jeno’s ear. Jeno forced himself to keep staring out the balcony at the people below going to their seats like ants, “I wanted to see a show.”
Mark laughed weakly. His body slid onto the body next to his, warm. He was dressed in a suit, cut to his body like it had been sewn on. His hair was done, slicked back. It felt like he was playacting with a bastardized version of Mark Lee, some version of him that wasn’t the insomniac artist of their youth. This version was a clean-cut businessman, polite and sane.
“I guess I don’t have to tell you to enjoy the auction,” Mark commented. Jeno didn’t reply. The seats below were almost filled and Mark was getting tenser with each passing figure that entered the premises.
Jeno looked away, “No,” he replied unflinchingly. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll even participate to keep things interesting.”
Mark put the weight of his head into his palm, propping his tired face by his arm, “You’ve changed so much.”
He wasn’t wrong. Jeno had changed, “Whose fault is it?” he scoffed back flatly. Jeno had shed the tender childishness of his youth quickly, partly forced to take on an unyielding amount of rage in his body, every stone of his old self uprooted and turned over. His existence was a mild, suppressed life, tucked away far from Mark lest his anger would manifest on a canvas too close to him.
The younger Jeno wanted to be consumed in forcing his oppressors to their knees. The recent Jeno hadn’t cared anymore until Mark’s invitation. Until Mark kissed him against the abandoned walls of the gallery halls, embodying the violence he’d distorted into beauty from his unceasing head to the paintbrush. He probably should have forgotten about it after he arrived home, but he didn’t. Jeno brewed on it in the days leading up to the auction, wondering about the change that had partaken in both of them. He- they’d spent the last six years far from the spheres of each other’s influence, and Jeno had tossed away the past that had made him.
At least he thought he did.
Jeno watched the men downstairs carry a covered painting on stage as Mark sat next to him in silence, tense. The crowd below them seemed to have quieted immediately, anticipation in their postures. A few of them leaned forward eagerly, like wild hyenas waiting to pounce.
Watching the auction paddles fly up in rapid succession was both foreign and familiar. Jeno had watched them all like this, but never for someone else’s paintings, and certainly not for paintings that had plastered his likeness all over it, painted in a blue hue. It was surreal, but even he wasn't as transfixed as Mark was, eyes glued to the scene below like it was a horror movie he couldn’t take his eyes off of, like he knew what would come next but couldn’t bring himself to look away. The world seemed to end in Mark’s eyes, yet Jeno was barely fascinated by the display of wealth that was this auction. Even the reporters that had quietly filed into the large room wore two-piece suits.
By the last painting , where Jeno’s presence had been emptied out, the amount of money that had been thrown had already far exceeded the tamer side of multi-million, given as easily as a coupon would be handed out at a grocery store.
Jeno hadn’t been present at his second auction, or the third. He’d put the paintings in the front gallery and returned home, and was wired his full payment a week later, all the money deposited in a heap into his checking account. After the third auction, he started turning the money over to a finance manager to be saved and invested.
He made the briefest of appearances at his fourth auction, nearly two years out from his third. He rebooked the venue three times from the flood of ticket requests- the money that he made from which could’ve gotten him through four months of rent and living expenses. After all, he’d been silent for almost two years, they seemed morbidly curious at what new horrors his mind could conjure for him.
They only saw him for a ten-minute stint, speaking of the inspirations and stories behind the paintings. But all Jeno saw was greed dripping in jewelry and silks, lurking toward him. After his speech, Jeno left the auction manager to deal with them. He didn’t want their eyes haunting him.
Jeno knew that there would be photos circulating and short bits of articles published even before they had a chance to exit the building. There would be speculation, amazement, and buzz around the success of Mark Lee’s first-ever auction. The mainstream would never touch him of course, the art world was for its inner circle, recognized by people interested in the industry, no matter how insane and extravagant, almost a sparkly, gate-kept trophy for the wealthy.
He glanced at Mark, who sat still on the couch, knuckles curling white on his lap.
“Was it that bad?” Jeno asked, yawning. The reporters were taking every photo possible and the venue employees filed into the hall to escort the winners of the auctions. Very few of them noticed the two perched on the private balcony, watching them.
“Not for you,” Mark whispered.
“No,” Jeno agreed. “Not for me. I don’t auction my paintings for a twisted want for attention. How does it feel?”
Mark stayed silent for a few seconds, “Like… like I tore myself up.”
There was a sardonic smile on Jeno’s mouth. He reached for Mark, grabbing the collar of his tailored suit, pulling him close. Jeno had no doubt Mark had gotten very little sleep in the last few days, “Looks like you know how I felt at seventeen. What do you think they’ll say in the news, Mark? How long do you think they’ll praise you for all the money you’ve made? How long did you think our similarities were enduring before you started calling me your copycat?”
He let go, letting Mark fall back onto the couch, following him down. The noise of the auction attendees was fading away in the background as Jeno brushed the back of his fingers against Mark's cheek, cold, “I made too much of my life about you, from the moment I was fourteen. It’s time you pay me back, don’t you think?”
Mark reached for him, then paused. He retracted his hand, but Jeno didn’t move away from him.
“Yeah,” Mark replied in a whisper. “Anything. Take anything you want.” It felt like liberation, it felt like a mirrored, twin obsession.
Jeno’s smile gleamed, gleeful, “Don’t worry, I will.”