Chapter 46
I’m translating the chapter into the required HTML format now, keeping the narrative flow intact and converting the appraisal readout into a styled in-universe block.CHAPTER_TITLE: Western Painting (1)
Seoul, Hannam-dong.
“Just tell me already!”
Choi Sook-hyang felt as if her chest might burst.
She had spent every connection she had just to get her son into the LVMH Prize semifinal. How much money, time, and leverage had she poured into dressing up the portfolio he had submitted?
At the very least, he should have made the final list of eight. It made no sense to her.
She had even asked a judge on the Louis Vuitton side to look after him, so as long as he’d done the bare minimum, getting into the top eight should have been possible. The fact that he’d been eliminated instead made her blood boil.
What made it even more infuriating was that her son had come home, shut himself in his room, and not come out at all.
She hadn’t even been able to ask what mission he’d been given or what kind of work he’d made. She hadn’t heard a word.
And on top of that, there had been the occasional sound of him crying.
When she had finally lost her temper and pounded on his bedroom door, there had been no sign it was opening anytime soon.
“That useless brat, honestly! Ugh!”
In the end, she had failed to get the door open. She stormed downstairs, sank onto the sofa, thought it over for a moment, and then called someone immediately.
Then she spoke fluently in French.
“Yes, it’s me. About the LVMH Prize. Right. Could you tell me how my son was eliminated? Ah, no, that’s not what I mean. Ines, don’t misunderstand me, I’m not blaming you. I was only curious about the process. He can only improve if he knows. He was so shocked he hasn’t said a word. Hmm... suddenly? Hmm... I see. Who? A Korean? Really? There was a Korean next to Antoine? W-what? What does that mean? Bedding? Ah, yes. I understand. Thank you, Ines.”
After hanging up, Choi Sook-hyang jumped to her feet, stormed back up the stairs, and began hammering on her son’s door again.
“You! Open the door for a second. There was a Korean next to Antoine, wasn’t there? Did he lose because of that guy? Is that it? Are you not going to open up? If you don’t, I’ll break the door down!”
As she shouted,
Click.
The door opened, and Kim In-hyuk appeared in a miserable state.
“What do you think you’re doing, making such a fuss?”
“I don’t know.”
In-hyuk collapsed back onto the bed, and Sook-hyang folded her arms and walked into his room. Looking down at him where he lay face-first, she said, “Who is it?”
“Jung Seung-hyun.”
The name came out at once, without even a moment’s hesitation.
That alone told her the son knew that Korean very well.
“What does he do?”
“He runs a fabric factory. And...”
“And?”
“He’s my classmate.”
Sook-hyang’s pupils trembled hard.
“A classmate? A Seoul Institute of the Arts classmate?”
“Yeah.”
At that, she actually sat on the edge of the bed and slapped her son hard on the backside.
Smack!
“Ow! That hurts!”
As In-hyuk shot upright in outrage, Sook-hyang barked, “Speak properly. Is that all? What else?”
“...”
“I said tell me!”
“You can just let me talk! Quit yelling, damn it...”
“Tell me in detail. What is it?”
“We just don’t get along.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“Haa... we’ve basically been fighting for first and second place since freshman year...”
“You’ve never taken first with your work. Then that means he was always first?”
For In-hyuk, it was a humiliating fact.
That was why he hadn’t wanted to say it.
“...”
“Then he wouldn’t even feel bad seeing you. You said you beat him the whole time, didn’t you?”
“That’s... actually, I stole his girlfriend.”
“Oh, you crazy bastard!”
Her palm shot up again toward his head, but In-hyuk reacted fast and blocked her hand as he shouted, “She was pretty! I could’ve liked her too! How is that my fault?”
Thinking it over, his argument did have some logic to it.
The problem was that it had come back around like a boomerang.
“So? Are you still seeing her now?”
“No. I dumped her. She got boring.”
“Aigoo. You weren’t going to stay with her long anyway.”
“How would I know that when I start? You only find out once you’re together.”
“Then did that Jung Seung-hyun kid knock you out of the competition?”
“A hundred percent. If it wasn’t him, why would I have been eliminated?”
“I heard you froze in front of the judges. That you messed up?”
In-hyuk looked startled.
“What? You asked around?”
“Of course. You’ve been locked up in your room and won’t come out. How else would I know? And how else would I know there was a Korean next to Antoine?”
“...”
“That fabric guy or whatever he is. I heard he sells a brand called GyeolBit or something, and apparently that scored well. So Antoine kept him by his side the whole time...”
“By his side?”
“Yeah. Not just for a moment. They said he kept him with him the whole time. He even introduced him to Delphine Arnault, so he must have made a real impression.”
Until then, In-hyuk had been listening with a sulky face, but at his mother’s words, jealousy flared up in him.
“Bullshit... He just got lucky with some piece of crap he tossed out.”
Seeing the jealousy in her son, Sook-hyang realized things between the two had become irreparable.
And her own irritation surged right along with it.
She had worked so hard to raise him without a single flaw, yet it wasn’t some brilliant foreign designer who was trampling her son’s pride in the end, but some insignificant Korean kid. It would be a lie to say she was calm about it.
“Fine. I’ll look into it.”
“Look into what?”
“What else? Are you going to keep getting beaten like an idiot?”
“Why am I the only one getting beaten? Huh?”
“What else did you do besides stealing his girlfriend?”
“...”
Looking at her son, suddenly mute as if he had a mouth full of honey, Sook-hyang said, “Enough. I’ll take care of it, so quit whining already. How long are you going to cry like a pathetic little boy? Get out there, pull yourself together, and make something out of that jealousy. That’s how you win.”
With that, she snapped at him one last time and slammed the door shut on her way out.
*
Two in the afternoon, President’s Office, Haesol Textile.
Jung Seung-hyun was going through the business cards and emails of the buyers he had met at Maison&Objet in Paris one by one.
Interior brands from France, Germany, and Italy had each sent sample requests in their own way.
All of it showed promising interest, but none of it would necessarily turn into a contract, so Seung-hyun was trying not to get carried away.
“Don’t be certain until the contract is stamped.”
He muttered the words under his breath, words his father had repeated countless times while he was still alive.
He also kept checking the occasional KakaoTalk message and email on his phone, personally organizing the sample lists to send to each country.
Should he make them art-fabric specific? Should he focus on bedding? Or should he send a mixed package showing both?
The question kept circling in his mind.
“How are we handling the visit schedule?”
“I’ve been proposing every other day, but if possible I want to book them after Plant Two is completed. Even if we take orders now, we won’t be able to supply the quantities they want at the timing they want unless Plant Two is finished.”
Usually, after an exhibition ended, the phones would ring off the hook for a few days before things gradually cooled and all anyone heard were vague replies that they were still reviewing. This time, however, the situation was different.
This wasn’t just casual interest. A few companies had actually said they wanted to visit Haesol Textile’s factory in person.
Hwang Seok-jae was working with more energy than most of the younger employees.
He perched his heavy glasses on the tip of his nose and checked every newly arrived email whenever he had a spare moment, folding them into the schedule.
“Usually, when overseas buyers visit, do we just show them the factory and that’s it?”
He recalled the foreign buyers he had dealt with in the past and shook his head.
“No. If they’ve come from that far away, we need to host them properly. There’s a lot to arrange, from hotels and interpreters to the factory tour route. That’s why we line up the buyer visits sequentially, and if we reserve residences or hotels in advance, we can keep the cost lower.”
“I see. Thanks to you, I feel a lot lighter.”
“It’s what I’m here for.”
Mr. Hwang was delighted to be recognized by the young president.
Perhaps it was because he was feeling the pleasure of work again after so long.
“What about the yarn supply?”
“Oddly enough, the price of C-grade yarn is creeping up. Since C-grade polyester is the key material in art fabric, the cheap yarn that used to be dumped onto the market is practically running dry.”
“Hmm, I can imagine.”
“We’ve been covering it through suppliers linked to Hanil Global, but at this rate I’m starting to think direct overseas purchases might be the better route.”
“Wouldn’t that be risky if it all comes in as one huge batch?”
“It would be. The risk is real. When we run the plant at full capacity, we end up contracting nearly a year’s worth of yarn at once. So with art fabric, President, we do need you to make a decision at some point. Should we focus on GyeolBit bedding and leave the sofa fabric alone for now...”
“No. We’re keeping art fabric as it is.”
“Understood. Then I’ll look for a supplier who can provide C-grade polyester at a lower price.”
“All right.”
After finishing his meeting with Mr. Hwang, Seung-hyun sat down in front of his computer.
The reason he had gone all the way to Paris in the first place, making something from nothing, wasn’t it to create a high-end art fabric that would work in Korea with Yu Se-rin’s collaboration?
The reason he couldn’t abandon furniture fabric was partly to keep using the equipment he already had, but more than anything, because it offered far greater added value for the same cost.
Since C-grade yarn was the main material, once the fabric was made, most of the sales would almost become profit.
Compared to bedding woven from expensive yarn at a density of 400 count or higher and then embroidered with all kinds of patterns, the profit margins were worlds apart.
As a company, he couldn’t afford to give that up.
Seung-hyun’s research continued without pause.
Across an A3 drawing sheet, fragments of hand-sketched motifs were spread out in disorder, while on the monitor a graphic tool displayed an antique Gobelin pattern separated into layers.
“Haa... if I’m not careful, this could look too old-fashioned. I need to keep some modern feeling in it too.”
He sipped his coffee and adjusted the pastel tones in the color palette.
What if he overlaid a faded orange afterimage over a texture that looked as though water had spread through it?
Still, it might retain a slightly dated feel, so he tried adding a very faint violet in a few places.
When he enlarged the photos of Gobelin tapestries he had taken himself in Paris, unexpected color combinations were hiding in the worn gaps of the wool fabric.
It was work to extract those digitally, rearrange them, and soften them again so that the “trace of time” could be deliberately reproduced.
“Done. This is enough for a first draft.”
Seung-hyun muttered that to himself and suddenly pushed back from his seat.
By now, the pattern on the monitor was beginning to take shape more concretely inside his head.
Once he printed the pattern onto fabric and checked the data to compare marketability, he thought he’d be able to identify the optimal version.
After stretching his back, he saw that the clock was already heading toward midnight.
He stepped outside the office building to breathe in the night air, and from the factory there came the faint, steady sound of machinery.
It seemed someone was still adjusting the machines, probably because it was one of those partial night-shift days.
Half curious, half worried, Seung-hyun opened the door to the production wing and went inside. He had expected everyone to have switched off the lights and gone to sleep by now, but several overhead lamps were still on, brighter than he’d imagined.
“Mr. Isan, are you still on duty?”
There stood Isan, the Sri Lankan young man with brown skin, large eyes, and thick fingers, pulling off his mask and wiping his sweat.
He looked a little tired, as if he was just about to clock out after moving materials and tidying the machines during the night shift, but he was still smiling brightly.
“Ah, President. I finish soon. I must prepare this or I get scolded.”
Seung-hyun felt grateful to him, but then his gaze landed on the hoodie Isan was wearing.
It had a beige base, but the sleeves and body flowed together in clean curves, and across the chest the English words Lesser Factory were printed with striking clarity.
“That outfit... doesn’t look like workwear...”
Isan flinched and stammered, “Ah, this... the lady who made it... gave it to me.”
It was clear he had been told he could wear it and had done so, but he also seemed embarrassed, as if he’d done something wrong.
“No, I’m asking because I was curious. I’m not mad.”
“Yes...”
“Was the design by A-young again this time?”
As if speaking to himself, Seung-hyun reached out and touched the clothes Isan was wearing.
“Huh?”
C-grade yarn quality = 80.2%
Sewing condition = 89.5%
Design suitability = 90.3%
Product value = 91.1%
Ninety-one?
Seung-hyun was stunned.