~[Chapter 1] Blank Canvas~
The call had been going on for twenty five minutes.
Seo Yikyung knew because he'd been watching the clock on his studio wall the entire time, eyes tracing the slow drag of the second hand like it was the only interesting thing left in the world.
Behind him, three blank canvases leaned against the wall. They had been blank for four months.
"The exhibition is in two months, Yikyung."
Director Joon's voice came sharp and clipped through the phone, the way it always did when he was trying very hard not to sound panicked and failing completely.
"Two months. And the clients — Seo Yikyung, are you listening to me? The clients are worried. They haven't received anything. Not a concept, not a mood board, not even a single sketc—"
"Hyung." Yikyung's voice was calm. Deliberately, almost insultingly calm.
"Breathe."
"I am breathing—"
"You're not."
He turned away from the clock and walked to the window, looking out at the city below. Seoul moved the way it always did — restless, relentless, entirely indifferent to the fact that one of its most celebrated artists hadn't been able to pick up a brush without his chest caving in.
"I'll figure it out."
"You've been saying that for four months."
"And I'll keep saying it until it's true."
"Yikyung—"
"The clients are worried, you're worried, everyone is worried."
He pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose.
"I understand. But worrying louder isn't going to make me paint faster, Hyung. It actually does the opposite."
Director Joon exhaled. Then inhaled. Then launched back in with renewed energy, something about contractual obligations and reputation and the gallery in Gangnam that had already printed his name on the promotional material—
Yikyung pulled the phone from his ear and looked at it for a moment.
Then he ended the call.
He stood in the silence of his studio for a long moment — really stood in it, let it settle over him like something heavy.
The room smelled like linseed oil and old paint and the ghost of every piece he'd made here before whatever this was had happened to him.
There were awards on the shelf he hadn't looked at in months. A framed magazine cover facing the wall because he'd turned it around one afternoon and never turned it back.
Seo Yikyung — The Voice of a Generation.
He picked up his car keys.
___________
He didn't have a destination. That was the point.
Seoul at midday was an assault — neon and noise and ten thousand people moving with purpose while he drifted through the streets with none.
He drove the way he used to paint in his early days, before the galleries and the clients and Director Joon's carefully managed calendar.
No direction. No plan. Just movement for the sake of it.
It didn't help though.
It used to help.
He stopped at a red light on Gangdong-daero, fingers drumming once against the steering wheel before going still. His eyes drifted the way they sometimes did — scanning without meaning to, an old habit from when the world used to feed him images he wanted to capture.
A woman adjusting her umbrella. A child tugging at a sleeve. A delivery rider weaving between lanes with practiced ease.
Nothing.
He looked away. Looked back at the light. Still red.
Then something snagged at the corner of his vision.
A poster.
Large format, the kind mounted on the temporary boards they used for construction hoardings.
He'd passed it without really seeing it but something — some reflex he thought had gone quiet — made him look again.
VISIT NAEUN-RI.
Where the sea remembers your name.
There was a photograph. A coastline he didn't recognize, small and unhurried looking, the kind of place that seemed to exist slightly outside of time.
A fishing village. Colourful market stalls. Water so clear it looked painted.
Tourist attraction, he thought, and almost looked away again.
But something held him.
If it was pulling tourists in, something interesting was happening there. Something worth seeing.
And he hadn't seen anything worth seeing in — he did the math grimly — a very long time.
The light turned green.
The car behind him beeped once.
Yikyung sat there for one more second, reading the poster a final time.
Then he turned his indicator on, pulled out of the lane, and drove home.
________
The texts loaded in waves.
Seventeen from Director Joon. Four from his gallerist. Two from a journalist he'd been avoiding since January. One from his mother that just said eating well? which was somehow the one that made his chest tighten the most.
He sat on the edge of his bed, scrolling through them without opening any, until Director Joon's name appeared on his screen as an incoming call.
He picked up.
"Before you say anything," Yikyung said.
"Yikyung—"
"I want to travel."
Silence.
"...What?"
"I need to get out of Seoul."
He leaned back, staring at the ceiling.
"I've been staring at the same four walls for four months now and nothing is coming. Maybe it's the city. Maybe I need — I don't know, a change. Different air. Different environment. Different inspiration."
"The exhibition is in two months."
"I know."
"You can't just—"
"I'll be back before it."
His voice was quiet but certain in the way that Director Choi had learned, over eight years, meant there was no point pushing.
"I'll come back before it. And I'll bring something with me."
A pause.
"Something worth showing."
Another silence. Longer this time.
"...Where are you even going?"
Yikyung thought for a moment.
Where the sea remembers your name.
"Somewhere the city can't follow me," he said.
Director Joon made a sound that was equal parts exhaustion and resignation — the sound of a man who had long since accepted that managing Seo Yikyung was not a job so much as a calling.
"Fine," he said finally. "Fine. But Yikyung—"
"Two months. Complete piece. I promise."
He hung up before Joon Hyung could change his mind. Then he opened his laptop, typed Naeun-ri coastal town into the search bar, and started looking for somewhere to stay.
For the first time in four months, his hands weren't restless.
They were reaching for something.
He just didn't know yet that what he was reaching for had a name.
The village called it Daun.