At precisely midnight, when most citizens had collapsed from exhaustion, in the hallway of an apartment in Seoul…
“Are you certain this is how we should do it?”
Juhyeon questioned the format of a meeting almost impossible to find in modern society.
“We place two folding chairs in an apartment hallway and sit facing a Portrait hanging on the opposite wall?”
“What is wrong with it? We even have a table. Our Guild personally commissioned this table.”
“Its semicircular shape certainly makes it feel as though Mr. Gio is seated here with us.”
“Rather than merely seeming to be here, is he not actually present?”
“He has not emerged from the Frame himself.”
Juhyeon smiled bitterly.
“Because he takes the form of a framed picture, it feels strange—as though we were holding a conversation before a memorial portrait.”
The Portrait himself answered,
“In one sense, I am indeed a memorial portrait.”
Yoo Seongwoon objected.
“No. Gio is a painted portrait, not a photograph.”
“Mr. Yoo Seongwoon is correct on that point.”
“Of course, Gio’s Portrait may not be an ordinary chosang meaning ‘portrait,’ but the other chosang meaning ‘the first funeral after a death.’ The word used when one says a family is holding a funeral.”
“That appears to be a witty hypothesis.”
“We are discussing your identity. Is there…