The Creditor Is My Husband? - Chapter 24

“Ahem.”

Lucas found himself staring at her lips and quickly cleared his throat, looking away.

Even though he was dressed comfortably, he felt inexplicably stifled.

‘It feels hot…’

“See, senior? You’re coughing because you gave me your coat and stayed like that. Here, put it back on. I’ve cleaned it, so it’s better now.”

“No, it’s okay…”

He tried to refuse the coat she handed back to him. But she spoke first.

“I’m fine now. Actually, I’m feeling hot. It must be because the sun is right overhead.”

Giselle pointed to the sky above her head. The sun was indeed high in the sky as it was past noon.

‘…So that’s why it’s hot.’

Lucas squinted up at the sky, and in that moment, Giselle quickly draped the coat over him.

Because she was shorter than him, it looked a bit awkward, but still.

“Sigh…”

He adjusted the coat properly. Giselle nodded in satisfaction and asked again.

“So where are we going now?”

“Not sure.”

Lucas frowned at her question.

Should he call the driver waiting nearby and suggest going to the tearoom of his hotel? He was pondering this when Giselle spoke first.

“If we don’t have anywhere specific to go, how about there?”

“Where?”

“The Summer Palace. I’ve never visited it even though I live in the capital.”

Giselle spoke with an embarrassed expression, but her cheeks were flushed with anticipation.

‘The Summer Palace…’

Though it was called a ‘palace,’ it wasn’t actually a royal palace. It was just a name people used.

It referred to the art gallery and gardens owned by Lucas, which were rumored to be so beautiful they resembled a palace.

But Lucas himself had little interest in the place. To him, it was just a storage space for his art collection, with no particular attachment.

But Giselle’s eyes sparkled with excitement.

Feeling a strange sense of pride, Lucas was about to speak when she suddenly looked dejected and slumped her shoulders.

“Oh, come to think of it, isn’t today a closed day? I heard it’s closed on the second Sunday of each month.”

Though she had never been there, she had heard plenty about it, given how popular it was.

Disappointed, Giselle sighed and was about to change the subject when Lucas spoke first.

“Giselle, you seem to be forgetting something.”

“…?”

“The owner of that ‘palace’ is me.”

He chuckled at her green eyes looking up at him.

* * *

“It’s a painting by Raoul Puhenna! Senior, it’s a Puhenna painting! I can’t believe I’m seeing a painting I’ve only seen replicas of up close…”

Giselle, who had just entered the gallery, gasped and ran towards the large painting on one wall.

The sound of her footsteps echoed on the marble floor of the empty gallery.

Startled by her own noise, Giselle stopped and looked back at Lucas, her face turning red with an awkward smile.

“Sorry. I got excited without realizing it.”

“It’s fine. It’s just us here, so it doesn’t matter.”

He chuckled and approached her. But she continued to blush, shaking her head in embarrassment at her own behavior.

“There are manners we must observe even when we’re alone. Above all, it’s disrespectful to this wonderful painting.”

She was overly excited about visiting the ‘Summer Palace’ for the first time.

Even though she was thrilled to see the painting she had always wanted to see with her own eyes, her recent behavior was wrong.

Acknowledging her mistake, Giselle brushed her cheek with an embarrassed expression. Yet, her green eyes kept glancing at the painting.

“Pfft.”

Lucas burst into laughter at the sight and extended his hand towards her.

Giselle gently took his hand and approached the painting with him.

A bright blue sea. And a woman and a dog sitting on the golden sandy beach.

It was a painting that perfectly suited Lucas’s gallery, known as the ‘Summer Palace.’

However, what made her like this painting wasn’t just the bright scenery.

What truly captivated Giselle’s gaze was the rough hand of the woman petting the dog.

“It feels more vivid seeing it in person. As I thought, the painter didn’t mistakenly draw the hand wrong. It wasn’t because the person who copied the painting was clumsy.”

Giselle first learned about this painting while browsing through imitation frames sold on the street. And what drew her in at that moment was the hand she was now looking at.

“The hand?”

Lucas stepped back and watched Giselle admire the painting, tilting his head. She nodded at his puzzled look.

“This woman’s hand. Unlike the bright coastal scenery, it’s rough. The brush strokes are so distinct that you can tell it was intentionally made to look rough. In a way, it’s so out of place with the surrounding scenery that it feels jarring.”

“Hmm…”

It was as she said. He examined the woman’s hand in the painting, which he hadn’t paid much attention to before.

The woman, petting the dog and gazing at the distant sea, was beautiful and wore a flowing dress.

The people around her also looked elegant and luxurious, indicating they were from a wealthy class.

Even the dog’s fur was glossy.

In that context, only the woman’s hand was rough.

“I thought perhaps what the painter truly wanted to depict was this hand, not the beautiful and bright surroundings.”

Giselle recalled the day she first saw this painting.

She remembered it as an unusually tough day. Although she wondered if there had ever been a day that wasn’t tough, that day was particularly hard in many ways.

She had been blamed for something that wasn’t her fault, received all sorts of verbal abuse from her superior, and the deadline to repay her father’s debt was the next day.

All those burdens weighed heavily on her.

So much so that she felt she might be crushed to death.

No matter how hard she struggled, the future seemed so distant and bleak.

That day, she even had the impulse to disappear somewhere on her way home from work.

It was then that she stumbled upon a street vendor.

A vendor selling imitation frames with famous paintings. Normally, she would have passed by, thinking it was a luxury she couldn’t afford, no matter how cheap the imitations were.

But that day was different. Or rather, she didn’t pass by.

She felt unjustly wronged, thinking she couldn’t even spend that little money on herself after enduring such a hard day.

“Of course, it’s just my thought. How could I guess what Puhenna was thinking when I didn’t even know who the painter was at the time?”

“…….”

“Maybe he just wanted to depict the bright sunlight, the sea waves under it, the warm sand heated by the sun, and the people enjoying their leisure there. The painting does show that. But…”

Giselle tilted her head back to look at the painting again. The painting that filled one side of the gallery wall was too large to take in at a glance.

And the woman’s rough, coarse hand was larger than Giselle’s entire body.

Giselle, who had been quietly staring at the hand, turned to Lucas and smiled softly.

“Still, I somehow felt that everything was painted for that rough hand. To comfort someone who had a hard day.”

It was tough, wasn’t it?

You did well today.

Giselle burst into tears at the comfort offered by the cheap imitation frame that day. She had to walk home holding the frame because she spent her fare on it.

People gave her strange looks as she walked home sniffling, but she didn’t regret buying that frame.

Even now, that small frame sits by her bedside.

Every day, it tells her, ‘You did well today.’

“…….”

Lost in her memories, Giselle unconsciously pressed her lips together. Lucas, who had been quietly watching her profile, spoke casually.

“Do you want this painting?”

“…What?”

She furrowed her brows at the absurd words she heard. She looked at him, thinking she had misheard.

Lucas pointed at the painting with a light nod and continued nonchalantly.

“As a wedding gift. If you want, I can have it delivered to your house right now.”

“…Delivered to my house, wh-what?”

Giselle, who had been repeating his words absentmindedly, looked at him in shock. Her green eyes blinked rapidly.

In contrast, his navy blue gaze remained steady as he looked at her.

“…No way.”

She opened her mouth involuntarily but then closed it and swallowed hard. She looked at him in disbelief, but his expression was as calm as ever.

‘Is he serious?’

Giselle opened and closed her mouth a few times before finally managing to ask.

“You’re giving me… this painting… as a gift?”

“If you want it. No, just take it. If you have that cheap imitation or whatever, throw it away immediately.”

Lucas clicked his tongue with a displeased expression.

An imitation.

He had never imagined such a thing. He didn’t even know it existed.