Chapter 1

Chapter Notes: Some definitions at the end of chapter. Use of 20's slang. 

"This world's divided into two kinds of people

-the hunter and the hunted.

Luckily, I'm a hunter.

Nothing can ever change that."

The Most Dangerous Game (1932)

His first time at a Gatsby party had been quite the experience. His first thought had been excess. Everything was at the reach of his hand in overabundance. Bootleg alcohol[i] first and most of all, then women, men, feathers, and golden serpentine falling down from the sky, well, the ceiling of an enormous mansion. The strenuous music of three orchestras playing at the same time rumbled inside Jiyong’s skull, like a rhythmic start of a bad headache.

Although it wasn’t his first time at a party that involved illegal alcohol and Charleston. No. He was well versed on that side of the society. His self-proclaimed liberal friends had taken him under his wings since his first days at the university and introduced him to the wonderful world of speakeasies[ii] and, although secretly, to pansy clubs[iii]. But this? This went beyond and further of what Jiyong had experienced in his short adult life.

“So, is the monkey rum[iv] not of your taste?” slurred Youngbae to his ear, with a drunk, marveled grin on his face. He took Jiyong’s glass and slurped all its content in one go; returning the now empty glass to its owner with a chuckle. Jiyong rolled his eyes and pushed him off, not without a grin of his own.

“Beat it[v], Youngbae!” he shook his head.

“Once I find a girl I like,” winked Youngbae, staring at a group of girl dancers running towards the adjacent room hall. Her skirts flapped around their tights, exposing more skin than necessary. Youngbae gasped at the view, “I think I have a crush.”

“I rather think you’ve got an edge[vi],” Jiyong laughed and took another glass of champagne from one of the many waiters carrying platters full of glasses of all sizes and colors.

“Oh! Pipe it down[vii],” Youngbae dismissed him with a hand and stepped towards a newly formed group of young women dressed in golden and white satin evening gowns, “And go look for a girl for yourself,” he winked at him one last time and got lost among the multitude of people.

“Boy, Youngbae. A boy,” Jiyong murmured to himself and looked around one more time. Admiring, once again, the lasciviousness of it all. As many right now at the party, he hadn’t met yet Gatsby, nor he had any hopes to. But having the chance to be at the party as an invited guest felt like an accomplishment of its own. How many could say they were important enough to carry a golden ticket inside their back pocket? Not many. Most of the fancy dressed men and women there had stepped inside this house without any invitation, as accustomed. The thought brought a smile to Jiyong’s face. He took another careful sip and leaned on the white banister, which allowed him to stare at the party going on on the first floor of such an enormous house.

His first days among the high society of Columbia University had been difficult, to say the least. His parents had entered the United States as labor workers, his mother in San Francisco, his father in Florida. They had met as mostly all Asian workers did these days, with traditional matchmaking processes, that forced them to only being able to see their faces in pictures before the wedding. Jiyong was born from that type of arranged marriage. And though his parents had finally ended up establishing in New York and worked hard enough to own a Korean restaurant at the skirts of Manhattan, his childhood life couldn’t be called fancy by any standard. His had been that one of a middle-class kid exposed to elegant cars and fancy women walking down the streets of such an agitated city as New York. A kid that admired those type of luxuries and worked the rest of his days to reach those standards.

“Are you the Korean painter, the one that paints male nudes?” a small, chic women asked him, pulling him out of his thoughts. She pressed her back on the banister and arched it enough to show a nice glimpse of her cleavage. Jiyong stopped himself from smirking.

He turned his body to face her and gifted her with a wide smile, “Do I look Korean to you?” he teased. The girl giggled and one of her hands came to rest over the shiny necklaces hanging in front of her dress, fingers playing with the strings.

“No. You look like a painter,” she laughed. And Jiyong saw the shiny edges of drunkenness in her eyes. Everyone was drunk at those places. Jiyong took another sip of his own glass and nodded his head.

“How does a painter look?”

The girl her deep red lipstick covered lips and tilted her head to the side, to expose the stretch of her neck, "Lonely," she answered and placed her hand over the left pocket of his gray vest, pulling him closer.

Jiyong had no time to answer anything when a deep voice shouted his name at his back, surprising both him and the girl, who let go of her grip on his vest and stepped backward, an annoyed frown on her pretty face.

“Jiyong! I’ve been looking for you for ages!” Mr. Drane pushed his way through the crowd, with his perfectly fitted tuxedo and his shiny bald head, "Hello, Mrs. Wentlandt. I see you found our painter before me,” he put on a gentle smile that couldn’t hide at all the hints of despondency in his voice.

“I guess I did,” Mrs. Wentlandt, as now Jiyong knew the girl was called, answered with a sneer and pushed herself off the banister and walked away, without saying goodbye, swaying her hips while she wandered off.

A hand came to rest on his upper back, “That girl has nothing good in her,” Mr. Drane said looking at the retreating girl with scorn, “She is nothing but a flapper[viii].”

“I am a flapper myself, Mr. Drane,” gasped Jiyong, pretending to be insulted by his words. Mr. Drane broke in laughter and shook his head.

 “All you lack is being a woman and I would believe so myself,” he took Jiyong semi-empty glass of champagne and placed it over the flat edge of the banister, then proceeded to fix Jiyong’s suit and small bow tie, “Now onto more important things, I want to introduce you to someone.”

“Are you introducing me to Gatsby?” Jiyong joked although a small tiny hope was present in the way his eyes flickered for a couple of seconds. But the loud laughter that came as a response, crushed any hopeful expectation.

Mr. Drane threw his head backward and rubbed his eyes, "You sap! I don't even know him myself and I've been attending these parties for longer than your age," he clasped his back and with a small push, invited him to walk with him.

“His name is Lee Seunghyun and…”

“Another Korean? Really?” Jiyong’s spluttered and his brows knitted in a frown. What Jiyong less wanted was meeting any more Asian men with sad stories they were eager to share; because they always were, “You know I barely can speak Korean, right?”

“Not any Korean, this man is probably the owner of half of Columbia University," Mr. Drane whispered, his eyes bulged out filled with greed.

Jiyong sighed, “Is that so?”

He disliked being used like this but he had no say about it. Mr. Drane was the full reason he was where he was. A recognized painter, a first class student and now, a Gatsby special guest. He had believed in his talents when no one else had. But sometimes, and now it was one of those times, his gratitude wasn’t enough to overlook the faults the man had. He was a money-grubbing player. And while he was interested in art, he was even more interested in all the money he could gather by making good connections and organizing art galas, or fundraisers, as he was so insistent to call them.

“Now, the most important thing of all,” Mr. Drane continued talking, ignoring the discord in Jiyong’s comment, “Never call him by his real name or it all will be over before it even starts. You will be blacklisted for life. And do we want that?” he turned and looked him straight in the eye. When Jiyong didn’t answer he asked once again, his lips pressed in frustration, “Do we want that?”

“No?” Jiyong answered slowly.

“That’s right,” Mr. Drane clapped once and gripped his shoulders. “We definitely don’t want that. So you call him Seungri instead. Seungri. Don’t forget that Jiyong or I’ll make sure you regret it for the rest of your poor life.”

Jiyong chuckled at that and bent in laughter.

“What’s so funny about that, Kwon Jiyong?” Mr. Drane frowned, “I’m serious.”

Jiyong gasped between breaths, “It… is Korean.”

“I know he is Korean!” Mr. Drane pushed him up and took his face between his hands, “Please don’t tell me you are that drunk.”

Jiyong shook his head and pulled Mr. Drane’s hands away from his face, “Not him, his nickname. It’s the Korean word for victory. I just…” he stopped to look at the unamused face of Mr. Drane and his smile faltered. “I’m sorry, I just found it hilarious.”

“Well, you better don’t pull that stunt in front of him. Now, as I was telling you he is our Big Cheese[ix]. You listen? He is the owner of the RailRoads company. The one Asian gentleman everyone wants to be friend with. And the best shot for us to have a good benefactor for your art.”

That shut up Jiyong for good and made him listen.

“The owner of the RailRoads company?” Jiyong gasped, in open-mouthed amazement.

They reached the stairs that led to the first floor and Jiyong followed Mr. Drane still with a baffled expression on his face, that probably made him looked totally drunk.

“The one and only. So I’m serious when I say don’t ruin this opportunity,” Mr. Drane said when they reached one of the smallest rooms inside the house and pushed the doors open. Another orchestra was playing at the back of the room; the song was familiar to him, King Porter Stomp had been a favorite of one of his roommates at the university and pretty popular that year on the radio.

Mr. Drane cleared his throat in a definite sign of nervousness and that made Jiyong notice how the atmosphere inside the room felt tauter than anywhere else at the party, and he knew instantly he was among the elite.

“Seungri, my friend,” Mr. Drane pushed his way inside a circle of extremely well-dressed individuals. Jiyong looked down at his tuxedo and prayed they didn’t find any bad stitching in it. He gulped and followed Mr. Drane.

“Oh! But if it is not our beloved Harold Drane," an extremely handsome Asian man smiled back and opened his arms to embrace Jiyong’s mentor. He was dressed in a black tuxedo, his short black hair was, surprisingly, unruly, and his eyes were a shade between brown and gray, “I last saw you a few years ago at Clarence’s daughter’s birthday party, didn’t I?”

“As always, you are right. Never forgetting a thing, aren’t you?”

The man chuckled and grinned. The rest of the men and women laughed with him, as if not laughing was out of the option. Jiyong frowned confused, and of course, that was when the man's eyes fell on him.

“Who is this young man?” Seungri asked, his ferocious eyes studying every inch of him.

“Oh! You will be pleased!” Mr. Drane smiled nervously, “This is Kwon Jiyong. Our most promising painter at the Arts department.”

Seungri nodded and stepped closer to Jiyong, extending a hand, “And your most controversial too, as I’ve heard.”

For once Jiyong had no idea of what to do. He barely noticed himself moving a hand until he felt the silky touch of skin against skin, and a strong hand enveloping his hand with strength. He knew about him. This powerful, handsome man had heard about him, and whether it had been good or bad critics didn’t really matter much to Jiyong at the moment.

"Pleased to meet you. I've listened a lot about your art. Hopefully, I can see one for myself one of these days," Seungri smirked and let go of Jiyong’s hand.

“T-thank you, Mr…”

Seungri stopped him with a smack of his tongue, “No Mr. or Sir, just call me Seungri. We are all friends after all,” he said looking around at the men and women gathered, and all of them nodded furiously as if pulled by invisible strings.

To say Jiyong was impressed was an understatement. With the Immigration Act just having been declared, it was striking to see so many Americans awed and dazzled by the very same one they had passed a rule against. Jiyong remembered the day Youngbae shoved the paper on his face, facial features contorted in alarm. The Immigration Act of 1924 had been nicknamed as the “Oriental Exclusion Act” and had been established to exclude Korean immigrants into the US. How funny was it that this very Korean man had everyone eating from the palm of his hand?

Including myself, Jiyong thought and couldn’t help the amused grin to spread over his face. He shook his head. Shut up.

What he wasn’t expecting was to lift his eyes and see an equally amused grin appearing on the other’s man face. His eyes still fixated on him despite him being now immersed in a conversation with another man.

Seungri stopped then his conversation with the gentleman rather abruptly and approached Jiyong, with a sideways smile.

“So, a painter?” Seungri said, his hand came to rest on Jiyong’s back and pushed him away from the crowd. Jiyong walked beside him enraptured, only noticing the pleading look Mr. Drane sent his way. When the man raised an expectant eyebrow, Jiyong finally broke out of his trance.

“Yeah. Funny, huh?” he said and rubbed the back of his neck, “I guess I was always good with my hands.”

The other man raised both eyebrows and a playful smirk appeared on his face.

“I will be the judge of that,” he said and paused, his eyes traveled down from Jiyong’s eyes to his lips and neck and went up again, “Once I see your paintings. Are you showing your work anywhere at the moment?”

Jiyong shook his head, “We are working on an exhibition, at the hmm… Annual Student Meeting at the Vanderbilt’s Whitney Arts Studio, for this autumn.”

“Ah! That’s a nice place to start presenting your art. I’ve been there myself. Quite open minded people go there, I would say. Especially taking into account your… type of art," Seungri said, deep intense eyes stared at him. Jiyong felt analyzed.

“M-my type of art?”

“Many of my female friends seem to be quite marveled by your nudes.”

“Not mine,” Jiyong murmured and Seungri lifted his eyebrows at that, confused.

 “I mean the nudes,” Jiyong rushed to clarify, “They are my paintings, but I do not paint myself ,” Jiyong blushed to the tip of his ears and he wondered if Mr. Drane would be proud to know his beloved disciple was talking about him being with his future benefactor.

“That’s a shame,” Seungri frowned, although his was a teasing type of frown. He got closer and whispered in his ear, "I would have loved to see you .”

Jiyong stuttered an unintelligible response and tried to step backward. Now, he wasn't a bluenose[x] at all. Not remotely. He had been approached before in the pansy clubs he frequented with delight. All types of men, from the business type to the bulky ones who clearly worked in labor went there to enjoy the drag shows and then to find different ual experiences, as they called them. Because mostly all of them would deny being faggots, and Jiyong would roll his eyes. He had kissed and had being ed by men from those clubs, men with delicate hands to men with too rough, chafed ones. But on a party like these, being approached so openly and unashamed, it took Jiyong out of his usual zone and left him appalled. Add to it being approached by no one else but Lee Seunghyun, Korean man of the year as it seemed.

Seungri laughed a deep melodious laughter and whispered once more to his ear, "I am going to take you home and do things to you. If that’s okay?” he asked that last part more mocking than anything. And Jiyong wondered then two things: when, in the short span of their talk, had this man recognize him as one of those men; and more importantly, if this man wasn’t playing a cruel trick on him.

“I’m sorry,” Seungri stepped backward, "I don't…" his short-lived answer died the moment Seungri raised a disbelieving eyebrow and smirked, knowingly.

“Anyway,” the man placed his hands inside his pockets and kept walking, as if nothing degenerate, as anyone at the party would judge such exchange, had been said between them, "I might have time in my schedule to pay a visit to your exhibition. You might even convince me to invest in you," he said that with a suspicious side glance.

“That would be, I mean, yes,” Jiyong shook his head slightly and gulped, “I hope my work is of your taste.”<