Summary:

They keep meeting each other for dance classes every day, and they slowly fall in love. When the tailor brings the new dress to Kyungsoo’s mansion for both Jongin and Kyungsoo so try them on, Baekhyun is there. When Jongin tries his, the Duke is mesmerized and the marquise notices how much Kyungsoo desires the other, but keeps quiet. They go to the party, and there Jongin meets Yixing, a foreign noble, who offers him a job back at his homeland. This job needs a year to be completed, and Jongin, since he doesn’t know about the Duke feelings towards him, and thinks his is a unrequited love, accept the job, also because he knows he gain fame thanks to it.

After Jongin’s departure, Kyungsoo falls into aestheticism even more to forget about him – he believes he can’t be with another man so he should forget about him now that he can- and starts going to parties almost every day, he sleeps around with every woman who is willing to and even falls into ersion with and other pleasurable but not socially accepted ual activities. Here his portrait, who had been linked to his soul since the beginning, becomes how you can see it in the video, and Kyungsoo’s personality changes too. He isn’t kind anymore, he treats the others like they are only objects, and he believes he is superior to all of them. His mansion is now once again full of mirrors and even marble statues of Kyungsoo, since he is conscious of his good looks.

When Jongin comes back, he can’t believe how much Kyungsoo has changed; it’s like now the Duke has no morality, and it pains the painter to see the man he loves like that. He tries to make him go back to how he was, but to no avail. At the same time, Baekhyun, who is now Kyungsoo’s closest friend, convinces him that being with a man is no different from being with a woman, since they don’t  care about what the society thinks. The marquise teaches him how to love a man – scene yes my baeksoo- and not too long after that Kyungsoo invited Jongin to his mansion, and since the painter has still feelings for him, The duke has no problems in seducing the younger man –again, scene-. But Kyungsoo never mentions his feeling for the others, since feelings go against all he believes now, and Jongin feels used, feels like he is just another playtoy of the noble, and so he leaves the mansion to never come back. Jongin accepts a permanent job at Yixing’s  mansion, and Kyungsoo is left alone, having lost the only thing he truly cared for all for the sake of an empty life.

Now Kyungsoo is hollow; he does not enjoy the pleasure that once delighted him anymore; it’s not the portrait that is becoming like him: it’s him who has now became specular to his portrait. He keeps living in this way for so many years that he doesn’t even remember how his life was before the portrait came into the picture; he has already lost himself, he goes on merely for inertia, not living anymore, just kind of being. He has lost his identity and has started wearing a mask identical to his portrait: others see him as a sinful, beautiful, luring man who is living his life to its fullest, but in reality, Kyungsoo is only an empty shell who feels nothing and keeps acting as others expect him to because of his reputation.

He sits near his portrait, which is on the floor, leaning on a couch, and he leans his head on the painting’s frame; if it wasn’t for the inhuman stillness of the picture, no one could tell them apart.