The Road To Glory [EN]: Chapter 181

# 18 For a Better Future

Halo opened to the very last page of the notebook. He saw the familiar musical staves, with thick and light notes swimming within.

‘Maybe.’

Halo thought.

‘I might have been mistaken.’

The sentimental melody and sweet lyrics looked like a ballad from Korea, a love song for a lover.

Noh Hae-il didn’t have a girlfriend.

Jang Jin-soo might be wrong, but if he had a lover or a similar relationship with a woman, he would have been contacted already.

The possibility of unrequited love was also unlikely because Noh Hae-il’s lyrics didn’t seem like unrequited love.

Therefore, Halo considered a possibility he had never thought of before.

‘The owner of this song.’

The person Noh Hae-il wanted to sing this song to, wasn’t a girl he was interested in romantically.

Halo reread the sheet music for [Confession] from the beginning.

“I have something to say all night.”

Halo read only the lyrics, without the notes.

[Listen as every moment flows by.]

[It might seem strange,

I’m getting one step closer to you with trembling steps.]

[If you don’t leave no matter what I say,]

[If you greet me with the brightest smile so that I’m not afraid of this night, the moment we’ve been waiting for will come.]

[This is a song only for you.]

[An old confession kept under the night sky.]

[I’ll put eternity in a letter floating on the night sea and sing it to you before this night ends.]

[A story only for the two of us.]

It was poignant, yet the lyrics made it feel simple. He thought it was just because it was a pure and innocent middle schooler’s song.

Changing the subject made it sound different.

“Confession.”

The title of this song wasn’t just a proposal to a girl he liked.

Noh Hae-il, who hadn’t been able to choose anything until now, was finally trying to confess his feelings.

Perhaps the target is—.

‘Mother,’ it seemed.

It’s not strange that Halo was mistaken.

Because this song is definitely a love song.

He was intentionally hiding the subject, ‘you,’ in a romantic melody.

If someone didn’t know Noh Hae-il, if they didn’t know the background of this song, everyone could have been mistaken.

Halo laughed in vain.

He, too, had fallen for this simple trick like other ordinary people.

“I sang it completely wrong.”

And he admitted it.

He had been underestimating this kid and got a taste of his own medicine.

“Cocky brat…”

Halo cursed for no reason and acknowledged the middle schooler who had tricked him for the first time.

Noh Hae-il is completely different from Halo. It doesn’t mean he’s a coward or an idiot. Noh Hae-il, as a completely different human being, would have walked a completely different path.

If Halo chose avoidance and resistance, Noh Hae-il chose dialogue and harmony.

At least if he was going to let her listen to this song.

Now, Halo couldn’t even predict what kind of future Noh Hae-il would have.

However, he knew what Noh Hae-il wanted.

Halo asked Noh Hae-il.

Preparing all this,

“Are you telling me to create a better future?”

Halo didn’t know if this kid’s choice would end well. As he said before, it was a choice Halo had never experienced.

However, since this kid was hoping so much, he felt a sense of responsibility.

Not as an adult, but just as a human being. That kind of thing.

Also, a little curiosity about whether this would really work.

“I wouldn’t be me if I chickened out here.”

Halo got up.

#

Park Seung-ah cleared the dishes. Then, she turned on the washing machine and emptied the trash can. After opening the windows wide and turning on the ventilation fan, she went through the spacious living room, master bedroom, and small room in turn with a silent vacuum cleaner.

She usually finished her housework here, but Park Seung-ah looked for more to do. She took out a towel and wiped the windows after a long time, and organized the dusty books. She also replaced the old clothes hangers that she had been putting off because she was too lazy, and checked the already clean kitchen again.

She couldn’t stay still.

Even to shake off her complicated thoughts, she moved more diligently.

Eventually, the time came when all the work was done.

She stood in the middle of the living room and noticed her son’s room at the end of the living room. The door was tightly closed.

Suddenly, a question arose.

Since when has that door been so tightly closed?

She couldn’t remember. Of course. Noh Hae-il, who studied until after 2 a.m., closed the door so that light wouldn’t leak out.

She left him alone because she thought he would study better, and the door has been tightly closed ever since. He was such a neat kid that there was nothing to clean up in his room.

She carefully approached Noh Hae-il’s room. And slowly put her hand on the doorknob. Click. The door wasn’t locked. As if waiting for her to come in at any time.

Park Seung-ah entered Hae-il’s room after a long time.

“!”

And what she faced was a messy room. It wasn’t that clothes or trash were scattered around. However, crumpled papers were rolling on the floor, and the AirPods she had bought him as a birthday present a long time ago were lying next to them.

A roughly crumpled blanket.

And dust floated in the unventilated room.

She calmly looked at the messy room.

Strangely, she wasn’t angry. She just picked up the pillow and AirPods that had fallen on the floor and put them back in their original places.

Then, she gathered the paper balls rolling on the floor.

She was about to throw them all in the trash, but she saw what was written inside. When she unfolded the crumpled paper, musical staves and notes were scribbled on it.

Some papers had alphabets, and others had letters that she didn’t know what they meant.

Having always seen neat handwriting, she couldn’t imagine that her son would have such bad handwriting.

Unable to throw away the paper, she neatly unfolded it and placed it on one side of the desk, then plopped down on her son’s bed.

Soon, she recalled the ‘video’ that Chan-soo’s mother had told her about. The video that had complicated her mind.

There is no mother in the world who doesn’t recognize her son.

No matter what he looks like, no matter how far away he is, she finds him as if there is a frequency.

Park Seung-ah also found her son in the video.

Chan-soo’s mother easily dismissed it as someone who looked alike, but she was sure it was her son.

But at the same time, it felt unfamiliar.

His expression, his actions, and all the environments surrounding her son were very unfamiliar to her.

Yes, she didn’t know that her son would have this side of him.

She didn’t know that he would be surrounded by so many people, with such a happy expression, singing such a warm song.

“Why, why didn’t you tell me?”

It’s natural that she doesn’t know.

Noh Hae-il didn’t say anything to her.

He didn’t tell her where he went, what he did, who he hung out with, or when he became friends with that Jun-soo.

He had opportunities to tell her at any time, but he didn’t seem to want to.

Or was it?

She recalled the morning she had fought with her son.

‘If you don’t intend to do it as a hobby?’ That morning, she had dismissed his rude attitude as puberty.

What did she say back then?

Did she tell him not to do it?

Or did she just get angry?

There was no positive reaction.

Of course, her son had no time to do anything else.

Getting into a foreign language high school was just the beginning, and the road was long.

That’s what she thought rationally.

She thought she had to be stricter for her son’s future.

But.

Hae-il in that video looked so happy. Also, the expressions of the people listening to the song made it feel like she was there.

Now, she wondered what was right.

Park Seung-ah, who had been staring blankly into the air, jumped up from her seat. She ran to the internet television in the living room and turned on YouTube on the big screen.

Of course, there was only one recent video.

The video she had watched dozens of times.

Now, she had memorized what song Hae-il sang and what face he made while singing it. But what was still new about this video was that the reactions of the people listening to Hae-il’s song made her heart flutter.

Tears of emotion, lovers leaning their heads on each other’s shoulders, people singing along, and the people reflected behind the cell phones wouldn’t leave her head.

She also opened the comment section to see people’s reactions. She had seen the popular comments so many times that she didn’t feel anything anymore, but the constantly appearing comments and their compliments made her excited, and the negative comments made her frown.

However, the critical comments were terrorized with dislikes and were soon buried by good posts.

– I cried after a long time. Every day is the same.

I had a resignation letter in my pocket and was comforting myself with a glass of soju [Korean distilled spirit], struggling through today, but suddenly everything was okay. It’s always hard, but the world still seems worth living. Thank you for singing a good song after a long time. He’s a young friend, but he sings a song that makes people cry. It’s been a while since someone who can sing this kind of song has come out in Korea. I hope he sings more songs.

Somehow, her eyes got hot.

It was touching that so many people were being healed through her son and could endure a difficult day.

The video, which was clearly at 480,000 views until this morning, was surpassing 550,000 views and approaching 600,000 views in the blink of an eye. It was a huge growth rate. The algorithm may be the cause of this number of views, but there were also people who watched it again among those who had already seen it. Just looking at the comments, they said they had been listening for four hours.

Moreover, judging from the increasing number of comments in foreign languages, it seems that not only Koreans are being drawn in.

She scrolled down as if she was going to read all the comments and found a comment she hadn’t seen before.

-Isn’t this person this person?

nutube.com/watch?v=5_RhQor [wave_r]

I think it’s right

Park Seung-ah was startled when she found the address bar. She thought Hae-il’s personal information had already been revealed. Park Seung-ah, who even imagined reporters flocking to her house and eventually moving, carefully clicked on the video.

And what she found was.

“This is…”

Park Seung-ah’s eyes widened.

A channel with nothing, with a small number of views that couldn’t be compared to the previous video.

There was only one clean video on it.

Swallowing hard, her trembling fingers touched the video. Soon, a melody was heard.

#

“Are you done?”

“Yeah.”

Halo turned off the computer and got up.

The bones in his body made a cracking sound.

The preparations were all done. He grabbed his guitar.

Since he didn’t understand the composer’s intention, the existing song was a failed song. He revised the song to convey the intention again and finished recording the instrumental with MIDI [Musical Instrument Digital Interface].

Now it was time to let them hear Noh Hae-il’s true feelings.

In the best way he could.

Noh Hae-il was in the recording studio because he was going to show them the video, but this time he had no intention of filming the video as he intended.

Because there was a better way than that.

Something he could do better, and probably convey better.

“Well, do you think it will work out?”

He asked as if he knew what he had done, even though he didn’t know. But Halo, who knew that Jang Jin-soo wasn’t just a lacking kid, answered the question that he would have ignored.

“I don’t know.”

“…Oh, why are you so unconfident?”

“It’s not that I’m not confident.”

It was because that was beyond what he could do.

Halo recalled the memories of the past.

His father tried to break his guitar when he said he was going to do music. He saved it by throwing his whole body, and he rebelled against his father.

As a result. His father punished him, saying that he was possessed by the devil, and his mother also scolded Halo. His siblings also criticized him.

There was no one to listen to his earnestness. No one heard his voice. It felt like shouting at a wall.

He had never regretted his way of running away from home.

So maybe that’s why.

He didn’t know what would happen this time.

He had prepared to the best of his ability in the way Noh Hae-il wanted, but in the end, it was up to them to accept it.

Halo took a deep breath and got on the apartment elevator.

His legs became stronger as he took a step,

And his eyes, facing forward, were filled with determination.

For a better future.