The Road To Glory [EN]: Chapter 1331

< The Sun Rises in Venice -133>

“I can’t see anyone.”

Halo turned around.

All he could see was a world with subdued colors through his sunglasses-like glasses, but he couldn’t see any familiar faces.

And no sounds either.

He closed his eyes and listened carefully, but he couldn’t hear any Korean. Only Italian, Spanish, English, Chinese, and all sorts of other languages and music.

The festival music was always enjoyable. Halo smiled as he listened to the cheerful music.

Everyone had scattered, but there was no need to worry.

They were all adults and not the type to get lost in a strange place. If necessary, they would contact him by phone. They all knew the way back home.

So, Halo walked wherever his feet took him.

There were quite a few people dressed as Medico della Peste [Plague Doctor]. It couldn’t be helped that there were duplicates since it was one of the popular costumes.

Halo spotted a Medico della Peste, dressed in a black coat and black suit like himself. The man, carrying a large guitar case on his back and holding the white cane of a plague doctor, was clutching his stomach and staggering.

The man slowly approached Halo, who was leaning against the wall.

“Where’s the bathroom! Emergency!”

“The bathroom is around that corner.”

“Oh, thank you! …Oh my god! Comrade!”

When Halo pointed to the bathroom sign, the man looked up, greeted him, and then shouted when he saw someone in a similar costume.

Then he hesitated, about to turn the corner.

The narrow bathroom was too much for him to handle with all his luggage.

Seeing his guitar, cane, and hands full, the man handed the cane to Halo.

“Please hold this for a moment!”

“?”

“Please! I’ll be right back, ugh-. I should never drink before a performance again.”

At that moment, the man’s stomach rumbled.

As if sensing a signal, the man backed away with hurried steps.

What if he just took the cane and left? From entrusting it to him to shouting that it was an emergency. He must have really gotten a bad stomachache.

I guess he’s still maintaining his last bit of sanity since he didn’t leave the guitar?

“…”

Since he was resting anyway, Halo nodded roughly. The man’s face brightened, and he ran around the corner.

Before the door slammed shut, the man shouted in a voice like a scream.

“It’s not worth much! I got it secondhand!”

“…I don’t need it.”

It sounded like he didn’t care if it was stolen, but he didn’t have a hobby of coveting other people’s things. How much could this be worth? Halo gripped the cane and placed it on the ground.

How long had he been waiting?

No matter how long he waited, the man didn’t come out.

He felt like he had waited for twenty or thirty minutes. Had he gone to build a bathroom, or had he fallen and died in the bathroom?

Halo turned towards the corner the man had entered, wondering if he should just leave the cane against the bathroom door. At that moment,

“Peter!”

Someone grabbed Halo’s arm from behind.

It was a man in a flamboyant clown costume.

He shouted, panting.

“Hey! I’ve been looking for you! I thought you fell and died in the bathroom. I told you not to drink so much!”

“?”

“If you’re done, let’s go quickly!”

The man pulled Halo with force.

Halo stood still, wondering what was going on, and the man slapped him on the back.

“Hey, we’re late. This is our first time applying, so we have to do well even if we’re nervous. We practiced hard! Let’s go quickly!”

“Performance?”

Unfortunately, the man didn’t seem to hear Halo’s voice due to the noise of the crowd.

He forcibly dragged Halo into the crowd.

Halo glanced back and then looked at the clown.

It seemed like he had misunderstood something.

“Wait a minute.”

The sound of a trumpet blared loudly next to him, drowning out his voice.

He tapped him, but the clown went ahead, annoyed.

Halo chuckled and obediently followed him. This absurd situation would be resolved as soon as the man who went into the bathroom returned, and he was curious about what the performance was.

He thought he could just say no in a less crowded place.

Since he followed obediently, the clown no longer dragged him by force.

The clown took him to the pier.

There were far more gondolas there than he had seen in Venice.

It was as if all the gondolas in Venice had been gathered there.

However, the difference was that the gondolas were decorated lavishly.

Only then did Halo realize that these gondolas were going to have a parade.

The clown led him to a gondola.

“I can’t believe we’re doing something like this.”

He said with a voice mixed with tension and excitement.

“I would never have been able to do this normally. The mask is cumbersome, but in a way, it feels good. It’s like I’ve become someone else. I feel like I can do anything because my face is covered.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. Even if I make a mistake, no one will know it’s me. They’ll just think the clown made a mistake…”

The clown paused.

He realized that the voice of the Medico della Peste talking next to him was different from what he knew. The Peter he knew had a phlegmy voice, not one so clear. The clown jumped and asked.

“Who are you?!”

“Someone you brought here by mistake.”

Halo crossed his arms.

At that moment, the clown realized his mistake.

He couldn’t tell his complexion because of the face paint, but Halo could tell that his expression had suddenly become serious.

“Ah, no. You look just like Peter. And that cane-”

Halo thought of the person who had entrusted him with the cane. He wondered who he had mistaken him for, and it turned out to be that Medico della Peste.

“Oh, oh, what should I do? We have to get on the gondola in five minutes. Where did that bastard Peter go?”

The clown’s face contorted as if he was about to cry.

“Does Peter know where this is?”

“Yeah, there’s no way he wouldn’t know. We’ve been here several times.”

“Then we’ll have to wait. We can’t go back.”

“…That’s right. Peter will come, right?”

Halo spoke calmly with the clown, as if he thought the person he had mistaken him for was a counselor. Just then, the [Please board] announcement was made.

Halo said leisurely.

“Then I’ll do it.”

“Do you know how to play the guitar?”

The clown belatedly recognized the guitar case he was carrying again.

Yes, he had confused him with Peter because of the cane, guitar case, and plague doctor costume. But looking at it again, the luxurious guitar case with the butterfly engraved on it didn’t look like Peter’s at all. How could he have been confused?

The clown blamed his stupidity.

“You can’t not know the song. It’s a very famous song.”

The clown whispered.

Halo’s eyes gleamed as he listened quietly.

“You know it?”

“Yeah.”

“Why are you smiling?”

“Just… because it’s fun.”

What’s so fun?

The clown tilted his head.

Eventually, the clown nervously bites his nails and gets on the gondola. Can you really play it? The clown asked Halo, not knowing what to do.

“Where’s my seat?”

Why doesn’t he give me a definite answer? Halo looked around, oblivious to the clown’s pounding heart. The clown pointed to the bow of the boat.

The bow of the boat. The most visible spot.

“Be careful not to fall.”

“Ben, what’s wrong?”

“Who is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where’s Peter?”

“I don’t know, some guy who fell and died in the bathroom.”

The faces of the team members on the gondola with the clown were filled with question marks at the clown’s words.

Someone whispered, is this right? But the gondola in the front row was already departing. Oh well, whatever.

Since they’re wearing masks anyway. What’s worse than being on the news? The clown vowed to throw Peter, who would nonchalantly appear after this parade, into the dirty Venetian water.

Thus, the boats moved along the canal.

The lights around the canal began to turn on one by one.

The lanterns on the boat were also lit.

The first day of the Venice Carnival.

The sun was slowly setting.

The people who had been so numerous during the day were finding their way into restaurants or accommodations.

A pierrot [a stock character in French pantomime] began to play the conga with his hands.

The clown played the accordion. The Joker played the pan flute.

The plague doctor standing at the bow of the boat threw the guitar case on the boat and grabbed the guitar. He held a guitar with a beautiful non-linear shape and an elegant H embedded in it.

“Dad! Look! A crow is holding a guitar.”

The child on his father’s shoulder pointed to the bizarre combination, and the child’s parents corrected him, saying, “It’s not a crow, it’s a Medico della Peste,” and tried to pass them by when.

An acoustic guitar sound and a clear voice echoed through the Venice Canal.

The couple, who had been smiling brightly, paused, thinking it was a familiar voice, and their expressions slowly hardened. When they turned their heads, the boat was flowing along the canal’s waves.

The person rowing the boat roughly rowed and raised his head.

A black figure was bisecting the horizon where the sun was setting.

The black coat fluttered in the wind, and his song flowed into the Venice Cathedral.

“Where am I hearing a Halo song?”

“Isn’t someone playing it?”

“Uh… doesn’t it sound a little different?”

“…!”

A quiet classic was playing in the restaurant.

The people who were eating on the second-floor terrace soon jumped up and grabbed the iron bars that blocked them.

A major accident occurred in the back, creating a gap between the gondolas, but the leading gondola was still moving leisurely.

They were heralding the spring, and at the same time, people began to gather one by one.

“…Halo?”

Halo didn’t stop singing when he saw Han Jin-young standing with a foreign couple.

“Can you see? The gondola parade is underway to wrap up the first day of the carnival.”

The Italian Venice local broadcasting station anchor was broadcasting the situation of the festival live. People holding cameras raised their thumbs, and the anchor pointed to the gondolas crossing the canal.

“The sun is on the horizon…”

The anchor paused for a moment at the sound of the song.

It was because HALO’s song was coming from somewhere.

The sound slowly got closer, and the anchor, who thought someone had turned on the music, turned his head towards the sound.

“The sun…”

More than 3 seconds of silence. It was a broadcasting accident, but the anchor’s head was already following the gondola.

“Hae…”

“Halo?”

The voice of the anchor, who was wearing a sun necklace, trembled.

No one could blame her. Even the camera followed a gondola instead of the anchor, and even the sound was tilted towards the canal.

The plague doctor standing at the bow of the boat briefly turned to look at them.

The black glass-bead glasses reflected them.

For some reason, they were tense and couldn’t breathe. In a moment when time seemed to have stopped, the plague doctor looked forward again, and time began to flow.

“Halo!”

The anchor, who had been staring blankly at his actions, dropped the microphone on the floor and started running.

The gondola was far ahead, so they couldn’t follow.

And,

There was a procession of people desperately chasing the gondola.

Whether anyone was chasing him or not, Halo sang freely.

-It’s like I’ve become someone else. I feel like I can do anything because my face is covered. Even if I make a mistake, no one will know it’s me. They’ll just think the clown made a mistake.

He felt like he knew what the clown had meant earlier.

It had been a long time since he had heard the session’s performance,

But Halo didn’t care and sang the song he knew best.

He spread his arms and enjoyed the wind and the beautiful sunset.

As the boat got closer to the land where it could land, Halo jumped off.

When he turned around, the clown, Joker, and Pierrot were looking at him with stupid expressions. Their eyes were wide open, and their mouths were wide open, so it wouldn’t be strange if bugs ate them.

“Thank you. I had a great time today thanks to you.”

“Th-there…”

Halo greeted those who had given him a pleasant experience and ran up the stairs. Lights began to flash in the distance. It was the procession chasing Halo. Halo entered the alley before the light got closer.

The gold-framed butterfly shone brightly in the darkness.

Those who were blankly watching the slowly disappearing figure could no longer see Halo’s back as the boat flowed away.

[Large Chain Collision of Gondolas on the First Day of the Carnival]

An article appeared on the newspaper page that dozens of gondolas collided, people fell into the canal, and the festival was devastated, but it was buried by another article.

Not a Venice newspaper, but all of Italy.

No, breaking news was posted all over the world.

[The Sun Rises at the Venice Festival]

[Mysterious Plague Doctor Appears at the Carnival!]

[Cause of Large Chain Collision of Carnival Gondolas (No Injuries)]

Front page of the newspaper, internet articles, public broadcasting, local broadcasting.

One sentence was posted everywhere.

[HALO Appeared]

Halo reveals himself!