The Road To Glory [EN]: Chapter 811

< 81. We Are Band, Okay? >

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“Thank you!”

HALO folded the bills and put them in the viola case.

The young brothers who were busking shouted their thanks.

And then, they continued their classic performance.

“Alright, then.”

HALO looked around.

He had come up the hill and was slowly reaching the end of his memory.

He would soon reach the restaurant he used to visit whenever he came to this neighborhood.

Of course, he didn’t expect the same place to be in the same spot. The same person wouldn’t be there either—even if they were, they would already be buried—but his feet stubbornly moved forward.

‘Nick’s Kitchen’ was a restaurant that sold burgers, salads, and brunch, and the most popular menu item was the cheeseburger.

It wasn’t that the cheeseburger was particularly delicious, but rather that the other menu items were so bad that regulars always ordered the cheeseburger.

He, too, used to sit by the window and order like them.

‘The usual.’

‘Did you leave coffee beans here or something?’

‘Two cups today, Nick.’

‘Just eat your burger.’

It definitely wasn’t a place he went to because the food was good.

Rather, it was a place he went to drink the coffee that Nick brewed as a hobby. The aroma and taste of the coffee were amazing, as if it were made by a top European barista.

He always drank a strong espresso there. Then he would tell him to quit the burger joint and open a cafe.

‘He did say he would live as a burger joint forever.’

HALO turned the corner.

And he looked up and stopped walking.

At the end of the road, what appeared was not Nick’s shabby burger joint, which he shared half of with an ice cream shop, but,

“…I told you to change it to a coffee shop a long time ago. Look. It’s doing so well.”

HALO’s lips curved into a smile as he took in the sight of a large cafe bustling with tourists.

It wasn’t the same as it used to be at all.

The size, the store, the people—everything was different, but he was still happy.

[Ever Since]

He walked inside, guitar slung over his shoulder.

The rich aroma of coffee beans filled the air as soon as he approached the cafe.

The interior had a unique structure.

Most of all, what caught his eye was the crowd.

LA is mostly takeout-oriented, so it’s rare to find a cafe where you can spend time inside. There are almost none except for Starbucks. Maybe a pub.

Perhaps that’s why this two-story cafe, which was renovated from an old theater, was so full of people that it seemed like all the citizens of California had gathered.

People from various countries wanting a leisurely coffee break.

HALO looked around and went inside.

He didn’t know that this cafe was renovated from an old theater, but he quickly noticed that there was a stage like a theater. Also, that there were band instruments on the stage, including a piano.

“Huh? Is that person perhaps…”

“Why? Who is it? Huh? Roh HALO?”

Without noticing the gaze staring intently at him from afar, HALO quietly looked at the stage.

“Is this your first time here?”

A staff member wearing a vest approached, perhaps bothered by him standing in front of the entrance.

“This place… is my first time.”

He thought it was a subtle nuance, but the staff member thought it was a misunderstanding since this cafe was created long before this boy was even born.

“Welcome to Ever Since. It’s a famous attraction in Beverly Hills. The popular menu items are Einspänner [a coffee beverage with whipped cream] and Latte. Of course, other coffees are also excellent. It’s a cafe renovated from an old theater, so take your time to look around. It will be a feast for the eyes. Oh, and you’ve come at a really good time today. There’s a performance prepared.”

“A performance?”

“Yes, there will be a jazz performance on the theater stage tonight.”

Jazz, huh.

‘Nice.’

HALO nodded.

He thought it would be nice to stay in the cafe all day since he had plenty of time.

“How can I help you?”

“Cheeseburger and an espresso, please.”

Just as the staff member was about to enter the menu at the counter,

Bee-beep- The vibration rang for a long time. It was Han Jin-young’s number with the chip inserted.

Hmm, she woke up earlier than I thought.

HALO calmly thought and tried to put his phone back in his pocket. The vibration rang again.

Since he didn’t answer the phone, a message came right away.

[Where are you]

#

“Wow, this place is really nice. It’s rare to see such a large cafe in America.”

“I know, right? It would have been even better if someone hadn’t secretly left in the early morning.”

HALO avoided her gaze at the barbed words and looked at the stage. The jazz performance was slowly being prepared.

The red-haired woman who just went in seems to be the singer who will be performing today. She could be a session musician, but that’s the feeling he got.

The people who ordered salads and other things waited until Moon Seo-yeon took pictures for her Instagram.

“Aren’t you eating, boss?”

“I had a cheeseburger earlier.”

“Ah…”

Moon Seo-yeon said with a pitiful look.

“The only thing that doesn’t get good reviews here is the cheeseburger.”

“Really?”

“Yes, everyone says that all the other menu items are delicious, but the cheeseburger is disappointing.”

“Hmm.”

HALO chuckled.

And then he thought again.

‘I told you to quit the burger joint a long time ago, Nick.’

Just then, a commotion arose from somewhere.

Moon Seo-yeon, who cut a piece of cake and put it in her mouth, Nam Gyu-hwan, who put a croissant in his mouth, and Han Jin-young all turned their heads.

The singer with dark brown hair came out on stage.

The singer in the fancy dress was quite pretty, but only for a moment, as they noticed the singer and the owner talking. Judging by their expressions, it didn’t seem like a very positive situation.

“The performers suddenly bailed?”

“We’re urgently looking for performers, but…”

The owner looked around with a troubled face.

Customers who came expecting a performance.

He didn’t know how to find session musicians right now.

Not even just one or two.

All the sessions, including piano, contrabass, full hollow body guitar, and conga, bailed.

A buzzing sound spread.

A middle-aged couple came to the owner and asked how today’s performance would go.

The owner couldn’t give a proper answer.

If he had just one day, he would have found them somehow, but since they went AWOL right before the performance.

He couldn’t create performers unless he was a god.

The singer with her arms crossed on the stage touched the microphone with a gloomy face.

Eventually, the owner had to make a decision.

Just as he was about to go on stage and announce, “Today’s performance has been canceled.”

The singer suddenly raised her head and whispered something to the owner. The owner shook his head with a bewildered face, but the singer held up one index finger. Eventually, the owner hesitated and opened his mouth.

“Is there anyone here who can play an instrument?”

The crowd, which had been buzzing, became quiet at that one word.

There were people who could play instruments, but there were many who played other instruments or were reluctant to perform unprepared.

Moreover, since it was a place renovated from an old theater, the stage was much more noticeable.

HALO looked at the singer.

The singer who wanted to perform no matter what.

Their eyes met.

The singer’s clear green eyes and black eyes crossed.

The singer, whose gaze was fixed, suddenly realized that the boy’s eyes were shining brightly.

She felt a strong feeling.

Maybe that kid will raise his hand and say this, ‘I’ll do it.’

“Weren’t you bored at the broadcasting station?”

“Huh?”

“Don’t you want to perform before you go back to Korea? Whatever form it takes.”

The band members immediately noticed the meaning of those words and their faces brightened. Except for one person.

“I quit playing the piano.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. But-”

HALO looked at Moon Seo-yeon with a meaningful look.

Did you really not want to do it? That was the look.

Moon Seo-yeon took another big bite of bread and nodded. She didn’t want to do an unprepared performance.

“It’s been a while since I’ve played the conga.”

“Huh? Are you going to do it?”

Nam Gyu-hwan nodded.

He didn’t say it, but he was bored to death at the broadcasting station.

Even though it was a HALO special, there was nothing special, and he thought that they should all go to a talk show next time and perform.

Music is sometimes annoying, but it’s an occupational hazard, and he wanted to pick up the sticks again after a day or two of rest.

“I only really know how to play the contrabass.”

“You know how to play it?”

“Do you know how to play the hollow body guitar?”

Han Jin-young also laughed in response to HALO’s laughter.

“Is Jin-young oppa [older brother/male friend] going too? Then what about me?”

“You said you weren’t going to play the piano. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Han Jin-young lightly stroked Moon Seo-yeon’s hair and got up.

“How can I stay here when everyone else is going?”

The singer’s green eyes followed the boy.

Even though the other members also got up, her eyes were only fixed on the boy. The owner was delighted to see the boy coming with a guitar.

“I’ll keep the guitar safe! The people behind you are also, by any chance-”

“We, are, band, Korea. Ah, I mean, Korea. OK?”

Nam Gyu-hwan cleared his throat and spat out English, and the owner, who finally understood, nodded.

The people who had been quietly watching the situation applauded their courage.

Some people left their seats with dissatisfied faces.

Courage is great, but they were also worried about the quality of the performance. After all, it was a suddenly formed band.

“Can you do well?”

“Ha, I quit playing the piano, do I really have to do it?”

“I think I learned the contrabass about ten years ago?”

And when he saw the band members looking at him without any tension, HALO added.

“It’s my first time playing jazz.”

If the owner, who was anxiously watching them, knew Korean, he might have been horrified.

But their bright faces simultaneously turned to the instruments, and soon the lights went down.

#

It was truly a movie-like day for Olivia.

A performance schedule that she had gotten after a long time.

It was also a performance at her favorite cafe, ‘Ever Since,’ so she had been preparing for the performance with a pounding heart for days.

Her college friends congratulated her and said they would definitely come to see her, and her professors also congratulated her on her challenge.

So, she borrowed the most gorgeous dress she had ever worn in her life with the money she had earned from her part-time job, and stood on stage.

But the performance was in danger of ending as it was.

Not because of her fault, but because the performers went AWOL [absent without leave].

‘I had a bad feeling.’

She should have known when they said they were going to a club during the rehearsal the day before.

She told the owner that she could do it alone if there were no performers, but the kind owner asked the audience, risking being rude, for the lonely singer.

There was no way.

There was no way such a coincidence, a miracle, would happen.

But.

She made eye contact with a boy.

Before realizing that he was carrying a guitar on his back, the boy’s presence caught her eye.

The corners of his lips slightly raised.

It was like the devil’s whisper asking, ‘Do you need my help?’

She, who was desperate even for the help of such a devil, nodded, and soon the boy got up from his seat.

Her heart was pounding.

Her blood began to surge following the tuning sounds.

She grabbed the microphone and looked at the audience, then briefly turned her gaze to face the boy.

The boy, holding a guitar and calmly bathed in the lights, nodded.

Feeling that she was slowly becoming stable for some reason, she opened her mouth.

[Do you know the shape of love?]

A melody arose with her voice.

At that moment, the old theater turned back time and regained its past glory,

The four performers became a splendid orchestra,

The cheap dress that imitated luxury became the dress of a prima donna.

“…!”

A group of men and women, who had been looking up at the performance without thinking, stared at the stage with their mouths wide open.

#

45 minutes before the performance started, office workers in light clothes took their seats in a corner of the first floor.

“Wouldn’t it be better to go to Monica’s and drink?”

“Why? It’s good, the Einspänner is the best here. And there’s a jazz performance soon, so how great is that?”

“You mean an amateur jazz performance?”

“Hey, are you perhaps looking down on them? Please don’t forget that there’s a singer among the people who have performed at Ever Since that you’re desperately requesting.”

“No, when did I ever look down on them?”

Comfortably dressed men and women gathered on the first floor of Ever Since in the evening. The man with the mustache was the only one grumbling in that spot.

“I just meant that if we’re going to watch a jazz performance, wouldn’t it be better to have a drink instead of coffee?”

“My daughter said she’ll kill me if I come home smelling like alcohol again today.”

“Oh, she looks a lot like your wife.”

“More than that, how’s the recruitment going?”

“How long has it been since Coachella [a famous music and arts festival in California] ended? Let’s celebrate a little more.”

“Now that the festival is over, it’s time for us to start working again.”

“We had a hard time because a crazy guy suddenly said he couldn’t come during the festival. How long do we have to suffer?”

“Well, until we step down from being directors?”

Everyone chuckled at that.

Yes, everyone gathered in this place.

They are the executives of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

They are the directors responsible for planning North America’s largest festival by recruiting prominent musicians.

The Coachella Festival is held every year on the second and third Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays of April, for a total of 6 days, unless there are special issues.

So, now in May, there is still a year left until next year’s Coachella, and it might seem strange to someone to be worrying about recruitment already.

However, Coachella is not a university festival that can be prepared in three months.

Coachella is attended by the hottest artists in each field every year, and nearly 200,000 people gather in the California desert to see them.

You can’t prepare a festival of this scale three months in advance. It wasn’t just about responsibility, but it took quite a long time to prepare sponsors, manpower, and selection companies.

Most importantly, it’s the schedules of the stars. It is said that one of the indicators of a star’s popularity is their schedule, and indeed, top stars have their schedules filled for a year, so they had to start working now.

“So, has Veil responded?”

“Veil is always the same. We’re not a management company, we’re a distributor, so contact them directly. If we could contact them, would we have requested it like that? They should at least give us a direct contact number.”

“At this point, I wonder if that old man is trapping the sun and making him write songs? I told him I wanted to bring the sun as a headliner, but he didn’t even pretend to listen.”

And what they focused on was, after all, the best trend icon of this era. HALO.

They wanted to see the sun rise in the California desert next year no matter what.

“By the way, why are there so many foreigners here?”

“I know, right? There are especially many.”

It wasn’t that they disliked foreigners, but they heard quite a lot of foreign languages around them.

Asian people looked around and sat down.

The mustache, who managed to recognize their language as Korean, snapped his fingers.

“Ah, how’s the recruitment for the K-pop side going?”

“We’re thinking of inviting the band we invited last year.”

“Or, an idol group would be good too.”

“Aren’t there any new faces?”

“Why are you looking for new faces at Coachella? Well, I know what you’re saying. There aren’t any new faces who will become global stars yet. If there are popular stars who are good at what they do, I’d like to bring them.”

“Hmm, what time is it now?”

“Why, what’s up?”

And then the incident happened.

As everyone knows, the performance’s performers bailed. The performance was scheduled to be canceled, and the mustache was lamenting that they should have gone to Monica Beach after all.

By chance, a band that had visited the cafe went up on stage.

“It’s like a movie.”

“Yeah, if the performance ends well, I wouldn’t doubt that it’s a music movie.”

The man with the sideburns agreed with the woman with the bobbed hair.

Before long, their words were proven.

The amateur singer and the band’s orchestra echoed in the large cafe.

Customers who heard the sound from outside and came in forgot to order coffee and watched the stage.

Like the lyrics that say love is like chocolate, how desperate and sweet is this stage.

“There is a new face.”

What they initially focused on was the singer standing at the very front of the stage. However, since they were people with sensitive ears, their gaze gradually turned to the back.

“The level of completion is too high for a band that suddenly formed?”

“Was it a song they already knew?”

“It’s a famous song.”

A fluent pianist, a skilled percussionist, and a solid contrabassist. Most of all, what caught their eye was the boy playing the guitar.

Is it because he’s Asian?

It’s impossible to guess his age at all.

He looks like a middle school student on the outside, but if you only look at his skills, he seems to be at least in his 40s. Well, even if you look at it generously, he’s in his early 30s to late 20s with a natural talent.

He definitely doesn’t look like he has the skills of a teenager or someone in their 20s.

The singer sings well, but it is the power of the boy playing the full hollow body that stably leads her.

The singer seems to know it well, and she looked at the boy every time she finished a song. She even went to the boy’s side and sang.

And the singer’s sudden action of suddenly holding out the microphone.

The boy chuckled and then sang along to the lyrics a little.

“!”

The singer was startled when a sweet singing voice returned to the place where silence had been lost due to the affectionate joke.

That was the same for the audience who were watching together.

Whistles and cheers erupted in the place where silence had been lost for a moment.

“The original performers bailed, and a performer who happened to be eating at the restaurant came up on stage, and not only is the performance crazy, but he also sings like that?”

Even a B-movie wouldn’t be made like this.

The woman with the bobbed hair muttered cynically.

At that time, the mustache suddenly came in.

“That kid is a Korean singer.”

“A singer? That’s why. It doesn’t make sense if he’s not a singer.”

“How do you know that?”

“When I asked the women sitting next to me what they were cheering for, saying ‘no wheel! [mishearing of HALO’s name]’, they said he was a famous Korean singer. The people behind him are his band.”

“Famous? I’ve never heard of him.”

“He hasn’t even debuted for a few months.”

“Wow.”

The mustache stroked his beard and fell into thought.

A new face, proven skills.

If his name becomes known in this field, it would be good to invite him to Coachella.

“Excuse me, do you happen to have a video of that friend’s performance?”

The mustache even got the video address from the Koreans sitting next to him with the intention of seeing his skills.

The fantastic performance of the singer and the Korean band ended, and they sat around in the corner of the cafe that was about to close and looked at the videos.

The first was the ‘HALO cover video’ that they had already seen or heard of.

The second was the performance at the music festival.

And the third, even the guerrilla busking [street performing] direct shot that happened in Hongdae.

The five people, who had only watched the videos without saying anything, finished their coffee together and got up from their seats.

No more conversation was needed.

It was enough with each other’s eyes filled with different colors.

“I’m glad we came here, right? I told you to come.”

The man with the sideburns said as he opened the door.

“I’ll honestly admit it only today.”

The mustache nodded with a displeased face. He thought it was a good harvest since he met singers who had the new face and proven skills that he wanted.

Maybe we’ll meet again someday, even if it’s not next year.

“Because we found friends to put on the list of candidates.”