T/N: The manhwa has a new cover /cry
Without a moment to catch his breath, Hyunseung jumped straight into fully working on Executive Director Park’s theme song.
“Daddy…”
He had written songs for a father before, but those were songs he wrote while looking at his own father.
Now, he, who was not even someone’s father and had never even kept a pet, had to write following the viewpoint of a father looking at his child.
No matter how fiercely a child loves a parent, it cannot equal how a parent loves a child.
Ask and ask again, how should he unravel that heavy, tender heart of a father that is so hard to fathom?
A love with a different depth and breadth.
He would have to set it apart as a love story distinctly different from the love he had written until now.
Tap!
Right then, Hyunseung punched in a single chord onto the session.
Even in his past life, one method he would use when he seldom hit a snag was to just drop in some chord first and see.
They say starting is half the battle.
This work had already taken off, which meant it was half finished, and there was no stopping halfway.
“Hmm.”
Before proceeding, Hyunseung played a recording.
It was a file containing the heartfelt words Executive Director Park had poured out while drinking.
Scratch, scratch.
Mulling over his slurred pronunciation, Hyunseung transcribed it into his notebook. He thought moving his hand might help something surface.
Looking at my sleeping daughter, the thought suddenly came to me. For this child, I could die in her place. Without a moment of hesitation, I could die in her place.
I think that was when I first held onto my sleeping daughter and told her I loved her. Nothing else, that right there was love.
As he wrote, he arrived at one thought.
Indeed. Does the daughter really not know a father’s heart like this?
Of course, they say love must be expressed to be known, but even Executive Director Park, stingy with the word “love,” surely, with his eyes, his gestures, his expressions, had loved his daughter.
Even from his own perspective as a third party, when he spoke of his daughter he was very careful, and love welled up over his eyes.
So, there is no way the person herself would not know. It must be that someone is covering her eyes right now, so she pretends not to know, pretends not to see.
Right.
Then he should tell her exactly.
Ah. They say children can never know a parent’s heart their whole life, but they can dimly feel it.
Tak!
At length, Hyunseung tossed onto the table the pencil marked with bite dents from his time of pondering, then brushed himself up and stood.
And then, swinging his long legs, he headed somewhere.
With one hand, he was hastily texting someone.
[ Please spare me a moment. ]
Hyunseung’s expression was just as confident as a boy detective in a comic who has solved the riddle.
[ I am on my way to see you now. ]
Executive Director Park, when Hyunseung suddenly came to his office, affected an air of annoyance and busied his hands.
“I am busy to death right now, why did you come?”
“Feels a bit like you are hurriedly pretending to be busy, must be my imagination?”
“It is your imagination.”
“Even so, please spare me a moment.”
At that, Executive Director Park folded his arms with lofty air and asked,
“You, when I first suggested we have a cup of coffee, didn’t you refuse?”
“You remember that? You are not some young lady of the house, how can you still be sulking because I declined a little tea time?”
Then, turning his gaze back to the approval folder, he answered curtly,
“Who says I am sulking? I am just telling you I am busy, with not even time for a cup of coffee with you.”
“That sounds like the same thing….”
At that, Executive Director Park slammed the approval folder shut.
In truth, the documents had long been signed. Naturally, that was a secret from Hyunseung.
“No, so…”
Executive Director Park lifted his chin stiffly and asked curtly,
“What is the reason you came to see me?”
“Why are you so prickly today?”
When Hyunseung tilted his head as if he had no idea, Executive Director Park, looking awkward, grumbled for no reason.
“What did I do, punk.”
In fact, since the drinking session he had with Hyunseung by chance, Executive Director Park had been deliberately avoiding him.
Because he had drunk far more than he had planned, he was embarrassed that he seemed to have grabbed a kid and babbled all sorts of useless things.
Even after sleeping it off, the memory was so vivid he had kicked off the covers how many times. He practically did flying kicks.
Hyunseung, as if he knew nothing of his inner circumstances, just kept blinking and asking, “Are you feeling ill?”
Not ill, just mortified.
“Executive Director Park.”
Surveying the office, Hyunseung pointed toward the door and added,
“This does not feel like talk for here, how about we go have a drink somewhere together.”
“I told you I am busy.”
“Ah, I saw the signatures there are all done.”
“Y-you saw it?”
“I will pretend I did not see, so let us go.”
That brat, if he had already seen, he should have said so earlier, how embarrassing….
In the end, Executive Director Park silently followed behind Hyunseung.
Looking down at the bowl of fish-cake broth with two spoons shoved in roughly, Executive Director Park sneered.
“I knew it from when you said you were buying.”
As for side dishes, only a few fried eggs and red-seasoned pork cartilage.
They were snacks that fit a shabby street tent perfectly.
No.
“That brat, he makes more money than I do….”
When Executive Director Park, who had expected fine whiskey or some foreign liquor, showed signs of disappointment, Hyunseung picked up his chopsticks as if to say why.
“It is romantic and nice.”
He had felt this before, but this kid who looks finicky like some rich family’s young master, when it comes to food he does not discriminate and just stuffs it into his mouth.
‘As a kid, did he not get to eat well?’
Even now, seeing him eat a whole fried egg in one bite, it seemed clear he had grown up not eating well.
No, no.
He could rather be the hidden son of a chaebol family. So they would not have let him eat food like this.
‘That makes some sense…?’
Just as Executive Director Park, with bleary eyes, was scanning Hyunseung up and down and continuing his delusions,
“Why are you looking at a person like that, like some pervert?”
Hyunseung, looking uncomfortable, scrubbed his mouth with a napkin.
“Is there something on my face?”
“No, anyway, say it now. What do you have to tell me?”
“You are quite impatient, first take a drink.”
Then he picked up the soju bottle and filled the glass in front of Executive Director Park.
“We can clink glasses and talk slowly. It will not be too late.”
Does this kid even know what time it is right now…
It was nearing midnight.
Ah. According to rumor, that kid does not sleep, is that true?
Glug, glug, glug.
Instead of speaking further, Executive Director Park filled Hyunseung’s glass.
Clink!
Like that, the two of them filled and emptied each other’s glasses several times.
By the time he could feel the alcohol sloshing in his liver,
“I only have a father.”
Hyunseung spoke first.
Normally.
As if telling someone else’s story.
“My father cannot hear. The cells have died, so even hearing aids, even cochlear implants do not work.”
Just as Executive Director Park had poured out his story when he was drunk, Hyunseung also began to share a little of his deep story.
“But of all things, I am a composer. So he wants to at least feel my songs a little, and he fumbles and touches the score until it wears thin.”
Executive Director Park answered only by quietly filling his glass.
“Watching that, the thought suddenly came to me. What size and shape is a father’s love, really?”
Spinning his glass round and round, Hyunseung went on.
“But I do not know. I do not think I can dare to measure it.”
“Rookie, you will never know that in this life or the next until you become the father of a child.”
“Right, I cannot know how much my father loves me or with what heart he is loving me.”
Then he lightly bumped his glass against the one before Executive Director Park and asked back,
“Perhaps your daughter is the same, Executive Director Park?”
“Huh?”
“You said you confessed love to your daughter’s sleeping face.”
“Y, yeah, I did….”
Hyunseung thought that before he made the song, he should first get Executive Director Park’s permission.
Right.
Because it was true he had taken his feelings toward his daughter as the motif.
“How about trying to convey that heart? Then your relationship could be restored as well.”
“At some point we stopped contacting each other, and now it has even become awkward to reach out first.”
Yet unlike usual, Executive Director Park did not scold him as impudent.
He added, shoulders slumped and shrunken, his spirit deflated:
“Maybe I am hesitating because I am scared. Afraid even the fact that I am her dad will be denied.”
At those words, Hyunseung let out a low hum for a moment.
“Then how about this.”
Setting down his phone, he smiled slightly.
Playing, “Looking at my sleeping daughter, the thought suddenly came to me.”
When he heard his own voice, Executive Director Park started and stared intently at Hyunseung’s face.
“You, when did you….”
Without replying, Hyunseung replayed the recording that had paused.
Playing, “For this child, I could die in her place. I think that was when I first held onto my sleeping daughter and told her I loved her.”
“Not anything else, that was exactly love.”
With those words, the recording ended.
“If it is hard to say directly, mix it into the music and convey it.”
Then, tapping the screen of Executive Director Park’s phone instead of his own, Hyunseung said,
“Deliver it before it is too late. I will help you.”
Looking at the young face of his daughter on the wallpaper, Executive Director Park’s heart grew tangled.
“Is it really not too late?”
The child had already grown up tall without him.
“Hmm.”
Watching that expression on Executive Director Park, Hyunseung added,
“No matter what anyone says, the father is you, Executive Director Park.”
Yes, that is right.
“No matter what anyone says, the dad is me.”
If it was not far too late, if there was a chance, Executive Director Park wanted to restore at least his relationship with his child.
No. He just wanted to see her. He wanted to watch by her side as her clear face and her growing day by day.
“Hey.”
Executive Director Park called Hyunseung and poured his glass to overflowing.
“If you are going to make it, make it far better than anything you have made up to now.”
Why say the obvious and wear out your mouth…
Clink!
Instead of answering, Hyunseung knocked his glass against it with force.
“Ma’am, one more bottle here.”
For Hyunseung, nothing was easier than making a good song.
“Hey, why are you being stingy and ordering one bottle at a time? You have plenty of money.”
“What does that have to do with that?”
“Enough, just give us one bottle each per person here.”
Executive Director Park would have known that fact as well as anyone.
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