Pen and Paper Translations

[ Bonus chapter 2 of 2 ]

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All of a sudden, the song cut off with a thud and quiet settled over the room.

“…”

Before long, Kim Woohyun gripped Hyunseung’s shoulders tightly and asked,

“You really do have something going on, don’t you?”

Can you fool a ghost’s eyes but not a mother’s? That is what they say.

“It is nothing.”

As if he could see straight through Hyunseung trying to brush it off, Kim pressed again with worried eyes.

“Really nothing?”

“Just…”

Hyunseung paused for a beat.

“It is absolutely not about me, it is just about a friend I know.”

Just as he was about to continue with the most clichéd preface in the world,

“Geumdong has a friend too?”

At Kim’s counterquestion, Hyunseung gave a little shrug.

“What kind of question is that? I have these things called friends too.”

“No, it is just that I think this is the first time I have heard the word ‘friend’ from your mouth… Ah, is it about Hyoeun?”

“She is not my only friend.”

“If so that is a relief, so what is it about?”

At that, Hyunseung cautiously opened up.

“If it were you, Mom.”

“Your mother?”

“No, you.”

“Uh, if it were me?”

Then he got to the point in earnest.

“If you happened to run into by chance, after a long time, a woman you once briefly liked, what would you do?”

Kim showed a momentary hint of surprise at the question coming out of Hyunseung’s mouth, but soon asked calmly in return.

“Back then, did you at least confess that you liked her?”

“No.”

“So you let that fated bond go before you could do anything?”

“Yes, she was someone who lived in a world too different from mine.”

Kim clasped his chin with a very serious face.

“Hmm…”

The low humming that had filled the room ceased only after three minutes had passed.

“If it were me in that situation, I would run straight over and talk to her.”

With a face full of conviction, Kim added again.

“I think I would at least honestly tell her that I really liked her back then.”

“Even if not now?”

“If you are worrying about it like this even now, maybe it is not completely settled.”

At that, Hyunseung could not get any words out and hesitated.

“Above all, even if back then you did not come together because your worlds were too different, it might not be that way now.”

Soon Kim gripped Hyunseung’s solid shoulders with both hands and asked again.

“What is my Hyunseung lacking that you are having this kind of worry?”

“No, I am telling you it is not about me, it is about a friend I know.”

Watching Hyunseung flare up, Kim answered glibly, “Okay, okay,” and cautiously added,

“I am just saying that if it were me, I think I would do that.”

“But is it really good to force a connection again?”

“What do you think?”

“I think it is right to let a bond that has passed by flow along. All the past memories might end up becoming a complete mess.”

At Hyunseung’s answer, Kim resumed the stopped song.

─ ♬ ♬ ♬

Suddenly the room was once more quietly filled with “Only After the Flowers Have Fallen.”

─ Is it not natural that a flower should fade?

Before a voice that seemed to deliberately hide a seething grief by sounding calm, the two fell silent for a moment.

It was none other than Hyunseung’s voice.

─ I will cry enough for your share too, so please, you go smiling.

As the song neared its end, the first to break the silence was Kim.

“Right, maybe letting the flower wither like this song says is not such a bad thing.”

At that, instead of answering, Hyunseung gave a small nod.

He likes dramas and loves music, and in the end it seems he entered the drama department to find his dream.

Just like before, and even now, he is still talkative and sociable, so that is enough.

Yes. Having learned that the figure who drifted faintly on the other side of memory is living well somewhere, for Hyunseung that was enough.

Truly, that was enough.

Just someday… at most he could treat her to a meal on a purely work-related basis.

“Do you want this sandwich I made?”

Yes, in the previous life he had gotten food from her too.

Just to that extent.

There is no need to force oneself to continue a tie.

─ Let us not say that we are connected.

Just as Hyunseung’s thoughts were chasing one another like a song on repeat,

“Since you might be able to make a flower that hasn’t bloomed do so, don’t deliberately pretend not to notice the flower blooming.”

With those words, Kim got up from his seat.

“Mom has a meeting now, so I am going.”

Then he thoroughly mussed Hyunseung’s head and turned to leave the studio.

Left alone in the room, Hyunseung, for no good reason, tidied his disheveled hair and muttered,

“I had it neatly set, and you mess it up like this.”

—

Vincent was biting his fingernails without rest like a teething puppy.

Click, click, click.

An unpleasant scraping sound kept coming from the living room.

“Ah—!”

A groan of vexation soon rang out.

And no wonder.

It was because of the shocking news conveyed by Austin.

[ HS said that if you keep acting tough, he will not accept a new proposal. ]

At the timing when a call from the person themselves or their contact information should have come, suddenly this kind of news arrived.

“This is nonsense.”

It was a situation Vincent simply could not understand.

No, had not that youth named HS first talked about instruments to him and asked him to sing his song?

Moreover, he had not even achieved that condition he so confidently shouted about, maintaining number one on the Billboard chart for three months.

Of course. That condition had long since become meaningless to Vincent.

What currently held Vincent’s sole interest was this.

As Sarah Stewart had said, to remake and sing the song “black angel,” which had supposedly been reborn through HS’s arrangement…

That song was like…

Just hearing it made his mouth water, as if the most delicious food in the world were set before him.

It was the kind of song that would stir up in a true singer the desire and lust to try to interpret it at least once.

That extremely minor-key song, running to the point of being extreme, was a song you could only sing once a solid voice unlike any other stood behind it.

Yes. A song with which he could, with voice alone, truly play a decisive match against his competitor Sarah Stewart.

However, having gone so far as to hear the words “acting tough,” Vincent, who is called the unchallenged number one among existing singers, could not very well go in with his pride already dented.

To heck with it, if I do not sing it, that is that.

“Fine.”

For a moment, Vincent threw his phone down any which way on the sofa and flopped down.

“Ah, seriously.”

Like a spring, he popped his upper body up again and grabbed his phone.

Tap, tap-tat-tat-tat.

Then he immediately sent a reply to Austin.

[ Understood, then please have him contact me. ]

It was a reply condensed to preserve what pride he had left.

“Whew.”

Vincent lay down on the sofa again and put on a song on his phone. From the speakers installed in the living room, a sound so huge as to be grand poured out.

─ ♬ ♬ ♬

It was “Black angel,” sung by Sarah Stewart.

─ Come deep into the darkness

He could not say for other people’s ears, but to Vincent’s ears it sounded like a magnificent orchestral concerto.

─ Come deep into the darkness

Like Beethoven’s Symphony of Fate, finally forced to bloom on the brink of death, the melody of the song constricted his neck and once more swallowed him to the ends of the earth.

─ Don’t be scared.

How could anyone not covet a song like this?

─ Darkness isn’t a bad thing

It was a song that not only he but any singer would covet.

Only they couldn’t dare sing it, so they could not easily try.

“This will not do.”

Vincent immediately sat up again and sent Austin another text in quick succession.

[ Could you please have him contact me as soon as possible? ]

Tap, tat-tat-tat.

[ Tell him I accept the proposal I made in the corridor back then. ]

Only after even the last text had been sent could Vincent set his phone down with an easy mind.

“Since I have gone this far, he will contact me.”

Vincent had always been like this. Once he set his mind to doing something, he had to do it for his mind to be at peace.

Probably that temperament of seeing things through to the end once he started was what had brought him to where he was now.

Bzzzzzzzt!

Just then, an unfamiliar number came up on his phone.

“Already?”

Vincent looked down at his phone with a relaxed smile, thinking, of course.

It must be HS, having received the message from Austin, contacting him.

Just like he had made Vincent fret…

Should he make the other side a bit antsy too by answering a little more slowly?

Bzzzzzzzt!

He was just about to pick up the phone, which was ringing as if it would cut off at any moment, when

Buzz!

The call dropped without strength, and before long a text arrived.

[ If you fill “I will be your instrument.” until it spills into MMS, I will contact you. ]

What does this mean?

At the completely unexpected content, Vincent could do nothing but stare at the text for a long time.

Is he trying to train me right now?

Brrrrring!

Frowning hard, Vincent immediately called the number that had appeared.

─ The person you are calling is unable to answer right now…

In less than five seconds, it rolled over to an automated message.

It felt like he deliberately let the call go.

No, is he really saying he will not contact me until I send a text that fills that ridiculous requirement?

Tap, tat-tat-tat-tat.

As if bewitched by something, Vincent frantically hammered out a text. In front of a situation that had never happened to him and that he had never imagined would happen, his mind was already muddled.

[ I will be your instrument. I will be your instrument. I will be your instrument. I will be your instrument. I will be your instrument. I will be your instrum… ]

While Vincent was staring at the message window he had densely filled by hand without any copy and paste,

Bzzzzzzzt!

As if he truly meant to train him, the moment the text was sent, HS called again, as if he had been waiting for it.

“H-hello?”

But this was no time to quibble about that. Afraid it might cut off again, Vincent hurriedly answered.

Then from the other side, HS’s voice flowed out, sounding very satisfied.

“You did very well.”

“Ah, yes…”

“Since you have declared you will be my instrument, I will make a special exception and come to you.”

With a tone like he was doing a favor, so arrogant that Vincent lost even the strength to answer.

“Ah…”

Although no reply came back, HS poured out his words as if it did not matter in the least.

“I will contact you as soon as the schedule is set, so keep your schedule loose for a while.”

Then he abruptly hung up with those words.

“What, is this…?”

Vincent stared blankly down at the dark screen.

Compared to the days and nights he had agonized and burned, his first call with HS had been cut off in not even thirty seconds, so was it not natural for a sense of futility to come flooding in?

Truly.  It was something he had felt even when they first ran into each other in the corridor…

“This guy is a total perverted lunatic, right?”