(2/4)
Mateo scooped up a spoonful of soup and put it between his dried-out lips.
In truth, he had no appetite at all, but he had to eat in order to live.
‘Look at me, trying to live by eating even in a situation like this….’
Looking back, he was a worthless father.
He had said he would not make his daughter repeat misfortune, yet in the end, he had saddled her with another misfortune.
Right. The heart that said he would protect her had, before he knew it, become chains that strangled the child. He had a vague belief that someday a day of understanding would come.
Even when he never once went to pick her up in front of the school, even when he told her not to invite friends to the house, even when he trampled on her dream by saying she absolutely could not be a singer….
Someday she would understand that it had been for the sake of protecting herself.
He had thought his daughter would understand such feelings of his.
One day.
Even when she said she was leaving home, he complacently thought that blood ties were not something that could be severed so easily.
But his daughter cut the chains called heavenly bond and left his arms.
The expression on his daughter’s face, whom he had met again after five years, was saying as much.
That she did not want a father like him anymore.
“That cannot be.”
It was when Mateo pounded the table with his fist, desperately denying it.
Bzzzzt!
A call came in from his old friend, Paul. He was not really in the mood to answer, though.
“Seems to me you owe me a big meal.”
Hearing the imposing voice as soon as he answered, it seemed he was about to talk about Choi Jihyun, whom Mateo had asked him about the other day.
But Mateo had already lost interest in Choi Jihyun.
“Yeah, I got it.”
To be precise, his whole mind was occupied with his daughter, so he had no room to care about Choi Jihyun too.
“What on earth is this reaction supposed to be?”
Surprised by his lukewarm response, Paul asked in a tone laced with concern.
“Is something going on with you?”
“It is nothing.”
“Did your daughter by any chance contact you?”
As expected, his perception was sharp.
“Rather than say she contacted me, we met.”
His relationship with Paul went back to their college of music days. They knew each other for a long time, so they knew a lot about one another.
Paul knew everything, from the fact that he had a daughter to the fact that his daughter had left home.
Moreover, when they were younger, Paul had often bought presents for his daughter and come all the way out to the countryside to see her.
“That is really a good thing, so why does your voice sound like it is dying?”
“I think my daughter intends to never see me again.”
“What do you mean? Surely she did not say she wanted to cut ties?”
“I only thought my daughter was going through a belated adolescence. So I thought she would hate me for a while, that was all.”
Mateo continued speaking calmly, but only for a moment.
“But it was not like that.”
Suppressing the surge of emotion, he added.
“It seems she hates me as a human being.”
“Are you not just jumping to conclusions? Did you really talk things through properly with your daughter?”
“I should have done that when there was still a chance left to me, but I do not think I will ever have that chance again.”
“Still, reach out first. Can you live without your daughter?”
To Paul’s question, Mateo answered without the slightest hesitation.
“If my daughter will be happy only if I am not there, then I have to live alone.”
“Mateo…”
“As a father, I only hope my daughter will not be unhappy anymore.”
Nothing came from the other end of the receiver. In the face of his weighty resolution, Paul probably could not bring himself to say anything more.
Before long, Mateo quietly continued, picturing his daughter’s face.
“In those five years she has become a lady. She takes after her mother, her face is pretty and her voice is good too.”
A faint smile hovered at Mateo’s lips as he said it.
“You were the one making a fuss about how your daughter wanted to become a singer, asking what you were supposed to do.”
“I did, didn’t I? But while I was not looking, she ended up becoming a singer after all.”
From the other end of the receiver, Paul’s startled voice came, asking again, “Really?”
It was understandable that he was surprised.
“Well, I have not been interested in singers lately either, so I only found out not long ago.”
“I do not know that side of things at all either, so I did not even know my niece had debuted.”
“But this time she got caught up in a dating rumor with some guy, a composer called HS.”
There was a brief silence.
“Huh? Who?”
Wondering if he had misheard, Paul asked again.
“HS? It is a name I have never heard before either, so I am looking into it.”
“H-HS?”
“Why are you so surprised? Is he a composer you know?”
“N-no.”
It felt very suspicious, but there was no way Paul would know him.
There was absolutely no point of contact between Paul and HS, and according to his own investigation, HS, like Choi Jihyun, was also Korean.
Ah.
Then perhaps Choi Jihyun knew something about HS?
“You!”
Mateo suddenly asked, his eyes gleaming sharply.
No matter how much his daughter tried to stop him….
He felt he could not rest easy without at least knowing what kind of person HS was. Yes, whether he was a guy who would make his daughter happy or make her unhappy.
“Wasn’t it about Choi Jihyun that you were calling me?”
“Well, yes, but….”
“What did he say? Did he say he would contact me?”
“He just said thank you for seeing him in a good light….”
Mateo snorted in disbelief and asked back.
“What? You told me to buy you a big meal just for that?”
“Well, since we are at it, it was also an excuse to see your face.”
“Enough of that, and make sure you tell him this once again.”
Then he added in a firm tone.
“Tell him I will be waiting for him to contact me.”
“H-hold on a second.”
“I will buy you that meal then.”
With those words, Mateo abruptly hung up.
He was inconveniencing Paul, but….
Since it involved his daughter, there was nothing he could do about it.
Meanwhile, Paul, who had been staring blankly at the screen of his phone after the call was cut off, let out a sigh.
“Ha…”
Only for a moment.
He quickly sat in front of his computer and turned on the power. Paul belonged to a generation still more familiar with computers than phones.
In truth, he was not all that skilled with those either.
Click, click.
With just a few clicks, he was able to check all the things Mateo had talked about.
From the fact that Mateo’s daughter Sarah had debuted, to the information that she had a dating rumor with the composer HS, everything.
Even the fact that her song and Vincent Mah’s song, for which the New York Phil had done a session, were competing on the Billboard chart.
And also that the song of hers that had reached number one on the Billboard chart was one that composer HS had made for her.
“How can connections get tangled up like this….”
Paul let out a heavy sigh. It was understandable, for he was one of the few people who knew that HS and Choi Jihyun were the same person.
And now his old friend was looking for both Choi Jihyun and HS at the same time, so he could not help but be flustered.
Furthermore, it seemed Mateo did not have good feelings toward HS, which made it all the more awkward.
‘Well, there is no father who would easily take a liking to his daughter’s boyfriend….’
However, because he knew all too well how Mateo felt about his daughter, he could understand it a hundred times over.
The Mateo he had seen was ridiculously doting as a father.
He was just clumsy at expressing affection, but he constantly had the words “I will never make my daughter unhappy” on his lips.
Not only that, when his daughter left home, he had come to Paul and poured out a flood of tears all night long.
He even boasted about his daughter every time they met, to the point where Paul had had to tell him to stop.
And yet, how had such a father-daughter relationship been driven this far?
The Sarah he had seen when she was young had seemed to find her father a little intimidating, but she had fairly well followed him and liked him….
“Phew….”
This was not the time to be worrying about someone else’s family circumstances.
“What should I do about this?”
He first had to resolve the situation that had unfolded. His conscience pricked at him if he were to stubbornly insist to Mateo that he knew absolutely nothing.
But to tell this fact to Choi Jihyun, no, HS….
“I cannot.”
The words came out of Paul instinctively as he was following the train of his thoughts.
Right.
He had suddenly imagined telling this to HS, and that was why he had reached the conclusion that he could not.
Why?
Because as soon as HS heard this, he would certainly say it sounded fun and ask Paul to quickly let him get in touch.
Above all, if they actually met, HS would not bother to hide that he was HS. At least, that was the kind of person HS was in Paul’s eyes.
“No, no.”
In the end, Paul concluded that he must absolutely never let the two of them meet.
Especially…
Mateo was the kind of man who would easily ruin the bright future of a young composer if it were for his daughter.
“That must not happen.”
At the very least, Paul wanted to see HS, no, Choi Jihyun, for a long time.
Hyunseung was less patient than he had thought.
‘I definitely told him to give him my contact information….’
It had been a full 24 hours, plus 38 minutes and 23 seconds, since he had told him to give Mateo his number…
And there had been no contact at all.
Even Paul, who had reached out first, had not contacted him in any way.
“Ah, I am curious…”
Even Animal Island no longer held his gaze, and he tossed his game console carelessly onto the table.
It was no wonder.
He was terribly curious why Mateo liked Choi Jihyun but hated HS. What on earth was the difference?
“Hmm…”
In his previous life, Mateo had called him a commercially driven composer crazy about money and had said he did not even want to call him a fellow composer…
He might think of HS the same way. If that was so, then in this life too, a bad relationship would be starting.
“Hm…”
Hyunseung let out a low sound for a moment, then soon shook his head.
‘Even so, I am not the type to deliberately go looking for him.’
He decided to set it aside for now, since thinking about it would not give him the answer.
‘No, wait…’
If Mateo were to find out that HS and Choi Jihyun were in fact the same person, how would he react?
‘That would be fun.’
It was from this point on that, worn out by waiting, Hyunseung began to spin his delusions in an increasingly strange direction….
‘Ah, right.’
Since Mateo seemed to have ties with Paul, it would be quite fun to bring in the New York Phil and make a fusion piece that blended East and West.
It might also be fun to make a track by punching in money codes one by one with him, like in the sweet-and-sour pork game1.
“Keuk.”
Unable to hold back, Hyunseung burst out laughing for a moment.
“Ah, wait.”
He immediately picked up his phone.
Tap, tap, tap!
Soon he sent a text to Austin.
Right. To that very Austin who had earnestly begged him never, ever to answer if Mateo contacted him.
[ Could you please give me Mateo’s contact information? ]
Moreover, it was a message that would be enough to turn his stomach upside down.
[ I will talk with him directly. ]
If you give him the disease, you have to give him the cure too, right?
[ A collaboration between Mateo and HS, let us distribute it through Unice. ]
Hyunseung added words that would make Austin drool and finished sending the message.
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