Pen and Paper Translations

Mateo returned to the United States with his mind in turmoil.

“Why don’t you release a collaboration album with me?”

At first, he had thought the kid was out of his mind.

“If you work with me, you can put Sarah Stewart up as the instrument.”

He had not liked that his daughter was being called an instrument.

“And you can put into music what you cannot put into words.”

But with that last line, the sturdy wall he had built up over the years crumbled.

A wall made of worries like: Isn’t it too late? What if it only makes our relationship worse?

“Gae, gae, ideuk.”

Muttering the Korean word he had learned from HS, Mateo sat down in front of his work desk.

A song that carries the things I want to say to my daughter…

He had never once even imagined writing such a piece before, so it was not easy to begin.

From the very moment he booted up his program, he knew it instinctively.

This job was not going to be easy.

Just as his instincts had warned him, he ran into tremendous difficulties.

“Sigh…”

Anyone who has ever taken a test in their life has probably, at least once, changed an answer and gotten it wrong.

You know how it goes: you choose an answer on instinct, then after agonizing, you change it to something else, and it turns out your first instinct was right.

Mateo had done that back when he was a student too.

Ever since that day, he had begun to trust his first instinct.

It was the same when he wrote music. He always took the first musical idea that brushed past his mind and built freely from there.

He never changed it after overthinking it.

However, the current Mateo found it hard and nerve-wracking just to put down a single chord.

Eventually, after one day, two days, four days… only after a full week had passed did he finally complete the song and listen through it, thinking:

Was this really the work I was capable of doing?

When you write while thinking of someone specific, it is only natural that your objectivity blurs. It becomes hard to judge properly whether a song is good or not.

All the more so when it is a tribute song for his own daughter.

“This is not it.”

The more Mateo listened to what he had written, the more his doubts about the piece only grew.

That said…

The idea of asking that brat HS to evaluate whether his song was good or not was more unbearable than death.

If I could just know that one thing, I feel like I could make it better…

Mateo was lost deep in thought when—

Ping!

A KakaoTalk message arrived.

Of course, it was not from his daughter.

[ HS: How is the work coming along? ]

It was a nudge-that-wasn’t-quite-a-nudge from HS. Mateo did not want his current situation to be seen through.

Regardless of what the chart performance might be, he wanted to be the one to complete his track faster than HS this time.

Because he was the father.

— Have you already finished yours?

[ No. ]

— Then?

[ I have not even started yet. ]

— What? You have not even started? Is this a joke to you? Was that talk about a collaboration album just something you said for fun?

“Fuck…”

Muttering a curse, Mateo sent one last, anger-tinged KakaoTalk message.

— If you do not send me your track by tomorrow, let’s say the collab never happened.

— Besides, I am the one who really needs to hurry and finish…

Tap, tatatatak, tap.

Mateo’s fingers began moving over his phone screen again.

Because there was something he absolutely had to know before he could finish the song.

---

Sarah Stewart gnawed on the tip of her pen, her face full of worry.

She had lyrics, but no melody that suited them would come.

It was probably because she had listened to HS’s songs so much that her ear had become too picky.

Sarah gathered up her silver-blond hair and tied it back, then rolled up her sleeves.

Then she threw herself into her work without a moment’s rest.

Still, she no longer did anything self-destructive just because a song would not come out. She now knew that did not magically produce good music.

Right.

That weirdo had always seemed calm and laid-back, no matter what.

If it does not come out, you keep working until it does.

If the finished track was a bit lacking, you could just develop it further. There was no need to get impatient; you just had to take it step by step.

─ ♬ ♬ ♬

Sarah Stewart kept poking in notes, playing them back, and sketching out ideas, over and over, until the melody she wanted finally appeared.

She had no idea how much time had passed.

Only once she started to think, If this keeps up, I might starve to death, did she take her hands off the keys.

This would not do; she had to eat something.

If you wanted to write good music, you had to fill your stomach too.

She had learned that as well, from that weirdo.

He was the type who pushed himself brutally hard when he worked, but he still never skipped meals.

In fact, he ate a lot.

So much that you wondered where it all even went.

Then why am I the only one gaining weight…

Sarah gently pinched her soft belly.

If anything, she had not been eating much lately, so she did not know why she kept putting on weight.

People said she looked much better now than when she had been skin-and-bones, but…

That weirdo nags me every time he sees me, saying I have gained weight…

She decided she would have to go on a strict diet before her upcoming comeback.

Ah!

In that case, why not just do a misutgaru one-food diet?

It was sweet and tasty, did not require any cooking at all (*which she had no talent for), and since it was made by grinding grains, it had to be healthy, right?

Honestly, it felt like the perfect diet for her.

Just in time.

It had now been eleven weeks since her title track, “Look at me,” had taken first place on the Billboard chart.

Which meant…

If she held out for just one more week, she would win the bet and earn herself 100 boxes of misutgaru.

Oh yes, heaven really is on my side.

She decided she would start the diet right away and was just pulling a packet of misutgaru out of her bag when—

Bzzzz—!

The screen of the phone she had forgotten she left in her bag suddenly lit up bright.

“Ah.”

Checking the preview, Sarah could not help letting out a sigh.

…

[ What kind of father have I been to you? ]

Because she had just received, for the first time in her life, a question that was both completely new and unbearably heavy.

---

Meanwhile.

[ If you do not send me your track by tomorrow, let’s say the collab never happened.]

Seeing the KakaoTalk message Mateo had sent, Hyunseung tossed his phone onto the sofa as if it were a nuisance.

“As if I would not do it anyway.”

He would have it finished tonight, long before tomorrow.

Seated at his work table, Hyunseung spread out a sheet of staff paper.

At some point, he had started to feel that this way was more comfortable.

In truth, he had been carrying a certain musical idea in his head for quite a long time.

He just had no confidence.

Even though he was Hyunseung, the one said to be unmatched, when it came to this musical idea, he doubted whether he could express it fully with his own skills.

He doubted he could ever write lyrics worthy of that music.

So he had left that idea sitting in his head for a very long time.

But now, he could not let it rot there any longer.

It is a bit old, but…

He had to keep his promise.

Scritch, scritch.

As if simply copying a score that was already complete, his hand ran smoothly over the staff paper, drawing all kinds of notes.

To the eye, it looked like nothing more than worms crawling across the page.

Scritch, scritch.

How much time had passed?

Ping!

Only when he got a message from Executive Director Park, asking why he was not coming to work out, did he realize dawn was breaking.

“Ah, I am supposed to go work out.”

Contrary to his words, he could not bring himself to lift his backside from the chair.

The sheets of staff paper had turned into a fairly decent score, but he had not written a single line of lyrics to go with it.

As expected…

His earlier prediction that he would not be able to write the lyrics had been right.

Still, he could not just scribble something half-baked.

But he truly had no sense of what line to start with.

Because this was an emotion he did not understand at all and an experience he had never had.

And… it is something I simply do not have.

In the end, Hyunseung collapsed forward over the scattered sheets on his work table.

Right. It would be easier if he just accepted that this was something he was not good at.

Wait.

Could he not just leave the lyrics to the “instrument” who would actually sing it?

Yes, that was it.

It was their story anyway, not his.

Tap, tadadadak, tap!

Once he had solved one problem, Hyunseung moved on to another he had been putting off, and dialed a number.

─ ♬ ♬ ♬

The cheerful ringtone suddenly cut off, and a voice sank down to the bottom of the line.

─ What do you want…

A voice like it had been drawn up from the depths of an underground cave.

Hearing it, who would ever believe it belonged to the same person as the one singing in the ringtone just moments ago?

“Did you get dragged down into the underworld or something?”

─ No, my throat is just a little hoarse.

It certainly sounded like something had happened, but if she did not want to talk, he could not force her to.

Besides, now that he even knew about her complicated family situation, it would be better for both of them if he did not meddle any further.

“By the way, are you still stubbornly holding on to that weird conviction that you will only sing songs you wrote yourself?”

─ Why? Are you going to give me a song?

Sarah Stewart’s voice, which had been sunken only a moment earlier, suddenly soared as if nothing had happened.

You really could not tell what went on inside women’s hearts.

─ That actually works out. I had lyrics, but I could not come up with any decent melody, so the timing is perfect. Come on, let me hear it!

“Where did that rock-solid conviction of yours get sold off to?”

─ Once a conviction has been broken, what good does it do trying to glue it back together? Anyway, if I like it after I hear it, I will graciously sing it and even put my own lyrics on it.

“I do have a song where only the melody is done and I have no lyrics, but…”

Before he could even finish, Sarah’s excited voice came through the receiver.

─ That is perfect, isn’t it? As long as the lyrics and melody match in mood, it is good for both of us.

At that, Hyunseung clicked his tongue with a “tss” like he was in a bind, and then cut cleanly:

“But that is not a song I am going to give you.”

The piece he had wrestled with over and over, the one he had finally drawn out from that long-stewing idea, was not written for Sarah Stewart.

It already had an owner, or rather, an instrument it was promised to.

Even if that promise had come a bit late.

─ Then what did you ask for?

“I wanted to know whether you are willing to sing songs other people have written now.”

─ Other people? You mean it is not a song you wrote?

To that question, Hyunseung answered briefly, “Right,” and then added:

“Mateo.”

The instant he said that name, there was a tremendous crashing noise.

And then the call cut off with a sudden click from the other side.