All of a sudden, the studio was extremely quiet, as if someone had splashed cold water over it.
It was because of HS’s question about who would go in first.
And that was because Mateo was not good at singing, and now he was being told to sing a song he had never even hummed, let alone practiced, so of course he could not help hesitating.
And Sarah Stewart did not want to show her father what it looked like when she sang.
But HS was not a man with much patience.
“At times like this, all you do is let time evaporate.”
In the end, he frowned as if he were frustrated and pointed at Sarah.
“Just you go first.”
“Huh? Why?”
“At least you practiced a bit before coming.”
“W-Wait! Let me drink some misutgaru first!”
“You really are something else, seriously.”
As if possessed by something, Sarah hurriedly pulled something out of her bag. Then she tore open the corner of the pack and gulped it down.
It seemed that was the food where you mix the grain powder Sarah liked so much into water and drink it.
“Hmm….”
Mateo watched that for a moment.
“I’ll go first.”
He said it as he brushed himself off and stood up. In truth, he had no confidence. It was obvious it would be embarrassing and humiliating.
How could a composer, not even a singer, possibly sing well a song he had only heard a few times?
Yeah.
HS was the one asking for something that did not make sense in the first place. So he would let him hear it himself. He needed to show him just how absurd a demand it was.
“I’ll go first, so I’ll be counting on you to direct me.”
Mateo headed for the booth with steps so bold they were almost shameless.
In any case, HS probably did not have high expectations for him either.
He was probably only thinking of using Sarah Stewart and him like chess pieces to grab attention.
He had no intention whatsoever of being played around by some kid, but for his daughter’s sake, he would humor him for a bit.
“Just so you know, I’m going to sing however. Let’s just go one take.”
Before long, if HS was not an idiot, he would stop this prank.
“Old man, you’re so decisive. I like that.”
He could be sure when he saw HS’s face beyond that booth, smiling mischievously.
What stopped before long was not HS’s prank…
It was Mateo’s “certainty.”
“Huh? R-Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“It really ends like this?”
Mateo asked again and again, to a degree that the word “again” did not even feel like enough.
“Yes, it’s really over.”
Through the booth window, he could see HS’s satisfied face. It was a face that looked pleased without a shred of lying.
‘Not even one note?’
As Mateo looked at HS’s face, he felt confused.
It was as if he had stepped into a virtual world, to the point that he even felt a strange sense of alienness.
There was a reason he was like that.
It was because, even just two hours ago, he had not expected the work to end this quickly.
.
.
“First, I’ll just think of it as matching the lyrics, and we’ll try a one take.”
The start had gone smoothly.
─ ♬ ♬ ♬
With an extremely indifferent face, HS played the track and kept the beat with his finger.
Yeah.
This was probably all he was expecting of me.
Just matching the pitch and the rhythm.
However, after the one take ended, HS seriously corrected his posture.
And then, as if he might burst through the booth window at any moment, he continued obsessive directing, line by line.
─ Even the words that if it gets any bigger, everyone will know, are selfish, too.
“Just now, on ‘know,’ could you sing it like you lightly toss out your breath?”
Acting as if he were some kind of vocal trainer.
─ Whether you know it or not, I only realized now that I expected a lot from you.
“When you sing the last ‘realized,’ don’t let the breath trail out long.”
He kept correcting him sharply.
─ I shouldn’t do that; I should’ve become your shade.
“Every time you say ‘shade,’ it only goes up by half a note, but the pitch is unstable.”
He did not let even a single line pass easily. That was when Mateo felt it. This kid is serious.
He really intends to use me and do this properly.
He is not just trying to grab attention.
That desire rippling inside his calm, quiet eyes was telling him that.
To be precise, that was what Mateo thought.
Before going into the booth for the one take recording, HS brought in a bottle of water, telling him to drink while doing it.
“Give me one of those too, not water, that misutgaru or whatever.”
“Old man, you can’t drink misutgaru. It makes your voice go dull.”
“Then why are you giving it to Sarah?”
“She stays clear even if it goes dull.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means even if she looks dull on the outside, inside, she can’t help being clear and soft.”
“Don’t talk like you know my daughter so well.”
At Mateo’s barbed words, HS gave a light snort and left the booth again.
Slide.
Mateo rolled his eyes and searched for his daughter, whom he had forgotten about for a moment.
She was perched awkwardly on the sofa stretched out inside the studio, neither properly sitting nor standing.
Holding sheet music tightly in both hands, she was moving her lips, so it seemed she was practicing.
‘Kid…’
Looking at her like that, he remembered when his daughter first called him “Dad.” Of course, it had been babbling, like “Aba, aba!”
Mateo could not forget that day.
It had been a brutally exhausting day, after consecutive all nighters.
He especially did not want to go home, but he pressed the accelerator anyway, worried about his wife, who was taking care of the baby alone.
Screech!
Even opening the front door had felt so heavy, and he had thought, Is this what the weight of being the head of the household is?
But then.
Tap, tap, tatak, tap!
From beyond the inner door, he heard the sound of skin meeting the floor, and then—
“Aba, aba!”
His daughter crawled across the floor and came out to greet him in front of the inner door.
“Aba, aba!”
Then she rubbed her cheek against the inner door that would not open easily and made a “ngh” sound.
To be honest, it was a feeling he had never had, not even when his wife was pregnant, or when she gave birth and he held the baby in his arms.
He had only felt dazed at the fact that he, who had been someone’s child, had now become someone’s father.
But after that day, Mateo’s world was filled with his daughter.
Only then did he understand what people meant when they said that even if you put them in your eyes, it would not hurt. Words he could not say easily even to his wife, he could say to his sleeping daughter without hesitation.
“I’ll protect you no matter what, Sarah.”
Just that one “Aba, aba” made him feel like he had the whole world, like there was nothing to fear.
If he could protect Sarah, it felt like he could do anything.
Though what use was any of that now…
Mateo pulled back his gaze with a bitter face. He had returned to the real world again.
To the reality where he and his daughter had gone as wrong as wrong could be.
“Let’s try again.”
When he moved his gaze forward, his eyes met HS’s in midair. HS had been staring straight through him.
For some reason, there was a strange sense of expectation in HS’s eyes.
That was the eyes of a relentless man.
The eyes of a beast that would bite down and not let go easily.
Maybe Mateo, too, had been a composer who showed eyes like that to someone.
─ ♬ ♬ ♬
Without answering, he gave a small nod, and the track started quietly.
Slide.
Mateo’s gaze naturally went to Sarah Stewart.
When he had been taking line by line takes for practice, he had been embarrassed, and he had been too busy chasing the directing that poured down like it was driving him, so he had not had the room to check on his daughter….
But now that he set his mind down lightly, his daughter filled his eyes.
─ Even the words that if it gets any bigger, everyone will know, are selfish, too.
His daughter did not look this way. He could not tell if she was deliberately not looking because she was conscious of him, or if she was truly absorbed in practice.
─ Whether you know it or not, I only realized now that I expected a lot from you.
But Mateo stared at his daughter’s face stubbornly.
─ I shouldn’t do that; I should’ve become your shade.
He did not even have the other man sitting beyond the booth in his sight.
─ I can’t even say I’m sorry to you. If you ever want to take shelter from the rain, come to my side.
As if he were in unrequited love, he sang in a low voice while looking only at his daughter.
Right now, he could not tell whether his pitch was right, whether the rhythm was dragging, whether his breath was coming forward.
He did not have the skill to account for all of that while singing, but right now, even that was not in his sight.
─ I’ll bear everything, so you just quietly stay and then go.
In fact, the longer the recording got delayed, the better it was for him. Because he could look at his daughter longer.
Wrong, corrected, humiliated.
He had gotten too old to cling to those things.
And too much time had already passed where he and his daughter had been out of sync.
He just…
Since it might be the last time, he wanted to take her in even more slowly.
─ Just for a moment, so you can breathe, I’ll be there.
Even as he let out the final line, the song did not cut off.
That did not mean it was okay. He was not a singer, but he could definitely tell how terrible his singing had been.
He was a composer and a producer, after all.
HS would probably spin a finger over his head right away and, through the talkback, say, “Let’s go again.”
“Okay, you can come out.”
Of course. Just as Mateo, resigned, took one step back toward the standing mic—
“Huh? What? What did you just say?”
He asked with eyes as wide as lanterns.
“The recording’s done, so come out.”
“T-that can’t be!”
“If I say the recording is done, then it’s done.”
“But it was a complete mess.”
“No, it was good. Come out.”
Mateo was dragged out of the booth, and even after coming out, he asked again and again if it was really over.
“Huh? R-Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“It really ends like this?”
Even when he was directing, that guy’s eyes were flashing like a hyena as if telling him to show any opening, but now he was letting go this easily?
“Because I’m not a singer, you went easy on me, didn’t you?”
Mateo could not easily accept this situation at all.
But HS answered immediately, showing sharp eyes as if he had gone through his own definite grading.
“I’m not that soft. I’m choosing to go with that take because it really was fine. It’ll be covered enough with post work, and it’s not like you’ll be going around performing this song on stage.”
“W-Well, that’s true, but….”
“It was genuinely fine.”
After saying that, HS turned his head and asked Sarah, who had been subtly conscious of this place.
“Right, Misut Sarah?”
Sarah Stewart flinched as if she had been caught eavesdropping.
“Uh… well, since he’s a composer, he has the basics, so it was fine.”
She continued, pretending it was nothing.
“Oh, good work today. You can head in now.”
In the meaning of Sarah’s words, there was the implication that since she was about to go into recording, he should go now.
Just as Mateo nodded, saying he understood.
“What are you talking about?”
HS stood up, planting his hand on the desk with an audible sound, and asked as if arguing.
“Why are you the one deciding whether he goes or not?”
“He’s done singing, and you can do the directing, can’t you? Since we have senior discounts, we can send him off no—”
“No. He’s the one who made the song, so he has to take responsibility and finish all the post work too before he goes.”
Mateo did not like the tone, like he was scolding his daughter…
But right now, it was giving him a reason to stay in this studio longer, so he decided to keep quiet.
More than anything, it seemed like she listened to HS better than she listened to him.
Before long, HS tapped his finger in turn at Sarah Stewart and the booth door as he said,
“Put down the misutgaru you’re drinking and go in.”
At that, Sarah let out an “ngh” like when she was a baby and walked weakly into the booth.
“Same thing, we’re doing a one take first.”
Mateo looked at HS’s back as he immediately took up a working posture and thought,
‘Well done, HS!’
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