Vincent went to the shower room, which could be called one of the headquarters’ prides.
It was to wash off the dirt dust he’d gotten while tending the yard.
Hyunseung said he had taken on Daniel Parker’s project and was about to go inside, so Vincent tried to follow him in, but….
“No dirt dust in my studio.”
He was stopped immediately.
“Cheap bastard.”
Even while grumbling, Vincent washed every corner of his body.
“Nice, the hot water comes out well.”
Then, looking satisfied, he roughly dried his hair with a towel.
To be honest, he hadn’t planned to build a shower room.
But he had built it because of Hyunseung’s stubborn request.
What was it he said again?
That a headquarters, by definition, had to have a cafeteria, a cafe, and a gym, and a shower room too, or something like that?
Somehow.
It sounded like he planned to solve all leisure life inside the headquarters.
“Daniel Parker…”
Vincent paused mid-change into the suit he’d brought and murmured the name.
Daniel Parker.
He was a musician standing at a peak so high that even Vincent couldn’t easily carry the name, someone like the progenitor of glam rock.
Now…
He was already into middle age, but he was the kind of person who didn’t seem to know what “the end” was, always releasing albums with new and shocking concepts and surprising the world.
Not only his record sales, but even the scale of his concerts was so massive that Vincent couldn’t even compare.
‘To get to work with someone like that…’
It wasn’t pleasant at all to have Hyunseung’s first song after founding VINCIS taken away by someone else, but.
If it was Daniel Parker, it also wasn’t something he couldn’t accept.
More than anything, if the first work produced the moment VINCIS was founded was a “Daniel Parker” album, the ripple effect would be enormous.
It would become a foothold to secure their position in the U.S. all at once.
“Good is good.”
Vincent smacked his lips in lingering regret for a moment, then.
“This is Vincent.”
He called someone.
Knock, knock.
Vincent knocked on Hyunseung’s studio door, and before any reply came back, he couldn’t hold in his curiosity and carefully opened it.
“…”
No music was flowing out inside.
That said, Hyunseung wasn’t just sitting still.
Even from only the back of his head, you could feel how intensely focused he was.
Tap, tatadak, tap.
Hyunseung was freely moving his hands, as if he’d already finished adapting even to the newly installed equipment.
Of course, you could say equipment was equipment, but still, there would be subtle differences, and there would be things more familiar to his hands…
But for Hyunseung, it seemed those kinds of constraints didn’t exist.
Tap, tatadak, tap.
Because he had a headset on, Vincent couldn’t tell exactly what kind of song was being made.
But…
— ♪ ♪ ♪
From the way he soon slung on a guitar and started plucking at it like he meant it, it was clear a far-from-ordinary song was being made.
He can even handle instruments well, that’s unfair.
At the very moment he should have been amazed, for some reason, a laugh slipped out of Vincent.
The silent smile that had been spreading quietly soon grew into an audible laugh.
“Haha, hahaha!”
If someone saw him, they might think he was a lunatic laughing while staring at a man’s back.
“Haha, hahaha, hahahaha!”
But the laughter just wouldn’t stop.
And that was because.
He had become sure that his prediction would come true.
That with HS, they would conquer even America easily.
Olivia, who had been about to eat a hamburger, had to set it down again.
“This is insane…”
Then she clasped the phone she’d been holding in one hand with both hands, tightly, like she was gripping a precious jewel.
[ Sarah Stewart’s man, composer “HS,” joins hands with Vincent to establish the “VINCIS” label in the U.S.! Full-scale American activities begin… ]
With her green eyes shining, she read through the article.
To summarize the long article…
It meant composer HS would now step into the Billboard market as the CEO of a U.S. label.
“So cool…”
Olivia, wearing a blissful smile, rubbed her cheek against the screen.
Yes.
She was an ardent, passionate HS superfan.
“The scale is just different, isn’t it?”
When she locked the phone screen, a photo from HS’s fan meeting appeared on the display.
“Ha…”
No matter how many times she looked, looked, and looked again, she never got tired of looking at his face.
In truth, Olivia hadn’t been HS’s fan from the beginning. She had been a Sarah Stewart fan.
She was captivated by Sarah’s easygoing, say-what-she-wants attitude.
Her singing, her composing, her lyric writing, her performances.
Sarah was good at everything, and Olivia fell for her more and more with each passing day.
And then she learned that the title track of the new album was not a song Sarah had made, but a song by a composer.
It was shocking.
Because as a fan, she knew Sarah Stewart was someone with immense pride and self-respect in songs she made herself.
So the moment it was released, she listened to it right away.
Look at me.
It felt like a very challenging song, because it was the first time Sarah Stewart, who used to exert strong power in a low register, kept leading rhythmically through the mid-to-high range.
Of course, that challenge was extremely successful. For a while, Olivia listened to “Look at me” like she was crazy.
To the point she thought the “repeat a single song” function was, truly, so convenient.
After that, she became interested in HS. So much so that it wasn’t enough to consume all the K-pop he had composed.
She joined his fan cafe and would translate and read the posts that went up every day.
Then a dating rumor with Sarah Stewart came out, and she felt just a little sad, but since it was a relationship between two people she liked, she decided to support them.
Of course.
She supported HS more than Sarah Stewart.
But, well, that’s just how a woman’s heart is.
What can you do?
She’d seen HS’s fancam, HS’s face, HS in real life.
Yes.
A few months ago, she once saw a man on the street who resembled HS by chance.
He insisted it wasn’t him and left, but she could tell instinctively.
‘It’s HS.’
And that was because, even if it was just one video, one photo, she had played it countless times, and zoomed in countless times, so even if she tried not to recognize him, she couldn’t not recognize him.
Even his aura wasn’t that of an ordinary person, was it?
But these days, as more and more HS fans were gradually increasing even in the U.S., Olivia also felt upset.
How should she put it?
Like her greed to keep him all to herself kept popping up?
But if you had to pick the hottest keyword in America right now, it would be “HS,” so that was an impossible wish.
“Hoo….”
Now that he was even forming a label in earnest, it was basically only a matter of time before HS’s name became widely known.
So it would be an even more rational choice for her to let go of her greed.
“Ah, seriously—!”
But how could that be easy?
Tap tap, tap-tap!
Seeing the article’s view count shoot upward, Olivia stamped her feet.
“No, think of it positively!”
And then, after only a moment.
“That’s right, it’s a good thing!”
To steady her heart, she gulped down cola.
Yes, calm down.
Now she’d be able to listen to HS’s songs as much as she wanted.
Daniel forced his heavy eyelids open.
These days, especially…
Pain kept coming, and because he’d been losing sleep at night, it felt like fatigue was piling on top of fatigue.
“Haa…”
Still, he had to get up.
Today.
He was going to meet HS.
[ Let’s meet at my headquarters. ]
Just from hearing his voice, he understood that HS knew he was Daniel Parker, so Daniel wondered if he was a fan and tried to call him to the studio of the record company he belonged to.
But he was making this middle-aged man, whose body already felt heavy, come all the way out there.
Still, he was the one asking the favor, so what could he do?
But…
If, when they met, his skill was lacking, Daniel intended to turn around and walk right back out.
Yes.
If he was going to entrust this album to a composer with merely so-so ability, he didn’t intend to release it in the first place.
Creak.
When he finally forced himself up, opened his bedroom door, and went out, the wide living room laid with marble looked like a painting.
Meaning, it was that fragmentary and devoid of warmth.
One side of the living room was filled with awards he’d received so far, but it was just an empty shell.
Because he was just someone with an expiration date, who had to wait for the day he died.
That didn’t mean he was afraid of death.
Everyone dies someday, so to live without regrets, he lived each day however he wanted.
Thanks to that, he had spent youthful days more dazzling and heart-thrilling than anyone.
Yes.
To the point he lived with the words “I could die anytime and it wouldn’t matter” on his lips.
Women, alcohol, cigarettes.
It felt like he’d done everything addictive. And he didn’t regret it.
He wanted to, he did it without lingering attachment, and until the day his life ran out, he would do what he wanted.
Music was the same.
From his debut until now, he had lived making the music he wanted to make.
Some people said you had to make commercial songs to earn a lot of money, but he considered all of that bullshit.
Why?
Because he had made the music he wanted all this time and still received immense love, earned astronomical money, and gained towering fame, so of course there was no reason not to.
This album was the same.
He had released albums that melted down his many different selves until now, so this time, he meant to capture his life.
From the moment he was born.
Through childhood.
Through adolescence.
Through his coming of age.
And into middle age.
He would contain the entire life of the person named Daniel Parker.
Whether HS could pull off such a difficult thing, he didn’t know.
Still, it was also true that he felt a faint sense of expectation.
He….
Looked like someone who knew how to turn another person’s pain into music.
Couldn’t he also capture the joys and sorrows, anger and delight, woven into his life?
Flap!
Finished preparing, Daniel threw on his coat and stood in front of the full-length mirror by the front door.
“This is ugly.”
Maybe because he’d lost quite a bit of weight, the fit looked dead, and he frowned and left the house.
After riding in the car for a long time, the place they arrived at was a quiet outskirts, somewhat far from the city.
Seeing a white building that looked as if it were nestled inside a nest made of blue forest, it looked exactly like a psychiatric ward.
(T/N: Psych ward… so fitting lmao)
“Seems like someone with no sense of aesthetics.”
Daniel got out of the car, crossed the long yard in one go, and stood before a gate like a huge castle wall.
“Haa, haa….”
Just from walking this short distance and getting out of breath, it seemed he really didn’t have much time left.
“Damn it.”
Daniel had one hand braced against the gate as he tried to steady his rough breathing, when.
Creak.
The gate opened inward, and Daniel’s body swayed suddenly.
Soon he grabbed onto something solid and barely regained his balance.
“The first greeting is kind of like this….”
At the sudden voice coming from above his head, he looked up and saw a man wearing a bizarre helmet.
“Are you gay too, mister?”
The man flicked his goggles up and asked.
In that moment, Daniel realized four things.
- What he was holding onto was this man’s waist.
- This man was definitely composer HS.
- As Mateo warned, he seemed to have no manners.
And lastly….
- Judging by the helmet design, his aesthetic sense was definitely zero.
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