Halo flipped to the last page of the notebook. What met him was the familiar staff paper he knew so well. The thick and thin notes floated on it.

'Maybe.' 

Halo thought.

'I was mistaken.'

The sentimental melody and heartfelt lyrics looked everywhere like a ballad sung in Korea, a love song to a lover.

He was told that No Haeil didn't have a girlfriend.

Jang Jinsoo could have been wrong, but if there was a girlfriend or similar relationship, there would have already been contact by now.

The possibility of unrequited love also seemed low, because the lyrics No Haeil wrote did not give the impression of unrequited love.

So Halo thought of a possibility he had never considered before.

'The owner of this song...'

If the person No Haeil wanted to play this song for was not a girl he was interested in romantically, but...

Halo read the music score for [Confession] from the beginning again.

"I have something I want to say all night."

Halo read just the lyrics, omitting the melodies.

[Listen to every moment as it flows.]

[It may seem strange, but

I'm taking trembling steps to get closer to you.]

[If you don't leave no matter what I say]

[So this night isn't scary, greet me with the brightest smile]

[Then we'll arrive at the moment we've been waiting for the most]

[This is a song only for you]

[An old confession kept under the night sky]

[I'll sing it before this night ends, putting eternity in a message floated on the night sea]

[Just our story]

It felt sad yet candid because of the lyrics. He had thought it was just the pure and innocent song of a middle schooler.

But when he changed the subject, it sounded different.

"Confession."

The title of this song was not just a proposal for a girl he liked.

This was No Haeil finally trying to confess his heart to someone when up till now he hadn't been able to choose anything.

The subject was probably...

'His mother'.

It wasn't strange that Halo had been mistaken.

After all, it was clearly a love song.

The 'you' was intentionally hidden in the romantic melody.

If someone didn't know No Haeil, if they didn't know the background of how this song was made, anyone could have been mistaken.

Halo laughed hollowly.

That he too had been fooled by this simple trick, just like any other ordinary person.

"I sang it completely wrong."

And admitted it.

That he had underestimated this kid.

"Cheeky brat..."

Halo cursed as he finally acknowledged the middle schooler who had tricked him.

No Haeil was completely different from Halo. It doesn't mean he was a coward or idiot. No Haeil was a completely different human from Halo, who would have walked a completely different path.

If Halo chose rejection and resistance, No Haeil would have chosen dialogue and reconciliation.

At least, if he was trying to play this song for her.

Now Halo couldn't even predict what kind of future No Haeil really would have had.

But he understood what No Haeil wanted.

Halo asked No Haeil.

With this prepared,

"Are you telling me to make an even better future for you?"

Halo didn't know if this kid's choices would turn out well in the end. As he said before, it was a choice Halo had no experience with.

However, since this kid wished it so much, he felt a sense of responsibility.

Not adult responsibility or anything, just human decency. Something like that.

Also, a small curiosity about whether something like this could really work.

"Can't lose my nerve here."

Halo stood up.

#

Park Seungah cleaned up the dishes. Then she ran the washing machine and emptied the trash can. She opened the windows wide and turned on the ventilation fan, then vacuumed the spacious living room, bedroom, and small room in order with a silent vacuum cleaner.

Usually, she would finish housework here, but Park Seungah looked for more to do. She took out towels she hadn't used in a while and wiped the windows, tidied up dusty books. She replaced old hangers she'd been putting off. She double-checked the already clean kitchen.

She just couldn't sit still.

To shake off her complicated thoughts, if nothing else, she moved more diligently.

Eventually, the time came when there was nothing left to do.

She stood in the middle of the living room, then noticed her son's room at the end of the living room. The door was tightly shut.

Suddenly she wondered.

Since when had that door been shut so tightly?

She couldn't remember. Of course. No Haeil, who studied past two in the morning, closed the door so no light escaped.

Thinking it would help him study better, she left it alone, and the door had remained tightly shut until now. He was such a tidy kid, there was nothing to clean in his room anyway.

She carefully approached No Haeil's room. Then she slowly raised her hand to the doorknob. Click. The door wasn't locked. As if waiting for her to come in anytime.

Park Seungah entered Haeil's room for the first time in a long while.

"!"

What met her was the state of the messy room. Not that clothes or trash were lying around. Just that crumpled papers were rolling around on the floor, and the AirPods she'd gifted him for his birthday long ago lay fallen next to them.

The blanket was roughly rumpled.

And dust floating in the room without ventilation.

She looked over the chaotic room calmly.

Strangely, she wasn't angry. She just picked up the pillow and AirPods fallen on the floor and returned them to their places.

Then she gathered up the paper balls rolling on the floor.

As she tried to throw everything into the trash can, she saw what was written inside. Unfolding the crumpled paper, she found staves and notes scattered across it.

Some papers had alphabets, while others had characters she couldn't recognize.

She, who always saw neat handwriting, never imagined her son would have such messy writing.

She couldn't bring herself to throw them away, so she neatly flattened them and placed them on the desk. Then, she plopped down onto her son's bed.

Before long she recalled the 'video' Chansoo's mother had told her about. The video that had complicated her mind.

A mother in the world doesn't fail to recognize her child.

No matter what state they're in, how far away they are, she finds them like they're on the same frequency.

Park Seungah also found her son in the video.

Chansoo's mother passed it off as someone who looked similar, but to her, it was clearly her son.

However, what felt unfamiliar at the same time:

His expression, actions, and everything surrounding her son in that video were so unfamiliar to her.

Yes, she didn't know her son had this side to him.

That he was surrounded by so many people, with such a happy expression, singing such a warm song, she didn't know any of that.

"Why, why didn't you say anything?"

Of course, she didn't know.

No Haeil hadn't said a thing to her.

Where he went, what he did, who he played with, and how, when he'd gotten so close with that friend named Junsu - he didn't tell her any of it. (TLN: Yes it’s 준수 (Junsu))

He'd had plenty of chances to tell her anytime, but he seemed to have no intention of telling her.

Didn't he?

She recalled one morning when she had fought with her son.

'What if you don't want to do it as a hobby?' That morning when she'd written off his rude attitude as just puberty.

What had she said to him then?

Had she told him not to do it?

Or had she just gotten angry?

There was no positive reaction.

Of course, her son had no time for nonsense.

Getting into a foreign language high school was just the beginning, the road ahead was long.

It was reasonable.

She thought she had to be stricter with him for his future.

But.

Haeil in that video looked so happy. And the expressions of the people listening to his song were as if she was there at that spot too.

Now she wondered what was right.

Park Seungah, who had been staring blankly into space, abruptly stood up from her seat. She ran to the internet TV in the living room and turned on NuTube on the large screen.

Of course, there was only one recent video.

That video she had watched dozens of times.

Now she had memorized what song Haeil sang in it, what expression he made as he sang that song. But what still felt new about this video was how it made her heart flutter to see the reactions of the people listening to Haeil's song.

The tears of emotion, couples leaning their heads on each other's shoulders, singing along, the people filming on their phones in the back wouldn't leave her mind.

She also opened the comments section to see people's reactions there. She had seen the popular comments so many times now that they didn't make her feel anything, but the continuous popping up of new comments, the commenters made her heart race, while the hate comments made her frown.

But the critical comments were overwhelmed with "dislike" attacks and were soon buried by good posts.

For the first time in a while, I cried. Just the same daily life. Clutching my resignation letter, consoling myself with a glass of soju, somehow getting through another difficult day, suddenly everything feels alright. It's always hard but still, the world feels worth living in. Thank you for singing a good song after so long. Though you're young, you sing songs that really move people. It's been so long since someone in Korea could sing songs like this. I hope you sing more songs.

Her eyes grew hot for some reason.

It was touching that through her son, so many people were comforted and could endure their difficult days.

The view count on the video, which had definitely been at 480,000 that morning, was now passing 550,000 and nearing 600,000 in the blink of an eye. It was tremendous growth. While algorithms were surely behind these view numbers, there were also people among those who had already seen it that were watching it again. Just looking at the comments, people said they had been listening for four hours straight.

Also, judging by the increasing foreign language comments, it wasn't only Koreans tuning in.

As she was about to finish reading all the comments, she discovered a comment she hadn't seen before.

-Isn't this person him?

nutube.com/watch?v=5_RhQor [wave_r]

Looks like him

Upon finding the link, Park Seungah flinched in surprise. She thought Haeil's personal information had already been exposed. Imagining reporters swarming the house and ultimately having to move, Park Seungah carefully clicked the video.

And what she discovered was.

"This is..."

Park Seungah's eyes widened.

An utterly unremarkable channel with a viewcount incomparable to the previous videos.

And a single pristine video sitting forlornly there.

Swallowing her saliva, her trembling finger touches the video. Soon, a melody flows out.

#

"Done?"

"Yeah."

Halo turned off the computer and stood up.

Every bone in his body creaked loudly.

The preparations were complete. He took his guitar.

Since he hadn't grasped the composer's intentions, the original song was a failure. He tweaked the song to convey the intent properly this time, and finished recording the instrumental on MIDI.

Now it was time to let No Haeil's sincerity be heard.

In the best way he could.

No Haeil had gone to a recording studio to show the video, but this time, Halo had no plans to film a video like No Haeil intended.

Because there was an even better way.

One he could do better, one that could probably convey it better.

"Think it'll go well?"

He asked as if he knew what Halo had done, when he didn't know at all. But realizing Jang Jinsoo was no mere kid, Halo answered the question he would normally ignore.

"Don't know."

"...Oh, that's rare for you to lack confidence?"

"It's not that I lack confidence."

Because it wasn't something he could control.

Halo recalled memories from the past.

When he told his father he was doing music, his father had tried to smash his guitar. He threw himself to protect it and rebelled against his father.

As a result. His father claimed Halo was possessed by the devil and beat him, and his mother scolded Halo as well. His siblings condemned him too.

There was no one to listen to his earnest pleas. No one heard his voice. It felt like screaming at a wall.

He didn't regret running away from home like that even once.

So because of that.

He didn't know how this would turn out.

He had prepared in the way No Haeil wanted with his best efforts, but in the end, it was up to them whether they accepted it.

Halo took a deep breath and got into the apartment elevator.

With every step forward, his legs grew steady,

And determination filled his gaze looking ahead.

For a better future.