Chapter 143

"Honestly, I've had a lot on my mind while preparing this song."

Haru began, softly, to share his own thoughts.

"Parting with my hyungs is so sad, and being sad while still having to prepare a stage was pretty overwhelming…. And then I met this song. Seok-hyung was the one who recommended 'Where am I' to me, and reading through the lyrics, I found I really related to it."

At Haru's natural gesture handing the credit over to Seok, the live feed caught Seok mid-check on his violin's strings and bow. Startled at his name coming up, Seok looked around awkwardly, eyes darting.

"That song alone could carry so much feeling — but adding this other song, the one Siwoo-hyung's father left behind, I think what we wanted to say became even more, more complete."

For someone as young as he was, Haru spoke remarkably fluently.

Everyone here — his hyungs seated behind him included — was hanging on his words.

As if he knew that, Haru held the mic firmly, hands steady — sunset-hued eyes shining out over the countless faces in the audience — and spoke.

"The hyungs said they wanted to send this song out to all the Destis, but — I want to sing this one for myself and for my hyungs."

"For your hyungs?"

"Yes. For the teammate hyungs here with me, and for the friends and other hyungs watching us from the waiting room right now. Because the things this song's lyrics are about — I learned them through my trainee friends and my hyungs."

Haru's voice really was steady.

For that moment, Hajin found himself, at least briefly, having to reconsider his own guess that this kid was the Selected Regressor.

A kid this steady — what could he have been so afraid of, that he'd had to spend so much time running?

Looking at Haru's back, framed against the reddening sunset, Hajin drew another question mark into his mind.

And at the same time, remembered.

The obvious fact that encouragement and comfort don't always have to be spoken aloud to reach someone.

…Thirteen.

Yes?

Kim Wonho — what's he doing right now?

Ah…. give me a second!

Thirteen briefly dissolved with a small poof, and was back before long.

Wonho-nim is in the waiting room! The team's been comforting him, and it looks like his feelings have settled a bit. Earlier…. he says for a moment he was afraid to sing. But he seems to be doing a lot better now. Thank goodness…. (╯︵╰,)

Listening to Thirteen relay Wonho's situation, Hajin quietly slipped into thought.

Then, without a word, he carefully rested his long, elegant fingers on the keyboard — an instrument he hadn't touched in a good long while.

It brought back the first time he'd ever played piano as a child — when he'd started only because the director of the piano academy had said one line: you have hands made for the piano.

Waiting for his parents — both of them working — and holding the hand of his year-younger brother Hawon, Hajin used to sit and quietly listen to the director play.

Some pieces he'd asked for the sheet music to, hoping to play them himself one day; others he'd asked the title of, so he could bring them home for his parents.

As things got tighter at home, Hajin ended up leaving the piano academy before he ever got to learn the piece he'd most wanted to play….

But the Hajin of now knew how to play that piece.

Whenever he'd come across a piano in the years since, he'd practice that piece.

There are things like that, you know.

Some things you understand without being told.

Some things comfort you just by reaching your ears.

Some things play, in certain moments of a life, like the background music to that moment.

Small things that turn a bleak day into one that's a little more bearable.

"Alright — please, listen well to our song."

Hajin hoped this song could be that kind of song for Wonho.

And for himself,

for Seok, for Haru, for Siwoo.

For all the someones who'd left the tangle of their lives behind and come this far just to see them.

Truly, thankfully — the Kang Hajin of now was someone able to offer that kind of comfort.

"Yes. Then — Youth-Never-Dies team, the stage is yours."

Kang Hajin thought — really —

thank goodness for that.

---

The sound of wind.

At the end of a nicely cool breeze, Siwoo's latte-colored bangs stirred.

Under a white shirt, a couple of buttons casually undone, a short-sleeved white tee peeked out, small lettering across it.

Sitting on a long stool in loose-cut light-wash jeans, one leg crossed over the other, Siwoo had his father's light-brown acoustic guitar slung across him.

In thin-rimmed silver glasses slightly bigger than his face, threaded through with a fine silver chain, Siwoo looked like he'd walked straight out of some 70s or 80s youth drama — you'd have believed it.

Except his features were too sharp and modern to pass for a period piece — and every time his face hit the big screen, gasps went up here and there.

Only briefly, though — because a moment later that carved-from-the-70s figure of a man started strumming, pick in hand.

♩♩♬― ♪♪♩♬―

The acoustic guitar, plaintive enough to tug straight at the chest, filled the evening plaza.

For some in the crowd, a scene from a drama surfaced naturally over that melody — and then Hajin's piano came in, laid over it.

Eyes on each other, Siwoo and Hajin adjusted the tempo and rhythm of their playing, reading each other's cues.

Yes, they had a metronome click in their in-ears and pre-prepped rhythm-instrument tracks running under the MR, but this wasn't just about staying on beat.

The emotion they were reaching for, the timing of each dynamic shift, playing so as not to crowd each other — they built it together, each considering the other's line.

♬♬♩♪♪―

Then Haru's xylophone came in, layering on again.

Like a song of childhood, a sound as clear and pure as Haru's own voice gathered into a single melody.

Sometimes Haru and Hajin played the same note; sometimes Haru's line answered Hajin's, as if in reply.

That playing — gentle, tender, so like the sunset itself — pulled everyone in, one by one.

Seok, his black hair down neat and straight, a beige knit vest layered over a white shirt buttoned all the way up, carefully took the mic. The first verse was his part.

I don't know.

That single line — one night, once — had made Seok sob until it hurt.

So Seok, calling back the way he'd felt then, chewed each word carefully before letting it out.

How are you these days?

Every time someone asks me that,

my answer, lately, is —

I don't know.

Seok had found the competition too much.

Truthfully, he wasn't even someone with some grand dream.

Singing had just been the thing he happened to be best at,

and he'd walked into the company only because a chance casting offer had come his way.

Even as his confidence slid, surrounded by trainees more talented and more driven than he was,

what he'd been unable to quit — was fear.

That if he didn't at least keep this up, he'd end up a loser who'd hit this age with nothing to show for himself.

At least while he was still a trainee, the sense that he was doing something let him breathe a little.

Small hands, brought together,

to build a delicate little sandcastle

Against the white waves rolling in

did we all just come apart, in the end?

Playing guitar, eyes gently closed, Siwoo took up the next verse.

Seok watched him.

Same age, and yet Siwoo was staggering.

Even before debuting, the reputation and the record Siwoo had already built were things someone like Seok couldn't dare to dream of.

Not just ability, either — inwardly, too, Siwoo felt so much more grown than him.

Watching that Siwoo, Seok kept feeling smaller.

He knew Siwoo was being considerate of him, and even so — he didn't know how to hide his own shrinking self, how to tuck it out of sight.

—Seok-ah.

—Uh, yeah? What?

—Would you take a look at how I'm singing this part?

—Me? Me?

—Yeah. Watching you the other time — when you hit the high notes, the sound comes out really easy, really clean. I want to learn from it.

—But…. singing, you're — you're way better at it than I am.

—Everyone has their own way. If you're okay with it, teach me a little. Singing.

But even to someone like him, Siwoo asked without hesitation to be taught.

Which was how Seok had ended up admitting it, in the end.

That this road wasn't his road.

And once he'd admitted that, a new question was waiting for him.

I don't know.

Where to go,

where I'm going.

Where the sandcastle used to stand —

did we, in the end, achieve nothing?

Now, what's left for me?

Where am I?

I've only run with the current, that's all

and I don't know where I'm meant to land

I'm wandering, walking on

Over a white short-sleeved tee stamped with an English line, a light-blue-striped shirt layered on top — Hajin's voice broke out. Letting out that trademark surge of emotion just as it came, Hajin poured the same helplessness and fear he'd once known himself directly into the song.

That emotional line carried straight over to Haru.

Where are we, now?

I can't find the way back

Both hands wrapped tight around the mic on the stand, Haru looked off into the distance, putting the lyrics into his mouth like a question aimed at the world. A boy's aching question — one that tugged at every heart in the crowd.

A night with no stars, because we can't dream

Are we all just going to stop, right here like this?

Once I get eliminated from the survival, what happens to me?

Do I become a failure?

Is this how it all ends?

What am I supposed to do now?

The worries that had kept Seok up through countless nights weren't only his.

Everyone, at some point, has thought that.

Every one of us.

Woo― woowoo―

Siwoo hummed a melody the public hadn't heard before.

'Where am I' was Siwoo's own question — and it had been his father's, too, for the whole of his life.

And the song Siwoo was about to sing now was, in fact, the answer his father had arrived at, at the end of that lifelong asking.

Siwoo picked each note even more carefully than usual as he sang.

His father's song — one he wanted to sing more preciously than any other he'd ever sung.

In the days I couldn't love myself, when it hurt to be me

a single beautiful flower that opened anyway —

Siwoo, who normally sang beautifully and evenly, raised his voice for the first time as if pouring every feeling out at once.

Unlike any other time, the crack at the end of his voice,

the veins standing out at his throat as his head rang,

the force his hand put into the guitar,

none of it mattered — he sang freely.

In the time I couldn't love myself either, when it ached

that small breath, threading happiness into it after all —

was the song he'd so longed for, so admired.

His father's song.