NOVEL NEXT Chapter 25 - I'll Take Full Responsibility
“Yerin?”
“…Yes? Did you call me?”
Hearing the voice calling her, Baek Yerin raised her head and blankly looked at the person who called her.
Seeing her daughter so absent-minded, clearly different from usual, Lee Yeon-hee asked with a worried expression:
“Something happened, right? Can I ask which side it is?”
The moment Baek Yerin heard those words from Lee Yeon-hee, she suddenly recalled an old memory.
When something was wrong, mom would notice it at once and always ask like that.
Explaining that if it can be shared with others, it’s a worry, if it can’t be shared with others, it’s a secret.
Strangely, Baek Yerin always answered that question saying it was a worry.
…How should I put it.
It felt like even secrets she didn’t want to tell in front of mom became worries.
But this time.
“It could be a worry, or it could be a secret.”
It was a bit ambiguous.
Currently, Baek Yerin’s mind was full of a certain song.
She kept thinking about how to digest that song, what emotions to put into singing it.
And right now, there’s only one person in the world Baek Yerin can pour out these feelings to.
That’s why she said it was a worry, and at the same time, because she could only confide in that one person, it became a secret.
What’s clear here is.
“But it’s a secret from mom.”
At least that person isn’t Lee Yeon-hee.
When Baek Yerin said that firmly, Lee Yeon-hee opened her eyes wide, looking a bit surprised.
And she smiled bitterly and said:
“I’d really like to hear about it later. Hmm… Is a mom who’s so interested in her daughter like this not good?”
“No. I like it. Ah, in that sense, I think I take after mom.”
Baek Yerin grinned.
There was no lie in that smile.
* * *
Baek Yerin’s first concert was confirmed for next Sunday.
“We were lucky. The outsourcing company was initially shocked by the two-week deadline, but they first asked whose concert it was.”
Kang Beom-joon smiled faintly as he heard Cha Min-seok, the director of the Management Support Department.
“When they heard it was Yerin’s first concert, did they agree without hesitation?”
“Exactly.”
“Well… I guess that’s the level of Yerin’s position right now.”
For reference, the concert venue was confirmed as the Korea Indoor Gymnasium.
With about 10,000 seats, they originally wanted to rent a bigger place, but unfortunately, time was woefully insufficient, so this was the second-best option.
At that moment, Cha Min-seok looked at the guitar placed next to Kang Beom-joon and asked curiously:
“But why did you suddenly take out the guitar?”
“Ah, Ryu Won made this request. For the last song Yerin will sing on the day of the performance, he asked me to appear as a surprise guest and take charge of the guitar accompaniment.”
“Oh… That would be quite an interesting direction in its own way. So how was it? The kids’ new song.”
Kang Beom-joon grinned at Cha Min-seok’s question and just answered like this.
That tissues would definitely be needed when listening to the song.
Meanwhile.
With about 10 days left until the concert, Baek Yerin and Ryu Won were in the middle of song practice.
But to call it song practice, they weren’t singing at all.
Literally a contradictory situation.
But they were practicing their best in their own way.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah… It’s really not easy.”
Baek Yerin answered Ryu Won’s question, catching her breath with difficulty.
She was now sitting down, trying to calm her emotions.
To express it accurately, she was ‘restraining’ her emotions to sing the song.
Ryu Won’s songs have a strange power to stir the emotions of listeners. But in Baek Yerin’s opinion, this one was especially so.
Every time she tried to gather her emotions, she felt like she would cry, being overwhelmed by those emotions instead. Her voice doesn’t come out well either.
To the point where she thought about singing without restraining her emotions at all.
“Then you’ll definitely cry.”
“There are people who actually sing while crying on stage, right? Wouldn’t it be okay as long as I don’t wail too much?”
“Are you confident you won’t?”
…She wasn’t.
That’s why this song felt like the hardest to sing among all the songs Ryu Won had given her so far, and the more so, the more she had to focus only on controlling her emotions.
From the start, the current Baek Yerin just needed to solve this part well somehow.
“You don’t need to practice singing separately anyway.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re Baek Yerin.”
It was an extremely simple and clear answer.
Baek Yerin has the talent to digest any song.
Because she’s a real genius acknowledged by none other than the great Ryu Won.
Moreover, it’s a song made directly by none other than Ryu Won,
And this time, even the lyrics were written directly by Baek Yerin.
There’s no way she couldn’t sing such a song.
“And I think this song is only complete when your emotions are fully contained in it. But emotions become fainter and wear out the more you use them. So I think it’s right to save them with the feeling of pouring everything out on the day.”
“Then what about recording?”
“Ah… Now that I think about it, that was there? Somehow it feels like the flavor won’t be there if we sing it after the concert…”
Ryu Won started weighing something with a serious expression.
The quality of the digital release and the impact at the venue.
The former was important for the composer, and the latter was important for Baek Yerin.
So, as if it was only natural:
“Let’s do the recording after the concert. For now, focus only on controlling your emotions.”
The scale inevitably tilted to one side in an instant.
Ryu Won thought.
The reason for making this song was solely for Baek Yerin and her mother.
So the recording can be done later, that’s all.
Well…
The boy thought simply. But for the girl in front of him now, all those words couldn’t help but feel completely different.
And so.
“…Thank you.”
The girl expressed her gratitude to the boy in a small voice.
* * *
At the point of one week before Baek Yerin’s first concert.
Except for about 10,000 people, the world was full of complaints.
[Damn… How can all seats be sold out in 30 seconds after ticket sales started?]
└ I couldn’t even enter because of the waiting line lol
└ I entered right on time too, but there were 600,000 people in the waiting line in front of me
└ Is it true that there were 5 million concurrent connections to the site?
└ This is beyond an ordinary national singer lol
[But RT Entertainment really does a good job. I didn’t expect them to hold a concert this quickly at all]
└ Everything’s good but the venue is a bit disappointing. They should have done it in a bigger place
└ Just do it at Jamsil Olympic Stadium. Looking at the situation, even 100,000 seats seem like they’d all sell out
└ How can a rookie singer who debuted this year perform there? Let’s think a bit before speaking
└ But Baek Yerin is a ‘divine’ rookie singer?
└ Nice~
[Real-time Baek Yerin concert black market ticket trading status.jpg]
└ Yeah. Now not even a single black market ticket is being listed~
└ So clean lol
└ It’s their first concert so they’re curious too. Even I couldn’t resist if it were me
└ It’s fortunate they’re at least doing a live broadcast. If they didn’t even do this, there would have really been a group protest in front of RT Entertainment headquarters
The atmosphere was that the 10,000 people who succeeded in getting tickets for Baek Yerin’s first concert in just one day were the winners.
And in such an atmosphere, there was someone who had the privilege of being able to see her concert without having to get tickets.
If she said she wanted to see her daughter’s concert, she could have watched the concert directly in some way by conveying it to RT Entertainment or her daughter.
But she… no, Lee Yeon-hee couldn’t do that.
Lee Yeon-hee knows.
How bad her current physical condition is.
To put it bluntly, it was like a time bomb that could explode at any moment.
It meant she could cause a big inconvenience to her daughter and the audience during the concert.
So.
“We’ve doubled the medical support team staff. We’re thinking of having one team exclusively dedicated to you.”
At Ryu Won’s sudden words, who came to visit alone, Lee Yeon-hee couldn’t help but blink her eyes.
Ryu Won continued:
“So please come to see Yerin’s concert. It will surely be a good memory.”
“But I heard all the seats are sold out…”
“Of course, we’ve reserved a seat for you.”
“Still, it’s a bit… to be in such a seat alone…”
“I’ll be watching together next to you, so don’t worry too much.”
Ryu Won, who erased all of Lee Yeon-hee’s worries in an instant.
Lee Yeon-hee couldn’t help but smile faintly.
It seems he came fully prepared to make her watch her daughter’s concert somehow.
Thanks to that, Lee Yeon-hee could notice a certain truth.
“It feels like there’s something you want to show me at the concert. Maybe it’s related to the secret Yerin didn’t tell me.”
“……”
Ryu Won remained silent.
Because it was too sharp, he had nothing particular to say.
And while Ryu Won was like that, Lee Yeon-hee made her own decision.
In fact, the person who wanted to watch her daughter’s concert more than anyone was Lee Yeon-hee.
She recalled.
The figure of her daughter singing on the Music Save stage.
She felt it was so cool even just seeing it on the TV screen. She was proud to the point of wanting to boast that that child was her daughter.
In that sense, she was curious.
How cool will her daughter look this time?
Lee Yeon-hee wanted to watch that moment by her daughter’s side.
So.
“Since a famous composer says he’ll take full responsibility, maybe I should go.”
Lee Yeon-hee said that to the boy who seemed to have come to persuade her.
To this, the boy smiled, having heard the answer he wanted, and replied:
“Yes. I’ll take full responsibility.”
“Then for Yerin too?”
“Of course. Since I made Yerin a singer, I’ll definitely take responsibility for that part too.”
The boy answering like that as if it was only natural.
Lee Yeon-hee really liked the boy’s eyes.
There was no hesitation, no lie in those eyes.
Only a strong will to move forward for a better future was embedded in them.
“That’s cool. You pass.”
“?”
As they were having such a conversation, the date of Baek Yerin’s first concert was getting closer and closer.