What a Mystery
It really was a mystery.
Today, mindful of how the kids were holding up, I left work a little early.
"Aigoo!"
After a quick bath, I set the boy down on the bed, and Reni let out that little "aigoo" as he flopped straight onto his back, still swaddled in the towel.
I really need to stop saying "aigoo" in front of the kids.
"Reni, are you tired?"
"Mm… Today was super busy."
Reni answered with a slow blink of those big eyes of his.
It had been his first day at preschool, he'd met a lot of new people, and on top of that he'd even "gone to work," played hard, eaten well, and gotten washed. Of course a four-year-old was exhausted.
By the time I finished drying his hair, Reni was already asleep.
"Luca, should we put big brother's clothes on first today?"
"Uungh."
Normally I did Luca first, but today I slipped a diaper onto Reni—who was sleeping with his mouth just slightly open—and dressed him in pajamas.
At first Luca watched everything I was doing with wide, bright eyes. Then he looked at his sleeping brother and started nodding off himself, little head bobbing.
I gave a soft poke to the cheek of the child fighting a losing battle with his drooping eyelids, mouth gently parted.
"Luca, you know you secretly copy big brother a lot, right?"
"…Yeah."
Even so, getting sleepy just from watching his older brother fall asleep was pretty strange.
Anyway, I wasn't about to waste a golden chance to put a child to bed easily.
With quiet gratitude I supported the back of his neck and slowly tipped him onto his back. I patted his tummy and chest in a steady rhythm, and Luca slipped under almost at once.
I cheered silently to myself, then headed off for a leisurely shower. After rinsing off under the warm water, I reached for a beer, switched it out for sparkling water instead, and stretched my legs out on the sofa.
Pssht!
The crack of the can opening was wonderfully crisp.
I savored a rare stretch of solitude at the end of a long day, then picked up my phone.
I checked the channel's growth numbers and scanned for any new emails. As it happened, two messages from Evan about the book curation had come in.
The first was a PDF of a regular periodical from Brown House Publishing, with an attached file on the featured titles I was supposed to promote.
That one was being handled through the publisher rather than Evan personally, so the format was locked down to perfection.
Images ready to insert throughout the video, plus neat, stylish intro copy already prepared like a clean script. When a sponsor knows exactly what they want, it sure makes life easier.
The second email was about the book curation Evan was commissioning personally.
For the book curation, he noted, the format still wasn't finalized. For now, he just wanted me to look over a rough outline.
"Hmm."
He also said he'd send over the selected books so I could read them myself. At this rate I was going to end up rich in books.
Well, I'd never hated reading to begin with, so it wasn't a bad deal. Back in school I'd always fled to the library to escape the noisy kids.
These days, aside from picture books, I barely had time to read anything at all…
I still wasn't particularly sleepy, so I opened my laptop and started going through the attachments.
Then I choked on my sparkling water and broke into a coughing fit.
The first theme Evan had chosen was Love and War.
What Evan had sent was a little different from the book curation I was used to.
The kind I knew recommended books within a single theme that could push readers to think from all sorts of angles.
But what Evan had put together…
How to put it. It felt closer to an essay.
I failed at love.
As someone who knew his situation, that very first sentence made my breath catch hard in my throat.
Someone once said you can't fail as long as you don't quit. I quit. And I failed.
The former spouse who betrayed me asked for one more chance, but I decided not to give that person another opportunity to waste my time.
So that was it. Grace had actually asked to get back together. Honestly—no conscience at all.
Some people say life without love has no meaning. But do our lives truly need love? Without it, life may be dry—yet it is also free of problems. In a modern existence already crowded with things to worry about…
Well. It wasn't wrong, and I understood the point…
Trying to hold on to someone who does not love you is an act of losing yourself.
That also sounded… pretty right.
In the end, the conclusion of love was settled with money. The final chapter of a couple who had once dreamed of a happy little family was nothing but a receipt on which everything had been converted into a dollar amount. From the very start, the process of divorce demanded staggering costs…
Somehow it left a heavy feeling in my chest.
Having the disgrace, the anguish, the full measure of heartache reduced to a number on a ledger was an experience I had never imagined I would live through.
Yeah. At least I fully understood the state of mind behind every word he'd written. He'd probably burned through a whole pack of cigarettes writing this.
There are questions you will live with forever without answers. There are problems you must leave behind unfinished, a tangled mess, and walk away.
The conversation I'd had with Evan about the children flickered through my mind. The sentences that followed carried a similar weight.
Can we leave the past where it belongs, embrace the present, and once more welcome a future that dares to dream of love? The authors of the books introduced here say this:
Weaving his own story into an essay and introducing five books along the way, Evan's file came to an end.
Clack.
I closed the laptop and laced my fingers together with a rather serious expression.
I had not seen this coming at all…
We had a problem.
It was boring.
The next morning.
I started the meeting by sharing the file Evan had sent the night before with both of my employees.
"Read through it once."
About five minutes later.
"…I'm not still half-asleep, right?"
"No. I'm getting sleepy too."
Greg shook his head and got up to brew a fresh pot of coffee.
"It does give you something to think about, and all of that's fine. The books Evan picked look solid when I look them up, too."
The problem was that reading or listening to the writing made you drowsy the way studying does. Honestly, people who weren't already interested probably wouldn't even glance at it.
The night before, wondering if it might land better spoken aloud, I'd tried reading Evan's material out loud and even recorded myself. It was still completely uninteresting.
I'd gotten so bored reading it that I nearly dozed off sitting upright.
Which made the whole thing even more of a crisis.
"It's a promo video in place of rent. If it bombs, that's… not great."
Since launching the channel, we'd luckily never posted a video that could be called a flop. Even the ones that didn't explode still pulled roughly similar views and comments.
But the moment we turned this into a video and uploaded it, I was pretty sure it would die.
Cassandra forced her eyes wide open again and skimmed Evan's writing as she answered.
"Right. A promo video bombing? Absolutely not. Hmm. What do we do with this…"
Greg, who had been rereading Evan's piece with an equally grave face, let out a long sigh.
"What is this? Sounds like this guy's carrying some real heartbreak."
"…"
I opened my mouth, then closed it again.
Come to think of it, Greg didn't know much about Evan's situation. He didn't particularly need to, either, so there was no reason to fill him in.
More importantly, the real issue right now was how to turn uninteresting content into something interesting.
But seriously—how?
Nobody seemed to have a brilliant idea ready. Silence hung for a moment. From the playroom came only the occasional clatter of the kids' toys.
I half-turned my chair and watched the children play until my eyes met Luca's.
He grinned at me—hee—then dove right back into whatever game he was playing with his brother.
I decided to keep it simple. Authentic content tended to win people over, so if I thought in terms of packing it with sincerity…
I'd never been through a love like Evan and Grace's, so I had nothing there. Maybe I should think about the methods I'd used whenever I absolutely had to do something boring.
"…"
Whether it was fun or not, I just… did it. Quietly. What a dull life that had been.
Then what about our Luca? What did Luca do when something wasn't fun?
"…"
Well. First he threw whatever it was on the floor. Then when I picked it up, he threw it again.
I spent a second imagining hurling a book at a blank wall, then shook my head. Throwing books was not an option.
What about Reni? What did Reni do when something wasn't fun?
Hmm… Did he get out of it with cute charm?
That was out too. Outside of my own kids, I had zero intention of pulling any of that for anyone.
A string of thoroughly unhelpful thoughts was still trailing through my head when Cassandra snapped her fingers.
"We turn the weakness into a strength. Just go full ASMR with it."
"Hey, just because something's quiet and puts you to sleep doesn't automatically make it ASMR."
"But wouldn't it be a good way to keep people focused on the book content? If we can at least grab them visually, then even if they get sleepy, they won't think the video itself is boring."
"Oh, that's actually a solid idea. I was just imagining setting the narration to a melody and singing it, and that… was really not it."
Yeah. Obviously not…
Greg's idea was useless, but Cassandra had a point. There was still one problem, though.
"Would Evan even like that?"
This was a man who clearly had something very specific he wanted to say.
"We make a test version first, show it to him, and discuss it then. When Evan commissioned you, he was probably hoping we'd make a video that plays to our channel's strengths. If he just wanted to say his piece himself, he could've done that. It's not like he can't speak—or write."
"…That's true."
"He commissioned our channel after watching the first membership video you posted, remember? A format like that video letter from back then could work really well."
That was genuinely persuasive. Maybe that was exactly the kind of video he was hoping for. Leave it to Cassandra.
"Was that the one where you were carving a wooden spoon?"
Greg scrolled down through the membership videos as he spoke.
"Yeah. And don't play that while I'm sitting here."
Greg snorted and took his hand off the mouse. He tipped his chair back, thought for a second, then sat up straight again.
"Still, ultimately we have to sell the books, right? So shouldn't we at least be tapping the covers or making that soft paper-flutter sound?"
"Even that doesn't seem as easy as it looks."
The ASMR channels that actually did well didn't just… hit objects randomly.
"There's this subtle rhythm, a certain snap of the wrist… I wouldn't dare copy it half-heartedly."
"Exactly, it's not easy. I tried it myself a while back and gave up."
"Man, nothing's ever simple. Ah! What about hand-copying the text?"
"That wouldn't be bad, but… I'm not that great at handwriting, and as something to watch…"
As I talked, something suddenly occurred to me.
If I ordered a calligraphy set through the Manito App… would my handwriting turn artistic too?
…Of course it would.
I immediately changed course.
"My regular handwriting's nothing special, but I'm great at calligraphy."
Greg looked at me like he could not begin to understand how that sentence worked.
"Just how does that even work, teach?"