I'll Take Full Responsibility
“Yerin?”
“…Yes? Did you call me?”
At the sound of her name, Baek Yerin lifted her head and stared blankly at the person calling her.
Seeing her daughter so completely out of it—far more than usual—Lee Yeon-hui asked with a worried expression.
“Something’s happened, hasn’t it? Would it be okay if I asked whether it’s a worry or a secret?”
The moment she heard those words, an old memory surfaced in Baek Yerin’s mind.
Whenever something went wrong, her mother would instantly notice and always ask that exact question.
She would explain that if it was something she could share with others, it was a worry. If it was something she couldn’t tell anyone, it was a secret.
Strangely enough, Baek Yerin had always answered “worry” to that question.
…How should she put it?
It felt like even the secrets she didn’t want to talk about somehow turned into worries in front of her mom.
But this time was different.
“It could be a worry… or it could be a secret.”
It was a little ambiguous.
Right now, Baek Yerin’s head was filled with a single song.
She kept thinking about how to deliver it, what emotions she needed to pour into it.
And in this entire world, there was only one person she could truly open her heart to about it.
That was why she had called it a worry. At the same time, because she could only tell that one person, it also became a secret.
What was clear here was this:
“But it’s a secret from Mom.”
At the very least, that one person wasn’t Lee Yeon-hui.
When Baek Yerin answered so firmly, Lee Yeon-hui’s eyes widened in slight surprise.
Then she gave a bittersweet smile and said,
“I’d love to hear it someday. Hmm… Is a mom who’s this interested in her daughter not very cool?”
“No, I like it. Actually, I think I take after you in that way.”
Baek Yerin smiled brightly.
There wasn’t a trace of falsehood in that smile.
Baek Yerin’s first concert was set for the following Sunday.
“We got lucky. At first, the outsourcing company completely freaked out over the two-week deadline. But the moment they asked whose concert it was, they accepted without hesitation.”
Kang Beom-jun listened to Cha Min-seok, the head of the management support department, and gave a faint smile.
“When they heard it was Yerin’s first concert, they approved it right away?”
“Exactly.”
“Well… I suppose that shows where Yerin stands right now.”
For reference, the concert venue had been confirmed as the Korea Indoor Gymnasium.
With about ten thousand seats, they had originally wanted to rent a larger space, but time was far too short. This was the next best option.
At that moment, Cha Min-seok glanced at the guitar sitting beside Kang Beom-jun and asked curiously,
“By the way, why did you suddenly take out the guitar?”
“Ah, Ryu Won made a request. He wants to appear as a surprise guest during the last song Yerin will perform on the day of the concert and handle the guitar accompaniment.”
“Oh… That sounds like it’ll make for quite an interesting production. So, what did you think? Of those kids’ new song.”
Kang Beom-jun answered Cha Min-seok’s question with a sly grin.
He simply said that anyone who heard it would definitely need tissues.
Meanwhile.
With about ten days left until the concert, Baek Yerin and Ryu Won were deep in song practice.
Though calling it “song practice” was a bit misleading—they weren’t singing at all.
It was a completely contradictory situation.
Still, they were doing their best in their own way.
“You okay?”
“Yeah… It really isn’t easy.”
At Ryu Won’s question, Baek Yerin answered while catching her breath with difficulty.
She was currently sitting down, trying to calm her emotions.
To be precise, she was suppressing her emotions in order to sing.
Ryu Won’s songs had a mysterious power to shake the listener’s heart. But in Baek Yerin’s opinion, this one was especially intense.
Every time she tried to steady her feelings, she would instead get swallowed by them and feel like she was about to cry. Her voice wouldn’t come out properly either.
She even wondered if it might be better to just sing without suppressing her emotions at all.
“Then you’ll definitely cry.”
“There are people who sing while crying on stage, you know. As long as I don’t completely break down, wouldn’t it be fine?”
“Are you confident you won’t?”
…She wasn’t.
That was why this song felt like the hardest one to sing among all the songs Ryu Won had given her so far. And the more she felt that way, the more she had to focus solely on controlling her emotions.
In the first place, the current Baek Yerin only needed to solve this one part well.
“Besides, you don’t actually need separate vocal practice anyway.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re Baek Yerin.”
It was an incredibly simple and clear answer.
Baek Yerin possessed the talent to perfectly digest any song.
She was a true genius acknowledged by none other than Ryu Won himself.
Not only that, this was a song he had personally composed,
and this time, she had even written the lyrics herself.
There was no way she couldn’t sing it.
“And I think this song only becomes complete when your emotions are fully contained within it. But emotions tend to fade and wear out the more you use them. So I believe it’s right to save everything and pour it all out on the actual day.”
“Then what about the recording?”
“Ah… I forgot about that. Still, if we record it after the concert, I feel like the live feeling might be lost…”
Ryu Won began weighing his options with a serious expression.
The quality of the recorded track versus the impact of the live performance.
The former was important to the composer, while the latter was important to Baek Yerin.
So, as if it were the most natural thing in the world,
“Let’s record after the concert. For now, just focus on controlling your emotions.”
The scale tipped to one side in an instant.
Ryu Won thought to himself that the reason he made this song was solely for Baek Yerin and her mother.
So recording could be done later.
Well…
The boy thought simply. But to the girl sitting in front of him, every word carried a completely different weight.
And so.
“…Thank you.”
The girl expressed her gratitude to the boy in a small voice.
One week before Baek Yerin’s first concert.
Aside from the roughly ten thousand people who had managed to get tickets, the rest of the world was filled with dissatisfaction.
In just one day, the ten thousand people who had successfully gotten tickets became the clear victors.
And in that atmosphere, there was one person who had the special privilege of attending the concert without needing to fight for a ticket.
If she had simply told RT Entertainment or her daughter that she wanted to see her daughter’s concert, she probably could have attended in some way or another.
But she… no, Lee Yeon-hui couldn’t do that.
Lee Yeon-hui knew.
Just how bad her current physical condition was.
If she had to compare it, she was like a time bomb that could go off at any moment.
It meant she might cause a huge inconvenience to her daughter and the audience during the concert.
That was why.
“I’ve doubled the medical support team. One of the teams will be exclusively assigned to you, ma’am.”
At Ryu Won’s sudden statement during his solo visit, Lee Yeon-hui could only blink in surprise.
Ryu Won continued.
“So please come watch Yerin’s concert. It will definitely become a wonderful memory.”
“But I heard all the seats are sold out…”
“Of course we left a seat open for you, ma’am.”
“Still, sitting alone in a place like that feels a bit…”
“I’ll be sitting right next to you, so please don’t worry too much.”
In an instant, Ryu Won erased every one of Lee Yeon-hui’s worries.
Lee Yeon-hui could only offer a faint smile.
It seemed he had come fully prepared to make sure she would attend her daughter’s concert no matter what.
Thanks to that, Lee Yeon-hui was able to sense 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 wouldn’t tell me about.”
“……”
Ryu Won remained silent.
She was so sharp that he had nothing to say.
While Ryu Won stayed quiet, Lee Yeon-hui made her own decision.
In truth, no one wanted to see her daughter’s concert in person more than Lee Yeon-hui herself.
She remembered.
The image of her daughter singing on the stage of Music Save.
Even through a TV screen, she had thought it was incredibly cool. She had felt so proud that she wanted to brag that this child was her daughter.
In that sense, she was curious.
Just how amazing a performance would her daughter show this time?
Lee Yeon-hui wanted to watch that moment from her daughter’s side.
So.
“Since a certain famous composer said he’ll take full responsibility, I suppose I should go.”
Lee Yeon-hui said this to the boy who had come to persuade her.
The boy, having received the answer he wanted, grinned and replied.
“Yes. I’ll take full responsibility.”
“Even for Yerin?”
“Of course. Since I’m the one who made Yerin a singer, I’ll take full responsibility for that part as well.”
The boy answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Lee Yeon-hui really liked the look in the boy’s eyes.
There was no hesitation, no falsehood in that gaze.
It only held a strong determination to move forward for a better future.
“Impressive. You pass.”
“?”
While the two of them were having that conversation, the date of Baek Yerin’s first concert drew closer and closer.