The Road to Glory – Chapter 186 – A Good Stage

Author: Dawn

“How is it?”

“What?”

“That.”

BB was looking down at Seoul’s midday cityscape while receiving a phone call.

It was a call from LA, where they would be having dinner right now.

The caller was Thomas Benson.

BB’s business partner and a good collaborator.

“Did you get anything?”

“Well…”

“I knew it would be like that. Just make sure to get the contract signed properly.”

BB smirked at his completely expectation-free response.

“Don’t you want to come to Korea?”

“Me? Why? Does ‘he’ want to see my face too?”

“Would you come if that were the case?”

“For the movie, of course.”

“Fortunately, ‘he’ doesn’t seem to have any interest in you.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

Thomas responded as if he had expected that.

But that only made BB want to mock him more.

How shocked would he be if he saw this material?

BB couldn’t help but say,

“You idiot.”

“What now?”

“I’m certain that you’re the dumbest person in this world.”

“?”

Thomas’s voice grew increasingly agitated.

He’s not someone who can’t read the room.

He’ll think carefully about why BB is talking like this.

“What does ‘he’ have?”

Oh, you bet he does.

“You’ll never believe it.”

“No, I don’t understand. What’s with this reaction?”

Mumbling sounds continued over the phone.

He seemed uncertain and dubious.

“Don’t tell me instead of the interview, his ‘story’ was helpful?”

Honestly, BB wouldn’t have believed it either if he hadn’t been here in person.

“You’re saying a story made by a 16-year-old, who I doubt has even read a single screenplay, was helpful?”

“He’s seventeen.”

“Whether sixteen or seventeen, it’s an age where they should be making cringy TikToks.” (+) ^[1]

“You haven’t forgotten his name, have you?”

“The King of Pop. Mozart’s reincarnation. The Second Coming of Rock. The Sun that the world loves. And the Glory that might be born once in a millennium. Is that enough?”

“More than enough.”

After listing ‘his’ nicknames in succession to show he definitely hadn’t forgotten, Thomas wanted to hear the main point.

“Tom, do you know what’s the most common mistake amateur directors make?”

“You always say it. Maintaining tension.”

In other words, it could be expressed as conflict.

Every narrative has conflict, and tension is created through that conflict.

And that tension becomes the driving force that carries the narrative forward.

But handling tension isn’t an easy task.

It’s difficult enough to handle tension between lovers or friends,

but in narratives, don’t you have to handle the tension of even more characters?

Moreover, what directors need to care about isn’t just the tension between characters, but also tension with the readers.

Readers are like sensitive hermit crabs.

If the tension is too high, they’ll get tired and drop out,

If the tension is too low, they’ll lose interest and retreat into their shells.

This meant you had to create just the right middle ground of tension where they won’t drop out and will maintain interest.

That’s something even BB, a renowned Hollywood director, always worries about.

Something he doesn’t always get right, and sometimes gets wrong.

Therefore, BB didn’t expect much from the narrative quality Halo was going to tell.

Even if he handles musical tension well, handling screenplay tension is different.

He didn’t think Halo, who was an amateur in screenwriting, would create tension well.

He thought it would either be excessive or non-existent.

And even beyond tension, BB hoped to learn about Halo’s thought process, tastes, and life inherent in the story rather than the story itself that Halo created.

“So you mean his story has a lot of tension? Having too much is better than too little. We can always cut it down.”

“No.”

“Then it’s on the low side?”

“No.”

“Then?”

“It’s strange.”

“Huh?”

What does he mean it’s neither low nor high but strange?

But BB could only say it was strange.

Because the tension was being created perfectly to the point of being strange.

BB had doubts from the beginning about how Halo’s music and Roh Haeil’s life didn’t match at all, and he wanted to resolve this through interviewing Halo.

However, the story of ‘another HALO’ that Halo was telling-

“It’s like seeing the answer key.”

“What?”

It was enough to give him goosebumps.

The questions that couldn’t be explained by Roh Haeil’s life.

Halo’s raw, unfiltered music.

In the story of ‘another HALO’, everything made sense.

Not just made sense, but the pieces fit together without any misalignment.

As if they had always been part of one puzzle.

The hair on his arms stood on end as he matched the compiled interview materials with the questions in his notes.

It made him doubt whether such a person could actually exist.

BB even personally checked the address Halo had mentioned. He couldn’t believe it even after seeing that it didn’t exist in the past or present.

The story of a person who didn’t exist in this world was crafted too intricately.

It felt like peeking into the life of a real artist rather than reading a novel.

-Though Halo said ‘another HALO’ wasn’t an artist- in BB’s eyes, he was the very embodiment of an artist.

Like Halo’s music, ‘another HALO’s’ life was both desperate and beautiful.

“You’re saying it’s that perfect?”

“Well, there are some rough spots.”

Actually, that was strange too.

Halo, who had made everything else seem like a real story,

-So you still don’t want to tell me?

-Tell you what?

-His real name.

Until then, BB had referred to him as ‘he’ since he didn’t know his real name or even his stage name. Halo smiled faintly and asked back.

-Is that important?

-Names are one of the special devices that describe a protagonist.

BB thought that given how perfect this story was, he would hear a name befitting ‘another HALO’. But that wasn’t the case.

-Then make it whatever you want.

-Pardon?

-Tom is fine, John is fine too.

-…Such ordinary names don’t suit him. Mr. Halo, did you not decide on a name for ‘him’?

At that time, if he had just said yes, BB would have moved on, but Halo continued the interview.

-He left everything at home. What little pocket money he had was all spent getting to Scotland, and his clothes had long since been thrown away from wear. It was the same with his name. He decided to completely abandon the name he hadn’t heard for so long. So he answered his boss when asked for his name.

-A name he had carelessly chosen from a crumpled science textbook long ago.

BB felt goosebumps rising then, though he hadn’t thought much of it before.

-HALO.

Because it was the name of the boy sitting right in front of him.

BB didn’t know how to explain that feeling.

It felt like he had realized something, yet he couldn’t tell what he had realized.

It felt like he was uncovering an enormous secret.

BB felt thirsty.

He wanted to know how ‘HALO’, who shared the same name as the boy, would end up.

Of course, this wasn’t a story that would end soon.

BB thought the interview content was still in its introductory phase, and he would learn the ending only after more time had passed.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this kind of thirst.

He was curious yet not curious about how Halo had come up with such a story.

Even if he was a real person who hadn’t made it into history, BB felt he could just believe it.

“Anyway, you’re saying the interview will take a long time? Another one today?”

“No, we won’t be able to do it for a while. Today’s the concert, and there’s an after-party when it ends.”

“How long do you think the interview will take?”

“Hmm. About a hundred years?”

“What?”

Though it was a rather unfitting sentiment, he wanted to uncover all the life that ‘another HALO’ might have lived. From his birth to his death. Since it was one person’s life, he thought it might take about a hundred years.

He had definitely become completely absorbed in both the boy and the ‘another HALO’ the boy spoke of.

Anyway, his work as a director was done for today, and now it was time to enjoy his hobby.

BB, the holder of the golden ticket, checked his watch and left the room.

Seoul Arena, completed in October 2025, is located in Changdong, Dobong-gu, Seoul. The circular arena, which could accommodate 28,000 people including standing room despite having 18,269 seats, had such long lines that one might think the entire population of South Korea had gathered there.

The arena’s auxiliary facilities had been full for a long time, and the situation with subways, buses, and roads wasn’t great either.

Actually, this was inevitable. As Halo’s concert with the most secured tickets and his last concert, people had rushed in from all nearby Asian countries.

Befitting the Halo fandom, crowds of various age groups and ethnicities had gathered, and the golden lights symbolizing Halo had been flashing since daylight.

Even the sun floating in the sky was dazzling.

At the center of this golden wave, the boy leaped up.

As it was his last concert, Halo, planning to properly enjoy himself today, served ‘Until dawn comes’ as an appetizer before moving straight to the main dish.

Today’s main dish was planned to be endless.

The goal was to fill up the space until people would beg for it to stop, to the point of bursting.

The audience seemed better prepared today too, releasing balloons reminiscent of the dawn sky from ‘Until dawn comes’.

Balloons and fireworks soaring into the sky simultaneously.

The waves of cheers and light sticks filled with affection.

The atmosphere was quite different from HALO’s concerts in the past world.

Back then, the concert atmosphere usually varied depending on the album.

The highly controversial 3rd album and the single ‘I am HALO’ that targeted those who criticized him

Followed by the 4th album that was criticized for allegedly mocking Christianity, the concert atmosphere was chaotic.

Cheers on one side. Groups cursing him on the other side, and fights seemed to break out constantly.

This atmosphere wasn’t limited to concerts.

The atmosphere from the 2nd album, when the whole world loved him, had disappeared somewhere, and some people wanted to drag the ‘young man’ down by any means.

The media poured out gossip about the young man daily,

Critics said Halo had caught the art disease, and some singer groups told him to stick to what he was doing (being a pretty face). Even the female fans who had strongly supported Halo were divided over the album, and after Halo disrupted a party, the upper class who were there cursed the young man for being vulgar.

The ‘young man’ lived well in such an atmosphere.

The kids he hung out with just treated his gossip as drinking snacks while high, and the ‘young man’ hung out with them while releasing diss tracks. A diss track that shattered the ‘homme fatale image’ built from his 1st and 2nd albums and his looks. ‘I AM HALO’, which he released with his own money without the boss knowing, was banned from radio.

However, ironically, through the diss track, the ‘young man’ became closer to being a rocker than a celebrity. Just as the young man had wanted.

Although interference with his albums increased afterward.

Because even the ‘profits’ that the boss valued most were shaken.

The young man released the 4th album O GOD without even blinking at the boss’s interference.

Though the boss tried to break the young man’s spirit somehow -allowing the 3rd and 4th albums was a high-level strategy to let him experience failure- there was no way to control the wild beast who didn’t care about his image.

Even when they tried to isolate him, the young man was now a proper adult, his fandom grew proportionally with his anti-fans, and his connections grew due to his personality that loved parties and pleasure.

The 5th album Like a Heroin was born from such pleasure.

The young man, who had divided his fandom with controversial songs until then, gained tremendous fans again with that album.

His looks and body at their peak.

The mature and decadent adult songs spread among people like perfume, and the concerts were filled with a sexual atmosphere.

Compared to that, this world’s Seoul concert had a wholesome atmosphere even while singing the same 5th album.

While Korea’s atmosphere was a factor, it was probably because the boy singing the 5th album was still a minor. After HALO’s identity was revealed, fans tended to show restraint in front of the minor.

Everything would completely change when Halo became an adult, but fans had at least the minimal conscience to try to protect their singer.

The wholesome Halo concert ended with Roh Haeil’s album.

As people had hoped, Roh Haeil’s album, which wasn’t sung anywhere else, was sung in Roh Haeil’s country.

Then the encore-.

“Confession! Confession! Confession!”

Why do these people like this song so much?

It began with the boy’s blank expression.

Because the end is always regrettable

Though no one could easily take their steps away

Using all strength until the last moment and promising the near future

Walking together wouldn’t be so difficult.

Halo gave them encore stages until their shouts ended as he wished and as people wished, and promised to see them soon.

And on their way home, he waves to people.

Instead of ‘Get home safely,’ saying “See you again” as a farewell.

It was a greeting he used even before the world changed.

His friends who hung out with him said what’s with that kind of greeting, saying the public changes like reeds anyway, especially they’ll all fall away when his handsome days are over, but Halo’s stubborn greeting never changed.

If you say get home safely, their greetings will end similarly.

Isn’t that a bit boring?

Conversely, if you say ‘see you again’, their greetings become diverse.

Some say ‘see you’ with brighter faces, or ask with playful faces if there’s another concert tomorrow. Some promised to come to concerts for life, some worried about how his condition was these days, and some nagged him to stop getting into trouble.

He liked such varied responses.

-There must be people who cursed you among them, what’s good about that

-Anyway, this kid’s unnecessarily romantic. Has an unexpectedly pure side

-He’s just young. These are the good times.

People around him couldn’t understand why he was like this even after experiencing what happened during his 3rd and 4th albums.

Come to think of it, even after receiving such criticism then, he never thought about retiring.

If anything, he was excited about how to get back at the anti-fans.

Halo briefly recalled what happened after that, then shook his head.

Though the concert was over, there was still work left to do.

Namely, the after-party.

As always said, Halo is someone who loves parties and pleasure.

He likes meeting new people, and his specialty is talking nonsense while eating peanuts. He really likes alcohol too, but he decided to hold off on that since Roh Haeil is young.

Music and people are enough.

And many people were expected to come to this after-party.

Whether they were people he knew or didn’t know, he had said to bring anyone they wanted to bring.