The day he collapsed on stage, no one stopped applauding.
The lights were still on. The cameras were still rolling. The fans thought the fall was staged. But inside him, something had already gone completely dark. Yet what exactly had faded away?
He had lost consciousness, yet it felt as though he had awakened. Only his soul had fallen into old memories. At first, he wondered where he was. Then he saw his grandmother working in the field. A small boy was sitting under the shade of a tree, softly singing.
He walked toward his grandmother and said,
"Grandma… are you alive? They took you away. They told me you had died. I missed you so much."
He tried to hug her, but he couldn't. None of it was real — it was only a dream. He tried again and again, but it was impossible. Frustration overwhelmed him, and he began to cry. He fell to his knees in front of his grandmother as she worked and sobbed,
"Grandma, please forgive me."
Even though it was only a vision, tears flowed from his grandmother's eyes. But Taehan did not see them. He wiped his own tears, stood up, and walked toward the boy sitting beneath the tree.
The boy — his younger self — looked at him and said,
"I didn't know back then… that my voice would make me famous and known to the world, only to leave me lonely again."
This was Taehan's childhood. His mother was fighting an illness. Seeing her condition, he felt deep sadness. Taehan was only six years old. In the end, his mother could no longer endure the illness and passed away. When he saw her eyes slowly closing from exhaustion, the child thought, "Mom is falling asleep." He lay down beside her and fell asleep too.
When his father returned home, the sound of his voice startled the boy awake. But his mother did not wake up. She never would. She was gone.
As the funeral took place, Taehan finally understood that he had lost his mother and cried uncontrollably. But it was already too late. After the ceremony, his grandmother took her grandson to her home. From that day on, his father began to distance himself from Taehan…