The Boy Who Returned From Seoul

“Five years after disappearing into the basements of an idol agency, Mateo returned to his parents' bakery in El Poblado with a scar on his wrist and silence written into his contract.”

When Mateo Sánchez won the global talent audition at seventeen, our entire high school in Envigado celebrated his departure like a national holiday: he was the first Colombian trainee accepted into a major Gangnam agency. Five years later, as I open my mother's flower shop on a steep street in El Poblado, I spot him unloading sacks of flour into his family's brick bakery, his hair dyed jet black, wearing unbranded work clothes and wearing a gaze that avoids every eye. His non-disclosure agreement forbids him from touching an instrument or speaking to the press, but when Medellín's five o'clock downpour soaks the sidewalks and neon reflections blur across puddles, an old notebook of handwritten chords and the scent of warm cheese bread force us to remember who we were before the world tried to package us into an idol mold.