Chapter 26
Animation OSTs rarely attract particularly good composers or singers. The reason is obvious: an OST isn't about singing your own song; you have to make one that fits the work.
Especially with animation, the promotional value was usually so slight that there was little reason to bring in a good singer or composer. Likewise, the production side had no reason to spend a fortune forcing a famous singer onto the project.
‘Still, things are starting to change.’
The trend would gradually shift from here on out, but even the song that had landed in my hands right now didn't feel like it had much capital behind it.
The instrumentation and MIDI arrangement were as crude as could be, and the vocals were nothing special either.
“But the topline is incredible.”
Songs like this cropped up from time to time. One part was good, while everything else was catastrophically bad.
The blue glow of the monitor illuminated my face, while the anime OST So Yu-jin had recommended played through my headphones.
First, I stripped all the tracks apart: a childish synthesizer characteristic of the 2000s and a clumsy drumbeat that did nothing but charge forward.
“This is a bit much.”
Without hesitation, I deleted the tracks. The song's biggest problem was its flat arrangement, completely devoid of tension.
The direction I chose was symphonic rock. I decided to use the contrast between grand orchestral sounds and sharp-edged electric guitar.
First, I loaded a large-scale string section from a virtual instrument library.
I layered the low register of the contrabass with the sharply scraping staccato of the violins.
Then I raised the tempo from 95 all the way to 140.
“This part needs to hit with more grandeur.”
I added timpani and chorus sounds, vastly expanding the sense of space.
Between the enormous walls of sound, I drove in a sharp, distorted guitar riff.
I built a dramatic arrangement in which the grand orchestration surged, then the instruments dropped out in an instant, leaving only the electric guitar and my voice.
“Hmmm...”
I cracked the candy that had been releasing its sweetness into my mouth with my teeth.
But I grimaced at the intense, cheap sweetness that flooded my mouth.
“But... this has practically become a different song.”
Once I finished the arrangement, only the topline remained as it was; everything else had vanished without a trace.
When the arrangement neared its final stages, I stood in front of the microphone.
The small hum I recorded as a guide vocal rose over the explosive orchestral sound.
There was an incongruous thrill in hearing a delicate, youthful voice break through a harsh rock sound.
“...Not bad.”
Beautiful orchestration, destructive rock, and the delicate voice of a nine-year-old at their apex. It was a combination like flames bursting through a cathedral's stained glass.
“Hmm, but something still feels a little lacking.”
The song's overall quality was decent, but I wished there were some special device that would suit my voice.
“Well, since this is the mentoring round, why don't I ask the mentor and discuss it with them?”
I took the matter lightly, closed the laptop, and left the room.
The current time was seven-thirty in the morning.
Maybe because I'd gone to sleep so early the night before, I woke up unusually early and worked on the arrangement for a while before breakfast.
But it felt better than expected, and I ended up making quite a lot of progress.
‘I should let So Yu-jin hear it once she wakes up.’
It wasn't as if I was dead set on using this song. If the reception was poor, I was prepared to tear it apart and redo it at any time.
Whether it was arranging or composing, repeating that sort of work was an everyday occurrence for me.
When I opened the door, the humid, unpleasant air characteristic of a summer dawn wrapped around me.
I thought I'd take a short walk to clear my head, but...
“Damn it. Cigarettes...?”
Why were there so many people smoking these days? Did they really want to puff away in a place with a child like me and underage girls like Blooming?
And they weren't even e-cigarettes; they were regular cigarettes.
To find out who was smoking at this ungodly hour, I headed toward the corner where the smoke was drifting from.
“Huh?”
“Ah... Oh. Haha... Si-yeon, you were already awake?”
There stood Baek Yu-yeon, smiling awkwardly with her mild, innocent-looking face.
The pack was blue and bore a cigarette brand beginning with M. Thinking that it was a pretty strong cigarette for someone so young, I spoke.
“If you smoke something that strong this early... it'll ruin your voice.”
“Ahaha! This voice is already ruined. I've been smoking for such a long time.”
“...Seriously?”
Her voice was husky, to be sure. But it wasn't the uniquely grated, unpleasant voice of a smoker, so I'd thought it was natural...
Wait. Come to think of it, Baek Yu-yeon was only in her early twenties.
If she'd been smoking until her voice became hoarse, that meant...
“...Since when have you been smoking?”
“Uh, who knows? Since I was...”
As she spoke, she spread her fingers to form a number.
“Six... teen? Wait, you started smoking in middle school?”
By the standards of Neulneul Orphanage, this was tier one—no, more like tier two—delinquent behavior.
Naturally, by ordinary standards, it was tier zero. Drinking and smoking since middle school? That was no small thing.
“A-actually, I'm from the same neighborhood you live in, Si-yeon. Ahaha...”
“That doesn't mean everyone there smokes.”
No matter how hopelessly rough that neighborhood was, not everyone there drank and smoked.
Apparently, Baek Yu-yeon had been quite a delinquent during her school days. It was a little surprising, considering how completely different that was from her appearance.
‘But that isn't important.’
It wasn't as if I was going to expose her online by posting, “I met a delinquent!” so what did it matter whether Baek Yu-yeon smoked or not?
What mattered right now was that I had someone in front of me who could listen to the song I'd just rearranged.
“It's fine. People can smoke sometimes.”
“N-no! You must never smoke, Si-yeon!”
“Would you like to hear the song I rearranged after getting up at dawn?”
She quietly nodded.
* * *
To Baek Yu-yeon, Seo Si-yeon was an extremely unusual child.
Baek wondered who could possibly not see Seo Si-yeon as unusual, but from her perspective, Si-yeon was all the more fascinating.
Baek Yu-yeon had lived in the same neighborhood as Seo Si-yeon from childhood until she graduated high school, and had even graduated from the elementary school Seo Si-yeon attended.
That was why quite a few of Baek Yu-yeon's friends and acquaintances were from Neulneul Orphanage.
Since she'd gone around puffing on cigarettes, she couldn't help but associate with bad kids, and the children from the orphanage were always at the center of those groups.
And of the delinquents from Neulneul Orphanage who used to hang out with her back then, nearly ninety percent had gone on to become gangsters if they were men and prostitutes if they were women, as if they had stepped out of the world of some cartoonist named Kim.
Naturally, even amid all that, there were children who grew up properly at Neulneul Orphanage.
But for a child as mature and brilliant as Seo Si-yeon to emerge from such an environment was truly unexpected.
“It's the anime opening you heard yesterday.”
Seo Si-yeon clicked away at the laptop, and before long, an unexpected melody began to flow from the speakers of the somewhat underpowered laptop.
“Hmm? An orchestra?”
“Yes. You recognized it right away.”
Baek Yu-yeon forgot even to stub out the cigarette in her hand as she leaned closer to the laptop speakers.
What burst through the limitations of the crackling, bargain-bin speakers was completely different from the light cartoon theme So Yu-jin had played for her yesterday.
From the opening bars came the sharp staccato of violins that seemed to scrape at her nerves, followed by a feast of grand strings pressing down on her heart.
“This is... that song?”
Baek Yu-yeon's lips trembled faintly.
As the music rushed toward its midpoint, a shredding distorted guitar burst in between the massive orchestral sounds.
It was an arrangement that could easily have become a tangled mess, but the balance Seo Si-yeon had created was close to perfect.
It was the textbook example of an orchestral arrangement: grandiose, yet alive with sharp aggression.
And when the guide vocal finally began to play, Baek Yu-yeon felt goosebumps rise across her skin.
Seo Si-yeon's delicate voice breaking through the storm-like sound.
It was like a small, sturdy glass bottle floating on rough waves. The voice seemed precarious, yet never broke, strengthening the song's solemn, desperate intensity.
“Si-yeon... You really did this in just a few hours?”
Even after the music ended and silence descended, Baek Yu-yeon stared blankly at the laptop screen for quite some time.
She couldn't believe that such a sensibility could be born in that gray neighborhood where she'd lived, a place where hope only ever sprouted like mold.
‘No, perhaps it's precisely because it was that kind of neighborhood that a genius could emerge.’
This went far beyond simply possessing talent.
“I told you. I woke up and worked on it before breakfast.”
Seo Si-yeon closed the laptop as if it were nothing special.
“If this is what you did after only a little work... how good would it be if you really devoted time to it?”
“Well, wouldn't it be more or less the same even if I really tried? I'm fairly quick at working. But right now, it feels like something's missing. What do you think? Was there any part that sounded a little dull?”
Baek Yu-yeon swallowed a hollow laugh.
Dull? This song was so full and polished that it could be put over movie credits right now without seeming out of place.
Even so, having listened to and sung countless OST songs of this kind, Baek Yu-yeon could understand what she meant to some extent.
“You mean the pre-chorus, right?”
“You understood right away? It does feel a little lacking, doesn't it?”
If she had to be picky, it was only a tiny blemish on an otherwise flawless gem.
In fact, transforming an utterly ordinary anime OST into something like this was practically a miracle.
“I-I don't know?”
But she had no knowledge whatsoever of composing or creative work.
So even if she could identify what was empty, she lacked the instinct to know what should be put there.
“...That's a shame.”
Even so, receiving the disappointed gaze of an elementary-schooler head-on still stung a little.