Chapter 4
“Hmm… I can't really use this for now.”
Even though I was participating in the audition, I hadn't abandoned composing altogether.
When I was at the PC bang, I continued composing, and I used the money I saved there to go to karaoke and improve my own singing skills.
As a result, a considerable number of songs had piled up on my USB.
The only thing that had changed in the process was that I was now making songs for myself to sing, rather than songs for someone else.
Therefore, most of the songs I'd composed in my previous life ended up in the [For Later] folder.
That was because most of the songs I'd made in my previous life had been group songs for idol bands.
They were difficult to sing, and they didn't suit me particularly well, either.
That was why most of the songs I was considering for the main competition were either songs I'd made recently or solo songs that had been hits in my previous life.
At the same time, I'd recently been diligently researching the audition as well.
I was looking back over the previous seasons, gauging the judges' preferences and the show's direction, and considering how I should approach the audition to advance as far as possible.
“YRK's president definitely likes the artist type. KY seems to favor idols.”
PU, on the other hand, liked artists who followed the standard formula. For example, typical vocalists from practical-music departments received unusually high marks from them.
In other words, they weren't very generous with their evaluations of unorthodox types like me.
“Mmm-yum.”
As I said that, I stuffed the popcorn chicken the owner had fried into my mouth.
The crisp texture of the batter filled my mouth.
The owner had been an enormous help to me.
By my reckoning, he was giving me various benefits while losing more than five thousand won a day on me.
The owner said the extra customers I'd brought in were more than enough to make up for it, but I wasn't sure whether that was really true.
When I looked at the clock, it was already past seven.
It was about time to head back to Neulneul Orphanage.
At the same time, I needed to get permission from the orphanage director to appear on the show.
I'd already printed out the guardian consent form they'd sent me, so all I needed was his signature, but honestly, I had no idea how he would react.
Basically, he really was someone who cared about the children, at least outwardly.
He was a devout Christian who had devoted his life to volunteer work since he was young.
However, considering that he'd recently replaced his personal car with a luxury foreign vehicle… the prevailing opinion among the residents was that he was quietly skimming a little money from the orphanage's operating funds.
So, taking into account that appearances weren't everything, I couldn't help wondering what he was really like.
Well, whether he was embezzling money or doing whatever, none of that was my concern. I just needed permission to appear on the show.
If I appeared on terrestrial television, it might promote the orphanage and make it easier for them to receive donations, too.
If appealing to his emotions didn't work, I thought explaining the benefits this way would still give me a decent chance of getting permission somehow.
I went to the director's office, extremely nervous.
“All right. Give me the consent form, and I'll fill it out.”
Contrary to my expectations, I watched the director fill out the consent form without the slightest resistance.
Seeing that, I realized something.
Why had I assumed from the start that this man would be so difficult about giving permission?
Come to think of it, there was no reason for the director to stop a resident from appearing on a famous program.
Maybe the negative things I'd experienced at the orphanage had made me jump to the conclusion that the man at the top of it all was a bad person.
“Si-yeon was always so passive about everything.”
“……”
“But now that Si-yeon has said for the first time that she wants to do something, why would I have any reason to refuse?”
Those words made me feel that, if I ever came to view this orphanage a little more positively in the future, they might be what prompted the change.
That's how I felt.
* * *
In a basement beneath an old commercial building in a back alley behind Incheon Juan Station, wedged among the gaudy neon signs of the nightlife district, there was an instrument shop called ‘Paradise’ that reeked of mold and had nothing to do with its name.
Si-yeon wiped her nose as she descended the creaking stairs. She'd looked through several instrument shops, but as expected, no one had been willing to lend a guitar to an elementary school student.
Solo vocals alone made it difficult to create a strong impact right from the beginning.
Honestly, if I went to the audition relying only on my vocal chops and happened to draw a PU judge by bad luck in the third round, there was a very real chance I'd be eliminated outright in the preliminary third round.
So I needed something to support my vocals, and the guitar—the instrument I was best at playing—was the only possible choice.
I could sing while playing guitar, and to judges who knew how difficult that was, it would probably be a major selling point.
“Are you there?”
The store was a mess. Old, unidentifiable amplifiers were piled up, and beyond them, a scruffy-haired man was working on a guitar's circuitry while fumes rose from his soldering iron.
It was obvious to Si-yeon that neither the wire cutters he'd casually tossed aside nor his soldering skills were ordinary.
“I’m not buying. Get out.”
With an indifferent voice, the man dismissed her. Si-yeon lightly brushed off his words and scanned the guitars hanging on the wall. Then her gaze stopped on an old acoustic guitar in the corner, covered in dust and without even a case.
“That one’s an original vintage Martin D-28, right? It looks like an early-seventies model.”
The man's hands stopped. He raised his head and looked at Si-yeon. In an old T-shirt and dragging slippers, he looked exactly like an unemployed neighborhood bum, but his eyes were cold.
“An elementary schooler knows Martin?”
“Know it? Of course I do. That one has such an unremarkable tone that it probably won't suit my voice right now… Ah, that Gibson beside it will sound a little dry. I'll use that one. Lend it to me.”
Si-yeon brazenly pointed at the guitar with her finger. The man let out an incredulous snort.
“Hey, brat. Do you even know how much that costs? And you want me to lend it to you? Get lost.”
“I don't have any money, so I'll pay you back in labor. I noticed the setups on the guitars in your shop are a mess, so I'll balance the tone on all of them for you. I have really good ears.”
The man was about to put a cigarette in his mouth when he stopped and stared intently at Si-yeon.
She was a brazen little brat unlike anyone he'd ever seen.
He was the lead guitarist and vocalist of Black Canary, a man who ranked as something of a rock star.
Although Korea was a wasteland for bands and he had never gotten much recognition at home, his band had attracted attention overseas and made that its main stage. He had left the guitars in the shop more or less neglected because of his busy schedule traveling abroad.
“You’re going to balance them? You?”
“If you don't believe me, test me.”
Si-yeon snatched the electric guitar he was repairing and plugged it into an amplifier. Her small hands couldn't even reach the high frets, but she drew on all the instincts from her previous life and ran down a blues scale using the most efficient fingering possible.
Jing—.
It was only a single phrase. But the vibrato and attack on every note displayed the skill of a professional who had spent decades onstage. The cigarette in the man's mouth dropped to the floor.
“You… where did you learn that?”
“YouTube. The world is great these days, isn't it?”
Si-yeon lied shamelessly and set the guitar down.
"What do you think? Worth lending it to me, right? I'll use that guitar for just a few weeks. Of course, I'll return it in top condition.”
It was his first break in a long while. He had planned to kill time quietly repairing guitars, but if something this interesting had come along, that was another story.
“What’s your name?”
“Seo Si-yeon. And you?”
“Park Han-su. Just call me Park.”
Park Han-su slowly looked over the child's face and hands.
Upon closer inspection, she was even smaller than he'd initially thought.
She looked like a first- or second-grader.
Judging by the small hands characteristic of a girl, it seemed practically impossible for her to hold a full-sized guitar.
However, what surprised him more than that was the child's appearance.
He was a fairly successful musician, and he'd met many people: pop stars called the beauties of the century, Japanese idols dubbed idols of a thousand years, and top-tier K-pop artists in their prime.
This child's looks were in no way inferior to theirs. In fact, if she grew up just as she was, she might be able to overwhelm most of them.
She had a star's aura that couldn't be hidden by her plain clothes and roughly tied-up hair.
“Fine. I'll lend it to you.”
“Huh? Really? I haven't even told you what I'm going to do with it!”
“What you do with it doesn't matter. However…”
He went into the storage room for a moment, then came back with a mini guitar that was slightly smaller than a regular one.
“With hands like those, you can't even fret an F or Bm, can you? For proper playing, you'd better use this smaller guitar.”
“Huh? But something like this has kind of a…”
“Trust me. It's a children's guitar model made by Yamaha, but it sounds almost no different from a regular guitar. You can rest easy.”
Seo Si-yeon honestly wondered what qualified him to guarantee that.
However, the fact that he owned so many high-quality instruments in a place like this seemed unusual enough, so she kept quiet and accepted the small guitar he handed her.
“Huh. It looks kind of like a ukulele.”
Regardless, Si-yeon formed a chord and began playing a song.
It wasn't a sound she could be completely satisfied with, but it was usable enough.
That left Si-yeon with no choice but to smile awkwardly.
“Hehe. Wow, it sounds really good! You're a trustworthy guy after all!”
“… Do I have some credibility with you now?”
As he said that, Park Han-su thought to himself that acting cute was second nature to Si-yeon.
Since it had been nearly a month since she had possessed the body, it was an accurate assessment of Seo Si-yeon, whose personality was gradually becoming that of an elementary schooler.
However, if Si-yeon had heard him, she would have had a fit over such utter nonsense.