Chapter 45
After the noisy meat party following the semifinals ended, everyone went to sleep with their stomachs full. I alone sat in a secluded corner of the communal practice room, turning on the light over my laptop.
This was a song for which I had made only a simple melody in my previous life, thinking that someday I wanted to write something with this kind of feel.
I couldn't guarantee whether it would succeed, or even whether it was a good song or a bad one.
Because it had never been released to the world; only I and the people around me had ever hummed its melody.
“……So in the end, I'm bringing this one out.”
I had decided on the working title ‘Goodbye, My Four Seasons.’
Its genre was electronic pop, combining a lyrical melody with synth sounds, drums, and electric guitar.
This was a song that the trainees and idols at my agency in my previous life had casually used as a practice song.
I had kept a melody I recorded long ago on my smartphone, and one of the trainees happened to hear it.
‘Oppa. This is fucking good. Why aren't you releasing it?’
Because this was a personal song I had made just for myself.
Honestly, I hadn't really wanted to give it to anyone else.
That was how the kid spread the song to the other trainees, and just like that, it became their vocal warm-up song.
Even after those kids debuted, they continued using the melody as a simple warm-up song.
Honestly, I hadn't been thrilled about it… but they said it was their routine, so what could I do?
Producers are powerless in front of idols. Especially when those idols are kids they raised with their own affection and care.
The younger trainees began following the seniors after seeing them warm up to that song, and soon everyone else started using it as a practice song because they thought it looked fun.
By then, I suppose it had become somewhat awkward to release it. Anyway, that was why I had simply left the song in my head.
‘But I can sing it now.’
The song originally had no lyrics. The people who used it simply made up rough lyrics as they pleased, which was why there were several different versions.
‘They even used to argue among themselves about whose version was better.’
Since I had made it all the way to the finals, the concept for the lyrics had already been decided.
‘I have to write my own story.’
Rather than playing on my past misfortunes to stir people's emotions, I had to look back on the past, remember the good things, and envision the future.
Lyrics about looking back on the past and reminiscing, sung by a nine-year-old child, would sound to the public like the innocent growing pains of a young child.
Worries over how abruptly my circumstances had changed, and fear of the things that lay ahead.
But for me, it would be a true farewell—the act of finally sending off my previous life and accepting my life as Seo Siyeon.
’The song is already almost complete.’
Because I had kept working on it whenever I had the time. Since it was the song that would adorn my finale, I wanted to bring it to the highest quality I could achieve now, so I kept refining it even while preparing for the previous rounds.
“It doesn't even have a trace of my previous life's style.”
The song from my previous life had only possessed the melody for its chorus, so I had to build the song again from its very skeleton.
What I chose was not the broad range of classical instruments, including the violin I had loved so much in my previous life, nor genres like house or Jersey club.
Instead, I chose the purest and most immense sense of space left after stripping away all those modifiers.
The song began with a dreamy synth-pad sound spreading low through the air, opening the door to the sensation of walking along a path around an apartment complex shrouded in dawn fog.
-Soft seasons, like scattered flower petals. I'm afraid my life might become the same.
The feelings of wandering from the days when I had no mother, along with memories of a happy childhood despite that, flashed through my mind.
But the moment the beat kicked in in earnest, the atmosphere changed completely.
A desperate yet exhilarating beat, a powerful kick pounding against the heart, and an electric-guitar riff racing over it.
“The bridge is the most important part.”
I muttered to myself while running the recording program.
The highlight of this song lay in the bridge, where the emotions burst forth more intensely as the second half approached.
The rough vocal drive that seemed to pour out all the suppressed emotions at once, combined with a majestic chorus that sounded as though the sky itself were collapsing.
- Goodbye to the hot summer, and even to all those memories that burned me.
As I murmured the lyrics, the memories of my previous life flashed past like scenes from a revolving lantern.
The bitter taste of the instant coffee I drank while working through the night, the joy I felt when the kids I had debuted won three music-show trophies and topped the charts, and even my final moment, which ended so futilely.
After the bridge passed, all the instruments dropped out as if the song were catching its breath, and the track was engulfed in silence.
Filling that space, where only the muffled resonance of the bass remained, was Seo Siyeon's greatest weapon—her clear, ringing natural voice.
- My four seasons that will never return, standing at that crossroads
The quiet lasted only a moment before the song's signature swelling texture reached its climax.
The drumbeat no longer split the rhythm, instead pounding steadily against the heart, while layers of chorus lines piled on top of it and filled the space like the sound of tens of thousands singing together.
The light melody the kids from my previous life had playfully used to warm up their voices now met the synth pad and the distorted sound of the electric guitar in the background, exploding into one complete song.
The scale of the song was far too immense to dismiss it as merely a nine-year-old child's song.
As the song entered the outro, I deliberately did not pull back the strength in my vocals. Instead, I preserved every subtle tremor in my voice, capturing an emotional swell that felt like being pushed off the edge of a cliff.
- Cold winter, dazzling spring days too. All fragments of me that I once loved.
This part was less a lyric than a tribute sent to the person I had been in my previous life.
The moments when I had shone brilliantly as a producer, and the miserable end when I had nearly disappeared without even leaving my name behind.
And the chance I had received to move forward once more, in a different form and into a different season.
The lyrics said that I existed as I was now because I had lived through all those seasons.
At the end, the main instruments faded away, and the song returned to the dreamy synth sound from its beginning.
But it was different from the beginning.
If the opening sound had been an oppressive fog, the final resonance felt like a quiet dawn after a storm had passed.
The sound of piano keys, as though coming from far away, grew more distant one note at a time, and the song slowly faded out.
“…It's good. Let's go with this.”
When I listened to it myself, the song was of a quality I could be more than satisfied with.
If I divided my own self into a critic's self and a producer's self… Producer Seo Siyeon would wonder why I had made a song in such an outdated style with such questionable mainstream appeal, while Critic Seo Siyeon would praise it as a fucking masterpiece.
“As always, popularity can be crushed beneath a song's quality.”
The prime example was glassy sky.
At its core, it was a Vocaloid-style song with an otaku sensibility, layered with sounds and instruments that I personally liked.
But it had plenty of opportunities for exposure, and with the song's quality and the vocalist's skill backing it up, it had planted itself firmly in the upper ranks of the charts.
“My skills aren't on Yoo Seolha's level… but in any case, this isn't a song made by looking at the charts.”
This was a song for putting my previous life to rest and living on as Seo Siyeon.
I was going to use up this practice song, almost the last lingering attachment to my previous life, and forget my past as a producer.
‘That won't be easy, though.’
Of course, forgetting that I had once been a man didn't mean I was going to turn into some female bitch.
It would be better to think of it simply as a resolution to live well from now on without being too shackled to memories of the past.
Honestly, I still sometimes had nightmares at night.
Nightmares where, by the time I became an adult, I had forgotten my identity as a man and only my female identity remained, turning me into some kind of bitch.
“Ah, fuck. Now that I've imagined it, it's even fucking awful.”
Anyway, just as I was thinking that it was about time to go back to my room and sleep, and was about to close the laptop,
The door opened with its hinges shrieking like metal crying out.
-Creeeak
“Mmm… Siyeon, aren't you asleep?”
“Naeun… unnie?”
“Mm. I came out to use the bathroom, but the light in the workroom was on…”
I hurried over to her.
Perhaps because she had just woken up, her orange hair hung long and straight down her back.
Since she always wore her hair tied in twin tails, it felt unfamiliar.
“I was working… I'll go to bed soon.”
“Mmm. You're working hard… It feels like we won't even need to practice much.”
Startled, I asked her what she meant.
What kind of nonsense was that? How could we not practice when it was the final?
“Ah, no, why? It's the final!”
“Ah. Because we've already rehearsed this song hundreds of times… This was the first song we ever played together in elementary school.”
Let's think about this for a moment.
Blooming had formed when Yoo Seolha watched a certain Japanese band anime, decided she wanted to start a band, and forced the friends she hung out with to pick up instruments.
Park Heesu had originally played an instrument, but it had been the violin, like her mother, not the bass.
Anyway, what was the first song they had played together?
It was obvious.
“Wait, are we allowed to sing a Japanese song?”
“It's an adapted version. I already got permission from the lyricist and composer because we planned to perform it if we made it to the finals…!”
E-even so, they were going to sing a Japanese song on broadcast television!
It was an unbelievably bold decision. I looked at Jo Naeun with slightly startled eyes.