Chapter 57
The performance held amid rain pouring down in torrents came to a triumphant close.
Calling it a triumph might be a bit much when there were only about twenty audience members and the sound was a mess, but both we performers and the people watching had enjoyed ourselves in our own way, so perhaps it was fair to call it a successful performance.
Or perhaps not.
And, astonishingly, the rain stopped as if by magic the very next morning.
The moment I saw that, I wondered why—and for what purpose—I had performed in that park, but regardless, I picked up my guitar again the next day.
Unlike yesterday, this was a busy area with plenty of foot traffic, and I plucked the guitar strings while countless people watched.
I had four songs to play in total.
Three on guitar and one on violin.
None of them could really be called difficult, and that was why the busking performance was able to end successfully.
There were going to be two busking performances in Barcelona.
One of them was now over. Since I had only been brought in as a session musician instead of singing this time, it was finally time for me to sing.
“One song….”
After finishing the busking, we went to a nearby restaurant that served pizza and pasta.
I spent a little while marveling at flavors I couldn’t get in Korea and frantically inhaling the food.
Before long, though, I had no choice but to start thinking about how to make the most of the one opportunity I had been given.
Naturally, I had already considered two candidates. I wasn’t planning to bring out one of my own compositions; I intended to sing an English song that people in the West would be familiar with.
Since our schedule was extremely tight and I had to choose a song and begin practicing right away, I decided to use the Coca-Cola rhyme to pick one at random.
“Coca-Cola tastes good. If it tastes good, have some more… Ding-dong-dang-dong, Mr. Know-it-all, tell me the answer….”
“Khh—pfft!”
At the sound of laughter, I looked toward the door and saw Jia standing there, apparently having arrived some time ago and watching me while trying to hold back her laughter.
“…Why are you doing that?”
“Ah, no. Seeing you like this, you really are a little kid.”
“At my age, I am a kid, I guess.”
I answered that shamelessly enough, but I couldn’t hide my face flushing with embarrassment.
No matter that my body had become that of a female elementary school student and my mind seemed to be gradually assimilating into it as well… The mental blow of being seen acting like an actual child was still just as severe.
Jia was also someone I still wasn’t very close to—in other words, someone with whom I had an almost awkward relationship.
The thought that someone like that had caught me behaving this way made my face turn bright red in an instant.
“Hehe. Cute. Should I do the Coca-Cola rhyme with you? I did it a lot when I was little, too….”
“You’re still young now….”
“I’m old compared to Siyeon! A total old lady.”
She had debuted only last year and was still just seventeen. It wasn’t an age at which calling herself old was particularly fitting.
“So why were you doing the Coca-Cola rhyme?”
“I couldn’t decide what song to sing, so I was going to use it to choose one. Since you’re here, you choose for me, unnie. I’ll go with whatever you pick.”
“Eek. I-I’m not good at things like that!”
Taking the attitude that refusal was not an option, I immediately told her the names of the two songs I had been considering.
Naturally, they were extremely famous pop songs, so Jia knew both of them well.
Contrary to what she had said about not being able to choose, she began thinking it over with a fairly serious expression.
“I think I like the second song better. It has a female vocalist, unlike the first one.”
She gave a perfectly safe answer.
“All right. Then I’ll go with the first song.”
“No! Why?!”
It was a small act of revenge for laughing at my Coca-Cola rhyme earlier.
* * *
A masterpiece that could be called Coldplay’s greatest hit and one of the most famous songs of the twenty-first century.
Even though this was a parallel world, plenty of famous foreign bands and artists existed here, so I decided to use this song, which I had heard countless times in my previous life, for our busking performance.
Jia did protest that I had dismissed her opinion in the process… but, naturally, the opinion of a hopeless amateur who couldn’t play a single instrument and couldn’t even stand as a session musician was not reflected in the song selection at all.
The original song made use of extremely powerful vocals and instrumentation. But since this was busking, that sort of instrumentation was impossible, and my voice was not suited to producing such powerful vocals either.
“Please play it like this.”
“Hm? You arranged it?”
“I made a few simple changes earlier.”
Hanyul looked at me as if I were a monster. Since he wrote and arranged his own songs, someone who had produced a decent arrangement in such a short time must have looked monstrous to him.
To get straight to the point, I had already arranged the song this way in my previous life.
That was why I could recall those memories and finish the arrangement so quickly.
Even so, arranging something plausible in just a few hours was only possible even for me when I was in particularly good form.
“Given your age and everything… your skill is completely monstrous.”
“Hehe. Thank you. How’s the quality? Is it usable?”
Lee Seunghyeon, the keyboardist, had been quietly examining the sheet music beside us. He looked over at me and answered my question.
“You’ve taken out all the instruments entirely. You slowed down the tempo, too… It’s the exact opposite of the original. Well, it isn’t bad.”
“It practically only has piano, so Uncle Seunghyeon’s playing is the key!”
“Using a chorus wouldn’t be bad, either.”
“Would that give it a slightly more mysterious feeling?”
“Yes. Our idol girls can’t play instruments, so they’d be bored if they just stood there. I thought giving them a role like this might not be a bad idea.”
Indeed, neither Saki nor Jia knew how to play an instrument.
They more than made up for it by dancing like crazy, but that wasn’t a useful talent on a busking stage like this. If they weren’t singing, they could only stand to the side and watch.
A chorus seemed like it would work well enough to give the song a suitably mysterious feeling.
“All right. Then let’s call the unnies over and run through it once.”
* * *
The square in Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter was surrounded by a forest of centuries-old stone buildings and held the damp moisture left behind after the rain.
The rain kept stopping and starting, so everyone coming and going carried an umbrella in case of any sudden downpour.
Amid the countless people passing through, we began playing a lyrical yet dreamlike introduction.
Lee Seunghyeon’s keyboard broke the silence, and a clear, crystalline piano melody spread across the square.
Tap, tap-tap-
I tapped the body of my guitar with my palm to create the sound of a kick drum, then struck its body to produce a snare sound.
As I repeated the rhythm as if I had turned on a loop station, the footsteps of people crossing the square gradually began to slow.
Since it was difficult to set up a drum kit in these circumstances, I, the singer, had to take on the role of creating the rhythm myself.
Many Westerners found the performance of the doll-like Asian child interesting and stopped to watch for a moment.
-I used to rule the world...
The moment I opened my mouth, the noise of the square receded like an ebbing tide.
My voice was the complete opposite of the band’s vocalist Martin’s.
Instead of a rough, powerful vocal, a dreamy and clear tone, as if someone were walking through the fog at dawn, echoed through the Barcelona square.
-Be my mirror, my sword and shield
The keyboard notes quickened like a heartbeat as the song progressed, and the center of the square had transformed into a gigantic concert hall before I knew it.
-And that was when I ruled the world
A couple pushing a stroller, travelers carrying backpacks, and even an elderly local gentleman drinking coffee at a nearby café all seemed to hold their breath and listen to the nine-year-old child’s song.
The chorus came in as soon as the first verse ended.
Though the girls had felt sorry that they couldn’t play instruments, their tasteful harmonies, worthy of veteran idols, added a mysterious color to the song.
Their “oh~ oh~” humming created a strange, mystical atmosphere, like an oracle being delivered from an ancient temple.
At the climax of the song, every instrument stopped, leaving only my voice in the square.
- For some reason I can't explain...
As I murmured the final line, I lightly muted (Mute) the guitar strings.
-But that was when I ruled the world
Then I slowly opened my eyes, which I had closed.
I saw that quite a large crowd had gathered around us, unlike before.
A brief silence followed.
Then, beginning with one man’s applause, cheers and clapping erupted from all around us.
Watching the scene, I broke into a blissful, goofy smile.