66 You Won't Be Able to Do That

Whenever the end of the year approaches, people's hearts inexplicably start to feel buoyant.

Along with the realization that another year has already passed, content looking back on the events of the past year tends to trend online.

Every year, the million-subscriber music YouTuber's “Looking Back at XXXX Through Songs” is a representative example.

-Wow! It's already time for this to be uploaded.

-I know every song here.

-It looks like one person's songs make up almost half of it… I'm not imagining that, right?

↳For real lol

↳Light Siyeon

-Now that this is up, the year-end awards are just around the corner… Do you think they'll give Siyeon a grand prize?

↳Doesn't look like it.

↳It'd be ridiculous if they didn't lol. She released several songs that topped the charts.

↳Song of the Year is basically guaranteed to be glassy sky, but there isn't anything else for her to win.

↳god danm deserves one too, doesn't it??

↳How can they give a grand prize to a song that never even topped the weekly chart?

↳RPS fangirls are freaking scary…

-Thank you for the great video. Memories from the past year are flashing through my mind.

Even the comments on a YouTube video were turning into arguments like this, so it was obvious what the idol and singer communities must be like.

[The WMA Needs to Go Global Too]

They give grand prizes to domestic-only singers day in and day out and are damn stingy toward groups that raise Korea's prestige overseas.

Does it make sense that Black Canary haven't even won a main award, let alone a grand prize?

Starting this year, I think groups like RPS and Starlight that have done well overseas should get bonus points.

-What kind of bullshit is this? The WMA is a local awards show to begin with.

-Hmm. Is it really that bad?

-Why does it need to go global? Seriously, this is fucking hilarious lol.

↳Scrambling to get RPS a grand prize somehow lol.

↳Shouldn't groups that bring honor to the country obviously be the ones winning awards?

↳Domestic charts ^none^, overseas charts ^none^, ah… just the Billboard No. 25 award.

↳Shut up, idiot. They sell ten times as many albums as the idol you stan.

[But shouldn't they just give all the grand prizes to Seo Siyeon?]

Seriously, I Don't Know

-Everyone here is a crazed idol stan, so they don't know that.

-Honestly, this is kind of true.

-Artist of the Year is a sure thing.

↳Looks like glassy sky will take Song of the Year too.

↳glassy sky is freaking amazing. How did a song in this style become a hit?

↳If a song is good, it'll catch on regardless of genre. This example is enough to shut up all the whining bandman hipsters in Hongdae's indie scene.

[!!!!!!!!]

WMA ticket sales begin in one minute! Don't forget, everyone.

-Thanks. I'm turning on my computer right now.

-You should've told us ten minutes ago, damn it. What are we supposed to do with one minute's notice?

↳If you haven't even opened the ticketing page by now, doesn't that mean you weren't going?

[Fuck, there are 50,000 people waiting lol]

* * *

“So, is anyone coming?”

Everyone sitting around me shoots their hands into the air.

In my hands, I held the fluttering WMA tickets. There were five in all, but several times as many people were vying for them.

“How are we supposed to choose…”

Most of them were third-year high school students from the orphanage who weren't attending school now that the CSAT was over.

‘Hm? Come to think of it, they took the CSAT not long ago, didn't they?’

I smirked as if I'd just had a good idea.

“How about distributing them in order of CSAT scores…?”

“Sounds good. Let's do that.”

The person who said that was Seo Na-hee, the hope of our orphanage—a jewel in the mud—and the holder of the highest estimated CSAT score in the history of the orphanage.

Because she wasn't just good at studying but had a wide network, she was effectively regarded as the head of the orphanage, and everyone had no choice but to keep quiet.

“Na-hee… unni. How many did you get wrong?”

“Three.”

“Wow.”

What a lunatic.

Even nationwide, that had to be a score among the best of the best.

I had no idea how someone like that had come out of this hopeless orphanage. If she'd been born into a normal family, might she have gotten a perfect score?

No, perhaps without that fierce drive, she might actually have scored lower. Who knew?

But one thing was certain: one ticket was going into her hands.

“…Who do you like, unni?”

“Who? Obviously Siyeon, our orphanage's hero and cutest little darling…”

“Don't lie.”

Since she saw Siyeon's face every day at the orphanage anyway, why would she come all the way here just to see her onstage?

She had to have another reason.

“…RPS. Felix, specifically.”

“If I get the chance, I'll get you an autograph.”

“R-really? You really are our cutest!”

Next, I asked about the scores of the male student ranked second in the orphanage. I wondered how someone with a vaguely delinquent look who even smoked had managed to come in second.

“Me? Was it 44345?”

“How on earth did you come in second?”

“Haha! For someone like me, that's a really good score. I even got a 3 in math.”

As expected of this hopeless orphanage, it wasn't that he had done well; everyone else had simply done terribly.

Anyway, I handed all five tickets I'd received from the organizers out to them. After all, the orphanage's residents were the only people who would give tickets like these to an orphan like me.

At first, I'd hated the orphanage so much, but I'd grown a little attached to it now.

That didn't mean I wanted to keep living here, of course.

I'd found a practice room nearby, so I planned to live there and sleep at the orphanage.

When I talked with Lee Ha-jun recently, he suggested that I enter an arts-focused middle school in Seoul when I moved up to middle school, then become completely independent at that point.

Honestly, doing housework and preparing my own meals in an elementary-schooler's body was a hassle, and living on delivery food would wreck my health, so that seemed like the better option.

“Ah. Come to think of it, do those people claiming to be relatives still come to the orphanage sometimes?”

“…Yeah. Almost every day. You must be pretty tired of it too.”

“Hmph. It doesn't bother me at all, no matter how much those guys without parental rights rant about adopting me.”

If the people coming had actually been Seo Siyeon's relatives, I might have at least met them, but every one of them was either delusional or a scammer…

Honestly, I'd thought that, now that the whole country knew about my success and how much money I'd made, at least one relative would come looking for me. But somehow, nothing but scammers had been arriving one after another.

Thanks to that, the director had been having a hard time lately… But I'd given her the SUV I'd won, so she ought to do that much for me.

‘Maybe I should bring her a gift next time I visit the director's office.’

Anyway, the WMA was now only four days away.

As the awards ceremony approached, I…

“Uncle. You finally made it back to Korea.”

“Shorty. You haven't grown even a bit while I was gone.”

“Be quiet.”

I stopped by the instrument shop to see Park Han-su, the world-class bandman who had given me a guitar long ago and was one of my benefactors.

* * *

“Feels like it's been almost half a year since I last saw you.”

“I've been back in Korea for ages… You were just too busy to see me.”

“What could I do? I won.”

I replied with a shrug.

Had I looked a little cocky? Well, it was fine to seem that way in front of this person. My image had been that of a cute, clever, but cocky genius from the start.

“I knew you'd win long ago, of course. But I didn't expect you to become a star so quickly.”

“Hehe. Well, if you want, I could write you a song or two.”

“I'll have something to ask you for later.”

I tilted my head.

I did think we'd probably collaborate someday. After all, Park Han-su and I were acquainted, and Black Canary itself was a band that got quite a lot of songs from outside writers.

I figured I'd probably give them a song at least once.

“Is the album coming along well?”

As expected, he was asking about music again. Seeing how music came before asking how I'd been, I decided he was a musician through and through.

“Would you like to hear it? I've already finished recording and mixing it, so it's on my phone.”

“No. I plan to buy the album later and listen to it myself.”

“Suit yourself. Honestly, I think that's probably better. We need to sell at least one more copy.”

Knowing that he'd recently been spending a lot of time with Jo Na-eun of Blooming, I asked him what he thought of Blooming's new song.

“So, what did you think of ‘To My Youth’?”

To be honest, I hadn't expected him to give it particularly high praise. The genre Park Han-su's band played was, after all, quite far removed from “To My Youth.”

From what I'd seen of his musical tastes so far, both the music he performed and the music he listened to were quite far removed from genres popular in Korea.

The song I planned to use as the title track of my next album might suit his tastes, but “To My Youth” definitely wouldn't.

“It's a good song. Just not the kind of song I like.”

“I figured.”

Just as expected, it was more or less what I'd anticipated.

Even afterward, we continued trading pointless stories.

We made small talk for a while and roughly caught each other up on how we'd been.

Just as we were running out of things to say, he finally got to the point.

Park Han-su took a sip of water, then finally began explaining why he'd called me here today.

“If you have the time, would you be interested in playing as a session musician and sub-vocalist on our band's next world tour?”

“What?”

“I'm making this offer because I think you'd have quite a lot to learn from a tour by a band of our caliber. This will be our band's first large-scale world tour, too. You'll probably be doing tours on this scale yourself someday….”

I quietly shut my mouth.

You probably… won't be able to do that, though?