Chapter 121
- Just what you'd expect from the great nation of music, Japan—a sense of style those Korean bastards can never have, with nothing but idol songs playing all day lol
- A country where even high school girls play guitar, damn ㄷㄷㄷㄷ
- (This is viral marketing lol emote)
- Stop this fucking viral marketing already, goddammit
- I want to pound the left bassist's tits.
ㄴ Looks like you'll get sued for obscene online communications lol
ㄴ Yeah, but they're Japanese, so they can never sue you~
- They look like people I've seen somewhere.
- (Nyaaah, I was happy emote)
- (VTuber dancing emote)
- They're fucking gorgeous.
ㄴ That's pretty? Where'd your eyes go?
ㄴ They're pretty enough at that level lol
ㄴ (Speechless emote)
- Fact on a plate: Japan is a superior country to Korea, as proven by the difference in national power. Instead of hanging out with the Korean women littering the streets, let's marry these ordinary Japanese women who are this beautiful!
ㄴ (Fluttering Japanese flag emote)
ㄴ Bullshit, at that level she's an old hag lol
ㄴ (Not human emote)
Comments with no meaning whatsoever. The content was so pointless that it was hard to understand why a thousand replies had been posted. But overall, most were along the lines of, ‘The girls are cute, they sing well and play music well too. Who are they? Are they Japanese?’
‘But I don't understand how this ended up reaching Korea.’
He had heard they filmed the video partly as promotion. He had also heard it had passed ten thousand views. But frankly, ten thousand views wasn't enough to cross a national border, let alone the wall around one's own house. How had this happened?
Keeping that question in mind, Myeongjeon looked around the communities and figured out what had happened. That damn Twitter was to blame.
[う〜る @leews_0627]
These girls are cute~ They seem to be good at music too. I wonder what girls' band they're from. They make me want to buy their album. Does anyone happen to know them?
The Twitter user presumed to have been a customer in the instrument store when they first played Roundabout. That tweet, containing a brief performance of about a minute, was retweeted over 5,000 times and spread fairly widely.
Of course, if that had been all, it wouldn't have spread this far. But someone on Twitter clipped a specific part of the Roundabout performance into what people commonly call a ‘meme video,’ setting the internet ablaze... and eventually it spilled over onto the Korean internet too.
[Real-life Bocchi the Rock ㄷㄷㄷㄷㄷ]
[High school girls' guitar skills these days.avi]
[Is this how viral marketing works these days?]
[Is this considered good guitar playing? Question]
[These are the girls I've been pushing lately hehe]
[Wow, she plays fucking well]
[If even high school girls can play this well, why am I so fucking bad? Makes me want to kill myself]
Various reactions decorating the Korean internet. Most were positive, and even the rest were neutral at worst. Even the negative reactions were along the lines of ‘Stop the viral marketing,’ not posts like ‘These fucking bitches.’
‘Not exactly the most welcome route, though.’
But thinking that, Myeongjeon rested his chin in his hand and stared at the monitor.
These days, he did feel as if his identity was becoming a little blurred... but he was, above all, a musician. Someone who wanted to be recognized through music and become famous through music. In that respect, Myeongjeon didn't want this sort of bizarre fame.
‘No, maybe that's not quite right.’
There was nothing wrong with gaining fame of any kind. Back before media had developed so much, things like a ‘mysterious persona’ had worked well, and people who operated under such concepts had done quite well.
But these days, adopting that kind of ‘mysterious persona’ was a surefire way to starve to death. If you said, ‘I don't want to show myself to the public. I want to be judged solely on my abilities,’ twenty-first-century media would simply ignore you with a ‘Sure, keep burying yourself~.’ There were endless people clamoring for attention, after all.
Thinking that, Myeongjeon paid for and downloaded the sheet music for Roundabout from a sheet-music website. Regardless of whether it had become a meme, riding the wave was the priority.
It seemed like a good idea to film a tutorial video for Roundabout as well, both to give his own channel, [White Room], a sign of life and to show that it was still active.
* * *
Myeongjeon lay down and looked at his hands.
Calluses that had already grown thick and solid. Hands so changed he could hardly believe they were the same ones he had first seen, with not a single callus and no grip strength to speak of.
Looking at those callused hands, he recalled something that had happened recently. The last night of the trip. And what Hyein had said when they returned to Korea.
‘Career path.’
Myeongjeon had never thought about his own career path. It wasn't like Iseo, who simply ‘hadn't given it much thought.’ Rather, his path had been so firmly decided that he had never questioned it. He already knew what he would do for a living going forward, so why bother thinking about it? It would only be idle speculation.
But although he had decided what he would do for a living, he hadn't decided how he would make a living doing it. That was Myeongjeon's recent concern.
How was he going to live?
Of course, he had a long-term goal in life. ‘A life spent making music.’ ‘Let's make the music we love.’
It was the goal and ideal he had set for himself from the moment he awoke in Ha Suyeon's body. And it was what he had continued doing ever since.
But that alone wasn't enough to live on. If he went through life vaguely thinking, ‘Let's make music,’ and ended up out on the street, then what? Would he say, ‘I'm still making music while living on the street, so this is a happy life!’? Of course not.
‘Succeeding through music is too vague.’
The question was how to make it happen.
Thinking that, Myeongjeon glanced up at the ceiling. Unless he hit the lottery or something, achieving anything required taking it step by step. You couldn't learn calculus and use it to calculate if you couldn't even do addition and subtraction. In the end, even a lofty tower had to be built one floor at a time before you could add the second and third.
Succeeding in music was the same.
To live while making only the music he wanted, he needed to make a lot of money, and to do that, he had to succeed. But you couldn't achieve success itself when you hadn't even made it to the first letter of the word. So where was the road to success?
‘He needed to set incremental goals.’
Myeongjeon took out a sheet of paper and began to write. What was it called—brainstorming? He poured out every thought that came to mind when he thought of ‘succeeding in music.’ Number one on the album charts. Number one on the 24-hour chart. A concert tour. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A Fender endorsement. Selling a million albums. Number one on Billboard, and so on...
After scribbling on the paper like that, Myeongjeon's hand stopped after he wrote down three words.
What made a good goal?
It had to be realistic, achievable, something that required effort to accomplish, something that would bring a sense of fulfillment once accomplished, and something through which he could grow. Otherwise, he would only waste time chasing an unrealistic goal.
What Myeongjeon had written was exactly that. Realistic and achievable, yet difficult to do without effort. Something perfectly suited to serve as an immediate goal.
‘Holding a solo concert’ was it.
A solo concert.
Generally, this meant a concert held solely by the performer. Of course, a concert with ten attendees could be called a solo concert, as could one with a hundred, so in general, people tended not to recognize it as a ‘solo concert’ unless it drew around one or two thousand people.
But Myeongjeon wasn't aiming for one or two thousand seats. In his view, a show of that size was hard to call a success.
‘Realistically, around ten thousand seats... If it were Jamsil, I could definitely consider the goal achieved.’
One standard for distinguishing a ‘successful musician’ in Japan was whether they had performed at Budokan. Could they be considered a musician of the caliber needed to perform at Budokan? Could they sell it out? Depending on that, one could say the major and minor tiers were divided.
Jamsil didn't have quite that status, but its capacity was similar to Budokan's 11,000 seats. And since Korea had markedly lower concert draw, successfully holding a solo concert at Jamsil would unquestionably make him a ‘successful rock band.’
Myeongjeon tilted his head slightly, then looked at the notebook again. The notebook with ‘Hold a solo concert’ written on it. He tore out the page and taped it beside the bed.
His new goal was to make the day when he could take that down come as soon as possible.
* * *
After finishing the picking, Myeongjeon quietly stared at the guitar strings, still trembling. Since it sounded more natural to let them ring out on their own, he didn't mute them separately.
“Thank you for your hard work!”
Once the sound died down, the PD was applauding through the window outside the recording booth. As soon as he stepped outside, a barrage of praise poured over him.
“Thank you.”
“The guitar recording is completely done! You did an amazing job. Wow~ At first I was really suspicious. I thought Junhong had finally lost his mind.”
“I hear that a lot.”
Myeongjeon answered, tilting his head slightly. The producer laughed cheerfully and applauded. The expressions of the musicians scheduled for the recording sessions after him also looked quite bright. The guitar part had been finished incredibly quickly.
“I'll send the payment to your account. Thanks for your hard work today~”
After several minutes of praise and exchanging business cards, Myeongjeon was finally able to leave the studio. It was already growing dark outside. The sun had still been up when he went in. Even if he finished as quickly as possible, it still took hours, after all.
“Yes, Mom. I'm on my way home now. Should I pick anything up? ...You don't want home-cooked food? No. I just thought it must be tiring for you to cook every day too... No, that's not what I meant. It's not that I don't want to eat your cooking.”
Chatting pointlessly with Hyein over the phone, Myeongjeon boarded a bus. It was about a thirty-minute ride home.
After setting ‘holding a solo concert’ as his goal, Myeongjeon decided to start by saving money. He had a long road ahead. Of course, in blunt terms, he could simply tell Hyein, ‘Mom, give me some money so I can hold a concert,’ and she would surely hand it over while saying, ‘Oh, my daughter~!’ But one couldn't live like that, could one?
That was why Myeongjeon swallowed a little of his pride and asked Junhong for introductions, and the result was the work he was doing now. Not enough session jobs to come pouring in, but enough to be a considerable help.
‘At this pace, I should still be able to save up something like the production costs for an album before the end of the year.’
The first full-length album they would produce once Hyeona returned. They would sell the album, then use it as a basis to tour festivals or otherwise promote themselves, scraping together fame and money at the same time. If they kept repeating that, someday the day when they could hold a solo concert would come.
Thinking that, Myeongjeon looked ahead. The bus went straight after winding through one corner after another. Then his phone rang. An unfamiliar number.
“Hello?”
“Uh... Is this Ha Suyeon's phone?”
“Yes, it is. Who is this...?”
“You don't recognize my voice?”
“...Who are you that I should recognize your voice?”
A crazy bastard calling out of nowhere and asking if he recognized the voice. Myeongjeon tossed out those words in disbelief. The man on the other end burst into laughter. Just as he was about to get annoyed, the other party revealed his identity.
“I'm Kim Cheolyeon from Taylored. How have you been, Student Suyeon?”
“...Ah! Yes. I've been well, thanks to you. Thank you for looking out for me last time.”
What a benefactor to receive a call from. Myeongjeon slightly regretted being so curt and answered the phone. It was nothing much. He was only asking how things were. Questions like, ‘I enjoyed the audition program. So what happened with that?’ and ‘You've been quiet lately. What have you been doing all this time?’
And at the end of those questions, one proposal was waiting.
“Students are on vacation these days, right? Would you be interested in doing a session, Student Suyeon?”
“A session... I am doing those, actually. What did you have in mind? Do you need someone for an album recording?”
“No, no, not that. A live session.”
“A live session?”
Myeongjeon raised the end of his sentence slightly. Why would this man need a live session?
“We're releasing a new album this time, and we're going on music shows and a national tour to promote it. Would you be interested in joining our tour session band as the lead guitarist?”