YouTube

He was an ordinary office worker.

The only unusual thing about him was that he lived near Hongdae.

Today, too, his boss had battered his mental state, and all he could think about was getting home quickly, getting drunk on beer, and sleeping.

Hongdae at this hour was a very familiar sight to him: buskers gathered in groups, desperately appealing to passersby to look their way at least once.

What made them so desperate? Was being noticed really that enjoyable? He had no idea.

His aimless walk came to a temporary stop at a spot where people had gathered in such numbers that they were starting to annoy him.

Why were there so many people? Was someone performing magic, or had some famous dance crew come?

Since he couldn't hear anyone rambling on and explaining anything, perhaps it wasn't either of those.

Drawn by inexplicable curiosity, he approached the crowd watching the busking performance. When he subtly made his way through the strangely silent people,

he saw a high school girl playing guitar.

She wasn't wearing a tie, her sleeves were rolled up, and her pants were pulled up slightly. Her long hair fell softly along her forehead. Her expressionless face seemed to show how intently she was focused on playing.

He didn't know what song it was. The rhythm and lyrics were unfamiliar, something he had never heard before. The brief guitar solo had a faintly sorrowful feeling to it.

He had never heard a country song before, but was this what they felt like? Wasn't she a little too young to be singing something like that?

As he wondered about that, the song came to an end with a third guitar solo accompanied by an addictive sound.

It wasn't an extraordinarily special song, nor was it so moving that he would call it a masterpiece. It was an unfamiliar genre to him, after all.

Yet for some reason, he suddenly wanted to go home and look up the song so he could listen to it again. He regretted not recording it from the beginning.

“That was All Your Love by John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. Thank you.”

After the applause died down, the high school girl quietly murmured the song title. He couldn't make out the singer's name, but at least the song was called All Your Love.

While opening KakaoTalk to make a note on his phone, the next song began.

And he forgot to make the note.

A dreamy synth sound played from the speaker.

Could this be what a sound echoing wistfully from beyond a distant mountain range would be like?

Or perhaps it was like the sound of something that had sunk into an emerald sea in some bygone age.

But the sound didn't last long. Cymbals and synth entered at the same time, building the mood.

Then came the guitar.

The clean tone wasn't flashy. It simply rang out. Sometimes it rose coolly enough to pierce his ears, and sometimes it descended to earth and trudged along the ground.

Yet it wasn't flat.

It rose and fell, wavered, and returned. The flow never broke; it twisted and surged like a river.

He closed his eyes.

All he was doing was sitting on the street and listening to sound leaking from a twelve-inch cabinet speaker.

Yet the moment he closed his eyes, he felt as though he had been transported to a massive concert hall. The guitar's tone poured out a sense of vastness.

It felt as if he were sitting alone in the middle of the venue, receiving the echoes of the sound as they struck his skin, enjoying a concert meant only for him.

The sound grew more intense as it approached the latter half. The drums came in, and the melody became increasingly varied and fierce.

He wondered what expression the guitarist was wearing.

What did it feel like? What kind of person played a song like this? Was she marveling at her own talent? Was she lost in the music?

But the girl played nothing but the guitar with an expressionless face. It was as if this was nothing more than a job to her. Her expression was as firm and unyielding as that of a carpenter driving in nails.

Eventually, it came to an end.

The guitar, having poured out everything, rang on, trailing its final note.

The applause was quiet, but it wasn't merely formal. The performance they had just heard had simply left them unable to express such intense emotions.

“Thank you.”

Myeongjeon checked the guitar for a moment. Playing while using the tremolo arm so violently often threw the tuning off. Sure enough, he found a slight discrepancy and made a small adjustment.

There were about twenty minutes left in the scheduled performance, but there was no reason to continue, so Myeongjeon bowed to the audience. Applause rang out once more. Some people left after saying they had enjoyed it, while others came over to ask for autographs.

“Is our Suyeon a genius? You haven't been playing guitar for very long, have you?”

In the midst of that, the voice he heard beside him belonged to ‘Mom.’ Instead of answering, he smiled faintly. It was an impossible question to answer anyway, so it was better to brush it off.

“I guess I have some talent.”

“Even I can tell, and I'm your mom. What should we do? If Suyeon becomes a rock star, should I quit my job and just support you?”

There would be no such future. Becoming a rock star in Korea was not easy.

But Myeongjeon had enough sense not to bring up a story so devoid of dreams and hope. What would that make him, anyway? It would be no different from declaring that he planned to bleed his parents dry.

Of course, it was different. There was at least a difference between someone who declared he intended to bleed his parents dry and then did it, and someone who did it without saying so.

“Could you help me pack up?”

“Yeah. Sure. Let's pack up together.”

After roughly seeing the people off, Myeongjeon packed up the equipment with Ms. Lee Hye-in. A camera for recording YouTube videos, a cabinet speaker, an amp, a power bank, effects pedals, a laptop, a guitar, and so on. The gear alone filled two carts.

‘This is genuinely too much stuff to move without asking for help.’

In his previous life, he would have simply driven all this busking gear away by himself. Now he couldn't drive, and a motorcycle was out of the question. It was too much to load into a taxi, too.

There was also a way to avoid needing help by using a rental amp. He had rented and used equipment like that during his second busking performance, after all.

But although the audience hadn't seemed to notice much difference, Myeongjeon hadn't found a single satisfying aspect, from the output power to the sound itself.

So in the end, he had no choice but to ask ‘Mom.’ ‘Mom’ cheerfully carried the gear while saying things like, “My daughter is putting on a show? How nice~” but Myeongjeon felt a little awkward about it.

‘At my age, I'm asking other people for help… And that person is much younger than me, too. What are you doing, Myeongjeon?’

A few days ago, the person who had extorted a fortune of several million won from someone much younger might have been Seo Myeongjeon rather than Kim Myeongjeon, but regardless, that was what Myeongjeon thought.

* * *

If someone asked what was troubling Myeongjeon at present, he could list the Ukraine–Russia war, climate change, declining teacher authority, school violence, and the economic recession.

That was because Myeongjeon was an intellectual (self-proclaimed) who took an interest in society (reading daily newspaper articles) and actively participated in it (fighting in the comments).

But what tormented Myeongjeon the most was… unfortunately, for a self-proclaimed intellectual, not some grand narrative, but a very trivial matter concerning him personally.

‘Why is this happening?’

The very first video Myeongjeon had appeared in had already surpassed two million views. People were saying things like a new rock star had appeared for the first time in ages. It hadn't caused a major stir online, but the view count was high.

The second video featuring Myeongjeon was the same. It had been filmed without him even realizing when, and its views had already surpassed four hundred thousand. It had even received a popular-video badge.

But…

[HSY's Guitar Heaven]

@HSYguitar 2 subscribers 3 videos

‘Why is my channel like this?’

As far as Myeongjeon was concerned, the situation was impossible to understand. No, even if that other channel had many subscribers and this one had few… wasn't the video he had recorded the original?

On top of that, Myeongjeon had put a fair amount of effort into making his videos. He had added tags so people could find them on their own, written the text a little larger, and listed the song titles in various places. He had even decorated everything in pretty, vivid colors.

[I covered Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Child. #JimiHendrix #Guitar #Epic #Legend #MZ #Busking #PsychedelicRock]

5 views / 1 day ago

[I covered Eric Clapton's I Shot the Sheriff. #EricClapton #Guitar #Epic #Legend #MZ #Busking #BobMarley #Cover]

0 views / 1 day ago

And yet, this was the situation: nobody watched them.

Of course, the fact that nobody watched his channel wasn't a serious blow to Myeongjeon. He had two purposes for busking: finding material to upload to YouTube and promoting himself as a session musician.

If his performances were uploaded to someone else's YouTube channel and seen by lots of people, his second purpose was fulfilled regardless. In fact, when he saw his performance videos circulating on sites like Mule and Cuonet (cuonet), he could feel his recognition rising in real time.

Quite apart from that, though, he couldn't help feeling annoyed.

‘Shouldn't people be watching the original?’

Myeongjeon considered sending a complaint email, but decided against it because he wondered whether the channel might take the video down. Whatever their intentions, they were promoting ‘Ha Suyeon,’ after all.

Thinking that he would have the video taken down once the channel grew a little larger, Myeongjeon turned his attention back to his own channel, whose views showed no sign of increasing.

He suddenly wondered whether he should follow the advice the kids at school had given him.

The thumbnail he had chosen showed the song title, performance venue, and time in large text, making it immediately clear what kind of video it was.

But if that didn't work… The exact opposite would be to put ‘Ha Suyeon’s’ face and an image of her playing guitar in the thumbnail, as Dain had suggested, and give it a provocative title. He could use ‘Ha Suyeon’s’ feminine appearance as bait to sell the video's content.

Should he do that?

‘I don't want to go that far…’

Myeongjeon lightly twisted a lock of hair. If he used ‘Ha Suyeon’s’ looks, he could probably bring in plenty of views.

But he had been born a man… Of course, his current form wasn't male, but regardless, he didn't want to do that. He could live with getting no views. How important could it really be…?