Chapter 24
“This next act… We have quite a few students joining us from other schools! Yoo Seoha, a second-year student at Suyeong High School; Choi Iseo, a first-year student at Hanseung High School; and Ha Suyeon, a first-year student at Hanseung High School!”
The moment Suyeon was introduced, the auditorium began to buzz. Is that Ha Suyeon? Why is she here…? She does music?—whispers like that.
‘Was this girl famous enough for students from other schools to start buzzing just from hearing her name?’
“And this band consists of Jeong Hyeona from Class 2-2!”
“Now, let me introduce them: Group Sound!”
The usual slightly half-hearted applause and cheers erupted. The volume that had continued while Seoha and Hyeona entered rose a little when Iseo came in… then shot sharply upward when Suyeon entered.
“Suyeon, you’re beautiful!!”
‘What the hell is that guy doing?’
When a deep voice rang out from the audience, the spectators burst into laughter. To shout something like that, he must have been acquainted with ‘Ha Suyeon’… but it was not a voice that remained in her memory at all.
‘Well, there’s no need to pay attention to something like that.’
Myeongjeon gave his head a slight shake, then took his position at center stage. The MC naturally handed him a microphone. It seemed he was supposed to chat for a while until the members finished setting up.
“Uh… hello.”
Cheers erupted. Judging by how most of them were about her looks, it seemed that these days, an appearance like hers was enough to make someone famous throughout the local area.
“It seems quite a few of you recognize me. But I don’t know you very well. As you all know, I lost some of my memory a few months ago after my head exploded while I was riding a kick scooter.”
The atmosphere suddenly fell silent. Only a few awkward coughs could be heard. But Myeongjeon continued speaking without paying it any mind.
“They say people do things they normally wouldn’t when they’re about to die. So after nearly dying once myself, I decided to do something I normally wouldn’t. You all know what it is, right? I’m standing here, after all. Yes, I started making music.”
Myeongjeon lightly plucked his guitar. At the showy movement and sound, the audience let out a “Woooah—!”
“Sorry for the long-winded talk. I hear I wasn’t like this before. Well, teacher, if you got your head blown up like I did, don’t you think you’d change a little too? Anyway…”
Myeongjeon glanced over his shoulder. Everything was set, and the kids were nodding with determined expressions.
Then, shall we begin?
“We’ll begin with the first song.”
Along with a high-pitched clean tone that raised the energy, the cymbals were struck four times. The performance began.
What moved the audience, who had no idea what song it was, was the violent low end of the drums and bass. The low frequencies, boosted as much as the school auditorium could handle, shook everything from the floor to the ceiling.
They didn’t know what song it was, but it was good.
Myeongjeon didn’t really know it that well either.
But did a song have to be familiar for people to enjoy it? Wasn’t it all right if they didn’t know it?
Blank, vacant eyes stared up at the stage.
Not knowing what was happening, exposed to music they were hearing for the first time in their lives… frozen because they still hadn’t decided whether the song was good or bad.
The children looking at him were letting the opinions of those around them decide whether music was good or bad.
Vacantly, they withheld judgment.
Admit it.
Accept the cries from within yourselves.
I hope you’ll admit that the performance before your eyes is good.
If you can’t do that,
then I’ll help you do it.
During the brief moment when the bass rested, Iseo checked the audience’s condition.
‘They look like their souls have been sucked out.’
It might have been only natural. Suyeon had instructed them to boost the low end enough to cause tinnitus the next day. The bass and drums, cranked up accordingly, were driving the audience into a kind of trance.
‘And mine, too.’
Thinking that, Iseo pulled the strings again.
Her worries had already disappeared.
Her worries about making mistakes during the performance, which had been gnawing away at the depths of her heart, had vanished, like a raccoon washing cotton candy.
Only euphoria filled the space left behind.
The fact that the kids before her didn’t know the song. The fact that they couldn’t react. At first, she’d been worried, but now she felt it didn’t matter anymore.
I’m performing, so what does any of that matter? They’re nothing more than the audience. I’m the owner of this stage.
One sharp sound brought Iseo’s thoughts to a halt.
One became two,
two became three,
three became four, four became six, seven, and nine. And little by little, they grew larger, little by little.
The faint applause, gradually growing in volume, slowly gained strength and rang throughout the auditorium.
The children knew nothing about the song, but even so… they had chosen the only way to make the stage understand what they were saying.
In response to that reaction, the bass began to ride the rhythm a little more.
In response to that reaction, the drums grew a little more intense.
In response to that reaction, the keyboard became a little more meticulous.
A performance racing to the limits they had practiced.
They burned through their stamina, playing their instruments as though they would live only for today and die afterward.
The fierce performance continued.
‘Amazing.’
That was what most of the people here were thinking. Most of them still didn’t know whose music this was, what it meant, or what language it was in.
Some of those who did know sent cynical looks her way…
But none of that mattered in the slightest to most of the students. Why should it? If they liked the song they were hearing right now and enjoyed the performance before their eyes, that was all that mattered.
The third and final song was heading toward its climax.
The applause, unable to keep up with the fierce tempo, had shifted into a two-beat rhythm. Some strange male students swayed their heads in place, while others, unable to contain themselves, stood up and danced along.
The one thing they had in common was that they were all enjoying themselves.
Spitting out the final lyrics, Myeongjeon prepared for his guitar solo. A solo somewhat longer than the original, one that could draw enough reaction from the audience.
Taking one step at a time down from the stage, Myeongjeon tore into the strings flamboyantly.
As he drew closer and closer to the audience, as the performance grew more and more intense, as the distance between them narrowed, the cheers rose higher and higher.
The tempo had already gone beyond the level of rapid-fire playing. It was a speed he had attempted only a handful of times even in his previous life. As he displayed such playing, Myeongjeon slowly raised the neck, then…
Together with the drums, bass, keyboard, and the fireworks waiting in the wings…
With a thunderous boom, he brought lightning crashing down into the auditorium.
* * *
As soon as the performance ended, Myeongjeon quickly hid backstage. Far too many people were visibly waiting to grab hold of him.
Since the other two also evacuated quickly, the only one left as the sacrificial lamb for the exhilarated audience was Jeong Hyeona.
Leaving Hyeona behind as she slowly lost her mind while hearing things like, “When did you learn to do this?!,” “Holy shit, that was awesome!!,” and “What the hell, Jeong Hyeona…!” Myeongjeon and the other two left the gymnasium.
“That was so much fun.”
“It really is fun to play in front of people again after so long.”
Both Iseo, performing for the first time, and Seoha, who had performed many times before, seemed at a loss over how much fun the performance had been.
Despite being exhausted from all the hardships they had endured, their faces were filled with relief that the performance was finally over—and anticipation at the thought of doing it one more time.
“Is it okay to leave Hyeona unnie like that?”
“She’s at her own school, so she’ll probably be fine.”
“I… guess so?”
It was a rather halfhearted conversation.
But what else could they do? If they went back into the gymnasium to bring Hyeona out, it was painfully obvious what kind of fate awaited them.
They decided to sacrifice one of their number.
“We’ll do another performance… right?”
“Another performance?”
“We’re not going to end things here, are we?”
At Iseo’s question, Myeongjeon stopped walking with his guitar slung over his shoulder. Well, another performance…
Seeing Suyeon standing there without saying anything, Iseo felt a little uneasy.
Even if all four of them had worked as one, it was Suyeon who had ultimately created today’s performance. If the guitarist had been someone other than Suyeon, it would have been difficult to draw this much of a response.
The other three had been too busy trying to play what they had practiced. There was nothing wrong with that. At band performances, it was common to fail to show even a quarter of what one had practiced. For a beginner band, managing to show something beyond what they had practiced, even for a moment, was surely a triumph.
But Suyeon was different.
Had Suyeon even needed to practice in the first place? It was difficult to call it merely ‘something beyond what she had practiced’; she filled out the lacking sound by showing them things she had never shown before. And the parts that even that couldn’t fill, she buried beneath such an overwhelming atmosphere that no one could get a word out.
Therefore, if Suyeon were not there…
“Another performance? Well, when should we do it?”
Myeongjeon tilted his head slightly before opening his mouth. This performance had been quite an enjoyable experience for Myeongjeon as well. It had definitely felt different from the performances he had participated in as a session guitarist.
‘So all those other guitarists, singers—in fact, all those musicians…’
They’d been keeping something this wonderful all to themselves?
Myeongjeon briefly clenched and unclenched his hand. The sensation of controlling, with a single hand, an audience that had stood there blankly, not knowing what would happen next, the instant he stepped onto the stage.
That had been far more exhilarating than he’d expected.
He might get addicted to it.
No, he wanted to get addicted to it, but…
There were some unsatisfactory aspects.
Especially in terms of sound.
“We should probably do it soon.”
At Myeongjeon’s low murmur, Iseo’s expression brightened.
“What song this time?”
“Well, it could be an original. At the very least, I don’t think we’ll do the songs we just played… It might take a little while.”
“Why?”
The question burst out before she could stop herself. Myeongjeon glanced briefly at Iseo’s face, then turned his head away again.
“There are things I need to buy.”
‘I wasn’t completely satisfied.’
To satisfy himself, he had to reclaim his guitar tone… not completely, but at least to some extent.