Chapter 35
“Uh, with only a few days of vacation left…”
Hyuna muttered. At that, Myeongjeon realized that high school students’ vacations were shorter than he’d thought. The kids he had taught were usually college students, whose winter breaks lasted two months or more. But high school students’ winter break was only about a month…
“Come to think of it, that is a pretty tight schedule. For some reason, I thought February was part of winter vacation too.”
“That’s what college students always say, isn’t it? ‘I want to get to college already. I’d be able to have so much fun…’”
Who knew. Myeongjeon thought of the college students he had taught. They seemed to have their own troubles too…
But telling them that probably wouldn’t hit home. To begin with, ‘Ha Suyeon’ had been a high school student too.
In any case, it certainly seemed they needed to adjust the schedule. The original songs were going to be guitar-heavy, and since the kids would be participating in the songwriting, they should be easier to play as a band than the covers, but…
That didn’t mean they were something they could phone in. They would absolutely need a certain amount of practice.
“Then for now, let’s aim for two original songs and one cover. We’ll do the other one if we can make room for it after adjusting the schedule. As for practicing the original songs, we’ll start as soon as the arrangements are finished…
I’ll take care of most of the arrangements, and you can look them over and give me your opinions during the finishing work… Let’s take a few days off, then get back to practice. Live-club auditions aren’t usually that strict, so we can take practice a little easy. There are some tough ones, but plenty that aren’t, too…”
The kids sighed in relief at Myeongjeon’s words. He did wonder whether he was pushing the young ones too hard, but…
Hadn’t this been their choice? He had clearly given them the opportunity to choose. They were the ones who had chosen. It wasn’t as if anyone had held a knife to their throats and threatened them, like one of those trendy MZ-generation catchphrases.
Still, it was true that the schedule was demanding.
There was a huge difference between Myeongjeon, who was moving forward with his future already determined based on the outcome of having lived through it once, and the other three, who had never lived it in advance and hadn’t lived very long at all.
‘I should be considerate.’
And that would be the direction they enjoyed more, too. So what if they missed the application deadline for the grant program or an audition? So what if they failed? Their musical ability wouldn’t disappear. They could apply elsewhere if they failed, and go on if they succeeded.
As long as he was leading this band, its future success was assured.
* * *
Iseo walked up the subway stairs. Standing in front of the station entrance was someone whose face she had been seeing a lot lately. Suyeon was wearing a slightly oversized black belted coat with a guitar case slung over her shoulder, her trademark expressionless face in place as she stared blankly into the distance.
“I’m here.”
“Huh? Oh, okay.”
Suyeon immediately started walking toward Nakwon. The atmosphere felt awkward for some reason, so Iseo hurriedly threw out something to talk about.
“How’s it going lately?”
“…How’s what going?”
“Uh… the apologies, I guess?”
Oh, what am I saying? Iseo blurted it out without thinking and immediately regretted it.
“Hmm… You could say it’s going fairly well, or you could say it isn’t.”
But Suyeon merely muttered that without showing any particular displeasure.
“Are there people who accept them?”
“Quite a few have readily accepted them, saying it was nothing serious. But ultimately, with something like this, the victim’s feelings are what matter most… No, let’s stop talking about this here.”
Suyeon said that, twisting a strand of hair around her finger. As the atmosphere grew a little gloomier, Iseo began desperately rummaging through her mind for something to say.
“Oh, you’re buying the effects pedal today! Are you really going to buy it for the full two million won? Aren’t you going to try to get the price down?”
“Hmm…”
Myeongjeon thought about it for a moment when he heard that. He had intended to bargain. No matter how he looked at it, two million won seemed expensive.
But his thought that perhaps 1.8 million won would be enough shifted slightly because of Iseo. He began thinking that maybe he should bargain properly.
A Civil War Big Muff could be bought on Reverb for around a thousand dollars. Even if it was equipment he had once used, it wasn’t worth as much as two million won… The shop owner probably knew that too.
“I should try to get the price down.”
Myeongjeon said that and fell into thought. Come to think of it, he was a little annoyed with that fellow too.
It was definitely his equipment, and whoever had found it and sold it in the first place had probably let it go for pennies. Then it had passed from hand to hand until it ended up there…
Wasn’t there something a little unconscionable about selling someone else’s keepsake for two million won?
“How much do you think we can get him to knock off?”
“Hmm…”
Myeongjeon briefly recalled the history of that effects pedal. After buying that Big Muff, he had once worked on its capacitors and transistors.
“I think we can get him to lower it quite a bit.”
“It hasn’t been sold yet, right?”
“Of course not~ Lots of people have asked about it. But I told them I already had a prior commitment—that someone was going to buy it.”
Iseo looked at Suyeon. This was the shop they had visited a few months ago when they first met—or, to be precise, not the first time they had met. In that shop, Suyeon was receiving the effects pedal she had seen back then from the owner.
“It’s hard to find effects pedals like this. There’s a reason vintage gear is called vintage. Someone like me is the only reason you can get your hands on one.”
The shop owner continued rattling off explanations, but Suyeon paid him no heed and examined the effects pedal.
“Can I open it?”
“What? No! How do I know you won’t break it?”
“Then how do you know this isn’t just an ordinary Big Muff with a Civil War lid on it?”
The shop owner fell silent at that. Watching Suyeon stare coldly at him, Iseo thought,
‘But can you really tell just by opening it?’
But she must have had some way to know, or she wouldn’t have asked to open it like that. Iseo decided to simply keep quiet. There had to be some method, anyway.
“I can let you play it.”
“No, playing it is the bare minimum. Say I bought this for two million won. But if I opened it later and found out it wasn’t a Civil War Big Muff but some other product, then I’d have been basically scammed, wouldn’t I?”
“My, this young lady is awfully picky. If the shop owner says it’s genuine, then it’s genuine. Why keep suspecting him?”
“If it were ten or twenty thousand won, or even a hundred or two hundred thousand, maybe. But this is a two-million-won item.”
“Ha… Just trust me, trust me. I sell instruments and effects pedals, and I’m a professional. Do you think I’d sell a counterfeit? I’ve been doing business here in Nakwon for thirty years, and not a single person has ever come to me saying I sold them a fake. I check, inspect, and sell everything myself.”
Watching the slightly heated verbal exchange, Iseo wondered whether she should just leave them to it. The owner of the shop next door was even poking his head out to watch.
“You check and inspect everything before selling it?”
“That’s right. I told you, I checked it all.”
“Then what will you do if it isn’t?”
At Suyeon’s provocative tone, the shop owner’s face hardened instantly. But Suyeon paid no attention and continued speaking.
“Since you said you checked it, then you won’t mind if I open it, will you?”
“No… I mean, can you even tell by opening it? You don’t know anything about… Do you even know what a circuit is?”
“Of course I do. That’s why I’m saying this. Don’t be like that, sir. Let me open it and take a look. If there’s nothing wrong with it, I’ll pay you two million won in cash right now and buy it here.”
Leaving the owner muttering as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, Suyeon took an envelope from her inner pocket and slapped it down on the table.
“But if I open it and find something wrong, you’ll take responsibility.”
“…What responsibility am I supposed to take? I can just not sell it…”
“But you said you inspect everything before selling it. Didn’t you say that yourself? If there’s something wrong even though you inspected it, shouldn’t you take responsibility?”
“She’s right. That’s exactly right.”
At Suyeon’s words, voices suddenly came from outside the shop. Two men dressed like the owners of neighboring shops had poked their heads in.
“Boss Park, if you’ve got nothing to do, just go inside.”
“No, the young lady’s right. You said you inspect it yourself, didn’t you? Then you should take responsibility.”
The increasingly heated argument ended about five minutes later. After trading words back and forth, the owner nodded as though they had reached some kind of agreement and handed over a screwdriver.
“If this breaks, it’s your fault, miss.”
“Don’t worry.”
After saying that, Suyeon placed the screwdriver against the effects pedal and began turning it.
“Can you tell by looking at it?”
“Of course I can. That’s why I’m opening it.”
Unlike the self-assured Suyeon, Iseo was a little nervous.
Can she really tell this sort of thing? Well, as someone who handled instruments, maybe she did know about this kind of thing. Meanwhile, the effects pedal was opened. Suyeon stared at something intently, then nodded with a faint smile and said to the owner,
“As I thought, there are signs it’s been worked on. This isn’t an original Big Muff.”
“What? Miss, what’s that baseless nonsense? You opened it, found nothing wrong, and now you’re just looking for a fault?”
Hearing Suyeon’s claim, the shop owner’s face flushed. But Suyeon calmly pointed to one side of the circuit and said,
“Look here. The capacitor in a Civil War Big Muff should be 1,000 pF. But this value is different. It says 470 pF right here.”
“What?”
The owner held the circuit and began squinting at it. Suyeon continued,
“And there are signs the transistors were replaced too. It’s not an original Big Muff, so why are you charging two million won for it? Are you a scammer, old man?”
“Here, have a drink.”
“Thanks~”
Myeongjeon handed Iseo a warm canned coffee. She opened the can and drank the coffee, blowing on it between sips.
“Did you already know there was something wrong with it?”
“Not exactly… Usually, with vintage gear that old, there are signs of modification when you open it up. When I looked it over earlier, I saw signs that it had been opened too.”
Of course, those were the traces he had left. He had owned the effects pedal ever since he bought it twenty years ago. He had also been the one to modify it for its tone.
‘I do feel a little sorry for him, but this is also the result of his own actions.’
Weren’t merchants generally like that? “I checked everything,” “I inspected it all,” and so on… If he hadn’t said those things, they wouldn’t have gotten tangled up so badly.
“So you’re not going to post this shop online?”
“Well, I did make a promise.”
Myeongjeon opened his can and took a sip of coffee. With the other shop owners watching, the man had been unable to do anything except say, “I’ll just give it to you…” and beg them not to post it online.
It had annoyed Myeongjeon that the man had sold his keepsake(?) as stolen goods… but Myeongjeon was also guilty of deliberately provoking and tricking the owner despite knowing the item was defective, so he decided to let things end there. If the man had any sense, he wouldn’t do something like that again.
“A story like this would get quite a lot of views if we put it on YouTube…”
But that resolve began to waver a little at Iseo’s quiet murmur. Quite a lot of views?
“…How many, exactly?”
“Huh?? Well… If we catch the right wave and tell the story well, couldn’t we get a pretty good number of views?”
Iseo suggested they might even aim for a hundred or two hundred thousand views. But Myeongjeon… decided not to do that.
“If that’s true, let’s wait until the channel is a little bigger than it is now.”
“…So you’re not saying we shouldn’t do it?”
“Why wouldn’t we? In the end, he’s the one who did wrong. I didn’t really do anything wrong, did I?”
Well, couldn’t they just tell the story without revealing which shop had done it? Myeongjeon thought there wouldn’t be any particular problem if they did that.
“Come to think of it, how’s your channel doing these days, Suyeon? Your YouTube channel.”
“My channel?”
Myeongjeon opened YouTube and checked the channel. It had gained quite a few subscribers, reaching around ten thousand… Its views had risen considerably too, and it was a channel that had been approved for monetization.
“Lately, the views on my original song have suddenly shot up. So my subscriber count has gone up a lot too.”
Myeongjeon showed Iseo the state of his channel. The second original song had views that were strikingly different from those of the channel’s other videos.
It was a song he had made one night when he was bored, without expecting many views at all since he had simply followed his impulses and slapped together the MIDI. Yet for some reason, its view count was shooting up.
“Huh…? I feel like I’ve heard this song somewhere before…”
After seeing the screen Myeongjeon showed her, Iseo fiddled with her phone and then thrust the screen toward him.
On it was a YouTube video. It had 600,000 views and was titled [[𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭] Guitar Instrumentals to Listen to on a Dark Winter Night While Gazing at the Milky Way in the Night Sky].
“Could the song in this video be yours, Suyeon?”