Chapter 37
Myeongjeon checked his email once more. The subject line read [Proposal for a Collaboration with White Room on YouTube].
The email began with [Hello, White Room. My name is Im Junhong, a session guitarist who runs [Guitar Channel for Ordinary People | Guitar for Normal People].]. The contents were…
[Hey, it's me. You play guitar pretty well. I have over 100,000 subscribers. I can promote you. I get views, and you get publicity, so isn't that a win-win? Please make the wise decision.]
That was more or less what it boiled down to.
Myeongjeon tilted his head slightly. The name Im Junhong sounded familiar, but…
Ah. It seemed to be the name of the brat he'd met in the early 2000s, the one who had swaggered around boasting that he'd graduated from some arts college. He'd said he had been introduced by so-and-so, and that he was a genius.
‘Come to think of it, that kid came to me a few years ago, too.’
One day, he had suddenly shown up drunk and gone on a drunken tirade about hitting some kind of wall and having no potential for improvement, or something like that.
At the time, Myeongjeon had been living in the countryside in a house he'd built, doing nothing but playing guitar. Since he had some spare room, he remembered telling the boy to stay for a few days and teaching him guitar. After the boy left, Myeongjeon had only heard from him through letters and the like.
Myeongjeon raised and lowered his hands over the keyboard several times. He had asked Ms. Lee Hyein earlier, “Would it be all right if I went to something like this?” and received her permission, so all he had to do was reply, but…
He remembered some of the comments he had received recently on the community and YouTube: [No fucking way, she's a high school girl, so why the hell do her posts sound like some fucking old fossil lol], [She's so pure when she opens her mouth, but something about what she writes smells like an old schoolmaster ㅠㅠㅠㅠ].
‘Does it really feel that mismatched?’
Without thinking too hard about it, he tried drafting a reply.
[Hello.
The weather has been extremely cold lately. I hope you are taking good care of your health.
I am Ha Suyeon, the proprietor of the White Room YouTube channel.
First, I would like to express my deepest gratitude for your reply. After carefully considering the proposal sent by your channel…]
‘Seems fine.’
No matter how he looked at it, he couldn't find anything particularly wrong. What was the problem? Wasn't this how people normally wrote?
After browsing the internet for a while, Myeongjeon searched [How High School Girls Write These Days], but naturally, nothing like that came up. He thought for a moment, then tried looking at it from a different angle. Ha Suyeon was a high school girl to begin with, so weren't her current “friends” high school girls too?
He recalled the way one of his friends wrote online and tried composing the message that way.
“Suyeon~ What are you doing?”
“Oh, I'm just writing an email. I'm going to reply to that thing from earlier.”
“Really? Do you know how to write a business email, sweetheart? Should Mom teach you?”
Hyein gently hugged Suyeon from behind and looked at the monitor. The email read…
[OMG;;;Hello~~ I.am.youtuber.white.room. Thankyouthankyou~ so much for the proposal. I've thought about it a lot;; and I think I should accept it.;;…]
Hyein instantly had question marks floating over her head. What was this? Some incomprehensible… something. Letters whose errors she couldn't even begin to identify had been scattered all over the monitor.
“Suyeon. This is…”
“Does it look a little like something a high school girl would write?”
Suyeon's face as she turned to Hyein was full of anticipation. She looked genuinely pleased with having written something that seemed a little like a high school girl. At that expression, Hyein couldn't bring herself to tell her that it didn't…
But this was too much, no matter how she looked at it.
“Not at all.”
“What?”
“Suyeon. It doesn't look remotely like something a high school girl would write, and you shouldn't send a reply like this in the first place.”
“Business emails have clear conventions. You start with a greeting…” Hyein began explaining. Myeongjeon felt deeply aggrieved. All he had done was try to write in a way appropriate to her age, so why did he have to listen to this…
* * *
[“I'm still searching for you, the you from that day we never got to meet…”]
Myeongjeon listened to music with his AirPods Max on. It was a song he had composed, and Iseo had volunteered to write the lyrics for. The lyrics were… fairly decent, he thought. They fit snugly with the rhythm he had created, too.
‘Come to think of it, Iseo can sing pretty well, too.’
Until now, Myeongjeon himself had handled vocals in the band. There was no particular reason for it; he was simply the only one who could play an instrument and sing at the same time.
But lately, Iseo's skills had improved by leaps and bounds. Her vocals weren't bad either. She wasn't an amazingly skilled singer, but her voice had character… a timbre distinctly different from Ha Suyeon's.
At this level, perhaps he could let her handle the vocals. He could keep doing it himself, but Myeongjeon saw no particular reason to. He had never especially liked singing in the first place. He couldn't focus on the guitar when he did.
‘For now, I should at least have her try backing vocals.’
Thinking that, Myeongjeon checked the practice videos the kids had sent him. None of them was lagging behind in progress or amount of practice; all of them were steadily keeping up. It looked like they would have no trouble sticking to the schedule they had set earlier.
“So, how's the band coming along?”
The question was thrown at Myeongjeon as he took off his headphones. Lee Hyein was looking at him through the rearview mirror.
“Well, it's… coming along pretty well, I suppose.”
Myeongjeon answered that way. At his words, “Mom” smiled brightly. Myeongjeon had thought she didn't need to come along for something like this, but… technically, Ha Suyeon was a minor. So he couldn't openly object when Hyein said she would come with him.
“If you need anything, tell Mom anytime. I'll give you all the support you need. You know Mom makes lots of money, right? It's all so you can do whatever you want, Suyeon.”
“Mom, you're already helping me a lot. Too much, really.”
They were splitting the expenses as much as possible, but… the costs of running a band were still considerable. And most of that money came from Ms. Lee Hyein's wallet.
Myeongjeon had a conscience, so he had intended to cover the band's operating expenses by working himself, but… Ms. Lee Hyein wouldn't hear of it. She had said something about it being “what a parent is supposed to do,” or something like that.
“Really?”
Hyein grinned and turned her eyes back to the road. Myeongjeon could only wonder what Ha Suyeon had disliked so much about this woman that she had treated her so outrageously.
* * *
“Hello, I'm Im Junhong… Might I ask if this is the person?”
“No, I'm this girl's mother. My name is Lee Hyein.”
“Oh my, you're so young and beautiful that I mistook you for her. You really surprised me~ Ahaha.”
They exchanged the usual pleasantries. But even to Myeongjeon's eyes, it was clear that Mr. Im's compliment was sincere. And no wonder—Ms. Lee Hyein was undeniably beautiful. If someone didn't know her, they could easily believe she was in her late twenties.
“I'm Ha Suyeon.”
Myeongjeon said that and held out his hand. Junhong hesitated slightly before accepting the handshake.
‘She did say she was coming with her mother… She really is a minor, isn't she?’
The mother was wearing a black suit with a slight navy tint. The daughter wore an unusual-looking black knit top, black slacks, and a guitar on her back. Since they were both wearing matching coats, perhaps they had coordinated their outfits.
Seeing that both of them were remarkably beautiful, Junhong thought their husband must be a very lucky man and led them inside. It was his usual practice room, studio, workspace, recording room, filming room, and… well, some sort of multipurpose space.
“Please sit over there.”
“Thank you.”
Once the two of them sat on the sofa, the editor brought them coffee. Watching them take small sips, Junhong opened his mouth.
“I didn't go into much detail in the email… but this is the kind of work I do.”
Myeongjeon accepted the business card Junhong held out. It read [Session Guitarist | Im Junhong]. On the back were several songs that could be considered his representative works.
‘Did this kid record this one too? He's done quite a lot. This is a song I was once approached about, and he was the one who played on it.’
Myeongjeon glanced at Junhong's face. He wore an expression of subtle anticipation. Myeongjeon didn't particularly react to it.
“Wow, you recorded Lee Myeong-heon's [To You], Mr. Im?”
“Oh, yes. I helped out a little. I just played some guitar… Ahahaha!”
The reaction came from beside him instead. Perhaps it was a song Hyein knew. It had been fairly famous, after all. Myeongjeon lightly twisted a lock of hair and put the business card in his wallet. Meanwhile, the two of them continued chatting.
“Anyway, regarding the broadcast… there won't be any particular changes to the revenue or content from what we discussed earlier. Here's the script for now.”
Junhong slid several sheets of paper over from the side. Did a YouTube broadcast really need a script? Was he planning to direct everything down to the smallest detail? But when Myeongjeon looked at it, the content wasn't particularly detailed.
It merely said that they planned to record a live broadcast and upload it to YouTube, along with notes on what they would discuss at certain points in the stream. There were several pages outlining the general flow of the broadcast, its overall direction, and things Junhong particularly wanted her to mention.
“Also… I'm an endorser for a certain brand, so I'd like you to play this guitar at least once during the broadcast. Would that be possible?”
As he spoke, Junhong held out a guitar. It was from a famous brand and had a remarkably refined appearance. Myeongjeon accepted it and gave it a quick once-over. The intonation was spot-on, and there wasn't a single obvious problem. So it really was a high-end guitar.
“It's a good guitar.”
“Right? I did customize a few things on it, but that company makes excellent guitars to begin with. Anyway, if it's possible…”
“I think that should be possible. I'm not particularly picky about guitars.”
Myeongjeon did like Fenders, but he wasn't the sort of person who went around declaring, “If it's not a Fender, I won't play it!” like Yngwie Malmsteen.
Even before his death, Myeongjeon's home had held two or three high-end guitars each from makers like James Tyler, Suhr, Tom Anderson, Don Grosh, and Michael Tuttle… Besides, a session guitarist couldn't afford to be picky about guitars. The person paying was king.
“Uh… then perhaps, could I see the student's guitar?
“Of course.”
Myeongjeon took the guitar out of the case he had set down. His dazzling black guitar, the Black Strat, emerged. From the corner of his eye, Myeongjeon noticed a slight change in Junhong's expression, which had looked somewhat bored despite all his talk.
“Oh… is this a Black Strat?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Is this a famous guitar?”
Junhong asked as he accepted the guitar, and Myeongjeon answered. Then Hyein asked,
“It's a very famous guitar. You probably don't know who David Gilmour is… Anyway, you can think of it as an exact replica of a guitar played by an incredible guitarist. The quality is quite good, too… But wasn't this bought for you by your mother?”
“No, I didn't specifically choose and buy this guitar for her. She said she needed money to buy a guitar, so I gave her about two million won. Then one day, she suddenly came home with this.”
At Hyein's answer, Junhong looked puzzled.
“…Two million won? You couldn't possibly buy this with that…”
Hearing Junhong mutter that, Myeongjeon sensed that the atmosphere was taking a strange turn.
‘Why the hell did this guy suddenly bring a guitar out of nowhere and start making a fuss like this? It's not as if he stole it, so I suppose it doesn't matter, but…’
Myeongjeon shifted his eyes around, feeling a little wronged. Junhong was wearing a puzzled expression, while Hyein simply smiled innocently, unaware of how the situation was unfolding.
Then Junhong stared at the guitar a little longer before suddenly jerking his head up.
“This is… Myeongjeon's guitar…? How does a student have this…?”