Chapter 56
The studio’s interior was entirely white. White chairs, white furniture, white walls. The only thing that stood out was the purple-toned lighting—a style of interior design that had become popular recently.
The sound equipment was middling, but everything else was lacking. There were only a few chairs (because they supposedly ruined the interior), few amenities nearby, and poor transportation. There were also only a few instruments inside the studio.
That was why, under normal circumstances, the studio was mostly used by new bands unfamiliar with those shortcomings and by Gyusik’s band.
Still, it did fairly well on occasions like this. Because it looked good.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Those people. I said hello for no reason, and then…”
“It’s only natural to greet people when they’re there. Even if it makes things more troublesome, it’s proper to say hello when you’ve seen someone. Don’t let someone in a bad state making a scene get to you.”
In response to Seoha’s answer, Suyeon spoke as though she didn’t care. It would have been understandable for her to be bothered by strange people barging in and saying they wanted to watch or sit in, but Suyeon took it all in stride.
‘Sometimes, when I look at her, she really feels like someone living through a second life.’
It was a remarkably accurate deduction, but Seoha dismissed it as an absurd fantasy. As she prepared the equipment, she glanced toward the entrance. Three people were sitting in chairs and talking.
They hadn’t been people Seoha particularly liked to begin with. They had only interacted a little back when Seoha thought metal was the greatest music; these days, all they had done was accept a few drinks while passing through clubs.
But today they had barged in, and now they were sitting there with their arms crossed as if they were judging an audition. After hearing that the band was entering Band Pioneer, they seemed even more determined to stick around.
‘Could those people be participating, too?’
As she racked her brain, Seoha came to that thought. The more she considered it, the more plausible it seemed. She wasn’t sure why it had made her feel so unpleasant, but just because they were in a bad mood, would they really insist on listening to another band’s music?
Of course, Seoha was a woman too, and she knew about ‘those things.’ So in one respect, she thought she could understand why they were acting angry.
But what they were doing now was an entirely separate matter. Despite being an established band, they had rudely barged in like that. Their behavior clearly seemed to have a purpose.
“Who are those people?”
“Oh, people I know.”
Seoha caught Iseo, who was about to go say hello, and shook her head firmly. Iseo looked at her without understanding why, while Hyeona watched the strangers cautiously.
“But are they going to stay?”
“They said they’d leave after listening to a few songs.”
At Seoha’s words, Iseo scratched her head.
“We’re filming that YouTube video right now. Is it okay if those people show up in it?”
Come to think of it, Iseo had said something like that earlier. Would they be allowed to appear? Seoha thought for a moment, then answered, “Couldn’t we just cut them out?” It wasn’t a big problem to film them, after all. As long as they didn’t appear in the final product, wouldn’t that be enough?
“Right?”
“Well, then I suppose that should be fine…”
Meanwhile, Suyeon was calmly adjusting the equipment and preparing to record.
“Let’s loosen up our hands first.”
Suyeon said that and picked up her guitar.
* * *
Gyusik watched silently as everything unfolded, his arms crossed.
The girls moved as though they had not a shred of experience. The bassist and keyboardist bustled around busily, while Seoha kept glancing over as though their presence made her uncomfortable. The guitarist simply watched the girls prepare.
“What a mess.”
At Gyusik’s remark, Heeseong and Gyeongyun nodded. Everything was completely disorganized. Whether in a studio or a practice room, you had to set things up as quickly as possible to avoid wasting money. But the girls seemed not to care about that at all.
“Doesn’t look like it’ll last long, does it, oppa?”
“Well, yeah. After we watch a little, I should tell Seoha to come over to our side if the band falls apart. That bastard Lee Junseong can’t play drums for shit, and he’s always fucking late. If we kick him out and put Seoha in, it’d be perfect.”
“Exactly. Wouldn’t it be perfect if Seoha joined? Junseong oppa is so creepy and kind of lame.”
Seoha herself hadn’t even said she would do it, but her future had already been decided. Heeseong thought it was pathetic as he looked at the band preparing to play.
‘Well, Gyusik hyung is right.’
He didn’t know what kind of music those kids played. But judging by what he had seen so far, they didn’t look as though they would be particularly good.
Wasn’t it obvious at a glance?
It might have been Heeseong’s prejudice, but if he had to name the kind of people farthest from bands in this world, Korean high school girls would surely be on the list. Of course, Seoha was a Korean high school girl too, but she was an odd case.
“Look at the guitar and bass players’ posture. They don’t even have the basics down.”
The guitarist was trying to play with her strap hanging as low as possible, while the bassist appeared to be using a right-handed bass despite being left-handed, as if she were Jimi Hendrix.
Though they were trivial details that could easily be overlooked, Gyusik and Gyeongyun nitpicked and grumbled about them. Heeseong had similar thoughts, but he wondered whether they really had to find fault with things like that.
But the moment the playing began, their thoughts changed 180 degrees.
No, they had no choice but to change.
The guitar began playing out of nowhere, the girl wearing an expression as though she were casually warming up her hands. Unlike her fingers, which drifted back and forth as peacefully as if floating above the clouds, the sound that came from the guitar and burst from the amplifier made its presence unmistakably clear.
Faced with playing utterly unlike what he had expected, Heeseong involuntarily looked at Gyusik. He wanted to know how Gyusik, as a guitarist, was taking it.
And Gyusik’s reaction was exactly what Heeseong had imagined. He looked shocked by playing that was impossible to believe came from a girl of high school age. His slightly parted lips and widened eyes revealed the extent of his shock.
‘Can that be real?’
Gyusik had lived a dissolute life in many respects, but he was also the guitarist of a fairly well-known band. He had some talent and had played guitar for a long time, earning his living through lessons and his band. He was skilled enough to say, ‘I’m pretty good at guitar.’
But the scene unfolding before him denied all of Gyusik’s common sense.
The girl led the melody with fluid touches, playing something impossible to believe came from a high school girl. Gyusik felt overwhelmed as he watched her.
‘No, maybe she only practiced that phrase. These days, they say lots of kids practice phrases without any fundamentals.’
Gyusik clenched his teeth at the thought. If he admitted that such a young girl played better than he did, it felt as though all the years he had built up would collapse meaninglessly.
And he had evidence to support that thought. No one else had joined in yet, after all. Wasn’t that proof that she had practiced only her own phrase without giving any consideration to her bandmates?
But that thought was shattered when the bass slipped in at exactly the right moment. The high school girl with flashy makeup, who looked as though she were as far from music as could be, played the bass in a textbook, polished manner.
Next came the keyboard, then the drums. The instruments entered one after another, and there were slight spots where they didn’t quite fit. But instead of continuing while producing dissonance, they adjusted themselves to one another by lowering their volume, slowing the tempo, and so on.
And guided by the guitar, which coordinated the entire process, the performance flowed as smoothly as water. There was no conducting, no gestures, no words… but Gyusik was a guitarist too, so he could easily tell what the guitar was trying to do.
‘But the song itself is messy. Other than going straight into a completely raw live performance, there isn’t much to see in this playing.’
Gyusik clenched his teeth. If this was an original song, then the composition was far below expectations. What good was outstanding skill? In the end, the song was what mattered. They were in the band scene, not the session scene… With thoughts like that, Gyusik belittled the high school girl band before him.
“We’ve finished the jam (an improvised band performance), and our hands are warmed up… so let’s play a cover now and start recording.”
But after the performance ended, the guitarist’s words made Gyusik hear something crack inside his heart.
‘That was a jam?’
‘The others all felt like the guitar was pulling them along, so I could understand that—but the guitar played that as a jam?’
‘Is that even possible? She doesn’t look very old. Did she actually start playing guitar when she was very young? Or is she someone with extraordinary talent?’
“Why are you like that?”
In the midst of his turmoil, a question came from the front. Gyusik realized that he had unconsciously gotten up from his chair and was heading forward.
“Uh…”
Gyusik stammered without realizing it. What was he supposed to say?
There were so many things he wanted to say. Had she just been miming along to a recording playing somewhere? Would she like to join their band? She played guitar so well. Had she ever thought about composing? Did she have a boyfriend? And so on.
But after passing through Gyusik’s brain, only one thing made it out of his mouth.
“Um… how long have you been learning guitar?”
Gyusik himself thought it was a question with a vulgar ulterior motive. How long could she have been learning? Surely it had been at least five or ten years.
By comparing that period with his own, he could tell himself that she was merely a little more talented than he was; that she had talent comparable to his, but had simply developed it in a different direction… He asked it to comfort himself.
“I suppose…”
At Gyusik’s question, whose intention was either impossible to discern—or impossible not to discern—Heeseong and Gyeongyun stared at him in confusion… while Suyeon answered with an ambiguous smile.
“About a year. It doesn’t feel like it’s been very long.”
* * *
“Why did those people come?”
“Who knows…”
Myeongjeon smiled bitterly. Unlike Iseo, who had never understood their intentions to the very end, and Hyeona, who had only roughly guessed, Myeongjeon had known what they wanted the moment he saw them. Wasn’t it obvious that they wanted to pick a fight?
There had been people like that in the past, too. People who couldn’t admit their own shortcomings and devoted themselves to tearing others down.
‘It’s a shame.’
Myeongjeon knew very well what talent was, and what it meant to encounter the wall created by it. He might even have been the person in Korea who had thought most deeply about talent.
‘But this is a bit much…’
If you looked at it normally… weren’t they professionals who had suddenly barged in out of spite after seeing a band formed just so its members could have fun together? Whatever they might have thought, if they wrote it down and considered it carefully, it was simply insane behavior.
And Myeongjeon was definitely not the sort of person who would soothe people like that and quietly send them home.
“Are they gone?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
When Seoha came in through the door, Iseo asked her about it. Seoha had apparently gone to see them out and apologized first. Myeongjeon cocked his head slightly before speaking.
“Didn’t they say anything to you?”
“Not really… They just said they were sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize.”
Myeongjeon thought about it. What had Seoha done wrong? If she had any fault, it was merely that she had chosen the wrong people to befriend. Of course, thinking of how Seoha had been in the past, perhaps she, too, had once lived like that.
‘Come to think of it, maybe correcting her behavior early on had had more of an effect than I realized.’
With that thought, Myeongjeon picked up his guitar again. They had already wasted a great deal of time; now it was time to record the submission for the government-supported program…