Chapter 8
Though it had been far too long ago to recall easily, Myeongjeon tried to remember the high school girls from his own high school days. The kids back then were… hmm.
‘I don’t think that’ll be much help.’
He swept his hair back and looked at the teacher who had entered. A male teacher with a timid-looking face. He had always thought the world had changed a lot, but he never expected to feel it so starkly.
In the days when he went to school, teachers were gods and kings. If a teacher slapped you across the face, you simply took it; and if you complained at home afterward, you got told, “You must have done something to deserve it,” or even got beaten by your father for making a fuss after being beaten yourself.
And now teachers like that had been reduced to this? Watching the students in the front subtly torment the teacher, Myeongjeon let out a deep sigh.
Honestly, what was happening to the world? Unless they lined everyone up and gave them a good beating, it seemed impossible for the world to keep turning properly.
“Since you’re out of the hospital, wanna go to a coin karaoke booth after school?”
A girl slid into the seat beside him. Was she the one who had aggressively gone through his KakaoTalk earlier? Her name was… Park Dain, he thought.
“Dain.”
“Yeah?”
“Study.”
“Holy shit, what’s wrong with her? Ha Suyeon just told me to study. Is she seriously brain-damaged?”
“I guess getting her head cracked open really did bring her to her senses.”
Someone answered Park Dain’s fussing listlessly.
“It looks like it really did crack. I checked her KakaoTalk, and she hadn’t looked at a single message from the boys.”
“Seriously?”
When were these kids planning to study? Myeongjeon looked down at his textbook. Things he had learned long ago coexisted with things that hadn’t existed back then, making his head spin.
And while the students in the front rows were diligently concentrating on their studies, the ones near Myeongjeon spent class whispering busily and passing notes around. It was an environment where he couldn’t concentrate at all.
Myeongjeon let out a sigh deep enough to make the earth cave in.
* * *
When second period ended, Myeongjeon sat with his chin propped up, surrounded by chattering kids, wondering how he could make money. A part-time job? That would take too long. Sessions? Even if he somehow managed the equipment, he had no reputation. Instagram? He didn’t even want to look at it. YouTube? Well, maybe that had some potential…
“Suyeon. Let’s go to the bathroom.”
“Go ahead.”
“Hey, we’re supposed to go together. What are you talking about~”
With those words, Myeongjeon was half forcibly hauled to his feet. He was carried along like a piece of luggage until they arrived at the girls’ bathroom. When Myeongjeon and the trio appeared, the girls inside scattered in all directions.
“Why are they leaving?”
“Who knows~ I guess they got scared. She really must have cracked her head and lost her memories.”
“Whoa… Then can I have Yeonsu’s Moose Knuckles?”
The girls said that while watching Suyeon’s reaction. But Suyeon showed no response and instead asked a question.
“What are Moose Knuckles?”
“Hey, Suyeon really isn’t putting on an act… If you don’t remember anything, why did you come to school? Your mom didn’t tell you to come, did she?”
“Well, I don’t remember much, but I didn’t see any particular reason not to come. So I came.”
Of course, I remember everything… Myeongjeon thought. But the girls’ expressions were growing increasingly serious.
“I saw you come in dressed like a fucking model honor student and thought, Wow, what a committed act. But the fact that it’s not an act and you’re actually like this is creepy.”
“Then how do we remember you?”
“I remember that we were close, but I don’t remember much else.”
But if he dug through Ha Suyeon’s memories, they hadn’t actually seemed all that close. She went around with these girls, but she drank and partied with other people at night. She had also talked behind their backs plenty.
‘What an exhausting life…’
‘Ha Suyeon’ was ‘Ha Suyeon,’ and Myeongjeon was Myeongjeon. He had no intention of following the exact path this girl had taken through life. As for his relationship with these three… Well, he didn’t know what they thought, but he didn’t want to form any deep ties with them either.
Kids like ‘Ha Suyeon’ and her friends didn’t drink and smoke because they particularly liked alcohol or cigarettes. They simply wanted the sense of immorality and liberation that came from doing things society had forbidden.
But to Myeongjeon, a veteran wastrel who had even been arrested for smoking marijuana, it was nothing more than pointless nonsense—selling their futures for a brief moment of pleasure.
He hadn’t been good at studying when he was young either, but he had kept practicing guitar while he played around. Thanks to that, he hadn’t become particularly successful, but he had earned more than enough to feed himself. What did these kids think they were going to do with their lives… Tsk, tsk.
“Stop doing your makeup and let’s go back in.”
“Ah!! Yeonsu, you’re pretty, so you don’t need makeup, but we do!!”
“Get a grip and study. I don’t remember much, but after drinking and cracking my head open, I realized that all this fooling around is pointless.”
* * *
Even after homeroom dismissal, Myeongjeon remained surrounded by girls for a long time. It wasn’t just the trio who had been hanging around him, either. There were girls from other classes, upperclassmen, and all sorts of others…
Everything they asked was something like, “Are you really going to study now?” or “Did you really lose your memory?” Too tired to answer them one by one, Myeongjeon simply stood up halfway through.
‘Am I going to have to suffer through this until winter vacation? It could take even longer than that.’
Even if escaping didn’t require sacrificing a finger like some American mafia initiation, it still wasn’t easy to sever deeply entangled relationships with a single stroke.
After all, relationships were reciprocal. Even if one side said, “Let’s stop now,” the other side might still cling to them. If this were society, it would end there because they would never have to meet again. But in the confined space of a school, Myeongjeon thought that would be difficult.
The way home was already growing dark. Myeongjeon walked without thinking. Once he got home, he planned to play some guitar and continue thinking about how he could make money.
“Ha Suyeon!”
A familiar voice. Not one he had heard until he was sick of it today, though. This was the tone he had heard a little earlier.
“Going home?”
“Yeah.”
On her way to the practice room, Iseo ran into Suyeon and thought this was perfect timing.
‘Come to think of it, maybe she only bought that amp yesterday on a whim. Maybe she thought, I’ll just buy an amp first and figure things out later!’
The effects pedal might have been the same. Iseo thought she might simply have been captivated by its appearance and decided to buy it. Maybe her actual skill level was close to Iseo’s?
If so, maybe they could teach each other and gradually improve together. And then perhaps Iseo could even form the ‘band’ she wanted. Excited by these fantasies, Iseo asked Suyeon a question.
“I’m going to the practice room to practice today. Want to come?”
“…Together? Why?”
It was a firm question that implied, Why should I go with you?
“I, uh… Don’t you practice?”
“I do. At home.”
“Isn’t it frustrating practicing at home? You can’t turn the sound up much, either.”
“That’s true.”
The house Myeongjeon had lived in before had even been equipped with a soundproof booth for practicing. When it got too late at night, he connected his guitar to a computer and practiced. But now that he had only a single amp, it was true that he wasn’t entirely satisfied.
“That’s why I’m asking you to come with me. Isn’t practicing alone at home boring? Wouldn’t it be more fun to practice together?”
“Why does practice need to be fun?”
At that, Iseo was struck speechless. Was that… true? She couldn’t ask whether he was joking, because Suyeon’s expression was completely serious.
“You shouldn’t try to find fun in practice. Practice is just something you do. It’s not a matter of whether it’s fun or not.”
“I mean, it should be at least a little fun…”
“Don’t try to attach meaning to it like that. Practice should become something that feels as natural as breathing…”
Suyeon suddenly turned serious, as if she were a different person, and began explaining her philosophy of practice. Then she shook her head briefly and spoke again.
“No, well, um… Fine, I guess I’ll go for now.”
“… Huh? Oh, yeah! Then, um, here…”
Iseo was caught off guard by Suyeon’s sudden change in attitude, then hesitated again as she tried to send her the map app link.
They didn’t have each other’s contact information, and they weren’t registered on KakaoTalk. But Suyeon casually entered her phone number.
* * *
The practice room they arrived at was completely ordinary. It had guitar and bass amps, a computer, and, for some reason, even a folding Rakuraku bed. There was a small refrigerator, too.
“It belongs to my lesson teacher, but he lets me use it for practice when he isn’t using it. Today’s my day.”
Perhaps she had noticed his gaze, because Iseo explained where the room came from without being asked. The bass amp was an Ampeg, the guitar amp was a Fender, and the monitor speakers were Genelecs. It was a basic but solid setup.
Feeling Iseo’s gaze boring into him, Myeongjeon opened his case.
“Wow, it really is a Fender.”
Iseo murmured admiringly as she looked at his black guitar. Well, this guitar was pretty impressive.
He gently stroked the guitar. He had gone through an incredible amount of trouble to give it a natural-looking relic finish.
“What year is it?”
“Hmm… ’69… Hard to say.”
Myeongjeon connected the guitar to the amp and plucked a few strings. The clean tone wasn’t as good as the full setup he had used before, but he liked it quite a bit. They said tone was seventy percent amp and thirty percent guitar, but a good guitar could cover that thirty percent regardless.
“Suyeon. Could you play one song for me? Anything is fine.”
Just as he was thinking, Shall we start practicing now?—a voice came from beside him.
“Why?”
“Well, um… Honestly, I’m curious how good you are at guitar.”
So that was why. Myeongjeon scratched his head. She was curious about his skill? It had been decades since he had heard someone ask him that, so he had no idea how he was supposed to show her. Even the people who had given him advice and told him what to do had never questioned his playing ability.
But Iseo interpreted his silence differently.
‘…Is he pissed off??’
Thinking about it, Iseo realized that asking someone out of the blue to play for her could understandably make them angry. She had invited him to the practice room without asking whether he wanted to come, and now she was suddenly asking him to play, too. Come to think of it, he looked really pissed off…
“I—I didn’t mean it in a bad way! Uh, no, I’ll show you my playing first.”
“Huh?”
Iseo suddenly sprang into action, plugged her bass into the amp, and started plucking it by herself. She worked earnestly at whatever she was playing, shaking her head and keeping time.
Judging by the way she played while stealing glances at Myeongjeon, it seemed like she was hoping he would say something.
“How was it? I’ve been learning for one y—no, about eight months.”
“Eight months? For eight months…”
“For eight months?”
“You’re not very good.”
Myeongjeon said it without thinking. Iseo stared at him with wide eyes.
“I’m… not good?”
At the slight tremor in her voice, Myeongjeon looked at Iseo. Come to think of it…
“Did you say you did this as a hobby?”
“A hobby, right?”
Myeongjeon thought of the bassists he had seen in his previous life. They had all played extremely well. Then again, was it a little cruel to compare her to them? They were already finished products, while this girl wasn’t.
“Then you’re about average. Maybe slightly above average? If you’re this good after eight months, becoming a professional would be difficult. If you practice a lot more from now on, you might still have a chance.”
Iseo had suddenly found herself in the position of being evaluated. He had said she was bad, then said she was about average, then said it would be difficult for her to become a professional? She felt extremely strange about it—mostly in a negative way.
“You show me, too. I showed you how I play. It’s only fair that you show me.”
“No. If you came to a practice room, isn’t it only natural that I’d show you how I play guitar?”
Myeongjeon answered as if he found the question slightly ridiculous. Iseo felt a little sheepish at that. Come to think of it, that did seem obvious…
“W-what, what, what can you play?”
“I can play pretty much anything, as long as it has guitar in it.”
“Pretty much anything?”
“I think I can play all the famous songs you know.”
One of Myeongjeon’s practice methods was to play every song with guitar in it at least once or twice. Of course, the world was a big place, so he couldn’t play every song that existed, but he could play anything a high school girl like this would likely know.
“Then can you play ギターと孤独と蒼い惑星 (Guitar, Loneliness, and the Blue Planet)?”
“…What’s that?”
At that, Iseo’s face lit up as she suddenly spoke in Japanese. Myeongjeon tilted his head at a song he had never once heard.
“It’s from an anime… No, anyway, it’s a Japanese song… Um… Then what about 転がる岩、君に朝が降る (The Rolling Rock, Morning Falls on You)?”
“A song by Asian Kung-fu Generation? It’s a good one. You know a song that came out more than ten years ago?”
The intro was quite memorable, so it was a song he occasionally played himself. It was a pretty good song. If you ignored the fact that they were a Japanese band, that was. But judging by the fact that she was asking about such an old song, perhaps she had the right attitude toward music as someone who did some digging (see Note 2).
“No, no, I mean… Just play whatever you want to play.”
Iseo said that with her face slightly flushed. Myeongjeon didn’t know why, but he didn’t bother asking.
Instead, he decided to play the song he always played whenever someone asked him, “Please play some guitar.”
Without touching the amp or volume, he set a completely clean tone. His soft, delicate fingerpicking soon became a lyrical melody that began to drift around the practice room.
‘Tears in Heaven.’
The song had originally been written for guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, who had been close to Eric Clapton.
He died in a helicopter crash while flying in a helicopter Eric Clapton had given up to him. Eric Clapton had been writing the song to mourn his close friend.
A few months later, Eric Clapton’s four-year-old son fell to his death from a building window.
Whenever Myeongjeon sang the song, he remembered those facts. What had Eric Clapton been thinking as he wrote it? And what had he been thinking as he sang it?
And as she listened to the song, Iseo thought,
‘Is she… really the same age as me?’
Ha Suyeon was definitely the same age as her. Sixteen. A high school student. As far as Iseo knew, she had never done music before.
But the sight before her now—the face of a girl with her head slightly bowed as she plucked the guitar strings and sang, the incredibly delicate movements swaying with the melody—
How was she supposed to put it…
It was the very image of an extraordinarily mature musician.
‘Seriously, what am I supposed to call this…’
Iseo didn’t know what kind of song it was. Since the lyrics were in English, she couldn’t make them out clearly, either.
But she could tell that it was a sad song.
His voice sounded slightly restrained, as if he were forcing himself to sound calm and trying desperately to keep it that way.
But the guitar was different.
Between the gentle notes, Iseo felt as though she could see cracks. Screaming pain lay within the melody. The sorrow that cried out without end had become vibrations, subtly shaking the melody.
In doing so, it proved the existence of emotions he had not revealed.
Myeongjeon gradually drew the melody to a close and finished the song. When he looked up, Iseo’s eyes were red.
“Let’s start a band.”
“Huh?”
“We should start a band!”
…A band?