Master Kim Se-jun
The Concert Hall at the Seoul Arts Center was a venue vast enough to swallow a full-scale orchestra. This stage had always belonged to them.
But today was different.
Ordinarily the stars of this hall were world-renowned foreign conductors. Today's star was a middle-aged man steeped in the mystery of the East—seated cross-legged at the very center of the stage, hair streaked with gray, dressed in a pure white modified hanbok. Among players of traditional Korean string instruments—the geomungo, the gayageum, and all the rest—he was spoken of as a legend. Kim Se-jun, one of the foremost authorities in Korea's gugak world.
He quietly steadied his breath and laid his right hand upon the jwadan of the gayageum resting across his knees. As he prepared to play, the audience swallowed hard and sank into him. A silence so thick it was difficult to breathe.
Then Kim Se-jun's fingers plucked the strings. Not the metal strings of a modified gayageum, but traditional ones spun from silk. The sound that bloomed through the concert hall was slightly duller than a modernized instrument—yet some would call it the voice of nature itself, the distinctive timbre of an ancestral gayageum. The gentle notes seeped into the hearts of the audience, and they felt themselves growing calmer and calmer.
They had no idea that the man performing for them was burning up inside.
"Master! That was a truly magnificent performance!"
"Thank you."
"Master! Thank you so much for inviting me today!"
"Ah, you came as well. It must have been quite a journey."
When the performance ended, the lobby outside the concert hall was a sea of people, and at the center of it all stood Kim Se-jun, freshly come from the stage, receiving bouquets and congratulations laden with every flowery compliment imaginable.
Ahem...
He smiled and answered, but a restless edge kept creeping in. He was sorry to think it of people who had come all this way to hear him play—but he did not have time to stand around chatting.
Why did it have to be today, of all days?
Today was his own performance, yes. It was also the day of Idress's first solo concert.
Idress. The hottest girl group in Korea right now. Three years since their debut, and tonight was the first solo concert of their lives. And Kim Se-jun was a die-hard uncle-fan who had been watching and cheering them on from the very beginning.
The moment he realized his own concert date overlapped with theirs, he had seriously considered canceling. Fortunately his performance had ended at four, and Idress went on at seven. If he left right now, he would arrive with time to spare.
The problem was that he could not leave.
A faint crease gathered between his brows. What he wanted was to come right out and say he had to go see the Redung-i concert. If only his image would allow it. The legend of the gugak world—that title sat heavy on his shoulders, turning every gesture, every word, into something that had to be carefully measured.
Still... there's still time.
So long as his acquaintances did not keep him pinned here with empty flattery a moment longer. They had come to hear him play, and he was grateful for that, so he could not let any of this show. He simply stood there with a smiling face, receiving their greetings.
If I'm late and miss this concert, I swear I'll retire.
All he could do was fret in silence.
"Master! The performance was wonderful! So gentle, and yet it sent ripples through the heart—a truly moving performance!"
Even in a crowd this dense, the voice rang out with a piercing, unmistakable brightness. Kim Se-jun's head turned of its own accord. A middle-aged woman was shouldering her way through the people toward him—white powder caked thick across her face, lips drowned in red lipstick, oversized pearl earrings and a matching necklace that were impossible to miss. The moment he saw her, his mouth twitched.
What is she doing here?
She was a woman to whom an acquaintance owed a favor. He had been introduced through that acquaintance, and ever since she had been a tiresome presence, endlessly twittering at him to take her daughter as a disciple.
"You came. I'm glad you enjoyed it."
She probably did not know the first thing about gugak and was reciting whatever she had picked up somewhere—but she had listened to today's performance all the same. Contrary to everything he felt, Kim Se-jun smiled and offered his thanks. The woman covered her mouth with her hand.
"Oh, ho ho. Not at all. Of course I came. You have no idea how much I admire you, Master. Your performances really are the very best, I mean it. I don't understand why the public can't see it. The internet was completely plastered with the Idress concert again today. Honestly, what's so great about those songs where they just scream their heads off?"
What had this woman just said?
A vicious cloud of perfume stabbed at his nose, and Kim Se-jun's face tightened. He was absolutely not angry because she had insulted Idress. He was angry because he did not care for the smell of her perfume. He repeated the self-hypnosis silently, over and over.
"You were in the very back row, weren't you?"
"Yes! Master, you noticed me~"
She clasped both hands together, delighted that he had recognized her—and then froze exactly like that at what he said next.
"I could see you sleeping so clearly, even from the stage."
"I beg your pardon?"
"It's all right. If you're tired, you're allowed to sleep. Gugak is nice that way, isn't it? Compared to all that noisy pop music, it puts you right to sleep. Doesn't it?"
A bright little smile. The face behind it was as cold as a sheet of ice. The woman could not manage an answer. She only stood there, face flushed scarlet, breathing hard.
"Thank you. You've given me a great deal to reflect on. I've been reminded, all over again, that I'm still far from someone who can move every heart."
Kim Se-jun's face kept smiling, but the air around him had frozen over as if a midwinter storm had torn through the lobby. The only sound was the woman's ragged breathing after the open rebuke. Unable to bear the humiliation, she shoved her way through the crowd and fled outside.
The atmosphere had gone bleak. For Kim Se-jun, it could not have been more perfect. He cleared his throat a couple of times at the people still hovering around him in visible anxiety, and floated the suggestion as lightly as he could.
"I'm glad you all enjoyed it. I'd love to have dinner with you, but as it happens I have an important prior engagement tonight..."
The others nodded. Kim Se-jun inwardly cheered and started walking. Convinced they had soured his mood, the people around him had no choice but to see him off.
Kim Se-jun rode the elevator down to the underground parking garage and headed for his car with a spring in his step. If he could just reach the concert venue on time, it would be a perfect day. His own performance had been flawless, and the one he was about to enjoy as an audience member was something he had been waiting for with his whole heart.
He was still walking on that lifted feeling when a car horn slammed into his ears.
BEEEEEEP!
And then the pain came crashing in. A shock so enormous it stopped thought itself arrived in an instant. His vision flipped a hundred and eighty degrees, as if he were flying through the air, sky and ground inverted.
Even then, his fandom was something to behold. Through that reeling field of vision, he could see it perfectly clearly: a single slip of paper, carefully tucked inside his wallet, fluttering limp through the air.
"N-no... the Re... Redung-i concert..."
He stretched out a hand, but it was a meaningless struggle. His body, still sailing through the sky, slammed into the ground.
Kim Se-jun first encountered gugak when he was seven years old. Like most children just beginning traditional music, he had slipped into it with small hands clutching at his parents' sleeves.
It was fun.
Even as a child he understood that gugak was not especially popular. It did not matter. When you were young, fun was all that counted. Blessed with both enjoyment and talent, he became the rising star of the gugak world almost overnight.
And the moment he became the prodigy everyone was watching, his misfortune began.
"Who was it that said the scariest thing in the world is a passion that comes late?"
Kim Se-jun agreed with that down to his bones. He had been living proof. In his early twenties he had happened to hear a pop song—nothing much different from the hits ringing out across the country. And yet why had that song lodged itself so deeply in his mind?
That was when it started. His consuming interest in popular music. The expectations pouring down on him, the sense of responsibility he had more or less accepted—all of it thinned and washed away. Before he knew it he was playing pop songs on the gayageum instead of court music and sanjo, scribbling pop arrangements for the instrument across staff paper.
"God, it was fun."
Far more than when he had first fallen for gugak. The Kim Se-jun of those days, who had not distinguished night from day, had been dazzlingly beautiful. And then the light went out.
The expectations the gugak world had placed on him. The responsibility not to betray that world. The association elders only had to look at him to call him the talent who would save traditional music—telling him that because of him, the day would come when the people loved gugak more than all that noisy pop. Their hopes made him see his own actions as a betrayal of everything they stood for.
So he stopped. And he went back.
"But what about now?"
Kim Se-jun murmured the words, looking at the papers piled high on a familiar desk. Sheet music soaked through with his early-to-mid twenties.
"No doubt about it."
Feeling the cool autumn wind on his face, Kim Se-jun spoke with a complicated expression—sad and joyful at once, a face that said everything about what he felt.
"To think I've gone back to the past."
Even after seeing the familiar room and his own reflection in the mirror, he had not been able to believe it, so he had come outside. To someone arriving from decades in the future, people's clothes and the buildings looked rather old-fashioned. Old-fashioned—and endlessly familiar. He watched couples walk by with their arms linked, laughing at some private delight, and let out a sigh.
One way or another, he had returned to the past. So what was he supposed to do? Devote himself to gugak all over again? Or, just this once, indulge a little of what he actually wanted?
The hesitation lasted only a moment. The answer came at once.
If you wanted something this badly, you did it. How many decades had he spent aching to get his hands on pop music? Kim Se-jun nodded, the decision settling into place. This life, he would live the way he wanted.
As the sun began to set, crowds poured into the downtown streets. A Friday night and fine weather were all the excuse the young people who had been holed up indoors needed to come outside. And gathered there at the same time were the people hoping to capture those young hearts.
Busking.
This was one of Seoul's better-known busking streets, and the good spots were already taken. Kim Se-jun watched them—armed with nothing but cheap amps and microphones, each one pouring out a color of their own—and his eyes lit up. The skill was not extraordinary, but every one of them was giving everything they had. He stopped walking and let himself savor the songs.
From any reasonably open stretch of ground, sound carried. Music from countless spots mixed together and reached his ears—and all at once his eyes went wide.
A song that could not be heard here. More precisely, a song that should not have been heard yet.
"What? Why is this song playing here?"