Debut and Recording
The day Kim Se-jun took the Open Mic stage, Lee Hae-jin was not the only one left deeply moved.
Among the guests who had watched that performance was Kim Joo-young. He had come after hearing rumors that an Open Mic event was being held, but he hadn't arrived with any great expectations. A beer to sip, a few songs to take in, a little of the day's fatigue washed away — that would have been more than enough.
And then he saw Kim Se-jun's stage.
The sight of him singing as he plucked the gayageum. Beautiful, even though he was a man. A soft melody unfurled through the room and left a deep, lingering impression on the heart.
And today, several days later, Kim Joo-young found himself thinking it would be a waste to keep that feeling to himself.
Should I try sending this?
On his phone was a single video, and in it that day's performance had been preserved in full — Kim Se-jun singing as he played the gayageum. A clip he had replayed dozens of times since. A stage he fell into, without meaning to, every time he pressed play.
It's too good to keep to myself!
Having made up his mind, Kim Joo-young sent the video to the administrator of a popular channel on the social platform Faceon. He had no idea whether it would be posted or not. Still, he sent it hoping that others might feel even a fraction of the emotion that had been given to him.
Haa... what the hell am I supposed to do with this kid?
After listening to the song Kim Se-jun had brought in, Lee Hae-jin could not find his footing. Admiration, shock, joy, and sheer awkwardness all pulled him in different directions at once. This was already the fourth time. Four times, one after another, this monstrous kid had written a song that seized him by the heart.
I'm supposed to make a kid like this wait a year to debut?
As the head of a management company, and as an artist in his own right, he could not accept it. To leave a talent who could sweep the music industry right now sitting idle for a whole year — it was unthinkable.
But throwing out Producer Song's song doesn't make sense either.
His own taste leaned closer to what Kim Se-jun had written. That did not mean Song Dae-jun's song was lacking. Whichever of these goes out into the world... it would become a once-in-a-generation masterpiece and take the public by storm.
Caught in the dilemma, Lee Hae-jin put in an urgent call to Ha Dong-jun. The man came hurrying down the moment he picked up. But Ha Dong-jun's reaction was not so different from Lee Hae-jin's. He marveled at the song, then promptly looked lost. Watching him heave sigh after heavy sigh, Lee Hae-jin sank deeper into the problem.
How do I keep both songs alive...
What broke the deadlock was an employee who burst into the studio in a rush.
"B-Boss! We've hit the jackpot!"
The man kicked the studio door open and came in wearing a grin so wide it barely fit on his face. Kim Se-jun tilted his head at him.
Marketing team?
He couldn't remember the name, but it was a face from the marketing department — one he had seen when Ha Dong-jun had given him the company tour.
"What? What's the jackpot supposed to be?"
Lee Hae-jin asked for all of them, and the employee pulled a phone from his pocket.
"Look at this! It's completely exploding right now!"
He logged into Faceon, queued up a video, and held the screen out to them.
"...!"
"Th-this is Se-jun, isn't it?"
"That's right. The day I first saw him. That's the day."
On the screen, Kim Se-jun stood on a small stage, singing as he plucked the gayageum. Soft light fell over him, and he sang with a fresh, youthful smile. It was as beautiful as a scene from a film, and the instrument's melody laid a crowning grace over every frame.
"So this was the song? Holy hell..."
Ha Dong-jun muttered as if he had been put under a spell, and the others nodded. Even Lee Hae-jin, who had already watched that stage with his own eyes, found himself falling for it all over again. The marriage of gayageum and voice stole every gaze in the room, and when the short clip ended the employee fussed that they had not even seen the real news yet.
"This is the actual jackpot, Boss. This video has thirty thousand likes and four thousand comments. A hundred thousand views!"
"...!"
"R-really?"
"Yes! And it only went up yesterday. There's no telling how much higher it'll climb."
The ripple effect of social media was nothing to ignore. Singers who had spent a lifetime in obscurity could blow up on a platform overnight and find themselves suddenly ranked among popular artists — it happened often enough. That was why so many management companies poured themselves into social promotion, and Ares Music was no exception.
"What a windfall is this? Se-jun. Did you plan this? Is this a video you filmed?"
Ha Dong-jun turned to Kim Se-jun with a bright, delighted smile. Kim Se-jun shook his head.
"I didn't film this. I never even thought about recording anything."
He was more than a little startled watching it himself. To think someone had filmed his stage that night. He felt dazed, and at the same time a thrill surged up through his chest. The comments under the video — a few promotional ones cropped up here and there, but every last one of them was praise for his performance. The knowledge that his stage had given people emotion and joy sent his confidence soaring.
"We're going to have to overhaul the whole plan."
Just as the employee had said, the ripple would only grow from here. Kim Se-jun would be put in front of a far wider public, and interest in him would rise on its own. That much was certain. They could not let an opportunity like this slip. A year was more than enough time for even naturally generated attention to go ice-cold.
Lee Hae-jin's voice was iron. That was the moment Kim Se-jun's debut was decided.
Just as they had expected, the video's popularity did not fade. A month later the likes had soared well past a hundred thousand, and the view count had broken into the millions. Interest in Kim Se-jun rose naturally among the public, and more and more people found themselves curious about him. Acquaintances who knew him let a few personal details slip, but it was only trivial information — hometown, school, nothing more.
Then a little more time passed, and just as that curiosity was beginning to wither, a handful of posts appeared on the community boards.
"The response is on fire, huh?"
Dozens of comments had stacked up beneath the posts, as if to prove the point, and the Ares Music publicity staffer watching them broke into a bright grin.
"Right? Good. We've got to keep throwing bait so this doesn't cool off."
The publicity team lead clapped him on the shoulder as if to say well done, and the staffer went and left the same write-up on the other community boards. It was not something they had planned — it had simply happened. You row when the tide comes in, and they meant to wring every last drop out of the moment. They rushed Kim Se-jun through a profile shoot, posted it to the website, and spread the word through the communities. It was not a particularly elaborate campaign, but talk of Kim Se-jun circulated through board after board, and the promotional effect was nothing to sneeze at.
While the publicity team threw themselves into their work, Kim Se-jun was giving everything he had to his.
"How am I supposed to write these lyrics..."
Just because it was a remake did not mean he had to keep the lyrics exactly as they were. A little alteration was allowed. He rolled a pen between his fingers and rolled ideas through his head at the same time, but nothing clean presented itself.
"Should I just leave them as they are?"
That felt lacking, somehow.
"Isn't there some fresh approach worth trying?"
He groaned and turned the problem over, but no answer came, so he opened a notepad file saved on his computer. A flood of text filled the screen — his personal playlist, the songs he had loved and played on repeat before the regression. A private feast of tracks that only he knew now, written down by tracing his memories. He scrolled and scanned the titles, calling up each song's concept, hunting for anything he might be able to use.
"This one's just a breakup ballad. This one was a brilliantly unhinged dance track. And... huh?"
Two interesting titles caught his eye as he rested his chin in his hand.
How an Ordinary Man Loves.
How an Ordinary Woman Loves.
"These two... they were response songs to each other, weren't they?"
A response song. A dapga — a song composed as an answer to another. In other words, the story was not confined to a single track. The two songs were connected.
"Wouldn't this be fun?"
The original of Lotus was a love song and a breakup song both. If Lee Jin-ah sings from the female narrator's side, and I sing from the male narrator's...
The corner of Kim Se-jun's mouth curled up.
Not bad at all.
A remake. There would inevitably be limits because of that — but wasn't that exactly what made the idea new? Just remaking a masterpiece people still talk about from time to time would draw plenty of eyes on its own. And then we hang a response-song concept on top of it?
His eyes curved into crescents, as if the thought alone were entertainment enough. He pulled out his phone at once and called Lee Jin-ah.
"Hello?"
"Jin-ah noona. Have you finished your lyrics?"
It had already been a month since he had gotten to know Lee Jin-ah. They had grown close enough by now to speak comfortably with each other.
"Lyrics? Why, what's up?"
Kim Se-jun smiled faintly at that and let the idea out.
"Noona, what do you think of this?"
Then came his explanation. It was a time when the response-song concept was not yet commonly used. Hearing him out, Lee Jin-ah lit up at how fresh it was, and they hung up after agreeing to sit down later and match their lyrics to each other.
"Smooth. Everything's going smoothly."
The work was clicking into place, piece by piece. Kim Se-jun's debut was drawing closer by the day.
Another month passed after that, and the year's end was drawing near, but Kim Se-jun was busier than he had ever been. Session recording. Vocal recording. The work of fastening the first button in the making of an album. Only when this recording was done properly could the mixing and mastering that followed proceed without a hitch.
And this was the last stage at which Kim Se-jun could still put his own hands on the song. Mixing and mastering were not his domain. That was the producer and the engineer's work. Of course he could sit in, but without specialized knowledge he could not have any real impact — offering an opinion, at most.
First I have to nail the recording.
He gathered up his gayageum and headed for the studio. As if to mark the occasion of his first session, Song Dae-jun was not the only one waiting. Lee Hae-jin and Ha Dong-jun were there as well.
"Today's the gayageum recording, right?"
"Yes."
Kim Se-jun nodded at Lee Hae-jin's question. He had come to the studio to record his own session — the gayageum.
"You'll be nervous since it's your first recording, so don't tense up too much. Relax and keep it light. Light."
Don't be nervous?
Lee Hae-jin's advice. Kim Se-jun was grateful for it, but he could not quite keep a small smile from forming. Just recalling his previous life, he had spent nearly forty years with the gayageum under his hands.
I really did play it for a long time.
Thinking of it again, the years stretched out until they felt almost endless. To have lived with the instrument at his side for that long...
If you took the gayageum out of my life, there would be nothing left.
It was the whole of Kim Se-jun's life now, that instrument. And he was supposed to be nervous about plucking it? Who got nervous about breathing?
"Don't worry."
With a confident smile, Kim Se-jun stepped into the recording booth. Then the recording began.
First, a glissando.
In gayageum technique it was called sweeping the strings — a single finger drawn in one continuous motion across several strings laid side by side. When Kim Se-jun swept the strings, the song's atmosphere softened by degrees, planting a quiet ease in anyone who listened.
Then came the tremolo. The same pitch, sustained at high speed without a break, holding the song's stability in place.
Kim Se-jun played without a hitch. Lee Hae-jin and Ha Dong-jun watched him go, and the expressions on their faces went slack. Anyone would be nervous and awkward for a first recording — that was only natural. And even when it was not a first recording, even singers with names people knew struggled with the booth all the time.
But here was Kim Se-jun, recording with a comfortable smile on his face. From the look of it, the session would not even take that long.
Watching him, Ha Dong-jun let out a hollow laugh, as if he could not quite believe what he was seeing, and muttered under his breath.
"Was recording supposed to be this easy...?"
"Beats me. I think I'm having an existential crisis..."
Recording was something even Lee Hae-jin — a man people called a music genius — had always had to wrestle with. But Kim Se-jun, recording right now, looked a world away from anyone who had ever had to struggle.