Genius
A cute junior overflowing with talent. That was Bae Jin-goo's verdict on Lee Jin-ah.
He would never quite know how to thank her enough — this young woman who, undaunted by the decades between them in age and career, treated a worn-out old man with such warmth and genuine affection. And then there was that voice: a clear, ringing power no one would believe could come from so slight a frame, paired with a pure, crystalline tone that suited her appearance perfectly. Finding satisfaction in someone so gifted in both character and talent was, in a way, only natural.
Even now, she was matching his banter beat for beat, following his lead without a hitch.
"I hear your songs are the ones women request most at karaoke, Jin-ah. Did you know that?"
"Oh my? I had no idea. That's so kind of you to say. I'm truly honored."
"Why do you think your songs are so popular in karaoke rooms?"
Lee Jin-ah paused to consider, then answered with a small smile.
"Hmm... probably because there's a lot of high notes. If you can pull one of my songs off, there's that little feeling, you know? It's a bit embarrassing to say it myself, but..."
"Ah. Sing this and people will think you can actually sing. Something you can show off with, you mean."
"Hehe. Yes, exactly. I think that's a big part of why people like them. A woman who sings well is attractive, isn't she?"
"In that spirit — you've just given us another new song that's perfect for karaoke, haven't you? I imagine everyone here already knows the one I mean."
Bae Jin-goo swiveled his chair toward the studio audience as he spoke, and a burst of cheers and applause erupted from the seats.
"And this one is especially dear to me. You remade one of my songs, after all. As the original writer, there's no way I could sit here and not hear it."
"Having to sing it right in front of you is making me terribly shy."
"Don't worry. At least the viewers at home already know you sing better than I do. You do realize that if you sing too well, I'll be the one left embarrassed?"
"Then I suppose I'll have to sing even better than usual?"
Lee Jin-ah answered with a laugh, and the audience laughed with her.
"Ah... wonderful. Let's have me thoroughly humiliated, then. Lee Jin-ah's Lotus. Let's go."
At Bae Jin-goo's cue, the backing track poured from the speakers and filled the stage.
The audience watched her with soft, expectant eyes. Bae Jin-goo, too, waited for her song not as a host this time, but with the same feeling as everyone else in the room.
When the lotus first bloomed, I saw you.
I went to see the lotuses — so why do my eyes hold only you?
It was luminous. As her clear, crystalline voice unfurled through the hall, a look of deep satisfaction rose unbidden to Bae Jin-goo's lips.
When would I ever have a luxury like this again?
The moment of hearing a brilliantly gifted junior remake his own song and sing it live, right in front of him.
There is no extravagance to match it.
And listening as the original writer, comparing it against his own version, only made the pleasure richer. Where his song had blended the folk and ballad styles fashionable in the eighties, Lee Jin-ah had recast it as a lyrical ballad.
Every memory, every remnant of that time — I cast them all away.
And there was Lee Jin-ah's face, steeped in a distant, aching sorrow. The line, in his original, had been less grief than resentment.
So this is how Jin-ah read it.
Watching her reinterpret his song and make it her own, Bae Jin-goo's smile climbed all the way to his ears.
That's my Jin-ah. She's wonderful.
The look on his face was the unguarded fondness of a grandfather watching his granddaughter, and then the song turned toward its climax.
I believed it was a fate the heavens had bound.
On the day the lotus withers, you walk away.
As Lee Jin-ah sang the bridge in a voice raw with longing, murmurs of wonder broke from the audience. The voice that seemed to reach straight into feeling, the expression, the gestures, even the direction of her gaze — watching her stir every person who looked at her, Kim Se-jun, who had been watching from the wings, could only shake his head.
Incredible. A professional is a professional.
It was a different class entirely. This was the stage of a seasoned artist, something he could not yet do himself. As if to prove the point, thunderous applause exploded from the audience the moment Lee Jin-ah's performance ended.
"Wow... I really have been thoroughly humiliated. Isn't that a little too well sung?"
"Not at all. That's just a junior showing off for her senior."
Bae Jin-goo's praise and Lee Jin-ah's humility folded together, and their conversation picked up again.
"The women in the audience have just added another favorite to their karaoke list. You can all sing it as well as Jin-ah, right?"
At Bae Jin-goo's question, the women in the seats offered awkward little laughs. In that warm, easy atmosphere, he delivered his next line.
"Now. There's something we ought to address here. Jin-ah isn't the only one who remade my song, is she?"
"That's right. This friend of mine wasn't even supposed to be part of the remake — he just somehow ended up on it."
A stir ran through the audience at Lee Jin-ah's words.
This past Monday, a rookie had appeared like a comet. A few people in the seats wore puzzled looks, still in the dark — but those who had already heard Kim Se-jun's song watched Lee Jin-ah and Bae Jin-goo's mouths with faces full of anticipation.
"Oh. For someone who jumped in at the last minute, the song is remarkably good. And it's a response song with Jin-ah, isn't it? I love that kind of concept. The story continues. Each one answering the other."
The audience listening along nodded in agreement.
"Exactly. The reason this friend ended up joining so suddenly is that the song was simply too good. He showed up with it out of nowhere, and neither the company nor I could choose between my track and his. So we said, to hell with it — let's release both. That's how it happened."
"Ohh! So it was too good not to put out. That's what you're saying. And it really is that good. The song is genuinely wonderful."
"It almost sounds like you like his better than mine?"
Lee Jin-ah pouted playfully, and Bae Jin-goo raised his voice in mock panic.
"No. No, no. That's not what I meant. I mean they're both wonderful."
The two of them playing out the script looked so natural it might as well have been real.
"And the response-song concept was this friend's idea, too."
"Wow... that's someone with a rare musical instinct."
He swallowed, then stopped himself, smiling at the expectant faces turned toward him from the seats.
"If I say any more, I think the audience is going to get angry with me. Today's special guest. Kim Se-jun! Please come out!"
"Now! You can go on now!"
At Bae Jin-goo's cue, the staffer beside Kim Se-jun called out to him.
Let's go.
He set his trembling feet in motion and climbed slowly onto the stage. The audience welcomed him with applause. He glanced at Lee Jin-ah, and she mouthed a single word at him: Smile.
Is my face that stiff?
He loosened the rigidity that had settled over his features without his noticing, and managed a small smile.
"Huh. His face is more ordinary than I expected."
"Right? It's nothing like the photos."
"His fans watching this are going to be in tears."
For all Kim Se-jun's effort to smile, the people seeing him for the first time made no attempt to hide their disappointment. It was not an ugly face — but it was a rather ordinary set of features, nothing like the photographs that had captured the hearts of so many women. A few fans who were seeing him in person let out sighs they could not quite swallow.
"Ah. Welcome, Se-jun. First, a greeting for the viewers, if you would."
"Yes. Hello. I'm Kim Se-jun, a new singer."
Kim Se-jun bowed his head toward the camera trained on him.
"My word — a rookie, and you sing like that? The song this time is wonderful. And it's an original, too. You don't seem like a newcomer at all."
"The original was so good to begin with. It's a song I've always loved, so remaking it wasn't particularly difficult."
"Wow... you do realize that just sounded rather arrogant? As if you're saying you write songs easily. Quite the swagger you've got there."
At Bae Jin-goo's teasing, Kim Se-jun scratched his head, looking flustered.
"That isn't what I meant. I really have been a fan of yours for a long time, Mr. Bae."
"Ah, well. When you put it that way, I can only be grateful. You play the gayageum, which is unusual — will you be showing us that today as well?"
"Ah, of course."
"Wonderful! Then let's get ready and have a listen, shall we?"
At those words, Kim Se-jun crossed to the corner of the stage, took up the gayageum that had been prepared for him, and returned to their side. He set it on its stand, plucked the strings once, lightly, and nodded to say he was ready.
Seeing his signal, the staff started the backing track.
The accompaniment began beneath the audience's applause. As the clapping faded, Kim Se-jun's distinctive voice and the clear, ringing tone of the gayageum spread through the microphones and filled the hall.
When the lotus first bloomed, I saw you.
More than any lotus, I carried only you home in my eyes.
Bae Jin-goo's eyes widened at the first phrase, and the corner of his mouth lifted of its own accord.
That Hae-jin...
He knew it from the opening line. Lee Hae-jin had landed a massive catch.
This was a singer with a charm entirely different from Lee Jin-ah's. A husky, fiercely individual voice. If Lee Jin-ah was the kind of artist who stirred an audience's feelings and struck the heart with a clear, luminous tone, Kim Se-jun had the kind of presence that bewitched people — a singer who made you fall silent and listen, half in a daze.
And the gayageum doesn't just add to the charm... it multiplies it.
The gayageum. What an instrument it was. Widely known as a traditional Korean instrument, and yet so few people had actually heard one. That husky voice and that mysterious instrument together left the room speechless, and pulled them under.
The memory of that day — that time I long to forget.
When the lotus falls, I will leave you.
The chorus. The part of a song that has to leave the deepest impression — what people call the highlight, the place where feeling has to be poured in most completely. As the song reached that chorus, the audience cried out, and Bae Jin-goo let a silent exclamation rise inside him.
Oh-ho!
Kim Se-jun looked at Lee Jin-ah, who sat beside Bae Jin-goo watching the stage, with a gaze full of distant longing. The melancholy in his face and eyes was so natural it might have belonged to a man looking at his actual lover. And in the same instant, a sound of piercing, mournful beauty filled the hall from the speakers.
Is that a haegeum?
Bae Jin-goo pricked up his ears at a sound that was at once familiar and not, and then he laughed, as if he could not quite believe it.
Hah. Unbelievable.
The plaintive, aching cry of the haegeum, and that faraway look on his face. It was like a single frame from an Eastern film. The instrument's sorrowful, yearning voice worked on the audience's ears and lifted their feeling higher and higher.
Listening to the recording, I thought his emotional delivery was a little thin...
Seeing him on a stage, his innate gift came into sharp, unmistakable focus. The natural expression. The way he used his eyes. And the haegeum, drawing everyone still deeper into what he was feeling.
He's the kind of artist who shines more on a stage than on a track.
As Kim Se-jun's song drew toward its end, Bae Jin-goo watched him with a look of deep satisfaction.
Better than I expected.
A stage so complete it was hard to believe this was a first broadcast appearance. Watching him deliver a performance without a single mistake, Bae Jin-goo revised the thought.
Better than expected? That isn't it at all.
When the song ended and only Kim Se-jun's breathing could be heard through the microphone, Bae Jin-goo murmured quietly to himself.