Room Concert

Wow...

Kim Se-jun let out a purely honest gasp of wonder as he checked the viewer count. Eight hundred people — hardly a small number. And before he knew it, that figure had already swollen to two thousand. He had only just finished the first song.

"We're already at two thousand. Thank you so much. Ah — I've got Super Chat turned off right now. This is a Room Concert. It shouldn't cost anyone anything, right?"

He chatted lightly with his viewers, but even as he talked, his hands never stopped moving. A Modified Gayageum had to be retuned every time he used it — that was simply the nature of the instrument. He had asked for their patience, and yet they seemed delighted by the unfamiliar ritual instead.

So this is why people go live.

It was more fun than he had expected. More rewarding, too.

"All right — now I'll sing whatever you all want. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠one with the most likes was Cute Girl's Wish, right?"

The viewers sent up a storm of enthusiastic agreement. Watching them spam nodding emoticons, Kim Se-jun let out a small laugh.

I feel like a mother bird.

Every one of them was looking only at him, radiating anticipation.

"Then let's begin."

Cute Girl. A girl group that no longer existed. They had defined an era, but time, in the end, had been colorless and unkind. They had announced their disbandment last year and gone their separate ways as soloists.

And then there was their song — Wish. The track that had made them, without argument, the top girl group in Korea. A beloved classic their fans still ached for.

I'll drop the key a little. That should do it.

He cleared his throat and began to pluck the gayageum. Wish was a song steeped in the bright, sparkling feeling of a young girl — the kind of number that might not have suited a man in his twenties.

But that won't be a problem.

He had the gayageum. All he had to do was sing it differently, through the instrument's own voice.

His left hand slipped past the bridges to the right and began plucking the strings alongside his right. In the traditional technique, the right hand plucked while the left pressed and released the strings, shaping the lingering tones. Years of research had changed that. The left hand was no longer confined to coloring aftertones. It had crossed to the far side of the bridges and taken up the melody itself — and with that, a revolution in gayageum performance had begun. In time the left hand had gone further still, laying down harmonies the way a pianist's left hand does.

Ease the tempo down a little.

The original was an idol dance track, and the tempo was fast. He slowed it, folding a quieter emotion into the song. What had once been bright and sparkling, a girl in full bloom, became a shy one — bashful, flushed, holding something back. The same song, and yet not the same. A delicate rearrangement.

Anyone who had wanted the original untouched might have felt a pang of disappointment. The viewers' reaction, however, was closer to shock.

The chat was in an uproar. Kim Se-jun did not even notice. He was lost in the playing and the singing.

A soft falsetto, nothing like his usual style. The unexpected color of his voice drew startled reactions from the viewers. They had known him for that husky, distinctive timbre — and here he was, singing with something smooth and honeyed they had never heard from him before.

Even so, that voice of mine doesn't belong on a song like this.

The original was so full of a young girl's feeling that his ordinary tone would have sat wrong against it. So he had sung it in a voice that was not his usual one.

A shame I can't check the reactions in real time.

The chat was updating in a blur, too fast for him to read the actual words. Here and there, though, he caught clapping emoticons and other bright little signs of approval, and he guessed from those that it was going over well enough. Holding on to that thought, he played on.

A quiet, gentle melody. A voice sweet enough to linger. The newly born Wish sent the viewers who had once been Cute Girl fans into a crucible of feeling. His singing reached into a tender, half-forgotten corner of their memories and pressed there, softly.

Park Su-jin had been a devoted Cute Girl fan. She was moved enough that tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. She brushed them away with her sleeve and made a vow, silently, to herself.

I'm stanning again.

After Cute Girl disbanded, she had barely managed to climb out of the fandom. She had sworn she would never fall for anyone again. Today was the day that vow shattered into pieces.

"So? How was it? Was it all right?"

The moment the song ended and Kim Se-jun asked, the chat exploded — thumbs-up and clapping emoticons, praise piled on praise. He bowed his head with a bright smile.

"Thank you for liking it."

Wow. The viewer count really jumped.

He lifted his head and checked the number. Nearly ten thousand people had crowded in. It was far more successful than he had imagined. He had only just started the Room Concert, and already there were ten thousand of them. If a little more time passed, he could hardly guess how many more might come.

"My next activities? I don't really know yet. Nothing's been confirmed. I imagine we'll finish what we're doing now properly first, and then make plans from there, don't you think?"

He answered their questions kindly, and still drew the line where it needed to be drawn. His schedule for the coming year was already mapped out. He was not foolish enough to leak future plans that were company confidential.

A little more easy conversation followed, the kind of small talk that kept the room warm. Then the retuning was finished, and Kim Se-jun spoke again.

"All right — shall we look at the next one? The song with the next most likes was Ed Kane's With You, wasn't it?"

With You. A smash hit by the British-born singer Ed Kane, still holding a steady place near the top of the digital charts. A classic that had clung to number one on the Billboard chart for a long stretch. From the intro on, an electronic beat chimed like a xylophone, looping without pause until the song was over. It could have sounded like nothing much. Musically, it might not have been the most sophisticated thing ever written — and yet it had taken people by the heart and refused to let go. Kim Se-jun loved it too. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Before the regression, he had arranged it for gayageum more times than he could count.

"You all know the chorus, right?"

He looked into the camera with a sly, knowing smile. The chat went wild, as if everyone had read his mind at once, and he burst out laughing.

"Yes. When we get there, I want all of you singing along. This is a concert, after all!"

This is actually so much fun.

He would never have guessed that singing while talking with people — even online — could feel this good. The smile at the corner of his mouth had no intention of coming down.

With You had two kinds of magic. One was that addictive beat. The other was lyrics so direct they left nowhere to hide. From the first bar, that simple electronic figure, chiming like a xylophone, seized people's attention in a single breath. And Kim Se-jun began to pluck that same beguiling beat on the gayageum.

The figure that had captured the world. The moment it was played on a gayageum — the instant his fingers touched the strings — the chat fell into a frenzy.

It was a sound quite unlike the electronic original. What had chimed like a xylophone became the gayageum's clear, ringing voice. The addictive feel of it, though, did not vanish — and some people found it even more captivating than before. The beat was fairly fast, and Kim Se-jun's hands moved with a dazzling precision.

The chat overflowed with praise for Kim Se-jun. And it did not stop there. The moment he opened his mouth to sing, another wave of it came crashing down.

This time it was the distinctive voice they knew — only rougher than usual, a little more husky. That was With You's other kind of magic. The lyrics were blunt enough to lay a person's instincts bare.

Physical love. Instinct. Something primitive.

To keep that feeling alive, he sang it rougher than he ordinarily would. It was his own reading of the song, and it was an excellent choice.

Like a bird of a hundred colors, he kept showing them a different face. People began to fall for a charm they had never seen from him before.

And then the chorus arrived — the same sing-along the crowd had roared when Ed Kane himself had come to Korea. The scene replayed itself. Kim Se-jun stopped singing and played the gayageum alone, watching the chat with a quietly pleased smile. The window was being papered over with the lyrics of the chorus.

Now this is a concert.

They could not speak to one another face to face. Even so, it was a moment the singer and every person watching were sharing, and enjoying, together.

Kim Se-jun's Room Concert ended in a triumph. By the time it closed, it had drawn a hundred thousand viewers and seized the real-time search rankings. He had planned on something like five songs. The viewers' encore requests never stopped, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in the end he sang ten.

"There's our lucky charm! You really went and caused a sensation, huh?"

"Thank you."

He had been called to Lee Hae-jin's office, and the moment he stepped inside, Ha Dong-jun spread his arms wide at the sight of him. The grin filling the vice president's face left no doubt that he was genuinely, thoroughly delighted by the way things stood.

"This is a smash. A real one. The internet is eating it up. How did you even think of this?"

Lee Hae-jin, who had been sitting in his chair looking at his phone, turned his gaze to Kim Se-jun as well. The Room Concert. When Se-jun had said he was going to do MeTube, Hae-jin had written it off as a reasonable bit of fan service. This was more than he had imagined — Se-jun's sense for a concept, and the reach of it. A young artist who had been treated as a spectacular rookie was now being set beside other top stars. After this, his asking price was going to climb through the ceiling. That much was certain.

With Simcheongga, he had already won the deep affection of men in their forties and fifties, the heads of their households. This time, he had won over every other generation as well.

He really is a lucky charm. At this point, there's no other word for it.

Everything the young man touched turned into a hit. The look Lee Hae-jin turned on Kim Se-jun was endlessly gentle.

"You did well. So — how did it feel, putting on a concert?"

At Lee Hae-jin's question, Kim Se-jun scratched the back of his head. He had called it a concert, but saying that word in front of a man who had stood on countless real stages made him a little embarrassed.

"It was good. It wasn't a perfect concert, and it wasn't exactly face-to-face, but I enjoyed it."

"Kid's a born singer. That's all there is to it."

Ha Dong-jun chimed in from the side, clapping him on the back, and Lee Hae-jin nodded. He had felt it from the first time they met. Kim Se-jun was built for the stage.

"Good. Then you'll do just fine at next month's concert, too."

Lee Hae-jin murmured it almost to himself. The moment the words reached him, Kim Se-jun doubted his own ears.

"Pardon? A concert?"

He echoed it back, startled.

"Yeah. We've got a concert next month. Not the Room Concert you did on MeTube."

Lee Hae-jin gave a small, crooked smile and went on.