Three Songs
That night, after Lee Ye-eun had listened to the guide track Kim Se-jun had given her, he sat bolted to his desk well into the small hours. A corner of his computer monitor flickered.
"Hmm?"
A message from Lee Ye-eun.
Her messages stopped. Se-jun frowned at the screen.
What was that?
The conversation had fizzled out just as it had started to get interesting. Se-jun, thoroughly curious now, pressed her.
Huh?
Se-jun's eyes went wide. She wanted to write the lyrics?
He sat with the message unanswered, turning it over. His fingers drummed the desk as he reached back into the past — her hit songs, the ones he remembered. Quite a few of them, as far as he knew, had been compositions she had written and lyricized entirely on her own.
That might not be a bad idea at all.
He knew what she was capable of. An intrigued smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
She read the song perfectly.
The mood of a pair of lovers parting in a little pavilion, spring rain falling around them, each already aching for the other — that was the feeling he had poured into the duet he had named Spring Rain.
And now I really want to hear it.
A sharp curiosity took hold of him. What kind of words would Lee Ye-eun lay over a melody he had written? Her lyrics had a way of finding the softest place in a listener's chest. If those words met his music, what kind of synergy would they make?
He had taken too long to answer, and she had already talked herself into the worst conclusion.
Se-jun huffed a quiet laugh at her reply. If anyone ought to be saying thank you, it was him. One day Lee Ye-eun's market value would climb through the roof — and here he was, receiving her feature and her lyrics without paying a dime.
All right. Back to work... wait. Who is it this time?
He had just closed the conversation with Ye-eun and was steeling himself to dive back into the session when his eyes drifted to the corner of the monitor again. A new notification was blinking there, and the name attached to it was the last one he had expected.
Se-hyun?
They had exchanged numbers after the last Asian Music Awards, but neither of them had reached out since. Se-jun had been grateful for the way Se-hyun seemed to think well of him, but there hadn't been enough time back then to turn that goodwill into any real friendship.
Come to think of it — where had Se-hyun even heard that he was putting out an album? The industry really was a small world.
The question came so far out of left field that a question mark practically lit up in Se-jun's head.
...!
Se-jun's pupils blew wide. A feature from Se-hyun — a member of B.ONE. The public's attention would snap to it in a heartbeat.
I guess my name actually carries some weight now.
It was a little embarrassing to say it about himself, but Kim Se-jun was no longer a light name in Korea. His songs spilled out of speakers on the street. After company dinners, when the second round moved to karaoke, his tracks were the go-to numbers for every department head and team leader in the room. Pair that with Se-hyun — a member of a group you could fairly call one of the top idol acts in the country — and you had a combination people would be waiting for with their breath held.
It wasn't only the public. Somewhere in a corner of Se-jun's own chest, a fierce little spark of anticipation had caught. Se-hyun was good enough to hold the main vocal seat in B.ONE. He had released a string of solo tracks, turned them into hits, and proven exactly what he could do. To pretend he wasn't curious what kind of masterpiece the two of them might make would have been a lie.
Even so, Se-jun shook his head.
Even through text, Se-hyun's disappointment came through thick enough to taste. Se-jun clicked his tongue. He was disappointed too — every bit as much. He had turned the offer down anyway, because he had judged that putting Se-hyun on his first album would not be an unmixed blessing.
There was a real chance that the mere fact of Se-hyun's participation would draw more attention than the album itself. In other words, one careless step and the guest would swallow the host. He did not want that kind of risk sitting inside the record.
That's how big the B.ONE name is.
B.ONE's fandom, in particular, had the kind of firepower you could count on one hand among idol fandoms — exactly what you would expect from a group of that caliber. If Se-hyun ended up on a b-side instead of the title track, the conversation could turn ugly in all the wrong ways.
Once that conversation was closed as well, a smile slipped across Se-jun's mouth before he quite noticed it.
Where had he been a year ago? A nobody. Even landing a single feature on someone else's track had been an uphill fight. And now a top-tier singer was practically knocking the door down to work with him. The change a single year had brought made him quietly proud of himself.
"I've come a long way."
His position. His name.
"But I've still got a long way to go."
The road ahead was still impossibly far. His first album would be the first step he took along it.
Late January. Kim Se-jun, Lee Hae-jin, and Song Dae-jun gathered in the studio.
"Se-jun. Sorry, but I think the title track has to be mine."
"Excuse me?"
"You'll know when you hear it. This song has to be the title. No argument."
Dark circles hung all the way down to Hae-jin's nose, but the words he threw at Se-jun were bursting with confidence.
"If the song's that good, then of course it should be."
"I'm sorry, sir. I think my name is the one that needs to go on Se-jun's title track this time."
On Hae-jin's heels, Song Dae-jun — his face worn down to half of what it used to be — pushed back in a voice just as sure of itself.
The two of them looked like they had been scraped down to bone. They had burned time and body alike to make these songs, and Se-jun, who had come out of the same grind looking every bit as much like a zombie, wagged a finger at both of them.
"I'm sorry, but I'm certain my song is going to be the best of the three."
"I feel the same way about mine."
"What he said."
Exhaustion sat on them in layers, and still their eyes shone — full of pride in the songs they had made. Watching them, Se-jun smiled, thoroughly satisfied. As a fellow composer the competitive heat had caught in him too, but as a singer, their pride was the most reassuring thing in the world. In the end, their songs were songs he would be the one to sing.
"Shall we decide whose we hear first, then?"
"I'll put mine on."
Hae-jin stepped forward, and the song he had made himself spilled out of the speakers. Se-jun closed his eyes, ready to listen — and the moment the melody reached him, a graceful curve found his mouth.
Oh...?
Even the intro was interesting. Birdsong, as if announcing the morning. Then a gentle violin, and woven through it, the voice of a gayageum.
Morning?
What rose from the song was a fresh spring morning — the feeling of warm sunlight shouldering through an open window and settling around you, soft and close.
It's clean.
The whole track breathed the bright, clean air of spring. A light New Age sensibility ran through it, and yet it didn't pick its audience; it reached for something universal, something that simply made a person feel good. You couldn't help coming out the other side of it lighter than you went in.
Now I get why he was so sure of himself.
"Whew... that's good."
When the song ended, Dae-jun shook his head in open admiration. A track that made you feel refreshed the instant you heard it. There wouldn't be many people willing to call a song like that anything less than good.
"I really liked it too."
Se-jun put a thumb up for Hae-jin, who wore a look of deep satisfaction.
"I'm pretty happy with how it came out myself. Who's next? Dae-jun?"
Hae-jin pointed him out with complete confidence. Dae-jun, not about to be outdone, queued up his own track with a look of equal swagger.
"Your song is outstanding, sir... but I don't think mine falls short of it."
We'll see once we hear it.
Se-jun watched the two of them square off with genuine interest, then closed his eyes again as Dae-jun's song began.
...!
The corners of Se-jun's mouth traced that same elegant curve all over again.
This one's a whole different animal...
Like Hae-jin, Dae-jun had put something distinctive in the intro. A whistle. But it wasn't bright or soft. There was a thread of sorrow in it. Se-jun could see it — a drunk man weaving down a late-night street, whistling as he went — and the melody that followed laid color over the picture.
It's dark.
Where Hae-jin had called up the brightness of spring, Dae-jun had found a spring that was still dark. A late dawn. The story of a lonely man walking those slightly chilly hours alone. Se-jun smiled. In an age that spent so much of itself fighting loneliness, a song like this had every chance of becoming the kind of classic that sat down beside people and kept them company.
"What do you think?"
When it was over, Dae-jun asked the question carefully. He had talked a big game, but a little tightness around the edges was only human.
"It's good. You've earned the right to be confident."
Hae-jin's praise lit Dae-jun up.
"Ah — and I thought Se-jun's fans would really love this one."
"My fans?"
"Yes. While I was working on it I kept thinking of my father. Coming home alone in the small hours, that lonely walk back. That feeling. I think the older listeners among your fans would find a lot to recognize in it."
He's not wrong.
A certain part of Se-jun's audience would hear this and feel seen — and comforted.
"All right. Then I guess I'm up."
Hae-jin and Dae-jun nodded, and Se-jun went on.
"This is my solo track first."
He started the song and watched their faces, curious what they would do.
The first thing that came through the speakers was Se-jun's signature — the gayageum. But the melody was brighter and warmer than the wistful color he usually painted with.
Oh.
A bright sensibility, same as Hae-jin's, and yet not quite the same. Where Hae-jin's song had been clean and fresh, Se-jun's was more alive, more full of motion.
This is good.
It felt like arriving at a flower-viewing. The heart lifted, as if you had settled down among blossoms of every color. It was the kind of song that made a person smile without meaning to, that sent a little flutter through the chest.
Then the track hit the chorus, and the rhythm changed. It was a pulse any Korean would feel in the body before they thought about it — so familiar that question marks surfaced on Hae-jin's and Dae-jun's faces.
I've heard this sound somewhere.
An instrument driving the rhythm the way a drum would. A flicker of uncertainty — and then Hae-jin's eyes, which had been closed, flew open as if something had just locked into place.
The janggu and the buk!
Perhaps it was more a traditional rhythmic cycle than a beat. The familiar pulse made him feel as if he had been invited to a real celebration — buried in a field of flowers, dancing and singing, playing without a single worry on his back. Hae-jin was left speechless.
With a song like this... it might actually be possible.
He had packed the track full of the flavor of gugak and still managed to catch, cleanly and completely, the joy of spring. Lay Kim Se-jun's voice over it, and a new king of the season might just be born.
"That's good..."
"I thought so too..."
When the song ended, both of them let the admiration out. Their hearts were still floating; neither of them had quite come back down.
"I lost. I lost."
"I lost as well."
They shook their heads, laughing in a kind of helpless defeat. Their own songs weren't lacking — but set beside Se-jun's, something in them felt like it had come up short.
"You're really something."
"I don't see any way to beat that."
They looked at him with something close to awe. Se-jun huffed a quiet laugh and tossed a single line back at them.
"I still have one more song, you know."