Hanpuri Concert (2)
Baek Yuri looked at Gal Neoul with a sour expression, then reached for his wallet.
Why did he suddenly need fifty thousand won right before bed?
Mermaids were impossible to make sense of.
Neoul was asking to borrow it, but would he even have the means to pay it back? Yuri was reluctant, but he figured there must be some reason for it and decided to hand it over as money he probably wouldn’t get back.
“Do you need it right now?”
“Probably.”
When Baek Yuri took out his wallet and handed over the fifty-thousand-won bill, Baek Namu’s face soured. He stamped at the air in irritation.
“Hey, hey! Why are you giving money to someone who doesn’t even look like he can pay it back? Huh? I thought you’d gotten a little smarter, but no, Baek Yuri’s tendency to get taken advantage of hasn’t gone anywhere! This won’t do!”
Neoul accepted the bill and stared back at Baek Namu, his expression equally sour.
He told him to borrow it, and now he was making a scene.
The look carried that complaint plainly.
“Oh? You’re looking at your teacher with disrespect?”
Baek Namu punched Baek Yuri on the shoulder a couple of times, then told Neoul to lie back down on the bedding he’d been resting on before.
“Keep the money in your hand.”
When Neoul clutched the money tightly and lay back down, Baek Yuri and Baek Gi-yeom, who had been watching from the side, both wore expressions full of question marks.
Yuri, in particular, suddenly felt a chill on his shoulder and checked the air conditioner temperature.
“Neoul. Why are you sleeping with fifty thousand won in your hand?”
“There is a use for it.”
At Baek Gi-yeom’s question, Neoul gave a halfhearted answer. The moment he laid his head back on the pillow again, sleep came rushing in.
Not long after, the room went dark.
Baek Namu pressed his thumb and middle finger together, blew a sharp huff through his mouth, and then flicked Neoul hard on the forehead.
“Ow!”
Neoul, who had been on the verge of sleep, shot upright while clutching his forehead. The banknote in his hand crumpled tightly in his grip. Startled, he lost the last traces of sleep at once.
“What are you doing?”
When Neoul stared at Baek Namu with wide eyes, this deranged grim reaper seized his arm as if he meant to drag him to the underworld and hurled his body out the window.
“Whaaat?!”
Neoul was startled all over again. No matter how many times Baek Namu had kicked and punched him before, his blows had always passed straight through Neoul’s body. But this time, the moment Baek Namu grabbed him, his arm was truly caught.
Neoul’s body was dragged through the closed glass window and insect screen and out of the building.
When he turned his head to look back, he saw his own body still lying in the room, asleep.
“Surely... I have died...?”
What kind of lunatic was this...? What had he done?!
Trying to understand the situation, Neoul’s pupils shook as he looked back and forth between his sleeping body and Baek Namu.
“Kyaahah! Mermaid prince! First time out of body?”
“What?!”
“Let’s go!”
“W-wait!”
Out-of-body experience!
A gust of wind rushed past, and the scenery changed. When he opened his eyes after squeezing them shut, Neoul found himself in the middle of a pitch-dark, eerie amusement park.
Broken glass windows, an old carousel coated in dust, a roller coaster abandoned with one side of its track shattered, and framed pictures painted with bizarre images.
The amusement park, as though no human had set foot there in a long time, carried a cold, sinister atmosphere.
“Let’s see now. Ah! Over there!”
When Baek Namu yanked his arm once more, Neoul found himself standing atop a tower-like structure. From there, the outdoor stage below was visible at a glance.
“While you’re watching the performance, if any passing ghost recognizes you and tries to mess with you, take out a ten-thousand-won bill and give it to them for your passage money. Everyone will probably be too busy watching the show to notice, but just in case.”
Distracted by the amusement park spread out beneath him from such a height, Neoul vaguely nodded and tucked the money safely into the pocket of his pajama pants.
“Then enjoy the show!”
With a jangling sound from his earrings striking together, Baek Namu vanished in an instant.
Neoul looked quietly down below. He could see so many ghosts gathered around the stage that it would have been impossible to count them all at once.
Then, in that instant.
Flash!
Lights came on across the once-dark amusement park.
Before the lights were lit, the amusement rides had only looked eerie, but now that colorful sparkling illumination flooded them, the whole place transformed into a beautiful sight. Yellow bulbs strung everywhere and lanterns of many different colors added to the dreamlike atmosphere.
The tower Neoul stood on flickered on and off a few times, then began to shine brilliantly as well. When the ghosts lifted their heads toward it, Neoul hurriedly ducked and hid behind the railing.
But why am I hiding?
Even if a ghost tried to bother him, what could it do to someone who was already dead? Neoul wasn’t afraid of ghosts at all.
Just as he was about to rise proudly, unable to understand Baek Namu’s warning, a sound drifted in from somewhere.
♪♩♪♪― ♩♪♬♪― ♪♩♬♩―
Music.
Neoul’s rabbit-like eyes widened as he looked around for the source.
On the left side of the stage, he saw instruments: keyboard, drums, electric guitar, bass guitar, and more. Ghosts dressed in distinctive clothes and hairstyles were playing them with obvious excitement.
In particular, the drummer looked as though only bare bones remained where arms and legs should have been, yet he wore fingerless gloves and swung his sticks freely.
“Ummmmmmmm- Yeeeeeeah!”
Following the engine-like growl of a motorcycle, a thunderous shout rippled across the entire amusement park. With the crisp crash of drums behind it, Baek Namu appeared onstage.
A scream-like cheer burst from the ghosts below the stage.
Kyaaaah!
Baek Yuri wore black pants, black leather gloves, and a black harness over a white shirt unbuttoned at the top. His clothes had changed, but the accessories he had been wearing remained the same.
All the ghosts who had been looking toward the tower now turned their attention to Baek Namu onstage.
“You thought it was over!
Everything was hard from the beginning,
We did our best even when everything was a mess,
Laughing and crying, struggling as we ran,
You’ll be afraid all the traces of the past
Might disappear completely.”
Holding a handheld microphone, Baek Namu roamed freely across the wide stage. His sweet yet clear vocals and his uniquely compelling tone were irresistible.
“On cold ground, beneath the shade of trees,
In the middle of scorching fire,
If you thought the eternal night had come,
Then don’t worry anymore.
Lift your head and look at the world!
You’ve already shed enough tears.
Shake off your fear and regrets,
Hold my hand!”
Boom! Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud! Boom-boom!
Between the intensified drums, a powerful voice filled with deep emotion tore upward as if it might punch straight through the sky.
“I’ll tell you this isn’t the end.
A new world will open up-!
To say your heart doesn’t race anymore is a bright yellow lie.
To say you’re sick of everything is a bright red lie!
In truth, just like young boys and girls,
You were always wishing for your heart to pound without caring how it looked.
If you want it one more time-
Don’t hesitate.
Hold my hand!”
Hopeful, exhilarating rock. Running nonstop across the stage as he sang, Baek Namu flung the microphone high, did a somersault, and caught it again.
Kyaaaah! Aaaah!
Lights flashed amid the cheers and little hops of excitement. The tickets the invited ghosts were holding and waving glittered like fireflies.
“Oh oh ohohoh ohoh oh-”
At the very edge of the stage, right up close to the audience, Baek Namu sang with perfect pitch, as though he were placing each note by hand.
“Come on, you guys! Sing with me! Let’s go!”
Then he shouted toward the crowd and held the microphone out to them.
Oh oh ohohoh ohoh oh-
A sing-along followed.
Some of the audience members sang beautifully, while others missed every note or lagged behind the beat, but everyone joined together and sang as one.
A broad smile bloomed across Baek Namu’s face as he held the microphone toward the crowd and stretched out his arm. He nodded in time with the music, keeping the beat for them.
Suddenly, Neoul got chills and rubbed his arms. He had never seen anything like this in his life. Baek Namu was not only filling the enormous stage by himself; he was also naturally and joyfully connecting with the audience below it.
Neoul could not tear his eyes away for even a single second, taking in both the stage and the crowd.
“Hold my hand!
Oh oh ohohoh ohoh oh-”
Oh oh ohohoh ohoh oh-
Another wave of response rose from the audience, and after an exciting instrumental break, Baek Namu’s voice rang out again, clear and bright.
“Don’t be afraid, take my hand-!
Throw off gravity
And shout out hotly, Ooh-!
Even without wings, we can fly!”
Bang! Bang-bang! Fireworks shot into the sky. Neoul watched, spellbound, as the lights burst and spread and fractured into a dazzling feast. The fireworks smelled of incense instead of gunpowder.
“There is no ending, meet me in the prologue.
A new door has opened-!
To say we’ve just been living like strangers is a sky-blue lie.
To say it’s okay now is a snow-white lie!
In truth, just like young boys and girls,
You were always wishing for a special day without understanding a thing.
If you felt it once more in this moment-
Don’t hesitate.
Hold my hand!”
Baek Namu removed the rings from the ten fingers of both hands and scattered them evenly toward the audience. Then, with lighter hands, he went from one end of the stage to the other, taking the outstretched hands of the front-row ghosts one by one.
“Hold my hand!
Oh oh ohohoh ohoh oh-”
Oh oh ohohoh ohoh oh-
The ghosts responded fervently. A few of them even burst into tears. The sing-along grew louder than before, and the hands waving the glowing tickets trembled with excitement.
“Don’t be afraid, take my hand-!
Throw off gravity
And shout out hotly, Ooh-!
Even without wings, we can fly!”
Flying across the stage, Baek Namu looked as though he had been born on it. Neoul remembered what he had once said.
I’ll show you exactly what an idol is.
The chain hanging from his flashy silver earrings swayed without pause before finally falling still. Though he was a grim reaper and surely not short of breath at all, Baek Namu nevertheless lifted and dropped his shoulders as if he were winded, striking a cool pose.
“Hold my hand-”
Kyaaaaaaa!
The response exploded outward. Baek Namu, luxuriating in the bright, fevered reaction, vanished from the stage like smoke, and a woman with her hair tied up in twin tails took his place.
“Hello, everyone! Thank you for coming to this Hanpuri Concert, where we’ll be letting out all the old grudges and regrets weighing on your hearts!”
Waaaah!
“Worries! Regrets! Sadness! Pain! Leave all the burdens on your shoulders in the world of the living, and let’s sing our hearts out with our bodies made light!”
The speakers boomed each time the woman spoke.
The concert, which had started with Baek Namu’s rock, rolled on through one dazzling stage after another.
The grim reaper with twin tails covered a recently popular girl idol song, and then Baek Namu appeared again to present a dance-pop stage.
Pop rock, synth-pop, and then trot and rock ballads, followed by a group stage by the five grim reapers.
Neoul couldn’t look away for even a moment from the relentless rush of performances. Just as Baek Namu had boasted, he kept appearing in solo stages, mixed-gender stages, and group stages, taking up seventy percent of the concert’s performance time.
When Baek Yuri had once bristled and snapped, “Now I’m better than you,” Baek Namu had flown into a rage as if deeply offended. It had not been for nothing.
When he danced, every angle and line was perfect, and in terms of vocals, he was not one step, but two or three steps above Baek Yuri.
His tone was so beautiful it struck the ear like lightning, and on top of that, his range was astonishingly wide, with register changes as effortless as breathing. The sheer charisma overflowing from him was only the bonus to a talent so obvious it could only be called inborn.
Baek Namu, now a grim reaper, seemed not to be a living person at all; even after moving around for ages without eating, he never seemed to collapse from exhaustion, and no matter how much he sang or scraped his throat, his voice apparently never ached. Add to that a body light enough to fly, and his dancing took on the grace of feathers.
Neoul noticed that many of the ghosts, who had mostly been stuck close to the ground, were gradually floating a little higher into the air as though they were setting down the weight of life itself.
“Hey. Student.”
Then someone spoke from behind Neoul.
“Why are you watching all alone here?”