Performance Preparations
I turned off the video.
When Greg said he'd done "rock," I'd vaguely pictured something like pop-rock, but the rock he'd played was heavy metal.
The twenty-year-old Greg in the footage—hair even longer than before he'd shaved it bald, black lipstick smeared on—looked nightmare-fuel terrifying.
When I killed the screen right at the intro, Greg asked in a flustered rush,
"Uh, is this not working for you? Actually if you listen carefully this song is a hidden masterpiece..."
I shut that down without leaving any room.
"No. Drop this genre. From now on we only sing sweet, heartfelt, lovely songs."
Greg's face fell into a mild sulk of disappointment, but that wasn't my problem.
"Let's bury the past where it belongs. Now listen to what I've got to say."
I sat the deflated-balloon version of Greg down beside me, showed him the YouTube channel Cassandra and I were running, and briefly laid out the direction we planned to grow it.
Of course I tastefully edited out Cassandra's "You have to become a star" bit.
"...So I'm thinking of gradually uploading all kinds of videos that capture my lifestyle. When Cassandra heard about you, she said it would be great if videos of us performing together popped up every now and then."
"Oh, really?"
"Yeah. No guarantees on success, though. We only just hit the watch-time and subscriber thresholds to start earning."
In truth Greg might have wanted his own channel if he kept doing music, so I made sure to sell the advantages of ours.
"But either way we'll keep pushing out solid content. Cassandra's planning sense is excellent... and of course, since it's with you, I'll split the video revenue. So? You in?"
Greg, who'd been steadily inflating again while he listened, bounced up from his seat like a balloon pumped full of air.
"Ah, but..."
Right. Now came the part where he had to talk the family out of the weekend job at his sister's shop.
"Don't worry. I think they'll say yes pretty easily. No need for a long speech—let's just show them right in front of their faces."
I didn't wait for an answer. I walked inside, headed for the living room, and started playing the accompaniment to the song we'd just practiced together.
The lyrical melody filled the house, and one by one people who'd been doing their own things drifted into the living room.
I looped the same highlight section until everyone had gathered, then gave Greg a look.
His face, which had been perfectly casual out back, flushed a little, but he launched into the song with practiced ease.
The sisters grimaced and laughed; Mom and Grandma clearly loved it. Perfect—exactly the reactions I'd expected.
The kids sat clustered together, toys in hand, staring up at us as we played and sang. I flashed a smile at our adorable audience, then focused on the performance.
We finished one song and did two more, turning the family into the crowd for a mini-concert.
The persuasion that followed was not difficult at all.
The next day.
Greg arrived at work early, sporting a halo so bright it made yesterday look dim, and delivered the news.
"Jun. After you left yesterday I talked with the hyung who runs the pub. We locked in the schedule—Saturday four weeks from now."
"Not bad."
The stage time the two of us had to fill was an hour and a half.
Forty-five minutes of performance, fifteen-minute break, another forty-five minutes.
Excluding the break, the pay for covering the stage together or trading off was a hundred and fifty dollars each. A hundred bucks an hour.
Thinking of it as a hundred-dollar hourly wage almost made it sound decent—until I considered everything else and decided musicians really do have it rough.
"Honestly, even the hundred-an-hour is because we know him. Some musicians go on stage for free."
"Aigoo."
"That's just how it is for musicians before they blow up. Instead they get to put a solid place like hyung's pub on their portfolio, or they cut a deal to upload the performance footage and make video money..."
Greg grinned.
"If you're good-looking or actually talented, the audience tips aren't bad either. It's a little weird saying it myself, but we'll be pretty solid. Think of it as weekend side work."
That part definitely caught my interest.
Tips...!
I'd bought it with points, sure, but the guitar I'd just gotten was not cheap.
If I'd known nothing about guitars it might have been different, but once I decided to get something decent while I was at it and started hunting...
I ended up with an all-solid acoustic. When I first held that soft-grained Engelmann spruce there hadn't been a single regret, but...
The playing I planned to do going forward was mostly delicate fingerstyle, so this acoustic was necessary... my gratitude to Greg was about that size, and I could always pass the guitar down to Luca later...
I piled on every excuse I could think of, but deep down I was already calculating how many gigs it would take to recoup the guitar money.
"Hey, how many times do I have to play before this guitar pays for itself?"
"No idea, but I'll work hard enough that buying you a second one won't even be a problem, my friend."
"Deal. I believe you."
Adding music to the monotony of office life was like pumping pure vitality into the days.
I already had plenty of that from everything else I was juggling, but Greg's face growing brighter by the day proved the point for him.
We synced up online a couple of times a week after work and practiced in person on weekends, trading houses.
At the office we tossed performance ideas back and forth over lunch...
Anyway, we spent the next few weeks riding high. And apparently it showed.
We were in the break room drinking post-lunch coffee and talking about what to wear on performance day when Austin walked in.
"You two look ridiculously pumped these days. Got something good? Share with the class."
"Ah..."
I hesitated for a second over whether to tell him the real story.
I'd known Austin long enough that we traded all kinds of talk, but I'd always felt the guy's chatty side leaned in a not-great direction.
Greg beat me to it.
"Actually this weekend we're playing a set at a pub in Old Town. Want to come watch?"
"Huh? Suddenly a performance? What, you two can actually sing?"
Greg laughed awkwardly, but I stepped in. The main vocal of a two-man band couldn't look unsure of himself.
"I'll handle guitar and backing vocals. Greg's the lead. He's got a great tone and solid technique."
"Well, good singers turn up everywhere."
"......"
"...Haha, yeah."
Greg forced a matching laugh.
I sighed inside, and Austin planted himself like an uncle who'd just sniffed out a scoop and inserted himself into the conversation.
"But both of you seem pretty shy. Not exactly stage material. You sure you'll be okay?"
I smiled and lightly punched Greg's shoulder.
"Ah, no worries there. Greg, show Austin that old performance video of yours."
"Oh, should I?"
Watching Greg pull up the clip with that same sunny, hopeful face, I wondered if the always-cool Rachel had fallen for exactly this pure side of him.
Of course the reverse-charm factor couldn't be ignored either...
[GWOORK, GWAAAAARGH...! YOU SOUL BOUND FOR THE FIRES OF HELL...! KIEEEEEEEK...!]
Click.
Austin shut the phone off with a thoroughly unsettled look. Greg took it back looking just as unsettled.
"Ahem. So... you're going to do that at the pub?"
Greg's eyes sharpened this time, but I answered with a smile.
"No. At the pub we'll stick to more crowd-friendly songs, of course."
"Right, well... but what suddenly got you started?"
"Ah, that..."
For a second I debated whether to stop Greg from opening his mouth, then decided against it.
Greg and Rachel planned to go public about dating eventually.
Greg wasn't about to spill a secret relationship all by himself, and the fact that he was becoming a dad would come out sooner or later anyway.
Greg bashfully ran a hand over his newly shortened hair and said with a little smile,
"Actually, I'm scheduled to become a dad before the year is out."
"Whaaaat?!"
Yeah. By quitting time there wouldn't be a single person in the office who didn't know.
The best response to Austin's over-the-top reaction was no reaction at all, so I just drank my coffee in silence.
That coffee nearly came back up during the conversation that followed.
"You dog. So you're living with the girlfriend right now? You gonna marry her?"
"Ah... well, she says she wants to think a little more about marriage."
"What? The woman said that?"
"Yeah. It was a sudden pregnancy, so she says there's still a lot to prepare and think through..."
"Aigoo, then that settles it."
Austin slapped the table and delivered the line like it was profound.
"What?"
"It's not your kid."
What the hell.
"...Excuse me?"
"She doesn't want to marry you."
"...It's not that she doesn't want to. She just said she needs to think a bit more."
"Same thing. What's there to think about? Women love marriage. They love locking down that security. But she gets pregnant and still doesn't want to marry..."
Greg shook his head hard.
"No... she wouldn't be like that."
Austin answered like the case was already closed.
"Don't be stubborn. At least get a paternity test. What if you pour your time and hard-earned money into this and later find out you've been raising someone else's kid?"
I glared at the back of Austin's head as he headed out for a smoke after lobbing that grenade.
Hope a bird shits on you while you're out there.
"......"
I asked the blank-faced Greg in the calmest voice I could manage,
"You going to do a paternity test?"
"...No."
"Good. Smart call."
Jumping to a paternity test just because some loser opened his mouth was pure idiocy. Nothing tanks a relationship faster than refusing to believe the person you love.
But Greg's next words caught me a little off guard.
"If..."
"If what."
"If—just in case—it's not my kid, what then?"
"What?"
"Rachel and I already picked out names. Boy names and girl names, both."
"......"
"We've talked about how to decorate the room. We've already discussed which schools later."
I almost laughed. They'd already scouted educational institutions for a kid who hadn't even babbled yet. I could already picture what a pair of hopeless softies these two were going to be as parents.
"But if it turns out not to be mine, what then? If they say I can't raise it?"
So that was the real fear. I patted his shoulder.
"Calm down. Don't let that moron's garbage get in your head."
"...Yeah?"
To already love a child that much before it was even born—that was pure Greg.
Anyway, that afternoon the news that Greg was becoming a dad spread through the office exactly as expected, and people kept stopping by to congratulate him.
"Hey, so two people in our office are becoming parents this year?"
They were talking about Rachel's pregnancy—the one everyone had already guessed even though it hadn't been announced.
Since I was the only person besides the two of them who knew those two parents belonged to the same baby, everyone else was going to be pretty surprised later.
Anyway.
Time rolled on, and on a weekend in May with the soft spring breeze stirring,
we headed to the pub Greg's acquaintance ran for our first performance.