Immersion (1)
Is this even okay?
Listening to the new tracks pouring from the speakers, I swallowed hard without realizing it.
The moment Producer Seo Geonwoo stepped into the studio, he plugged in his external hard drive before anyone could finish greeting him and started playing the songs he had prepared one by one.
I had expected him to play a couple of tracks and stop. His playlist had no end.
Is he really allowed to just play all of these for us?
Tracks of every genre came flooding out. Some had carefully recorded guide vocals. Others were unfinished sketches, nothing more than a rough piano melody line. Yet the astonishing part was the completeness of even those. A few bars of the beat alone—or even the empty spaces where the melody had not yet been filled in—perfectly conveyed the direction and mood each song was chasing.
So this was why they called him the number-one producer in Korea.
I had completely lost track of time, every nerve focused on the monitor speakers, when Kang Minhyuk, sitting beside me, carefully spoke up.
"Um… Producer?"
Seo Geonwoo, who had been staring blankly into space while riding the rhythm, turned his head.
"Aren't there… a little too many songs?"
At the dazed look on Kang Minhyuk's face, I checked the time. Good lord. Two or three hours had already flown by since we entered the studio.
We had been listening nonstop without a break, so of course Minhyuk's ears were getting tired.
Only then did Seo Geonwoo glance at the clock himself. He let out a hearty laugh.
"Hahaha! Now that you mention it, maybe so? I got a little too excited and went overboard. Was it too much?"
He turned toward the VJ who had been standing silently in the corner holding the camera the entire time.
"Aigoo, Camera Director. Stuck there without moving for two, three hours… Aren't your legs killing you? You okay?"
Seo Geonwoo scratched the back of his head apologetically, then shifted his gaze to me.
"What about you, Jiyoung? Were you bored?"
"I like all the songs."
"All of them?"
"Yes. Not a single one I could leave out. Even the tracks without guides had such a vivid sense of space that I could already picture exactly how to sing them the second I grabbed a mic."
At my praise, the corners of Seo Geonwoo's mouth curled up in satisfaction.
That was when Kang Minhyuk, who had been listening beside us, cut back into the conversation.
"But out of all those countless tracks, there must still be one you looked at us and thought, this is the one—your absolute best pick, right?"
I immediately understood the intention buried in those words.
So basically, what song do you think suits us best?
Time was tight and the competition fierce. This was Minhyuk's roundabout way of asking him to narrow the choices.
Faced with Minhyuk's pointed question, Seo Geonwoo propped his elbows on the desk, rested his chin in his hands, and sank into deep thought.
"Haa… Honestly, this is hard."
At his unexpected answer, I tilted my head and asked,
"What's hard about it?"
His songs were perfect, and it wasn't as if he didn't know both of our styles. I couldn't understand what was so difficult.
"Well…"
Seo Geonwoo rose from his chair and clenched both fists like someone utterly electrified. For a white-haired master, the gesture was surprisingly dramatic.
"There are just too many songs I want to give the two of you! Haa… This is driving me crazy. Han Jiyoung's tone and Kang Minhyuk's volume. Trying to pick one song while looking at two completely opposite weapons—my insides are burning up."
He genuinely seemed tormented, yet at the same time he looked like he was having the time of his life.
"On top of that, I have to watch the entire process of both of you preparing the exact same song. How am I supposed to decide on just one so easily? If I tailor it to Jiyoung, Minhyuk loses out. If I tailor it to Minhyuk, Jiyoung loses out."
Indeed. That was a producer's natural dilemma.
Two people practiced one song, and right before the stage, only one of them would hold the microphone. That meant the song selection itself would decide more than half the victory.
After pacing the studio in thought for a long while, Seo Geonwoo suddenly clapped his hands as if struck by inspiration.
"Then let's do it this way."
His eyes sparkled like a mischievous boy's.
"Me picking one feels meaningless. Both of you pick the one you liked best out of the tracks you just heard and tell me."
"…Excuse me? We're choosing ourselves?"
Kang Minhyuk blinked in surprise.
"Yes. The song you most want to sing, or the one where you think, with this track I can completely crush the other person. How about it?"
The ball was now in our court. A strange tension settled over the studio.
I crossed my arms, leaned back against the chair, and sank into deep thought.
In this case, I should pick the song I can do best.
My opponent was Kang Minhyuk, a former musical actor with overwhelming volume and stage presence. If I chose a track packed with high notes and grand scale, I would probably get sucked into his pace.
My weapons are emotional line and tone color.
The dozens of tracks I had just heard flashed rapidly through my mind. Just as I finished thinking and was about to open my mouth—
"I—"
My voice and Kang Minhyuk's overlapped perfectly in midair. We both flinched, glanced at each other, and as if on cue offered the same polite yield.
"Ah, you go first."
"No, you first, Jiyoung."
"If you're both going to yield like that, just say it at the same time. I'm dying to know what you two chose after hearing my songs."
"At the same time?"
"Yes. On the count of three. One, two, three!"
On Seo Geonwoo's cue, I confidently spat out the number that had been circling in my mouth.
"Number 17."
"Track 17."
Without either of us going first, Kang Minhyuk and I looked straight at each other with wide eyes.
Why did you pick that?
My look of sheer absurdity tangled with Minhyuk's undisguised bewilderment.
Track 17 was a song that sat far from Kang Minhyuk's main weapon of explosive volume. It was a track whose life depended on detailed vocal control—emotional line, sense of rhythm, everything.
While we sat stunned, Seo Geonwoo kept nodding like someone who had just discovered the most fascinating spectacle imaginable.
"Number 17. Number 17, huh…"
Click.
He clicked the mouse, and Track 17—the one we had both shouted—began pouring from the speakers again.
It already had finished guide-vocal recording, so if you simply layered our voices over it, the track could have been released as a proper digital single right then and there without shame.
Seo Geonwoo lightly bobbed his head to the rhythm spilling from the speakers, then hit the stop button and spun his chair around. He looked back and forth between the two of us and grinned.
"Well then, no need for long discussion. The song is unanimously decided, and there's already a guide. You two want to record right now?"
The scene shifted. Beyond the heavy soundproof door, perfect silence filled the recording booth.
Through the glass, Jiyoung stood alone inside the booth. She stood in front of the mic stand with her eyes closed, lightly humming as she warmed up her voice.
Seo Geonwoo crossed his arms, leaned back against his chair, and casually spoke to Kang Minhyuk sitting beside him.
"Jiyoung's voice and atmosphere change completely between when she talks and when she sings. It's really charming, don't you think?"
Kang Minhyuk couldn't tear his eyes away from Jiyoung beyond the glass and nodded as if entranced.
"Ah, yeah. I guess so."
Seo Geonwoo stroked his chin and let out a satisfied smile.
"That voice is too good. If she were a ghost, she could properly bewitch people with it."
Then, inside the booth, Jiyoung adjusted her headphones and raised a hand toward the glass with an "OK" sign, signaling she was ready.
Seo Geonwoo gave a light nod and clicked the mouse to press the record button.
A quiet, lonely piano performance lasting roughly forty seconds filled the studio air through the speakers.
The solitary keyboard tones, like someone walking alone through an empty room, gradually faded, and the tension began to climb—
exactly on the beat, Jiyoung parted her previously closed lips.
The instant her first phrase burst forth, Seo Geonwoo and Kang Minhyuk both held their breath as if they had made a prior agreement.
No—they couldn't even breathe.
For the entire song, the two of them didn't make so much as a small cough. They simply sat overwhelmed, staring only at the speakers.
Concentrating on Jiyoung's voice coming through the headphones, Kang Minhyuk couldn't suppress his inner shock.
Incredible. She immersed herself that deeply in a single moment?
Track 17. This still-untitled song that had been sleeping on Seo Geonwoo's external hard drive was a desperate breakup ballad that required scraping every last emotion from the bottom of your soul.
The reason Minhyuk was stunned had nothing to do with simple vocal skill. They had heard this song only once, as a guide-vocal version, barely ten minutes earlier.
There had been no time to fully absorb the lyrics or the story contained inside it.
And yet Jiyoung was pouring out sound while perfectly gripping the emotional line of the song, as if she had just walked out of a breakup herself.
Even someone like him—a former musical actor who prided himself on analyzing scripts and performing emotion—found it far from easy to become one with a song's narrative so instantly.
That's not acting. She instinctively let herself be swallowed by the music.
Around the time Minhyuk felt a cold sweat running down his spine, the song had already passed the latter half and was racing toward the final climax.
Even if I couldn't say I loved you,
I should at least say goodbye…
You who left without a single word—
I hate you so much.
Seo Geonwoo smiled as he listened.
The last trembling breath that slipped between her lips rode the microphone and scattered into the air, and the song came to a complete end.
Watching Seo Geonwoo's expression, Kang Minhyuk felt his insides burn.
It already felt as if the winner had been decided.