The Goblin Computer's Secret
On the way home from the Goblin Computer, Kim Mal-sook called out to Yoo Jae-won in an excited voice. "Son!"
"Yes?"
"When did you learn to play the piano?"
When was it, exactly? After he had finished his deal with God in his previous life, he had started learning the piano a few months later. He had not begun with any grand purpose in mind. Back when he had first started preparing for his regression, he had not yet decided on a clear career path. Being a sports star sounded good, and so did becoming an entertainer or a singer. The potential given to a regressor was truly limitless, after all.
At the time, he was still in the early stages of preparation, so no matter how much he thought about it, he could not reach a conclusion. So he changed direction. He would try everything he could prepare for. He was determined never to give up on something he truly wanted to do after regressing simply because he lacked the ability or preparation. That was how he had started learning the piano, and to his surprise, he found it enjoyable.
The piano was an instrument that was easy to begin with but incredibly difficult to master. It was an instrument with no end no matter how much one learned, yet every time the results of his efforts showed, he felt genuine joy. At first, he had taken private lessons three times a week at a local academy near his house. Later, he received private tutoring directly from a music professor. The professor had even suggested that he had talent and should learn properly rather than treat it as a mere hobby.
If Yoo Jae-won were to showcase his real skill, he could play pieces by Frédéric Chopin or Sergei Rachmaninoff without any problem, not just Pachelbel's Canon. Though at twelve years old he would have to accept that his fingers were still short, his ability would still be unmatched among his peers. However, this history was a secret only he could keep from his parents. That was why he needed a reason his parents could understand.
"From the computer!"
"What? The c-computer?"
Kim Mal-sook stammered at her son's unexpected answer. Even to her, who knew nothing about the piano, the performance her son had given at church had sounded magnificent. The sight of the pastor's wife's face crumbling the moment his playing ended—after she had worn that smug expression as if to say, "Let's see how good he really is"—had been deeply satisfying. It had been impressive enough that the pastor himself had given permission for Jae-won to practice the piano after school or whenever he had free time at church. At the same time, he had praised Kim Mal-sook, saying she had taught her son well and that if she continued his education, he would surely become a famous pianist.
What she could not understand was when her son had learned to play the piano at all. Their household was poor, so there had never been money for piano lessons, and in the rural village of Naeo, learning the piano would have required traveling thirty minutes by car into town.
"Really? You learned it from the computer?"
Yet against all her wildest imaginings, the answer that came back was "computer."
"Yes! There was an instrument learning program on the computer. I learned by watching that."
Yoo Jae-won answered with complete nonchalance. It was not entirely a lie, either. At this point in time, the biggest selling point of personal computers was education. From the MSX to the AT computers, while they were marketed for office use, their greatest value lay in education. Even the largest government-led computer distribution project was the educational computer supply initiative run by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. Thanks to that, computers came loaded with many learning programs. Korean, English, and arithmetic were obvious. There were even instrument learning programs like the one Yoo Jae-won had mentioned.
Of course, the quality of those learning programs was not particularly high. They were notable only for displaying text, images, and crude animations on the monitor screen, while the actual content was little more than paper textbooks copied over. They also failed to make use of the advantage of two-way communication between computer and user; their only real merit was automatic grading. Still, that was only from the perspective of Yoo Jae-won, who had seen twenty-first-century programs. By 1988 standards, they were astonishing enough to make one's eyes spin.
But a mother was still a mother. She could not bring herself to believe that he had learned the piano from a computer. So the moment they returned home, Yoo Jae-won had to turn on the program called Piano 1, 2, 3 and demonstrate it for her. The monitor displayed sheet music and instructions, matching the computer keyboard to the piano keys one-to-one so that pressing a key produced sound from the computer. Thanks to the AdLib card installed for sound processing, the sound was somewhat similar to a real piano. But that was all. Playing on a computer keyboard was only at the level of being able to perform simple pieces like "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" or "The Chopsticks March."
Yet because of Yoo Jae-won's impressive performance at church, it had become an incredibly advanced learning program in his mother's eyes.
"I've never been prouder of my son than I am today."
Only then did Kim Mal-sook accept it, moved. At the same time, she had never dreamed that buying the computer would produce results this quickly. Seeing the expression on his mother's face, Yoo Jae-won wondered if he had gone a bit too far. The plan for the Goblin Computer was to blame everything strange on the computer. But from the look in his mother's eyes, it seemed she was now placing the computer on the same level as him.
His father, who had gone to work even on a Sunday and returned in the afternoon, was no different. In front of his father, who refused to believe his mother's story about what had happened at church, Yoo Jae-won had to play several songs on the computer. Given his mother's personality, she was clearly ready to brag to her friends and everyone else that she had bought a computer and her son had become a piano master.
It should be fine.
He felt a brief moment of concern that his parents might get too excited over their son's small display of talent. If they went around boasting to the entire neighborhood, countless people might ask him to perform. Still, his actual piano skills were not going anywhere, so verification would not be a problem.
The next day, in the afternoon. With school starting the following day, Yoo Jae-won headed to the church carrying a black plastic bag. Inside were six blank cassette tapes, six standard envelopes, six stamps, and a single sheet of memo paper. There were no snacks or treats that children usually carried. The other reason he had shown off his piano skills to the church members yesterday lay inside those envelopes.
Just by looking at the supplies, it was obvious he intended to record something onto blank cassettes and mail them in envelopes. To buy these, Yoo Jae-won had to break open the piggy bank he had worked so hard to fill. Still, he did not regret it in the slightest. The expected returns from this would be hundreds of times greater.
"I wonder how many will respond."
Yoo Jae-won connected a microphone to the amplifier, then connected the amplifier's output to the recorder, murmuring with anticipation in his voice. "Ahem, ahem. Microphone test."
He even tested the microphone he had moved close to the piano. Thanks to the connection with the amplifier, the recording quality on the simplified cassette tape was clean. Moreover, the pastor and his wife were out, and since it was deep inside the village, the area was quiet with no cars or people passing by.
"Good. Then for the first song, how about 'A Fit of Laughter'?"
The task he was about to undertake was the first step toward securing seed money. He planned to compile the biggest hit songs from 1989 and 1990 and send them to the original singers. Since it was currently 1988, it was one or two years early, but if they were preparing an album, it was not an unimaginably distant future.
He recorded each song three times. The first time, just the melody line. The second time, adding chord harmonies to make it richer. The last time, including the lyrics to create a proper song.
"If only the equipment were proper, it would sound much more convincing."
After focusing on the work for a little under two hours, Yoo Jae-won gathered the tapes containing the results and let out a complaint. He had recorded six songs three times each, so even at minimum he had to perform eighteen times. In reality, he had played the keys far more than that. Not because he hit wrong notes or forgot lyrics, but because he was not satisfied with the results and had to redo them.
When he had imagined it, there had been no problem, but his younger voice was the issue. It was too youthful to sing about love, so the original flavor of the songs did not come through. On top of that, having only a piano as an instrument made everything feel monotonous. The lack of preparation was not limited to his voice or instruments.
"The problem is my age."
Yoo Jae-won knew well that when showing songs to singers, the most important thing was to clearly establish ownership of the songs. One had to join the copyright association, register the songs, and only then present them. It was a difficult task for a twelve-year-old Yoo Jae-won to handle. At twelve, he could not legally enter contracts or take responsibility, and finding someone to do it on his behalf would cost money. In other words, the possibility of someone simply taking the songs on the tapes and running off was, even in his own estimation, quite high. That was why he had prepared a countermeasure of his own.