Chapter 001
Chapter 001
“Geon-ah, dak-galbi for table 2 is going out!”
“Yes, sir!”
The sizzling dak-galbi on the iron plate was billowing hot steam.
If it tilted even a little, it looked like the sauce would spill right over the edge.
Gripping the tray tightly with both hands, I crossed the dining floor.
“Geon-ah, refill the water at table 3.”
“Yes, sir!”
My name is Park Geon.
A second-year student at UCLA Law School.
Right now, I was helping with my parents’ business during break.
In the middle of Wilshire Boulevard in LA Koreatown.
A Korean restaurant called Gohyangmi.
It was fairly large, with over eighty seats.
“Oppa, clear the empty dishes from table 7.”
(Translator’s Note:Oppa - A Korean kinship/address term used by a younger female for an older brother or close older male.)
My younger sister, Park Yul, spoke from behind the counter as she tapped at a calculator.
A second-year high school student, she was also helping our parents during break.
Whew, this is exhausting.
Even though lunch hours had passed, the dining floor was still crowded.
Word had gotten around that there was no Korean restaurant in the neighborhood that could match my father’s cooking, so not only Korean customers but plenty of locals came too.
Koreatown Yelp rating: 4.7.
(Translator’s Note:Yelp - A U.S.-based review platform for restaurants and local businesses.)
By the time I had made a few more rounds, refilled water, and carried more dishes, the clock was already pointing to 3 p.m.
I needed to get moving.
Taking off my apron, I walked over to my father.
“Dad, I’m going to go sell some used stuff.”
“Alright. Be careful.”
My mother also leaned her head out from the kitchen.
“What are you selling?”
“Just… some things I’m not using.”
“Okay. Drive carefully, and don’t go anywhere dangerous.”
“……”
Anywhere dangerous.
That stung a little, but I forced a smile as if it didn’t.
I pulled out a black carrier bag.
Inside, an audio interface, a MIDI keyboard, and monitor headphones were packed in tight.
“Huh?”
Park Yul glanced at the carrier bag while drinking water.
“You’re really selling that now?”
“Yeah.”
“Isn’t that a waste? You practically lived with that stuff on every night.”
“It’s not a waste.”
That was a lie.
It was a little wasteful.
No… really wasteful.
“It was just a hobby anyway.”
“Still, you liked it.”
“What you like and what you have to do are two different things.”
Park Yul looked up at me.
She seemed like she wanted to say more, but then she turned her head away.
“Go and come back quick. If the floor gets slammed, I’m the one who has to cover your part too.”
“See ya. I’ll be back soon.”
I slung the carrier bag over my shoulder and went out the back door.
Music was just a hobby to me.
I never had some grand dream or anything.
It started when I saw a beatmaking video on YouTube in elementary school, and I was amazed that you could create sounds that impressive with nothing but a laptop, so I started teaching myself.
Installing FL Studio, scraping together free plugins, layering drum patterns through a single pair of earphones and laying melodies on top of them.
(Translator’s Note:FL Studio - A widely used digital audio workstation (DAW), especially common in beatmaking and hip-hop production.)
That was more fun than I had expected.
But, well, that was as far as it went.
I never even thought about uploading anything to SoundCloud.
(Translator’s Note:SoundCloud - A digital audio platform heavily associated with independent and underground music distribution.)
Because—
I’d never once thought my tracks were at a level worth letting other people hear.
All I ever did was sit alone at dawn with my headphones on, messing around with this and that, and if I thought, Oh, this isn’t bad, I’d nod to myself.
There was no way music like that would sound good to anyone else.
That ends now too.
Second year at UCLA Law School.
Law Review selection, internships, GPA management.
There was no such thing as spare time for a hobby.
My parents were paying this outrageous tuition for me, and for me to be up all night making beats at dawn no matter how you looked at it felt like a sin.
So today, I had decided to get rid of all the equipment.
I had listed the MIDI keyboard, audio interface, and monitor headphones as a set.
And I had deliberately priced them a little low.
Because I wanted to get rid of them fast.
If I let myself stay attached, I’d drag it out again.
As long as the equipment was still in sight, I’d obviously keep telling myself, Just one more track, just one more track, and cling to it until four in the morning.
So I was going to end it for good today.
The problem was
the meeting place the buyer had chosen.
South LA.
More precisely, near Crenshaw Boulevard.
(Translator’s Note:Crenshaw Boulevard - A major Los Angeles thoroughfare with strong cultural significance in South LA)
Of all places.
Holding the steering wheel inside the car, I let out a sigh.
And what kind of neighborhood was this?
Crips.
(Translator’s Note:Crips - A Los Angeles street gang founded in 1969 in South Central Los Angeles, historically associated with the color blue.)
One of the two major gangs in the United States.
The other was the Bloods.
(Translator’s Note:Bloods - A rival Los Angeles street gang historically associated with the color red. In the story, the Crips–Bloods rivalry overlaps with music, public image, and diss-track culture.)
These two organizations had been fighting bloodily for decades with LA as their base, and their territories were divided as sharply as if drawn with a knife.
The Crips wore blue, the Bloods wore red.
And if you walked around in the rival gang’s color in their territory?
You just died.
No joke—you really died.
A place where your affiliation changed from one city block to the next, and a single cap in the wrong color could lead to bullets.
That was the underside of LA.
Tourists came to see the Hollywood Sign, but the southern part of this city was a completely different world.
I checked my outfit in the rearview mirror.
Black T-shirt, black pants, black sneakers.
Good.
There was no red anywhere.
Just in case, I had even worn neutral-colored underwear.
Ah, wait.
I looked down at my belt.
One red thread was sticking out from the label on the inside.
What if someone sees this?
It was hidden well enough by my shirt, but still.
What if the wind blew and lifted my shirt?
What if it got exposed when I bent over?
What if someone picked a fight and yanked up my shirt?
No.
Rip it off.
I caught the loose thread with my fingernail and tore it away.
The moment I got out of the car, I could feel the air was different.
The scenery was completely unlike the streets of Koreatown crowded with signboards.
Spray-painted graffiti clung to every wall, and a few people were gathered under a streetlamp at the corner, staring blankly in my direction.
They were all wearing blue.
Blue bandanas, blue sneakers, blue baseball caps.
Like people wearing matching blue uniforms.
A pair of sneakers hung tied together by their laces from a utility pole.
There were rumors that those usually marked territory, or places where someone had died nearby.
This is fucking terrifying…
Clutching the carrier bag tightly, I walked toward the bench in front of the laundromat, the agreed meeting spot.
Keeping my eyes fixed on the ground.
Don’t make eye contact.
Don’t look around for no reason.
In a place like this, curiosity could cost you your life.
I sat on the bench, set the carrier bag down beside me, and checked my phone.
3:27.
The meeting time was 3:30.
So I waited.
“……”
It became 3:30.
No one came.
3:35.
Still not a trace of them.
3:40.
I sent a chat message on OfferUp.
(Translator’s Note:OfferUp - A U.S.-based mobile marketplace app used for local secondhand buying and selling.)
[Park Geon: Hey, I’m here at the laundry. You close?]
Seen, ignored.
No-show?
A chronic problem with OfferUp transactions.
People who set up a meeting and then never show.
I’d heard Korean secondhand apps like Danggeun Market were the same, so I guessed that kind of thing was universal.
Tired of waiting, I rolled my neck once.
Crack.
A refreshing sound came out.
Then I bent my index finger backward.
It was a habit.
Kind of like stretching, something I did unconsciously.
“Yo.”
A heavy bass voice sounded from behind me without warning.
I turned around on reflex.
Two men were standing there.
One of them was a huge guy who looked well over 190 centimeters.
His shoulders were as wide as a door, and his neck was as thick as a thigh.
He had a blue bandana tied around his head.
The other was his complete opposite.
Skinny as a rail, with cheekbones jutting sharply out of his face.
A teardrop-shaped tattoo was inked beneath one eye.
Blue Dickies pants, a blue headscarf.
And sticking out of his back pocket was…
…a gun?
The grip was clearly visible.
Sticking right out in the open.
Hiiiiik!
The big man took one step closer.
“What’d you just do?”
“I-I just cracked my finger—”
“This bastard, you just threw a Blood sign right in front of us, didn’t you?”
The skinny one nodded.
“On my mama, I saw it clear. You bent your finger and made a B.”
A Blood gang sign.
Only then did I realize it.
Ah… I’m fucked.
That motion of bending my finger backward.
If you bent your index finger and folded it toward your thumb, it could apparently look similar to the Bloods’ hand sign shaped like the letter B.
And this was right in the middle of Crips territory.
They had mistaken me for flashing a rival gang sign.
“I-it’s a misunderstanding!”
I said it without thinking, stumbling back a step.
The big man grabbed my shoulder hard.
“Where you going? Where you think you going?”
This time the skinny one came closer, toying with the grip of the gun.
“Dawg, you know where you at pullin’ shit like this? Huh? You Blood?”
“N-no! I’m not Blood!”
“Then what are you?”
“I-I’m…”
I almost said that I was a diligent second-year UCLA Law School student, then snapped my mouth shut.
Wait.
Law school.
Law.
Lawyers.
Prosecution.
News headlines scrolled through my head at lightning speed.
Unjust sentencing, racial profiling, overcharging.
The wall piled up between the Black community and the justice system.
To shout I’m close to the law! in front of these people was basically the same thing as saying, I want to die here!
“Why’d you stop talking? What are you?”
The big man lowered his head and shoved his face close to mine.
Close enough that I could feel his breath on my face.
“Yo, speak up!”
Even the people nearby had started drifting over to watch.
I wanted them to help me, but instead of helping, they were grinning.
Haha, so this is how I die.
Didn’t even get to write a will.
Then the skinny one’s gaze dropped lower.
To the carrier bag sitting beside the bench.
The zipper was slightly open, and one end of the MIDI keyboard’s keys was sticking out.
“What’s that?”
His finger pointed at the carrier bag.
At that moment, my mouth moved faster than my brain.
“Ah, music! I’m a music guy!”
My voice was shaking, but I blurted it out anyway.
“Music?”
“Beatmaker! Producer! Fucking genius producer!”
A desperate struggle to survive.
I had no idea what I was even saying anymore; I was just spewing whatever came out of my mouth.
“Shit goes crazy, bro, for real!”
Did it work?
The skinny one and the big man exchanged glances.
Some silent conversation I couldn’t understand.
“Aight, then come with us.”
Then the skinny one pulled out the gun and started flicking it around.
The big man picked up my equipment bag with one hand.
It was heavy enough to drag my shoulder down when I carried it, but he lifted it easily.
…This was getting even bigger.
The place we arrived at under the gang’s kind escort.
The outer walls were covered in blue graffiti, and two more men were standing in front of the iron gate.
They looked like they were on guard.
The skinny one opened the gate.
Hip-hop with a heavy bass line was thumping from inside.
“Get in.”
The moment I stepped inside, the smell of weed hit me hard.
People were sitting around on a pool table shoved into a corner and on leather sofas.
At the far end, one man was sitting alone on a sofa.
And then—
“Yo, OG.”
…That was the title the big man had just used for him.
OG.
Original Gangster.
A title used for an elder or boss-level figure in a gang.
Which meant that man was the head of the Crips gang…
“This fool says he’s a musical genius. A fucking genius, at that.”
When did I say I was some crazy bastard?!
Then again, I guess I kind of had.
The OG’s gaze drifted over to me slowly.
“My boy, my boy. Why you so shook?”
“……”
“Where’d that attitude from before go, huh?”
Then it happened.
“Yeah?”
The OG slowly stood up.
The big man dropped my equipment bag onto the floor with a thud.
The MIDI keyboard poked its face out through the zipper gap.
The OG looked down at it.
Then looked back at me.
“Then let me hear some of your work.”
“…What?”
I blinked.
The skinny one shouted from beside me.
“Yo! You deaf?”
…This was the worst-case scenario.
The reason I hadn’t even uploaded to SoundCloud was because I had no confidence.
If I played that kind of result in front of a gang boss?
They’d drill a ventilation hole through my temple.
Instinctively, I started spilling excuses.
“I-I do have killer tracks, of course.”
I did not.
“B-but they’re not on this gear right now. All my projects are on my main computer at home. I brought this stuff to sell used, so… I formatted it. Formatted it all.”
For an excuse, I thought it sounded pretty convincing.
The OG spoke.
“Aight.”
Then, after a beat—
“Then make a beat right here. Something killer.”
The room went quiet.
Even the hip-hop that had been playing in the background seemed to get turned down by someone.
Every gang member in the room had their eyes fixed on me.
“No, I, uh, that’s, right now, in this situation…”
“Looks like you got the gear.”
The OG jerked his chin.
The big man chimed in from the side.
“Ayyyy, ain’t you a genius producer? What’s the problem? Show us, cuz.”
The skinny one joined in too.
“On my mama, you weren’t bluffin’, right?”
I looked down at the carrier bag.
The white keys of the MIDI keyboard visible through the zipper gap.
I had planned to sell it today and be done with it.
I had wanted a clean goodbye.
“……”
Yeah, I really do think I’m about to say goodbye for real.
Very soon.
Ziiiiip—
With trembling hands, I opened the zipper.
I took out the MIDI keyboard and placed it on the table.
Connected the audio interface, then pulled my laptop out of my backpack.
I had originally brought it along to study at a café, and it was a miracle I still hadn’t deleted FL Studio.
“Start.”
The OG lit up a joint.
…And I placed my fingers over the keys.