Chapter 40
J-Rackz’s studio.
This is insane.
I could not hide my shock.
Delivery Man had just rapped inside the booth, and this made no sense.
How can he improve this fast?
What the hell happened in the meantime?
He was round when he needed to be round, angular when he needed to be angular, and every syllable dropped clearly like beads of water.
It gave me chills.
“This is all thanks to my tutoring.”
J-Rackz proudly thumped his chest twice.
Creeeak—
The recording booth door opened, and Jay came out.
“...How was it?”
“Wow, it was killer.”
“Really?! Bro, you mean it?!”
Jay’s face lit up.
J-Rackz jumped in.
“You heard him, right?! Shotgun might not be in sunglasses mode right now, but he still said it was killer! See? I told you I improved him a lot!”
Sunglasses mode, my ass.
I laughed.
When I was with these two, I did not need to wear sunglasses.
There was no reason to keep a blank expression.
The three of us threw our arms around one another’s shoulders.
Then we spun around in circles.
Inside the cramped studio.
Carefully, so we would not crash into any equipment.
“I’m getting dizzy. Let’s stop spinning.”
After we stopped, I looked at Delivery Man.
“Jay.”
“Yeah?”
For reference, my publishing split with Jay was also fifty-fifty.
Since I had already agreed on that same ratio with J-Rackz, there was nothing I could do.
If I gave Jay a different split, J-Rackz might feel hurt.
“After hearing you rap today, I think we can start working right away.”
Jay’s eyes widened.
Then he clenched his fists and celebrated.
“YESSS!”
Then he suddenly pulled a bundle of papers out of his pocket.
“You know, I actually thought of a title and wrote some lyrics.”
He unfolded the papers.
A title was written at the top of the first page.
[Last Mile]
“Last Mile?”
“Yeah. The final stage of delivery is called the last mile. The final journey until you reach the customer’s front door.”
Oh.
He had turned his past as a delivery driver into the narrative of the song’s title.
“Last Mile... That’s good.”
“I wrote lyrics too. Here.”
Jay handed me the paper.
I read the lyrics on the first page.
Growing up in the streets of a poor neighborhood.
Freestyling inside the delivery car at night.
The feeling of wind blowing through the open window while driving the final stretch.
Not bad.
The rhymes still needed some polishing, but the content itself was good.
Delivery Man’s honest confession.
But there’s another page behind this. Are the lyrics really this long...?
The moment I tried to turn the page—
“Aaaah! N-No, not that!”
Jay reached out to stop me.
But I had already seen it.
[B.I.G, Slipknot Diss Track]
I blinked blankly.
Jay panicked and waved his hands.
“I-I’m not saying I’m actually going to diss them... It’s just.”
“Just?”
“...I remembered how they looked down on me, so I wrote it by myself.”
“Jay.”
This time, I spoke seriously.
“I’m confiscating this.”
Apparently, Jay was still young and did not understand how the world worked.
For reference, he was only one year older than Yul.
“I understand how you feel.”
He had probably imagined it many times.
Brutally crushing everyone who had looked down on him.
How did I know?
...Because that was classic loser behavior!
I used to sit alone in the library during school and imagine myself going up onstage at the festival too.
Of course, those fantasies had never become reality.
Because I was fairly good at objectively judging myself.
“This could turn into a political conflict if you’re not careful. And unlike last time, this is for your own personal reasons.”
“...”
“If that happens, you’ll be the one in danger.”
I folded the diss lyrics and put them into my jacket pocket.
Then I placed a hand on Jay’s shoulder.
“Don’t try to get revenge through a diss. The best revenge is succeeding. You said nobody tried to stop you when you left the Bloods.”
“...Yeah. That’s right.”
“Then let’s prove it together.”
“Together...?”
“I want to show the people who dismissed this beat too. I want them to regret it.”
Big Joe was included among them.
He had told me that he genuinely did not care and that I could freely do whatever I wanted as ASD.
Honestly, Big Joe is the main one.
“Thank you, Shotgun.”
Emotion flickered across Jay’s face.
I had no idea how someone this soft had ever been involved with a gang.
“But for that to happen, you need to do well. You’re the one who has to properly handle the beat everyone else called too difficult and failed to recognize.”
“...Can I really do it?”
From beside us, J-Rackz shouted.
“Yo, Jay! What did I tell you to say at times like this?!”
Apparently, the two of them had talked about something during their tutoring sessions.
Jay flinched, then puffed out his chest.
“Yo, of course I fucking can!”
“...?”
The mood relaxed again, and I casually asked Jay,
“Can you tell me more about your life? It might help while I’m working on the song.”
“My life...”
A little while later.
I arrived home.
I went upstairs and read through the lyrics again.
The poor neighborhood streets.
Freestyling inside the delivery car.
The wind during the final stretch.
The content was good.
Because it was Delivery Man’s real story.
But—
What if Jay had never managed to leave the Bloods?
The end of the road for a low-ranking gang member who grew up in a poor neighborhood.
Prison or a bullet.
Every day could have been his last delivery.
Then the title Last Mile began to take on a different meaning.
In American prison terminology, the last mile could refer to the final walk of a condemned prisoner toward the execution chamber.
The path leading to the death chamber.
A corridor with no return.
The iron door closing behind you, with only the end waiting ahead.
And a condemned prisoner walking toward execution had no freedom of choice.
That was exactly what Jay’s time with the Bloods was like.
I gently pressed a key.
A low note settled into the room.
...Wait.
The corridor a condemned prisoner walks down toward the execution chamber.
The sound of those footsteps.
What if I put footsteps in the intro?
Before the beat begins.
In a space with no sound.
Only footsteps.
Step. Step. Step—
The footsteps of a condemned prisoner walking down a concrete corridor.
The footsteps echo at regular intervals.
Then, the moment they stop—
The kick enters.
The 808 breaks through the floor.
The prisoner’s final step becomes the first bar of the beat.
Will Jay understand this?
He will.
Because he actually walked that corridor.
I opened FL Studio.
I created an empty measure in the intro.
Then dragged in a footstep sample.
It would probably be better to record real footsteps. But this is only a demo, so let’s use a sample to check the feel first.
Step—
I adjusted the spacing.
I deliberately matched the BPM to the pace of a person walking.
Step. Step. Step—
Then, on the seventh footstep, the 808 kick would enter, followed by Delivery Man’s first verse...
“!”
Goosebumps rose across my skin.
But then something even more chilling happened.
Buzz—
An updated contract had just arrived from Big Joe.
W-What the hell is this?
Stock options.
In other words, equity in LK Records had been added to my compensation as legal counsel.
Why would Big Joe suddenly include something like this?
No matter how I thought about it, I could not understand—
...Is he trying to put a chain around me?
Fuck.
Nova was secretly browsing Aella’s Instagram when he nearly had a heart attack.
Whoa, I almost liked that.
Liking a photo from two weeks ago would instantly make him look like a stalker.
The first time Nova had met Aella was during the music video shoot for When I Wake Up.
The moment he greeted her, Nova felt like he could not breathe.
Because he had fallen for her at first sight.
“...”
The problem was Shotgun.
If he wanted to look good in front of Aella, he could not act scared of Shotgun.
He had his pride as a rapper to maintain.
Right. Today, stay chill.
He arrived at the studio in St. Louis.
There were already people inside, including the musical director.
The person responsible for overseeing the live performance.
But Nova could only see Aella.
And beside her—
Shotgun.
Sunglasses.
Expressionless face.
Nova swallowed.
“...Yo.”
He held out his fist.
Shotgun turned his head.
Nova could feel the gaze behind the sunglasses.
Then Shotgun bumped his fist.
...Good. First obstacle cleared.
As Nova was about to sit—
He noticed a piece of paper on the floor beneath Shotgun.
Apparently, it had fallen from Shotgun’s jacket pocket when he sat down.
“Hey, you dropped this...”
While handing the paper back, Nova saw what was written on it.
[B.I.G, Slipknot Diss Track]
“...?”
But he already dissed them.
[SHOTGUN TO YOUR FACE]
[SHOTGUN TO YOUR DICK]
The two diss tracks aimed at B.I.G and Slipknot respectively.
Are these the lyrics from back then?
...No.
The lyrics were completely different.
D-Don’t tell me he’s preparing a second round of diss tracks?
Against rappers he had already sent straight into ruin?
To finish them off?
To dig up the corpses and kill them again?
This crazy, vicious bastard!
Nova’s face went pale.
“Hm?”
Shotgun finally reacted.
At that moment—
“H-Here.”
Nova respectfully handed him the paper with both hands.
Musical director Miles Carter.
His role was to oversee the music of the live stage.
To design how a song created in the studio would be realized in a live performance.
“Since this is live, I think it would be better to lower the vocal part by a semitone.”
Concert acoustics tended to swallow high frequencies.
Unlike a studio, the environment could not be perfectly controlled.
In practice, even major artists like Adele, Bruno Mars, and Ariana sometimes performed songs live in keys a semitone or a whole tone lower than the studio recording.
“Then we’ll lower the overall key from D minor to C-sharp minor and do one full run-through.”
The first run-through.
Shotgun’s piano melody began with the key lowered by a semitone.
Oh. Not bad.
The performance itself was not particularly surprising.
The piano loop was only a repeated pattern.
Anyone who had studied piano could reproduce the notes.
However—
The weight of every key is different.
Even on the same note, the texture of the sound changed depending on how deeply the key was pressed.
Some notes were pushed all the way to the bottom.
Others barely brushed the surface of the keys.
That difference gave the loop a sense of breath.
The emotional expression is good.
Nova’s verse began.
At the same time, Miles raised an eyebrow.
Every line of the verse felt like it had been delivered through clenched teeth.
Nova did not conserve his breath at all, and every line felt like his muscles were tightening around the words.
As though this were the last verse he would ever deliver.
This isn’t the Nova I know.
If he could maintain that tension in the actual live performance, it might become a legendary stage.
That was Miles’s instinct as a musical director.
But the next moment, his brows furrowed.
The bridge transitioning from Nova’s verse into Aella’s vocals.
Nova’s rap flow had been designed in D minor, but Aella’s vocal part had been lowered to C-sharp minor.
At the transition point between them, the entire song suddenly felt broken.
“Hold on. The transition just collapsed.”
Miles gave the stop signal.
Aella nodded as well.
“I felt it while singing too.”
“Hmm. This is a dilemma.”
Miles crossed his arms.
“If we lower the key for Aella, the transition falls apart. But if we preserve the transition, we have to raise her key. How do we solve this...?”
As Miles rubbed his chin and thought—
Shotgun spoke.
“...Then don’t lower the whole thing.”
“Don’t lower the whole thing?”
“Leave Nova’s verse as it is. Then when it transitions into Aella... how should I put it? We can descend a staircase that slowly gets darker.”
“What does that even—”
At that moment—
The human translator appeared.
“Modulation.” Nova continued.
(Translator’s Note: Modulation — In Western music theory, a change from one key or tonal center to another.)
The desperation of knowing he could not get a single word wrong moved his tongue.
“My verse stays in the original key of D minor. We don’t touch my flow. Then, in the bridge between the end of my verse and Aella’s hook, the piano uses a descending modulation. We lower it by a semitone from D minor to C-sharp minor.”
Aella’s eyes widened.
“Then my hook starts in C-sharp minor, so I’ll be singing it a semitone lower?”
“Y-Yeah.”
“But are you okay? Why are you so nervous?”
Ignoring her question, Nova looked toward Shotgun.
“...That’s what you meant, right?”
“Yeah.”
Miles also understood now.
Though he had no idea why Shotgun insisted on expressing it through metaphors instead of professional terminology.
“Certainly, with a descending modulation, the live audience can enter Aella’s section without consciously noticing that the key has changed.”
However, he pointed out the practical problem.
“But to do that, we need to change the song’s structure. We’ll have to write a new chord progression for the modulation in the bridge, and we’ll also need a new piano line that descends from D minor into C-sharp minor.”
Miles looked at Aella, then back at Shotgun.
Apparently someone had just contacted Shotgun, because he was staring silently at his phone screen.
“So if we have to do a full rearrangement, I’m afraid we’ll have no choice but to postpone the live stage sched—”
Before Miles could finish—
Shotgun placed both hands on the keyboard.
...He’s going to rearrange it right here?
[Big Joe: Mama Rose just agreed to attend the live stage too.]
“...”
If this schedule gets delayed, I’m fucked.