Chapter 16
Chapter 16
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 16
Chapter Title: For the Heavenly Voice
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It's kind of a meme, and it's a matter of taste, but in present-day Korea, the four people who sing the best are collectively called "Kim Seongyun Jang."
It was a nickname derived from their four surnames.
And in the era right before they debuted and rose to fame—from the '90s to the early 2000s—there were the "Four Heavenly Kings" who reigned at their peak.
Kim Beomsin was one of those Four Heavenly Kings, and not just any one—he was the first among them.
He was so incredible that people even said the current top singers, "Kim Seongyun Jang," should have Kim Beomsin's name instead of the current Kim.
Of course, whenever that opinion came up, the community would turn into a battlefield without fail, but there was one thing even those people agreed on without dissent.
Who has the greatest voice in Korean history?
It was exactly this.
If you asked ten people, eight or nine would pick Kim Beomsin.
They said that even if he couldn't sing, he could make a living as a singer on his voice alone, and in an era when cringey lines were everyday talk, he was given nicknames like "God's Voice" and "Heavenly Voice."
He was that kind of person.
And now, that very person had stepped into Ellis's studio recording booth and was beaming like a child.
"Is this a dream...?"
As BSK's CEO, Kim Beomsin was just a tough old guy, but as a singer, Kim Beomsin was a whole different story.
Ellis found herself getting nervous without realizing it.
Me, directing this man? On singing, no less? And for something as simple as a guide vocal?
Having dreamed of becoming a singer during Kim Beomsin's peak years, she couldn't help but feel the pressure.
At that moment, Jiyeong pressed the talkback switch and spoke into the booth.
"Ahem, Senior Beomsin, your voice gonna come out properly?"
-Yeah?
"You haven't sung in a while, right?"
-What are you talking about, kid? I grabbed a mic and sang just yesterday and the day before!
"...You're still up partying till dawn?"
-At home!! Home!! Who said I was partying, you punk? I manage my voice and train every day too.
Listening to their casual banter, Ellis finally snapped out of it.
No need to overthink it.
She was the producer in charge of this idol project and the entire album.
At least when it came to understanding this song and its lyrics, no one knew it better than her.
And since it was just a guide, she didn't need to teach every little detail.
A guide—how hard could it be?
With a lighter heart, she spoke up.
"Let's start?"
-Ahem, ahem, uh, yeah.
Kim Beomsin's expression changed as he stood in front of the mic.
He lived life so lightly that age meant nothing to him, but the man in front of the mic was different.
The moment the track started and he let out his voice.
Yeonwoo understood why so many fairies followed him around.
Countless fairies were born in the wake of his voice, joining the others in emitting a dazzling blue light.
The booth filled with so much light that it was impossible to keep your eyes open.
And his voice.
To Yeonwoo, who had only been listening closely to instruments until now, it felt like Kim Beomsin was declaring that the human voice was the greatest instrument God ever gave us.
Yeonwoo lost himself completely, just staring blankly as he savored Kim Beomsin's song.
* * *
"See ya, little guy."
"Yeah...."
After watching the guide recording wrap up, Yeonwoo gave a belly bow to bid farewell to the departing Kim Beomsin.
"Auntie, why's that uncle so good at singing?"
"Yeah, he used to be considered one of the best singers in Korea."
"Used to?"
"Yeah, back in the day."
"What about now? He still sings great."
Jiyeong laughed at that.
"Of course he still sings great now too. But popularity doesn't stick around forever just because you keep singing well."
"What does that mean?"
"It means adult circumstances get in the way."
"Adults are so weird."
How could someone who sings that well not be popular?
Yeonwoo just couldn't wrap his head around it.
Seeing him like that, Ellis chimed in.
"Popularity depends on the timing and the era. CEO Kim Beomsin nailed the timing and era to become the best, but that era has passed now. And people tend to seek out the new over the familiar."
"But... it's so good. He sings so well."
"Right. But even if you sing well, if you're stuck singing songs whose trends have passed, it's hard to keep the popularity."
"Does he have to sing trendy songs these days? Then he should just sing them."
"Hmm... how should I put it? People think Kim Beomsin means ballad, and ballad means Kim Beomsin. Even if he tries to switch it up with trendy songs, people get this sense of rejection... It's complicated to explain."
As Ellis smiled and spoke, Yeonwoo understood most of what she was saying.
But even so, it was hard to accept.
Yeonwoo listened to music, played instruments, and composed every single day without ever getting tired of it.
So how could a great voice ever get old, no matter how many hundred or thousand times you heard it?
But Ellis said that even if Kim Beomsin sang trendy songs, people rejected it because of his ballad image.
He sings well, but they hate it because it's outdated; he follows trends, but they hate it because it doesn't suit him.
No matter how Yeonwoo thought about it, adults were hard to understand.
Something hard to understand—he decided not to bother trying, and turned his gaze away.
The recording booth came into view.
Kim Beomsin, singing the guide track, had clearly produced countless fairies and emitted radiant light.
The afterglow must still linger, as various fairies were peeking around inside the booth.
"...?"
That's when Yeonwoo's eyes caught something emitting an especially bright light.
Yeonwoo peered intently beyond the booth, then stepped right inside.
"Ah...!"
Inside was a fairy of Kim Beomsin—born at some point, who knows when—wandering the booth with the other fairies.
Just a guide recording, but because Kim Beomsin had poured his all into it sincerely, it seemed to have been born right there in the booth.
It was the first fairy not from an instrument player, but from a singer.
Yeonwoo approached Kim Beomsin's fairy.
The fairy stood in front of the mic, just humming idly.
"Can you sing?"
At Yeonwoo's question, Kim Beomsin's fairy turned to face him with an expression like, "What kind of question is that?"
"Sing for me."
The fairy then sang into the mic.
Kim Beomsin's fairy couldn't speak human words.
It sang in some unknowable language, but it was exactly Kim Beomsin's voice.
The fairy singing passionately emitted that signature blue light.
"You're good."
At Yeonwoo's words, the Kim Beomsin fairy puffed up with pride. It was the spitting image of the real thing.
"Do you think the uncle's done for?"
The fairy shook its head vigorously side to side.
Nodding as he watched, Yeonwoo agreed.
"Me too."
That's why he started conceptualizing a song for him.
Truth be told, Yeonwoo wasn't a big fan of ballads.
As Jiyeong and Ellis had said, classic ballads felt outdated, and modern ones were still all about drawn-out tales of love and breakup, which didn't resonate with him much.
The melodies themselves weren't even that heartbreaking.
On top of that, the fairies that popped out from them somehow felt wistful.
Yeonwoo didn't listen to ballads much because he disliked that.
Partly due to Jiyeong's influence, but that was a big reason Yeonwoo mostly listened to dance tracks when it came to pop music.
Anyway, Yeonwoo wanted to give Beomsin something other than a ballad.
But he couldn't just hand him a dance track either. While pondering, Yeonwoo pulled up the Melboard charts.
He couldn't read English or fully grasp what Melboard was, but he had memorized the letters like pictures, and understood it as the most famous music ranking site.
Yeonwoo quickly scanned the Melboard songs in Ellis's studio.
The current trend was dominated by country music—the American staple that kept crawling back every time it seemed forgotten—with Latin pop and hip-hop following behind.
Yeonwoo boldly excluded country.
He'd never heard country on Korea's music charts.
That meant it didn't work here.
Sure, he could force it, but Yeonwoo wanted to create something more sophisticated.
That's when tropical house-based pop caught his eye.
It was in the top 20 of the Melboard Hot 100.
'This is good. What do you think?'
Yeonwoo asked Kim Beomsin's fairy, who was watching alongside him.
The fairy nodded as if in full agreement.
Yeonwoo searched for tropical house tracks.
Among them were songs that had held the Melboard Hot 100 number one for ages, still ranking high on yearly and all-time charts.
It wasn't as visible lately, so the trend might have slightly passed, but this genre was still a traditional powerhouse.
Listening to track after track, countless tropical house fairies poured out.
Yeonwoo wanted to compose right then with their help.
Should he use the tablet?
As he debated, his eyes fell on Ellis's computer and keyboard.
"Auntie Ellis... can I use this?"
Ellis, who had been discussing lyrics with Jiyeong, nodded readily at Yeonwoo's question.
"Of course. Hold on."
She quickly set up the keyboard for Yeonwoo.
No sooner had he sat down than Yeonwoo started playing.
Watching the skillful, flowing performance, Ellis was amazed.
'What was I doing at six?'
Probably banging on a xylophone in kindergarten without knowing the notes.
But Yeonwoo produced a plausible—no, an astonishing—song in one go.
"Hmm? A house track? Tropical house?"
"They call this tropical house?"
"You made it without knowing what it was?"
"Yeah, I heard it on the Melboard charts and tried imitating it."
"...You can just hear it and imitate it right away?"
Of course, it wouldn't be easy for Yeonwoo alone.
But with the tropical house fairies guiding him, it was a breeze.
Grasping the concept and structure with their help, Yeonwoo now began crafting the song he truly wanted to make.
"Auntie, this instrument!!"
"Got it."
With his aunt's help switching virtual instruments nonstop, he completed a second song in one burst.
"Done?"
"Yeah. Let's listen."
Yeonwoo played the music right away.
The song flowed out based on tropical house, but listening closely revealed Korean nuances woven in.
Poignant, maybe?
If you had to pin a genre on it....
"Ballad? It has a ballad feel?"
"Yeah."
It felt like a ballad that had absorbed and evolved everything, slathered in tropical house colors—or maybe the opposite?
If it were a full-on pop song, singing it in Korean might feel jarring.
But this song, somewhere between pop and K-pop, had no such disconnect even with Korean lyrics.
Ellis was floored watching Yeonwoo craft a track with such original chord progressions and genre fusion in a mere twenty minutes.
It was a different shock from just hearing the finished product.
Realizing that this six-year-old had produced something at this insane level hit her, along with the fact that she was face-to-face with a once-in-a-century genius.
Just six years old now.
How much further would he grow? How many more songs would he create?
Feeling powerless before genius while grateful to work with him, Ellis set that aside as Jiyeong asked Yeonwoo separately.
"Should we shop this to another agency too? Like the one for Auntie Ellis—there'd be a line of people willing to buy it."
Yeonwoo shook his head.
"What, you don't like it? It sounds good enough to release as-is, no arrangement needed."
"One instrument's missing, Auntie."
"What's missing?"
The song wasn't complete yet.
A key instrumental element was absent.
"Voice. It needs a voice to make the bass. Then it'll be done."
"Whose voice? Well, you can synthesize voices virtually too. There's this thing called AI vocals."
"No, Uncle Kim Beomsin. It needs Uncle Kim Beomsin's voice."
"Senior Beomsin? Why? His voice is still great, of course, but...."
There was a reason his voice was needed.
The reason it would be the bass was simple.
"I'm giving this song to Uncle Kim Beomsin."
Because it was born from listening to his voice.
Which was why only one person in the world—called the Heavenly Voice—could sing it.