Guide Vocal
Yu Nari could feel that she had changed a little.
Nothing had changed in any major way. School was the same. Her classmates were the same. Even her usual corner seat in the practice room was the same. But inside all of that, Nari's attitude had shifted.
Looking at the classmates who were ahead of her no longer hurt the way it used to. The stares that landed on her when she sang were still frightening, but she was no longer so frantic about it. Just yesterday, after all, more than ninety people had come to watch her. That was more than most Hongdae buskers could pull. Online and offline were different worlds, so maybe it was a childish little superiority complex — but results were still results. Bit by bit, Nari was finding her footing.
And the reason for that was clearly…
"Hey, Nari~ You seem a lot more at ease lately?"
Her classmate Hye-jin dropped into the seat beside her after practicals ended.
"Do I?"
"Yeah. Settled, I guess? You used to always look like something was chasing you."
Nari thought for a moment, then smiled.
"Maybe. I don't know."
She pretended not to, but she knew. Someone had truly listened to her voice for the first time. The casual compliments he had tossed out like they were nothing had lingered far longer than she expected. Even when her classmates brought up their practical presentations, she no longer shrank into herself right away. She found herself thinking through which songs might suit her, and those thoughts were surprisingly concrete. She was starting to understand, a little, what fit her. And all of that was thanks to him.
Without thinking, Nari pulled out her phone and opened the DearCode app. The familiar English username sat there as always. Their last messages had been about contest prep the night before. That this connection would keep going after the contest was over felt so obvious to Nari that she had never even questioned it. They would just keep messaging like this. That was all.
Ding!
She flinched at the sudden notification, then smiled when she saw the sender.
"Nari, Nari~ So how about a blind date? With some applied music kids from the school next door?"
"Nope, I've got plans! Gotta go, bye!"
"…I didn't even say a date yet."
The second class ended, Nari bolted out of school like lightning. The moment she got home she opened her laptop before even putting her bag down.
Title: Graduation Ceremony — Lunari Version.
A file from English.
Why send it right when she was out, of all times? He wouldn't have known she was at school, so it wasn't on purpose — but still. She plugged in her earphones and hit play.
And then.
"…Huh?"
The moment the intro came through, Nari's eyes went wide.
Hello, when I first saw you—
A voice. Where there should have been only the instrumental, a low, quiet voice had been laid over it.
A guide vocal?
Nari froze. The voice was clear and clean. He wasn't forcing anything, yet the pitch was exact, and he sang it dry, as if holding the emotion down — and somehow that fit the song's mood unnervingly well.
Was this English's voice?
The second the thought hit her, her heart skipped a beat faster. It could be someone else. That was more reasonable, more natural. And yet she felt a strange certainty that it was him.
It fits the song so perfectly.
How could it not be him?
They had only ever talked through chat, through DearCode messages. She had imagined what his voice might sound like, but she never expected something this young. Nari hit play from the beginning again. The second time through she tried to focus on the whole track rather than the voice, and soon a strange feeling rose up in her.
It was good. It was clearly good. The tone, the arrangement, the way the guide vocal expressed itself — all of it was good. And yet for some reason it made her desperately sad. Maybe because a song that had felt like spring sunlight thick with youth had somehow become a raw farewell. Whether it was the lyrics, the melody, or that dry way of singing, she couldn't say. Listening just left her with this aching, wistful feeling. Good, but good in a way that snagged at her.
She sat with that sensation for a long while, finding it odd, then opened DearCode on impulse.
But it was a nickname she no longer saw in her stream chat. For some reason, that bothered her. It had to be because his composition skill was just that exceptional. The ability to shake a person's heart like this. Nari found herself desperately curious about songs he had written himself, not just arranged.
She stared at the screen a moment longer, then put her earphones back in. The track played a third time, and that tone of his came through again. It was a voice she wanted to hear in person, just once more.
Adding the guide vocal had been close to an impulse.
If I had finished the arrangement and sent only the instrumental, Lunari would have just sung it her own way. But this song couldn't work like that. The temperature of the emotion mattered so much that I felt she needed to hear it at least once to understand the feeling I wanted.
So I picked up the mic for the first time in a long while. It was awkward after so long, and knowing someone else would hear it made my body seize up. At first no sound came out properly. My throat was locked. I cracked a few notes on the second and third tries before I finally started locking into the beat. It wasn't perfect, but maybe it would get the nuance across.
After I sent the file, I spent about thirty minutes under my blanket, looping why did I do that. Then I fell asleep. A vibration around 6 p.m. woke me. I stuck just an arm out from under the covers and checked my phone.
My eyes opened on their own.
Extroverts' endless praise barrages needed to be filtered.
I crawled out of the blanket. Sleep was gone anyway.
Lunari shared a contestant list link, and I filed the unfamiliar names into my head one by one as she explained.
Baek-a, Baek-a. Ah, there she was. A search pulled up several videos. Listening, there was real detail in her vocal skill. Her VTuber avatar sang with eyes squeezed shut, and the immersion was considerable. More than anything, there was overlap with Lunari's singing style. If she went up against this Baek-a person, it would be a razor-thin fight. Even their preferred genres were similar.
I searched for the streamer Sion. The second I played a video, I knew.
Going head-to-head with this person is absolutely not an option.
A classic R&B balladeer. The raw force in the voice itself was different. If Lunari's strengths were delicacy and tone color, Sion was a monster who just bulldozed through with powerful singing ability.
Avoiding both favorites was ideal, of course. But matchups were drawn on-site the day of. Nobody knew how it would go.
We kept going through contestant analysis for a while, until Lunari suddenly changed the subject.
Complicated? I had figured that if she just followed my vocal flow, Lunari would understand it fine.
The reply came fast.
A call.
I stared at the screen, finger frozen. This was my safe room, and still a chill climbed the back of my neck.
I refused. Ever since I had holed up in this room, even conversations with family were rare. The last outside call I could remember was when I got expelled from university. When had that been?
Haah.
Her pure passion for not wanting to ruin my song needled at my conscience. Looking at it coldly: this person had no ulterior motives toward me. Of course not. We had never seen each other's faces, didn't even know each other's ages. All we knew was a voice and a love of music. She was clearly different from the people who had tormented me.
This was an illness I would have to overcome someday. I knew that. And still, I was scared. If I had to do it, better with a voice I had already heard countless times and grown familiar with. If it was Lunari, with her pure affection for music, wouldn't she be the ideal practice partner?
I went back and forth through that argument again and again, and eventually accepted the call.
One second after I replied, the call started.
Ring—!
The connection tone sounded, and through the headset came the faint sound of breathing.
"H-hello? Wait, you actually picked up. English? Can you hear me?"
"Ah… yes. I can hear you."
My voice shook wildly. It was the exact same voice as on stream. I had thought the familiar tone would make it fine. Cold sweat beaded on my forehead. I was fighting down the urge to hang up right then and dive back into bed when Lunari immediately started humming a section of the song.
"In front of the bridge we walked together— as I let you go— this part! Should I stretch it a little longer here?"
The moment I heard her sing, the anxiety that had been standing on end got crushed down. My brow furrowed without me meaning it to.
"Um… Lunari."
"Yes yes!"
"Uh… sorry, but you shouldn't lift the breath that brightly there."
From a mouth that had been shaking seconds earlier, a very calm voice came out.
"That part isn't about letting go of lingering attachment. It's the feeling of forcing it out, so if you gather the last note that prettily, the song's bitter edge dies completely. You need to just… cut the breath off, drop it to the floor."
People being scary was one thing. My music getting ruined was something I could not stand. Careful but uncompromising feedback. A very short silence stretched through the headset. I was starting to sweat again, wondering if I had snapped too hard, when—
"……Ah. That's it."
She murmured it so softly I almost missed it.
"……Lunari?"
"No! I'll try it again the way you just said! Like this?"
After that, questions poured in for all kinds of parts. Not so much varied as a head-to-toe teardown — she sent questions from the start of the song all the way to the end. And she absorbed my feedback with startling speed. She was already good enough that I wondered why she was even asking. I learned just how considerable her passion for music was.
After a few rounds of correction, when the song's nuance had settled perfectly into that floor-crawling loneliness I had wanted, she spoke.
"Hey, English."
Her voice had gone soft and gentle.
"I didn't notice before. But fixing it like this, the lyrics to this song are really good. Really sad, too."
"……Are they?"
"When you sang it, it really…… it sounded like someone leaving me and going far away. Enough to choke me up. Like a goodbye. That kind of atmosphere."
I said nothing.
"What kind of feeling did you arrange this song with, English?"
I had imagined the end of this strange companionship with Lunari and drawn inspiration from that. But my instincts screamed at me not to say so honestly. A brief silence passed.
"……I just thought it would suit your voice."
"Is that so? Hehe—!"
And that was that. How many minutes had it been? I checked the clock and we were already closing in on an hour since the call started. Wasn't that remarkable progress? I was almost proud of myself.
After that, Lunari chattered the way she did on stream.
"Ah! And English, I think people will probably ask about the arrangement after I sing at the contest?"
"Uh… you think so?"
If the results were good, maybe?
"Of course! It's such a bold arrangement, they'll definitely ask. At first I was going to just tell them about you, but I figured that might make you uncomfortable. What should I say?"
"……Keep it secret. Just say an acquaintance."
"Mm… a little disappointing, but okay! It also kind of feels nice like I have you all to myself…… ahem."
"And do you have a composer name or anything? Calling you English all the time feels a little weird."
"Not really."
"Then want to come up with one? It'll be easier to answer if someone asks later! Like inventing a fictional person."
I wasn't sure it was necessary, but "English" did sound awkward to the ear.
"Since it's asdf1234, take the 'as' from the front and go with 'AS'?"
"Eugh, that sounds like a repair technician."
"Then English 'A' plus the number 1 at the end — A-il?"
"A-il, A-il, A-il… Ale. If you say it fast it becomes Ale? Like the beer, hehehe."
"……"
I thought it was fine, actually…. Getting roasted two times in a row stung a little.
"Aren't you naming this way too casually? You could make over a hundred names like that."
"Since you're English, take 'Yeong' from English plus the first number 1 from asdf1234 — Yeong-il! Pfft—"
"Oh. That one's good."
"……?"
Yeong-il. I liked it. It sounded like a real name that suggested someone older, and if you didn't know the meaning it could also read like a number. I liked that complexity a lot.
"It's kind of froggy and uncle-ish……"
That was what made it good.