Rooftop
“Ah, right. Hello. I’m Kang Min, the drummer.”
What the hell was this situation supposed to be?
“Hey, what kind of guy wants to be in a band and doesn’t know Kang Min?”
What was a guy who’d only ever done sports supposed to know?
But after hearing the whole story, it was something I knew too.
More accurately, I hadn’t known in my previous life—but I did now, if you could even call that knowing.
Drum Masters Championship, or DMC for short.
The national drummer competition held in Seoul.
Two years ago, Kang Min had won it at the age of sixteen, making him the youngest champion in the history of the event.
Among band people, that made him practically a celebrity.
Of course I knew that.
I’d heard it so many times while we were in a band together in my last life that it had nearly been drilled into my skull.
What I hadn’t realized was that I could recognize the winner’s face at a glance.
“And you still don’t know who Kang Min is?”
So when Heo Junseong started rattling off Kang Min’s résumé and cornering me with it, I had no choice but to keep playing dumb.
Damn it. I should’ve just pretended I knew him.
“Anyway, sit down. What brings you here?”
“What the hell do you mean, ‘what brings you here’?”
“Seoha really has no idea what’s going on, huh.”
“Let’s just replace our leader already…”
I know. I know, you idiots.
“I came because the owner of Hyeon-ui Ullim said you’d be here.”
“Oh? The owner told you?”
“Yeah. I was about to head home after watching the show, but I figured I’d regret it if I didn’t at least talk to you.”
Kang Min was as direct as he’d been when he grabbed my collar at Lee Doyeong’s funeral.
“If it’s all right with you, do you want to jam right now?”
At Kang Min’s blunt suggestion, everyone’s faces brightened.
They all seemed to have been hoping for it, deep down.
“Sure.”
We decided to use Kang Min’s private practice room for the jam session.
As we followed behind him, we kept talking.
“Hey, what the hell is this even?”
“Seriously. I still can’t believe it.”
“Cha Seoha really did play well.”
“Yeah, did I?”
We were all reeling from the sudden good fortune that had dropped into our laps.
Of course, I was thinking about it from a slightly different angle.
If it turns out like this, then it doesn’t matter if the video never gets uploaded, does it?
The reason I’d performed that song in the first place was because I thought Kang Min might see it if someone recorded it and put it online.
That guy was a genuine otaku.
How much of an otaku? If there was a video of a song he liked, he’d even go out of his way to find high school festival footage.
Which meant that the video of us playing at Banwol Park would eventually reach Kang Min sooner or later.
When that happened depended on luck—or fate.
But I hadn’t expected everything to fall into place because of a single word from Mr. Jang Deokcheol.
Or was that fate too?
Wasn’t it fate that I’d made friends with Mr. Jang Deokcheol in the first place?
“Still, it really is strange.”
“Strange, my ass. You didn’t even know who Kang Min was.”
Heo Junseong snickered.
Then Lee Doyeong, with a serious expression, spoke up.
“It’s weird. It happened exactly the way Seoha said.”
“What? What did?”
“A skilled drummer saw our performance and came looking for us.”
“Huh? Right, I did say something like that!”
After a brief silence, Kim Jihoo added his two cents.
“Did you get possessed by a shaman or something?”
I laughed at the absurdity of it.
Yes, I was a regressor, but I wasn’t a shaman.
“What shaman possession? Say something that makes sense.”
“Then what about the drummer?”
“It was just a breeze. A gust of wind. You know what they say—say it out loud, and it comes true.”
Heo Junseong cut in.
“No, no. Cha Seoha’s body was kind of hot. Isn’t that one of those weird illnesses you get when you’re possessed?”
“You were the cold one. Are you an idiot?”
“…?!”
Heo Junseong lunged at me, and Lee Doyeong and Kim Jihoo had to throw their whole bodies into stopping him.
Kang Min watched the whole thing like we were some kind of rare animals in a zoo.
And that was how we arrived at Kang Min’s studio.
I’d been there a few times in my last life.
Seeing it again after so long made me oddly happy.
“Should we try one song?”
Kang Min suggested it the second we got there.
We hadn’t even properly introduced ourselves yet.
As expected, these guys put music first.
More important than words was the connection you made through sound.
There was no need to waste time proving our skills.
Kang Min’s skill was beyond question.
“What song should we do?”
At my question, Kang Min hesitated for a moment before answering.
“Then... the one from earlier?”
“That one?”
“Not the other one?”
“That’s fine too.”
The others looked at him with surprised expressions.
“Ah, I only caught the earlier performance as an encore, so…”
“Ah, so you came in late.”
“Yeah. And I’ve already played the other songs a lot anyway.”
Right now, Kang Min hadn’t admitted yet that he was a total fanboy.
So he was biting down hard and trying to act like a normal person?
“All right, enough talk—let’s just do it!”
“Whoa! This groove is insane!”
“We really do need drums.”
“That sound is excellent.”
The moment the jam began, everyone had to admit it.
He really hadn’t won DMC for nothing.
It felt completely different from laying a recorded drum track underneath the backing.
Heo Junseong, Lee Doyeong, and Kim Jihoo each reacted in their own way, and so did Cha Seoha.
Kang Min hasn’t changed much at all.
He was almost exactly like I remembered him at the end of his last life.
Time had probably made him a little more seasoned, but technically, he’d already been fully formed by this point.
What state is Kang Min in right now?
Was he interested because we were playing a song from an anime he liked?
Or was he interested in the band itself?
Either way, I had to hook him hard during this jam session…
Meanwhile, Kang Min was feeling pretty amazed himself.
They all have potential.
If he looked only at technique, the keyboardist—the sharp, brainy-looking one, Kim Jihoo—was clearly superior. But when it came to the instinctive feel a musician was born with, none of them had a decisive edge.
In fact, if he had to pick based on feel alone, Kang Min liked Lee Doyeong best.
He was a little clumsy, but he never tried to hide that clumsiness.
Kang Min liked the fact that he played each note with complete sincerity.
His slowness came from caution, no doubt about it.
And then there was…
Cha Seoha.
The monster-level vocal ability of that guy, who had seemed to just drop out of nowhere, was so far beyond the standard high school band scene that it was almost unfair.
Honestly, Kang Min couldn’t remember ever hearing a vocalist that good even in the Hongdae scene.
Masaka…! Have I fallen in love?
That was why he’d been looking forward to this.
The Banwol Park busking session had been noisy, and the speakers there weren’t nearly good enough to carry the sound in an open space like that.
He wanted to hear Cha Seoha’s proper singing in a small practice room.
And, as luck would have it, the song itself was exactly his taste.
Just then, the intro ended and Cha Seoha started to sing.
Cha Seoha had never had any real interest in Japanese subculture.
He had only practiced the pronunciation because he knew Kang Min would love it.
But the Japanese he’d honed through idol life rang out to Kang Min like a giant angelic bell.
A comrade…!
That wasn’t all.
Cha Seoha’s singing, far better than it had been through a mediocre speaker, made Kang Min’s heart pound.
How can someone sing a song that intensely?
It was emotional delivery so good it was almost frightening.
And so the jam session rolled on without a single misstep.
At last, they reached the chorus.
Riding Kang Min’s rhythmic fill, Cha Seoha roared through the song with raw emotion.
That was when the drums cut out.
“Huh?”
“What?”
Just as the others, completely immersed in the performance, turned to stare at Kang Min—
“Sob… sob…”
Kang Min suddenly burst into tears.
“Is he… crying?”
“He is.”
“K-Kang Min, why are you crying?”
“The lyrics are so moving… and so is your singing, and your playing…”
It wasn’t the lyrics that were moving him; he was probably just reacting because it was a song he already loved.
No matter how Kim Jihoo looked at it, he was certain this band was full of lunatics.
Still, the final piece of the puzzle—the drummer—had finally joined the band.
Exactly as Cha Seoha had longed to see in his dreams.
Once Kang Min joined us, we finally had the shape of a proper band.
Heo Junseong, Lee Doyeong, Kim Jihoo, Kang Min.
And me.
The exact same lineup we’d had in my previous life.
“Thanks for joining us, Kang Min. We might not be as good as where you came from, but let’s do our best.”
“Huh? No. It’s pretty similar.”
“Pretty similar?”
“Yeah. In some ways, you guys might even be better.”
Even if I didn’t know much about the band scene, it couldn’t have been that similar.
Before joining us, Kang Min had been in a famous Hongdae band called Skydiver.
Obviously, I knew they were a pretty strong band.
I’d never actually seen them myself, since they fell apart when Kang Min left.
There was no way we, a group that had just been put together, could compare to them.
What had he seen that made him say that?
“Well, anyway, let’s do our best.”
The members were all here now, but we still weren’t finished.
Just because we were together didn’t mean we would stay together forever.
I was going to protect this band until the day I died.
“For that to happen, we need a name first.”
We’d promised the audience at our last busking session that we’d perform again the following week.
It was important to show who we were through our music, yes—but we also needed a name to stamp ourselves into people’s minds for good.
“Right, I was about to explode because we didn’t even have a name yet!”
“Does anyone already have an idea in mind?”
At my question, everyone hesitated, and the first to offer one was Lee Doyeong.
“Well, if Jihoo can adjust his academy schedule, we’ll be meeting and rehearsing every day, so how about DaySeven?”
“Hey, don’t we still need to rest on weekends?”
“Then… DayFive?”
“No, there’s got to be something better.”
“I watched a movie recently. It was about neuroscience and philosophy, and…”
Kim Jihoo launched into a long-winded explanation.
“...The movie was called Lucy.”
“So?”
“Let’s call it RUCY. It suggests music made with the precision of someone using the brain to its fullest potential.”
“That feels way too much like you just stole it outright. No.”
“Hey! Then what about ASDF? It’s simple and good!”
“Heo Junseong, three-minute timeout.”
“Aw, why!”
There were plenty of other suggestions too.
TF Island, CN Red, Biz, and more.
Only names that sounded like they might exist somewhere kept coming up, and none of them felt right.
“Hey, what happens if you shoot everything down? If the two of you haven’t said anything, then say something—Kang Min, Cha Seoha.”
Kang Min’s eyes lit up.
“I actually have one name in mind.”
“What is it?”
“How about Kessoku Band?”
Kang Min’s eyes gleamed as he said the name of the band.
“Kessoku Band? What does that mean?”
“I just like it because it sounds like a band that would build real cohesion.”
“Ugh, what is that? It’s not even a cable tie or anything. That’s weird.”
“Wow, Junseong, even if the name’s bad, saying it’s weird right to his face is rude.”
“Is this how he always is?”
“It’s too much…”
Kang Min wilted right there on the spot.
“Cha Seoha. Why don’t you give it a try this time?”
At Heo Junseong’s question, I racked my brain, but nothing new came to me.
My head was already full of one name and one name only.
The name we’d chosen when we first started out.
The name of a group that had known nothing back then, and had only had youth to believe in.
“How about OKTOP?”