The Song She Wanted
Office worker Kim Juhee was heading home after another brutal day at work.
And to get there, she had to cut through Banwon Park.
So, as always, she crossed the park and spent the whole way home lamenting the sorry state of a Friday night with no plans.
"Waaah!"
"Aaaah!"
That was before she got to know those guys.
About a month ago, she had happened to pass through Banwon Park and stumbled across a busking performance by a nameless band.
At first, she had gone to watch because she’d been helplessly caught by their good looks.
But little by little, she found herself falling in love with their music.
She didn’t know much about music, but the songs they sang were like rain after a long drought, washing over her exhausted days.
She couldn’t have explained exactly what it was, but the music and energy they made together just felt so young, so alive, so good to watch.
Even now, Juhee could still remember that first performance with perfect clarity.
She couldn’t have said exactly what level the band was at overall.
But one thing was certain: the vocalist’s skill was almost professional.
Juhee, along with everyone else standing around her, had watched the performance in a daze.
And after that day, familiar faces began gathering in Banwon Park to catch their high-quality free concerts.
Not long ago, the band had introduced themselves by saying they’d named themselves OKTOP.
A brand-new high school band.
It was the kind of setup that naturally made people smile like proud parents.
"This next song is new! It’s also our own composition."
"Whoa, a new song!"
"The title is Rendezvous. Please enjoy it!"
At the words new song and original composition, the crowd let out a chorus of eager exclamations.
"I’m filming this one too."
Juhee lifted her smartphone without thinking and started recording.
Recently, she’d been filming most of OKTOP’s performances and uploading them to YouTube.
It didn’t get many views yet, but she was convinced that someday it would take off.
If OKTOP ever succeeded.
If they ever became famous.
Then the records she was leaving behind now might one day rack up an unbelievable number of views.
With that thought in mind, Juhee once again aimed her lens at Cha Seoha and his friends.
When OKTOP’s new song Rendezvous was being previewed at Banwon Park for the first time,
"Wow."
"What even is this⋯⋯."
Yoo Yeongeun, vice student council president of Jeongun High School, was watching the performance with a friend.
"Yeongeun, they’re seriously good⋯."
"Right? Is this what high school bands are supposed to sound like?"
"No way. They’re special."
At that word special, Yoo Yeongeun blinked in surprise.
The girl she called a friend happened to meet a lot of special people.
"Even by your industry standards, Gayoung?"
"Yeah. In my eyes, they are."
Mun Gayoung.
The actress who had debuted as a child star at seven and was still actively working to this day.
That was Yoo Yeongeun’s friend.
Most child actors had a strange dead zone as they grew from children into adults, but Mun Gayoung had continued working steadily without a single break even while growing up.
That alone proved how highly her acting and star power were valued.
But in truth, Mun Gayoung’s dream was to become a singer.
Not just any singer, either.
A band singer.
So there was no way she could watch this performance without going completely still.
OKTOP stood on a slightly raised platform, playing instruments and singing.
There were no lights, and the sound system was nothing special.
But for some reason, to Mun Gayoung’s eyes, they shone brighter and looked more dazzling than any singer in the world.
It was a strange feeling.
Envy, maybe⋯⋯.
Wanting it, too⋯⋯.
The kind of thing that made you want to get up and move right this second.
"Thank you!"
After the performance, we did what we always did and took time to pose for photos with the fans who swarmed us.
We’d been performing steadily all this time, and busking in Banwon Park had become a small culture of its own.
It got to the point where other buskers would even schedule their sets around ours.
In other words, they were using a strategy that relied on OKTOP’s name recognition.
Busking with an audience already waiting had its advantages, after all.
What was a little strange was that those buskers would quietly step aside whenever we showed up.
Busking didn’t have any real traffic control rules, so if someone didn’t willingly give way, there was nothing to be done.
And since it was always our time slot, telling them to move would have been ridiculous.
It’s not like Banwon Park belonged to us.
Still, it was weird that this never caused any problems, so today I asked the buskers about it.
The answer was simple.
Seventy percent of the people gathered here came to see OKTOP.
And, apparently, he was one of our fans too.
That was the reply of a beatboxing busker with a cool, sharp face.
Once I heard that, I looked back over the crowd and realized there were a lot of faces that felt strangely familiar.
Usually, there were around seventy people when we busked, but most of them seemed to be people I’d seen more than once.
So this is the indie scene?
Honestly, as a former top star, I didn’t know much about the indie scene.
So without really meaning to, I’d apparently filed away any audience smaller than several hundred people under the category of “small-time crowd.”
Busking had felt less like a performance and more like rehearsal with an audience.
But maybe my mind was changing.
Banwon Park was our cradle.
This was Brutal’s Kaiser Keller, Youngbladders’ Seattle OK Hotel, and Reloader’s LA Whisky a Go Go.
"That was so cool!"
"Thank you for coming."
"Of course I had to! I’ll come again next week too!"
"Really? Then we’ll have to be even better next week."
I looked down at the middle schooler with a faint smile and answered, and their face flushed bright red.
"I-I’ll wait right in the front!"
After the fan hurried off with both hands over their mouth, Heo Junseong jabbed me in the side.
"Hey, that’s a middle schooler."
"What is?"
"No, seriously?"
It hit me a second later.
"You psycho."
That was just the practiced polish of my 1,214 fan-signing lines.
Was there anything more effective at making someone flutter than half-formal, half-casual speech on first contact?
The narrowing distance only made the bond between fan and artist stronger.
With the last of the students photographed and sent off, we were about to start packing up.
"Doyeong!"
Then someone called Lee Doyeong’s name.
So that was Yoo Yeongeun.
I didn’t know what Yoo Yeongeun looked like, but I recognized her immediately anyway.
I’d already spotted Mun Gayoung wandering around in the back with a huge ball cap pulled low.
Those two were definitely real friends.
They’d been friends since kindergarten, and they were still close even after Mun Gayoung became a top star.
A moment later, Lee Doyeong walked over.
"Seoha, over here."
"Hm?"
"My friend said she has something to ask you."
Something to ask me? Nice.
The other friends went home first, and Lee Doyeong, Yoo Yeongeun, Mun Gayoung, and I headed to a café.
Mun Gayoung had already established a solid foothold as a child actress, but she still wasn’t at the level of a true star yet.
Industry recognition and public fame were very different things, after all.
Maybe that was why Lee Doyeong didn’t have much of a reaction even after meeting her.
Or was it just because he’d been seeing her around since first year?
Come to think of it, his school life had probably been a lot more tightly packed than mine had been with the taekwondo club.
"I really enjoyed the performance today."
"Thanks. You’re a celebrity, right?"
"Yeah, that’s right. An actress."
"So what brings an actress here?"
"Well, I heard that the song you performed today, Rendezvous, was your original composition. Is that right?"
"It is. Seoha here made it."
At Lee Doyeong’s answer, Mun Gayoung turned her gaze to me.
"You wrote it by yourself?"
"Technically, I did the work. The inspiration came from the members, though."
"Could I sing that song? I mean, if you register it as a digital release, I’d like to do a small remake in my own style."
Exactly as I’d expected.
Mun Gayoung was currently a very active actress, but her original dream had been to become a singer.
As far as I knew, the reason she’d kept acting was to build a bridge toward singing in the first place.
And right around this time, her passion for it would have been at its hottest.
But her agency was extremely reluctant to let her pursue music.
It wasn’t easy for a child actor to settle into adulthood as a successful actress.
There might be plenty of roles available, sure, but one wrong turn and she’d end up as just another vaguely known actress with vague public recognition.
So her agency worried that if they let her spend her image on singing too freely, she might get labeled as a B-grade idol who didn’t belong in serious acting.
For Mun Gayoung, though, her very first dream in entertainment had been singing.
In a situation like this, the agency had no intention of supporting her attempt to become a singer, and they were just killing time with one excuse after another.
In the original timeline, she’d gone straight to a composer to commission a song⋯⋯.
And it had blown up in her face.
The agency’s fears had turned out to be real.
Right now was probably exactly when she was wandering around looking for a composer.
So if I let Mun Gayoung see our performance, it wasn’t some huge leap to think I might be able to land a composition request.
Besides, she’d always wanted to sing songs with that teen-school-band kind of energy.
How did I know something that specific?
Because after she debuted as a solo singer and I’d been acting for a while, we’d gotten close while filming the same drama.
I’d always known we were classmates, but that was the first time we’d ever actually had a proper private conversation.
And to my surprise, she already knew about OKTOP, and she thought our songs were pretty good.
Not the current OKTOP.
The OKTOP from my past life.
Seeing us as we were now, leveled up across an entirely different dimension, I decided she wouldn’t be able to just walk away from us.
But well.
I couldn’t just give her Rendezvous.
"That’s a bit difficult."
"Hm? Why?"
Lee Doyeong and Yoo Yeongeun both looked startled.
For an entertainer to say she wanted to sing an unknown band’s song was an enormous opportunity.
"Why not?"
"There are plenty of reasons, but more than that, it wouldn’t suit you anyway. That song was written with a male vocalist in mind from the start."
"If I rearranged it a little⋯⋯."
"Even with an arrangement, no. This is a matter of feel. The vibe of a boys’ high school student and a girls’ high school student is definitely different, right?"
Of course, I couldn’t say it was impossible a hundred percent.
With a good arrangement, maybe it could work.
But what I wanted was something else entirely.
"How about this? I’ve got a song I made for a female vocalist."
A moment later, one track began to spill from my phone.
It was a song I’d worked on recently, called Diving.
Lee Doyeong’s eyes went wide as he looked at me.
His expression practically asked if I was really giving that to her.
I answered with a look that said it was fine.
"Hah⋯⋯."
And Mun Gayoung focused on the song.
After some time passed, she dropped her head toward the table as if she’d collapsed into it, then let out a long, slow breath.
"You⋯⋯ are a genius, aren’t you?"
"I wouldn’t go that far."
"Is the guide vocal you?"
"Yeah."
"Then you definitely are a genius."
Well, it was a good song.
It had been commissioned when I was making it for the leader of a famous girl group’s solo debut.
Diving had hit number one on every music show for two full weeks, and it had also landed in the top twenty on the yearly chart.
"You’re not letting OKTOP sing this one?"
"Not for now. I wrote it with a female vocalist in mind."
"I’ll buy it. How much do you want?"
Maybe because she hadn’t completely crashed and burned as a singer yet.
She was incredibly decisive.
And she clearly loved the song.
"How about we talk about something other than money first?"
"Something else?"
"Where are you planning to use that song?"
"I want to release it. And I’m going to perform it too."
"Perform it? What kind of performance?"
"Well, our school festival is coming up soon, right? I want to sing it there."
Right. Well.
Mun Gayoung performing at a school festival was basically a fixed value.
Because⋯⋯.
"You’re filming a variety show on the day of the school festival, aren’t you?"
"How did you know?"
For once, the usually calm Mun Gayoung jumped in surprise.
"I stopped by the teachers’ office and overheard it by accident. The filming crew seemed to be asking for permission?"
"Oh, so that’s how. I had no idea. Yeah, I’m filming Star Observation Cam that day."
Star Observation Cam.
It was a variety show that filmed a celebrity’s daily life, usually planned in three- to four-week blocks per project.
It had been pretty popular in the past, but I remembered its popularity starting to fade around this point.
"Then they’ll catch you performing too, won’t they?"
"Right."
"Then let’s bundle ourselves in."
"Hm?"
"You’ve got something you’re good at, don’t you? Acting."
I thought there was something kind of fun about rolling around Hongdae for a few years and succeeding slowly through the proper, textbook route.
But one thing still bothered me.
Their age.
Eighteen.
We still had a decent amount of freedom for now, but in just one year we’d become exam candidates.
That didn’t matter much for me, Heo Junseong, or Kang Min.
We’d either already given up on studying or dropped out altogether.
But it was different for Kim Jihoo and Lee Doyeong.
Especially Lee Doyeong.
Kim Jihoo could take the lead when it came to actions, but Lee Doyeong was the type to get swept along by whatever his parents said.
That wasn’t necessarily bad, but⋯⋯.
Lee Doyeong’s parents were exactly the sort of people who had every reason to oppose their son’s music with all their might.
So my plan was to make sure the whole country had heard our name at least once before next year arrived.
And the start of that plan was a variety show with a 14 percent rating.
"Bundle ourselves in? What exactly are you hoping for?"
"How about a scenario like this?"