The Link They Needed
“Hi. You’re early.”
“Yeah, I got here a little ahead of time so I could set things up and be ready to record right away.”
Mun Gayoung wanted Cha Seoha to handle her recording direction.
They would be assigning a professional director as well, of course, but she still wanted to hear the opinions of the original composer and the guide vocalist.
While Mun Gayoung warmed up her voice, Cha Seoha looked around the studio and let himself sink into the feeling of it.
It had been a while since I’d been in this studio.
Peanut Studio in Nonhyeon-dong.
This was where Cha Seoha had recorded when he made his first solo album.
“What’s that camera stand for?”
“Oh, the variety show crew set it up and left it here. I don’t know if they’ll actually use it, but this is still an outside activity.”
“Right, I guess. But hold on a second.”
“Why?”
“There’s something I can do since the gear here is so good.”
Cha Seoha erased the stem-exported tracks in a flash and moved the MIDI tracks he’d prepared ahead of time into the session.
He’d brought them just in case, since he’d been to the studio before, and as expected, the built-in instrument quality was solid even at this point in time.
“What are you doing?”
“The file I sent you can’t be edited. It’s in waveform form, see?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What I brought separately is a MIDI file, so I can tweak it instantly. I’m going to adjust a few things with the instruments here.”
“Now?”
“Yeah, while you’re recording.”
“⋯⋯You can do that?”
“Why wouldn’t I be able to?”
Mun Gayoung had taken composition classes too.
She’d studied for a while, realized she didn’t have much talent for it, and given up, but she still roughly understood how a song was made.
So in that sense⋯⋯.
Why is he saying that so calmly?
She wondered if he was just showing off, but he didn’t look like that kind of person at all. If anything, when she kept firing questions at him, he seemed a little annoyed.
“You’ll see. Let’s get started. I’m busy.”
“Oh. Okay, got it.”
Mun Gayoung went into the recording booth, and Cha Seoha sat down in front of the monitor to get ready.
They moved through the recording with remarkable smoothness.
“Oh, nice. Very good. You’ve recorded before, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, I’ve been taking vocal lessons too.”
“Excellent. All right, I’m taking the next part.”
“Okay!”
Just watching them from the side, you could feel how excited both the director and the singer were getting.
Mun Gayoung’s manager, who had been standing by in the back, would usually have passed the time by looking at his phone, but not today.
He couldn’t.
This Cha Seoha guy was directing Gayoung’s recording while also tearing apart and rebuilding the instrument tracks.
Swapping out instruments, or even playing entirely different parts.
Mixing things, polishing the sound.
I couldn’t say exactly what he was doing just by looking at it, but whatever it was, the music was getting better in real time.
Was that even possible?
Cha Seoha worked like a man half-mad, fully absorbed, moving with unbelievable speed as he juggled several different tasks at once.
“Okay, done! Come on out.”
“Okay!”
Gayoung came out of the recording booth, sweating.
“Whew, that’s refreshing!”
“It was hot, right? Good job.”
“No, you worked harder.”
Gayoung spoke to Cha Seoha casually, yet somehow still with a very proper posture.
Anyone watching would have thought they were an in-house composer and a trainee at the same company, separated by a clear hierarchy.
“All right, look here. This is the record button.”
“Okay.”
“And if you hit the space bar, it stops.”
“Oh.”
“And if you click here, this time bar jumps back. You can also just press the number one key.”
“Okay, but why are you telling me this?”
“Oh, we’re recording the chorus. I’m going in to sing, so I want you to try pressing the buttons too.”
“Ah, okay!”
He was going to sing too?
“All right, recording starts now!”
And just like that, the chorus recording began.
“Whoa⋯⋯.”
“Damn⋯⋯.”
It was good enough to make both Gayoung and her manager—who had seen plenty of celebrities—gasp in admiration.
As far as he knew, chorus recording was the kind of thing even seasoned veterans struggled to finish in a single take.
And yet Cha Seoha came out after knocking it out in one go.
Watching him walk out of the booth, I could tell he had a sturdy, solid build.
He was tall, too.
And that’s supposed to be a normal person?
But instead of heading straight back to the monitor, he reached over and picked up a guitar.
“Why the guitar?”
“I listened a second ago, and the guitar pattern in the backing layer was pretty bad. I’m redoing it.”
“You really can’t do anything wrong, can you?”
“I’m just kind of doing it casually.”
Casually?
That was absurd.
Every single thing he did was professional-level, and he called that casual?
Was this guy maybe living alone in some kind of Cha Seoha universe or something?
Either way, the manager felt like he’d discovered something valuable today.
“Good work. I’m heading out first.”
“Yeah, thank you so much, Seoha. I really won’t forget this kindness.”
“Well, as long as the deal goes through properly, that’s enough for me. But you know the composing fee and the directing fee are separate, right?”
“I know. And since it doesn’t seem right to make the song free too, I was thinking of sending it together with the directing fee.”
“That kind of conversation should happen after you sneak it into someone’s pocket and then talk about it over messenger.”
After spending several hours recording in the same space, they’d become a little more comfortable with each other.
Well, I wasn’t awkward around Mun Gayoung to begin with, not after the friendship we’d had in my previous life.
Just as I was about to head home, though—
“Excuse me, student.”
“Yes?”
Mun Gayoung’s manager stopped me.
“This is our company business card. If you’re interested, why don’t you give us a call sometime?”
“Ah. Um, sorry, but I’m not planning to become an entertainer right now.”
“⋯⋯Huh?”
“I’m sorry.”
The manager looked utterly stunned.
“Wait, you’re saying you don’t want to be a celebrity?”
“Yes. I’ve got something I’m preparing with my friends. Sorry.”
“Oh, I see. Well, can’t be helped. Still, take the card. You never know how life’s going to turn out.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
One refusal might be fine, but a second refusal could easily be considered rude.
So I decided to take the business card for now.
After saying goodbye to Mun Gayoung and her manager, I left the studio.
If the semester ended, I wanted us to try performing at a proper venue over winter break if possible, instead of busking or playing only at school festivals.
Our song Rendezvous, along with Your Time, had already been handed over to the distributor.
The review process was still underway, so we didn’t have a release date yet, but it would probably be soon.
In the meantime, we diligently prepared for the school festival, and Mun Gayoung sent us three million won.
Compared to the last song fee I’d received, it wasn’t much, but for an unknown teenage composer, it wasn’t a trivial amount at all.
And just like that, time passed dutifully until the day of the school festival arrived.
From the morning on, each class started decorating its room, selling food, or setting up games and activities.
The performance, the highlight of the festival, was scheduled to begin after evening fell.
It was an annual event, but this year the whole school felt unusually noisy.
The Star Observation Cam crew, filming Mun Gayoung as she enjoyed the school festival with Yoo Yeongeun, was roaming all over campus.
And it wasn’t just Gayoung they were filming. The B team and C team were also busily trying to capture the festival itself.
It was a little funny, in a sad sort of way, but I knew exactly why there were so many crews running around.
And that was the core of my plan.
From the production team’s perspective, Mun Gayoung was a rather boring cast member—someone with almost no footage worth salvaging.
I’d heard that directly from a man who was a production assistant for Star Observation Cam back then and later went on to become a star producer.
In the end, of the three weeks’ worth of broadcast material, everything except the first week ended up focusing on Mun Gayoung’s challenge to become a singer.
If something isn’t entertaining, then at least it needs a story.
So in the original timeline, Jeongun High School’s festival—something that didn’t have much to squeeze out of it in the first place—ended up getting a surprising amount of attention, with subtitles like “the fresh scent of youth” slapped all over it.
But now⋯⋯.
We had something worth filming, didn’t we?
Unless the station had gone blind.
Us.
The problem was that shining a light over the entire festival and shining it on a specific team were two completely different things.
No matter how badly they needed footage, they couldn’t just spotlight us out of nowhere.
So we needed a pretext.
Our relationship with Mun Gayoung.
“Act close to us. And act like you want to beat us, like we’re the high school band ruling this neighborhood.”
“That’s not exactly wrong, so it wouldn’t be hard⋯⋯. But where am I supposed to beat you?”
“At the school festival.”
“You’re performing at the Jeongun High festival too?”
“That’s right. So in a way, we become friendly rivals. Besides, I’m the one who composed your song, remember?”
Mun Gayoung seemed to think it was no big deal, and maybe even a little absurd⋯⋯.
But this was a thread.
A thread linking Mun Gayoung and us.
If that thread looked convincing enough to the people at the broadcast station, then OKTOP’s performance wouldn’t be someone else’s performance.
It would become the performance “we” needed for the story of cast member Mun Gayoung.
And in my judgment, that was perfectly reasonable.
Of course, I had no idea how much persuasive power the broadcast station would assign to that thread.
They might use it lightly, as a passing image, or they might try to wring it dry for everything it was worth.
Either way, it didn’t matter.
I had a plan for both outcomes.
So what I needed most right now was⋯⋯.
“Makeup.”
⋯⋯.
Uh⋯⋯.
Hmm.
Jeez⋯⋯.
As expected, their expressions were terrible.
“Why do you all look like that?”
“Hey, we’re not celebrities or anything. Why go that far?”
“Yeah, Seoha, wouldn’t a more natural look be better?”
“A rocker wearing makeup is humiliating.”
“I’m a little against it too⋯⋯.”
Of course a band guy would feel uneasy about going onstage with makeup on.
But still.
Conving these kids would only take a minute.
“If you’re getting a gift, isn’t it better when the wrapping paper looks nice too?”
“Mm, I guess that’s true.”
“We’re the gift. Our presence is going to turn this ordinary, predictable high school festival into the beginning of a legend.”
“Uh⋯⋯.”
“That memory will be recorded as a page of youth the students will never forget for the rest of their lives! And you want to go onstage barefaced? Is that really any way to treat a page that’s destined to become legendary?!”
“Uh⋯⋯.”
“Jackson changed the meaning of the words ‘Super Bowl halftime show’ itself. How much discomfort do you think he had to endure to do that? Hot lights, uncomfortable clothes, thick makeup. Because he endured all of it, because he tolerated all of it, a page in the history of popular music was rewritten!”
It only took a moment for the looks on the members’ faces to change to, So how much is that fancy incense burner, exactly?
Still⋯⋯.
“All right, Kim Jihoo, you don’t have to do it. Your expression really is bad.”
Kim Jihoo had failed to be persuaded.
Tch. Smart guys really don’t budge easily.
“Really?”
“I’m not going to force you if you don’t want to. And besides, you’re the best-looking one among us. If only you don’t wear makeup, it’ll still look about the same.”
“Oh. Uh, well, then⋯⋯.”
“All right! We don’t have time, so let’s get ready fast.”
And so I dressed my friends in the outfits I’d prepared in advance and hurried us into the rest of the setup.
Don’t laugh, Kim Jihoo.
The day will come when even you won’t be able to avoid it.