Playing to Be Heard
The next day.
Lee Doyeong stared at his textbook with a hollow look in his eyes.
Maybe it was because he hadn’t slept, but although he was clearly looking at the page, none of its meaning seemed to make it into his head.
Then Heo Junseong and Cha Seoha, the two boys who had kept him awake all night, came into the classroom side by side, each carrying a handful of bread.
Lunch had just been over, but apparently they still weren’t full. As that thought crossed his mind, Doyeong shot the two of them a sidelong glance.
Even when he told himself not to pay attention, his eyes kept drifting that way.
The moment they sat down, both of them tore into their bread.
“Next period’s math. Want to ditch?”
Heo Junseong’s voice was shameless as he so casually abandoned the duties of a student.
“Students are supposed to attend class. Are you a thug?”
Cha Seoha, suddenly acting like a model student, was even more shameless.
“What are you talking about? You’re the one who falls asleep first in class every single day.”
“I’m not sleeping.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Trying to understand the textbook.”
“What?”
“I’m leaning my head against the book in a friendly way with my eyes closed, aren’t I?”
“Are you insane?”
“I love you, textbook.”
“Yeah, you are insane.”
What kind of conversation was this supposed to be?
It was so absurd that Doyeong let out a laugh before he could stop himself.
Only after the sound escaped did he realize it had been much too loud, and he hurriedly ducked his head as if he were sleeping.
Thump-thump.
His heart had begun to race. What if they thought he was laughing at them? That wasn’t it, though.
More than that, after having shut them down so coldly, what if they got annoyed because he’d been eavesdropping?
As he silently prayed that neither of them had heard him—
Someone mercilessly tapped his shoulder.
Just as he was trying to pretend to be asleep, a voice came to him that made that impossible.
“You’re trying to understand the textbook too, aren’t you?”
...Damn it.
“...Why?”
With a sense of resignation, he lifted his head, and sure enough, Cha Seoha was standing in front of him with his arms folded.
“Have you thought about it?”
“Didn’t I tell you yesterday?”
“Yesterday was a no, but maybe you changed your mind today.”
“In just one day?”
“I quit taekwondo in one day, too.”
It sounded more serious than he’d expected, and Doyeong was at a loss for words.
Come to think of it, he had wondered why Seoha wasn’t going to training and was sitting in class instead. So he really had quit taekwondo.
He’d definitely said Seoha was the school ace...
“So, do you want to be in the band?”
“...Sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize. If that’s what you think, there’s nothing to be done. I’ll ask again tomorrow.”
What? He was going to ask again tomorrow? Why?
Seoha’s reaction only deepened his confusion.
Of course a band needed a bassist, but Lee Doyeong wasn’t the only person in the world who could play one.
There might be a few in the school if you looked around, and if he searched outside, the options would be even broader.
He might not be completely incapable, but he also wasn’t someone absolutely necessary to have.
The world was full of geniuses.
And compared to those geniuses, he was nothing.
Doyeong had felt that before, too.
Very acutely.
And yet, for some reason, Cha Seoha seemed to like him.
“......”
He didn’t have any especially special talent, and yet Seoha kept telling him to join the band. Why?
Just as he was about to ask,
Ding-dong-dang-dong.
At perfect timing, the bell rang for class to start.
“Pay attention in class.”
Seoha casually gave his shoulder a pat and went back to his seat.
Doyeong was dying to know, but once the moment passed, it was hard to bring it up again.
Would he really ask him again tomorrow?
The strange anticipation he felt made the fact that he hadn’t reviewed math ahead of time seem like a minor concern.
* * *
All through class, I kept thinking about how I was going to persuade Lee Doyeong.
Unlike the simple-minded Heo Junseong, Doyeong was not going to be easy to convince.
I was certain he’d end up joining the band, but I couldn’t think of the right way to get there.
All the memories we shared had been after he’d already taken up bass in the band.
To win over Doyeong in student-mode, I needed to show him that this wasn’t some momentary impulse...
Maybe I needed something more, too.
After class ended, I was still lost in thought when Heo Junseong threw an arm around my shoulders.
“Cha Seoha.”
“What.”
“You busy today?”
“No.”
As though my curt answers were nothing unusual, Junseong shrugged.
“I need to change my guitar strings. Wanna come with me?”
“Where are we going?”
“Nakwon Music Mall.”
The name alone felt strangely nostalgic.
If Yongsan was famous for electronics, then Nakwon Music Mall was the place for instruments.
It was the kind of place where you could easily get taken for a fool and end up paying twice the market price, but if you knew what you were doing, the advantages were huge, which was why so many musicians went there.
Besides, since it was a place where a lot of musicians gathered, it was easy to exchange information, network, or book a practice room or recording studio.
And I’d better start working on songs soon, too...
“Sure. Let’s go.”
Junseong nodded in satisfaction, then asked, “By the way, can you even play guitar?”
“Just... okay, I guess.”
I’d once sold over 2.5 million copies in first-week sales as a self-composed track—the highest ever for a male solo singer—but that wasn’t this life.
At this point, I’d never even touched a guitar, so my hands were probably stiff as stone.
“Then should this big brother teach you a little?”
Junseong’s crooked grin made him look ridiculously smug.
“You?”
“What’s with that reaction? Who was it that tried to seduce me when I was busking?”
Ah, right. That setup.
“I saw potential. Potential.”
“You only say that because you’ve only seen me busk. Want me to show you my real skills?”
“Show me for who? Keep it for yourself.”
“...You know, sometimes you really sound like an old man.”
An old man?
I was barely in my late twenties.
My mood soured instantly.
I’d have to put Heo Junseong in his place at Nakwon Music Mall.
* * *
The guitar specialty shop in Nakwon Music Mall, Hyeon-ui Ullim, was a space Jang Deokcheol had built up over twenty years.
Once a guitarist himself, he had opened the shop after his band broke up.
There wasn’t any grand reason behind it.
He knew guitars best, after all, and even after retirement he wanted to keep meeting all kinds of musicians and sharing small, casual conversations with them.
So whenever he saw beginners like the boys standing in front of him, a fond smile came to his face all on its own.
With a kindly expression, Jang Deokcheol handed over the guitar that had just finished being checked.
“I replaced the strings and did a full inspection while I was at it. Go ahead and take a look.”
“Thank you.”
The student who took the guitar examined its condition carefully. Even from the inspection alone, it was obvious he treated his instrument with care.
Maybe he was in high school.
I was like that once, too.
The tall student wasn’t even wearing his uniform properly. No one could tell where his tie had gone, and his shirt was hanging open at the collar in a way that looked entirely deliberate.
Someone else might have thought he looked like a delinquent, but Jang Deokcheol instead found himself thinking of his own youth, and looked on the boy with warmth.
Outer appearances didn’t always reflect what was inside.
He, too, had once lived in a way that made the older generation wince.
The student, after taking the guitar and checking its condition, began to play lightly.
Oh.
That was better than he’d expected.
It was a piece by Pinch Address, a band that had once defined the 1980s.
In particular, the intro to that song was so famous that almost anyone who’d ever played guitar had tried it at least once.
It was just an E7-based chord progression, and the playing itself wasn’t especially difficult, so some people didn’t even like it—but that was the kind of thing people only said because they didn’t know any better.
Imitating the song’s distinctive groove was no easy task, which was why many players failed to reproduce the same satisfying feel as the original.
It sounded simple enough when you only listened, but once you actually tried to play it, you realized the sensation was completely different. That happened to plenty of people.
In other words, it was the kind of song you had to play by awakening your sense for it, not just memorizing the sheet music.
As the student brought the pick to the strings, a familiar riff burst out.
A surprisingly relaxed, clean performance that still made room for his own sense of feel.
He had the ability to take something that looked ordinary and add flair to it.
And on top of that, there was a confidence in his playing that simply couldn’t come from having tried it once or twice.
It was an excellent performance—one that let you glimpse both his skill and his hours of practice.
Jang Deokcheol nodded in satisfaction. For a high school student, that was more than enough to pass with flying colors.
He still fell a little short in reproducing the song’s unique groove, but his fundamentals were solid, and as a guitarist, his future looked bright.
When the performance ended, Jang Deokcheol nodded and gave him a thumbs-up.
“You play well.”
“Thank you for listening.”
As expected, he was as polite as he looked.
That was when the other student, who had been listening quietly to the guitar playing, spoke with a flat face.
“You’re not as good as I thought, Heo Junseong. Are you still too early in the game?”
At the unexpected remark, Jang Deokcheol’s eyes went wide.
Wasn’t that perfectly good?
“What?”
Junseong was just as flustered.
He didn’t think his own performance had been perfect, but he also didn’t think it had been lacking.
He even had pride in being one of the stronger players among his peers.
At first, he’d decided to dismiss it as the nonsense of someone who didn’t know what he was talking about, but for some reason, Cha Seoha’s expression bothered him.
“You’re saying I played badly?”
“No, I’m saying you played worse than I expected.”
“What’s the difference?”
“I thought you’d be better.”
“What do you know when you can’t even play guitar?”
“I didn’t say you played badly. I said you were just okay.”
“Hah, really? Then try it yourself.”
Junseong couldn’t hold back his temper and shoved the guitar toward Seoha roughly.
“Prove it.”
“...Prove it?”
Seoha stared at the guitar for a moment before the corner of his mouth lifted, and he took it in his hands.
When the next melody began, Junseong flinched before he even realized it.
What the hell, he’s playing the same song?
How does he even know this?
No, setting that aside, it was one thing for the song to sound easy, but quite another to actually express it well.
At that moment, Seoha’s hand began to move slowly.
Not slowly in a way that meant the piece was being played sluggishly, but slow in the sense that it never felt hurried.
He drew out the melody as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and built the rhythm just as naturally.
Seoha was teaching him.
This song came from an era when people were calling for freedom. You need to be able to express yourself freely, too.
In some places, it felt as though he was pressing and easing the rhythm itself to show him how to feel it.
Why are you only playing the way you were taught?
It was clearly the same song, but the expression was different.
Don’t just show your practice. Show yourself.
And in between the set phrases, Seoha slipped in little riffs of his own, expressing exactly who he was.
There were even riffs inserted here and there that didn’t exist in the original.
The difficulty was simple enough, but the playing was full of emotion.
And Junseong understood what Seoha was trying to say.
I’m not playing it.
I’m letting it be heard.
Not a boast, but an act of empathy.
Not a technician, but a messenger.
By the time the performance ended, Junseong had no choice but to shout.
“Holy shit!”