The First Rehearsal
Because I’d burst into tears, the song ended before it could be properly finished.
Still, I’d shown everything I needed to show, so it didn’t really matter—as if.
Damn. That was humiliating.
Why had I cried?
Maybe because I’d been so deeply absorbed that even I couldn’t say exactly what I’d been thinking.
But one thing was certain: my thoughts had been in the past.
The past that was now slowly becoming the present.
“Um... Seoha, are you okay?”
Lee Doyeong seemed a little startled by my tears, and he offered me words of comfort.
What an idiot.
He didn’t even know why I’d cried.
“Damn. If I sang as well as Cha Seoha, I’d probably cry in front of a mirror too.”
Heo Junseong nodded gravely.
It sounded like comfort, but I was pretty sure he meant it.
Even bigger idiot.
“Do you cry on stage sometimes too?” Kim Jihoo asked with concern, but that wasn’t worry about me—it was worry that if I did it often, I’d ruin the performance.
Not even slightly funny, that guy.
Anyway, I needed to get out of this situation fast.
“I don’t cry. I never cry. Men cry three times in their lives, and this was my third.”
“...You’re a little crazy, aren’t you?”
“Forget that. How was the song?”
“I want to join the band. I want to put my playing on top of your song.”
Kim Jihoo looked me dead in the eye when he said it.
Not a hint of hesitation.
He was exactly like Kim Jihoo when he was being honest—completely, unapologetically honest.
“Me too. I was thinking the same thing.”
“Uh, yeah... same here, I guess.”
Lee Doyeong and Heo Junseong piled on before anyone could get there first.
My chest finally loosened.
We really were destined to make music together.
After that day, we stocked the school practice room with whatever instruments each of us needed and started practicing in earnest.
The first thing we had to do was check each other’s skill levels.
“Who’s first?”
“The youngest should go first.”
“The youngest?”
“Ahem. The Confucian order is strict, you know—how could the last one to join not be the youngest?”
At Heo Junseong’s words, Kim Jihoo argued back that the ranking should be decided by mock exam scores, and the two of them collided in a spectacularly heated argument.
For the record, I was on Heo Junseong’s side.
If we went by mock exam scores, that would make me the youngest.
Ridiculously, Lee Doyeong sided with Kim Jihoo.
Dammit. Smart guys really do seem to lack empathy.
They could at least empathize with my grades, couldn’t they?
After a long exchange of insults, Heo Junseong declared that, as the “senior,” he’d take the lead and picked up his guitar.
“Watch closely.”
He only said it while fixing his gaze squarely on me, then began dialing in his guitar tone.
Oh. That tone?
It was that tone.
The one he’d played for the demo at Hyeon-ui Ullim last time.
Of course, plenty of songs used the same kind of guitar tone, but Heo Junseong’s expression made it obvious which song he meant to play.
And the familiar guitar riff that burst out was, just as I’d expected, exactly that song.
I’d thought he’d choose something flashier or more aggressive, so this was a little unexpected.
What he was trying to show me wasn’t his current skill, but how much he’d improved in a short time—how much work he’d put in.
It had only been a few days, but he was definitely better than before.
His body had more ease to it, and instead of playing from memory, he was letting his whole body ride the rhythm.
Yeah. That was playing.
I’d wanted to see something more technical, but this wasn’t bad either.
I could picture how hard Heo Junseong must have gritted his teeth and practiced over the past few days, and for some reason it made me feel proud of him.
“Good. Better than before.”
“That’s it?”
“What, do you want me to pat your ass or something?”
“...Will you?”
“...Get lost.”
“I’m kidding. Don’t get so serious.”
As expected, Heo Junseong’s feel for emotion was good.
He had that vibe of a hot-blooded shounen hero who charges straight ahead without thinking.
For a band, the blend between members mattered, but the guitar was the one instrument that needed a little flash and edge.
If I had to pick a flaw, it was that he got excited too easily.
I’d have to correct that slowly, step by step.
We weren’t planning to end up as some neighborhood garage band, after all.
Then I turned to Lee Doyeong.
“Doyeong, you should play for us too.”
“Sure, but compared to you guys, I’m still way behind.”
“What matters now isn’t where you are, but your potential. Look at Heo Junseong—he was a mess just a few days ago.”
“Hey, a mess is a little much.”
Heo Junseong protested, but Lee Doyeong nodded, as if he’d regained a little confidence.
“Then I’ll try.”
The song Lee Doyeong chose was a song by Mice.
Not exactly a surprising pick.
Anyone who played bass had probably tried that song at least once.
The bass line in the intro was built on sixteenth notes mixed with open strings, which made matching the left and right hands tricky.
Because of that, Lee Doyeong had to grind his way through it.
He couldn’t quite keep up with the speed of the original, but he paid attention to every note and tried hard not to miss a single one.
He kept at the meticulous performance, then finished after a short run.
“Hmm, a little disappointing, Lee Doyeong. You’ll need more practice.”
Heo Junseong’s verdict was “disappointing.”
“No, it’s not disappointing.”
Kim Jihoo, on the other hand, seemed to like Lee Doyeong’s playing.
What about me?
It was excellent.
As expected of Lee Doyeong.
“Really? I guess the sense of speed was a little lacking.”
Heo Junseong wasn’t wrong either.
When you were playing as a band, speed and drive mattered.
But Lee Doyeong was still an unfinished member.
Anyone who clung to the fundamentals was far more promising than a player who sacrificed detail for speed.
And once he crossed a certain threshold, he’d grow frighteningly fast.
Heo Junseong was judging what he could see right now, while Kim Jihoo and I were looking at his potential.
“Playing with that kind of delicacy will be better in the long run. Heo Junseong, didn’t you practice that way when you were younger too?”
“Mm, now that you mention it, yeah.”
“Anyway, good job, Lee Doyeong. I’m looking forward to what comes next.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Lee Doyeong scratched his head, and he seemed to think for himself that he’d fallen short, but that was only where he was right now.
He was an artist I genuinely looked forward to seeing grow.
Ah, but I wasn’t going to stop at praise.
“But Doyeong, we have a serious problem.”
“Huh? What is it?”
“How much do you weigh?”
“What?”
“Your height and weight.”
“I’m 174 centimeters, and... 69 kilos.”
“If you want to be perfect, you need to get down to 64 kilos. Body fat under 15 percent. In other words, you need less fat and more muscle.”
“...Is that really important?”
“Extremely important.”
“Why?”
“The first gate to becoming a ridiculously good bassist is body fat under 15 percent.”
“...?”
Kim Jihoo cut in.
“You obtained singing ability in exchange for losing your mind, didn’t you?”
“I don’t respond to baseless smear campaigns.”
“...?”
“All right, next. Kim Jihoo, you’re up.”
The three of us, including me, turned our attention to Kim Jihoo.
“What should I show you? Guitar? Keys?”
“Could you show us the keys?”
Kim Jihoo would eventually become our band’s keyboardist, but since he could handle a variety of instruments, he was useful to have around.
Still, keyboard was his main weapon, so it was time to check that skill properly.
Kim Jihoo stepped up to the synthesizer.
He carelessly tapped out a few keys while rummaging through the sound patches, then flexed his fingers as if he’d found what he wanted.
Then he began to play, and some unidentifiable song spilled out.
Kim Jihoo ran his fingers across the mysterious synth sound, tracing ownerless chords through the air.
Then he started breaking those chords apart and reassembling them with both hands.
All kinds of arpeggios and tensions colored the practice room in an instant.
And then Kim Jihoo smoothed out the progression and tied it into a song we all knew well.
A song by Somrthing Doomed.
.
What an incredible progression.
This song, often called a textbook example of melodic speed metal, wasn’t something you could play with ordinary skill.
And then came the height of brilliance.
He even played the guitar solo that followed entirely on the synth.
“Wow... he’s good...”
Lee Doyeong covered his mouth with both hands, stunned.
Heo Junseong, on the other hand, already knew how good Kim Jihoo was, so he only nodded.
He really is good.
“Is that enough?”
“Yeah, I saw enough. It was precise.”
There wasn’t really anything to correct in Kim Jihoo’s playing itself.
But he was highly independent and very cold in how he approached things, so I expected he’d have trouble locking in with the rest of us.
We’d deal with that during rehearsal.
With that, the three of them had been neatly sorted out.
We four sat down in a circle in the middle of the practice room.
“All right, now that we know each other’s skill levels, there’s something we need to do.”
“What is it?”
“A performance.”
“Huh?”
“I’m the kind of person who believes practice without a goal can’t ever be truly all-in. Let’s do a performance exactly ten days from now, on Saturday.”
“Where?”
“Busking at Banwol Park.”
“What’s the goal?”
“The goal?”
I snorted at Lee Doyeong and Kim Jihoo’s words.
Smart guys may not have much empathy, but when it comes to achieving a goal, they definitely knew how to lock in.
“SNS.”
“Huh? You mean we should film it and upload it to SNS?”
“No. The goal is to make someone watch our performance and mention it on SNS.”
“Uh...”
“That’s not bad, but it’s kind of a high difficulty setting.”
It probably would be a tough goal.
Watching buskers on the street was common enough.
But for a performance to stick in someone’s mind badly enough that they’d mention it on their own SNS? That wasn’t easy at all.
“So? What do you think?”
“I like it.”
“Sounds fun.”
“I think we can do it.”
The replies came in one after another, and I opened my mouth again.
“Let’s each bring two or three songs we want to play. We’ve already seen each other’s skill levels, so you’ve got a sense of what kind of variations we can handle, right?”
Everyone nodded.
a song by Mandela Effect.
a song by SUN.
a song by Mice.
There were a few others as well, but these were the three we ultimately chose.
The first was Heo Junseong’s pick, the second Lee Doyeong’s, and the third Kim Jihoo’s.
To be honest, this was a pretty tough challenge for a band that had only just been formed.
Playing together wasn’t just about following the sheet music well as a group.
That was the bare minimum—the thing that made it a performance, not a rehearsal.
Playing together was about making a new world.
If you gave a hundred musicians the obvious phrase “a warm melody,” you’d get a hundred different interpretations.
One person might call the heat that warms the body “warm,” while another might find warmth in something lukewarm set against a chill.
Closing the gap between those interpretations and impressions, and building a single, massive house out of them.
Sound created by vibration.
Rhythm realized through the gathering of time.
A song completed by adding space to all of that.
The noble act of creating a world through music born from all those elements.
That was playing together.
In that sense, this selection was pretty interesting.
First, each song reflected its owner’s taste very well.
But there were some tricky elements for the other members to handle.
Mandela Effect was a song Heo Junseong could play easily enough, but it would be difficult to express.
Hot-blooded, flame-headed Heo Junseong tended to go full throttle when he played, and this was the kind of song you could only express if you stripped all of that away.
Lee Doyeong was a bassist who very clearly preferred to stay in the background, but SUN was the kind of song where every instrument needed to take a bold stance.
So far, so good.
If we closed our eyes and practiced hard, we could probably pull it off.
The problem was Mice.
“Can we actually do this?”
“I think it’ll be fun, but maybe it’s too hard.”
It was the kind of song that only really worked if it was absolutely perfect.
Should I call that a very Kim Jihoo choice?
We were an amateur band, so we were definitely going to make mistakes.
Would Kim Jihoo, seeing Heo Junseong and Lee Doyeong make mistakes, shout “wrong answer” and run ahead on his own?
Or would he help create an imperfect transformation together with them?
I didn’t know.
That was something we’d have to watch and find out.
A mix of anticipation, worry, and all sorts of other feelings made it strangely exciting.
Anyway, that was why we’d chosen the songs the members brought in, but something felt a little off.
“Why are you guys being so obedient about this?”
“About what?”
“I mean, you’re just following what I chose without complaining.”
“What am I supposed to do about it? I wanted to do that song too.”
I ignored Heo Junseong’s grumbling and looked at Lee Doyeong, but surprisingly, the answer came from Kim Jihoo.