The Six-String Orchestra
Looking back, there had been many reasons Heo Junseong had fallen in love with the guitar, but one stood above the rest.
To his younger self, the guitar had looked like the star of the stage.
So whenever he played, he threw himself into it with everything he had.
Even after he ran into the limits of teaching himself and started taking lessons at a practical music academy.
Even after he formed a band with his friends and began tightening the pieces together in rehearsal.
He could never break the old habit.
But now, something felt different.
To some people, it was just a street performance. An ordinary neighborhood park. A crowd that barely reached thirty.
And yet, standing in front of them, my senses suddenly widened.
What are these people cheering for when they’re seeing us for the first time?
The answer was already decided. Not the playing, but the ensemble. Not a guitar solo, but music. Not technique, but art.
The notes inside the C chord that Cha Seoha had talked about. He was only one of the notes that made up that chord.
The tension that had been knotted in his body slackened without him even realizing it.
And then he remembered Cha Seoha’s words.
Look back.There’ll be a cooler sound waiting there.
The instant an indescribable sensation swept through Heo Junseong’s entire body, Cha Seoha’s high note reached the highest corner of Banwol Park.
And then the guitar solo began.
Jiiiiiiing—!
With a flashy left-hand slide and tremolo picking, he showed them what a real climax was supposed to sound like.
His picking was fierce without losing its delicacy, built to lock in with the bass. The string noise from his left hand swept across the strings so it wouldn’t step on the synth line. Every sound he produced carried not greed, but the sense of belonging that came from being part of something bigger.
Heo Junseong ran hard, but he didn’t go berserk. He charged forward, but he didn’t overtake anyone. The guitar—called the orchestra of six strings—rang out full of electronic color and kept pounding at people’s hearts.
“Whoa!”
“Holy crap, what the hell was that?”
“Wow! That was so cool!”
The crowd answered him.
And with the final tremolo, Heo Junseong’s solo came to an end.
With his pick held high and his gaze fixed somewhere in the middle of the audience, there was no fake swagger in his expression, no needless humility either.
His face was overflowing with nothing but the pure rush that came after a great performance. It was a look so full of unguarded joy that, to anyone watching, it felt almost unmistakably masculine.
Cause we are
We are shining sun
We are glorious
We are who we are
Kim Jihoo and Lee Doyeong sang into the microphones set up on their stands.
This was the sing-along part of the song. Maybe because it was already so well known, a few people in the crowd were even following along.
The song moved toward its finish. The prerecorded drums. Beneath them, Lee Doyeong’s heavy, steady bass. Heo Junseong’s expressive guitar. Kim Jihoo’s veteran touch filling the empty spaces with all kinds of synth and brass sounds. And Cha Seoha’s outstanding vocal.
It was the beginning of a band that would become a legend.
“Thank you!”
“Woooo!”
“That was insane!”
“Holy shit. What the hell was that? What did I just see?”
“Right? They’re ridiculously good.”
“They’re good-looking, too!”
“Haha, thanks. We’re still an unnamed band.”
“Whoa, no name? Did they just form?”
“No way... their band name is probably Still Nameless.”
“Right? There’s no way a band that good is really brand-new.”
“Yeah, that makes no sense.”
For a moment, the crowd murmured at the mention of having no name, but most of them assumed Still Nameless was the band’s actual name.
Indie band names were weird like that, after all.
“But they’re a band? Not idol busking?”
“Oh, yeah. I guess I unconsciously assumed they were idols, too.”
“It kind of has failed-idol busking energy...”
“Come on, their faces are way too high-end for that.”
“Fair. They’re all handsome.”
Some people came up with especially strange theories.
“How was the first song?”
“It was good!”
“You were amazing!”
The girls seated near the front were especially enthusiastic.
Honestly, on a personal level, I wanted to grab Heo Junseong by the collar and praise that performance all day long, but this wasn’t the time for that.
We were still in the middle of a performance.
“The next song has a slightly heavier mood. Please enjoy it!”
“Yesss!!”
And that was how the next song, Mandella Effect, began.
“Oh, I’ve heard this song before.”
“Yeah, the guitar line sounds familiar.”
“They’re good.”
“Hmm. Not bad.”
The response to Mandella Effect wasn’t as good as it had been for the first song.
The guitar riff was famous enough to rack up nearly eight hundred million views on YouTube, but the song itself had never really been mainstream in Korea.
We’d rearranged the five-minute-thirty-second track down to just under three minutes.
The long intro, where the instruments gradually layered in, had been reworked so that everything came in at once. The narration section in the bridge had been cut completely.
Even so, it was hard to pull much of a mass audience reaction out of it.
People who loved rock were truly enjoying themselves, but they were a small minority.
Most of the crowd was still there because they’d been carried over by the afterglow of the previous song.
It wasn’t impossible to win over an audience with a non-mainstream song.
But for that to happen, every performer had to be confident and fully immersed in the ensemble.
Right now, the only ones doing that were me and Heo Junseong.
Kim Jihoo was simply playing the song without making any mistakes.
And Lee Doyeong, perhaps because he’d sensed the mood, looked like his confidence had dropped through the floor.
When a performer loses confidence on stage, it’s the worst possible thing. Not only the other musicians, but the audience can feel it too.
The song ended in that awkward, uncertain atmosphere.
In one sense, it looked like a bad setlist choice. But it had been expected, and it had been necessary.
I didn’t show it to the members, but the success of today’s busking wasn’t what mattered most to me.
What really mattered was the members breaking out of their shells.
Lee Doyeong was badly discouraged, and Kim Jihoo was dissatisfied with the quality of the ensemble.
They were ready to crack their shells.
“You guys aren’t bored, are you?”
“No! It’s fun!”
We all knew the atmosphere had been a little off, both the performers and the audience.
Cha Seoha had no intention of sneakily dodging the issue.
“See? I told you we shouldn’t do this one.”
“Huh? Hey, when did I ever—”
“It was that guy over there playing guitar who insisted on this song, and no matter how much I tried to stop him, he wouldn’t listen.”
“Hey!”
“Pfft!”
“Hahahahaha!”
Heo Junseong’s flustered scramble sent laughter bursting out from the audience.
Which made sense, since just a moment ago he’d been playing the guitar like a total alpha.
“No, I’m pretty sure everybody said my setlist was good, too...”
“Trying to wriggle out of it now?”
“Wow, whatever. Fine, fine.”
Heo Junseong waved both hands and gave up on arguing any further.
“The first song I played for you earlier was chosen by our bassist. How was it? You liked it, right?”
“Yesss!”
In response to the crowd, Lee Doyeong answered with a short slap bass line.
“Ooooh!”
“Woooo!”
Seoha pretended to be impressed by Lee Doyeong’s sense for the moment and continued right on.
“Hey, instead of panicking like Heo Junseong, you should’ve answered with something that cool.”
“I can’t exactly argue with bass playing.”
“The guitar talks back?”
Heo Junseong had been utterly defeated.
Of course, because of that little exchange, the awkward mood from before had loosened up a lot.
“The next song was chosen by our handsome keyboardist.”
“He’s so handsome!!!”
A girl in the front row shouted toward Kim Jihoo.
Kim Jihoo answered with his playing, just like Lee Doyeong had.
“See? That’s how you do it.”
Cha Seoha jabbed at Heo Junseong again, and Heo Junseong trembled with indignation.
“Those two are so funny.”
“Hahaha! Seriously, they’re hilarious.”
“Comedy duo, maybe?”
“That guitarist is way too entertaining.”
Cha Seoha could only be grateful that Heo Junseong had become such a useful piece of stage business.
“All right, then. Let’s move on to the next song!”
Now it was time for Mice, chosen by Kim Jihoo.
Ironically, Mice was the song they had practiced most successfully.
Maybe because the ensemble difficulty was so ridiculously high, everyone had gone into it with intense focus.
In the end, it was the song they’d prepared to the highest level.
There was nothing to worry about in the performance itself.
And yet Lee Doyeong couldn’t stop thinking about the reaction to the previous song.
Non-mainstream songs don’t get good evaluations, do they?
The previous song had been shortened so it would be easier to listen to.
On top of that, we’d rehearsed enough that there had been no mistakes.
Even so, the reaction had been disappointing compared to the first song.
Would this one be the same, too...?
He wanted to become a capable bassist.
Like that genius.
But no matter how much he practiced, he couldn’t become like him.
Of course, he knew his career was still short.
But that genius had already been incredible since he was a child.
If he could become someone like that, he’d be able to move an audience no matter how mainstream the song was.
No. Focus on the stage first.
Heo Junseong played the main riff, signaling the start of Mice.
Then the drums joined in, and the bass came in after them.