All In, Techno Dance
"Um... excuse me."
It took Park Songhwa quite a while to produce her first words.
"What did you just say? I think I misheard you."
"All In. Techno dance."
"...Same the second time around."
Park Songhwa pressed a hand to her temple.
Well, fair enough. She has no idea what I saw last night.
My childhood bedroom at my family home in Gimcheon.
Under the glow-in-the-dark stars I'd stuck to the ceiling back in elementary school, the bells had rung, and my vision had bloomed open.
The first thing I saw was light.
A pillar of blinding white, plunging straight down onto the stage.
And at the very center of it stood Park Songhwa.
...That's Park Songhwa?
Her jacket, densely studded with black crystals, shattered into sparks every time the lights caught it. A stage costume with sharp, commanding shoulder lines — the polar opposite of her usual soft, innocent styling.
Dum... dum... dum...
The beat dropped, the dancers split to either side, and Park Songhwa cut a path straight through the middle of them. Her eyeline, her fingertips, her footwork — every movement landed exactly on time. And then the hook tore out of the speakers and drove itself into my ears.
A roar erupted from the audience, and a subtitle flashed across the bottom of the screen.
[Park Songhwa — All In]
...All In?
The scene flickered.
This time, it was article headlines.
And then, the last thing.
A music site's credit screen streaked past, and a single line burned itself into my memory.
Composed by AG
Click.
My vision returned to normal. No chart results, no rankings, no final placement — it simply ended there.
What kind of channel plays only the ending credits and locks the actual show? My subscription fee is going to waste.
It's free, though.
"...Mishin-ssi, do you know something?"
Park Songhwa's voice had dropped low and grave.
"There are two kinds of jokes in this world. The kind you're allowed to make, and the kind that gets you in serious trouble."
"I'm not joking."
"That's exactly what's so scary about this! I did a self-imposed reflection period because of gambling, and my comeback song is called 'All In'? People are going to think I came out here to embroider confessions onto a horsehair cushion!"
Then something else seemed to occur to her, and the color drained from her face.
"W-wait a second. Don't tell me... that song? The one you played for me in the car? You're turning that into a techno track?"
"That song stays where it is. This is a new one."
"Ohh, thank god..."
Her hand, halfway through sweeping relief across her chest, froze in midair.
"No, hold on. What do I have to be relieved about? The new song's title is 'All In' — that's what I just said!"
Relieved alone, then panicked alone. She was a busy woman.
Park Songhwa pulled her phone out of her pocket and thrust the memo app at me.
Title Candidates
1. Dear
2. Moonstruck
3. When It Seeps In
4. Bloom
"Look at this. See how sincere I was? I stayed up until two in the morning tossing and turning over these."
"......."
"I even storyboarded the whole music video. A foggy greenhouse, a white dress, flower petals scattering everywhere..."
"The 'All In' music video will have something scattering too."
"What?"
"Chips."
"MISHIN-SSI!!"
A scream close to a full-throated wail slammed into the practice room walls.
...Thank goodness for soundproofed rooms.
"Hoo... calm down, Park Songhwa. This is a shaman we're dealing with. Everything has a meaning...."
Finished muttering to herself, she asked, carefully:
"Did you really see it? A future where I sing that song?"
"Yes. On a stage. The costume was dazzling, there was a dance break, and the crowd was roaring."
"...People weren't laughing? Going, 'What is she doing, has she no shame?'"
"They cheered."
"......."
A complicated emotion settled over Park Songhwa's face.
I understood the feeling. This was someone who could pull down tens of thousands of comments over a single song title.
"Are you scared?"
"...Of course I'm scared. I've only just gotten to the point where I can breathe again, and it feels like I'm picking at a scab for no reason."
"If you hide it, it stays a tag on your name for the rest of your life. Drag it onto the stage yourself first, and from that moment on, it becomes a weapon."
"......."
"You already proved that once, in that hospital room."
"Is it because you're a shaman? The words just pour out of you like a stream...."
After a short pause, Park Songhwa added quietly:
"The stage... what was it like? Me, I mean."
"I'm sorry?"
"You said you saw the future. Was my dancing good? Because I'm really, truly terrible at dancing...."
"You were radiant."
"...! Th-that was me?"
"The stage lighting."
"......."
I asked about the stage, though.
"You don't need to worry about the song itself."
I moved on to business.
"I caught the hook roughly in the vision, so I can set the reference direction, and if we submit a formal commission through A&R..."
"Hold on."
Park Songhwa sat up straight.
She took one deep breath, then spoke each word clearly.
"...I'll do it. All In."
"Good decision. Then let's contact A&R right away—"
"On one condition."
Her words cut mine off.
"There's something I want first."
"Name it."
"You compose it, Mishin-ssi."
"...Me?"
The question escaped before I could stop it.
"Yes. You, Mishin-ssi."
"Songwriting was strictly a hobby for me. The professional league is a different animal."
"If that hook was a hobby, then every professional should just retire."
I stared at her in blank disbelief, the same way I had last time, but she pressed on without a care in the world — head still bowed, of course.
"If this moves forward, it needs A&R approval, division sign-off, the CEO's signature — the whole gauntlet, right?"
"That's right."
"But even if every single one of those approvals goes through, if the person who has to sing it says no, it's over. Because I'm the one singing it."
"......."
"So let me say the most important opinion in this room first."
Park Songhwa straightened her back all the way up.
"I like your songs, Mishin-ssi."
"......."
"I still haven't forgotten that song from the car. It comes out every time I shower. At this point, it's an addiction."
"That one's a ballad. This is a dance track."
"Who cares about genre? A person who writes good hooks writes good hooks. And besides..."
Only then did she lift her head, just slightly.
"I told you before, didn't I? All my songs got taken back. I can't sing a song by someone who's uncomfortable standing next to my name. Who knows when they'll snatch it away again — how am I supposed to give it my heart like that?"
"......."
"But you, Mishin-ssi."
Her eyes rose to meet mine.
"You were the first person to see me at rock bottom, and you're still here beside me."
"......."
The words caught in my throat.
Inside my head, three years' worth of folders was scrolling past. A career worth 430,000 won a month in settled payments. Do I really have the right? — and yet even as I thought it, the lights shattering against the stage and that roar of the crowd came flooding back.
How hard would the composer who wrote that song's heart be pounding, watching a stage like that?
"...I'll think about it."
Because that thought had taken root, I couldn't bring myself to accept right away.
There was one thing I hadn't been able to tell her.
...AG.
Those two letters, stamped into the credits of the future. The hook of the song I was being asked to write... might well belong to that faceless composer.
Ten days later. The Yeongdong Expressway.
Ever since Our Hospital, casting inquiries had started trickling back toward Park Songhwa. The next card the company had picked from the deck was a reality show: Country Mouse.
A city star spends three days and two nights fending for herself in a run-down farmhouse deep in the mountains — or, in the PR team's phrasing, a "humanity laundering course."
From the back seat, visible in the rearview mirror, a restless rustling had been going on for a while now.
"I binge-watched a legendary moments compilation of rural variety shows yesterday. I learned how to light a wood-burning stove and cook rice in a cast-iron pot and everything."
"Oh...."
"Oh, and apparently today's mission is catching stream snails. Do you think I can catch a lot?"
"Just catch them at dusk."
They're nocturnal. Once it starts getting dark, they come crawling out.
"Wow, you can even see stuff like that?"
"......."
For the record: zero credit goes to any divine spirit.
The source was my grandmother. Every summer of my childhood, she dragged me down to the stream to catch them. Stop shuttling yourself up in that room, get some fresh air, she said.
"By the way — the song? How's it coming?"
"I haven't started."
"WHAT?! Ten whole days have gone by!"
"I said I'd think about it. I never said I'd do it."
Park Songhwa clicked her tongue in disappointment.
"Oh, right — apparently there's no script for this shoot. 'Genuine observation reality,' they say."
"That's actually good news. You never follow the script anyway."
"MISHIN-SSI!! BANNED TOPIC!!"
We pulled into the Munmak rest stop. Park Songhwa — fully armored in cap and mask — and I got in line at the udon counter, where an ajumma holding a ladle fixed me with a long, hard stare.
"Oh my! It's you, isn't it? The gifted one! The one who called Park Songhwa's gambling thing!"
"......."
"......."
She had apparently never once dreamed that the person in question was standing right beside her.
"You see, my son is thirty-eight and still not married. When do you suppose he'll tie the knot?"
"That depends entirely on when he makes up his mind."
"Aiigoo, you really are gifted! That's exactly my son! He just won't make up his mind!"
Beside me, Park Songhwa's shoulders started to shake. The laughter she'd been suppressing since we got back to the car finally burst through.
"PUHAHAHA, 'depends on when he makes up his mind'... what kind of fortune reading is that?!"
"A good answer is a good answer."
"Still, it stings a little. I'm the celebrity here, and you're the only one anyone recognizes."
"You could look at it as a blessing. Thanks to that, nobody recognizes you."
"Well... that's true, actually. Thank you."
"Don't mention it."
Park Songhwa gazed out the window for a while, then asked out of nowhere:
"Mishin-ssi, do you not want to be famous?"
"No interest."
"Why not? That face, that aura — you'd get halfway there on looks alone."
"My fate doesn't include being an entertainer."
"......."
It was just a common idiom, but for some reason Park Songhwa wore the expression of a woman deeply convinced.
Two in the afternoon. A mountain village in Gangwon Province.
The shoot location was a farmhouse at the edge of the village, built beside a small reservoir. I parked the van in a neat line next to the production crew's vehicles.
At some point, Park Songhwa was already outside, getting made up for the cameras.
"......."
Leaning against the van door, I pulled out my phone.
The thing that had been nagging at me this whole time.
It wasn't my first search, of course. I was simply trying again, on the off chance something had surfaced by today.
AG producer. AG credits. K-pop composer AG.
All dead ends.
I even dug through the music copyright association's database — not a single namesake to be found, which in itself was unusual.
At the level where your name lands in the credits, something should come up. That's just how it works.
Maybe a rookie who hadn't debuted yet. Or a new pen name adopted by an established composer.
Well, pen names are whatever you make them. Plenty of people go by initials. If it were me...
Lee Mishin.
Yi, Mi, Shin.
Already Shin.
Already... God?
A chill shot straight up my spine.
AG. Already God.
No way....
Stay calm. Reason it through.
Right now, no composer named AG exists in South Korea — the search proves it. In the future, a composer named AG does exist. And ten days ago, I told Park Songhwa that the song existed, and at the end of that thread, she asked me to compose it.
So in the end... that hook is mine?
That was why I hadn't been able to start — the unease of it. It felt like stealing a melody from a composer whose face I'd never seen; even opening the MIDI file had felt vaguely wrong.
But if it's a song from my future, that changes everything. It's just the future me writing it down for the present me. How is that plagiarism?
Self-plagiarism is not a crime.
But where did future-me get that hook? If present-me heard it in the future and brought it back... then who the hell is the original composer of this hook?
A chicken-and-egg paradox. I chewed on it for a while, then gave up.
This changes things, though.
A strange flutter of excitement welled up out of nowhere. It had been a long, long time since I'd felt this way.
Come to think of it... what are the rules on these visions?
I lined up everything I'd seen so far in order. Park Songhwa at the casino was an already-unfolding past. The nameplate on the CEO's office door was a decade or more away. The hospital special's reaction was three months out, and the All In stage — who knew when.
Past, then far future, then three months.
Why is it all over the place like this?
It'd be nice if I could at least set the point in time. I wasn't asking for anything grand. Just knowing what time today's shoot would end would be enough.
Ding—
"......."
My vision bloomed open like paint spreading through water.
And then...
...for the first time, I saw ten minutes into the future.
The Gangwon sun sank faster than the city's did.
The highlight of Country Mouse's first day was the self-sufficiency dinner mission. The task that fell to Park Songhwa: fishing at the reservoir.
"Songhwa-ssi! Whatever you catch is dinner!"
the PD shouted toward the water's edge.
"And if I don't catch anything?"
"Plain rice with gochujang!"
"WHAT?!"
Boots on, Park Songhwa all but carried her fishing rod as she trudged toward the wooden pier — a narrow platform stretching out along the reservoir's edge. Moss had settled into the planks here and there, and every step creaked.
"Baiting the worm is DIY, Songhwa-ssi!"
"Aaaaah... I can't do it."
A little while later:
"I'm sorry, you little guys... this is all because of the gochujang...."
Park Songhwa wanted the crew to see it — I'm trying this hard. She wanted them to look kindly on her, even just a little. With that in mind, she forced herself through it to the end.
"...She's actually doing it?"
"Whoa... incredible."
"No wait, I was just about to help her...."
It had started as a throwaway joke, but when Park Songhwa actually threaded the worm onto the hook with her own two hands, the production crew couldn't hide their admiration.
"...You got all that on camera just now, right? So the viewers can't say it was staged or whatever."
"Yes, every second, no edits."
Crouched on the pier, Park Songhwa waited with the earnestness of a prayer — and then the float dipped under.
"Huh? Whoa—"
She shot to her feet on pure reflex. And on the very plank at the end of the pier, where the moss lay thickest —
Screeech—
The sole of her boot slid clean out from under her.
Her body floated. The world tilted, and the dark green water rushed up at her.
She's falling—!
Through the viewfinder, the VJ's eyes went wide. Down on the bank, the safety officer grabbed a flotation tube and launched himself forward, but there was distance between them. Anyone could see it — he'd be too late...
And then.
Tak—!
The crack of a foot kicking off a plank rang out. In the next instant, a single hand shot out from the side and shoved hard against Park Songhwa's back as she tipped.
...Huh?
Her center of gravity, sliding toward the water, snapped sharply inward instead, and the long-haired figure took the full momentum onto himself.
SPLOOSH—!!
A column of water shot skyward.
"......."
"......."
The reservoir went dead quiet.
The first to recover was the PD.
"Wh-what just happened?! Who fell in?!"
"The manager! The manager fell in!"
"S-someone's in the water! Safety officer! Safety officer!"
The safety officer raised his arm to hurl the flotation tube — but the surface split first.
Shuuaaaak—
A man rose straight up out of the water.
The water came up to his chest. His soaked shirt clung along every line of his body, and his long hair hung completely over his face. Then, slowly, both hands rose — from his forehead, sweeping back.
Shuak—
The wet black hair slid over and behind him. Droplets scattered through the air, catching the last of the sunset.
The face revealed beneath it was utterly expressionless. Not a single breath out of place, he stood silhouetted against the setting sun.
"......."
"......."
The VJ, without realizing it, was zooming in.