Do they say if you wish for something desperately enough, it comes true? The dream I had carried for over ten years was performing in a stadium. In ten minutes, I would be playing guitar in front of one hundred thousand people. The reality was so hard to grasp that I played a familiar video.
[The story we wrote together. Only one page remains.]
The sight of our band in school uniforms, still boyish, practicing together—one page of my youth at its brightest. A smile crept across my lips, and my tension melted away like snow.
“Jay, are you watching that clip again?”
“It’s about time, right? Let’s go.”
I hurriedly flipped my phone over and left it on the table. I’ll be back.
Throughout the performance, it felt like I was flying. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say I had endured all those long years just for this moment. Everything had reached its peak—skill, career, honor. Even if I were to die on stage right now, I wouldn’t have any regrets. I was so consumed with regret that it was ending that I could have gone mad.
“On guitar, Jay!”
“Woooahhh!!”
The applause poured over me like a tidal wave. My whole body trembled with the thrill of it. My shirt and bangs were drenched in sweat, and the crowd, lost in rapture, whipped their heads around. Every time my hand moved with the pick, the cheers multiplied. How many people in the world ever get to experience the roar of a hundred thousand voices?
The past flashed before my eyes like a panorama: the moment I first left Korea for the U.S., the times I was looked down on because I couldn’t speak English, the day I became a session player for the top star Elric Woods purely on skill. And at the very end of it all came the memory of that playful vow in a shabby practice room ten years ago: Let’s perform in a stadium someday too!
The two feet standing on stage felt awkward. Ten years later, I had achieved that dream. Only, it wasn’t with them.
After our group bow, leaving the roar of the audience behind, I returned backstage. Elric popped champagne to celebrate the triumphant close of the tour and slung an arm around my shoulder. “Tonight’s show was a total smash!” he said. “You’ll be on the next tour too, right?”
“Is that something I get to decide?” I answered.
“If it’s you, Jay? I know you’ve got tons of love calls lined up.”
Back on the plane when I left Korea, could I have imagined a day like this? That I’d be the session guitarist for a singer who hits number one on the Billboard charts like it’s nothing?
“By the way, Jay. My manager said your phone was blowing up during the show.”
“Really? I didn’t check.”
“Who was it, don’t tell me a girlfriend? You didn’t fight, did you?”
“A girlfriend? As if!”
I joked as I checked my phone. There were forty-eight missed calls, twenty-seven unread messages. “…Huh?”
And then the phone rang again. [Hangyeol_Keys]. A name I was glad to see—unchanged for the last ten years.
“What the hell, why’d you call so much? I told you I had a stadium concert today. Didn’t I say—”
[Why the hell are you only answering now!]
“Hangyeol—wait, who is this?”
An unfamiliar voice on the other end started yelling at me. It didn’t take long to recognize it as Kwon Taejin, the bassist.
“Why the hell do you have Go Hangyeol’s phone?”
[……]
“What? Why aren’t you answering? Is Hangyeol next to you? Put him on. I need to know why—”
[Juyeon… Hangyeol’s dead.]
The words hit like a thud.
“What are you talking about, why all of a sudden….”
[Didn’t you notice anything strange? The last person Hangyeol tried to reach was you.]
I was lost. The last time we spoke, he’d been the same as always. Sure, we only contacted each other a handful of times a year, but still. What on earth had Go Hangyeol been trying to tell me? With hands trembling like mad, I finally checked his message, and instantly began packing my things.
[Hangyeol_Keys: I’m sorry. It was a precious song you gave me.]
Elric and the other session players came over, startled by my sudden movements. “Jay, what’s wrong? Are you okay?” Elric asked.
“I need to go back to Korea.”
“What? You said you’d never go back to Korea. What happened?”
“Something came up. I have to go now.”
With that, I headed straight for the airport. It might very well be a breach of contract, but none of that mattered. I bought the earliest flight I could find, and through all fourteen hours in the air I couldn’t close my eyes once.
Once I landed, I rushed into a taxi. “I’ll pay whatever it takes. Please, just get me there as fast as possible. Please.”
The driver looked puzzled but said nothing as he pulled out. That was when the DJ’s voice drifted from the radio: I hope today will be a day when you don’t hide your true feelings from the people precious to you. For tonight’s ending song, it’s one that’s given comfort to many—Ash’s ‘Just stay.’
Why the hell did it have to be that bastard’s song, now of all times?
“Sorry, could you turn the radio—” I froze.
I should’ve said it then. I don’t ask for anything else. Just stay with me, my everything.
That melody. Burned into my memory, lyrics Go Hangyeol had written through tears. Clear as if it were yesterday, his voice echoed in my ears: Juyeon, thanks to you I finally have the courage to face my mom. Thank you.
I couldn’t move a single inch.
“Do you know this one? Ah, I never realized Ash was such a devoted son,” the driver said, sounding touched, and began singing along.
The sound rang in my head like tinnitus, and I clamped my hands over my ears. It was impossible. This was a song that only I and Go Hangyeol knew.
Even after arriving at the funeral hall, I lingered outside for a long time. It was Seok Dojae, our drummer, who finally called to me.
“…Come in.”
Awkwardly, I followed behind him. Inside, Kwon Taejin and Cha Seonjae were already there. The sight left me unsettled. It had been ten years since the band was all together. This was the scene Hangyeol had wanted so badly, and yet he wasn’t here.
Taejin, who had called me, already had eyes swollen like balloons. He crouched in a corner, while Seonjae busied himself greeting the few mourners.
“It’s been a while,” I said.
He just stared at me. The air was so strained I couldn’t bring myself to say anything else.
“Why the hell did you only come now, huhhh…” Taejin broke into sobs again. Seonjae shook his head and shoved a wad of tissues at him like he’d done it countless times.
“Someone’s gotta cry like Taejin does.”
I nodded silently. Looking carefully at each one of them, I realized how much they’d changed. Then I walked up to the photo of Go Hangyeol, smiling alone.
What on earth had happened, what had driven him to death? I still had no answers. The song on the taxi radio only deepened the questions.
I sat down next to Taejin, who was still crying. In my head, “Just stay” played again and again, stuck like a broken tape. That was when Seok Dojae quietly handed me something.
“Here.”
“What is this?”
It was an envelope. A letter, he said, Hangyeol’s last note, entrusted to be given only to me. After a couple of short breaths, I unfolded the paper. The page was crammed with writing, stained here and there with tear marks.
[I’m sorry, Juyeon. I was such an idiot, I let your song be stolen.]
Line by line, sighs broke from my mouth. His handwriting, always neat, was now shaky and messy—his hand must have trembled so badly. The letter told everything: how Bae Shinwoo had approached him, how he had been gaslighted and strung along with false hope, how Shinwoo had stolen the work under the pretense of doing music together again.
I immediately searched Bae Shinwoo’s name on Witube. Right away, an interview clip popped up. The content made me sick. He was talking about Hangyeol’s family history as if it were his own.
[※Warning: tears※ Not “Ash,” but Bae Shinwoo’s true feelings in this live stage.]
[This is a song I made for my mother. It’s never shameful to speak your heart to someone you love. But I realized that too late and… ah, just a moment…]
[Ash, eyes reddening at the thought of his mother…]
It was acting so disgusting it went beyond hypocrisy and into nausea. But the reaction was undeniable—because it was a style of music he had never shown before.
— His character is just as flawless as his singing ㅠㅠㅠ Our Ash is really a gem.
— I never imagined someone like Ash, with his prince image, had a family story like this.
— Feels like Shinwoo trusted us enough to open up honestly. I’m crying ㅠㅠㅠ I’ll be a fan forever.
— What a devoted son… knowing the story makes the song even more heartbreaking.
“That son of a bitch…”
I forced myself to steady my heart that was racing with rage, then searched the track on a music site. And there it was—my own name listed under composition.
“What the hell… no way.”
I had thought, of course, my name wouldn’t be there. Since the song was stolen, I had been preparing to sue. But the bastard was as sly as ever. He was actually promoting it openly, flaunting the fact that I had “given” it to him.
Ten years ago, Bae Shinwoo betrayed all of us, and overnight became a star. The video of our band’s performance that had been going viral—he monopolized all that attention for his own flashy debut. And we? We had to disband under the disgraceful labels of “traitor” and “bully.”
The big agency backed him to the hilt, but it was a castle built on sand. When his lack of substance showed, his popularity dwindled. Then, shameless as ever, he even reached out to me, now finally gaining recognition overseas, with a “collab” offer. As if he had forgotten that ten years ago he had crushed me so thoroughly I couldn’t even set foot in the Korean music scene.
So he hadn’t given up after all—
Since I ignored him, he turned his target elsewhere. The reason he stole this particular song out of all the ones Hangyeol had written was obvious: for the buzz. A style he had never tried before, and one where he could also profit off my name at the same time. For Bae Shinwoo, it was the perfect move. He must have thought that even if Hangyeol didn’t react, I’d eventually see the royalties and be forced to respond.
“All this… just for that—”
My hand shook violently around the phone.
[Ash, the magical collab with star guitarist Jay, Choi Juyeon.]
[The Juyeon Effect? Ash greets a new golden era.]
[We’re still close… the story of Bae Shinwoo and Choi Juyeon, not just Ash and Jay.]
I couldn’t even bring myself to look at Hangyeol’s face. How much must he have suffered, all alone?
If only I’d answered his call…
The concert I had thought the pinnacle of my life now felt like a nightmare. If only I hadn’t been on that stage at that moment, maybe Hangyeol wouldn’t have died. But regrets were nothing more than spilled water.
Time passed. Taejin, after crying buckets, eventually dozed off. My own eyelids grew heavy. “It’s already dawn. Go in and get some rest,” Dojae said. His voice, calmer now, felt oddly unfamiliar.
Four grown men crammed into the room, it felt full to bursting. Sleep wouldn’t come easily. That was when Seonjae spoke.
“Doesn’t this feel just like high school?”
“Sleeping in the practice room all the time?”
“Taejin’s sleep habits are the same as back then. Arms and legs all over the place.”
“Pfft.”
In the cramped room, Taejin sprawled every which way. I thought everything had changed, but some things hadn’t.
“By the way, Choi Juyeon. Yesterday was your stadium concert, right?”
“…Yeah.”
“At least one of us set foot in a stadium.”
The lump in my throat threatened to spill into tears.
“If only we’d kept doing the band together…”
Silence.
“It would’ve been good.”
Would everything have been different if we had? Even if eggs had been thrown, even if we’d had to endure boos, if we had kept going together—what would we look like now? With that unanswered question, I closed my eyes.
Sunlight spilled through the window cracks, stinging my eyes. Morning already.
“Mmm…”
“You awake?”
“Why don’t you just move in here?”
The voices of Dojae and Taejin reached me as soon as I stirred. Right—the funeral wasn’t over yet. I blinked, my vision sharpening, and then I heard a voice I had missed for so long.
“Juyeon, did you fall asleep practicing here again?”
“…What?”
I bolted upright like a spring. For a long moment, I couldn’t speak.
Because right before my eyes stood Go Hangyeol.