“Hyung, did you come here to fan the flames?”
When Ha Dong-hun flared up again, CEO Kim Dae-myeong calmly met his gaze.
“What? Why?”
“What were you like before you gave us our third album?”
At Kim Dae-myeong's question, Ha Dong-hun looked away like someone with a guilty conscience.
“Why are you suddenly bringing that up?”
“Your sound was so unusual that your own teacher rejected you, and then every famous singer you approached turned you down one after another because you were a composer with no experience. Weren't we the ones you came to after that?”
“......”
Ha Dong-hun fell silent.
Kim Dae-myeong did not belabor the point.
He figured Dong-hun understood what he meant by now, so he moved on.
He took a USB drive from his pocket and set it on the table.
“......What's this?”
“It's a song by the trainee who turned you down, Dong-hun.”
“Turned me down? I was the one who said no. But is that really his?”
He had said he would never accept another song from Dong-hun and even told him to compose one himself if he was so determined to debut, but had he really gone and done it?
“Strictly speaking, the musical idea is his, but another trainee who practices with him wrote the song.”
“......What are you talking about? Either way, it's his song, right?”
Ha Dong-hun picked up the USB drive and plugged it into his laptop.
A file appeared on the desktop. When he played the MP3 inside titled ‘Blue Rose,’ music began to flow.
♩-♪-♩♬
“This is......”
The character of Yujin as I had envisioned him suited breakup songs.
But the opening rhythm I heard here was dull.
Like the surface of a tranquil lake.
I could not help feeling disappointed.
He said he would write a song, and this was all he had come up with?
But as the atmosphere gradually intensified, I instinctively sensed that something was coming. Soon, the mood of the song reversed, creating the feeling of breaking free.
‘Yes. Just like......’
Like the time I stormed out of my teacher's studio, determined to escape the same repertoire he wrote every day and create music of my own.
“Takes you back, doesn't it?”
“?!”
At Kim Dae-myeong's question in the middle of the song, Ha Dong-hun turned bright red like a child caught doing something wrong and grumbled.
“Ahem. Well, it came out nicely.”
By the time the outro began, Ha Dong-hun had finished evaluating the song.
He was reluctant to admit it, but the song was clearly the best fit for a singer like Yujin.
‘Though a song that suits its singer and a song that becomes a hit are two different things.’
The song had a strong narrative.
With a narrative like this, it would have no trouble winning over the public as well.
Kim Dae-myeong could tell that, despite all the grumbling, Dong-hun had acknowledged the song's quality.
Now there was just one problem.
“So you want me to work on this song, right?”
“Yes. But there's one problem.”
“What problem?”
Was there anything else about this song that could pose a problem?
The mixing and mastering were not finished yet, but that was what the A&R Team was for.
Before he could sink deeper into thought, the CEO answered.
“We've decided to debut them as a duo.”
“What?!”
Ha Dong-hun was so startled that he let out a piercing shout.
It was so loud that everyone else in the room clapped their hands over their ears.
Then, as if he genuinely could not understand, he fired off a barrage of questions.
“No, why? Why would you do that?”
“Because I wanted to, and they both agreed.”
“Wow, no. Hyung. You're making a serious mistake.”
Reluctant though he was to admit it, Ha Dong-hun thought Yujin could unquestionably rise to the top of the ballad scene with a song like this. But a duo?
“Is the trainee joining him a ballad singer too, by any chance?”
Kim Dae-myeong paused to think at Ha Dong-hun's question.
Chanhwi's talents were more varied than he had expected. He had been having Chanhwi try songs with all kinds of different foundations through NeoTube, and the boy handled everything from jazz to rock without hesitation.
There was just one exception. He had recently learned that Chanhwi did not sing ballads.
“No. Ballads aren't his thing.”
At that answer, Ha Dong-hun scrubbed both hands down his face and had the insolence to say, ‘Why? Seriously, sometimes I just can't understand the way you think, hyung.’ Kim Dae-myeong quickly got to the point.
“That's why I'm asking. We can't use this as the title song, can we?”
It was a question asked on the off chance that they could, but Ha Dong-hun answered as though it were obvious.
“Absolutely not.”
***
“You're saying we can't use this song?”
Yujin stared at CEO Kim Dae-myeong, utterly devastated.
“Hey. Did you just chop off everything he said before that? He didn't say we can't use it. He said it isn't right for the title song.”
At my answer, Yujin tilted his head.
“What's the difference?”
The title song.
The dictionary definition was the representative song of an album, but to look at the matter more closely, we were about to release our first album.
We needed to make our first album with a song imbued with both of our colors. But ‘Blue Rose,’ the song I had already written, felt no different from a Yujin solo track rather than a song that represented us.
At the same time, erasing Chanhwi's color just to push that song as the title track was something Chanhwi himself could not accept.
“So, how about the two of you write one more song together?”
Both of us stared wide-eyed at CEO Kim Dae-myeong's proposal.
Ordinarily, the A&R Team should have been the ones to make the song, but he had seen one possibility in the ‘Blue Rose’ Chanhwi had written.
Composer idols.
Many composer idols had emerged over the years, but even now, that image remained rare.
No singer had ever filled both an album's title track and its other tracks entirely with self-written songs, so he was certain that image would succeed.
Of course, he would never have made such a proposal if Chanhwi had the ability to compose but the song itself was no good.
‘The song is just that good.’
What surprised me most was that Ha Dong-hun, not I, had been the first to make this proposal.
‘He grumbled so much about it too.’
For a finicky man like Dong-hun to say their team would only help with the finishing work and leave the overall process to the two trainees, he must have liked the song quite a bit.
“......”
CEO Kim Dae-myeong addressed the two boys again as they sank into deep thought.
“What do you think? Would you like to try making one?”
“We'll give it a try.”
***
Before the regression, Yujin had captivated the entire world with nothing but ballads.
The resonance of his sweet voice wove narratives into his songs and won the empathy of countless listeners.
My songs were always contrasted with his.
Most of Chanhwi's songs were rock or pop.
They were songs he could belt out with abandon, songs whose rhythm made your body move on its own. Clubs played his music without fail.
As such, Chanhwi preferred rock and pop to ballads.
‘A ballad is something I only listen to once in a while.’
To Chanhwi, Yujin's music was like classical music. He would be swept up in the majesty of a concert and spend a day or two listening to nothing but classical pieces, only to return to his usual favorites a few days later.
That was exactly what Yujin's music meant to him.
That was why the instruction to create a song unique to the two of them proved more difficult than expected.
“This isn't it either.”
Exhausted from composing, I closed my eyes.
The conundrum of creating a song that belonged to both of us had been circling my mind for days.
‘I could write a song for myself as easily as I wanted.’
Ten years as an idol.
Over those ten years, I had personally written countless songs for countless albums.
Even now, merely thinking about them was enough to pull those songs straight out of the depths of my memory.
“But that won't work.”
I could not simply mold my style to Yujin's ‘Blue Rose.’
Nor could Yujin simply conform to one of my songs.
How could we create a song that belonged to both of us?
Flick!
“Ow!”
“Hey! I said it's time to eat!”
When I whipped my head around, I found my little sister staring down at me with an expression that said I was pathetic.
“You could have just told me instead of hitting me.”
“I knocked, and I called you too. It's your fault for not answering.”
I checked the time and saw that it was already time for dinner.
I had taken the day off from practice and spent the whole day composing, yet somehow it was already evening.
“Son, hurry up and take a seat.”
Yujin was working his part-time job today, so for once, it was just our family at dinner.
“So, how is the composing going?”
I had told my family that I had joined the debut team.
My little sister had looked incredulous. My father had simply congratulated me.
My mother had advised, ‘Plenty of trainees fall apart even after joining a debut team, so don't let your guard down.’
I had told them about composing the title song at the same time, which meant I could not escape their interest in my progress, whether at the agency or at home.
“It's not going well.”
Why was that?
I was not usually the type to talk about my worries, but perhaps because I felt so troubled today, I told my family about the problem I was having with the song.
“We're good at completely different genres. I don't know how to bring both of our strengths to life in a single song.”
After listening to my concerns, my mother asked me a question.
“Have you told Yujin that?”
“What?”
“It's supposed to be a song for you and Yujin, Chanhwi. Then why are you worrying about it all by yourself?”
“That's because......”
That guy could not even explain his musical ideas in concrete terms.
His sheet music looked like chicken scratches, so it was almost impossible to decipher.
What was I supposed to do with someone like that?
“Even so, if you make the song alone, then it's your song. It won't be a song for both of you, will it?”
At that moment, it felt as if something had delivered a sharp smack to my back.