WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Potter
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ My Fired Uncle Is a Genius Guitarist? ◈
Chapter 13: This Is It
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Just as I was about to tap the thumbnail, chat notifications began flooding the screen.
Yun Taerin> Uncle!!!!
Yun Taerin> Uncle!!!
Yun Taerin> It’s up!!! Our video!!!
Yun Taerin> We made it through!!!!
< I know. I’m looking at it.
Yun Taerin> What?
Yun Taerin> Why did you see it before me?
Yun Taerin> You said I’d be the first to tell you when the results came out!!
< I just checked, and it was there.
That was a lie. I’d spent all day refreshing the page.
Bae Somi started flooding the group chat too.
Bae Somi> Uncle!! We really made it!!
Bae Somi> Waaah (crying baby emoji)
For Somi, who usually spoke in a voice so soft it barely lifted off the floor, it was an unusually enthusiastic response, full of exclamation points. Cha Sion, on the other hand, was brief.
Cha Sion> Nice (cat giving a thumbs-up emoji)
Just one detached word. That sounded like Sion.
Yun Taerin> Hey, Cha Sion, be happier.
Cha Sion> I am happy.
Yun Taerin> Where?!
Cha Sion> Want me to add some exclamation points? And tildes?
Yun Taerin> Forget it. Don’t. That’s creepy.
The corners of my mouth twitched before I could stop them. It wasn’t a bad feeling. But I quickly wiped the expression from my face and swallowed a cough.
This was the office, and Assistant Manager Kim was glaring right beside me.
“Manager, did something good happen?”
“No.”
“You were just smiling.”
“The purchase order was funny.”
“...The purchase order?”
“Yeah. There was a funny typo.”
“Do you know you’ve been really suspicious lately?”
“Come to think of it, you look funny too.”
“...”
I turned my phone over and set it on the desk. Even after the screen went dark, it kept vibrating for a while. Yun Taerin was probably sending another twenty messages all by herself.
Three hours remained until work ended.
For some reason, those three hours felt especially long today.
#
The moment I got on the subway home, I pulled out my phone and played the video. At work, I’d only checked our team name on the list before closing the window like I was running away.
Now I was finally watching our first result properly, from beginning to end. My older sister’s framing was clean, and as promised, I had been erased from the screen. Only the sleeve of a red windbreaker brushed the right corner once or twice.
The view count was better than expected. It was respectable for only half a day after release.
The problem was the comments beginning to pile up beneath it.
- What is this vocalist? Are they really a high schooler?
└ The team intro says they’re in their second year.
└ That’s insane.
- Picked them for their face lol. Look at that thumbnail bait.
└ Bullshit. Have you even listened? Their tone is great.
└ Not just the tone, they can sing like crazy.
└ Still a little rough, but they’ve got a promising future.
- Who’s playing guitar here?
└ The vocalist is. Are you blind?
└ Idiot, that’s rhythm guitar. What are your ears for? There’s clearly separate lead guitar.
└ Huh? Then where’s the guitar sound coming from if the guitarist isn’t on screen? Did they use a backing track?
└ Look at the right corner around 1:32. You can see the elbow of someone in red lol. A session player?
└ For real lol. Is this Hidden Member Finder?
- The guitar’s pretty good, but is the gear cheap? The pitch gets slightly flat toward the end, and it’s weirdly distracting.
└ Your ears must be good.
My thumb stopped at that last comment.
It hit a nerve. The guitar was cheap, sure. But the real reason the pitch had slipped that day was the loose tuning peg. We’d filmed before I made the emergency repair, and I could feel the strings gradually loosening as the song went on.
‘...So I really do need to replace the guitar.’
People who could hear it, heard it. There were plenty of people in the world with sharp ears.
The group chat was chaos too.
Yun Taerin> (screenshot) Look, there are so many comments about Sion!
Yun Taerin> (screenshot) This one too!! They said Sion’s tone is good!!
Yun Taerin> Everyone at school will know tomorrow, right? Hehe
Cha Sion> Don’t say anything at school.
Bae Somi> But nobody’s talking about the bass...
Yun Taerin> No! There probably are some! I’ll look!
Yun Taerin> ...
Bae Somi> There aren’t any...
Yun Taerin> No!! Saying the sound is good means the bass is good too!!
< Somi. No comments about the bass can also mean you didn’t make any mistakes.
Bae Somi> ...Is that so?
< The bass isn’t normally a position that stands out. You can show them properly in the main round.
Bae Somi> Yes!!
Two exclamation points. That was enough for today.
I closed the comments and returned to the list of teams that had passed. The kids watched the comments, but I watched the numbers. The views and likes accumulated from the moment of release translated directly into bonus points for the main round. That meant points were building up somewhere, or the gap was widening, even now.
Then my scrolling stopped again near the top of the list.
[Noise Line]
A high school band like Black Rabbit.
But the speed at which their numbers rose was already different. Every time our view count rose once, theirs jumped two or three times. Their comments were not debates. They were nothing but praise.
I played Noise Line’s preliminary video.
Zing.
I knew the moment the first note hit.
A heavy guitar sound saturated with noise surged forward like a wall. Within that wall of sound, the drums and bass clung tightly together without drifting even an inch. When the guitarist at the front of the screen threw out a short count-in, all four members crashed in at once like a single organism.
‘...They’re different.’
After listening once, I rewound it and played it twice more.
This was not a performance where someone grabbed everyone by the collar and dragged them along. The four of them had seen the same picture from the beginning and were running toward it together. They were not a high school band. They were simply a complete band.
At least on this stage, I had no choice but to admit it.
They were better than Black Rabbit.
The comments here were a completely different world.
- What are these kids? They’re not high schoolers, they’re basically pros.
└ Listen to that sound. Damn.
- That guitarist is completely insane.
└ It’s not just the guitarist. They’re all insane.
└ Calling it now, they’re a pick to win this season.
- It sounds like one person playing, not a band.
└ Just give them the win already.
The thought of facing a monster team like this in the main round made a chill run down my spine.
And in the same school band niche, too.
‘We’re going to get compared a lot...’
Then the unfamiliar fragment of a riff I had deliberately brushed aside in the practice room last Saturday raised its head again.
No matter how much we polished a clumsy cover song, we would never surpass that team’s level of completion. But if we had a song that belonged only to us, one that did not exist anywhere else, that would be different. There would be no original for people to compare it to in the first place.
This time, I didn’t let it scatter.
#
Thursday afternoon, the alert from the secondhand marketplace app I had set up a few days ago went off. It was listing number three.
An electric guitar whose sound cut out every time the pickup selector was moved. The neck looked fine in the photos. If it was just a bad contact, the repair would cost around ₩10,000 in parts.
I arranged to meet the seller right after work. The seller took out the guitar and clicked the selector a few times.
“This is why. They say the sound cuts out whenever they change positions. I can’t demonstrate it here, though...”
“That’s fine. I came knowing that.”
There was no way to check the sound without an amp. But if the symptoms were as described, it was almost certainly the selector. And even if it was not, at this price, I had nothing to lose.
I handed over ₩120,000 in cash and took the case. That night, replacing the switch took thirty minutes. Buying it, repairing it, then leaving the final test to the shop amp. By the third time, this had become a routine.
The next day, I stopped by home after work, picked up the guitar, and headed to Jaedong Music.
“I’m back again.”
“You brought one in quickly.”
Oh Jaedong took the guitar, plugged it into an amp, and checked the sound all over. There were no problems.
“₩330,000.”
“Yes.”
There was no haggling. ₩120,000 for the purchase, ₩10,000 for the part. A net profit of ₩200,000. With that, the funds I had accumulated from numbers one through three came to ₩630,000.
At last, I had reached my target amount for a basic recording setup.
The moment I left Jaedong Music, I headed straight to another instrument store nearby. It was the polished new-instrument shop that had introduced me to Jaedong Music when I was looking for secondhand gear a few days ago.
When I walked in, the owner recognized me and brightened.
“Oh! You’re back. Have you decided on a guitar?”
“I’m here to look at audio interfaces, not guitars.”
“Oh, you’re going to record? A lot of office workers do home recording these days. We just got a great beginner full package in...”
“I don’t need a set.”
I scanned the display case and pointed out only what I needed.
“One two-channel interface. One dynamic microphone. Monitoring headphones. Two three-meter cables.”
The owner’s eyes widened as I rattled off the items in rapid succession.
“Uh... People usually use condenser mics for recording.”
“It’s a studio apartment with no soundproofing. If I use a condenser, it’ll pick up the neighbor sneezing.”
“Ah... What about speakers?”
“I’ll make do with headphones.”
“You should have at least a MIDI keyboard...”
“I’m not buying one. Not yet.”
“Then maybe a multi-effects unit...”
“Software can handle that.”
“What program are you planning to use? We also carry paid software...”
“I’m starting with something free. I’ll buy something when I need it.”
The owner stopped talking in front of the counter and stared at me for a moment. The look in his eyes clearly asked, Is this person really a beginner?
“I saw on YouTube that everyone does it that way these days.”
“...Ah, yes.”
While I waited to pay, the new guitars hanging on the wall caught my eye. Glossy bodies, straight necks, tuning pegs that would never come loose. The comments from the other day overlapped in my mind, and my gaze kept drifting toward them.
I forced myself to look away. A guitar was not in today’s budget.
Still tilting his head in confusion, the owner packed the items without another word. The interface, microphone, headphones, and two cables. ₩420,000 in total.
That left me with a little over ₩200,000.
“But sir, come look at guitars next time. It would be strange to set all this up and keep using a practice guitar.”
“...You’re right.”
He smiled as he suddenly hit me where it hurt. The exact spot where the comments had hit me the other day. I knew. I did. I desperately needed a proper guitar.
It just was not time yet.
#
Back in my studio apartment, I turned on my old laptop. It had survived ten years of me working at the company, so booting it up took forever.
I opened the box and set the audio interface on one side of the desk. While the free music production program downloaded, I flexed my fingers to loosen them up and turned over the riff circling in my head.
Once the installation finished and I launched the program, a blank screen appeared. A desolate project window without a single track.
I put on my headphones and plugged in the guitar cable. Compared to my past life’s studio, filled on every side with tens of millions of won worth of outboard gear, it was a pitiful setup.
But for now, this was enough.
I gripped the pick and plucked a string.
Zing.
The electric guitar rang clearly through the headphones. It sounded different from hearing it through the practice room amp. This sound went directly into my ears. It was the first time I had properly heard this guitar in this room.
I lightly ran over the frets as I warmed up. My mind settled calmly.
Yun Taerin’s offbeats. Bae Somi’s single note. Cha Sion’s humming. And the unfamiliar riff that had pierced through those fragments. The sound I had forcibly let go of in the practice room, afraid it would grow beyond control if I held onto it.
This time, I gripped it tightly instead of letting it scatter.
I moved the mouse cursor and pressed the record button.
With the pick striking the guitar strings, a heavy melody burst into my headphones. A thick, solid audio waveform began to etch itself in red across the laptop monitor.
Not a song pulled from a drawer,
but a new sound born in this room just now.
‘This is it.’
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