WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Potter
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ My Fired Uncle Is a Genius Guitarist? ◈
Chapter 15: If It's Weird, Throw It Out
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“Have you ever written lyrics?”
At my question, Cha Sion’s shoulders stiffened. As if trying to hide their surprise, they briefly avoided my gaze and answered shortly.
“...No.”
Their voice was as dry as usual, but their ears were still red.
“Liar! You definitely had something in that notebook...”
“I said it was doodling!”
“Then why are you so desperate to hide your doodles?”
“Enough.”
I held Yun Taerin back with one hand as they tried to rush in. This wasn’t something we could drag out by force. Until Sion chose to bring it out on their own, we had to act like it didn’t exist.
“If you haven’t, that’s fine. I’ll handle the lyrics.”
“You, Uncle? You said you couldn’t write them!”
“...I have a way.”
“What way?”
“A way. My own way.”
“That means you don’t have one.”
Yun Taerin looked at me with suspicion, but I ignored it. There was no way. But that wasn’t what mattered right now.
“I’ll take care of the lyric problem. For the rest of today, we’re transplanting the new song.”
“Transplanting?”
“We’re moving the demo into your hands and feet. Right now, that song only exists inside a file. If we want to put it onstage, we need to move it into your bodies.”
“Oh... That sounds kind of like surgery.”
“It is surgery. And since we don’t have time, we’re doing it without anesthesia. Get to your positions.”
“Wait, that’s scary!”
They shuffled toward their instruments. Cha Sion silently took their place in front of the microphone stand.
The first step of the transplant was obvious.
We had to start with the heart of the song.
“Taerin, you’re first.”
“Me? Why me?”
“Because the drums are the center of this song. The rest only stand if you’re solid.”
“...That’s suddenly a lot of pressure.”
Even while complaining, Yun Taerin readjusted their grip on the sticks.
“You know that offbeat rhythm you were playing during break last week? That’s the backbone of this song. Play it exactly like that.”
“...What did I play?”
Yun Taerin blinked, sticks still in hand. They had no memory of it at all. Of course not. It had just been something they tapped out absentmindedly to kill time.
“Move aside.”
I nudged them away from the kit and sat on the stool. Taking the sticks in both hands, I loosened up my wrists. There was no need for flashy technique. I just pulled out the messy offbeat rhythm they’d scattered into the air last week, exactly as it had stuck in my head.
Tss, taka, tss-tss, tak.
It didn’t hit on the beat. It slipped into the gaps around it. I stopped there and lowered the sticks.
“Wait. Uncle, you play drums too?”
“...!”
Yun Taerin’s eyes widened, and Bae Somi was staring at me with their mouth slightly open too.
“When you’re in a band, you can all do this much.”
“No, that’s not it... Was that really something I played?”
“Yeah. You played it and don’t remember?”
“How do you remember something after hearing it once?”
“If you’ve got ears, you remember it. And the demo drums were really made by polishing up what you just heard.”
“What? Seriously?”
“I’ll sing it for you. Follow along. Tss, taka, tss-tss, tak.”
“Tss, taka... Oh, wait. This is it? This was in the demo!”
“Yeah. That’s it.”
I handed the sticks back and stepped aside. Yun Taerin sat down at the drum stool with a dazed expression. They fumbled a few times, but before long, the rhythm from the demo began to take shape over the snare.
It really was different when it was a rhythm already ingrained in their body. Bae Somi, watching from the side, gave a quiet gasp.
“That’s amazing... Something Taerin played randomly really became a song...”
“Oh, it’s coming! This feels so good in my hands!”
“Play it exactly like that. Don’t try to add anything.”
“What if I put in a little fill before the chorus...”
“Don’t! Your offbeat is this song’s heart. You don’t tack useless extras onto a heart.”
“...Okay.”
Next was bass.
“Let’s get the three of us through this section together. Somi, play the line you pulled from the demo exactly as it is.”
The guitar, drums, and bass ran through the riff together. But halfway through, the sound began to feel strangely loose. The reason was obvious. Bae Somi was instinctively erasing their own sound again.
Yun Taerin noticed first.
“Huh? Something’s missing.”
“The bass is dying.”
When I stopped playing and looked over, Bae Somi’s shoulders drew in.
“S-sorry...”
“You don’t need to apologize. Let’s go again. This time, don’t pull your sound back. Without your sound, this song just collapses.”
They played through the same section again. This time, for the first few measures, the bass properly supported the bottom end. I could hear the riff rise up firmly. Bae Somi’s eyes widened too, as if they had felt it.
Of course, it only lasted a moment. Soon, their sound started creeping back down again.
“You heard it, right? That sound just now. That’s where you belong.”
“...Yes.”
“Somi, that was really good just now! When the bass is full, my drums feel easier too!”
“R-really...?”
Bae Somi smiled awkwardly at Yun Taerin’s enthusiasm. Still, there was more strength in the hands holding the bass than before.
If it were a habit that could be fixed overnight, it wouldn’t be a habit in the first place. It was enough to set the direction. For today, that was enough.
Finally, the vocals.
“Sion. Until we have lyrics, we’ll use humming. You remember the guide melody, right?”
Cha Sion nodded and stood before the microphone. The accompaniment began, and their voice started riding the melody.
“La, la la la...”
The notes were exact. They followed a melody they had heard only once with barely a mistake, and their voice stretched properly through every part I had designed for it. As expected, this song had been built for that voice.
“Oh... Hey, this works.”
Yun Taerin muttered with their sticks in hand, and Bae Somi nodded quietly. Just listening to the sound, there was nothing to criticize.
But.
‘...The notes are right, but it’s empty.’
The sounds filling the melody with la la las merely drifted along with it. They did not reach anywhere. Without words, there was nowhere for emotion to attach itself, and without emotion, the breath had nowhere to go. It was not a song. Just a precise sequence of sounds.
Cha Sion seemed to feel it too. At the edge of the chorus, they suddenly stopped singing. Their brow had drawn tight.
“Huh? Why’d you stop? It was good.”
“...”
“But honestly, all those la la las are kind of boring. It feels like just playing the backing track at karaoke.”
Cha Sion’s lips moved soundlessly as they stared only at the microphone. Frustration was written all over their face.
“It’ll be different when the lyrics are attached. Words give breath to it, and breath makes it a song. Let’s stop here for today.”
When I checked the clock, our rental time for the practice room was nearly over.
“Learn your parts completely before the next rehearsal. I’ll put the demo in the group chat, so listen to it until it’s stuck in your ears.”
“I’ll listen to it a hundred times! No, two hundred!”
“That’s your only homework. Somi, remember the sound you made earlier.”
“Yes, Uncle.”
While they packed up their instruments, Cha Sion stood in front of the microphone stand for a long time without moving. Yun Taerin finished packing and looked like they were about to say something, but I shook my head to stop them.
When someone had that look on their face, you left them alone.
#
At Noise Line’s practice room after band rehearsal ended.
While the drummer and bassist packed up the equipment, Park Taegeon sat on top of an amp and scrolled through their phone. The screen displayed a list of videos from teams that had passed the preliminaries.
“Should I reserve the same time tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
Park Taegeon replied carelessly without taking their eyes off the screen. Reserving practice rooms, checking competition notices, coordinating the members’ schedules. All those annoying tasks belonged to Kwon Jaemin. Park Taegeon led the band through music, but that was why Kwon Jaemin held the leader’s position.
“Have you watched all the teams that passed?”
“I’m watching them now. There’s nothing much to see.”
Park Taegeon flicked through the screen, then paused briefly on one thumbnail. A vocalist in ripped jeans stared straight into the camera.
“Are these guys Black Rabbit? I keep seeing comments comparing them to us.”
“Maybe because they’re high schoolers like us. Did you watch the video?”
“I did. They don’t seem worth worrying about.”
Park Taegeon said it indifferently as they played the video.
“The vocalist seems decent, but the rest are just at the level of a school band club. You can’t even see one of the guitarists.”
“People in the comments said they have a hidden member. Someone in red.”
“Probably a session player. They barely show up on screen, so whatever.”
Park Taegeon seemed to lose interest and started to move on to the next video. Kwon Jaemin, looking down at the phone from beside them, spoke.
“Play that again.”
“What?”
“That one. Black Rabbit.”
Park Taegeon held out the phone with an annoyed look. Kwon Jaemin took it and rewound the video. They paused it at the part where the vocalist stared directly into the camera.
“That vocalist is a little strange.”
“What is?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m watching it again.”
Park Taegeon gave a short laugh like the idea was ridiculous.
“If you’re that curious, go see them yourself at the finals.”
“I should.”
“What, you’re serious? I told you, they’re nothing special. They’re below par.”
“Then that’s good.”
Kwon Jaemin stared a little longer at the face on the frozen screen before handing the phone back.
“...I need to check them out in person at the finals.”
#
After returning to my studio apartment and showering, I opened my notes app. I had boasted that I would handle the lyrics, so I at least had to try writing them.
The shape of the song was clear. It had a beginning, a section that raced forward, and a place where it burst open cleanly. I just needed to find the right words to lay on top of it. Humming the melody, I typed out whatever words came to mind.
‘The lyrics should probably suit high schoolers, right?’
Thirty minutes later, there were exactly two lines on my laptop screen.
Alone on a dark street.
Who am I, lost and wandering?
I read them aloud. They were awful. I held down Backspace and erased every word. The screen was white and empty again.
No matter how hard I forced it, I couldn’t get past two lines. I was confident I could come up with a hundred melodies in a night, but connecting words and emotions into a story was an entirely different field. Maybe people who wrote songs and people who wrote words were different species from the start.
‘Lyrics weren’t my job back then either.’
In the end, all I had left was the blank white screen.
Just in case, I tried copying lyrics I had liked long ago. Even worse things came out. Sentences that wore someone else’s clothes smelled wrong from the beginning.
The situation did not improve over the next few days. Every night after work, I clung to my notes app, but the only thing that increased was the number of sentences I deleted. After I nearly let Assistant Manager Kim see my screen while I was scribbling during lunch, I did not even take out my phone at work anymore.
If I really couldn’t do it, maybe I should look into hiring someone. Or wait for one of the three to miraculously write something. Either way, it was an equally pathetic plan.
That day too, after work, I was leaning against my bed and glaring at a blank note when it happened.
Bzzzt.
My phone vibrated briefly.
It was not a notification from the group chat full of pointless chatter. It was a one-on-one message. When I checked the sender’s name, I sat up without realizing it.
‘Cha Sion?’
It was the first time. Even after the group chat had been created, I had never exchanged a private word with them. They had said they did not even want me to give them my number, yet they had messaged me first.
I opened the chat.
Cha Sion> I wrote something just for fun.
Cha Sion> Just look at it. Throw it out if it’s weird.
Something written just for fun. A request to throw it out if it was weird.
It was the thin, clumsy defense mechanism of that age, laid down in advance when they were afraid of getting hurt or rejected.
I was about to reply, but I was still trying to figure out what to say without embarrassing them when it happened.
Bzzzt.
Another notification rang out.
Cha Sion> (Photo)
A photo file suddenly appeared in the chat, apparently showing a notebook densely covered in writing.
As if entranced, I slowly reached a finger toward the photo on the screen.
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