WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Potter
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ My Fired Uncle Is a Genius Guitarist? ◈
Chapter 16: There's Someone Who Can Sing It
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I slowly reached a finger toward the photo on the screen. Spreading my thumb and forefinger, I carefully zoomed in.
It was a photo of a spiral notebook page, sent without even tearing it out. Between the scribbles blacked out in ink and countless erased marks, the surviving lines had gathered into one solid block.
I read it slowly.
“I said I didn’t care
It was going to end anyway
I thought if I threw it away
Before I was thrown away
It wouldn’t hurt at all
The more I walked without looking back
The louder my footsteps echoed”
‘...’
Honestly, my expectations had been low. Scribbles a second-year high schooler wrote for fun. At best, I expected teenage angst.
But no.
Over sixteen years, I had received more of Taeo’s lyric drafts than I could count. Something about an abyss, something about a brand, flames devouring a soul.
One time, Taeo had jammed the word “fate” into an eight-bar chorus six times. Every time I took one of those pages, my face burned, and I had to work hard to hide it behind a convincing melody. Still, those lyrics had taken the world by storm, so talent was talent.
‘This is better. It isn’t even comparable.’
There was not a single word trying to sound cool. They had simply written down feelings they knew in words they knew, yet the lines grabbed hold of me.
Out of habit, I quietly hummed the demo melody and tried laying the words over it.
“...Huh?”
A shiver ran down my spine.
The syllables fit. I didn’t need to force them in. Each note found a syllable waiting exactly where it belonged. More than that, every place where I had broken my breath while mumbling the guide melody, the sentences broke there too. That meant they had counted even the breaths in that rough guide.
‘They wrote this for fun?’
Liar. They must have played that three-minute demo I uploaded to the group chat dozens, no, hundreds of times.
I could picture them alone in their room from the day the file had gone up until now, earbuds in, rewinding it over and over as they filled their notebook. And after all that, they said they had written it for fun and told me to throw it out if it was weird.
The lyrics themselves were exactly the same. Pretending they didn’t care, pretending they had let go first, pretending they weren’t looking back. They were doing exactly what their lyrics described to me right now.
That reminded me of something they had suddenly asked just before leaving the rehearsal room one day.
“After the competition ends, are you going to quit?”
I still hadn’t answered that question.
It looked like they had already assumed I would leave and the band would end, building a wall around themselves first so they wouldn’t get hurt.
I adjusted my grip on the phone and put my thumb over the keyboard. While I was choosing my first words, messages suddenly flooded the screen.
Cha Sion> It’s weird, right.
Cha Sion> Never mind. Just throw it out.
Cha Sion> You don’t have to reply.
‘Impatient kid.’
Had it even been ten minutes since I read it? They couldn’t bear that short delay before deciding everything on their own. I typed whatever came to mind.
< This is it. We’re using this. The lyrics are perfect.
Not long after I sent it, the 1 disappeared. They had been waiting with their phone in hand.
But it took a long time before their reply came.
Cha Sion> Don’t lie.
‘This kid...?’
< Do I look like I have enough free time to flatter you?
Cha Sion> You hardly ever praise people, Mister.
< That’s why I’m saying it’s that good.
Cha Sion> It’s really not weird?
< If it were weird, I would’ve said so. You know I point that stuff out straight to your face.
Cha Sion> I know, but.
The read indicator appeared again. Then silence. The chat stayed quiet for five minutes. Just as I was about to put down my phone, it vibrated briefly.
Cha Sion> Then use it, I guess. Do whatever you want.
A few seconds later, another line appeared.
Cha Sion> You can fix anything you want to fix too.
‘...You really can’t be honest, can you?’
A laugh slipped out. I opened my laptop again and began copying the words from the photo into the lyric file.
#
They had told me to fix anything I wanted, but once I actually started, there was nothing to fix.
Over the next few days, I played the demo with the lyrics over it again and again. In the end, I only changed two places, dropping one syllable from each for breathing room. They were such tiny adjustments that only the person who wrote the original would notice.
It was Thursday, just after I returned from lunch with Assistant Manager Kim and sat down at my desk. I hadn’t even finished half my after-lunch coffee when Assistant Manager Kim stuck their head over the partition.
“Oh, Manager, did you know? Two high school teams passed this Plugged preliminary round.”
I nearly choked on my coffee.
“...Really?”
“I’ve been busy lately, so I only just got around to watching all the teams that passed. What did I tell you last time? I said almost every high schooler gets cut in the preliminaries. But two teams made it through this time.”
“Is that really so surprising?”
“Of course it is. And one of them, Manager, is a team called Noise Line. They’re the real deal.”
Assistant Manager Kim pulled his chair around halfway. The eyes of a rock geek with ten years of experience were shining.
“The moment I heard them, I thought, Ah, these guys are on another level. They don’t sound like high schoolers. They sound like a band that has been performing for years. Everyone in the comments is going crazy, saying they’re going to win.”
“...That good?”
“See for yourself. That video has been my commuting soundtrack lately.”
I already knew. The gap in views, the comments full of praise, the guitar sound that had charged in from the first note. Still, hearing it confirmed in real time by someone who had spent ten years obsessed with rock made it feel different.
“...What about the other team?”
I asked as casually as I could. Assistant Manager Kim shrugged.
“Oh, them? Maybe it’s because I watched Noise Line first, but they were definitely a little disappointing. Their vocalist was decent, though.”
“Only the vocalist?”
“The rest are just a student band. What was their name again...?”
The guitarist from the team whose name Assistant Manager Kim couldn’t even remember was drinking coffee right in front of them, and they had no idea. A rebuttal rose to the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it.
“Let’s get back to work.”
“What? You’re looking for work during lunch? You never work at lunchtime.”
“I have a lot to do.”
“No matter how much you have to do, you never work at lunch.”
“Quiet.”
“You’re especially prickly today. All right, then. I’m going to go watch that Noise Line video one more time.”
Assistant Manager Kim snickered and disappeared behind the partition.
‘Noise Line... Just wait and see.’
Swallowing down a line that sounded like it belonged to a third-rate villain, I drained the rest of my coffee in one gulp.
#
When I arrived at the rehearsal room on Saturday, all three had already finished setting up.
“Uncle! You’re late!”
“I’m on time.”
“If you got here after us, you’re late!”
Rather than answer, I took a sheet of A4 paper from my bag. It was the lyric sheet I had secretly printed from the office printer just before leaving work yesterday.
“The lyrics are done.”
“Really?!”
Yun Taerin threw down their sticks and hurried over.
“Who wrote them? Did you write them, Uncle?”
“Sion did.”
“What?!”
Everyone in the rehearsal room immediately turned toward one spot. Cha Sion, standing in front of the microphone stand, froze.
“Ooh, Cha Sion!”
“...”
“Let me see!”
Yun Taerin snatched the paper from my hand. Cha Sion’s calm face instantly flushed bright red.
“Hey! Give that back!”
“Oho! Let’s see. I said I didn’t care, it was going to end anyway~?”
Yun Taerin waved the paper teasingly and started circling the rehearsal room. They sang the lyrics with absurd rhythms and intonations, like they were doing trot or rap, while Cha Sion stomped after them.
“Give it back, Yun Taerin!”
“Ahahaha! I thought if I threw it away before I was thrown away~ Oh my, our Cha Sion is such a poet!”
“Are you really not giving it back?!”
“G-Guys, you’ll get hurt if you run...”
Still holding their bass, Bae Somi flusteredly tried to get between them, but failed cleanly within three seconds and quietly backed away. Timid Bae Somi was outmatched from the start against those two when they got worked up.
“Now then, what’s the next line~? The more I walked without looking back~”
Yun Taerin, laughing as they ran around the cramped rehearsal room, stopped in front of an amp. As they caught their breath and playfully hummed the next line, their reading gradually slowed.
“The more I walked... my footsteps... echoed louder...”
The uproar that had filled the rehearsal room vanished as if by magic. The weight of the lyrics on the page must have struck Yun Taerin too. Their mouth and feet both stopped.
Cha Sion, reaching for the paper, stopped awkwardly as well. Bae Somi looked over Yun Taerin’s shoulder at the lyrics and fell silent.
After a long moment, Yun Taerin looked up.
“...Hey. You really wrote this?”
“I told you it was scribbling.”
“Who puts this much effort into scribbling?”
Without waiting for an answer, Yun Taerin read the rest of the sheet. Looking away from the last line, they muttered,
“I think I’d cry while playing drums if we sang this.”
“What are you talking about? That came out of nowhere.”
“I don’t know. That’s just how it feels.”
“...It’s good.”
Bae Somi added quietly. Cha Sion awkwardly withdrew their outstretched hand and looked away.
“Ahem. Well, it’s fine if you like it.”
Their ears looked even redder than before. I clapped twice to break the silence, then took the lyric sheet from Yun Taerin and put it on the music stand.
“Come on, we don’t have time. We’re going straight into the first song with the lyrics. Cha Sion.”
“...What?”
“You need to sing it. They’re your lyrics. Everyone, back to your places.”
Only then did they come to their senses and awkwardly return to their instruments. Cha Sion adjusted their grip on the microphone. Their eyes scanned the paper, then stopped at one spot.
“...You changed this part.”
“Yeah.”
“This one, and one more later.”
“You found them right away?”
“I wrote it. Of course I did.”
“So you have every word memorized. Good. Then we can start right away.”
“...Th-That’s not what I meant.”
Speechless, they lowered their gaze back to the paper. Yun Taerin snickered quietly behind them.
“I know why you changed them. They were the parts that tied your tongue when you sang them.”
“Then you understand. Let’s go.”
Cha Sion stood in front of the microphone and needlessly adjusted the stand height once.
“Nervous?”
“I’m not nervous.”
“Your voice got louder, so you must be nervous.”
“Yun Taerin. Shut up.”
Before their bickering went on any longer, I cut in.
“Taerin, count us in. Don’t get greedy with the tempo.”
“One, two, three, four!”
At Yun Taerin’s short count, the offbeat drums dropped in. My guitar riff and Bae Somi’s bass poured over them, filling the room. Then Cha Sion’s vocals joined in.
It couldn’t be called a perfect rehearsal. It had only been a week since they divided up the parts. There were places where the rhythm slipped and creaked, sections where the sound weakened and got buried. The accompaniment was still unfinished, with a long way to go.
And yet, the moment Cha Sion began the first line, the air in the rehearsal room completely changed. Real words finally filled the place where empty humming had been until last week.
There was no sudden burst of high notes or flood of flashy technique. The range was still kept in the safe area where their voice could extend most comfortably. But as emotions they had written themselves settled over the sound that had been only a shell, those emotions pushed into the gaps of the melody and created a breath that belonged only to Cha Sion.
“I said I didn’t care
It was going to end anyway”
The heavy texture unique to their voice, delivered as if they didn’t care, fully carried the weight of lyrics that lingered because they couldn’t let go of their regrets.
Every word sounded like it was wearing clothes tailored perfectly to it. It wasn’t a matter of whether they were good at singing. I was certain these lyrics had been written to be sung by this voice.
It was hard to believe it was the same song as the demo I had listened to for days. The accompaniment was unfinished, but with the addition of lyrics alone, a completely different song was flowing out.
The chorus ended, and the lingering last strum sank into the walls.
No one spoke.
Yun Taerin stared blankly into the air with their sticks still in hand, while Bae Somi stroked the neck of their bass with an entranced look. Only Cha Sion, who had just finished singing, stepped half a pace away from the microphone as if nothing had happened. Except for the faint redness at the tips of their ears.
I quietly watched their back. There were still far more than one or two things to polish.
Even so, I was sure.
‘At this level... we have a shot.’
No. That wasn’t enough.
For sixteen years, I had been someone who carved songs down. I cut away notes Kang Taeo couldn’t reach, lowered the key, and released our songs into the world while pretending not to see the pieces that had been shaved away. Our first hit, “Breakneck Run,” had been the same. I lowered the song by a half step, and the world praised it as a masterpiece, but I alone remembered that the song had only been half complete.
But this song hadn’t lost a single note.
Just as it had been written, just as it had been designed. Right in front of me, it had become a complete song.
Suddenly, Kang Taeo’s voice from the conference room on the last day of my previous life overlapped in my mind.
“There’s no one who can sing your songs.”
I let out a small laugh.
There was someone
who could sing it.
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