WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Potter
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ My Fired Uncle Is a Genius Guitarist? ◈
Chapter 28: I Can Write One for You
──────
As we stepped onto the stage, lights poured down from the front. The strong backlight left only the first few rows of the audience faintly visible.
Among the crowd, a fluorescent sign reading “Go, Yun Taerin!!” waved in the air. Beside it, I spotted my older sister, Lee Suyeon, holding up her phone. Behind her, there were too many people to even guess how many.
Three high school students dressed head to toe in black, and a potbellied middle-aged man in a red padded jacket with a mask over his face. As this strange combination took center stage, laughter and whispers spread through the crowd in equal measure. It was the reaction I expected, so it didn't bother me much.
Then a deep middle-aged man's voice suddenly rang out from somewhere in the audience.
“Go, Crimson Rabbit!”
Laughter burst from the crowd.
‘...Was that Assistant Manager Kim?’
I couldn't see the person's face. I didn't bother looking. Whether it was Assistant Manager Kim or not, what did it matter? Under these lights, I couldn't see anyone's face anyway.
I completely erased Kang Taeo's name from my mind too. Right now, the only thing in my head was the performance checklist.
The amp connection. The Fender's volume knob position. Bae Somi's stance. Yun Taerin's eyes. Cha Sion's microphone height.
Everything was checked.
Bae Somi looked different today. No one would have believed she was the same girl who had been hunching her shoulders in the waiting area. Her chin was slightly raised, and her cool gaze looked down at the audience. She looked like someone who knew exactly how she appeared onstage.
‘That spell did the trick.’
She was literally radiating a queen's presence. Did I have a talent for hypnosis or something?
Lastly, I swept my gaze over the judges' table. Kang Taeo, seated at the end, was looking over the whole stage.
“This is the seventh team in the finals. One of the two high school bands to reach this season's finals... Ah, but the guitarist isn't a high school student, are you?”
The audience laughed again. The host pointed at the stage.
“Team Seven, Black Rabbit!”
Yun Taerin raised her sticks high.
#
Kang Taeo leaned back in his chair and looked at the four people onstage.
The company had arranged this guest judge spot for the finals. It was supposedly to broaden their contact with rock fans. There was no real reason for Kang Taeo to refuse the schedule, either.
He had watched videos of all ten finalist teams in advance. He needed some information if he was going to sit as a judge. Most of them only needed one quick look, but there was one team he had replayed several times.
Black Rabbit. “Footsteps.”
A song that began with a restrained verse before the whole band exploded in the chorus. Few people wrote songs like that these days. Most started with everything already wide open. Even he couldn't clearly explain why he kept replaying it.
It had simply stayed with him.
But he clearly remembered the credit. Composed by One Dragon. A name he had never heard before.
And One Dragon was standing onstage now, wearing a red lightweight padded jacket, black cap, and black mask among the high school students dressed all in black.
‘The song is great, but the fashion is a mess.’
Come to think of it, that was what the guitarist had worn in the previous video too. The combination looked even stranger in person.
Would this song build up and explode like the last one? Kang Taeo folded his arms and focused on the stage as the count came from the drums.
#
“One, two, three, four!”
Clang!
With Yun Taerin's count, the Fender's opening riff burst out.
Its clean, crisp tone traveled through the main speakers all the way to the back of the venue. It had a completely different texture from what I'd heard through the rehearsal room amp. Even for me, this was a sound I was hearing for the first time on this stage.
‘This is it.’
The crowd fell silent in an instant. Then the drums and bass joined in, and someone in the front row gasped in admiration.
“It was easy to walk the path laid out for me
Because I didn't need to know where it led”
Cha Sion's steady voice flew toward the audience. Facing hundreds of people instead of a camera lens had flipped her switch.
“I thought I only had to follow
The lines someone else had drawn first”
The song began racing forward at a fast tempo. As Cha Sion sang while wearing her guitar slightly off to one side and looking arrogantly down at the audience, people in the front row began nodding as if entranced. They were moving to the beat.
“But this time
There is somewhere I want to go”
Every instrument except the drums stopped at once.
Dudududu!
Yun Taerin's fill tore through the empty space without hesitation. It sounded as if she were pouring out everything she had held back all at once. Her timing was perfect. I didn't even need to step in and clean anything up.
Then the first chorus exploded.
Bae Somi and I moved into position on either side of Cha Sion's microphone. Yun Taerin leaned forward from her drum stool. When Bae Somi strode toward the front of the stage with her bass strapped on and her chin raised arrogantly, the audience began murmuring.
“Run my way!”
The three voices merged into one and tore through the speakers.
“Toward the path I chose
So what if I get it a little wrong?”
Cha Sion charged ahead, picking up right after them. The front rows stirred, and the sign waved up and down.
The song kept racing forward without stopping.
#
Kang Taeo's brow furrowed.
The moment the opening riff erupted, he knew. This song was completely different from “Footsteps,” from head to toe.
‘Was this really written by the same person?’
But by the end of the first chorus, he had his answer.
‘It was.’
The two songs had opposite personalities, but the skeleton was the same. From what he had heard already, every moment was perfectly divided: where the drums should surge out, where the bass should push forward, where the three voices should blend, and where only the vocalist should remain.
‘This is someone who knows exactly how to use the members.’
Then Jeong Sehyuk, sitting beside him, murmured quietly.
“That team sounds completely different after changing guitars.”
Kang Taeo didn't respond. He only stared at the stage.
One Dragon.
A name he had simply remembered had just become a name he wanted to look up.
#
The second verse began.
Cha Sion had changed. In the rehearsal room, she had played guitar in a rigid posture, as though it were glued to her body. Now, she swung the neck widely with every stroke and moved her upper body with the song. Every time the headstock bobbed up and down, cheers rose from the audience.
Yet her voice didn't waver in the slightest.
‘That isn't something you can teach.’
“Faster
Farther
Until I am out of breath”
When the second chorus exploded, a voice rang out from somewhere in the front row.
“Run my way!”
The pitch and rhythm weren't perfect. But someone was singing along.
To a song they were hearing for the first time today.
“Don’t tell me where to go
Just let me run”
The instrumental break.
I had exactly four measures here. Without hesitation, I stepped toward center stage.
Wheeeeng!
The Fender's sharp solo line tore through the air from the tip of my pick. The high notes that had turned muddy on the old Cort now stayed clear to the very end.
In that brief moment, I could feel every eye that had been fixed on Cha Sion throughout the song turn toward me at once. Hundreds of gazes pinned themselves to my fingertips.
I could have taken it. If I pushed harder here, the stage would become mine.
But I took only what I needed and stepped back without regret. I finished the four measures and returned to my original place. This wasn't my stage.
The “Go, Yun Taerin!!” sign waved wildly in the audience.
“I still don't know
How far I can go”
Right before the final chorus, Bae Somi and I rushed toward the microphones again. The audience saw it and reacted first.
“Run my way!”
This time, not just the front row but voices from all around the venue joined in. The sound onstage and the sound below it tangled into one, sweeping through the hall like a massive wave.
“Run my way
I will go all the way
I can regret it later”
The audience was already standing. Front row and back row alike, hundreds of people were racing together toward the end of a song they were hearing for the first time.
“Faster
Farther
It starts right here, right now
Just let me run”
Clang!
The stage lights flashed as the final chord struck.
“Waaaaah!”
A tremendous roar hammered against my ears.
The fluorescent sign shot up above the crowd. From somewhere in the darkness, that middle-aged man's voice rang out again.
“Crimson Rabbit!”
I was out of breath. Yun Taerin sprang to her feet with both arms, still holding her sticks, raised above her head. Bae Somi kept her chin up as she caught her breath and looked down at the audience. Cha Sion stared at the crowd, breathing hard through her shoulders.
I didn't even look toward the judges' table where Kang Taeo sat. Instead, I looked over the three kids beside me, soaked in sweat and gasping for air.
That was enough.
#
Kang Taeo couldn't clap.
His gaze was nailed completely to the guitarist in the red padded jacket standing at center stage.
During the instrumental break, Kang Taeo's assessment had gone one step further. The guitarist knew where and how to use the members, and was a performer who knew their own place onstage perfectly. At the exact moment they could have taken all the spotlight, they took only what they needed before slipping back with ease.
This should have been someone he had never met before, yet it didn't feel that way.
With a blank look, Kang Taeo picked up the microphone on the desk.
#
As the cheers died down, the judges' microphones switched on.
The judge in the middle spoke first.
“Out of all the teams today, you brought the audience along the best. The song is simple, but that became its strength. You saw the audience singing along on their own from the second chorus, right?”
“Yes! I saw!”
Yun Taerin answered brightly from behind the drums, drawing light laughter from the audience. Applause followed. Then the microphone passed straight to the far end.
“Black Rabbit.”
It was Kang Taeo. That familiar voice came through the speakers. Hearing it while waiting offstage and hearing it directly beneath these lights were different. That voice had sung my songs for sixteen years.
I clenched my teeth beneath my mask.
“First of all, I enjoyed that. It's rare for a song heard for the first time in the finals to stick in your ears so quickly.”
Applause poured from the audience again. Kang Taeo waited leisurely for it to die down before continuing.
“Did One Dragon write this song too?”
‘This song too?’
My breath caught.
This song too. That meant he had listened to “Footsteps” from the first round before the finals. I didn't know how many times he had listened to it.
I couldn't bring myself to speak. My lips were pressed tightly together beneath the mask.
“Yes.”
Cha Sion answered for me matter-of-factly.
“And the vocalist wrote the lyrics too?”
“Yes.”
“It’s our original song!”
Yun Taerin cut in. Kang Taeo smiled, and his gaze passed over Cha Sion before landing directly on me.
“Have we met somewhere before?”
Silence.
The crowd, which had been buzzing from the sudden question, fell quiet in an instant.
I didn't answer. No, I couldn't.
To you, I was only someone who had crossed your path for about a week sixteen years ago. I didn't even know if you remembered me. But I knew all sixteen years of your life. I knew how far you would rise with each song, where you would get stuck, even which foot you stepped forward with first onstage.
But right now, I was the only person here who knew that.
“Strangely, I feel like I know you...”
No one could know what expression I was making beneath my mask.
After a brief, taut silence, Kang Taeo gave a small laugh and changed the mood.
“Anyway, I really like the song. It's exactly my favorite style. Could you write one for my band too?”
“Ha ha ha!”
The tension finally broke, and laughter rose from the audience.
A vocalist from one of the country's top bands asking a high school band's guitarist for a song. To anyone listening, it was only a pleasant joke to wrap up the judge's comments.
“Ha ha, I'm joking.”
Just as Kang Taeo laughed and began lowering the microphone, I spoke clearly without one.
“I can write one for you!”
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
