WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Potter

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◈ My Fired Uncle Is a Genius Guitarist? ◈

Chapter 3: First Rehearsal

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Yun Taerin> A little?

Yun Taerin> How little is “a little”?

Well, little enough to become the guitarist for a Coachella sub-headliner?

But if I said that, it would sound like bullshit.

< I can play a bit.

The reply came quickly.

Yun Taerin> Hmm. (Puppy-thinking emoji)

Yun Taerin> We have rehearsal on Saturday. Can you come play with us then?

Yun Taerin> We’re practicing two songs right now.

Yun Taerin> One is this. (Link)

Yun Taerin> The other is Muri’s “Fall Toward You.”

Yun Taerin> Uncle, do you know Muri?

< I do.

< Not the song, though.

I knew Muri very well. A different world’s Muri, but still.

Yun Taerin> What are we supposed to do if you don’t know the song?

< I’ll learn it fast. Don’t worry.

I opened the first link. I snorted two bars into the intro.

The song beginner bands around the world pulled out for their first rehearsal as if it were an unwritten rule. I’d played it countless times since I was twenty, so naturally it existed in this world too, and naturally I knew it. I could play it with my eyes closed. Well, I used to be able to. I could still play it now... right?

The second song was the problem.

“Fall Toward You.”

My finger hesitated over the play button. Listening to a Muri song I didn’t know felt stranger than I had expected.

I tapped the screen.

A synthesizer came in, followed by Kang Taeo’s voice. Just as I expected, the melody stayed in a comfortable vocal range. Right before the chorus, it predictably hid behind the backing vocals.

I focused on the guitar part. Jeong Wooseok’s playing was clean. Clean, safe, and that was all. There wasn’t a wrong note anywhere, yet not a single line stayed with you after the song ended.

I listened to it twice. That was enough.

Intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, outro. The chord progression and guitar lines settled whole into my head.

The song itself wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t to my taste. It was a cleverly tailored song for Kang Taeo to sing.

More than anything, the guitar was easy. That didn’t mean Jeong Wooseok couldn’t play. The guitar was never meant to stand out in the first place. The arrangement’s top priority was making sure it never got in the vocalist’s way.

‘If it were me, I’d have shaken things up in the second chorus.’

I smiled to myself. The guy who had written eighty percent of Muri’s songs now had to copy a Muri song.

< Checked the songs. See you Saturday.

Yun Taerin> Oh, that was fast.

Yun Taerin> But Uncle, you really can do this, right?

I didn’t answer. I turned my phone face down.

I wanted to know that too.

#

The next day, I headed to my family home right after work.

My fingers didn’t hesitate over the door code. This world’s Lee Han Yong had visited this house every holiday. As for me... when was the last time?

“What brings you here? No call or anything? Did you eat dinner?”

Before I could answer, the savory smell of soybean paste stew rushed over me. A familiar smell. A smell I missed.

“I ate something. I just came to take something from the storage room.”

“The storage room? What are you taking?”

“A guitar.”

Mom’s eyes widened.

“Why do you suddenly need a guitar?”

“Taerin’s band has a missing guitarist, so they asked me to fill in.”

“Hmm...”

“What kind of reaction is that?”

“...Nothing. Have at least one spoonful before you go. I made soybean paste stew, your favorite.”

“...Then just one spoonful.”

One spoonful soon became a whole bowl. The moment I emptied it, Mom served me more rice without even asking. I was full, but my spoon moved on its own. No wonder I’d gained so much weight.

“Eat slowly. No one’s going to take it from you.”

“...Just give me the storage room key.”

Only after emptying two bowls could I get back to my original purpose.

The storage room at my family home was a graveyard for all kinds of junk. Kimchi-making mats, old fans, empty boxes from holiday gift sets. At the very back, standing upright beneath a layer of dust, was an old guitar case.

My hand trembled slightly as I grabbed the zipper. Was it nerves, or anticipation?

A cheap beginner guitar lay beneath sixteen years of dust. All six strings had rusted, and the neck was visibly a little warped. The body was covered with yellowed stickers that thirteen-year-old me had carefully put on.

“...It’s still alive, at least.”

Without thinking, I plucked a string.

Bwoong.

The dull sound of its ruined tuning echoed through the storage room. At that moment, a sharp pain ran through the tip of my left index finger.

This happened just from pressing one rusty string?

With the guitar I bought at thirteen.

The pain I suffered at thirteen.

I was about to suffer it again at thirty-six.

#

The moment I got back to my studio apartment, I started the operation.

I removed every rusty string and put on new ones. Through the bridge, wound around the headstock, leaving enough slack before cutting them. My hands moved surprisingly smoothly. My mind remembered the work, even if my hands did not. Only my muscles and senses had stiffened, not my knowledge.

After tuning it, I started practicing without even plugging into an amp. The room filled with the dry sound of the pick scraping the strings. Somehow, that sound suited my current situation.

The riff from that beginner-band staple quickly came back to my hands. It was a song I could play with my eyes closed. If my fingers got tangled at this difficulty, I should quit guitar immediately.

I had memorized the entire structure of “Fall Toward You” yesterday as well. As expected, the problem was my fingertips.

Thirty minutes.

At exactly that point, the tips of my left fingers went on strike. The spots where my fingerprints should have been burned, and the harder I pressed the chords, the more it felt like needles were stabbing me. That was the price of fighting steel strings with bare skin, without the shield of calluses.

I soaked my fingertips in ice water and stared at a stain on the ceiling.

‘How did I endure this when I was thirteen?’

Back then, I played without even noticing the pain. Even though I had no idea a Coachella stage awaited me in the future.

I knew now. But my damn fingertips had gone back to being a complete beginner at thirteen.

There were only two days left until the kids’ rehearsal.

#

Saturday. The rehearsal studio was in the basement of a commercial building. Yun Taerin, waiting at the stairway with their arms crossed, spotted me and waved.

“Uncle! Over here!”

A hoodie and jeans. Their hair was a little shorter than the Yun Taerin I knew from the other world. A second-year high school student, eighteen years old. And just as I expected from our messages, they interrogated me before even saying hello.

“What’s with that case? Don’t tell me you’re playing that thing?”

“Why? It’s a guitar case.”

“No, I mean... it’s a fossil.”

“It’s just... old.”

“How old?”

“I bought it when I was thirteen, so about twenty-three years?”

“...It’s older than me.”

Yun Taerin slowly took a step back.

“It’s not going to explode, right?”

“Why would a guitar explode?”

“I don’t know. It’s old.”

“...”

As we went downstairs, Yun Taerin spoke as though giving me a briefing.

“Bae Somi is on bass, Cha Sion is the vocalist. Sion plays some guitar too. Oh, and our band’s called Black Rabbit.”

“...Black Rabbit?”

“Yeah. Cool, right?”

“A black rabbit?”

“It only sounds like that in Korean. It’s cool in English.”

‘It’s still a black rabbit, isn’t it?’

I didn’t say it aloud. I had ten years of workplace experience, after all. Well, this world’s version of me did.

When we opened the rehearsal room door, two people were already there.

A tall female student with a bass strapped over her shoulder sprang to her feet and bowed so deeply it practically went thump.

“H-hello. I’m Bae Somi...”

Her voice trailed endlessly toward the floor at the end of the sentence. And her gaze was... where exactly was it wandering?

Then the remaining person, sitting in the corner with a guitar, slowly raised their head. So that was Cha Sion.

Their hair was loosely tied back, their eyes sleepy yet sharp. Even sitting still, Cha Sion had a strong presence.

Cha Sion gave me one quick look from head to toe. Their gaze lingered on my ancient guitar case for maybe half a second. They gave a slight nod, then returned to tuning without a word.

‘Not sure whether I was greeted or appraised.’

Watching Yun Taerin sit on the drum stool, I suddenly felt strange. The Yun Taerin from the other world had no interest in me. Rock music had never caught their attention, and they naturally had no idea how incredible their uncle was.

There had only been one time they had asked me for something, when we met during a holiday.

“Uncle, you’re a celebrity, right? Can you get me Yu Min from Crossbeat’s autograph?”

That was all. My niece who had only wanted an autograph from a famous idol was now sitting there, spinning drumsticks.

‘Looks like when the timeline changes, even your niece’s fandom changes genres.’

“Why are you smiling?”

“Was I... smiling?”

“You looked weird. Like a total perv. Were you thinking something strange while looking at Sion?”

“What are you talking about? What do you take your uncle for?”

“I’m joking. Come on, let’s start with the first song.”

With Cha Sion looking at me even more coldly, our long-awaited first rehearsal began.

#

The first song went smoothly, as expected.

Even fingers I had crash-trained for two days somehow held out through a beginner-band staple. I laid down the riff, left space for fills, and matched my tempo to Yun Taerin’s drums.

Yun Taerin was a completely different person behind the drum kit.

The cheeky brat from the stairs disappeared, and the moment they counted us in, their eyes settled. Their left foot worked hard on the hi-hat, and whenever the beat dragged, they looked angrier at themself than anyone else.

Their sound was as solid as their expression. The tempo didn’t drag, and there was power in the kick. Aside from getting greedy during fills and stumbling by half a beat at a time, it was obvious they practiced with sticks every day.

Cha Sion played guitar while only humming the melody. They probably wanted to get our playing together first. The guitar was precise. Playing that understood the role of a second guitarist. I would reserve judgment on the vocals. All I could tell from humming was that the pitch never wavered.

And the bass...

‘...Something feels off.’

I couldn’t quite identify the problem yet. The timing was clearly right, but something still bothered me.

Overall, they weren’t bad for a school band. Of course, compared to professionals, they were still terribly rough.

It was my first rehearsal in this body, and for me, it had only been a few days. The feeling of putting my sound on top of other people’s. My fingertips were screaming, but somehow I could breathe easier.

When the song ended, Yun Taerin widened their eyes, still holding their sticks.

“Ooh? You can play a little, Uncle?”

Bae Somi gave a small nod beside them. Only Cha Sion, expressionless, turned the page to the next song.

“Next. Let’s do ‘Fall Toward You.’”

Then, during the second song, my fingertips died a heroic death.

It wasn’t because the song was difficult. No one in this room knew I had copied a song I’d first heard two days ago entirely by ear. The problem was how much durability I had left.

My fingertips had gone on strike after only thirty minutes of practice two days ago. Today, they had run out after only a song and a half. The blisters from pushing too hard yesterday rubbed against the strings and burst.

My index finger slipped during the pre-chorus. The chord I pressed with the torn skin crumpled apart.

The rehearsal stopped.

“Uncle?”

“...My hand’s done for today.”

I held up my left hand. The tips of my index and middle fingers were red and raw, fluid seeping from them.

I didn’t make excuses. I didn’t say I had quit guitar for sixteen years, or that I had hurriedly practiced since two days ago. It was true, but saying it aloud would only sound pathetic.

If I couldn’t hold out, I couldn’t hold out.

Yun Taerin frowned as if they couldn’t believe it.

“How are we supposed to film the preliminary video next week like this, Uncle?”

Holding the guitar neck, Cha Sion spoke a full sentence to me for the first time that day.

“You’re planning to enter the competition in that condition?”

The voice was low, dry, and cold. It wasn’t anger. It was simply a judgment confirming the fact in front of them.

“It’ll be different once my hand heals.”

“Next week.”

“Right.”

Cha Sion didn’t respond further and turned toward Yun Taerin.

“Let’s rehearse on our own first. No time to waste.”

Without complaint, I was pushed off to a chair in the corner, and the three kids began rehearsing again.

But it was strange.

The moment I stepped back and sat down, the sound of the world changed. I was no longer a performer onstage, but a producer sitting in front of a mixing console.

The ears that had made songs and overseen performances for sixteen years switched on by themselves and went to work.

The lingering discomfort I had felt while playing the first song became clear only after I put down my guitar.

It was the bass.

Bae Somi’s timing was precise. Like she had swallowed a metronome whole. But the song was strangely flat and lifeless. The drums pushed from behind and the guitar drove forward, yet the bass, which should have anchored everything, scattered weakly.

The problem wasn’t timing, but the sound itself. Bae Somi was cutting off the sustain each note should have carried, killing it with her own hands. Defensive playing, holding back her sound because she was afraid of making a mistake and worrying about what others thought.

‘It’s exactly like that first greeting, with her head bowed and her voice trailing away.’

In my previous life’s studio, I would have stopped the recording immediately and given her an hour-long lecture. But this wasn’t my studio, and they weren’t my band members. I was just a potbellied stand-in uncle who had been banished to the corner because he couldn’t even take care of his fingertips.

...That was what I thought, but.

As the kids drank water after the song ended, my mouth opened before I knew it.

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