WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Potter
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ My Fired Uncle Is a Genius Guitarist? ◈
Chapter 32: This Much Revenge Should Be Fine
──────
I pressed the power button on the laptop and waited for it to boot.
Whirr.
As the old laptop let out a horrible groan and struggled to come alive, I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. It was time to rummage through the drawers in my head again.
This time, my standards were the complete opposite of when I had pulled out "RUN." Songs written from the start for Kang Taeo’s voice alone. Songs Muri had sung in my previous life, songs released to the world under Muri’s name. I pulled them out one by one.
‘...There really are a lot.’
Just as I had confidently told Kang Taeo, I had more than enough songs that suited his voice. Even after a rough selection, there was enough for two or three albums. I could not send them all. These were samples to give him something to choose from, so five songs should be enough.
Trendy rock tracks that hit the most powerful parts of Kang Taeo’s range, suited Muri’s current instrumental lineup, and could wipe away in one go the stigma of the “old-man idol” label he had self-deprecatingly used in the waiting room.
The selection took no time at all. The real problem came after that.
The moment the desktop appeared, I opened a free sequencing program. I loosened the wrist holding the mouse and started laying down drums on an empty track. Kick, snare, hi-hat. I added the bass line one note at a time, then layered riffs with the Fender plugged into the interface. By the time I added the third guitar track, the laptop started lagging. When I hit play, the sound followed half a beat late.
I sighed and deleted the unused dummy tracks. As expected, layering all the instruments at once was impossible. I would have to finish each song separately, then bundle them as audio files. That was how I had made both "Footsteps" and "RUN."
‘I’ll worry about buying equipment after the money comes in.’
I could not spend prize money that had not even been deposited yet. Thinking of the balance on my overdraft line, I moved my mouse faster.
Once I had roughly organized the instrumental sources, another problem caught me.
I could not just send guitar, drums, and bass. I needed to add a guide vocal, but I did not have lyrics ready. I could hum the melody, but wouldn’t that look a little pathetic?
‘Lyrics...’
Thinking of writing them myself brought back the memory of writing two lines for "Footsteps" before deleting them. If I wrote them, they would probably turn out like that again.
But these songs already had lyrics. There had been someone in that other world who had written lyrics for my songs for sixteen years.
What would happen if I put those lyrics on and sent them over?
‘Lyrics by One Dragon.’
The image of the name One Dragon stamped boldly into the credits made a hollow laugh escape me. Of course, this world’s Kang Taeo had not kicked me out, and I knew he was innocent.
‘Still, this much revenge should be fine.’
I could collect the lyricist’s share of the royalties from selling the songs too. It was killing two birds with one stone. The composer was set up to make the most money anyway.
I wanted to ask how it would feel for the guy from that other world to buy his own lyrics from someone else and sing them, but that was impossible.
With the lyric problem solved, I took out the dynamic microphone buried in the corner of my desk drawer and connected it. After clearing my throat a few times, I played the backing track and cautiously began to sing into the microphone.
“...”
I sang one line, then hit pause. Hearing my own voice through the headphones gave me chills. The pitch was right, and the rhythm was right, but putting the dull voice of a thirty-six-year-old office worker over a flashy rock track made for Kang Taeo’s explosive voice made the whole song feel ruined.
‘What choice do I have? As long as the melody gets across, that’s enough.’
I squeezed my eyes shut and hit record again. After all, Kang Taeo was the only person who would have to hear this horrible voice.
I worked until it got dark outside and barely finished the first song. One song every night after work. At that rate, I could have all five ready by the end of the week. Before collapsing onto my bed, I took off my headphones and did the rough calculation.
---
Monday morning, the guide vocal I had recorded late into the night still rang in my ears like an auditory hallucination. The moment I arrived at the Daejin Foods sales department office and sat down, Assistant Manager Kim’s head suddenly popped up over the partition.
“Manager! Did you have a good weekend? Did the wedding go well?”
“...Yeah. It did. The meat was good, too.”
“Sorry? The meat? Oh, Manager, I went to the finals, remember? Whew, you should’ve come too. It was seriously insane! The atmosphere there was...”
Unable to contain the excitement they had been holding in all weekend, Assistant Manager Kim dragged their chair over and scooted right up beside me. It was ten minutes before nine. The department head’s seat was still empty.
“You know Noise Line won, right? What did I tell you? I said they would win.”
Their review of the live show poured out like rapid fire. As they went on about how Noise Line had torn up the stage and how wild Kwon Jaemin’s vocals had been, the smile never left their face.
“But, Manager.”
Assistant Manager Kim lowered their voice slightly and added in a conspiratorial tone.
“What?”
“Black Rabbit was really... At the end, Kang Taeo gave Black Rabbit a perfect score. One hundred out of one hundred! Everyone there went crazy. Oh, did you know Kang Taeo was a special judge? Anyway, it was amazing.”
“I thought Noise Line won?”
“By four points. Just four points. Honestly, I thought Black Rabbit would win. I never expected Noise Line to pull ahead at the end. Seriously, either one could have won with a stage like that. I listened to Noise Line’s song and Black Rabbit’s song back and forth all the way to work today.”
“...Really? That good?”
“Yes! You should listen too, Manager. Especially that middle-aged guy playing guitar in Black Rabbit! He was cooler than I expected.”
Cooler than expected...
That did not feel bad.
I turned on my computer and opened Excel. While pretending to look at the numbers on my monitor and only half-listening to Assistant Manager Kim chatter away, they suddenly held out their phone. It showed an article at the top of the entertainment news page.
“Did you see this? There’s an article.”
[Noise Line Wins Overall, Runner-Up Black Rabbit Also Draws Attention After Kang Taeo Requests a Song]
The article thumbnail prominently showed me onstage in a red padded jacket, wearing a mask. The article described in considerable detail how judge Kang Taeo had jokingly requested a song during his remarks, and how I had shouted, “I can write one for you!” in my actual voice.
“What do you think this One Dragon guy really does?”
The person sitting beside you.
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s someone who plays in a band as a hobby?”
“If someone is that good at their hobby, can you even call it a hobby? Besides, Kang Taeo asked him to write a song, and he said he would right away. That takes serious nerve.”
“He probably answered a joke with a joke.”
“No, it didn’t feel like a joke. And before that conversation, Kang Taeo asked that guy if they had met somewhere before. That guy couldn’t answer at all.”
“...So?”
“Normally, you’d say no. But he just stood there. There has to be something going on with him.”
Click.
I realized the Excel cursor had been sitting in the same cell for several minutes. I moved the mouse once and shifted it to another cell.
“Maybe he was nervous...”
“People on the community have already given him a nickname. Crimson Rabbit.”
“Crimson Rabbit...”
“Yeah. Some older guy shouted it at the venue. ‘Go, Crimson Rabbit!’”
Apparently, that had not been Assistant Manager Kim.
“And since he wore that red padded jacket throughout the competition, people also call him Red Dragon. I don’t know whether it’s a concept or he only owns one outfit, but even that makes him seem like a pro.”
Why did people care so much about someone else’s clothes...?
“You should listen to the songs too, Manager. I’m going to listen to them all day.”
“Don’t you have work to do?”
“I’ll listen while I work.”
Just then, the office door opened and the department head arrived. Assistant Manager Kim quickly dragged their chair back to their own desk.
“Hey, Manager Lee! I heard you went to a wedding this weekend. You should start thinking about getting married soon too!”
“Ah, yes. I’m working on it.”
Fortunately, words like side job or second job did not come out of the department head’s mouth. I turned my attention back to the Excel window and gripped my mouse.
---
The large monitor in Muri’s agency conference room displayed an article about the final of Plugged Best Band Survival Competition Season 4, which had dominated the online portals all weekend.
The agency head sat at the head of the table with arms crossed, looking at the screen. The four members of Muri sat lined up on either side.
“So you asked someone for a song?”
“Yes.”
Kang Taeo answered at once with a pleasant smile. The agency head narrowed their brow slightly.
“Who?”
“One Dragon.”
“Who’s that?”
“The person who played guitar for Black Rabbit in this competition. The runner-up team.”
At that, the members all turned to Kang Taeo at once. But none of them looked particularly surprised.
Muri was a group that wrote only about thirty percent of its own albums, filling the rest with outside composers and collaborations. Getting songs from a new composer was not unusual in itself.
The agency head tapped their forehead with their pen as they asked,
“A rookie composer?”
“I watched the stage video, and the songs weren’t bad.”
Jo Wonwoo, the bassist, casually added his opinion as he remembered the final. Across from him, guitarist Jeong Wooseok tilted their head.
“Still, wasn’t that someone who wrote songs for a student band?”
“Well, there’s no harm in listening to one song.”
Baek Gibeom, the drummer, added indifferently. No one seemed capable of imagining that the masked older man was Lee Han Yong, the skinny little anchovy they had practiced with for a little over a week sixteen years ago.
Kang Taeo did not bring up their connection from the past either. Saying anything now would only make things more confusing.
“Not one song. He said he would send several.”
The pen stopped in the agency head’s hand.
“Several songs?”
“I’ve heard two of his songs, and I liked both of them. So I told him to send them first.”
Kang Taeo was already excited on his own, before the songs had even arrived. The agency head seemed to consider it for a moment, then shrugged and made their decision.
“Fine. Why not? When the demos come, we’ll listen. If there’s anything good, we’ll use one song. Listening doesn’t cost us anything.”
That settled it for the agency head. That was the full extent of the attention they could spare for an unknown composer.
---
Twenty minutes before the end of work, as the office was starting to fill with the restless mood of people preparing to leave, I belatedly realized it had become quiet beyond the partition.
Assistant Manager Kim had been talking nonstop from morning through lunch. When I glanced over, they were staring intently at their phone instead of their monitor.
‘Is something wrong?’
Just as I was about to dismiss it and shut down my computer, Assistant Manager Kim spoke.
“...Manager.”
Holding their phone, they popped their head up over the partition. Their eyes were trembling slightly.
“What? Aren’t you leaving?”
“No, it’s not that. Manager, could you look at this?”
“Another article?”
“No. It isn’t, but...”
Assistant Manager Kim cautiously held out their phone. It showed a post on a band community. A group photo another team had taken in the waiting area right after the final.
[Our Team in the Finals Waiting Room! Commemorating Our Trip to the Finals]
Six people stood smiling in front of the camera. Behind them, the partitions of the waiting area and people walking past appeared blurred in the background.
“So what? It’s not even Noise Line.”
“Yeah. It’s another team. But look in the back. On the right.”
“What’s back there?”
“I went through every uploaded photo looking for Crimson Rabbit. I thought there might be at least one photo of him without his mask.”
Assistant Manager Kim spread their fingers across the screen. The right corner of the background enlarged. A red padded jacket. Roughly half my profile, as I walked with my mask and cap off, was visible amid the blurry pixels.
The quality was so terrible that no stranger would ever be able to tell who it was.
But it was different for the eyes of a coworker who worked with me every day, ate across from me, and drank coffee beside me.
“...Manager.”
Assistant Manager Kim slowly moved their gaze from the phone screen to my face and asked in a trembling voice,
“Isn’t this you, Manager?”
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