WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Potter
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ My Fired Uncle Is a Genius Guitarist? ◈
Chapter 6: Isn't Uncle the Biggest Problem?
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Three pairs of eyes waited for my answer.
Yun Taerin had dragged her drum stool right up to me, Bae Somi hugged her bass and darted her eyes around, while Cha Sion stood beside the mic stand with her arms crossed. It was a perfect interrogation setup.
I casually peeled off the ragged tape wrapped around my fingertips.
“What did I do? I told you, I used to play a little.”
“When exactly was this ‘used to’?”
“When you were still in diapers.”
“So you quit for sixteen years. And someone who quit for sixteen years can cover another person’s mistake on the spot? Does that make any sense?”
“The world is big, and there are plenty of masters.”
“So you’re saying you’re a master!”
Cha Sion said nothing. Maybe she was replaying and dissecting my improvisation from earlier, because she only stared at me with cool, steady eyes. They were neither believing nor disbelieving. They were simply postponing judgment until more evidence came in. Those were the most troublesome kind of eyes.
I quietly changed the subject.
“More importantly, have you decided how you’re filming Saturday’s video?”
“How else? We book the rehearsal room for a long session and do several takes. Then we send in the best one.”
She looked as though the answer were obvious. It wasn’t bad math. For a band with working fingers, anyway.
“That won’t work. My fingers can only make it through three full runs a day.”
The rehearsal room went quiet.
“...Three?”
“Yeah. You saw my hands give out during the third run earlier. Saturday won’t suddenly make that ten times. I might manage four.”
“Wait. So we absolutely have to get a good take within three tries?”
“That’s right.”
“What if one of us makes a mistake?”
“Then don’t make one.”
Yun Taerin pretended to clutch the back of her neck.
“My head hurts.”
“If you mistake getting lucky and not making mistakes for skill, you’ll definitely fall apart in the finals. You need to become a band that proves itself in one go when the camera starts rolling. Got it?”
Yun Taerin pursed her lips but couldn’t argue. It wasn’t wrong. She fidgeted with her sticks, then nodded.
“Fine. Then let’s meet again Thursday. We need to practice getting it in one take before Saturday.”
“Okay.”
“But booking the room Tuesday and Thursday in a row is a little rough on the membership fees... Sponsor?”
She even rubbed her hands together and pretended to bow. Thinking of the balance on my overdraft account, I let out a short sigh.
“What else am I earning money for? I should at least pay for my niece’s rehearsal room.”
“Ooh, office workers are the best!”
#
Wednesday morning, before I could even sit down, Assistant Manager Kim slid a steaming cup of coffee onto my desk.
“Good morning, sir. Did you do your homework?”
“Yeah. I listened to it while eating ramen.”
“Ramen? I thought you were dieting.”
“...Salad ramen.”
“That exists? Is it a new kind of ramen?”
“You don’t need to know. Anyway, I listened.”
“What did you think? The band scene is crazy these days, right? Isn’t the first track, Night Voyage, amazing?”
“No. I liked Glass Cannon, the one below it, more.”
Assistant Manager Kim’s eyes lit up. It looked like I had set fire to the heart of a ten-year rock fanatic.
“Right? I told you, this album is a masterpiece! It’s such a shame their vocalist suddenly left, though.”
“A shame? That band was probably better off without the vocalist.”
“...Excuse me?”
Without realizing it, I slipped into the habits I had when I sat before a mixing console in my previous life.
“The guitar completely swallows the songs. But the vocalist’s tone is thin and light, so it just floats on top of the band sound. The engineers must have had a hell of a time turning down the guitar volume at every live show. For the band’s longevity, it’d be better to bring in a vocalist with a heavier style.”
Silence drifted over the partition. Assistant Manager Kim stared at me blankly, coffee cup still in hand.
“Sir... How are your ears so refined?”
“Huh?”
“I thought you were a critic just now. Honestly, I was the only one who felt the guitar balance was off. Everyone in the community just keeps praising it as a masterpiece, so I couldn’t say anything.”
Oops. That was far too deep an analysis for a fat office manager who had quit playing for sixteen years. I hurriedly opened an Excel sheet and spun the mouse wheel.
“What critic? It’s just an old man’s taste.”
“No, but that analysis just now was really...”
“Check the Samjin Distribution order form, Assistant Manager Kim.”
“Ah, yes. Oh, and since I know your taste now, I’ll send you Part Two. It’s mostly live videos this time.”
“...Thanks?”
“Also, let’s get pork cutlet for lunch today. I found an incredible place across the street.”
“No. Salad.”
“...What? Three days in a row?”
Assistant Manager Kim looked back and forth between my round stomach and face as if I were an alien.
“Nothing’s really wrong, is it? You didn’t get bad health-check results or something?”
“It’s a diet. A diet. Looking at you, you’ve put on some belly fat too. Let’s diet together.”
Filling my hunger with weeds was miserable, but I had no choice when I thought about standing before a camera on Saturday. I desperately wanted to avoid the sight of my guitar being pushed away by my belly.
#
When I rushed to the rehearsal room straight after work on Thursday, the atmosphere was different from the moment I walked in. Everyone wore serious expressions.
The first run was “Fall Toward You.” Since we had made it through the song once before, the first verse went smoothly. The problem happened in the same spot again.
The fill that led from the bridge into the outro. Yun Taerin’s sticks tangled for half a beat again.
This time, no one filled the gap. I kept playing the original rhythm, while the drums wandered helplessly half a beat off until the song collapsed.
“Ah, again! Sorry, let’s start over...”
“Wait.”
I put down my pick. It was a chronic problem I had noticed from our very first rehearsal. It was time to address it.
“Do you really have to put that fill in?”
“Huh? Yeah... I want to. It’s boring if I just move past that part.”
Yun Taerin answered with a pout. Her eyes were full of stubbornness. Of course she wanted to play it well. She wanted a flashy transition that would lift the song. Every drummer wanted a moment like that.
“Then play it until you can do it without making a mistake. Without killing the original beat.”
“That’s it? You don’t have some secret trick?”
“No. And let me tell you this now.”
I held up my left hand. My fingertips, once red and raw, were finally starting to form calluses.
“On Saturday, I won’t cover for you even if you mess up. No, I can’t. I’ll barely be able to hold out through my own part, so stick to the original beat.”
I had barely gained enough endurance to survive a full run, but that was all. I couldn’t leap across offbeats and drag the entire song back up by the collar with improvisation every time, like I had on Tuesday.
“Who asked you to cover for me? Let’s go again!”
Yun Taerin raised her sticks over her head and counted in.
“One, two, three, four.”
From there, it was tedious repetition. We cut out the eight bars before and after the fill and ran them over and over.
“Again.”
“Yeah.”
The sticks going in were fine every time. The kick coming out kept getting tangled.
“Again!”
“Okay!”
By around the third try, Yun Taerin’s playful expression had disappeared. By the fifth, Bae Somi was cautiously watching her. By the eighth, nobody spoke. Only Cha Sion calmly added vocals on every run.
“One more.”
“Take a break.”
“No!”
She pushed her sweat-soaked bangs up with her forearm, looking exactly like I had at that age. Back then, if anyone told me to stop, I only played more.
Running only one section cost less of my fingertip budget. Full songs were always the problem. I conserved what I had left and played the eight bars with them.
Around the point when I stopped counting how many times we had repeated it, Yun Taerin caught her breath.
“Let’s go from the beginning. Not just the section. The whole song.”
“You think you can do it?”
“I don’t know. But we can’t just keep running this section until Saturday.”
She was right, so I took the count.
Verse, pre-chorus, chorus. The song passed through the bridge and entered that cursed section again.
Tension filled Yun Taerin’s shoulders. Her sticks lifted from the hi-hat.
I had no intention of covering for her. If the song fell apart, I would let it fall apart.
But this time, Yun Taerin held back.
She cut the flashy fill she had wanted to play in half in an instant. With the movement simplified, her sticks fell without hesitation, and with the ambition pared back, the hits landed at precisely the right time. The beat did not slip even a little.
It was a decision I had not even told her to make. I had said to play it until she could do it without mistakes, and she had reduced it to something she could play without mistakes.
Onstage, that was the right answer.
Instead of filling a hole, I unleashed the riff I was supposed to play without hesitation. Cha Sion’s voice settled over it, and Bae Somi’s bass scraped along the floor beneath it. The four sounds came together into one mass and raced through the outro. This was not a performance where I had forcibly filled the gaps and dragged them forward, like Tuesday.
It was a complete run the band had endured on its own.
Zing.
Until the final chord struck the walls and faded away, silence lingered in the rehearsal room.
“Haah... Fuck, I didn’t mess up.”
“Watch your mouth.”
That was what I said, but inwardly, I nodded. For a school band, it was a pretty impressive breakthrough.
“But Uncle, I cut my fill in half. What a waste...”
“You didn’t cut it. You saved it. Taking ambition you can’t hold onto all the way to the stage is what causes an accident.”
“...Then what about the original fill?”
“Play it in the finals. Make sure you can play it without mistakes by then.”
“...Yeah. The finals. Of course we have to make it.”
Yun Taerin grinned and picked up her sticks.
“One more with the same thing! We need to see whether that was luck or skill.”
We went again. The shortened fill made it through safely once more. Two complete runs in a row. By the end, my fingertips were beginning to send warning signals. Two full runs and one partial one. That was exactly my playing budget for the day.
“Somi, you got better too. You hesitated when you were about to reach out, but you didn’t kill the note in the end.”
“...Yes!”
Her reply was noticeably louder than usual.
‘Now this sounds like a band.’
A complete run I covered for was mine. A complete run they endured with their own strength was theirs. Every complete run today belonged to them.
#
As we packed up, I brought up something we should have addressed much earlier.
“By the way, who’s filming Saturday? Are we setting up a tripod?”
“Oh, Aunt said she’d do it. Aunt works with performance videos.”
“...Did she?”
I belatedly searched through the memories of this body’s owner that had been buried somewhere in my mind.
My younger older sister, Lee Suyeon. In that world, she worked in advertising planning. But in this timeline, she made performance videos?
‘This really must be a golden age for rock. Even my sister’s livelihood has changed.’
Either way, it seemed she was still unmarried. Single in both worlds. Was my sister destined to live alone forever?
‘...I’m not one to talk.’
I lived alone in two worlds as well. Here, I even had a one-room apartment and an overdraft account thrown in for good measure.
“She said she’ll come Saturday afternoon. She said she’d bring equipment too.”
“It’s a relief a professional is filming us. Then there’s only one problem left.”
I looked over the three of them one at a time.
“Clothes. What are you wearing?”
“Clothes?”
Yun Taerin looked down at her hoodie.
“This?”
“Video is half sound and half image. People who see you for the first time decide within three seconds whether to keep watching or scroll past. Before they even hear you play.”
I knew what I was talking about. I had watched a band rise from its look to the top of the world from very close by.
“Don’t you have anything else?”
“This is all I have. Why, are you buying us clothes?”
Yun Taerin’s eyes sparkled. Even Bae Somi slowly raised her head.
I immediately did the math. If I dressed all three of them... the leading digit of my overdraft balance might change. The reality of a thirty-six-year-old man who could not confidently throw down a card for his teasing niece.
‘Who knew I’d ever worry about money in front of stage outfits?’
In my previous life, a stylist would have handled this. Now, I was only the sponsor who trembled over rehearsal room fees.
But thinking about it again, it was not necessarily a bad choice.
Rather than dressing up awkwardly and pretending to be adults, it would be far more powerful on camera if high school girls in hoodies and jeans made monstrous music. That contrast was a weapon that drew views.
“Forget it. Just wear what suits you.”
“Right. We all know what Uncle’s wallet looks like.”
Yun Taerin stood from the drum stool and slowly looked me up and down, from the top of my head to my toes.
“Then what about you, Uncle?”
“...”
“Isn’t Uncle the biggest problem?”
I could not argue. Three high school girls who looked like a concept just by standing there, beside a potbellied middle-aged man sweating heavily with a guitar slung over his shoulder. The worst possible shot formed in my mind all by itself.
“Uncle is, how should I put it... the visual balance.”
“Be quiet.”
“No, really. Aunt will frame it well, but...”
The way she trailed off hurt more. I knew the weight would not come off by Saturday. She knew it too. Even the scale shoved into the corner of my room knew it.
‘Starting tomorrow, I really won’t eat ramen at night.’
When I slung my guitar case over my shoulder, its heavy weight pressed down on me.
“Anyway, meet up Saturday afternoon. Do some mental practice or something so you don’t lose today’s feeling.”
“Yes, Sponsor. Get home safely.”
Yun Taerin waved with a teasing grin, and Bae Somi bowed her head too.
I had packed everything and grabbed the rehearsal room doorknob when Cha Sion, who had been coiling cables in the corner, casually spoke.
“Mister.”
“What?”
Cha Sion finished organizing the cable and asked as if it were nothing.
“When the competition ends, are you going to quit?”
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