WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Potter

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ My Fired Uncle Is a Genius Guitarist? ◈

Chapter 9: First, the Money

──────

As soon as I took off my earphones, Assistant Manager Kim poked their head over the partition again.

“Are you joining a band too, Manager?”

“What?”

“You were asking so many questions about the competition. About the channel, the winning team, and all that.”

“You were the one who got excited and rambled on. When did I ask?”

“Oh, was I? Haha. Anyway, honestly, jumping into a band after sixteen years off would be too much. A band needs more than just a guitar. You need people to play with, and you need to book a rehearsal room.”

“I suppose.”

“You're best off keeping it as a hobby, like you are now. Less stress that way.”

I quietly swallowed the fact that I was already playing with a band and even paying rehearsal room fees.

“Ah, but Manager. If you're really going to join a band, you should tell the company.”

“Tell them what?”

“You know we need prior approval for outside work. We can't do anything for profit without the company's permission.”

“...There's something like that?”

“Of course. Assistant Manager Park from the next team tried to do something on weekends last year, but the department head shut it down. You know what he's like.”

“How is being in a band a for-profit activity?”

“If you enter competitions, there’s prize money. Prize money. You'd probably get caught if you received it. And if you put out an album, you'd have music sales too.”

Prize money.

My niece's face flashed through my mind, shouting that they should split it four ways at the snack bar.

‘Well, it doesn't matter yet.’

For-profit activity or not, money had to come in first. Right now, I was only a guest guitarist for a high school band that couldn't even be sure of making it through the preliminaries.

“Manager?”

“Yeah. Got it. I'll keep that in mind.”

“Huh? That sounds like you have something to keep in mind.”

“Quit talking nonsense and get back to work.”

Assistant Manager Kim snickered and disappeared behind the partition.

#

After work, I showered and collapsed onto my bed. When I came to my senses, I was standing in front of the stove, boiling water in a pot.

“...Is my body controlling my mind now?”

I glared at the pot. The pot was innocent, and so was the water. The guilty party was my right hand, which had picked this up at the convenience store on the way home.

“...I'll only eat half. Just half.”

Making that pathetic compromise with myself, I snapped the noodles in two and put in one half. But then I realized I had nowhere suitable to store the other half. So I had no choice but to put all of it in.

What was the point of chewing salads every lunch to lose weight when I stuffed myself with ramen every night? That was how frightening habits were.

While the water boiled, I opened my banking app. It was time to see what traces the card payment withdrawn on the twenty-fifth had left behind.

A negative balance. The payment had gone out on Saturday, changing the first digit of the number.

‘Where the hell did this body spend its paycheck?’

I scrolled through the recent card transactions.

Delivery apps, late-night convenience store purchases, late-night taxi fares after company dinners, bills from barbecue restaurants where I had grilled meat alone on weekends.

There was no sign of any major extravagance. Money had simply leaked away steadily in small amounts. Every time this body's owner was stressed, they dealt with it by eating. Whenever they were tired, they took a taxi. For ten years, they had spent what they earned without any big splurges, then borrowed when it wasn't enough.

Then one regular transfer, withdrawn on the same date every month, caught my eye.

Recipient: Mother.

The moment I saw that name, an old memory from this body's owner snapped open.

The day they received their first paycheck. The hand that sent half of it home to help with hospital bills. The bank counter where they opened an overdraft line as soon as they gained the credit of a salaried worker. And before that, the winter when they were twenty. The night they got the call that their father had collapsed, sold their beloved guitar secondhand, and handed the entire envelope of cash to their family.

This body had lived that way. Filling the hole that began with hospital bills using its salary, enduring with food when it grew tired of filling it, then plugging that hole again with an overdraft line.

The body that had swollen to 105 kilograms and the bottomless overdraft account were both badges earned for the same reason.

‘If I'd given up music, this is how I would have lived.’

A hollow laugh escaped me.

I turned off the stove and sat at the table. As I lifted the ramen with my chopsticks, I thought it through.

In my previous life, I had been rich. Royalties and performance income alone had earned me enough to live on for the rest of my life.

But that money hadn't fallen from the sky. It had all come from my songs. Albums, performances, royalties. The source had always been the songs.

And those songs were still intact in my head. Not only Muri's trajectory through its eighth album, but hundreds of songs that had never been released.

The problem was the data. On the studio hard drive from that world, demos, guide tracks, and original project files for unreleased songs had been piled up layer after layer. But that hard drive didn't exist in this world. Not one fragment of a file remained.

I had the songs, but not the data. To bring them out into the world, I had to create them again from scratch here.

I looked around the room. One old laptop over ten years old. No audio interface, MIDI keyboard, or speakers. All I had was one cheap guitar with no amp to plug it into.

Making something was manageable somehow. The issue was the result. The sound in my head and the sound I could force out in this dreary little room were entirely different things. Knowing that difference, I couldn't throw something half-baked into the world.

Just to check, I picked up the guitar in the corner.

The fifth string was strange from the moment I started tuning. Even when I turned the peg, it spun freely without properly tightening. Only after a long while did I barely manage to tune it.

The pitch didn't last long. After I fingered a few chords, it had already slipped subtly flat.

“...Hey. Why are you acting up too?”

The high frets were even worse. Above the twelfth fret, the strings scraped against the frets with a zzzt. It was fret buzz. Its neck had been slightly bowed ever since I first took it out of storage, but after this weekend, it seemed to have finally gone beyond its limit.

Sixteen years in storage, then band practice and Saturday filming with a body already worn out. I had made a cheap beginner guitar keep up with a professional-level schedule. It would have been stranger if it had survived.

In a way, it was impressive that it had lasted through the video shoot. Still.

‘Why did you have to die now?’

I put down the guitar and looked around the room again. One dying guitar, one old laptop, and one overdraft account.

That was everything I owned in this room.

#

The phones were ringing off the hook from Tuesday morning. Part of the shipment sent to Samjin Distribution's logistics center yesterday had arrived with the boxes burst open. The client had refused delivery, and the voice of the person in charge was sharp over the phone.

“I'll come myself. This morning.”

I hung up and grabbed my car keys. For something like this, showing my face once was much faster than saying a hundred things over the phone.

The situation at the site was simpler than expected. I inspected the damaged goods, took photos, and bowed my head. Then I firmly set the schedule for collecting the returns and sending replacements right there.

“We'll send a pickup vehicle for the damaged goods today. We'll have the replacements there by Thursday morning at the latest.”

“Are you sure about Thursday? We have store orders pending too.”

“I'll stake my name on it. If there are any issues, call me directly. Here's my card.”

After I practically prostrated myself and handed over my business card, the person in charge, whose face had been tense, finally relaxed halfway and offered me a canned coffee.

“At least we can talk because you came right away, Manager. So many people try to handle everything over the phone these days.”

“Of course I had to come. When there's a problem with the goods, both sides need to see it in person to settle things cleanly.”

The issue was resolved earlier than expected. It was an awkward amount of spare time, too little to return immediately. And by pure coincidence, the road out passed an alley lined with music shops.

After hesitating for a moment, I parked in a nearby public lot. I didn't have money to buy an instrument right now, but I figured I could at least check current equipment prices and put together an estimate.

Ding-a-ling.

As I entered, a man who appeared to be the owner came out from the back of the store with a bright smile, guitars filling the walls around him.

“Welcome. Looking for anything?”

“Ah, I'm just looking around.”

“Sure, take your time.”

If he was going to let me take my time, why was he following me? Before I could even take three steps, the owner was right beside me again.

“Starting an office-worker band?”

I could feel his gaze traveling over me. My protruding belly and my shabby suit. It was a perfectly reasonable look from someone who didn't think I looked like a person capable of playing in a proper band.

“Something like that.”

“You came to the right place. There are so many beginners in their forties these days. Some come after dropping their kids off at cram school.”

“...I'm not in my forties yet.”

“Oh dear, I'm sorry. Haha.”

The owner waved a hand with an easy grin. He didn't look particularly sorry.

“What kind of budget did you have in mind?”

I couldn't answer right away. The balance on my overdraft account, drilling through the floor toward the basement, had crossed my mind.

Seeing my hesitation, the owner interpreted it perfectly in his own way and kindly led me to a corner of the store.

“If you're just starting out, this line is good. It's what beginners use most, and nothing beats it for value.”

The area he pointed to was full of cheap copy models in about the same class as the one gasping for life in my studio apartment last night.

‘...I'm not a beginner.’

I swallowed the words that rose to my throat. If I said I wasn't a beginner, the next questions would always follow. Where had I played? How long had I played? Let me plug in an amp, try playing something. It was obvious that things would get annoying.

When I didn't answer, the owner decided I was a complete beginner and asked another question.

“Do you have a guitar already?”

“I have an old one.”

“What kind?”

“Um... a beginner model I bought a long time ago.”

“Oh, then it's time to replace it. Beginner guitars hit their limits once you've played for a while. They go out of tune easily too.”

There wasn't a single wrong word in that, so I had nothing to say. I had seen that limit with my own eyes the night before.

The owner's explanation continued. The pickups, the neck grip, how this brand's finishing had improved recently.

I already knew all of it. I wished he would stop talking to me, but the owner was excited.

“What kind of music are you going to play? Working professionals tend to form a lot of cover bands these days.”

“Just... rock.”

“Rock is great! Rock is all the rage these days. The customers at our shop have doubled over the last three years.”

The owner gazed fondly at the guitars on the wall. It wasn't just the bluster of a salesman. He looked like someone genuinely happy to see the band scene growing.

He didn't look malicious, so I couldn't even get annoyed.

“How about this? It's the best-selling model among office workers these days.”

My gaze stopped in front of the guitar he pointed to. Not on the guitar itself, but on the price tag hanging below it.

The moment I saw the number, my breath caught. It was enough to decisively cut off the last breath of my struggling overdraft account.

“Want to try it? I'll plug it into an amp.”

“No, I'm fine.”

“Don't feel pressured. Everyone is shy at first.”

“I'm really fine.”

It wasn't shyness. It was dangerous. If he put that equipment in my hands, even I couldn't guarantee what these hands would do on the strings.

‘I used to just buy something like this. No, before I even bought it, it would arrive first.’

Sponsored gear, piled up like mountains in my studio by instrument companies begging me to use it just once.

‘...Sponsorship, huh. Is there anyone who would sponsor me now? Daejin Foods?’

Maybe if they sponsored our company's crab sticks or sausages.

“Want to look at effects too? These days, one multi-effects unit can handle almost anything. If you want to record too, you'll need an interface.”

I was practically dragged over to the effects section. The prices the owner quoted piled up one after another. Before I could even finish doing the mental math, the conclusion was clear. This amount would definitely bankrupt me.

“What do you think? If you get them as a set, I'll knock some off.”

“...”

“Interest-free installments are available too. Split it over twelve months, and it's not much per month.”

I already had an account that showed me, painfully well, what happened when that not-much money piled up over twelve months.

“...I'll think about it and come back.”

“Sure, take your time! Here's my card. Come back anytime, and I'll take good care of you!”

Leaving the greeting owner behind, I exited the store with only his business card in hand.

As I walked down the shopping street, I organized the calculations in my head.

What I needed right away was a weapon to replace the guitar at death's door, effects, and the minimum music-production gear needed to bring the songs in my head out into the world.

What I had, on the other hand, was a twenty-three-year-old piece of kindling at the end of its life, an ancient office laptop, and an overdraft account scraping the bottom.

With a manager's chicken-feed salary, there was no answer even if I went hungry and saved for months.

I had an enormous asset in my head, one that had reached the top of the world.

But right now, I didn't even have the minimum money needed to bring that asset into reality.

‘...First, the money.’

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried