A trained vocalist who can perfectly pinpoint the desired pitch might be able to sing a song just by looking at the sheet music.
But Hye-mi and Su-rim weren’t at that level of precision.
Instead, they started feeling out the melody by singing through different lines.
“This part is too high.”
“You can use falsetto.” *It’s a singing technique in which one controls their pitch
“Oppa, I think it would sound better if we ended this with a decrescendo.” *Gradually decreasing in volume or intensity.
“Try it however you like.”
Han Seon-ho watched their practice and adjusted various details as they went.
He had a vision in mind when he arranged the song, but he didn’t want to disrupt the sense of freedom in the room. First, he wanted to listen.
Truthfully, Jung Su-rim and Cha Hye-mi had little experience with professional producing.
So they weren’t sure how much freedom Seon-ho would actually allow them.
Most composers hated it when their envisioned sound was altered in any way.
Some even went as far as restricting the number of syllables in lyrics to fit their exact phrasing.
But Han Seon-ho wasn’t that rigid.
Or rather, it wasn’t that he lacked stubbornness—it was that he had confidence.
Confidence that he could refine their input while keeping their natural style intact.
Confidence that no matter what changes they wanted, he could adjust accordingly.
While Cha Hye-mi and Jung Su-rim were deep in analyzing the song, Han Seon-ho stood up.
“Keep practicing. I’ll go buy some snacks and drinks.”
“Oh, are you going alone? Let’s go together.”
“No, just keep practicing. I’ll be right back.”
He waved off Hye-mi’s suggestion and stepped outside.
The late summer sun greeted him.
The studio they were using belonged to MBN Broadcast Academy, located on the outskirts of Sangam-dong.
The area was packed with businesses tied to the entertainment industry.
Running into familiar faces wasn’t difficult.
Though Seon-ho hadn’t been in the industry long enough to know many people, he still recognized someone at the convenience store near the studio.
“Hey, you.”
“Oh, you didn’t go far.”
It wasn’t even right to call him a familiar face. Just an hour ago, they had been sitting in the same room.
PD Joo Min-hwan.
Joo Min-hwan walked up to Han Seon-ho, who was picking out drinks and snacks.
“Did you put ideas into their heads?”
“Put ideas into their heads?”
“I just remembered what you were rambling about in the smoking area.”
“Ahh.”
Seon-ho scratched his head and put down the yogurt he had been comparing for calories.
“I wouldn’t say I put ideas into their heads.”
“Then why—”
“I just… let them hear a better song.”
A quiet voice.
His expression was the same, but something about him felt entirely different now.
“Tch. Do you even realize how ridiculous that sounds? Acting like you know what makes a song ‘better’—”
“That could be true. You’re a veteran, PD-nim, so maybe your song really is better. If you did your best.”
Seon-ho continued.
“But if a veteran half-heartedly makes a song, and a rookie pours their soul into one… that’s a fight worth watching, don’t you think?”
Joo Min-hwan felt an odd sense of confusion.
It was the right moment to be angry, but curiosity took over instead.
At first, he had assumed this was just another clueless rookie manager getting carried away with his artist.
That happened all the time.
And when things didn’t work out, those same managers either turned on their artists or got turned on themselves.
But this kid didn’t give off that vibe.
Certainty. That’s it—certainty.
Han Seon-ho had certainty.
Not the certainty that his song would succeed—no, the certainty that it would fail.
It was hard enough to predict a hit song, but even harder to pick out a doomed one. A successful song at least gives off a vague sense of “this is good,” but a failing one? It doesn’t always feel outright “bad.”
Failure and “bad” weren’t the same thing.
There were plenty of unknown songs from ten years ago that suddenly became hits due to a lucky break.
Did that mean the song was bad a decade ago and then magically became good?
Of course not.
It was all external factors—trends, luck, timing.
Which meant the certainty Seon-ho was showing was something even a veteran producer of ten, no, a hundred years couldn’t have.
With confusion mixed into his irritation, Joo Min-hwan asked,
“What the hell makes you so sure my song isn’t good enough? I barely touched it. I just split the parts from Jung Su-rim’s original song. It was a good song, wasn’t it?”
“PD-nim, do you know how to play rock-paper-scissors?”
“…What?”
“A simple game. Rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper, paper beats rock.”
“What are you—”
Seon-ho cut him off.
“My certainty about your song is like rock-paper-scissors.”
“……”
“The problem is, you don’t even know which one your song is.”
He casually mimicked rock, paper, and scissors with his hand before shrugging.
“I do.”
Their eyes met.
For a brief moment, Joo Min-hwan instinctively stepped back.
Realizing what he had done, he covered it with a scoff.
“Hah… You’re completely insane. So that rookie’s song is some guaranteed win? Like, chart-topping number one?”
“Hmm. That’s the tricky part. A monk can’t shave his own head.”
“What?”
“But if your song is a guaranteed loss, the rookie’s song is at least uncertain. A 100% chance of failure versus a 33% chance of failure—isn’t that a big difference?”
Just then, Seon-ho’s phone vibrated.
He glanced at the screen before looking back at Joo Min-hwan.
“And besides…”
Hye-mi wasn’t the only one who felt a sense of stability through Seon-ho.
Seon-ho, too, found confidence and reassurance through Hye-mi.
A singer’s reaction that showed trust in his song.
The certainty of choosing his song over a veteran producer’s.
“I think I’m going to win.”
With that, Seon-ho lifted his phone.
What caught Joo Min-hwan’s eye was a message from Hye-mi, asking if he could bring her a drink since he was still at the convenience store.
“As you can see, I’m a bit busy.”
Shrugging, Seon-ho resumed calculating calories.
Joo Min-hwan, who had been about to say something, hesitated for a moment before simply walking out of the convenience store.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
Since he hadn’t heard that rookie composer Prefer’s song yet, he couldn’t make an accurate judgment.
In the end, Joo Min-hwan picked up his phone.
“It doesn’t exist?”
Team Leader Woo Jae-yoon frowned.
A&R Team 1, which he led, was usually responsible for debuting rookies.
But right now, their job wasn’t launching a new act—it was trying to revive a struggling one.
They were the emergency response team keeping Low Five alive with an oxygen mask.
That was A&R Team 1’s role.
The problem was that they couldn’t find the oxygen mask.
Or rather, they found it but couldn’t use it.
“What do you mean it doesn’t exist? You checked everything properly?”
Lee Dong-hyun, who had spent three grueling days on the case just because he liked mystery novels, grumbled in frustration.
“I’m sure! Do you know how much I suffered? I’m never watching another mystery show again!”
“No, suffering is one thing, but why doesn’t it exist?”
“How would I know? Maybe they downloaded it from the internet?”
“It was linked to A.T.’s session. How does that make sense?”
“A.T. could have shared his session on an online community. Black Lab and places like that have a lot of sampling and session-sharing going on.”
“Hmm?”
“Someone might have composed using that session.”
Woo Jae-yoon tilted his head at Lee Dong-hyun’s words.
A.T. was the type who craved recognition—he always had to share his work with others, even if it was just a rough draft.
So, Lee Dong-hyun’s theory wasn’t entirely out of the question.
“It sounds plausible, but that would mean A.T. uploaded his session online, someone else composed using it, and then A.T. downloaded it back… Isn’t that too complex?”
“But none of the engineers who were in the building at the time of the session edit have the initials HSH.”
“You sure you didn’t miss anything?”
“Oh, come on, Team Leader! Can’t you see my eyes?”
Lee Dong-hyun pointed to his bloodshot eyes.
“I checked three times! Three times!”
“What about initials? Did you check those?”
“There’s no one among the engineers, but in the legal team, there’s Hong Sung-hoon. In the PR team, there’s Heo Soo-hyun. And in Management Team B, there’s Han Seon-ho.”
“Could it be one of them? You know the saying—if a dog stays at a school long enough, it starts reciting poetry.”
“Team Leader, to compose a song of this level, you wouldn’t just be reciting poetry—you’d have to be running the whole school. You know that.”
“Still, you never know.”
“The only veteran among them is the legal team guy. The other two are first-years.”
“Ah, this is driving me crazy.”
Woo Jae-yoon ran his hands through his hair in frustration.
After thinking for a moment, he waved his hand dismissively.
“Dong-hyun, go to a sauna or something. Just go home, sleep in, and come to work after lunch tomorrow.”
“Huh? Really? You’re not lying, right?”
“Yeah, totally a real lie.”
“Yes!”
Fearing that Woo Jae-yoon might change his mind, Lee Dong-hyun bolted out of the engineer’s room.
Left alone, Woo Jae-yoon fell into deep thought.
Could it be one of the singers?
If it was someone whose career revolved around music, maybe they had been hiding a trump card.
He sent a message to the front desk staff, requesting a list of all the singers who had entered the building on the session edit date.
No, he decided to go bigger—he asked for a list of every single entertainer who had been there.
A short while later, he got a reply from the front desk and started making calls.
And the result?
“Damn it, nothing.”
Sighing, he put his phone down.
He still had no idea how that crazy song ended up on the company’s computer.
A composer didn’t enter the building, but the song exists in the system. What are the possibilities?
Someone could have brought it in via USB, but in that case, it wouldn’t be linked to AT’s session.
“Ugh. Why the hell don’t we have CCTV in the elevators?!”
Woo Jae-yoon grumbled, but until now, no one had ever needed elevator CCTV.
Besides, MOK’s walking corporate overlords weren’t exactly fans of surveillance cameras.
Letting out another deep sigh, he picked up his phone and called AT.
He didn’t want to talk to him after how he’d gotten wrecked by Hye-mi, but there was no other choice.
“Hello? Tae-shin.”
– Ah, Team Leader, it’s A.T.
“Come on, I’ve known you since you were a kid. Do you really expect me to call you A.T.?”
– Fine, fine. What’s up?
“Do you ever upload the songs you make online? The full session?”
– The full session? Sometimes. On foreign sites that big-name composers visit. I pretend to be a foreigner.”
“Oh yeah? Why?”
– So if someone samples my work, I can demand sample clearance. Or use it as leverage to ask for something else.
Woo Jae-yoon was dumbfounded that AT was more focused on scheming than actually producing music.
But putting his exasperation aside, this was actually a crucial piece of information.
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