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# Chapter 3: Days Without Fire
The stage lights at Hongdae’s Club Underscore were always blue.
Not just any blue — the particular blue that exists in the moment before sleep. Not quite dark, not quite light. The color of deep water. Whenever Sea stood beneath that light, she felt like she became someone slightly different. Not a different person, exactly — more like an older version of herself. Na Sea, back when she was still her mother’s daughter, diving the waters off Jeju. Back before she learned to calculate everything.
It was Thursday night. Sea stood at the far left of the stage, measuring the height of the stand microphone with her palm. She stood in this same spot every week, yet the mic stand was never quite the same height. Whoever used it before her — tall, and it was raised; short, and it was lowered. Sea always reset it to her own height. It was the only trace she ever left on this stage.
“Hey, Na Sea.”
Oh Haneul called out from behind the drum kit, a stick in one hand. Their regular drummer had called in sick, and Haneul had stepped in as emergency backup. She always said she didn’t play drums — yet somehow, whenever things got desperate, she ended up sitting behind the kit.
“Yeah.”
“You see the updated setlist? They added ‘End of Night’ at the end.”
“I know.”
“They raised the key. Half a step up from the original.”
“…Got it.”
Sea answered without feeling, but inside she was already running the numbers. A half step up meant her throat would strain on the final high notes. She’d already performed twice this week, and yesterday during her convenience store shift, she’d stood directly in the path of the air conditioning vent for hours. Her voice wasn’t in good shape.
She said nothing. Bringing up the setlist would mean talking to Jungho, the band leader, who was over there tuning his guitar right now — and whenever Sea mentioned anything about her condition, Jungho always said the same thing: If you’re not feeling it, you can sit out. Sitting out meant losing tonight’s fifty thousand won. Losing fifty thousand won meant this month’s calculation for her mother’s medication fell apart again.
Half a step up was fine.
“We’re good.”
Haneul glanced at her. Something in those eyes seemed to want to say more — but Sea went back to adjusting the mic stand. Haneul tapped the snare once and let it go.
Underscore was an underground club eight minutes from Hongdae’s main entrance, tucked down two alleyways. Underground by a floor and a half, technically — fourteen steps down from street level. The ceiling was low enough that tall people nearly grazed their heads on the ventilation pipes. Capacity was eighty, but when eighty people actually showed up, the air turned suffocating. Cigarette smoke, draft beer, and something absorbed deep into the old wooden floors — that was the smell of Underscore. When Sea first encountered it, she’d been strangely unbothered. It was the smell of a place where people came for the music itself. Not for the aesthetic. Not to be seen.
Sea had started doing session vocals here a year and a half ago. Two nights a week at first, now three. Fifty thousand won a show, with occasional tips. Tips were usually a single ten-thousand-won bill. Sometimes a drunk patron would leave fifty thousand, and on those nights Sea could skip her overnight shift at the convenience store. That happened maybe once a month, if she was lucky.
The house band was three people. Jungho — guitarist and leader, thirty-two, lean, glasses, a man of few words. Jisu — bassist, twenty-seven, always with one earbud in. And tonight, Haneul filling in on drums.
A year and a half working together, and Sea didn’t know where any of them lived, what their families were like, or what they actually wanted out of life. Jungho had never once asked if she’d eaten. Sea never asked him, either. That was the unspoken rule of this space. Come together for the music, and when it’s done, go back to your own lives. The only things worth saying were about the songs.
Sea found that comfortable. She didn’t have to explain herself.
The show started at nine. On a weeknight Thursday, the crowd was around fifty. Couples in the front rows, lone figures scattered through the middle, a group in the back nursing beers and talking over each other. Sea swept her eyes across the room as she took the stage — a habit she’d developed before the lights blinded her.
Jungho struck the first chord. Sea closed her eyes.
Something strange happened to her body in the moment before a song began. It wasn’t her breathing that changed — it was something deeper than that. Like unclenching a fist she’d been holding tight all day and letting whatever was inside fall open. Like her mother drawing in a long breath before slipping beneath the surface. And then — she dove.
Standing at the window / I told myself / it was just the season / making me think of you
It wasn’t her own song. It was a cover — a ballad from a well-known indie act. Sea didn’t particularly like it. The lyrics were too on the nose. Music shouldn’t have to explain itself, she believed. It should make you feel without telling you what to feel. This song told you everything.
She sang it anyway. Because some people needed things spelled out. The people sitting in this room tonight, nursing their drinks, waiting for exactly this song — maybe they needed exactly this kind of directness.
That was what she told herself as she sang.
Second song, third song. Her voice slowly loosened. Not that the pain went away — she simply stopped tracking it. While she was singing, the part of her brain that calculated how much strain her throat could take seemed to switch off for a while. She liked that. Liked the quiet when the calculations stopped.
Intermission. Sea stood in the narrow backstage area and drank water — a plastic 500ml bottle she’d bought herself. Underscore provided nothing for its performers. Jungho always brought his own tumbler. Jisu bought a convenience store Americano. Sea bought water. It was the cheapest option.
“Hey.”
Haneul dropped down beside her, tapping her drumsticks against her thigh.
“Your throat okay?”
“Yeah.”
“That ‘yeah’ means it’s not, and you know I know that.”
“…I’m fine.”
“Na Sea.” Haneul set the sticks down. “Did you reach out to Park In-chul?”
Sea took another sip of water. “No.”
“Why not?”
“What am I supposed to say.”
It wasn’t deflection — it was a genuine question. One Sea had turned over and over without landing on an answer. What was she supposed to say? My song came out without my name on it? Give me back my credit? She already knew what Park In-chul would say to that. He’d ask for a contract. There was no contract. They’d done it on a handshake. She’d trusted him.
Haneul exhaled — short, sharp. The kind of anger that wasn’t aimed at Sea and both of them knew it.
“God, that guy makes my blood boil.”
“…”
“How do you just erase someone’s name like that? Just like that? Without blinking? The audacity is on a whole different level.”
Sea turned the bottle cap. Open, close. “Park Sojin probably didn’t know. It was the label’s call.”
“That makes it worse, not better. If the label did it, that’s organized. That’s systematic.”
“…”
“Na Sea. Are you seriously not angry about this?”
Sea was quiet for a moment. The memory surfaced again — that night in her windowless room, the Melon chart glowing on her screen. Park Sojin, “At the Window.” Composed/Arranged by: Park In-chul. Whatever she’d felt looking at those words — she still couldn’t name it. She’d always thought anger was something that rose like fire. But what she’d felt instead was a sinking. Like a stone dropping through water. The same feeling she’d had on the ferry leaving Jeju.
“I’ll deal with it later.”
“Later.” Haneul repeated the word as though testing its weight. “You keep pushing things to later, and then ‘At the Window’ hits a million streams — then what?”
“…”
“Hey!”
“Let’s just finish the set.”
Sea stood up. Behind her, Haneul swore under her breath — not at Sea, but at the world in general. Sea felt it against her back as she walked away.
The show ended at eleven-thirty.
On the final song, “End of Night,” Sea’s voice barely held through the high notes in the last section. One more push and it would have cracked. She pulled back a beat early and let the note resolve lower — someone in the audience might have caught it, or might not have. Jungho said nothing afterward. When Jungho said nothing, it meant it went fine.
She collected her pay. Fifty thousand won, cash, handed over by Jungho in a small envelope. Sea slipped it into the inner zip pocket of her bag. It couldn’t go through her card — it had to be cash. Cash didn’t appear in bank records. That way her mother’s welfare benefits wouldn’t get reduced.
Another calculation.
Haneul slung her drum bag over her shoulder and fell into step beside her. They climbed the stairs out of Underscore together. Underground to street level. Fourteen steps. Every time she came up, Sea took one deep breath — to feel the moment the smell changed. Cigarette smoke giving way to the open air of a Seoul night. It was one of the few things she genuinely liked about this place.
Outside, it was cold. Mid-November. Sea didn’t turn up her collar. The cold felt like it might be good for her throat.
“Have you eaten?”
“Yeah.”
“When.”
“…Yesterday.”
“Hey!!!”
Haneul’s voice rang through the alley. A passing couple shot them a glance.
“Get something from the convenience store. Right now.”
“I have money.”
“I’ll pay. This isn’t about the money.”
Haneul grabbed her arm and marched toward the GS25 up ahead. Sea let herself be dragged. Not because she was hungry — but because fighting Haneul when she had this look on her face cost more energy than just going along with it.
The inside of the convenience store was bright. Fluorescent lights — the same kind Sea stood under for six hours every night at work. Haneul picked out two triangular kimbap and a warm can of corn soup. Sea stood still.
“You still like tuna mayo?”
“Yeah.”
“Then this one.” Haneul handed it over. “Sit down while you eat. Standing messes with your digestion.”
They settled across from each other at a small table near the window. Haneul had grabbed one for herself, too — a mixed grain rice triangle with doenjang mushroom filling. Her tastes had always been a little unusual.
Sea tore open the packaging on her tuna mayo, pulling the tabs in order: three, two, one. She remembered the first time she’d eaten a convenience store triangle rice ball as a kid, amazed by the way the wrapper came apart — she’d opened and closed it three times just to watch it work. Dohyeon had done the same thing. Triangle kimbap wrappers are magic, he’d said. She was thinking about that when she took the first bite.
It was warm. The rice was warm.
Sea glanced down for a moment, then looked back up.
“Haneul.”
“Yeah.”
“If I reach out to Park In-chul — what do I even say.”
Haneul stopped chewing. She set down the rice ball. She’d registered the shift — earlier, it had sounded like Sea was talking to herself. Now she was actually asking.
“First,” Haneul said slowly, “do you have any proof it’s your song?”
“It’s in my notes app. Timestamped.”
“Your phone’s notes app?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not sure how much legal weight that carries.” Haneul chewed her lip. “Okay — reach out to In-chul and ask directly. Not ‘what happened to that song,’ but ‘my song came out under your name — what’s going on?’”
“…”
“Can’t bring yourself to say it?”
“I already know what he’ll say back.”
“What?”
Sea took another bite and chewed slowly. She could hear Park In-chul’s voice already — that perpetually half-irritated tone, never quite dismissive. It was just a demo you brought in. I rearranged the whole thing. It’s nothing like your original. That’s what he’d say. And the thing was, he wouldn’t be entirely wrong. When an arrangement changed enough, how much of it was still the same song? Sea didn’t know — not legally. Musically, she knew it was hers. But legally? That was a different question.
“I don’t know. That’s why I can’t do it.”
An honest answer. Haneul studied her for a moment.
“Na Sea.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re genuinely strange, you know that.”
“I know.”
“I mean it as a specific kind of strange. You’re completely different on stage. You get up there and everything shifts. But then you come back down and you’re… this.” Haneul shook her head. “How does one person have that kind of range?”
Sea didn’t answer. Haneul wasn’t wrong. On stage, something else took over. The calculations switched off, the plans switched off, the fear switched off. There was only sound. Sound coming from inside her, traveling through the air, reaching the people across the room — and something moving across their faces, just for a moment. It was the most direct connection Sea knew. The only one that didn’t need words.
But when she stepped off the stage, the calculations always started back up.
“I only feel like a real person when I’m up there.”
She said it almost to herself. Haneul’s eyes went wide.
“…Don’t say things like that.” Something shifted in Haneul’s voice. “Hey. Don’t say things like that. I mean it.”
“It’s not a bad thing. I just mean that’s when I feel most like myself.”
“…”
“I’m done. Thanks.”
Sea gathered her trash and dropped it cleanly into the bin. One shot. Haneul was still holding her rice ball, watching her. Something in her expression held weight — but Sea didn’t let herself receive it.
Fifteen minutes on foot to the gosiwon in Hapjeong-dong. After parting ways with Haneul, the walk was hers alone. Taking the riverside path added five minutes, making it twenty — but Sea went that way sometimes anyway. She went that way tonight.
Once the Han River came into view, the wind changed. Seoul’s wind came funneled between buildings, but out here there was nothing to block it — it arrived wide and unobstructed. Sea stood facing it without leaning on the railing. Her hair whipped across her face; some strands had escaped despite being tied back.
Performance fee, fifty thousand won. Two more shows left this month — that made a hundred fifty thousand. Convenience store wages, nine hundred twenty thousand a month. Combined total, a million and seventy thousand. Gosiwon rent, three hundred fifty thousand. Mother’s medication, four hundred thousand. Dohyeon’s tutoring, a hundred fifty thousand. Utilities and phone bill, roughly a hundred thousand. That left seventy thousand.
Seventy thousand won. One month of food.
Two thousand three hundred and thirty-three won a day.
Sea had known that number for a long time. A convenience store lunchbox ran four thousand five hundred won, so she couldn’t afford one a day. She ate every other day, or waited for near-expiry markdowns. When she was working a shift, she’d time herself to be nearby when they cleared out the unsold triangle rice balls. The store manager always looked the other way — probably knew exactly what was happening and chose not to see. Sea was grateful for that blind eye, and uncomfortable with her own gratitude.
The Han River was black. Streetlamp light trembled on the surface of the water. Sea looked at it and thought of her mother — the look on her face coming up from a dive. The sound she made when she finally broke the surface after holding her breath as long as she could. Sumbi sori. The breath-cry of the haenyeo. Sea remembered it. The rawest version of her mother’s voice — less beautiful than it was proof of being alive.
I want to write a song that sounds like my mother’s voice.
The thought came and went. Sea pulled out her phone and opened her notes app. She typed something — not a chord, just words.
Wide. Cold. Goes on anyway.
That was all. It was enough. Sometime in the early hours, this might become a melody. Or it might not. Either way, she had to write it down now.
She was putting the phone away when a KakaoTalk notification appeared.
From: Na Dohyeon 🐹
Noona you awake?
She tapped it open.
Yeah.
lol obviously. where are you rn
Outside.
outside where lol that’s not an answer
Han River.
…WHY????
Just because.
noona i swear lol it’s cold out there. go home
I’m fine.
A pause. Then the typing indicator appeared — Dohyeon drafting something, deleting it, drafting again. Two times, three times. Sea watched it and waited.
Noona. how was the show tonight?
Good.
how’s your throat? sounded a little rough when we talked earlier
It’s fine.
for real? not lying?
For real.
lmao noona saying “for real” is always so funny. anyway get home and stay warm. you can’t sing with a cold
I know. Go to sleep.
yeah yeah. night noona
Sea tucked her phone away. She knew what Dohyeon hadn’t said. Thanks for the tutoring money. Thanks for Mom’s medication. He always swallowed those words. So did she. That was the agreement between them — the thing they’d never made explicit and never needed to.
The wind came again.
Sea turned around and headed home.
She got back to the gosiwon just past midnight. The hallway was quiet. Sea kept her footsteps soft as she stopped in front of Room 2. Key out. Door open.
The windowless room. She switched on the lamp. A circle of amber light.
She set down her bag, hung up her coat, opened her laptop. She always did things in the same order — lamp, laptop, check the plug. She verified the power cord was fully seated, twice. Then, while the laptop booted, she looked at the Post-it notes on the wall.
Yellow: finished pieces. Three of them. Two had already been handed over to Park In-chul. One was “At the Window.” The other was “Under the Same Sky” — that one hadn’t charted yet. She didn’t know if it would. Or maybe it already had, somewhere, under someone else’s name.
Sea peeled those two yellow notes from the wall. Held them in her hands and looked at them. Chord progressions, rough lyrics — her own handwriting, narrow and close-set. Proof that these were hers. But the paper meant nothing. Post-it notes weren’t evidence.
The laptop finished loading.
Sea sat down and opened Melon. Park Sojin, “At the Window.” The stream count was higher than yesterday. Over five hundred comments.
This song is so good. I’ve had it on repeat all day.
First time hearing it and I’m already tearing up. Sojin’s emotional range is insane.
Whoever wrote this is a genius.
Sea’s eyes stopped on that last one.
Whoever wrote this.
Park In-chul. That was the name in the credits.
She closed the comments. Opened a new document. She typed what she’d noted by the river — wide, cold, goes on anyway — and started building something around it. She wrote one chord. Am. Then F. Then her hands went still.
The chorus of “At the Window” drifted back through her mind.
Sea closed her eyes. She knew that melody was hers. Knew it in her whole body, in her fingertips, knew it had begun with the old woman downstairs and a sleepless predawn hour. The question wasn’t whether it was hers — it was whether she could prove it. And proving it required doing something, and doing something required energy, and the energy Sea had left was already allocated: make it through tomorrow’s convenience store shift, rest enough before next week’s shows so her voice didn’t give out completely.
Am. F.
She started writing again.
Songs came to her in the early hours. That was simply a fact. She couldn’t write during the day — the day belonged to other people. Only after midnight, when the world grew thin and quiet, did anything of hers surface.
A little past one in the morning, a sound came from the hallway.
She ignored it at first. Sounds in the hallway were ordinary — someone coming in late, a trip to the bathroom, the occasional phone call bleeding through. But this sound was different.
Music.
Someone was standing in the hallway with music playing from their phone — right outside her door, between Room 2 and Room 3. The volume was low enough that she couldn’t make out the song. But it kept stopping and starting again. The same passage, repeated.
Sea lifted her hands from the keyboard and listened.
Piano. That much she could tell. And the section being repeated — it sounded like the moment just before a key change. The tension that builds right before the chords shift. It kept stopping there, right at that edge.
Strange. Sea looked toward the door. It was past midnight, and the gosiwon rules were clear about noise in the hallways. But not getting involved in your neighbors’ business was an equally unspoken rule of gosiwon life.
She turned back to the screen.
The piano kept snagging in her ear.
That passage — the moment before the key change. She thought she knew where it needed to go. Not a half step, not a whole step. Somewhere between. Her hand moved through the air without thinking, fingers forming chord shapes over an invisible keyboard.
E7. It needed to go to E7. That would resolve the Am.
The music in the hallway stopped again.
Sea stood up before she’d quite decided to. She crossed to the door and stood there with her hand on the knob. Open it or don’t — she hesitated. It was past one in the morning. This was a strange thing to do. What would she even say? E7 is what you’re looking for?
She opened the door.
The hallway was narrow, lit by a single fluorescent tube. In the small space between Room 2 and Room 3 — beneath that light — a man was standing.
He was tall. He wore an expensive coat that had been badly wrinkled, the way something gets when you’ve been wearing it for days without hanging it up. He held his phone in one hand, one earbud in — the sound had been leaking from the other side. Dark circles under his eyes. His hair slightly disheveled. He looked up when Sea opened the door.
She didn’t know him. She’d never seen him in this gosiwon before.
He spoke first.
“…I’m sorry. Was the sound leaking through?”
His voice was low. He seemed flustered, but his expression gave almost nothing away. He slipped the phone into his pocket immediately.
“Yes.”
“I checked the earphones. I didn’t think it would still be audible.”
“…”
“I’m sorry for the disturbance.” He dipped his head briefly. When he looked back up, his eyes found hers.
Sea looked at him again. Newly moved in. The coat was wrong for this building — too expensive. But it was wrinkled in a way that said he hadn’t thought about it in days.
“That song.”
She said it. The man went still.
“The part you kept repeating.”
“…” He looked at her. “You could hear it that clearly?”
“Yes. The section right before the key change.”
Something shifted in his expression — barely perceptible, impossible to read. Surprise, maybe. Or something else.
“E7. That’s where it goes.”
Sea said it and moved to close the door.
“Wait.”
She stopped, door half shut. The fluorescent light in the hallway flickered. Same mismatched frequency as the one at the convenience store.
“How did you know? That it was E7.”
“…The progression.” Sea paused, then added, “Am to F, through C — E7 is the natural next step. But natural isn’t always right,” she said. “It depends on what you want the song to do.”
He was quiet.
“Is that all?”
“What do you think the song should want?”
Sea kept her hand on the doorknob and looked at him. It was a strange question. Not the kind of thing you asked a stranger in a gosiwon hallway at one in the morning. But it wasn’t a throwaway question. He meant it. He was asking because he genuinely didn’t know.
She considered it for a moment.
“Who wrote it?”
He paused.
“I did.”
“Then you’re the one who needs to know.”
Sea closed the door.
Back inside, she sat down at her desk. The screen still showed Am, F, exactly as she’d left them. She rested her hands over the keys.
E7.
She thought through why she’d said it. Am to F, through C — that was the chord sequence of longing. Of wanting to return to somewhere you couldn’t go back to. E7 was the most tension-filled choice from there, the one that held everything suspended right before resolution. The anxiety of something not yet settled. That had felt right.
Though it might change depending on what the man wanted.
She turned his question over. What do you think the song should want? It was strange that someone who’d written a song didn’t know what they wanted from it. And yet — maybe it wasn’t strange at all. Sea had moments like that too, when she didn’t know why she was writing something. Writing was how you found out. That was what composing was.
She typed F into the document. Then C. Then E7. Then Am.
A circle. Something that returns to itself.
She began humming a melody over those chords — barely any sound, just breath. No windows meant nothing leaked out. The melody brushed up against the words she’d noted by the river, and she felt them meet. Wide. Cold. Goes on anyway.
Two in the morning.
Sea kept writing. Words came — first scattered, then connected, then a line.
Most things that are wide are cold / but still we cross them
She looked at it for a moment. She didn’t know who it was about. Her mother, maybe. Or the Han River. Or what she’d felt earlier that night, hearing her own melody come out of a radio for the first time in a year and a half — something sinking and still moving forward at once.
She peeled off a Post-it note. Green — for work in progress.
She began writing down the chords and lyrics.