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# Chapter 4: A Hand She’d Never Seen Before
She had saved his number under the name “Producer Park In-cheol.”
Sea-ah stared at it. Hapjeong Station, Line 2, 11 a.m. She’d come home after last night’s show and a closing shift at the convenience store, slept three hours, and dragged herself back up. Her eyes burned. Her knees felt slightly unsteady. She couldn’t tell anymore whether it was the sleep deprivation or her voice — she’d pushed through “At the Edge of Night” a half-step up, her throat had scraped on the final high note, Jeong-ho had said nothing, and Ha-neul had grabbed her hand after the show and gone, “Hey, why are your hands so cold?”
The train rumbled into the station. Sea-ah turned off her screen and slipped the phone into her pocket.
She didn’t call.
It wasn’t that she didn’t know what to say — she knew exactly. “I heard ‘By the Window.’ Park So-jin’s song. That’s my song. What happened to the credits?” Simple enough. Twelve syllables. But to actually say those twelve syllables required something beyond just opening her mouth. She knew what it was. Not courage, exactly. Something more fundamental than that — the belief that she had the right to say it at all.
The doors slid open. People poured out. Sea-ah let herself be carried inside with the current.
Her destination was Gangnam. More specifically, Nonhyeon-dong, Gangnam-gu — a place called Sound Republic, a mid-sized recording studio. A month ago, a DM had appeared in her inbox. The account was @kimjisoo_music, the bio read Freelance Producer / Session Work Inquiries DM. The message itself was brief: “Looking for a session vocalist. Heard you at Underscore — your voice is something. Any chance you could come by?” Sea-ah had replied a week later. “When.” That was the entire conversation.
She hadn’t taken a week to think it over. She simply hadn’t seen the notification. Sea-ah barely used social media. She had an account — twenty-three followers, last post two years ago. A photo of the sea in Jeju. Taken right before her mother waded in. Her mother’s back, a black diving suit, and the ocean stretching out before her.
That photo had gotten twelve likes. Sea-ah had never checked who they were from.
The entrance to Sound Republic was tucked into a back alley in Nonhyeon-dong. The building itself was unremarkable — an ordinary commercial block, a flower shop on the ground floor, and a small sign above a staircase leading underground. Sound Republic — Recording / Production Studio. Clean-looking sign. Not the hand-lettered, scotch-taped kind they had at Underscore — this looked laser-cut. Sea-ah noticed the difference as she descended. The smell of money.
At the bottom of the stairs was a reception area. Not small. A sofa, a coffee machine, album covers framed and mounted along the walls. Sea-ah scanned them. She recognized some of the names — all JYA Entertainment artists. Park So-jin’s debut EP was there too. The one that had “By the Window” on it.
She looked away.
“Na Sea-ah?” the receptionist said. “He’s in Booth 2. Right this way.”
The hallway ran between two rows of booths, each with a soundproofed door and a small square of glass. Through the window of Booth 1, someone sat alone playing guitar. No sound — the insulation was good. Sea-ah watched the person’s lips move. Mouthing lyrics. A person singing on the other side of soundproof glass, completely silent. There was something unsettling about it. A song with no voice.
The receptionist stopped at Booth 2 and knocked. A voice came from inside — “Come in.” Low and unhurried. The kind of voice that takes its time.
The door opened.
The first thing Sea-ah noticed was the hands.
Resting on the mixing console. Long fingers, prominent knuckles. A pianist’s hands — she knew the shape. She’d taken piano lessons briefly as a child in Jeju, and her teacher had pointed to exactly this kind of hand: the long ring finger, the wide palm. Those hands were nudging a fader up, then back down, by the smallest increment.
Then she saw his face.
He was looking at the monitors. Hadn’t turned around. His hair was slightly long — just enough to brush the back of his neck. He wore expensive clothes, badly rumpled. White shirt, sleeves pushed up to the elbows. Dark circles under his eyes.
“Sit down.”
Still facing the screen. Sea-ah took the chair inside the booth. A compact space — mixing console straight ahead, recording booth visible through the glass, two chairs. Someone’s coat was draped over the one she’d sat in. She picked it up and set it carefully on the console beside her.
He turned around then.
A face she’d never seen before. Not striking at first glance — the kind of face that accumulated on you. His eyes were deep-set. The dark circles were worse than she’d initially thought. And the way he looked at her was odd. Most people, meeting someone for the first time, look at their face. He looked at her hands first.
“Kang Ri-u.” He said it plainly. “I’m the one who reached out.”
Sea-ah thought for a moment. The account that had messaged her was Kim Ji-soo.
“Wasn’t it a Kim Ji-soo who contacted me?”
“Assistant’s account.” Straightforward, no apology. “Too many messages if I use my own name.”
Sea-ah filed that away. A person whose name, used directly, brings too many messages. Kang Ri-u. The name nagged at something — she couldn’t place exactly where she’d heard it.
“You mentioned session work,” she said. “What’s the track?”
“One moment.”
He turned back to the console. Picked up a pair of headphones, set them down again. Looking for something. Sea-ah waited. The air conditioning hummed steadily. The room was a comfortable temperature, but her hands were cold. They always were.
He pulled up a file. Sound came through the speakers.
Piano. Solo. No arrangement, no vocal — just a single piano. Slow tempo, dense harmony. Quartal chords stacked in layers, technically in C major but with no desire to sound like it. Without meaning to, Sea-ah felt her fingers start to move. Against her knee. Following the chord changes.
The piece was maybe twenty seconds. It didn’t loop — it simply ended. Then silence.
“What is this?” Sea-ah asked.
“The session work,” he said. “I need a vocal.”
“You want me to lay something over this?”
“If that’s possible.”
She heard the if. He didn’t know if it was possible either. Sea-ah asked him to play it again. Once more, and then once more after that. Three times total. By the third, her fingers were tracing something different — not a vocal line to sit on top of the piano, but a sense of where the piano itself wanted to go. Her fingers knew it before her mind did.
“This piece,” Sea-ah said. “Did you write it yourself?”
A brief silence.
“Why?”
“It feels different. From label work.”
He looked at her. Weighing something. Sea-ah didn’t look away. She wasn’t trying to stare him down — she was simply looking, the way some people just look without it meaning anything.
“Just try it,” he said. “Go into the booth and do whatever comes out.”
“What about lyrics?”
“There aren’t any.”
“How am I supposed to work without lyrics?”
“However you manage.”
Sea-ah looked at him. He meant it — she could tell. Not a test, not a joke. He genuinely wanted however you manage. She stood up from her chair.
The recording booth was small. A single mic stand, a set of headphones, acoustic foam underfoot. Sea-ah put on the headphones and stepped up to the mic. Through the glass she could see Kang Ri-u at the console. He adjusted something, then spoke through the intercom.
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll start the piano. Begin when you’re ready.”
The piano began. Through headphones it was different — closer than the speakers, each note’s decay more distinct, more present. Sea-ah closed her eyes. Her fingers moved again — in the air this time, not tracing chord shapes but reaching for a melody. She hadn’t made a sound yet.
At the third bar, she opened her mouth.
No lyrics, so she gave it sound. Vowels only. Somewhere between ah and oh, in the space between defined sounds. Different from how she sang at Underscore as a session vocalist, where you followed a melody that already existed. This was something else — watching the direction the piano moved and building a separate path alongside it. Parallel, but heading the same way.
She started low for the first eight bars. The bottom of her range — the part she rarely used at Underscore, because every song on Jeong-ho’s setlists lived in the middle register. But the low end was where Sea-ah felt most at home. Her throat didn’t fight her there. She could hold more of whatever she needed to hold.
The piano modulated. She followed — or rather, she didn’t follow. When the piano turned right, she turned left. The opposite direction. And somehow it fit. Like a mirror.
Then came the final passage.
Sea-ah opened her eyes. She looked through the glass. Kang Ri-u had taken his hands off the console. He was watching her — not adjusting anything, not touching the faders. Just watching. She held his gaze as she drew out the last note — two full beats past where the piano ended — and then slowly let it close.
Silence settled.
She could hear her own breathing inside the headphones. She took them off. His voice came through the intercom.
“Come out.”
When she came back through the door, Kang Ri-u was studying the monitor. Sea-ah returned to her chair. He was looking at the waveform of what they’d just recorded — the shape of her voice on a screen. There was something strange about seeing it like that. Her voice, rendered as peaks and valleys. It exists. It looks like this.
“Let’s hear it back,” he said.
The playback came through the speakers — piano and voice together. Sea-ah had never liked hearing herself on recordings. Always off from what she’d imagined, too sharp or too low. But this time was different. Strangely, it didn’t feel foreign. This sounded like her. Not the voice that said “Welcome” at the convenience store counter. Not the voice performing whatever Jeong-ho had put on the setlist. This. This is me.
The recording ended.
Kang Ri-u was quiet for a long moment. Sea-ah didn’t speak either. Only the air conditioning.
“That last section,” he said. “You went against the piano.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Sea-ah thought. Explaining the reasoning in words was always hard. Translating instinct into language.
“If the voice goes down with the piano, the same feeling happens twice,” she said. “One of them disappears. But if you go the other way — both can exist at the same time.”
Kang Ri-u looked at her.
“What does that mean — both at the same time?”
“When the sadness goes down, something else rises. The sadness doesn’t disappear — something new appears beside it. And then the sadness isn’t as heavy.”
Silence.
He turned back to the monitor. The sound of mouse clicks. Sea-ah didn’t watch what he was doing. She wasn’t sure whether what she’d just said was right or wrong. She’d never said it out loud to a stranger before.
“Can you do it again?” he asked. “Just this section.” He dragged across a portion of the waveform with his mouse. “Here to here. But this time — keep your eyes open.”
“Eyes open?”
“With your eyes closed, you’re alone. With them open, someone else is there.”
Sea-ah sat with that. It was strangely precise. At Underscore she always closed her eyes. Easier not to see the audience — she could sing as though no one was watching. But that also meant singing as though no one was there at all.
“All right.”
After the second take, Kang Ri-u studied the waveforms for a long time. Sea-ah came out of the booth and sat down, drinking from a bottle of water she’d grabbed at reception. Her throat wasn’t good — it had been slightly raw since last night, and the two takes had made it worse. She didn’t let it show.
“How long have you been at Underscore?” he asked, still watching the monitor.
“A year and a half.”
“Before that?”
“Jeju.”
“What did you do there?”
Sea-ah considered. The answers were many. She’d gone to high school, arranged her father’s funeral, stayed by her mother’s side the day the sea was taken from her, walked her younger brother Do-hyeon to school, and she’d sung — in places no one could hear. On the hillside, on the breakwater, in the kitchen while her mother slept. She didn’t know which of those to give him.
“Just lived,” she said.
“Where did you learn composition?”
“I didn’t.”
For the first time, Kang Ri-u pulled his eyes from the monitor and looked at her directly. Fully. Sea-ah didn’t flinch.
“You didn’t,” he repeated. Not a question.
“No.”
“Then how did you know what you just said? About both things existing at once.”
“You don’t need to know music theory to have listened to music.”
Kang Ri-u almost laughed — the kind that barely makes a sound. Sea-ah tried to decide if it was dismissive, then realized it wasn’t. It was the laugh of someone who hadn’t expected something.
“Do you come to this studio often?” Sea-ah asked.
“Sometimes. I have my own space.”
“Are you with JYA?”
A small pause.
“Why?” he asked.
“The albums on the wall. I recognized a face.”
She didn’t specify whose. Kang Ri-u seemed to consider something for a moment, then said:
“I have ties to them. A&R side.”
“I see.”
“Is that a problem?”
“No.”
She didn’t say it was a problem. She didn’t know yet whether it was or wasn’t. JYA. Park So-jin’s label. “By the Window” had come from there. Park So-jin’s EP was on the wall of this studio. And Kang Ri-u was JYA A&R.
The dots were connecting. She just couldn’t see the picture yet.
“Is this the session work?” Sea-ah asked. “Laying vocals over this piano?”
“For now.”
“For now.”
“It might change later.”
She started to ask what that meant, then didn’t. Sea-ah had a habit of separating what needed to be known now from what could wait. If it changed later, she’d find out then.
“What’s the rate,” she said.
He looked at her. Slightly caught off guard — like the question had come sooner than he’d expected.
“Session fee?”
“Yes.”
“Fifty thousand an hour. We worked two hours today, so a hundred thousand.”
“Send it to my account.”
“…Okay.”
He took out his phone and asked for her account number. She read it out. KakaoBank. While he processed the transfer, Sea-ah gathered her things. As she stood, she noticed his coat — still sitting on the console where she’d placed it. She picked it up and hung it properly over the back of the chair.
“When are you available next?” Kang Ri-u asked.
She thought through her week. Underscore shows on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Convenience store night shifts on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. The only open window was Wednesday afternoon.
“Wednesday afternoon.”
“What time?”
“Two o’clock.”
“Got it.”
That was the end of it. Sea-ah walked out of the booth, down the hall, through reception, and up the stairs. She emerged into the afternoon light of Nonhyeon-dong and it hit her all at once. She squinted. The flower shop beside the entrance breathed out its scent — chrysanthemums, damp soil. She stood still for a moment.
Her phone buzzed. A KakaoPay notification: Na Sea-ah, Kang Ri-u has sent you ₩100,000.
She confirmed it and slipped the phone back into her pocket. Started walking toward the subway. The piano melody from earlier was looping in her head. And over it, her own voice. Both things, together. Sadness descending, and something else rising alongside it.
The odd thing was, her steps felt lighter going home than they had coming here. She wasn’t entirely sure why. Could be the hundred thousand won. Could be something else. She decided to figure that out later.
On her way back to the gosiwon in Hapjeong-dong, she stopped at a GS25.
One triangle kimbap, one warm canned coffee. She ate at the plastic table outside under the awning. She worked the night shift at this particular convenience store, so she usually knew whoever was at the counter — but this was the afternoon rotation, a stranger. That suited her. No need to wave.
The kimbap was tuna mayo. She tore the wrapper the wrong way and it fell apart. She ate it in pieces. The canned coffee was too sweet. She didn’t like sweet things, but she needed the sugar — she hadn’t eaten properly since the night before. The last real thing she’d had was half an expiring sandwich at the convenience store around 3 a.m.
She checked her phone. KakaoTalk from Do-hyeon.
Do-hyeon: noona what r u doing today
Do-hyeon: i skipped academy lol
Do-hyeon: ah dont worry i had a reason
Do-hyeon: actually you can worry tbh
She looked at that for a moment.
Sea-ah: why did you skip
Do-hyeon: oh band practice
Do-hyeon: it overlapped with the time
Do-hyeon: but noona dont be mad it was literally just this once
Sea-ah: who pays for the academy
Do-hyeon: …noona does
Sea-ah: then go
Do-hyeon: lolol okay okay starting next week
Do-hyeon: but noona did u eat
Sea-ah: yeah
Do-hyeon: what did u eat
Sea-ah: triangle kimbap
Do-hyeon: that’s not food tho ㅠ
Do-hyeon: oh also noona
Do-hyeon: mom said she wants to see the ocean today
Do-hyeon: she asked me when you’re coming
Sea-ah set down the canned coffee. She wants to see the ocean. It had been three years since her mother stopped diving. Her knees had given out — that happened to haenyeo, if they worked long enough. Her mother had known. She’d always known. That was probably why she’d kept going so long. Whenever Sea-ah thought about that, something in her chest turned briefly to stone.
Sea-ah: I’ll come next month
Do-hyeon: ok I’ll tell her
Do-hyeon: noona how’s your throat? how was last night
Sea-ah: fine
Do-hyeon: liar
Sea-ah: why
Do-hyeon: people who are actually fine don’t say they’re fine lol
Sea-ah: …
She typed a reply, deleted it. Typed another, deleted that too. She finally sent a single sticker — a thumbs-up. Do-hyeon replied with a heart.
She finished the kimbap scraps. Finished the coffee. Gathered the trash from the table. She was about to stand up but sat for another moment instead. The street in front of her was full of afternoon Hapjeong-dong life — people filing out of cafés, parents pushing strollers, college students with earphones walking somewhere. Everyone moving in their own direction. Sea-ah tried to hear the rhythm of their footsteps. Each person their own tempo. Quick ones, slow ones, ones that hesitated for half a beat.
Kang Ri-u’s piano started again in her head.
Sea-ah opened her phone’s notes app and started writing with her finger. Everything she’d heard today — the harmonic structure of the piano, the direction her own voice had taken, the feeling of two things existing at once. It was becoming a melody. Unfinished, skeletal. But the bones rang true.
She saved the note and put the phone away. Tossed the trash, stood up, and headed toward the gosiwon. She needed to get back to her room, boot up the laptop, transcribe the chords properly. Plug in the adapter — watching where she stepped so she wouldn’t trip over the cord. Get out the Post-its. She’d use green. Green was for things still in progress.
She’d barely stepped through the gosiwon door when her phone rang.
Unknown number. Sea-ah glanced at it, then answered.
“Na Sea-ah?”
A woman’s voice. Clear, with a slightly low register. A trained voice — the kind of projection that came from years in front of a microphone.
“Yes.”
“This is Park So-jin.”
Sea-ah’s hand stopped on the door handle.
“…Sorry?”
“Park So-jin, from JYA. Oh — you might not know who I am.”
“I know who you are.”
Sea-ah pushed the door open and went inside. She switched on the lamp. A circle of yellow light appeared. She was still holding her bag, phone pressed to her ear, mind already running. Why was Park So-jin calling. How did she have this number. What was she about to say.
“How did you get my number?” Sea-ah said.
“From In-cheol oppa.”
Park In-cheol. Sea-ah sat down on the edge of the bed.
“He gave it to you?”
“I asked him for it. I know this is a really weird way to call someone.” Park So-jin’s voice shifted, slightly awkward. “But I needed to say something.”
“What is it?”
A brief silence. Sea-ah sat with it, her eyes drifting to the Post-its on the wall. Mostly pink ones. Things she’d meant to throw away and hadn’t.
“’By the Window,’” Park So-jin said. “That song. I didn’t write it.”
Sea-ah said nothing.
“You wrote it,” Park So-jin continued. Her voice wavered slightly. “I — the company told me it was an in-house track. So I just took it and recorded it. But In-cheol oppa told me today. By accident. He’d been drinking. He let it slip that someone else actually wrote it.”
Sea-ah sat on the bed. Her coat still on. The room was small. Only the lamplight. A room with no window, where you could never tell what time it was.
“And?” Sea-ah said.
“And — what are you going to do?” Park So-jin asked. “About all of this.”
Sea-ah heard the question. What are you going to do. She wasn’t sure if she had an answer. No — she’d always had one. It had been there from the beginning. She just hadn’t let it leave her mouth. Like those twelve syllables.
“I don’t know yet,” Sea-ah said. “I need to think about it.”
“I can help,” Park So-jin said. “Whatever you decide. I was wronged too, in a way.”
Sea-ah heard that. I was wronged too. She couldn’t decide yet whether it was true or not. Even if Park So-jin hadn’t known — the song had charted at number four under her name. Sea-ah’s name hadn’t been anywhere on it. That fact didn’t change.
But.
She looked at the pink Post-its on the wall. Things she’d meant to throw away and hadn’t. Every single one of them had a melody written on it. No lyrics, just chord progressions. Things that might someday be finished, or might not.
“I’m saving your number,” Sea-ah said. “I’ll be in touch.”
“Okay,” Park So-jin said. “I’ll wait.”
The call ended.
Sea-ah set the phone on the bed. Took off her coat. Opened the laptop. Plugged in the adapter — watching her feet as she did, making sure she wouldn’t kick it loose. Took out the Post-its. Pulled a green one.
She wrote down Kang Ri-u’s piano in chords. The motion of his hand lifting the fader and letting it fall. What she’d seen through the glass during the second take, singing with her eyes open. All of it in notation. And then, below the last line, one more:
When sadness goes down, something else rises.
She pressed the Post-it to the wall. Next to the other green ones.