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# Chapter 5: A Business Card from Gangnam
Park In-cheol reached out again at eight o’clock that evening.
Sea-a had just finished her convenience store shift and was untying her apron when the KakaoTalk notification lit up her screen. She saw the name and her hands went still for a moment.
Na Sea-a, are you free tomorrow evening? There’s something I’d like to talk about. It’d be great if you could come to Gangnam.
She read the message once, slipped her phone into the apron pocket, then folded the apron and set it on the shelf. Grabbed her coat. Pushed through the convenience store door into the cold air, which wrapped around her throat — the aftermath of last night’s half-step key change was still there, a faint scraping sensation every time she swallowed.
She typed her reply while walking.
I’m free.
She sent it and dropped the phone into her bag. That was that. Sea-a knew what Gangnam was. She knew what it meant to be asked to meet there. She also knew that Park In-cheol had reached out to her first, for once. She turned all three facts over quietly in her mind, letting the arithmetic run its course.
Heading toward Hapjeong Station, she passed someone who smelled of cigarettes. For a second, the smell blurred into last night’s Underscore — blue stage light, that final song with the aching throat, the ankles of the audience. Sea-a cleared her throat once. Getting to Gangnam tomorrow would mean two transfers on the subway. Somehow, that was the first concrete thing that came to her.
Saturday, five in the afternoon. Sea-a came up through Exit 11 of Gangnam Station on Line 2.
The wind was different here. The wind in Hapjeong came off the river — low, damp, clinging. This wind had passed through the corridors between buildings. It was high and sharp, with something polished about it. Sea-a turned up her collar.
The address Park In-cheol had sent was a café in Yeoksam-dong, Gangnam-gu. Seven minutes on foot. She walked with the map app open. The buildings around her were nothing like Hapjeong — glass and steel, sleek signage on every ground floor, the coats of passersby cut from a different kind of fabric. She glanced down at her own coat. She’d bought it two years ago. She wasn’t sure if the color had faded. There was no mirror in her room.
The café was called Luna Coffee. Floor-to-ceiling glass walls, the whole street visible from inside. When Sea-a pushed open the door, the smell of roasting beans and a wave of warm air hit her at the same time. Park In-cheol was sitting by the window — baseball cap on, Americano half-finished in front of him. He raised a hand when he saw her.
“You made it.”
Sea-a nodded and sat down across from him. She didn’t take off her coat.
He spoke first. “What would you like to drink?”
“I’m fine.”
“Order something. The lattes here are good.”
She glanced at the menu. An Americano was sixty-five hundred won. Back in Hapjeong, she drank the convenience store coffee. Twelve hundred won. She didn’t know what accounted for the difference of fifty-three hundred won, and she had no desire to find out.
“Americano, then.”
Park In-cheol went to the counter to order. Sea-a looked out the window while he was gone. People flowed past in the direction of the Gangnam Station intersection. A Saturday afternoon in Gangnam. This wasn’t her first time here, but every time she came, the same strange feeling crept in — this was Seoul, and yet it wasn’t the Seoul she knew.
He came back and sat down. His eyes drifted slightly under the brim of his cap.
“First of all,” he said, “I’m sorry about how things turned out.”
Sea-a said nothing.
“When the arrangement went into JYA, the credits got restructured. And in that process — honestly — I didn’t protect your name.”
“Did you try?”
He paused. “Sorry?”
“Did you try to protect it.” Her voice was low and flat, without inflection. “Or did JYA ask for it from the start?”
Park In-cheol picked up his Americano, then set it back down. “…There are cases where agencies take the credit under an in-house composer. It’s common in this industry.”
“If it’s common, you should have told me.”
“That wasn’t an easy thing to bring up. You know how this industry works.”
She did know. That was exactly why she hadn’t said a word for two years. Because she knew, she’d handed over three songs without a credit. Because she knew, she’d waited even after he stopped calling. Sometimes knowing something was enough to make you completely powerless — more powerless than if you’d known nothing at all.
The Americano arrived. Sea-a wrapped both hands around the cup. The heat passed into her palms. Her cold hands thawed a little.
“So you asked to meet today to apologize?”
“No.” Park In-cheol met her eyes properly for the first time. “I have a proposal.”
The proposal was this.
Someone on the A&R team at JYA Entertainment had listened to the original demo of “By the Window” — the version before Park In-cheol’s arrangement, the version recorded in Sea-a’s own voice. That someone wanted to meet the original creator. His name was Kang Ri-u. Twenty-seven years old. The son of JYA’s CEO.
“Kang Ri-u wants to meet you.”
Sea-a turned the name over in her mind for a moment. Kang Ri-u. She’d never heard it before.
“Why?”
“He’s developing a new project and looking for a songwriter. Said your style might be a fit.”
“He could’ve contacted me directly.”
Park In-cheol gave a slightly awkward smile. “Then there’d be no place for me in this, would there.”
At least he was honest about it. Sea-a took a sip of her Americano. Bitter and hot. If there was a difference from the convenience store coffee — something deeper in the bitterness, maybe. Whether that was where the fifty-three hundred won went, she still couldn’t tell.
“What do I get out of this?”
“If you work on the JYA project, you get a proper credit, and the revenue split goes in the contract. This time it’ll be done right.”
“This time.”
“I mean—”
“What about the three songs from before.”
Park In-cheol went quiet. Sea-a set her cup down. It landed on the table louder than she expected.
“There’s nothing to say about those three songs?”
“That’s… realistically difficult, and you know that.”
She did know. There’d been no contracts signed, only verbal agreements, and the only proof she could offer that she’d written the originals was the demo files. Taking it to court would cost money. Money she didn’t have. And Park In-cheol knew that too.
Sea-a slid her hand into her coat pocket. Her fingers were cold — the same fingers that had thawed a few minutes ago and gone cold again.
“Give me Kang Ri-u’s contact.”
Park In-cheol looked briefly startled. “You’re deciding right now?”
“No. I’ll decide after I meet him. Give me the contact.”
He pulled out his phone and sent over the number. Sea-a saved it. Kang Ri-u. No profile photo on KakaoTalk. Just a black screen.
She finished her Americano and gathered her coat.
“Leaving already?”
“Yes.”
“Sea-a. This time it’ll really work out. Kang Ri-u — when he wants someone, he pushes. This is an opportunity.”
Standing up, she looked at him for a moment. Those eyes beneath the baseball cap — whether they were sincere or not, she decided not to judge. She didn’t want to spend the energy.
“Whether it’s an opportunity or not, I’ll find out when I meet him.”
She pushed through the café door and Gangnam’s wind cut across her throat again. High and sharp. She turned her collar up further.
On the subway home, Sea-a stared at the saved number for a long time.
Line 2 passed through Gyodae and pressed on toward Hapjeong. The Saturday evening train was packed. She stood holding a strap, not scrolling away from the screen. Kang Ri-u. Son of JYA’s CEO. A&R. Twenty-seven years old.
She knew what A&R was. Artists and Repertoire — discovering talent, shaping the musical direction. It had been the lifeblood of record companies once, but streaming had changed the role. She couldn’t remember where she’d read that. Probably stumbled across it in some late-night rabbit hole.
What kept nagging at her was that Kang Ri-u had listened to the original demo.
The demo she’d handed to Park In-cheol. The version in her own voice. Recorded on a smartphone, background noise included, no arrangement — just the skeleton she’d built with a few guitar chords. If he’d heard that and still wanted to meet her — it couldn’t have struck him as polished. And yet he’d asked anyway.
The train stopped at Hongik University Station. People streamed on and off. Sea-a didn’t move.
If it’s real.
She didn’t follow that thought to the end. Real or not, she’d have to meet him first. If she let herself hope before that — she knew how dangerous hoping was. Hope blurred the calculations. And when the calculations blurred, you ended up handing songs over without a credit all over again.
She got off at Hapjeong. Eight minutes’ walk to the goshiwon. She drafted the message as she walked.
Hello. This is Na Sea-a. I got your contact from Park In-cheol. Please reach out whenever it’s convenient for you.
She sent it and dropped the phone into her bag. Walked the corridor of the goshiwon to her room. Clicked on the lamp. A yellow circle bloomed in the dark.
She took off her coat and sat on the bed. Her throat hurt. Tomorrow there was an Underscore show. The day after, another one. With a daytime convenience store shift wedged in between.
She opened her laptop. Created a new file. A blank score appeared on the screen.
Her fingers lifted to the keyboard. Then stopped.
Everything she’d seen in Gangnam today was still inside her. The glass-walled café. The buildings of steel and light. The coats of a different texture. Park In-cheol’s eyes beneath his cap. The name Kang Ri-u. A black profile screen.
She closed the score file. Nothing was going to come tonight.
She turned off the light and lay down. Stared up at the ceiling in the dark. There was nothing there. No window, so no light either.
Sleep didn’t come.
The reply from Kang Ri-u came the following morning — Sunday, eleven o’clock.
Sea-a was twenty minutes from starting her daytime shift at the convenience store. She was brushing her teeth in the goshiwon’s shared bathroom when she felt her phone buzz on the edge of the sink. She checked it.
Hello. This is Kang Ri-u. I’ve been waiting to hear from you. Would Monday evening at six work for you, somewhere in Sinsa-dong? I’ll send the address.
Sea-a rinsed her mouth and looked in the mirror. The shared bathroom mirror of the Hapjeong goshiwon was blurry at the edges — her reflection looked slightly smeared. Hair pulled back. Dark circles under her eyes. Evidence of a night that hadn’t given her much sleep.
She sent her reply.
Yes. That works.
There was one day between now and Monday. In that day, Sea-a did two things.
The first was the Sunday evening show at Underscore. Her throat was still rough. Before the set she bought a ginger tea — twelve hundred won from the convenience store. She warmed her throat and checked the setlist. No songs transposed up a half step this time. That alone was enough.
The show ran two hours. On the last song, Sea-a stepped back half a pace from the mic stand — out of habit. A little distance from the mic lets the sound spread and takes some of the strain off the throat. The audience couldn’t tell. She’d never given the technique a name, and she used it without one. Naming it would have made it feel like a mistake.
Afterward, while Haneul was packing up the gear, she said, “Hey, that last song was really something tonight.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean it’s always good, but tonight it was different. Like you were somewhere else in your head while you were singing. And it actually made it better.”
Sea-a was folding the mic stand and said nothing. She wasn’t sure if her head had been somewhere else. She wasn’t sure if the name Kang Ri-u had slipped in between the verses. She’d thought she was just singing.
“Something going on?” Haneul asked, tucking her drumsticks into their case.
“No.”
“Liar. You have two different versions of ‘no.’ The actual no, and the don’t-want-to-talk-about-it no.”
Sea-a coiled the mic cable. “I got a message from JYA.”
Haneul’s hands went still. “JYA? The label with Park Sojin?”
“Yeah.”
“Saying what?”
“They want to meet.”
Haneul paused mid-zip on the drum case and looked at her. Sea-a finished coiling the cable to the very end.
“Na Sea-a.”
“What.”
“That’s the label that took your songs.”
“I know.”
“And you’re meeting them?”
“That’s why I have to.”
Haneul held her gaze for a beat. She looked like she had more to say. Sea-a knew that. But Haneul zipped the case shut and said instead:
“Eat something before you go.”
Sea-a nodded.
“I mean it. Look at your hands. Blocks of ice again. Ginger tea isn’t going to fix that — you need actual food.”
“I ate.”
“What did you eat.”
“…Convenience store stuff.”
“Oh my god.” Haneul picked up the drum case and stood. “I’m getting tteokbokki. You’re coming. If you say no, I’m calling the JYA guy first and telling him off.”
For the first time that day, the corner of Sea-a’s mouth lifted. “You don’t even have his number.”
“I’ll find it.”
They sat at a tteokbokki place in an alley near the club. A small table, one pot brought out and set between them. The red broth began to bubble, sending up a curl of steam. Rice cakes, fish cakes, boiled egg. Sea-a picked up her chopsticks.
Warm. Her hands thawed.
“Hey,” Haneul said, fishing out a fish cake. “What’s this JYA person’s name?”
“Kang Ri-u.”
“Kang Ri-u.” She said it once. “A&R, you said?”
“Yeah.”
“JYA’s CEO is Kang Min-jun, right? This is his kid?”
“That’s what Park In-cheol said.”
“Wow.” Haneul got a thinking look on her face. “Did you check his Instagram?”
“No.”
“Hold on.” She pulled out her phone. The sound of typing. “Kang Ri-u JYA… Oh, he’s got one. Seven hundred thousand followers. Damn, he’s actually good-looking.”
Sea-a ate her tteokbokki. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Just look. You should at least know what the person looks like before you go meet them.” Haneul slid the phone across the table.
Sea-a looked at the screen. A sparse account — not many posts. The last upload was three months ago. One photo caught her eye: a back shot of someone sitting at a piano. The background suggested somewhere high up. A city visible through the window. Hands resting on the keys. Long fingers, prominent knuckles.
She slid the phone back.
“What do you think?”
“Don’t know.”
“Did you see the hands? Pianist’s hands.”
“Yeah.”
“A piano player doing A&R?”
Sea-a didn’t answer. She dipped a rice cake into the broth. It burned her tongue.
Why someone who played piano was working A&R — that was something she’d have to find out in person.
Monday morning, Sea-a called home to Jeju.
Her mother picked up. Her voice was low and a little rough. She said she was taking her medication. Said she was feeling much better. Said Do-hyeon had cooked for her yesterday. Sea-a paused at that.
“Do-hyeon did?”
“Yeah. Made me egg fried rice. Too salty, but I ate it.”
Sea-a smiled quietly. No sound came out. Just the corners of her mouth.
“You doing all right up there?” her mother asked, slipping into Jeju dialect.
“Yes.”
“Eating?”
“I’m eating.”
“What’s wrong with your voice. You’ve got a cold, haven’t you.”
“I don’t.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
Sea-a was quiet for a moment. Her mother always knew. From a single sentence over the phone. Whether Sea-a hadn’t eaten, hadn’t slept, whether her throat hurt. Her mother had spent her life diving in the sea at Jeju, learning to hold her breath. She knew when her daughter was holding hers, too.
“I’m meeting someone important today. Music stuff. It’ll be fine.”
“Someone important?”
“For the music.”
A brief silence. Then her mother said: “It ought to go well.”
That was all. Not it’ll go well, not do your best. It ought to go well. Sea-a understood that this was her mother’s way. The way of someone who worked the sea. Saying it ought to go well was the same as saying she hoped it would. A wish delivered as a statement of necessity.
“I know.”
“Do-hyeon said he’s putting in his university applications. Make sure you’re keeping track of that.”
“I will.”
“Sea-a.”
“Yeah.”
“Eat something. For real.”
After she hung up, Sea-a sat for a moment with the phone in her hand. Alone in her goshiwon room. Under the yellow lamplight.
She sent Do-hyeon a KakaoTalk message.
Mom told me you cooked for her. Egg fried rice.
The reply came fast.
lol why’d she tell you it was salty. I know I can’t cook. but hey noona is something happening today? why are you randomly texting.
Sea-a thought for a second.
Nothing. Eat well.
His reply came.
when you say stuff like that it actually makes me MORE worried lol. stay safe wherever you’re going.
She set the phone down and stood in front of the camera on her phone — there was no mirror in the room, so she used that instead. Her face appeared on the screen. Hair tied back. She looked at it for a moment, then redid the tie. Tighter this time.
The café in Sinsa-dong was a different world entirely from Underscore.
It was called Fortnight — a name that meant nothing, but the space itself meant something. The entire two-story building was the café. The ground floor was open, the second floor divided into semi-private sections. Music played — jazz that Sea-a didn’t recognize, low and unhurried. High ceilings. Large windows. The Sinsa-dong street at six in the evening hung suspended in the glass like a painting.
Sea-a paused just inside the entrance. Looked down at her coat. Still couldn’t tell if the color had faded. Still didn’t want to know.
She went up the stairs. The directions hadn’t come from Park In-cheol — Kang Ri-u had sent the location himself. Second floor, window side. When she reached the top of the stairs, she could see the window table.
A man was sitting there.
Tall — you could tell even seated. He wore an expensive coat that was slightly rumpled. His hands rested on the table. Long fingers, prominent knuckles. He wasn’t looking at his phone. He was looking out the window, watching the Sinsa-dong evening like he was thinking through something. Dark circles under his eyes. So did Sea-a. Whether they came from the same place, she couldn’t say.
As she got closer, he turned.
Their eyes met.
She spoke first. “I’m Na Sea-a.”
He stood. Six-one, maybe six-two. A full head taller than her. “Kang Ri-u.”
They shook hands. His was warm. Hers was cold. That difference in temperature registered for exactly two-tenths of a second. His eyes dropped to her hand for the briefest moment, then came back up to her face.
They sat.
A server came over. Kang Ri-u ordered first — espresso. Sea-a ordered an Americano. After the server left, there was a short silence.
He spoke first. “I listened to the demo.”
Sea-a waited.
“Park In-cheol first brought it in and I heard it then. I passed on it at the time — it was the pre-arrangement version, so the production quality wasn’t there. But after Park Sojin’s release came out, I went back and found the original.”
“Why?”
“Because the two versions were different.”
Sea-a turned that over for a moment. “How.”
“Park Sojin’s version is good. A well-constructed song — built to chart. But—” Kang Ri-u paused. “Something that’s in the original isn’t there.”
“What’s in the original.”
He looked at her. A direct gaze — not appraising, not dismissive. Just looking. Like he was verifying something.
“I’m not sure. I can’t explain it.”
That answer wasn’t what she’d expected. “You went back and listened to it even though you couldn’t explain what it was?”
“Because not being able to explain it is rare. Most music can be explained — why this works, why that charts. There’s a formula. But that original was outside the formula.”
The drinks arrived. Kang Ri-u sipped his espresso. Sea-a wrapped both hands around her Americano. Her hands thawed.
“How did you write that song?”
Sea-a thought for a moment. How she’d written it. The overheard phone call in the goshiwon corridor — an old woman’s voice, its pitch sinking low. The sound of her mother’s숨비소리, surfacing from the sea.
“I listened.”
“To what?”
“A sound. A person’s sound.”
Kang Ri-u set down his espresso. “A person’s sound.”
“Someone was on the phone. I couldn’t make out the words — just the cadence. The way the voice moved. It sounded like someone who knows that something is coming to an end but also knows it won’t end yet. I turned that into a melody.”
Kang Ri-u looked at her. A different look from before. Before, it had been verifying. Now it was — she couldn’t find the exact word. Stilled. Like something in him had stopped moving.
“Someone who knows it’s coming to an end but knows it won’t end yet.” He repeated the words slowly.
“That’s the song.”
A silence settled over them. Outside, the Sinsa-dong evening had grown darker. The café lights, by contrast, seemed to brighten.
“If you raised the melody a half step in the second verse,” Kang Ri-u said, “it would hurt more.”
Sea-a went still.
Something in those words snagged on her — exactly. If the second verse went up a half step — she’d always known that. From the moment she first wrote the song, she’d known. She just hadn’t put it in the demo. She’d wanted to leave the original as it was. Hadn’t been ready to use that possibility yet.
And Kang Ri-u had heard it. The unused potential living inside the song.
Sea-a took a sip of her Americano. It was still hot.
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you put it in?”
“It wasn’t time yet.”
He looked at her. Just for a moment. Then gave a slight nod. Agreement, or something else — she couldn’t tell.
“I’m developing a project,” he said. “A new artist launch. I want to do it differently from the usual JYA approach. The songwriter’s name goes on properly. Credits, copyright, revenue split — all of it in the contract, all of it transparent.”