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# Chapter 10: Kang Riwoo, the Second Time
The beer can was empty.
Sea-a stood it upright on the table and stroked Jangpan’s back. The cat seemed to be already asleep — eyes half-closed, breathing slow and even. Cats always know when they’re somewhere warm. That’s what separates them from people, Sea-a thought. People can be somewhere warm and still pretend they’re cold.
“Hey.”
Haneul spoke. She’d just finished her second can. Haneul was the type who didn’t get drunk — or more precisely, the type whose eyes stayed exactly the same whether she was drunk or not. Sea-a had envied that once. The ability to keep your feelings off your face.
“Yeah.”
“You know Kang Riwoo?”
Sea-a’s hand went still on Jangpan’s back.
“JYA CEO’s son.” Haneul set her can on the floor. “Was he at the meeting today?”
“No.”
“Huh.” Haneul pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. “I looked at his Instagram. It’s a music account — 800,000 followers. Just music. Album reviews, concert write-ups, and every now and then a video of him playing piano.”
“Piano.”
“Yeah. But nothing’s been uploaded lately. Over a year now. No piano videos.”
Sea-a filed that somewhere in the back of her mind. Not like opening a drawer and putting something away — more like setting it on the corner of a table. Something she might come back to later, or might just leave there.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“If you’re signing exclusively with JYA, he’ll be connected to it. In practical terms.” Haneul said. “He’s in the A&R team, apparently. But it’s his dad’s company, so who knows how much he operates on his own.”
“…Where do you even get this stuff?”
“Lots of music industry clients. For tattoos.” Haneul shrugged. “There are certain types of people who treat their forearms like canvases. Musicians, chefs, military. They all love to talk.”
Sea-a laughed a little. A soundless laugh — just the corners of her mouth lifting.
“Stay over.” Haneul said.
“It’s fine.”
“You’ll just go back to that tiny room and write something at three in the morning.”
Sea-a didn’t deny it. Haneul could only say that because she’d known Sea-a long enough. Long enough to know that stress meant melodies at two a.m. And that those melodies would get tucked into a drawer the next day like they’d never existed.
“What are you going to do when you get back?” Haneul asked.
“…Sleep.”
“Liar.”
Sea-a said nothing.
“The fold-out bed’s narrow,” Haneul said. “Jangpan’s going to climb up anyway. But if that’s too much, you can go.”
Sea-a sat on the floor cushion and thought for a moment. The smell of her goshiwon room rose in her mind — the smell of a space that never got any air. Walls so thin she could hear her neighbor’s alarm. The pipes clanking at three in the morning like someone knocking.
“I’ll stay.”
The next morning, it was Jangpan who woke her.
The cat was sitting right beside Sea-a’s face. Close enough that her nose was almost touching Sea-a’s ear. Warm, the way only a cat can be warm against one side of your face.
Sea-a opened her eyes. The ceiling was low. Basement ceilings always are.
She checked her phone. 8:12 a.m. Her convenience store shift started at ten.
She got up slowly. Jangpan stepped aside. Haneul was still asleep, taking up more than half the fold-out bed. Haneul was a person who slept a lot — said sleep was her job, that a tattoo artist couldn’t have shaky hands.
Sea-a put on her shoes and eased the door open.
Outside was overcast. The Hongdae alley smelled different in the morning than it did at night — at night it was beer and fried food and cigarettes; in the morning it was wet asphalt and trash bags and coffee. Sea-a thought the morning smell was more honest.
She made her way out of the alley and onto the main street, checking her phone. One KakaoTalk message.
From: Park Incheol.
“Good work yesterday, Na Sea-a. Something I’d like to talk to you about. Reach out when you have time.”
Sea-a read it and slipped the phone back in her pocket. She walked and thought — something I’d like to talk to you about. Whether it was about something not in the contract, or a follow-up on something that was. Could be both. Could be neither.
She was heading toward Hongik University Station when she passed a GS25. The automatic doors slid open and a wave of air conditioning rolled out. She stopped, then went in.
One triangle kimbap, one warm canned coffee.
Standing at the register, she remembered telling Haneul last night that she’d eaten. When Haneul asked what, she’d said convenience store. Now it was convenience store again. The pattern hadn’t changed. A whole day had passed.
She paid and walked out, peeling open the kimbap wrapper as she went.
Should’ve grabbed something other than tuna mayo, she thought.
It was tuna mayo.
Her shift ended at two in the afternoon.
Sea-a took off her apron and stood in front of the small mirror in the back room. It was barely big enough to fit her face. Sea-a didn’t particularly like looking at herself — not dislike, exactly, just an unfamiliar habit. She never quite understood what people who stared at mirrors for long stretches were actually seeing.
She took out her phone. She needed to reply to Park Incheol.
I’m free this afternoon.
She typed it and deleted it.
Could you tell me what it’s about first?
She typed it and deleted it.
What she finally sent was:
I’m available.
Three words. Park Incheol replied within five minutes.
“How about a café in Hapjeong? Three o’clock.”
Sea-a paused at the word Hapjeong. A JYA person coming to Hapjeong — she wasn’t sure why, but it felt like the terrain was shifting. People who’d pulled out contracts in Gangnam were coming to Hapjeong. She still couldn’t tell if that was consideration or strategy.
Sure.
She sent it.
The café was near Exit 2 of Hapjeong Station.
Sea-a knew the place — a café with no name. Technically it had a sign, but no words on it. Just a blue circle. The locals called it “the blue place.” The coffee was strong and the chairs were uncomfortable, which meant people didn’t linger. That was exactly why Sea-a liked it.
Park Incheol was already there.
When she walked in, he was at a window seat, scrolling through his phone. He looked different from yesterday’s conference room — not a suit, but a dark grey sweatshirt and jeans. He looked less like a company person and more like just a person. Whether that was intentional, she couldn’t say.
He looked up.
“You’re here. Sit down.”
Sea-a sat across from him. The chair was wooden. No backrest. Uncomfortable.
“What can I get you?”
“Americano.”
Park Incheol went to the counter to order. Sea-a looked out the window. A Hapjeong afternoon. A few people moved through the alley — someone walking a dog, someone pushing a bicycle, someone striding fast with earphones in. The fast walker’s earphone cord swayed. Wired, not wireless. Sea-a used wired too. Better sound.
Park Incheol came back and sat down.
“How did the meeting feel yesterday?”
“You already asked me that.”
“In the elevator — and you didn’t really answer.”
Sea-a acknowledged that. It was true she hadn’t answered.
“You said you had something to tell me.”
“Right.” Park Incheol put his elbows on the table. His posture was more relaxed than it had been in the conference room. “What Team Leader Yoo proposed yesterday — that’s JYA’s official offer. But I’m not on their staff.”
Sea-a looked at him.
“I’m an independent producer. A collaborator with JYA. I was in that room because I produced ‘By the Window.’”
“…Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because yesterday wasn’t the right moment.” Park Incheol said, wrapping his hands around his coffee cup as it arrived. “I was sitting in that room like I wasn’t on your side. That bothered me.”
Sea-a let those words sit for a moment.
The coffee came. An Americano was set in front of her. Black and hot. She cupped it in both hands. The heat moved into her palms.
“So what are you trying to say?”
Park Incheol looked like he was choosing his words. He scratched the back of his head once.
“The thing is,” he said, “Kang Riwoo wants to meet you.”
Sea-a didn’t set down her cup.
The heat stayed in her hands. Holding something warm helped her focus. That was half the reason she bought warm drinks in winter — not to drink them, but to hold them.
“Kang Riwoo.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Park Incheol took a sip of his coffee. He didn’t answer right away. It was a silence of someone choosing what to say — not the silence of not knowing, but of selecting.
“He heard ‘By the Window.’ The original.”
“The original.”
“The first demo you sent to Park Sojin. The file on her phone.”
Sea-a’s cup shifted slightly in her hands. Barely enough for anyone else to notice. But she noticed.
There was a demo file. Recorded on the voice memo app when she first sent it to Park Sojin. No arrangement, no mixing — just Sea-a’s voice and one guitar. Nothing like the version currently on streaming. “Nothing like” didn’t quite cover it — it was a completely different song. Same melody, different temperature. When production gets added, a song becomes cleaner, but something gets lost. Sea-a couldn’t name exactly what, but she knew: there was something in the demo that the released version didn’t have.
And Kang Riwoo had heard it.
“How did he hear it?”
“Park Sojin played it for him. He asked if there was an original during a song meeting.”
“Why did he ask?”
“He said the released version felt off somehow. Like that melody wasn’t born looking like that.”
Sea-a set her cup down on the table. It made a small sound. Park Incheol looked at her.
He heard it.
She didn’t know where to put that. It wasn’t that she felt good, exactly. It wasn’t that she felt unsettled. It was that someone — not just anyone, but the son of JYA’s CEO, someone in A&R — had heard not the finished version but the demo. And had noticed something was different.
Sea-a knew what it felt like when she heard a violin. The single beat before the bow moved — when no sound had come yet but the music had already begun. That’s what this felt like. Nothing had been decided. And yet something had already started.
“What does he mean by wanting to meet?”
“He wants to talk about music.”
“As a JYA person?”
Park Incheol thought for a moment.
“…That line is probably never entirely clear for Riwoo. Even to himself.”
Sea-a listened to that answer quietly.
“Do I have to meet him?”
“No. It’s not a requirement.” Park Incheol said. “But I thought you should know. Better than having it happen behind your back.”
Sea-a looked out the window. The alley had emptied out. The overcast sky had grown a shade darker. The color of rain coming.
“I’ll think about it.”
Park Incheol nodded. He didn’t push further. Sea-a appreciated that — the absence of persuasion. She couldn’t tell whether he knew that not pushing was sometimes the strongest push of all. Either way, the silence didn’t bother her.
She finished her coffee. Park Incheol reached for his wallet. Sea-a pulled out her card first.
“I’ll get it.”
“No, let me—”
“This is my neighborhood.”
Park Incheol stopped, then laughed. He was the kind of person whose eyes crinkled when he smiled.
“Can’t argue with that.”
When they stepped outside, a few drops of rain were already falling.
Sea-a didn’t have an umbrella. She never did. It wasn’t that she thought umbrellas were a waste of money — it was just a habit she’d never broken, forgetting to carry one. When it rained, she got wet. That was her way.
Park Incheol opened his umbrella.
“Come under.”
“I’m fine.”
“Rain’s bad for your voice.”
Sea-a paused. He was right. For a session vocalist, her voice was her livelihood.
She stepped under the umbrella. Park Incheol was nearly thirty centimeters taller, so it tilted toward her side.
“Are you heading to Hapjeong Station?”
“Yeah.”
They walked. Rain pattered on the canopy above them. Soft, still — not the full storm yet.
“Sea-a.” Park Incheol said.
“Yes.”
“If you meet Riwoo, just remember one thing.”
“I haven’t said I’m meeting him.”
“I have a feeling you will.” He said it not as certainty but as something known from experience. “He’s honest when he talks about music. But once the conversation turns to business, he changes. You need to know where that line is.”
Sea-a walked and listened. The asphalt was beginning to darken with rain. The toes of her shoes were getting wet.
“Do you know where that line is?” she asked.
Park Incheol was quiet for a beat.
“…Honestly, it’s not always clear to me either.”
They reached the entrance to Hapjeong Station and she stepped out from under the umbrella. A few drops landed on her shoulder. She started toward the stairs, then turned back.
“I’ll be in touch.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Sea-a went down the stairs. The underground air was different — humid, faintly sweet. The particular smell of subway stations was one she’d known for a long time. When she caught that smell, it meant she was in transit. Either going somewhere or coming back.
Today she wasn’t sure which.
She got back to the goshiwon at five in the evening.
She went into her room, took off her jacket, and sat on the edge of the bed. It was narrow enough that she had to lean back against the wall. She looked up at the ceiling. There was a stain up there — one that had been there since the day she moved in. She sometimes wondered what it was. A watermark. Pre-mold. Or just the trace of something old.
She checked her phone. A KakaoTalk from Dohyeon.
“noona what r u doing. i want chicken but no one to buy it for me.”
She typed back.
“Go to class and study.”
“lmaooo noona is so mean lol but seriously did u actually eat today”
“I ate.”
“What.”
“…Convenience store.”
“bro na sea-a i mean na-noona lmao that’s not food that’s legendary suffering lol but fr tho I’m actually worried. don’t spend money on my tuition i’m gonna get a scholarship anyway so stop.”
Sea-a read that message and went still for a moment.
Dohyeon did this sometimes. Wrapped his worry in a joke and sent it. He seemed to think she didn’t notice. She did. She always did. And that made it — she stopped herself there.
“You know you have to study to get that scholarship.”
“yeah yeah i know. i’m doing it rn. while eating chicken.”
“Where’d you get chicken?”
“friend bought it.”
“Study.”
“oknoona eatsomelunchforreal”
The last message had no spaces. Sea-a read it twice.
She put her phone on the bed and opened her guitar case. Her guitar was a Yamaha acoustic. Four years old. A sticker on the headstock — Haneul had put it there, and Sea-a had never taken it off. A little whale.
She took it out and set it across her lap.
She didn’t play anything.
She just held it. The weight settled into her thighs. The warmth of the wood moved into her hands. Sea-a thought this — holding the guitar and playing nothing — was her most honest state. Not trying to create something. Not practicing. Just being there with it.
Kang Riwoo had heard the demo.
The thought came back. She rested her fingers on the strings without pressing down. The strings were cold. In a little while, the heat of her hands would warm them.
She didn’t know who Kang Riwoo was. She knew that he’d posted piano videos on Instagram and then stopped, over a year ago. That he was the JYA CEO’s son. That he worked in A&R. Those were facts.
But that he’d heard the demo — not the released version — that wasn’t a fact in the same way. It was a different kind of thing entirely.
She moved her fingers along the strings without pressing. No sound. She hadn’t pressed yet. Her hand drifted over the guitar in the air, somewhere between motion and stillness, not yet music.
Then she pressed down.
C major. The most basic chord. The first one anyone learns. The one her mother had taught her when she first picked up a guitar. In the yard of the Jeju house, summer. The day her mother came home from diving. Her hands were salt-rough and smelled of the sea, but they’d pressed the strings and made a chord. C major.
She didn’t know why that memory was surfacing now.
She set the guitar down and reached for her notebook.
Sea-a’s composition notebook was a spiral-bound one from Daiso. Plain cover. No staff lines inside — she never used staff lines. She wrote melodies in numbers, mixed in lyrics, scattered arrows and notes across the page. It looked like a cipher to anyone else. Haneul had glanced at it once and said, what is this, a math problem?
She flipped it open to the last page.
Something she’d started and abandoned. Three days ago. Two melodic lines and one lyric.
— if you breathe above the water / they said that’s what singing is
She looked at the line. It had started from her mother. The sound haenyeo made when they broke the surface — sumbisori, the breath-cry. That was the first music Sea-a had ever heard.
Below it, she wrote something new.
— if someone heard the original
She stopped.
A strange thing to write. Too ambiguous for a lyric, too personal for a note. Just something from today that had come out as a line. Sea-a wrote like this sometimes — things that didn’t know yet whether they wanted to become music. Some of them eventually did. Some of them stayed in the notebook forever.
She closed it.
Rain had started on the window. Heavier now than before. From the semi-basement, the window only showed people from the ankles down. Feet moved through the rain — feet without umbrellas, feet in rubber boots, feet running, feet walking slowly.
Sea-a picked up her phone.
She sent a message to Park Incheol’s number.
I’ll meet him. Kang Riwoo.
She sent it and turned her phone face-down.
She listened to the rain. In the goshiwon, it was loud — thin windows. The drops hitting the glass were uneven. No pattern. Sea-a liked sounds without patterns. No pattern meant she didn’t have to analyze it.
Her phone buzzed.
Park Incheol: “Tomorrow afternoon work? I’ll find a place.”
Sea-a: “Yes.”
Park Incheol: “One more thing, Sea-a.”
Sea-a: “…”
Park Incheol: “You just have to talk about music. Nothing else has to be decided. Just that.”
Sea-a read the message and sat with it for a moment. Rain on the window. Feet passing. One running pair stopped, then ran again.
You just have to talk about music.
Sea-a thought that was simultaneously the simplest and the hardest thing anyone could say. Talking about only music. No JYA, no credits, no exclusive contracts. Just music.
Whether that was actually possible, she didn’t know.
But tonight, she decided to believe it was.
The next morning, before her convenience store shift, a message came from Haneul.
“i know you snuck out yesterday.”
“I had work.”
“Jangpan was upset. Spent the whole morning sniffing where your feet were.”
Sea-a was tying on her apron when she typed back.
“I’m meeting Kang Riwoo.”
The reply came in thirty seconds.
“WHAT!!!!!!!”
“How many exclamation points is that.”
“Seven. Appropriate to the situation. When.”
“This afternoon.”
“What are you wearing.”
“Does that matter?”
“It matters. First impressions are last impressions. Most true thing I’ve ever learned.”
“It’s not the first time we’re meeting.”
“You saw him at Underscore? That’s across a counter. It was dark.”
Sea-a didn’t reply to that. The convenience store door slid open. A customer walked in.
“Hey, Sea-a.” Another message from Haneul. “Just one thing. Pay attention to whether he likes your music or whether he needs your music. Those are different.”
Sea-a read it and tucked her phone into her apron pocket.
She said “Welcome” to the customer.
Whether he likes your music or whether he needs your music.
Standing behind the counter, Sea-a turned the sentence over in her mind. Liking and needing. Yes, they were different. But couldn’t they be both at once? She had that thought — and then recognized the thought itself as a sign. She was already leaning, just a little.
The refrigerator door opened. The customer was picking out a drink. Fluorescent lights hummed. A car passed outside. An ordinary morning.
Sea-a placed both hands flat on the counter and looked out the window.
The afternoon was coming.
The place Park Incheol had chosen was somewhere she hadn’t expected.
A small record shop in Yeonnam-dong. Ten minutes on foot from Hongdae. The sign above the door read 오래된 것들 — Old Things — in Korean. No English name. LP covers pressed against the window. A bell above the door that rang when you entered.
When Sea-a walked in, Kang Riwoo was standing in front of the LP shelves.
She recognized him — but he looked different in the afternoon light of a record shop than he had in the dim lighting of Underscore. Sharper. Dark circles under his eyes. He was wearing a white button-down, wrinkled, that looked expensive but had never met an iron. His hands — the ones Park Incheol had called a pianist’s hands — were holding an LP sleeve.
The bell rang. Kang Riwoo looked up.
Their eyes met.
Sea-a didn’t look away first. No particular reason. She just didn’t.
Kang Riwoo slid the LP back into its slot and walked toward her.
“Na Sea-a.”
“Yes.”
“Kang Riwoo.”
“I know.”
A brief silence.
The corner of Kang Riwoo’s mouth moved. Too small to be a smile. Too warm to be just an acknowledgment.
“What did Park Incheol tell you? About me.”
“That you’re honest when you talk about music.”
“And?”
“That you change when business comes up.”
Kang Riwoo looked at her for a moment. The way you look at something you’re trying to read — not the way you read a document, but the way you read a score. Like counting beats.
“He’s not wrong.” He said it without flinching.
Sea-a admitted to herself that she hadn’t expected that. The absence of a denial.
“Should we sit?”
There were two chairs in the back of the shop. A listening corner — a turntable, a pair of headphones, two chairs facing each other. The owner was behind the counter reading a book. Sea-a and Kang Riwoo were the only customers.
They sat down.
Kang Riwoo pulled out an LP and slid the sleeve across to Sea-a.
She looked at it. A Yun Isang record from the 1970s. Pressed in Germany. The sleeve was worn, the corners soft with age.
“Have you heard it?”
“I know the name.”
“String Quartet No. 2. Something I love that most Koreans don’t know about.” Kang Riwoo placed the LP on the turntable and lowered the needle.
Sound came.
Strings. That particular quality of contemporary classical music — a beautiful discomfort. As if reaching for harmony and twisting away at the last moment. Sea-a listened and settled back in her chair.
“The demo of ‘By the Window,’” Kang Riwoo said. “I heard it.”
“I was told you heard it.”
“It was different from the released version.”
“I know.”
“Do you know how it was different?”
Sea-a thought for a moment.
“The released version is finished,” she said. “The demo is—”