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# Chapter 11: One More Thing
There’s a smell that hits you when the GS25 automatic doors slide open.
Coffee and microwaved food and plastic packaging, all layered together. Seah didn’t call it an occupational hazard — she just called it a smell she knew. The smell of someone who’d spent six in the morning to two in the afternoon inside it, catching it again on the way out. Familiar enough to make you pause for just a moment.
Seah didn’t pause. She walked past.
She was heading toward Hongdae Station instead of Hapjeong. The longer route. An extra transfer. Still, her feet carried her that way — there was a main road, and main roads had people, and people had things worth listening to. Even with her earphones in and nothing playing, sound came through. The rhythm of footsteps, the growl of a passing motorcycle, a single word breaking loose from someone’s phone conversation.
She listened to all of it as she walked.
Park Incheol’s KakaoTalk message sat read in her pocket. There’s something more I’d like to discuss. That sentence had lodged itself somewhere in her mind and wouldn’t leave. It wasn’t the sentence itself that troubled her — it was what might be hiding behind it. In this industry, there were only two kinds of “something more”: adding conditions, or removing them. Either way, the odds of it landing in her favor weren’t great.
She knew that. And she’d have to reach out to him anyway.
That was just the shape of her reality.
Her convenience store shift started at ten.
Seah took Line 2 from Hongdae Station. One stop to Hapjeong. The platform was crowded — even past rush hour, college students with lecture bags and tourists with cameras all pressed together. She leaned against the door. The tunnel blurred past the window.
She was walking from Hapjeong Station to the convenience store when her phone rang.
Not Park Incheol. Dohyeon.
She stopped for a moment, then answered.
“Yeah.”
“Noona, where are you?”
“Hapjeong. Why?”
“Lol, nothing. You didn’t read my KakaoTalk last night.” His voice sounded like it carried nothing. Which meant it was carrying something. Seah had lived with her brother long enough to know the difference. “Were you at Haneul noona’s place?”
“Yeah.”
“Lol did you see Jangpan?”
“Saw him.”
“He looked really fat in the photos.”
Seah started walking again, phone still pressed to her ear.
“Dohyeon. What did you say in the message?”
A brief silence on the other end.
“Oh, it’s nothing.” He paused. “The academy. The winter break intensive.”
“Yeah?”
“I think I’m gonna skip it. I can just study in the school library.”
Seah stopped. The convenience store entrance was just ahead.
“Why are you dropping the academy?”
“I just focus better in the library. The teacher talks too much.”
“Na Seah-ssi, good morning!”
The afternoon part-timer waved through the glass door. Seah nodded back and pulled the phone slightly away from her ear.
“Dohyeon.”
“Yeah?”
“Is it because of the tuition?”
Another silence. A little longer this time.
“No.” His words came out slightly blurred. “For real. I actually study better on my own.”
“Okay.”
“Do you believe me?”
“Yeah.”
“Liar.” He said it without accusation. It was the kind of thing said between two people who had known each other a long time — a confirmation, not a critique. “I’m hanging up. I have school.”
The call ended.
Seah looked down at her phone. Dohyeon’s name faded from the screen. She stood there for a moment — two steps from the convenience store entrance. Numbers shifted through her mind. Academy tuition. Monthly fixed costs. Exclusive contract. Rights assignment.
Dohyeon had said he studied better on his own.
She believed him.
And believing him, she walked into the convenience store anyway.
The morning shift was quiet.
Ten to two — the Hapjeong convenience store saw only the occasional neighborhood regular. A middle-aged man buying coffee. An older woman picking up milk. A young guy coming for a package. Seah stood behind the register, scanning barcodes, handing back receipts. Her hands moved on their own.
Her mind was somewhere else entirely.
Tossing on Haneul’s studio floor last night until two in the morning. Dimming her phone screen all the way down so she wouldn’t wake Haneul on the folding bed, then opening her notes app. Writing four bars there. The melody only existed in her head — she couldn’t notate it. She just hummed it. Silently, only in her throat.
Those four bars were still there. They hadn’t faded.
She stood at the register and let them repeat. Her lips didn’t move. No sound left her throat. Just inside her head. Somewhere in her chest.
I don’t know what kind of melody this is. I don’t know if it’s sad or angry. But it came out right after Dohyeon said he was quitting the academy — so it’s probably somewhere between the two. Between grief and fury. The region of feelings without names.
At two, the next shift arrived. Seah untied her apron and checked her phone.
Another message from Park Incheol.
If you’re free this afternoon, let me know. If Gangnam is difficult for you, I can come to Hapjeong instead.
She read it. Then read it again.
I can come to Hapjeong instead. That was strange. The man who’d been summoning her to a Gangnam conference room was now offering to come to her. He had something more to say, and he was willing to come to her to say it.
She closed the message and stepped outside. Cold air hit her face. The sky had gone greyer since morning — lower, heavier, like it was bracing to snow. Seah knew Seoul’s winter sky. Right before it snowed, it dropped. The clouds settled down until the tops of buildings went soft and blurred.
She typed her reply.
Hapjeong works. Anytime after three.
Park Incheol had chosen a café near Hapjeong Station.
It was tucked into an alley just off the main Hongdae strip. Seah had passed it before but never gone in. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Raw wood tables inside. The kind of café where the coffee would cost more than she expected. Not the kind of place her part-time wages took her.
Park Incheol was already there, sitting by the window with his laptop open. He raised a hand when she walked in.
Seah ordered an Americano at the counter. Smallest size. Park Incheol stood up and said, “Let me get that.” Seah said, “It’s fine.” He didn’t push it.
They sat down. The laptop was open on one side of the table. He closed it. She noticed. Closing it could mean this wasn’t an official meeting — or it could mean whatever was on the screen wasn’t meant for her to see.
She considered both possibilities at once.
“Thank you for coming yesterday.”
He spoke first. Seah nodded.
“You mentioned there was something more.”
“Right.” He picked up his coffee cup, then set it back down. “What Team Leader Yoo showed you yesterday — that was a draft.”
Seah said nothing.
“The exclusive contract structure stays the same, but the credit clause may come back differently. Not ‘subject to negotiation.’” He paused. “‘Expressly stated.’”
Seah set her coffee cup down.
“Expressly stated.”
“Yes. Your name — Na Seah — in the composition credit. Not co-composer. Solo.”
She heard it. And as she heard it, something moved inside her chest. She couldn’t tell if it was joy or suspicion — it had arrived too fast. Good news should always come slowly, she thought. Things that come too quickly are hiding something.
“Why?”
Park Incheol narrowed his eyes slightly.
“Why is it different from the draft yesterday?”
“Ah.” He nodded. “There was input from above.”
“From above?”
“The JYA side.”
Seah turned that over for a moment. The JYA side. Yoo Jaewon was the JYA team leader. Someone above Yoo Jaewon would mean — she stopped herself. It was too early to go there.
“Can I get the specific changes in writing?”
“Of course.” He nodded. “I’ll send you the revised contract sometime next week.”
“Thank you.”
Seah drank her coffee. It was hot. The tip of her tongue caught the heat. She let it, and kept thinking — there was a draft, and now there’s a revision. Someone’s input landed in between. Whoever it was, they’d pushed things in her favor. She didn’t know why.
Not knowing, and sitting with not knowing — that was the most honest thing she could do right now.
“Can I ask one more thing?”
“Go ahead.”
“The retroactive rights on 〈By the Window〉 — that’s still tied to the exclusive contract, right? That part doesn’t change?”
He paused briefly.
“That stays the same.”
“Got it.”
Silence settled between them. Jazz drifted from the café speakers — the kind where a low trumpet lays down the foundation and a piano moves across the top. Exactly the right sound for three in the afternoon.
“Seah-ssi,” Park Incheol said. “Can I be honest with you about something?”
“Please.”
“When I first reached out to you —” He wrapped both hands around his coffee cup. “It wasn’t only because of 〈By the Window〉.”
She looked at him.
“I listened to your other songs too. Your voice from the session vocal work at Underscore. But more than that — I asked the Underscore house band leader about you. What kind of person Na Seah was.”
“What did he say?”
“That you listen to music more honestly than anyone he knows.” Park Incheol said. “He also said he wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or a criticism. That listening honestly doesn’t always mean making good music. But with you, he said, it seems like both.”
Something inside her chest quietly tightened as she listened. It was a compliment. Seah wasn’t good at receiving those — she never knew what to do with them. When a compliment arrived, she’d find herself just standing there, not knowing where to put it.
“Thank you.”
That was all she had.
She left the café a little past four.
Park Incheol had gone ahead, leaving behind a promise to send the revised contract sometime next week. Seah stood in front of the café for a moment. The sky had dropped even lower through the afternoon. The air felt heavy with moisture. Still no snow.
She walked toward the Han River.
From Hapjeong, the river was fifteen minutes on foot. A path she walked often. The path for when her thoughts got crowded. The path for when melodies wouldn’t come in the middle of the night. Today it was both.
When she reached the riverbank, the wind came. Wind off the Han ran at a different temperature — colder than city wind, and without any smell. Seah stopped inside it. Her coat was buttoned all the way up, but she was still cold. Her throat still felt faintly raw.
Expressly stated.
Those two words were still sitting in her mind. The distance between “subject to negotiation” and “expressly stated.” Negotiation meant there was room for discussion. Expressly stated meant it was written into the contract. To Seah, the difference wasn’t a matter of degree — it was a different category entirely. Negotiation was air. Expressly stated was ground.
Someone had changed that.
She looked out at the Han. The water was grey. It always was in winter — not reflecting the sky, but becoming it. The boundary dissolved. Seah thought about how different that was from her mother’s sea. The waters off Jeju fought the sky. Different colors. A clear line between them. The Han just became part of the sky.
The haenyeo cried out when they broke the surface.
Sumbi soori.
She thought about it. Her mother surfacing from the water — the sound of breath held and held and finally released. Her mother had called it a song. A song of being alive. As a child, Seah had sat on the shore listening. While her mother was underwater, Seah held her breath too. When her mother surfaced and cried out, Seah let hers go.
When had Seah started holding her breath?
The thought arrived. Quietly. Clearly.
She looked at the river. The wind came again. Her hair threatened to come loose — the tied-back strands whipped in the gust. She reached up and pressed the pin down. Keeping it in place.
Her phone rang.
Unknown number.
She weighed it for a moment. Unknown numbers came in two kinds — spam, or someone she didn’t know. She could always tell from the first line.
She answered.
“Na Seah-ssi?”
A man’s voice. Low and unhurried. She had heard it once before.
In the hallway at Underscore.
“…Who is this?”
“Kang Riwoo.” The voice said. “From the JYA side.”
Seah stood looking at the Han and said nothing for a moment.
“How did you get this number?”
“From Team Leader Park Incheol. I should have asked your permission first.” A short silence. “Is this a good time to talk?”
She looked at the river. The grey water shifted on the surface in the wind.
“It’s fine.”
“You met with Park Incheol today?”
“Yes.”
“He would have told you about the credit.”
Seah pushed her hand into her coat pocket. Her fingers were cold. She’d forgotten her gloves.
“Was that you? Did you do that?”
Something shifted on the other end of the line — a sound like a chair moving, or a window being closed.
“I raised the issue,” Kang Riwoo said. “The decision came from above.”
“Why?”
“I listened to 〈By the Window〉. The version with your voice.”
She heard that. Your voice. The version she sang herself. That had never been released. Only the Bak Sojin version had gone out. The version Seah sang was a demo — and the demo was in the company files. The files she’d first sent to Park Incheol.
“How?”
“Park Incheol shared it internally for review.” His voice stayed unhurried — the pace of someone used to explaining without rushing. “I’m on the A&R team, so I had access.”
“…And?”
“And so I brought up the credit.” He said. “That Na Seah’s name needed to be in the contract.”
She looked at the Han. The wind stopped. For a moment the world went still.
“Why?” She said again. Same question.
“Because it’s the right thing.”
“The right thing doesn’t always happen. Especially in this industry.”
Something like a laugh came through the phone. Too short to really be a laugh — just a single exhale.
“That’s true,” Kang Riwoo said. “But when the right thing doesn’t happen, someone has to say something.”
She listened to that. She tried to sort it into categories — was he stating a principle, revealing something about himself, or trying to make her expect something? It wouldn’t sort.
“Kang Riwoo-ssi.”
“Yes.”
“How do you know my name?”
A brief silence.
“I saw you at Underscore. About two months ago.”
Two months ago. Underscore. She performed there every Tuesday. Two months meant several overlapping nights. One in particular came to her. Not the night she’d pushed a note up a half-step at the end — before that. A night when it rained. The club quieter than usual. The night she’d improvised the bridge in the last song.
“Which night?”
“The rainy one.” Kang Riwoo said. “You changed the bridge in the last song.”
She said nothing.
“Right before the final chorus — you held half a beat.” His voice shifted slightly. Not explaining anymore — the voice of someone remembering. “That wasn’t in the song. That was improvised, right?”
“…Yes.”
“That half-beat changed the whole song.” He said it slowly. “Up until that moment it was a good cover. But from that moment — it became your song.”
She looked at the Han.
The water was still grey.
Something shifted quietly inside her chest. She didn’t know what it was — or rather, she did, but she didn’t name it. Naming it meant having to deal with it. She wasn’t ready for that.
“You called because you have something to say,” Seah said. “What is it?”
Kang Riwoo paused.
“Could we meet in person?”
“Why?”
“There’s something easier to say face to face.”
“What kind of something?”
“It’s separate from the contract,” Kang Riwoo said. “Not about JYA either. It’s about your music.”
She thought for a moment.
About your music.
She didn’t know what that meant. She didn’t know, and so she was curious. Curiosity was a dangerous feeling for her — it made her move. And when she moved, things changed. And things that changed didn’t always go where she wanted them to go.
Even so.
“When?”
There was a pause before he answered. She caught it — a small adjustment, recalibrating to an answer that came faster than he’d expected.
“Does this week work for you?”
“Thursday evening.”
“Thursday works.” He said. “I’ll send you the location.”
“Make it somewhere in Hapjeong.”
Another small pause.
“Alright.”
The call ended.
Seah looked down at her phone. The unknown number appeared on the screen, then disappeared. She saved it. Started to type “Kang Riwoo” in the name field, then deleted it. She saved it with just the number.
The wind came off the Han again.
That evening, she came back to her goshiwon and locked the door. Still in her coat, she sat on the edge of the bed.
The room was small. A bed, a desk, a clothes rack — that was everything. On the desk sat a notebook. The one she used for melodies — not sheet music. Seah didn’t write sheet music. She used her own system of lines and numbers and symbols, a notation only she could read.
She opened it.
The four bars she’d written at two in the morning on Haneul’s studio floor. Lines and numbers, right there on the page. She read them. Translated them into sound inside her head.
The melody folded into Kang Riwoo’s words.
That half-beat changed the whole song.
She closed the notebook. Closed her eyes. The melody kept moving through her. Four bars became eight. Eight stretched into sixteen. She didn’t stop it.
Eyes still shut, she listened. No sound came out. Only in her head. But it was loud enough — loud enough to reach past the walls of this room, past the goshiwon building, past the alleys of Hapjeong.
She knew the melody needed words.
Her own words. Written for herself.
But that was a different problem. Writing for someone else and writing for yourself weren’t the same act. Writing for others was translation — rendering their emotions into sound. Seah was good at that. High empathy meant she felt other people’s feelings before her own.
Translating her own feelings was something else.
It required feeling them first. And Seah was not good at that.
She opened the notebook again. Put the pen to a blank page.
Nothing came.
She set the pen down and took off her coat. Lay back on the bed. The ceiling was low — goshiwon ceilings always were. Every time she looked at it, she thought of semi-basements. Haneul’s studio. The vinyl flooring. The smell of instant ramen.
Thursday.
What am I going to hear on Thursday?
The thought arrived. She couldn’t tell if it was anticipation or caution. She’d never been able to separate those two feelings — anticipation meant leaving yourself open to being hurt, and caution meant letting things pass you by. She’d always had to live somewhere in between, and that space was very narrow.
Her phone buzzed. Haneul. KakaoTalk.
Hey I heard Kang Riwoo called you. Park Incheol told me.
Seah read that and stopped. Park Incheol contacting Haneul meant — Park Incheol knew Haneul. That was strange.
How do you know him?
The reply came fast.
lmao Park Incheol is one of my tattoo clients. He’s got a compass on his right shoulder, I did it. He messaged me today asking if you were my friend. unbelievable.
Seah read that and laughed. Silently.
What did you say?
I said yeah, she’s my friend. But hey — Kang Riwoo called you himself? For real?
Yeah.
And you’re meeting him Thursday?
Yeah.
A pause. No reply for a moment. Seah held the phone and waited. She could feel Haneul typing and deleting — Haneul had a habit of rapid-firing half-formed messages and pulling them back when she was thinking something through.
Then it came.
Hey Seah. Can I ask you one thing?
Yeah.
When he called and asked to meet Thursday. What was the first thing you felt?
She read the question. Then read it again.
The first thing you felt.
She thought back to standing at the Han. The unknown number ringing. Hearing the name Kang Riwoo. Hearing the words that half-beat changed the whole song. Being asked if they could meet.
What had she felt first?
Caution? There had been caution —