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# Chapter 14: A Quarter-Million-Won Signature
Copyright assignment.
When Seah first heard those words, she understood exactly what they meant. It wasn’t a matter of legal terminology going over her head. She knew. She signed anyway — because two hundred and fifty thousand won was Dohyun’s school uniform money that month. That was all. The simplest math in the world, and Seah had finished the calculation in twenty-two seconds.
Those twenty-two seconds were sitting on the table between them now.
She heard Park Incheol set down his coffee cup. Seah looked out the window at the Hongdae alley below. The four o’clock light was cutting through at a slant. Someone walked past wheeling a bicycle. The sound of tires catching the gaps in the pavement filtered through the glass — it couldn’t actually be audible, but Seah heard it anyway, in her head. Click, click. Steady intervals.
It became a rhythm inside her.
This isn’t the time to think about music.
Seah pulled her gaze from the window. She looked at Park Incheol.
“That contract,” she said. “Is it still valid?”
Park Incheol glanced at her. Whether he hadn’t expected the question, or had expected it but not this soon — she couldn’t tell the difference.
“It’s valid,” he said. “No expiration date means it’s permanent, as a rule.”
Seah nodded.
“All three songs?”
“If Na Seah signed three contracts, then yes.”
Seah ran the numbers in her head. Three contracts. She remembered two of them. The third — the third was last spring. The month her mother’s hospital bills were overdue. The rep had said she needed to sign quickly, and Seah had put her name on the page without reading it all the way through. The first time she’d ever done that. The only time.
She still didn’t know exactly what she’d handed over that day.
“I’ll take a look at them,” Seah said.
“Do that,” Park Incheol said. No particular weight to his words — matter-of-fact. Seah thought the neutrality was actually right. There were things that went blurry the moment emotion entered them. She couldn’t afford blurry right now.
“So.” Seah wrapped both hands around her coffee cup. It had gone cold since she’d last touched it. “Kang Riwoo wants to hear my songs.”
“That’s right.”
“Why.”
Park Incheol paused briefly.
“Honestly, I don’t know exactly,” he said. “After the meeting yesterday, I got a separate message from him. He asked if he could hear the anonymous composer’s work.”
Seah sat with that. The anonymous composer. Riwoo must have used those words himself. His voice played them back in her head — she’d only seen his back as he walked out of the conference room into the hallway, but last night she’d imagined his voice. Lying on Haneul’s fold-out bed, staring at the ceiling.
Imagining someone’s voice meant something.
Seah decided not to think about what that something was. Not right now.
“Do I have to meet him?”
“You don’t have to,” Park Incheol said. “You could just send the songs. But.”
“But.”
Park Incheol tapped the table with his finger. Once, twice. Like a habit that surfaced when he was thinking something through.
“I’ll be straight with you, Na Seah.”
Seah shifted forward slightly, her back leaving the chair.
“Kang Riwoo isn’t an ordinary case. When he takes an interest in something — and I don’t mean because he’s JYA’s son — his ear has a reputation in this industry for a reason. He’s almost never wrong about whether a song is good or not.” Park Incheol looked at her. “But given where you stand right now — no credits, no copyright in your name — if you put your songs in front of him in that condition, even if he loves them, it might not play out in your favor.”
The music inside the café changed. Jazz giving way to acoustic guitar. Seah registered it.
“What would make it play out in my favor?”
“You’d need to sort out the copyright issue first,” Park Incheol said. “And.”
He stopped.
Seah waited.
“And you’d need to go yourself. Not just send the songs. He looks at the composer, not only the composition.” Park Incheol said. “If you can speak to your own work — explain it yourself — that could carry more weight than any credit history.”
Seah absorbed that.
If you can speak to your own work.
She never had. She wrote, she handed things over, she disappeared. That was her way. Where a melody came from, what she was trying to hold inside it — she’d never said any of that out loud. No one had ever asked. No one had ever thought to ask.
Park Incheol wasn’t asking now either. He was laying out a strategy.
Still, the sentence snagged on something in her.
If you can speak to your own work.
“I’ll think about it,” Seah said.
“You do that.” Park Incheol finished his coffee. “One more thing.”
Seah looked down at her cup.
“The CEO’s offer — the exclusive contract — it’s still on the table. Separate from all of this.” Park Incheol said. “But if you go into an exclusive deal before the copyright situation is resolved, getting those rights back could get a lot more complicated. Depending on what’s in the contract.”
Seah looked up.
“What does that mean exactly?”
Park Incheol held her gaze. Something moved briefly behind his eyes, like a calculation running its course.
“Page three, clause seven of the exclusive contract,” he said. “Make sure you read it before you sign.”
The wind had picked up by the time she stepped outside.
Seah pulled her padding jacket zipper up to her chin as she climbed the stairs out of Exit 4. The cold air hit her neck and ears at once. The Hongdae streets had shifted into their five o’clock palette — deeper than afternoon, lighter than night, everything edged in faint amber. Smoke curled up from a street food cart. The smell of egg bread drifted past on the wind.
She started walking.
Park Incheol’s words arranged themselves in her mind. Not by feeling — she sorted them as information. Copyright assignment. Three contracts. Exclusive contract, page three, clause seven. Kang Riwoo. No credits.
Lay them out one by one and they formed a picture.
It wasn’t a good picture.
Seah walked toward Hapjeong Station, pulling out her phone. She opened KakaoTalk. Haneul’s chat was at the top — the back-and-forth from last night. There was a message from Haneul this morning, still unread.
[Haneul]: hey did you leave?? the floor mat literally sobbed your name lol. did you eat?
Seah read it. Did you eat. She knew that was the shape Haneul’s worry took — not asking directly if you were okay, but asking if you’d eaten. Her mother used to do the same thing. Back in Jeju, when Seah came home from school. Did you eat? She’d figured out later that it really meant did anything hard happen today?
[Seah]: yeah I ate. can I ask you something about copyright stuff?
The reply came fast. Haneul was always fast.
[Haneul]: ??? out of nowhere lol. I’m no legal expert but go ahead
[Seah]: if a contract has a copyright assignment clause with no expiration, does that mean I can never get it back?
[Haneul]: seah hold on something feels very wrong here. can I call?
Seah stopped walking. Two blocks from the Hapjeong Station entrance. People streamed past on the sidewalk. She stepped to the side, closer to the building wall.
[Seah]: not yet. I’ll call when I get back to the gosiwon
[Haneul]: ok I have work tonight but call before 7. oh wait seah
[Haneul]: I know a paralegal. she’s seen a lot of freelance contract disputes around Hongdae. I can introduce you if you need it
Seah stared at the message.
A paralegal.
She immediately knew exactly where that word sat in her world. Something that cost money. Money she didn’t have right now. She ran through the numbers in her head — this month’s part-time income, the session payment date, the gosiwon rent due date.
The numbers didn’t add up cleanly.
[Seah]: thanks. let me re-read the contracts first
She put her phone away and kept walking.
She stopped three times on the way back to the gosiwon.
The first was in front of a convenience store. She stood there wondering whether to go in, then didn’t. Not because she wanted to buy anything — she’d wanted to stand for a moment under the fluorescent lights. The familiar smell, the familiar sounds. But she knew that if she went in, she’d be on the giving side of the counter, not the receiving side, and that role felt too heavy right now.
The second was at a narrow alley entrance — there was a cat. A gray tabby sitting next to a garbage bag, watching her with yellow eyes. Seah looked at it for a moment. The cat blinked. She blinked back. The cat looked away first.
The third was at the foot of the gosiwon stairs.
She had one foot on the first step when she stopped. She readjusted the strap on her shoulder. That wasn’t why she’d stopped. The day had been heavy — and she had to carry that weight up into the small room. Heavy things in a small room filled it completely. She had to wake up in that room again tomorrow.
She climbed the stairs.
The room was exactly as she’d left it.
An obvious thing to say — but Seah always checked. That nothing had been touched. That this space was hers alone. The room was small: bed, desk, shelf, and nothing left over. She’d stuck sound-absorbing panels to the walls herself, cut from flattened cardboard boxes. Not soundproofing — just something to dampen the way sound bounced. It helped a little.
Seah set down her bag and opened the desk drawer.
At the very bottom was a file folder. Where she kept all her documents — the gosiwon contract, the convenience store employment agreement, and. Seah lifted the folder out and placed it on the bed. She opened it.
The papers were arranged by date. She flipped from the back. The oldest ones were last. Her hand stopped.
A two-page contract.
Twenty-two years old. Her first one. The paper had a slight crease to it — from sitting in the folder so long. Seah took it out and unfolded it.
The second contract.
Twenty-three. A second label. Four pages this time, printed on slightly heavier paper. She pulled that one out too.
The third contract.
It took her a little longer to find — it was wedged between other papers in the same folder. Last spring. She worked it free. Six pages.
She laid all three side by side on the bed.
Seah sat on the edge of the mattress, still in her coat. The room was cold — not because she hadn’t turned on the heater, but because the gosiwon heater always left cold air seeping in from somewhere. She was used to the cold.
She started reading the first contract.
The copyright assignment clause was section four. Brief. All copyrights and related property rights to musical works provided under this agreement shall be assigned to Party A (the label), and Party B (the composer) agrees to the same. Two sentences. She read them twice.
The second contract. Copyright assignment was section five. Longer. Derivative works rights, reproduction rights, distribution rights — the terms stacked up. Seah read through them one by one. Slowly. When legal language borrowed everyday words and gave them different meanings — the gap between them was where her understanding broke down.
The third contract.
Seah read all six pages from the beginning. She stopped at page three. Clause seven.
Upon execution of this agreement, all copyright and related property rights to musical works currently held by Party B or to be provided by Party B in the future shall be assigned in their entirety to Party A. Party B retains moral rights as the author of such works but may not enter into separate agreements with any third party regarding the exercise of property rights without the prior written consent of Party A.
She read the paragraph. Then read it again.
Musical works to be provided by Party B in the future.
She had signed this contract last spring. She’d written songs since then. Eight of them. One had been released — the song Bak Sojin sang. But there were others. Unreleased ones.
Seah’s fingers went still on the page.
All copyright and related property rights to musical works to be provided in the future.
The things she still had. The unreleased ones. The ones Riwoo had said he wanted to hear.
She set the papers down.
The room was quiet. Someone moved past in the hallway outside. The heater gave off a faint hum. Seah sat on the bed and listened to those sounds.
Two hundred and fifty thousand won.
Dohyun’s school uniform money. That was what the first contract had been worth.
Last spring.
The month her mother’s hospital bills were past due.
Seah knew those numbers. She knew why things had gone the way they had. And yet here she was, sitting in front of three contracts spread across her bed — the sum total of everything she’d done until now. Nobody had tried to deceive her. The contracts had been clear. She either hadn’t read them, or had read them without understanding, or had understood and had no choice.
All three were true.
Seah picked up her phone. She called Haneul.
Two rings. Then an answer.
“I’ve been waiting. It’s almost seven.”
“Sorry,” Seah said.
Haneul paused. Seah didn’t say sorry often.
“Seah. Did you look at the contracts?”
“I did.”
“And?”
Seah looked at the three contracts on the bed.
“The third one,” she said. “Clause seven.”
She heard Haneul draw in a breath.
“Future works included?”
“Yeah.”
A brief silence on the other end. The sound of Haneul swallowing a curse.
“Na Seah.” Haneul’s voice had lost its usual rapid-fire pace. “When you signed that thing — did you read it?”
“Not all the way through.”
“How much did they pay you?”
Seah paused.
“Seventy thousand won.”
This time Haneul didn’t swallow it. Short and precise.
“God. Okay. What’s the name of that label.”
“Haneul.”
“No, seriously, you can’t just leave this. Future works included means everything you’re writing right now belongs to them too. Do you understand that?”
“I know.”
“Then why are you so calm?”
Seah looked at the window. Small, like all gosiwon windows. It had gone dark outside. Lights glimmered on the other side of the glass.
“Because I don’t know what to do,” Seah said.
That was the honest answer. Not that she wasn’t angry. The anger just had nowhere to go. She didn’t know whether the label had put that clause in with bad intentions. The fact that she’d signed was still a fact. Whether it could be undone — she didn’t know. When there were too many things she didn’t know, anger couldn’t find its way to anything.
“I’m introducing you to that paralegal,” Haneul said. “I’ll reach out to her tonight.”
“How much does it cost?”
“First consultation is free. Don’t worry about it.”
Seah nodded. A nod that didn’t carry through the phone.
“Haneul.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you eat?”
Haneul went quiet for a beat, then laughed. Short and warm.
“You can’t ask me that right now, are you serious.”
“Just asking.”
“I ate. You?”
“Yeah,” Seah said.
A lie.
Haneul probably knew. Probably let it go anyway. That was how Haneul was her friend.
After she hung up, Seah put the contracts back in the folder.
She didn’t put it in the drawer. She set it on the desk. Somewhere she could see it. Drawers made her forget things were there — she knew that about herself. Putting problems in drawers was an old habit of hers. That habit was part of why she was sitting here now.
She pulled out the desk chair and sat down.
She opened a notebook. Not the manuscript notebook — just a lined one. She wrote things in it sometimes that weren’t music. Numbers. Dates. Things to do.
She picked up a pen.
Things to check:
1. Third contract — label name, contract duration
2. Copyright registration — anything filed under my name?
3. Unreleased songs — how many fall under this?
Things to do:
1. Haneul’s paralegal — schedule consultation
2. Contact Park Incheol again — ask specifically about exclusive contract clause 7
Seah looked at the list and stopped.
She hadn’t written anything for number three.
She touched her pen to the space beside it.
3. Kang Riwoo.
And wrote nothing more.
Once she’d written his name, there was nothing to add beneath it. He’d said he wanted to hear her songs. He’d asked for the anonymous composer. Yesterday, as he walked out of the conference room, his back — Seah set down the pen.
Last night on Haneul’s fold-out bed, staring at the ceiling, she’d imagined his voice. She knew what that meant — and because she knew, she was trying not to think about it now.
This wasn’t the time.
She closed the notebook.
Wind pressed against the window from outside. Seah reached up and touched the left shoulder of her coat. Where the padding had flattened, the stuffing half gone. She’d been telling herself to get it mended for two months.
It was on the to-do list for tomorrow. But tomorrow would pass too.
The next morning, her phone rang with an unknown number.
9:20 a.m. Before her shift started. Seah opened her eyes to the ceiling — the gosiwon ceiling. It had been white once, but at some point a faint yellowing had crept into one corner. She looked at it every morning. Somewhere along the way, the fact that it was still there in the same spot had started to feel, strangely, like a small comfort.
The phone rang again.
Seah picked it up. A number starting with 010. Not saved. She answered.
“Hello?”
“Is this Na Seah?”
A man’s voice. Low, unhurried.
Seah realized she had imagined this voice last night. The real thing was different — lower than she’d pictured, slower. But she knew immediately.
“…Yes.”
“This is Kang Riwoo.”
Seah sat up in bed. Her back met the wall. The room was small.
“How did you get my number?”
“From Park Incheol. I’m sorry I couldn’t reach out in advance,” Kang Riwoo said. “Calling out of nowhere like this.”
“It’s fine,” Seah said. The words came out automatically.
A brief silence on the line. It didn’t feel awkward — he seemed perfectly comfortable inside it.
“I asked Park Incheol whether I could hear your songs,” Riwoo said. “But it felt like I should ask you directly.”
Seah sat with that.
He’d asked Park Incheol, but it felt like he should ask her directly.
She tried to parse the structure of it — couldn’t. It was a simple thing to say. She didn’t know why it wouldn’t come apart.
“Which songs?”
“Track two on Bak Sojin’s first album,” Riwoo said. “And track three on Ryu Nahyeon’s EP. Did you write both of those?”
Seah hesitated for a moment.
Those two. The only ones she’d written that had ever gotten a real response. The Ryu Nahyeon EP track had streamed better than expected — the rep had texted her. Seah had read it and said nothing. She’d thanked them.
“Yes, those are mine.”
“Could I hear them from you directly?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your version,” Riwoo said. “What they were originally.”
Seah looked at the window. Morning light was filtering into the gosiwon room. Thin light. The window was small, so the light came in small.
“My version,” she repeated.
“Yes.”
She turned that over.
My version.
She’d written both songs in the key of the artist who would sing them. Bak Sojin’s range. Ryu Nahyeon’s range. Never in her own. She’d never even tried singing them in her own voice. So what Riwoo was asking for was, in a way, rewriting them from the beginning. Different voice, different register, different weight.
“When?”
“Would this week work?” Riwoo asked. “I can find the place, or we can go wherever’s easier for you.”
Seah mentally pulled up her part-time schedule. Wednesday afternoon and Thursday afternoon were open. The club session was Friday night.
“Wednesday.”
“Wednesday afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“Where works for you?”
Seah thought for a moment. Not the gosiwon. A café — she couldn’t sing in a café. The Hongdae club would be empty during the day, but two people sitting across from each other in a club felt wrong somehow.
“A practice room,” she said. “I have one I use.”
“That works. Send me the address later.”
“Okay.”
Silence again.
She’d expected him to hang up, but he didn’t. She was about to pull the phone from her ear to check if the call had dropped when Riwoo spoke.
“The beginning of the second verse in Bak Sojin’s song,” he said. “Not modulating there — was that intentional?”
Seah went still.
That part. The one she’d agonized over the longest. A key change would have been more dramatic. More people would have felt something at that exact moment. She knew that, and she’d left it out anyway. Because she wasn’t sure whether the impact would be for the song or for the listener. A modulation was an explanation. She’d wanted the song to hurt without needing one.
She’d never said that to anyone.
“…It was intentional.”
A short silence on the other end.
“I thought so,” Riwoo said.
That was all. No elaboration. Not a compliment — a confirmation. Simply: what you were thinking was right.
Seah felt her hand close around the bedsheet.
“See you Wednesday,” Riwoo said.
The call ended.
Seah looked down at her phone. The screen had gone dark. Riwoo’s number was gone. She knew she should save it, but she sat there for a moment without moving.
The room was quiet. Someone opened and shut the bathroom door in the hallway.
Seah opened her hand. The hand that had been gripping the sheet. The fabric had left a crease across her palm.
I thought so.
She played the words back once more in her head.
And decided not to hold onto them — not the words, not the number.
If she saved it, she’d take it out and look at it. If she looked at it, it would grow larger. She couldn’t let it grow right now. There was the copyright situation. Three contracts on the desk. Haneul’s paralegal. Those came first.
Those had to come first.
Seah unlocked her phone and opened the contacts app.
Kang Riwoo. She saved it.
Then she turned off her alarm. Thirty minutes until her shift started.
The convenience store was busy from the moment she arrived.
Tuesday morning. The Hapjeong store drew different regulars depending on the day — Tuesday mornings meant people from the publishing offices nearby. Tumbler-carriers, laptop-bag-wearers, people who bought a sandwich with their coffee. Seah stood behind the register, scanning barcodes, taking loyalty cards, handing back receipts.
Her hands moved on their own while her mind was already on Wednesday.
The second verse of the Bak Sojin song. What it would sound like in her own range. She lifted the melody in her head and shifted it away from Bak Sojin’s key. Three semitones down. No — two.
“Na Seah, can you check the expiration dates over there?”
“Sure.”
She carried the music with her as she walked toward the drink refrigerator. She checked the dates, pulled the ones expiring today, pressed discount stickers onto them. The refrigerator breathed cold air against her hands. Her fingertips went numb.
She felt the cold.
The melody in her head paused, then resumed.
Two semitones down. That was right.
When her shift ended, she checked her phone. A message from Haneul.
[Haneul]: talked to her. she can do a consultation Thursday evening. this Thursday, 7pm, her office near Hapjeong. works for you?
Wednesday — Riwoo. Thursday — the paralegal. The two dates sat side by side in her mind.
[Seah]: yeah I’ll be there. thank you.
[Haneul]: hey can I ask you something for real though?
[Seah]: go ahead.
[Haneul]: