Chapter 305

Chapter 305

Kim Raebin looked very tense at the beginning of the meeting scheduled that day.

“It’s all right, Raebin. You’ve done well so far.”

“That’s right! Even if it doesn’t get picked, the problem is with our ears, not your music! But I doubt it’ll be rejected,” Big Sejin said.

“Yeah! Raebin, your music is good!” Eugene said.

“Thank you…”

He had seemed somewhat relieved after hearing the others reassure him. But the results were not what we expected.

“So we’re going with two, four, and five? Okay! Raebin’s track was number…”

“It was number three…”

“…!”

His arrangement wasn’t even one of the possible candidates. In other words, it had been completely disqualified. It would seem rather silly to describe it so lackadaisically, but nobody had expected this.

Raebin’s music was disqualified… Until now, his music had almost always made it into the final selections, almost to the point of being able to say that his music was always the one chosen in the end. There were cases, of course, where it wasn’t selected unanimously. But his work was always a decisive part of the process, and always in the final draft. That was why the members had always talked about his music being on the next album like it was a given.

“Looks like Raebin will make some great arrangements for our concert music, too!”

But for the first time since our debut, his arrangement had failed to make a good impression.

Not only that, he stayed up several nights making it. I glanced through the results of the concert arrangement blind test results that had arrived via email, before turning off the screen. Crossing my arms, I leaned back.

There has to be a reason for this. Perhaps the directionality was different, or the A&R Team had produced a bunch of output that sounded great because it had suited their style, or they had plenty of time to work. But why did it have to be now, of all times?

This is going to push Kim Raebin into a slump at a really critical moment. We couldn’t overturn the results of the vote, either—that would be foolishness. Raebin wouldn’t like it if we did so, and we couldn’t allow our quality to suffer just to make him feel better.

That would only worsen the situation without any benefit. It would be foolish to leave him as he was now, however. I got up from my seat. The morning concert meeting was over, so I decided I’d go look for the guy. I expected he’d quietly returned to his room and holed up there.

I didn’t even have to look that far. He was on the living room sofa with a resolute-looking Cha Eugene, worried Seon Ahyeon, and troubled Big Sejin next to him.

Eugene held something out to Raebin. “Eat this, Raebin.”

Raebin was wearing his jacket and socks. It was obvious he’d been about to leave, and they’d stopped him. “No. I have something to do in the studio—”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“…!”

They looked over at me.

Raebin gulped, then muttered in a low voice, “I need to correct the mistakes. Otherwise, I won’t be able to make music that people will be satisfied with next time, either…”

“Raebin, you’ll do great next time! This can happen. It’s not a problem!”

Raebin didn’t seem convinced or irritated by Eugene’s words. “We can’t be sure of that,” he said quietly. “Now that I’ve failed once, I think the odds of it happening again are higher. In order to reduce those odds, I need to prepare more…”

There was a brief silence.

“Raebin, why don’t you get some rest?”

“Th-that’s right. There’s plenty of time until the concert… You have to conserve your energy!” Ahyeon said.

The words poured out all at once. They seemed to think something bad would happen if they let him go to the studio in the state he was in.

And I agree with them. Perhaps it would have been fine if he’d been angry or frustrated, but this seemed like he’d fallen into obsessive behavior.

Big Sejin sat down beside him and thumped him on the shoulder. “Hey, look. As the saying goes, even Homer sometimes nods. Let’s think about the quality of our performances and get some rest. Rest is important, too!”

I felt the need to help out a little. I said, “You’ve been going at it hard for a while. Let your brain rest. You know muscles form when you rest, right? This isn’t about muscles, but the same principle applies. You’ve been getting too little rest.”

He said nothing.

“So get some rest.”

Raebin nodded reluctantly, and I repressed a sigh. The timing of all this was truly terrible.

***

A few days passed. Raebin did not go to the studio, just as he’d promised, but he continued to look rather down. It seemed the shock of his first failure still haunted him.

We got busy with the tour promo videos and whatnot, and then there was a lull because the drafts of some of the performances were not ready yet.

It’s quiet. I woke up way too early in the morning, perhaps because my body hadn’t adapted to the changes in our schedule yet.

I should get some water. Leaving my room quietly so that my roommate wouldn’t hear, I discovered something unexpected. Light was coming from the indoor balcony attached to the living room.

“…!”

The light was too close for it to be coming from beyond the building. I guessed it had to come from some electronic device.

Is someone trying to break in? Who would be mad enough to climb a rope down from the roof? But then again, there were people like that out there. Instead of putting aside my suspicions, I approached the glass carefully. I had the emergency number up on my screen, just in case I needed to make a call. There indeed was a person outside, but it wasn’t a stranger, as I’d expected.

“Kim Raebin.”

“…!”

Raebin nearly jumped out of his skin where he sat on the tiles. Then he looked around.

“Oh. M-Moondae.”

He was wearing headphones, and based on the program that was open on the screen… I could tell he’d been working on music again. The bastard had come out to the indoor balcony after midnight and was slouched over on the floor as he worked in secret.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Well…”

“You’re working on music, aren’t you?”

Was this why he had looked so tired during the day? Of course, he was having trouble recovering.

This idiot… I opened the glass patio door and strode inside, stopping in front of him.

“I…”

Raebin tried to pick his laptop back up quickly and mashed some keys in the process, scrolling through a variety of different windows.

“…!”

Raebin had been reading feedback as well as working on music.

[Concert arrangement blind vote results]

It was the same group email that I’d seen a few days ago.

Wait… From the way Raebin had been acting recently, I doubted that he’d wanted to use the email for motivation and inspiration, or anything constructive like that. He’d been plenty shaken up even without it. And the email didn’t just contain the results of the vote.

In order to come up with a reasonable combination, the participants had written anonymous entries explaining their choices. The wording of the responses, however, made it easy to guess who had written what.

- Number four is the most fun

- Two and five are real smooth. Keep it up :)

- They were all good, but five was the most natural-sounding. One and three, on the other hand, seem divisive.

This was why we hadn’t been able to reassure Kim Raebin by saying that he’d simply been unlucky, and that his song had actually been the best one. All of us had taken part in that vote, too, and I’d also commented on each of the tracks, including Kim Raebin’s arrangement.

- The sound seems excessive

Raebin had kept those evaluations from his companions open for several days and had been reading them over and over again. None of the comments said anything good about Kim Raebin’s track.

F*ck. Are you serious? Had he been trying to reflect the feedback in his work and revise his track? At this time of day?

“Listen,” I said, sitting in front of him and making eye contact. “The majority vote isn’t always right. Who knows? The public might actually prefer your arrangement over the others.”

He stared up at me wordlessly.

“You really don’t need to be so hung up on the results. It’s just one track.”

He said suddenly, “But you also deemed that my track was low quality.”

I fell silent.

“You said it was excessive… Moondae.”

“I’m not a composer. You don’t have to believe everything I say,” I said. “Your sensibilities matter more than what other people—”

“No!” His head sank. “Your evaluation of the music has always been objective and great. It’s never been wrong. I failed to make a good arrangement this time, pure and simple…”

I felt like I’d been slapped in the face. Apparently, this had shocked him even more than I’d expected.

He’s noticed that I have very good judgment when it comes to music. This was thanks to my trait, Catch-All Ears. He hadn’t caught on that I had fantastical skills and the like, but he was good enough with music to notice this, at least.

“Your selections are always great.”

He believed that the person he trusted most to produce an objective review had just dropped a scalding criticism of his work. I repressed a sigh. This left a bitter taste in my mouth. I wasn’t going to lie to myself. Even now, I didn’t really think Kim Raebin’s submission had been that good.

It was too bland for something made by Kim Raebin. I’d thought the A&R Team had created it. Because I’d gotten my trait through the status window, it was sure to—

Wait, the status window? A few things I’d experienced flitted through my mind. I immediately summoned Raebin’s status window. I prayed I was wrong, but I noticed a new addition at the bottom.

Status abnormality: Repeat Sign

Sh*t.

[Repeat Sign]

: You’ve lost your way, and it’s on repeat.

A repercussion of “Trait: Maestro (S).” Your sensibilities are diminished.

“B-but by excessive… Do you mean to say that there’s too much packed into the music? If I remove a few elements from here… Could you take a listen and tell me how it sounds? Is it better than before? Is it nicer?”

This wouldn’t do. It was clear that he was entirely demoralized. I could see it now. He had seemed unperturbed in the face of feedback so far because he’d been able to think of ways to improve immediately. Right now, however, that ability had fled him. He’d been reliant on it.

F*ck… I took the headphones he handed me, but I didn’t put them on.

Instead, I asked him, “How does it sound to you?”

He was sniffling quietly. “I’m not sure… I tried to channel what people liked the most in the past, hoping it would please them again… But I’m not sure I did a good job.”

“Do what you feel like doing,” I said.

“I… I can’t seem to figure that out, either.”

I understood this, too.

He lost his sense of balance. I knew that there was a modest side to him that tried to take in the feedback of others diligently. But at the same time, he’d had faith in his own abilities—a conviction that he could tell when something was good and when something was not. That was why he’d handled feedback in his own way, accepting some of it and filtering out the rest. He was the sort of person who marched to the beat of his own understanding and inspiration.

That’s his baseline. He’d even interpreted what T-Holic had said in his own way. But he was behaving differently this time around. Way too many people had praised him unexpectedly, and he’d been overwhelmed by the barrage of praise.

It’s made him lose his certainty. The idea that he needed to be perfect, that he couldn’t disappoint anyone, had destroyed his enjoyment. The individuality that had made his music great was gone now that he’d become a crowd-pleaser, and the negative feedback had confused him. He was now taking the feedback too seriously. It was the first time that his abilities had failed him, so to speak.

It’s a vicious cycle. I did my best not to swear viciously. He looked ready to burst into tears at any moment. I soothed him, then took his laptop away.

“Stop this for now. You’ve got plenty to do without it, and you’re talented. Just let it go for now.”

He didn’t respond.

“It’s not that I don’t think you’re capable. What if you develop insomnia? It’ll be a disaster.”

“But once it’s complete—”

“No.” I refused to return it to him. After some conflicted thought, I told him, “If you enjoy this, then I have no right to interrupt. But this is ruining your mental health at the moment. You aren’t even able to sleep.”

He hung his head. I patted his shoulder, then I realized that I was f*cking terrible at this sort of thing.

F*ck. I needed to come up with a solution.

***

Raebin faithfully participated in our various schedules after that early morning encounter, but his effervescent nature was gone. One of the members who had noticed this found the cause in my room.

“Moondae, that’s his laptop, right?”

Big Sejin said gravely, “Just let him work on his music. Not being able to will kill him.”

I tugged at my hair and spoke after a pause. I’d been thinking about this for days now. “Then rent us a mountain cabin.”

“Wait, what?”

I wasn’t joking. I considered Raebin’s status abnormality. His Maestro trait, which sped up his work speed and turned him into a veritable music factory, had backfired and led to a diminishing of his talented sensibilities.

He fixated on results and efficiency, and that hurt him. The answer was simple. We needed to do something creative that had no purpose, and no link to TeSTAR’s music. That was why I’d begun to plan out an absurd mental healing retreat, the likes of which I’d never even considered in my entire life. It would be a self-help retreat.

“Let’s just head into the mountains, is what I’m saying.”

The mountains, instead of toward a specific goal.