Chapter 306

Chapter 306

The van shook. It was silent inside the spacious vehicle that was transporting TeSTAR. Each member seemed to be listening to music or doing their own thing on their phone. Kim Raebin was trying to mentally go over today’s schedule and put together a detailed plan of attack when he stopped short. His mind simply refused to be productive, and it made him feel like guilt was eating him up inside.

I can’t believe I’m being so lazy. His was more of a case of exhaustion than anything else, but he chose to interpret it as laziness.

Everyone is working so hard… He suddenly remembered what the manager and the members had been saying earlier about today’s schedule.

“The filming is happening in a studio on the outskirts of the city, right?”

“Yes, That’s right.”

“Then it’ll take a while!”

It was true that he felt as though they had been sitting in the van for quite some time. Perhaps he just felt like it had been a long time because his anxiety was running wild inside him, going in circles inside his mind without his permission. Keeping still was the hardest thing in the world. In the past, he would make plans and jot down any tunes or ideas that came to mind for songs, and that had helped pass the time traveling in the van quickly.

He turned his head, trying to ignore the memory of his own failure that suddenly came back to him. He noticed a sudden influx of green through the windows.

Green? Glancing outside for the first time in thirty minutes, he noticed that they were on a wide road, speeding past a mountain. The van was racing along an expressway.

“…?”

He’d heard they were going to the outskirts of the city, but an expressway meant they were going to a completely different location, didn’t it? Raebin didn’t have a driver’s license, but he’d been to events in other regions, and the question on his mind was a reasonable one. But he said nothing.

I’m in no position to be asking questions. Thinking to himself that he would simply do as he was told, and do that to the best of his abilities, his posture slowly grew stiff once more. The predictions and worries were filling his mind once more.

Park Moondae, who was sitting next to him, glanced at Raebin before looking away. He hasn’t figured it out.

Moments later, the van came to a stop and the members began to pile out.

“Oh! We’re here.”

Raebin followed them out automatically but soon froze. They were standing on the side of the road, halfway up a mountain. The only thing he could see other than trees was an old, elegant house, which appeared to be their destination.

Are we filming something nature-themed? Before Raebin could begin to beat himself up for failing to keep track of their schedule well enough, the manager climbed back into the driver’s seat and bowed to them through the window.

“I’ll be down at the foot of the mountain.”

“Yes! We’ll be in touch!”

“…?”

This was also quite strange.

He won’t be with us during filming? Their manager was leaving them to work by themselves? This sort of thing hadn’t happened since their dedicated management team had been formed. Raebin lost hold of some of his apathy in the face of this strange situation and looked around him in confusion.

The mountain trees were beautiful, wearing their fall colors, and a cool breeze was blowing. It seemed to blow right through his heart, making the tight knot there loosen like it was finally coming undone.

I didn’t know there were mountains like this in Seoul. He reflected on his lack of knowledge and pre-conceived biases. This was a lovely place, like one of the Taebaek Mountains in Gangwon Province, where he’d used to live. As he continued to look around, he noticed a road sign.

[Seoraksan ↑ 32 km]

Confusion washed over Raebin. Seoraksan was in Gangwon Province. They really were in Gangwon Province, not the outskirts of Seoul. This was enough to make even someone steeped in self-loathing speak out.

“I-I’m sorry, but have we come to the right place?” Raebin shouted, anxious.

The members all turned around.

“Why do you say that?”

“This isn’t the outskirts of Seoul. It’s Gangwon Province!”

“That’s right.”

“Huh?”

Chungwoo said gently, “This is where we were meant to be going, Raebin.”

Raebin grew disoriented again. After seeing the manager off in the van, Moondae finally turned around to face Raebin. Moondae, whom Raebin respected very much, was smiling.

“What are we filming—” Raebin began.

“We’re not here to film anything.”

“What…?”

“We’re just here to enjoy the mountains. Do a little self-development, you know?” Moondae replied quickly, as if he didn’t enjoy the words that were leaving his mouth, but he smiled toward the end.

“You could say it’s a music composition retreat.”

Raebin’s mouth fell open.

When they entered the antique brick mountain cabin, nothing was out of the ordinary, only a modern TV looking rather out of place. Raebin was still dazed, however, standing in the living room and staring at its flowery wallpaper.

“Sit down, Raebin!” Eugene said.

“Wow. This really feels like a proper retreat, huh? The accommodations and everything,” Big Sejin said.

“H-how would you like some fruit?” Ahyeon asked.

Before he knew it, Raebin found himself holding a slice of pear and sitting on an electric heating mat that was slowly starting to grow warm.

“…?”

What is going on here? He hadn’t even noticed that everyone but him seemed unsurprised by all this. Raebin picked apart Moondae’s words, lapsing into deep thought. A music composition retreat.

He didn’t seem particularly happy about me continuing to write music, though… Had Moondae been so frustrated that he had brought Raebin out here to focus on writing music until he finally produced something they could use? Raebin suddenly felt afraid, but this was also something he’d been craving.

If I take his feedback and apply it, I might be able to go back to writing good music like I was before. The process might be extremely painful, but now he felt like he had no time to lose. He wanted to start working right away, get some feedback from the others, and finally escape the helpless state he’d been in for weeks now. He wanted to return to his old self.

As soon as Moondae had returned from the kitchen, Raebin shouted, “M-may I ask what this retreat is about?”

“As I said.”

Moondae produced something from his backpack. It was Raebin’s laptop. He felt his muscles stiffen, but he reached for it quickly. He felt the weight of it in his hands, since performance had been the main consideration when he’d bought it, not portability.

He said in a trembling voice, “In that case, if I start writing music now… you can all provide feedback—”

“You aren’t the only one making music.”

“What…?”

Moondae did not stop there, instead producing a second laptop from his backpack.

“Wow, Moondae! Flexing those new laptops, huh?” Big Sejin said.

“I want the red one! Red, man!” Eugene shouted.

Moondae passed one out to each member.

“Everyone writes their own music. And no negative feedback is allowed.”

“…!”

“We can’t get any external feedback for the duration of this retreat. The laptops have no messenger app installed, and emailing is prohibited.”

This was downright tyrannical, but Raebin could think of nothing to say in retort. Moondae finally produced a laptop for himself and opened it on the table, his back to the TV.

Raebin found himself following suit and opening his own laptop. He noticed the same program he’d been working on before, still open as he’d left it. He asked in a slightly quivering voice, “Then what kind of music—”

Eugene butted in. “There’s no goal!”

“…!”

“Moondae already told you that this is a retreat,” Bae Sejin said calmly. “You just make music, and that’s it.”

***

The idea of cutting ourselves off from the outside world in a mountain cabin for three days had received more enthusiastic support than I’d anticipated.

Though, I didn’t know that the mountain cabin would seem so much like a… family home. My eyebrows twitched at the sight of some ginseng liquor stored on the indoor balcony, but I said nothing. Big Sejin and Chungwoo had rented a place that looked like it could belong to one of their relatives in the countryside.

Maybe I should have let Bae Sejin book the accommodations.

Bae Sejin said, “The vibes here are so nostalgic.”

“Y-you’re right.”

I take it back. I should have handled it myself. But I’d been in charge of the planning, so there had been no two ways about it. It had been a long time since I’d done something so unproductive, and it had taken some trial and error.

I looked over at Raebin. He was looking between his laptop and the members, with a disturbed look on his face. His reaction did not surprise me. He’d just been told to make whatever music he wanted on his own. For this reason, I’d decided on a few themes we could start off with.

“I’ve been thinking about what themes we could pick to make this more fun,” I said.

I turned the TV on. The only modern thing in this cabin, the smart TV, opened to WeTube. There were a few conditions I had when it came to selecting a theme. The first was that it had to be distant from the work of TeSTAR. Raebin was in such a state that he would no doubt come up with criticism of his work all on his own, and worry constantly if the music had even the remotest possibility of becoming a TeSTAR song.

This has to be purely for fun. And in the same vein, the second requirement was that it needed to stay distant. In other words, it needed to remain something that had zero possibility of ever being used, making it impossible for Raebin to have any useless negative thoughts at all. Of course, the theme had to be such that it would not cause any trouble even if the songs ever leaked.

That filters out a great majority of topics. And finally, and most importantly of all, was that the topic had to be interesting. Raebin’s preferences had been quite clear ever since the second team battle of Idol Inc.

Inspiration. He needed to feel the desire to turn something into music. That was my reason for choosing this first topic. I pushed the remote buttons, logging in and choosing a playlist. Electronic noises, eight-bit sounds, and a black screen appeared.

[Welcome to SECTION 127]

[!wARNinG! ※L21※]

“The first theme is making the background track for a boss in the sequel to 127 Section,” I said.

“Wow!”

It was the sequel to the well-made game, 127 Section, which we’d collaborated with early on in our career.

This will never be used for work. The reason was simple—copyright. And this particular copyright hurdle would never disappear, since our collaboration with the game studio had ended long ago. Everybody involved knew that doing another would be too much.

But it’s fun.

“As it happens, each boss in this game… is based on our characters from the tutorial in the first game,” I said.

This was the reason I’d chosen this direction. There was a link, and room for creativity.

I think they said something about spirits from a parallel universe or something like that. In any case, what was certain was that this topic called to mind our past work while being very easy to approach.

[Sold Out – II8: BGM]

The boss music for B11, the character I’d played in the trailer, was playing now.

“Why don’t we try arranging the background track for the character we played, in any style we want?” I asked.

“Wow, that sounds interesting. You sound like a camp leader, Moondae!” Big Sejin said.

He’d been briefed about my ideas yesterday and agreed to every suggestion, yet here he was making a fuss. But this structure was necessary—a structure that lent to each of us attempting to write music together. We should have done this a long time ago.

We put too great a burden on Raebin. For instance, I never sang an entire verse by myself just because I had the highest singing stat in the group. The same rule should have applied when it came to music production. Instead of simply giving feedback, we should have taken a more active role in the creation of our music and increased our familiarity with this aspect of our work, but we’d delayed doing so because Raebin was so good at it.

The music is the most important aspect. We shouldn’t have neglected it. We shouldn’t have ever allowed Raebin to be referred to as the soul of TeSTAR’s music.

Instead of simply coming up with ideas for concepts and genres, we should have gotten our own hands dirty with making the music at least once. I glanced at the composition software sitting open on my laptop.

I hope this whole experience also helps him feel less of a burden. But first, I needed to check on his reaction. I looked over at him.

“And the next theme is…”

Actually, no second theme seemed necessary. I pressed my lips closed. He was staring at the video on the smart TV with great intensity.