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Playlist l This summer is our first love
Standing by the door was a boy I’d never seen before
He was holding a rain-soaked umbrella in one hand, and his school shirt shoulder was a little wet
Instead of answering, I froze half-risen from the chair
'Sorry, I’ll go out'
The words rose all the way up to my throat, then sank back down
The boy set his umbrella beside the door and slowly walked toward the piano
???? : "Left hand"
Hana : "...Huh?"
???? : "If you press down all the notes with your left hand like that, the sound gets muddy"
He stood beside me and placed his hand on the keys
Long, white fingers
???? : "Try just these three, like this, and leave one lower note out"
I did as he said
A clean harmony spread under my melody
It was the same song as before, but it sounded like a completely different piece
Before I knew it, I looked up at him
He looked at my score and pointed to the next bar with his right hand
One bar
Two bars
The sound he played was different from mine
It was the same piano, but even the off notes sounded like he’d meant them that way
His fingertips pressing the keys were very light
They were the hands of someone who had touched a piano for a long time, not someone touching it for the first time
Then he suddenly pulled his hand away
As if he’d touched something hot
???? : "...Sorry"
He left the music room without even taking his umbrella, leaving only those words behind
His footsteps running down the hallway were drowned out by the rain
I stood in front of the piano for a long time
I couldn’t shake that sound from my ears
Ding-dong-ding-dong
The lunch break bell rang
I hurriedly shoved the chair back into place and ran out
.
I wondered whether to take the other person’s umbrella standing by the door, but in the end I left it there
I only realized the notebook was missing that night
I dumped out my bag, opened every desk drawer, even lifted the blanket and looked underneath it
It wasn’t there
Hana : "...On the piano"
That was the only place it could have been
I pulled the blanket over my head and stomped my feet
The notebook had lyrics in it
Everything I’d never been able to tell anyone was in there
If someone read it
I wouldn’t be able to go to school.
But strangely, amid my worry about the notebook, something else kept coming to mind
The harmony that had spread so cleanly
And that boy’s face when he took his hands off
He looked like someone who had been caught by something
All weekend, my stomach burned
On Saturday, I thought about going to school
I went all the way to the school gate, saw the iron gate locked tight, and just came back
On Sunday, I took out my guitar
But since the notebook was gone, I didn’t know what to play, so I put it back
Mom asked why I was sighing so much, but
I only said I had a lot of homework.
Early Monday morning, I meant to go and stop by the music room first, but I missed the bus again
In the end, I walked again
By the time I reached the gate, it was just before the bell rang
The moment I stepped into the classroom, my breath stopped
That boy in the seat by the window
The boy who always wore one earbud and only solved workbooks was standing in front of my desk
And my notebook was in his hand
He dropped the notebook onto my desk before I even sat down
???? : "This is yours, right"
All the class’s eyes turned toward us at once
I only nodded
???? : "It’s a song, isn’t it"
I nodded again
???? : "You even wrote the chords. Did you write this?"
My third nod came a little late
Because he had opened the notebook to the middle, not the first page
Hana’s handwriting : 'The lyrics I wrote in small letters'
On top of those lyrics, something had been written in small pencil marks
'It’d be nice to add a bridge here'
It wasn’t my handwriting
???? : "Myeong Jaehyeon"
Hana : "...?"
Jaehyeon : "My name... you still don’t know the names of the other kids in class, right"
I’d been caught
My face flushed hot
Jaehyeon : "Come to the music room after school. I have something to talk about"
Saying only that, Jaehyeon went back to his seat and put his earbud in again
The class whispered among themselves
I heard someone say they’d never seen Myeong Jaehyeon talk to someone first
I also heard someone say what the top student in the whole school wanted with a transfer student
Top student in the whole school
Only then did I understand
That the boy tapping out the beat with the tip of his pen was the best student in this school
I clutched the notebook tightly to my chest
My heart was so loud I couldn’t hear a thing in first period
I secretly opened the notebook and looked at the pencil writing again
'It’d be nice to add a bridge here'
It was something only someone who’d read my song all the way through could say
I stood in front of the music room door after school for about five minutes
Should I go in
Should I just go home
When I’d put my hand on the doorknob and taken it off about three times
The door suddenly flew open from inside
1st-year : "Huh? It’s that older sister from back then!"
It was the boy who had been running while hugging bread
Today, instead of bread, he was holding drumsticks backward
1st-year : "Hyung, that older sister’s here! The sister who picked up my bread!"
Jaehyeon : "Kim Wunhak, you’re holding the sticks backward"
Wunhak : "Oh, really?"
Wunhak gripped the sticks the right way, then tried to spin them around coolly, only to drop them right away
The sticks flew and hit the cymbal
The clang echoed through the music room
Wunhak : "...I just practiced that"
Jaehyeon : "If that’s how you practice, don’t"
The music room had changed from that day
The stacked chairs had been tidied against the wall, and the cloth that covered the drum set had been taken off
In the corner of the blackboard, there was even something like a practice schedule written in neat handwriting
Someone had been coming and going here for quite a while
That neat handwriting was exactly the same as the pencil writing in the notebook
Wunhak pulled a chair over in front of me
Wunhak : "Sit here, noona. This is my seat, but I’ll give it to you"
Hana : "......"
Wunhak : "I’m Kim Wunhak, class 3, first year! I was actually the cleaning duty here"
Without me even asking, Wunhak kept talking excitedly
Wunhak : "While cleaning the annex, I kept hearing weird sounds from here every day, so I thought it was a ghost and peeked in secretly, and then Jaehyeon hyung was rapping by himself"
Jaehyeon : "Wunhak"
Wunhak : "But he was seriously so cool. Noona, have you heard hyung rap? It’s insane. So I said I wanted to do it too right away"
Jaehyeon : "Stop"
Wunhak : "Hyung asked what I could do, and I said I couldn’t do anything. But then hyung said, then do drums, and gave me the sticks"
Jaehyeon : "You said you wanted the noisiest thing"
Wunhak : "Yeah, that’s true too"
Wunhak laughed, heehee
Jaehyeon sighed, but he didn’t kick Wunhak out
I looked back and forth between the two of them
It was strange that the Jaehyeon who never said a word in class and the Jaehyeon who was now nagging Wunhak were the same person
Jaehyeon stood in front of the blackboard
He wrote a date in chalk and circled it
July 18
Under it, he drew a line and wrote things down one by one
Overall: Myeong Jaehyeon
Drums: Kim Wunhak
Main vocal
Guitar
Bass
Keyboard
Only two lines had names on them
The rest were all blank
Jaehyeon : "Apparently this school had a band club until a few years ago. Then it disappeared, and this room became a storage room"
Jaehyeon tapped the end of the chalk against the date
Jaehyeon : "We’ll be performing at the summer festival on this day"
The calendar by the blackboard was still stopped at May
I counted forward with my fingers to July
Seven weeks
I couldn’t tell whether that was long or short
Wunhak clapped
I looked at the blank spaces on the blackboard
There was no guitar, no bass, no keyboard
There were only two people
Jaehyeon : "We can gather people"
Jaehyeon said, as if reading my expression
Then he pointed at my notebook with his chin
Jaehyeon : "We’ve got a song"
Hana : "...?"
Jaehyeon : "I mean yours, the one in that notebook"
Jaehyeon sat down on the piano bench
He put his hands on the keys and played my melody with one hand
Then, over it, he laid my lyrics in a low voice
That sound, half singing and half speaking, filled the dusty music room
It was completely different from when I’d sung it alone, muffling my voice in my room
With my words coming out in someone else’s voice, they somehow felt less pathetic
They actually sounded cool
And for just a moment
I thought it sounded like a voice I’d heard somewhere before
I couldn’t remember where
Jaehyeon stopped his hand
Jaehyeon : "I want to do this on stage"
I opened my mouth, but no words came out
Wunhak : "Noona, do it with us too, okay?"
Wunhak gripped the sticks tightly and looked up at me
He had a face that knew nothing of rumors, just like the day he took the bread
And in that instant
Truly without meaning to
Hana : "...Yeah"
A sound came out
It was my voice
I clapped both hands over my mouth
Jaehyeon snorted with a laugh, and Wunhak tossed the sticks into the air and dropped them again
Clang
The cymbal rang out once more
The most surprised person was me
Hello! Hiki here!
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