Ji-hoon barely slept.
It wasn't because of the reminder about his mother's death anniversary. Not entirely because of the meeting that had dragged past midnight, either, where strangers sat around a glass table and talked about his voice as if it were an investment that needed to be appraised.
He couldn't sleep because of one sentence.
“You need to sleep tonight.”
Han Yoo-jin had said it in such a calm voice, as if he truly believed Ji-hoon would listen to someone he'd met less than ten minutes earlier.
Ji-hoon lay on a bed so wide that even lying in the middle left him feeling empty. City lights slipped through the gap in the curtains, dividing the room into patches of gray-blue. The phone on the bedside table buzzed again.
Tomorrow's schedule.
7:15 a.m.: Pickup. 8:00 a.m.: Vocal test at Studio B. 9:30 a.m.: Production meeting. 11:00 a.m.: Interview. 1:00 p.m.: Commercial shoot.
Ji-hoon read the last line, then turned off the screen.
His mother's death anniversary wasn't on the schedule.
He closed his eyes, but in the darkness, the old kitchen appeared again. The smell of seaweed, the sound of boiling water, his mother's hand resting against his forehead. Those memories always came when he least wanted to remember them, like a visitor who knew exactly where the door was but never bothered to knock.
By the time his alarm rang, Ji-hoon still hadn't slept.
His assistant noticed the dark circles under his eyes but didn't dare ask. She only handed him a cup of hot coffee, then kept apologizing because his schedule had been moved ten minutes earlier.
“It's fine,” Ji-hoon said.
He was still smiling as usual.
Studio B was in the basement of the Aurora building. There were no windows, no sunlight, only a long hallway covered in dark carpet and the smell of stale coffee mixed with the scent of hot electrical cables. When Ji-hoon stepped inside, several members of the production crew immediately stood.
“Hi, Ji-hoon.”
“Good morning.”
“It's great to finally work with you.”
The greetings came one after another. Everyone acted friendly, but their eyes skimmed over him quickly, stopping on the schedule, the contract, or the computer screen behind him.
Han Yoo-jin didn't stand.
He sat behind the mixing desk, wearing headphones over one ear, with several pages marked in pencil spread out in front of him. A cup of black coffee sat to his right, so cold it no longer gave off steam.
Ji-hoon walked over.
“Hello.”
Yoo-jin looked up. His gaze lingered on Ji-hoon's face a little longer than necessary—not because he'd recognized a celebrity, but as if he were checking some detail.
“Did you sleep?”
The question was so direct that Ji-hoon stopped short.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Long enough to arrive on time.”
“That isn't an answer.”
Ji-hoon pulled out a chair and sat across from him.
“Is this what you ask before hearing me sing?”
“Your voice will be affected if you're sleep-deprived.”
“And if I say I got enough sleep?”
“I'll listen and decide for myself.”
There was no reproach in Yoo-jin's voice. That was what left Ji-hoon unsure how to defend himself.
Yoo-jin pushed a stack of papers toward him.
“This is the temporary recording contract. The legal team has reviewed it. If there's anything you don't understand, ask right away.”
Ji-hoon lowered his gaze and read. The lines were packed tightly together: profit percentages, image rights, exclusivity periods, rights to edit the tracks, and promotional obligations. Everything was written in the cold language he'd long since grown used to.
“You don't need to read it,” a production director standing nearby said. “The agency already worked it out with your manager.”
Yoo-jin looked up.
“He needs to read it.”
The room fell silent for a moment.
The director gave an awkward laugh.
“It's just a formality.”
“Formalities still determine what he can do with his own voice.”
Ji-hoon looked at Yoo-jin.
The words hadn't been loud, but they changed the room. No one said anything else. The director lowered his head to check his phone, while Yoo-jin returned to the pages of music in front of him.
Ji-hoon read each clause one by one.
When he reached the final page, he stopped.
“This means the agency can change the arrangement without my consent?”
“In the event that the arrangement doesn't fit the release strategy.”
“And if I don't agree?”
“You have the right to propose revisions. You don't have the final say.”
“Then is this album mine or the agency's?”
No one answered.
Yoo-jin looked at him across the mixing desk. Then he picked up a pen and drew a line beneath the clause.
“I'll ask them to add the artist's right to approve the final arrangement.”
The director immediately frowned.
“Yoo-jin, that wasn't part of the original agreement.”
“Then add it to the new agreement.”
“He's a new artist in the music industry.”
“But he's the one who has to sing the song.”
Another silence fell.
Ji-hoon looked down at his hands. He'd signed more contracts than he could count, but this was the first time someone had said that the decision should belong to him, even if it was only one small clause.
“You don't have to,” Ji-hoon said softly.
Yoo-jin turned to him.
“Don't have to what?”
“I'm used to it.”
“Being used to other people making decisions for you doesn't mean you have to keep putting up with it.”
His voice remained calm. But this time, Ji-hoon heard something firm beneath it.
Ji-hoon raised his head.
“Do you always talk to people like this?”
“No.”
“Then why say it to me?”
Yoo-jin didn't answer right away. He pushed the microphone toward Ji-hoon, then pressed a button on the console.
“Because I haven't heard you sing yet.”
It was an answer that had nothing to do with the question.
And yet Ji-hoon understood.
If his voice belonged to him, then at least from this moment on, that man wanted to hear it before anyone else decided whether it had value.
Ji-hoon stepped into the recording booth.
Through the glass, Yoo-jin sat alone behind the mixing desk. The others moved farther back, leaving empty space between the two of them. Ji-hoon put on his headphones and accepted the sheet music handed to him.
“What is this song called?” he asked.
“It doesn't have a name yet.”
“Then what am I supposed to sing about?”
“Someone who wakes up in the middle of the night and doesn't know who they're waiting for.”
Ji-hoon looked at the notes on the page.
“That sounds too sad.”
“Not necessarily.”
“If you stay awake without waiting for anyone, how is that not sad?”
“Maybe they just haven't found a reason to sleep.”
Ji-hoon fell silent.
The intro began in his headphones. Only a few simple, sparse piano chords, but every note fell exactly where it needed to, tightening his chest. The melody wasn't trying to move the listener. It simply existed—calm and lonely, like the wan light beneath a door at three in the morning.
Ji-hoon closed his eyes.
“Start when you're ready,” Yoo-jin said over the intercom.
Ji-hoon took the microphone.
For the first time, he didn't sing as if he were standing in front of a camera. He didn't try to make his voice brighter, stretch the prettiest syllables, or place his emotions where other people wanted to see them.
He simply sang.
The first line fell into the recording booth, rougher and lower than expected. The technician beside Yoo-jin lifted his head slightly. The production director stopped scrolling through his phone.
Ji-hoon continued.
By the third line, memories of the old kitchen welled up. By the chorus, his throat had tightened. He wanted to stop, but the piano in his headphones continued quietly forward, neither urging him on nor leaving him behind.
He sang to the end.
No one said anything right away.
Ji-hoon opened his eyes. Through the glass, he saw that Yoo-jin was still sitting in the same place. Only the hand resting on the mixing desk had tightened ever so slightly.
“Sorry,” Ji-hoon said into the microphone. “I can do it again.”
“Why?”
“I went off at the end.”
“No,” Yoo-jin replied. “The ending was the most honest part.”
Ji-hoon froze.
Yoo-jin took off his headphones and looked straight at him through the glass.
“You don't need to do it again.”
“But it wasn't perfect.”
“I'm not looking for perfection.”
“Then what are you looking for?”
Yoo-jin looked at the sheet music in front of him. After a moment, he said:
“Your voice.”
The words passed through the glass, the microphone, and the tangled cables, falling into the place Ji-hoon had kept locked away for so long.
After the vocal test, everyone quickly left the studio for another meeting. The production director patted Ji-hoon on the shoulder, offered a few compliments about his commercial potential, and left. His assistant also received a phone call and had to run upstairs to deal with the schedule.
Only Ji-hoon and Yoo-jin remained in the quiet room.
Yoo-jin rewound the recording and stopped at the ending.
“Do you always sing like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you're apologizing for letting people hear you.”
Ji-hoon laughed, but the smile didn't last.
“You can hear that too?”
“I can hear what you're trying to hide.”
“That sounds terrifying.”
“I didn't mean to frighten you.”
“I know.” Ji-hoon looked at the recording screen. “It's just… strange.”
“Why?”
“Because you talk as if I could sing honestly.”
Yoo-jin leaned back in his chair.
“Can't you?”
Ji-hoon didn't answer.
Outside in the hallway, someone ran past. A door opened and closed. A phone rang. The entire building was moving according to its schedule. Only this studio seemed cut off from everything, like a pocket of darkness hidden underground.
Yoo-jin opened a drawer and took out a small recorder.
“Yesterday's song.”
Ji-hoon looked at the recorder in his hand.
“The song about someone who can't sleep?”
“Yeah.”
Yoo-jin pressed play.
The piano rang out, slow and deep. The melody was different from the song Ji-hoon had just sung. It had no distinct chorus, only a sequence of notes repeating again and again, like someone standing in front of a door without the courage to knock.
Ji-hoon listened for a long time.
When the song ended, he realized he'd been holding his breath.
“Who did you write it for?”
“No one.”
“That can't be true.”
“Why not?”
“No one writes a song like that if there isn't someone in their heart.”
Yoo-jin looked at the recorder, his finger resting on the stop button.
“Some people don't need to be in your life to keep you awake.”
Ji-hoon didn't ask anything else.
For the first time, he realized that this man wasn't without emotion. Yoo-jin simply kept his feelings somewhere else, somewhere no one could touch without permission.
Ji-hoon's phone buzzed.
A message from Manager Kang.
“Meeting canceled. There's an additional shoot tonight. The car is waiting at the back entrance.”
Ji-hoon looked at the message, then back at the recorder on the table.
“I have to go.”
Yoo-jin nodded.
“Eight tomorrow.”
“Will you be here?”
The question slipped out before Ji-hoon could stop it.
Yoo-jin looked at him.
“I'm your producer.”
“I know.”
“Then I'll be here.”
Ji-hoon picked up his coat, walked a few steps, then stopped.
“Yoo-jin.”
“Yeah?”
“That song from earlier… could you send it to me?”
“It isn't finished.”
“I don't need the finished version.”
Yoo-jin was silent for a few seconds.
“I'll send it.”
Ji-hoon nodded, but still didn't leave.
“Why haven't you asked what day it is?”
Yoo-jin's gaze shifted slightly.
“Do you want me to ask?”
“I don't know.”
“Then I won't ask.”
“Why?”
“Because some days, people just want to be beside someone without having to explain.”
Ji-hoon looked at him.
In that moment, the recording studio no longer felt cold.
He lowered his head, hiding the sudden sting in his eyes.
“See you tomorrow.”
“Yeah. See you tomorrow.”
Ji-hoon left the recording studio.
Before the door closed, he turned back for one last look. Yoo-jin had already lowered his head over the sheet music, the blue light from the mixing desk washing over his face. A man sitting amid countless controls, yet looking as if he were somewhere very far from everyone else.
The phone in Ji-hoon's pocket buzzed again.
A new audio file had arrived.
The file name contained only one line:
“The One Who Can't Sleep.”
Ji-hoon stood in the dark hallway and put on his headphones.
The melody sounded in his ears.
And for the first time in years, on the very day his mother had died, Ji-hoon didn't feel like he was the only one awake in the city.