The next morning, Ji-hoon arrived at the recording studio twelve minutes early.
He didn't need to come early. His schedule was already packed so tightly that even ten-minute gaps were noted in his phone. But ever since last night, after listening to the composition Yoo-jin had sent him over and over, he hadn't been able to lie still in bed.
The melody had no lyrics.
It only repeated a chain of chords so sad they were almost gentle, like the sound of someone walking down a hallway at midnight, then stopping in front of a door that didn't belong to them. Ji-hoon had listened to it in the car, in the dressing room, even while the makeup artist applied another layer of concealer beneath his eyes.
By the seventeenth listen, he had memorized every note.
By the eighteenth, he had started waiting for the final transition.
By the nineteenth, he realized he was waiting for someone.
The recording studio's lights still weren't fully on. Blue light from the mixing desk spread across the floor, cutting through coils of cable twisting like sleeping snakes. Yoo-jin sat where he had yesterday, one hand propping up his chin while the other moved the mouse across the screen.
He didn't look up when the door opened.
"You're early."
Ji-hoon paused slightly in the doorway.
"You knew it was me?"
"No one else walks into the studio without making a sound."
"So you heard my footsteps?"
"I heard the door."
The answer was so calm that Ji-hoon didn't know whether to be disappointed or laugh.
He hung his coat over the back of a chair, then sat down across from the mixing desk.
"You didn't sleep?"
"I did."
"How long?"
Yoo-jin stopped moving the mouse.
"Long enough to work."
"That was your answer yesterday."
"Then I answered correctly yesterday."
Ji-hoon stared at him for a few seconds, then genuinely laughed. It wasn't the smile he gave the cameras, or the one carefully angled for the advertising posters. It was brief and slightly hoarse, but it softened his face.
Yoo-jin looked up.
His gaze lingered on Ji-hoon longer than it had yesterday.
"You look better when you smile like that."
Ji-hoon immediately fell silent.
The remark didn't sound flirtatious. Yoo-jin had said it the way he might comment on a sound in a recording—plainly, without preparing the words first. That was precisely why Ji-hoon had no idea where to look.
"Do you usually say things that make people uncomfortable?"
"I only say what I hear."
"Then don't listen so closely from now on."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
Yoo-jin turned the monitor toward him. It showed recording software with dozens of waveforms layered over one another.
"My job is to listen."
"Just your job?"
The moment the question left his mouth, Ji-hoon wanted to swallow it back. Yoo-jin had noticed the strange silence that followed, too. He didn't call attention to it, only lowered his head and opened another file.
"This is the rough arrangement."
The melody from last night came through the monitors. Today, it had another layer: very thin strings, almost nothing more than a breath resting behind the piano. Ji-hoon sat still and listened to the entire passage.
"When did you add this part?"
"Last night."
"Why?"
"The composition was missing someone."
Ji-hoon turned to him.
"Missing someone?"
"Yeah." Yoo-jin said, "The piano is someone who doesn't sleep. The strings are someone standing outside."
"Then who's going to open the door?"
"No one yet."
The answer left Ji-hoon speechless for a moment.
Yoo-jin had a way of talking about music as if every composition were a room with people living inside it. And although he never said exactly who he was thinking of, Ji-hoon still felt as if he were eavesdropping on something deeply private.
"Do you write all of this by yourself?"
"For the most part."
"No one listens to it first?"
"No."
"Not even your family?"
Yoo-jin closed the file.
"My family doesn't listen to my music."
The words held no resentment. They simply fell into place, neat and final, like a fact that had been settled long ago.
Ji-hoon lowered his eyes to his hands.
"So I was the first person to hear that track yesterday?"
"Yeah."
"Why did you let me hear it?"
Yoo-jin didn't answer right away. He looked at the controls in front of him, then through the glass toward the empty recording booth.
"Because you asked."
"That's all?"
"That's all."
Ji-hoon knew he should stop. But the composition had done something strange: it made him want to understand the person who had written it, even as that person kept building walls out of short answers.
"Aren't you worried I'll hate it after I listen?"
"Do you hate it?"
"No."
"Then there's nothing to worry about."
Someone like Yoo-jin was incredibly annoying.
He said obvious things in an even tone, leaving Ji-hoon unable to find a single opening to argue through. But that was also why Ji-hoon felt at ease. Around Yoo-jin, he didn't have to guess how much of what the other man said was true. Yoo-jin didn't try to make him happy, didn't try to seem friendly, and didn't look at him like an opportunity that could be turned into a contract.
Yoo-jin simply listened.
And when he spoke, he always said exactly what he thought.
"Let's start," Yoo-jin said.
Ji-hoon stepped into the recording booth. Before closing the door, he turned back.
"Yoo-jin."
"Yeah?"
"Is this composition... something you were planning to write for my album?"
"I don't know yet."
"Then what if I want to sing it?"
Yoo-jin looked at him through the glass.
"You want to sing it?"
Ji-hoon was about to answer immediately, but stopped.
He wanted to sing it. Not because the song might become a hit, and not because it suited the image of a male idol preparing to release an album. He wanted to sing it because the melody made him feel as if he wasn't the only one waking up in the middle of the night.
But saying that aloud would sound too much like a confession.
"I think it suits me."
Yoo-jin continued looking at him.
"Those are two different things."
"Then how do you want me to answer?"
"Honestly."
A faint warmth crept up Ji-hoon's neck.
He turned toward the microphone.
"I want to sing it."
This time, Yoo-jin didn't ask anything else.
The intro began. Ji-hoon closed his eyes and let the piano notes pass through his chest. He sang the first line lower than he had during yesterday's test. By the second line, his breathing had steadied. Yoo-jin didn't interrupt him or ask him to fix his pronunciation or push the emotion higher.
He simply sat behind the mixing desk.
But Ji-hoon could feel that gaze through the glass, calm and focused, like an invisible hand holding him in place whenever his voice threatened to fall away from itself.
The recording took three attempts.
The first time, Ji-hoon sang too cautiously.
The second time, he deliberately made his voice sound prettier.
The third time, he forgot what he was supposed to do.
"Use the third take," Yoo-jin said.
The technician sitting beside him turned slightly.
"There are a few rough spots in the third take."
"I know."
"Should we record it again?"
"No."
Ji-hoon took off his headphones.
"Why?"
Yoo-jin pressed play. The ending came through the speakers, Ji-hoon's voice cracking slightly on one syllable before immediately pulling itself back together.
"Here." Yoo-jin pointed to the waveform. "You stopped trying to prove that you were okay."
Ji-hoon looked at the screen.
"It was only one syllable."
"Not to you."
The entire studio fell silent.
Yoo-jin said nothing more. But Ji-hoon heard the meaning behind his words: he had heard the moment Ji-hoon stopped performing.
No one had ever pointed that out before.
People usually praised his control, his stability, his professionalism. They liked the parts of him he could control. No one talked about the moments when he couldn't control himself, much less told him that those were the moments that made his voice real.
Ji-hoon turned away.
"You talk like you understand me so well."
"I don't understand you."
"Then why do you keep..."
"I only listen to you."
Once again, the answer left Ji-hoon unable to argue.
The recording session stretched past noon. When everyone else left to eat, Ji-hoon stayed behind to adjust the lyrics. He wasn't used to being allowed to participate in small decisions like choosing a word, changing the length of a pause, or cutting a line that didn't feel true to him.
Yoo-jin never said, "Just do it my way."
He asked:
"Do you think we should keep this line or cut it?"
"Do you want to sing through this transition or pause?"
"Do you want the chorus to open up more?"
Those small questions came together into something Ji-hoon had forgotten he ever wanted: the right to have an opinion about himself.
At two that afternoon, his assistant called to tell him the car was ready.
Ji-hoon stood, but didn't leave right away.
"Are we recording again tomorrow?"
"Yeah."
"Here, too?"
"Yeah."
"Will you come early?"
Yoo-jin looked at him.
"Do you want me to come early?"
The question thrown back at him made Ji-hoon realize he'd just revealed something.
"No. I was just asking."
"I'll get here before you."
"Why?"
"To check the studio."
"What does the studio need checked every day?"
"A lot of things."
"Like what?"
Yoo-jin looked thoughtful, as if he were genuinely considering the question.
"The microphone. The cables. The mixing desk. And whether you slept last night."
Ji-hoon laughed again.
This time, Yoo-jin's lips curved faintly, too.
His smile was so slight it barely lasted a breath. But Ji-hoon saw it.
He stood in the doorway longer than necessary.
"See you tomorrow."
"Yeah. See you tomorrow."
The hallway outside was brighter than the recording studio. Ji-hoon walked a few steps, then stopped and secretly glanced at Yoo-jin's reflection through the window in the door. The man had already returned to the screen and the compositions, as if that smile had never appeared.
Ji-hoon's phone buzzed.
A message from an unsaved number.
"Don't trust the people in the recording studio. They only want to use you to make money."
There was no sender name.
Ji-hoon read it once, then deleted it.
But before the screen went dark, he still saw the preview of another message that had just appeared below it.
"Where are you? I'm coming to pick you up tonight."
Sender: Min-woo.
Ji-hoon looked back at the recording studio door.
Behind the glass, Yoo-jin was still sitting alone beneath the blue lights.
For the first time, someone else began stepping into the stretch of time that had belonged only to the two of them.