The rain began falling at 9:17 p.m.
Ji-hoon was on a soundstage, standing beneath the white lights and listening to the director ask him to redo the crying scene for the sixth time.
“Don’t cry too beautifully,” the director said. “Your character was just abandoned. You need to look like you don’t have the strength left to maintain your image.”
Ji-hoon nodded.
He knew what to do.
He lowered his shoulders, let his breathing grow ragged, and stared into the empty space ahead with eyes trained to make people believe he was in pain. The camera rolled. He played a man who had been abandoned with everything he had ever learned about loneliness.
“Cut!”
Everyone applauded.
“That’s it. This time felt very real.”
Ji-hoon bowed his head in thanks, then turned away before anyone could see how quickly the emotion on his face had gone out.
His phone vibrated.
A message from Yoo-jin.
“Are you still on the soundstage?”
Ji-hoon checked the time. He wasn’t supposed to be at the recording studio today. His schedule had changed that afternoon, but Yoo-jin still remembered.
“Yes. Haven’t you gone home?”
“Not yet.”
“What are you doing?”
“Listening to the rain.”
Ji-hoon looked out the window. Streaks of water slid down the glass, blurring the city lights.
“Just listening to the rain?”
“And working on the track.”
“Which one?”
A moment later, Yoo-jin replied:
“The one with the empty space.”
Ji-hoon should have put his phone away. Instead, he asked:
“Can I listen?”
“You still have a shoot.”
“It’s almost over.”
“I’ll send it when it’s finished.”
“I want to hear it before it’s finished.”
This time, Yoo-jin didn’t answer right away.
Ji-hoon looked up. Through the glass, the director was conferring with the lighting crew. His assistant hurried over to remind him that he had one last scene. Everyone was still busy, but the conversation on his phone screen made time feel as though it had slowed down.
A new message appeared.
“Then come to the studio.”
Ji-hoon stared at the words, and his heart skipped a beat.
“Now?”
“Now.”
“Are you asking me to ditch my shoot?”
“I’m saying to come if you want to listen.”
Ji-hoon raised his head and looked at the director.
“Is the last scene ready?”
“About ten minutes.”
“I’m sorry, but I have an urgent matter tonight.”
The director turned toward him.
“What matter?”
Ji-hoon smiled out of habit.
“Recording.”
“It’s not on the schedule.”
“It’s a last-minute addition.”
The director frowned, but Ji-hoon had already turned to his assistant. He didn’t offer any further explanation. For the first time in years, he was leaving a schedule of his own accord—not because the agency had asked him to.
The rain grew heavier as the car pulled away from the soundstage.
The streets were gridlocked. The red lights dragged on. Rain struck the window in steady rhythms, like an instrumental song the city was playing by accident for everyone who was still awake.
Ji-hoon put on his headphones but didn’t play any music.
He only looked at Yoo-jin’s last message.
“Be careful on your way.”
Those two words made him read the message over and over.
Studio B was brighter than usual. Yoo-jin was sitting in front of the mixing desk, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. Several pages of music lay on the desk, their corners curled from the rainwater.
“Did you get the composition wet?” Ji-hoon asked.
“The window was cracked open.”
“Recording studios don’t have windows.”
Yoo-jin looked at him.
“Then it was coffee.”
Ji-hoon laughed. The sound rang through the enclosed room, lighter than the rain outside.
“You really called me here?”
“You came on your own.”
“But you told me to come.”
“I said to come if you wanted to listen.”
“So did you want me to come?”
Yoo-jin looked at the screen in front of him.
“I left the door open.”
The answer wasn’t clear, but Ji-hoon understood it was the closest thing to an admission Yoo-jin could offer.
He sat down beside him.
The composition began to play.
This time, the piano wasn’t alone. Behind it was the sound of rain recorded on some unknown night, woven into the silences between the notes. The sound wasn’t clean or perfect. Every so often, there was even the distant sound of a passing car and the faint vibration of metal.
“Where did you record it?”
“At home.”
“You left a microphone out on the balcony?”
“Yeah.”
“Weren’t you afraid the equipment would get damaged?”
“I was.”
“And you did it anyway?”
“Because if I closed the door, I wouldn’t be able to hear the rain.”
Ji-hoon looked at him.
It wasn’t a practical reason. But Yoo-jin said it with such seriousness that it became perfectly reasonable.
The composition ended.
“Do you want me to sing this track?” Ji-hoon asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Still don’t know.”
“I need to hear you sing first.”
“There are no lyrics.”
“Then sing it with vowels.”
Ji-hoon turned to look at him.
“You’re asking me to sing a song with no lyrics using sounds that don’t mean anything?”
“Yeah.”
“You really are difficult to work with.”
“I know.”
But Ji-hoon still stepped into the recording booth.
The rain fell harder outside. The lights were dimmed, leaving only the faint blue glow from the mixing desk. Yoo-jin sat behind the glass, one hand on the control fader and a pencil in the other.
“Start whenever you’re ready.”
Ji-hoon put on his headphones.
He sang along with the melody in meaningless syllables. At first, his voice was cautious, as though he were testing whether the room would hold on to his sound. By the middle, the rain in his headphones swelled, wrapping his voice in a thin veil.
Ji-hoon suddenly remembered the kitchen from years ago.
His mother used to sit by the window listening to the rain, peeling an apple while she hummed a wordless melody. He couldn’t remember which note it had started on. He only remembered that her voice had been very soft, quiet enough not to wake him.
Ji-hoon’s voice slowed.
Yoo-jin didn’t interrupt.
He let Ji-hoon sing to the end, letting the tremulous breath left after the final note fall into the recording.
Ji-hoon took off his headphones.
Neither of them said anything.
After a while, Yoo-jin pressed replay.
“The middle,” he said.
“Did I sing it wrong?”
“No.”
“Then why listen to it again?”
“I want to remember.”
Ji-hoon looked through the glass.
“Remember what?”
“How you sing when you’re thinking of someone who isn’t there anymore.”
The words made it impossible for Ji-hoon to keep breathing evenly.
Yoo-jin realized he had touched something he shouldn’t have, but he didn’t take the words back. He only lowered his voice.
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“I shouldn’t have guessed.”
“You didn’t guess,” Ji-hoon said. “You heard it.”
Yoo-jin fell silent.
Ji-hoon stepped out of the booth and went to the mixing desk. He looked at the waveform on the screen.
“My mother used to sing like that.”
Yoo-jin didn’t ask whether his mother was still alive.
He didn’t offer the comforting words Ji-hoon had heard too many times, either.
He simply pulled out the chair beside him.
“Sit.”
Ji-hoon sat down.
The rain was still falling outside. They listened to the recording once more, neither of them saying a word for four minutes and twelve seconds.
When the composition ended, Yoo-jin took a fresh sheet of paper.
“Do you remember the melody your mother used to sing?”
“Not all of it.”
“Sing back what you do remember.”
“What for?”
“So we can preserve it.”
Ji-hoon lowered his gaze to his hands.
He had once thought memories were things that could only be lost. People grew up, old voices grew fainter, faces faded, and promises dissolved into days no one remembered anymore.
But Yoo-jin spoke of preserving a melody with such calm certainty, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“Can you write it down?”
“I can try.”
“What if you write it wrong?”
“Then you correct me.”
“What if I remember it wrong too?”
“Then we’ll preserve the wrong parts, too.”
Ji-hoon looked up.
“We?”
Yoo-jin didn’t look away.
“Yeah. We.”
The two words were very soft, but they fell between them like a new note.
That night, Ji-hoon didn’t sing the song from the album.
He only sang back a fragment of the melody his mother had hummed when rain fell outside the window. Yoo-jin listened and wrote down each note, occasionally asking in a very quiet voice:
“Is this part a little higher?”
“Yes.”
“Is there a pause here?”
“Yes. My mother used to stop to catch her breath.”
Yoo-jin made a note.
He didn’t turn Ji-hoon’s memory into a commercial song. He didn’t ask whether it could be used as a backing track. He didn’t say that a story about a dead mother would move the public.
He simply preserved it as something that belonged to Ji-hoon alone.
Near midnight, the rain gradually eased.
Ji-hoon realized he had been sitting in the recording studio for more than three hours.
“I should go.”
“Yeah.”
“Aren’t you going to see me out?”
Yoo-jin looked up.
“You know the way.”
“I do.”
“Then why ask?”
Ji-hoon didn’t answer.
Yoo-jin looked at him for a few seconds, then stood and picked up the black umbrella beside the door.
“I’ll walk you downstairs.”
The hallway outside was completely deserted. The motion-sensor lights came on in sections as they passed. Ji-hoon walked more slowly than usual, keeping the distance between them no more than an arm’s length.
When they reached the back entrance, the smell of wet earth immediately filled the air.
Yoo-jin opened the umbrella.
“Where’s your car?”
“Across the street.”
“Let’s go.”
The umbrella wasn’t large. Their shoulders brushed now and then as they avoided puddles. Ji-hoon heard the rain striking the fabric overhead, so close it seemed to be falling inside his chest.
“Yoo-jin.”
“Yeah?”
“The composition from tonight…what are you going to call it?”
Yoo-jin looked at the road ahead.
“Don’t know yet.”
“Do you ever know anything right away?”
“Sometimes.”
“What?”
“When a singer is telling the truth.”
Ji-hoon turned to look at him.
Yoo-jin didn’t look back. But beneath the streetlights, the tips of his ears seemed redder than usual.
The car was waiting across the street.
Ji-hoon stood beneath the awning without getting in right away.
“Will you send me the recording tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Even the part about my mother?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t send it to anyone else.”
“I won’t.”
Ji-hoon nodded.
A gust of wind blew past. Yoo-jin held the umbrella out toward him.
“Take it.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going back to the studio.”
“You don’t need an umbrella?”
“I run faster than you.”
Ji-hoon took the handle but didn’t let go right away. Their fingers touched for one brief moment.
Neither of them pulled away first.
Then Yoo-jin released it.
“Go home.”
Ji-hoon got into the car and closed the door. Through the window, he watched Yoo-jin turn and walk away under the rain without an umbrella, his figure gradually disappearing through the building’s back entrance.
His phone vibrated as soon as the car started moving.
A message from Min-woo:
“Where are you?”
Ji-hoon looked at the screen, then turned it off.
A second message arrived right after.
“I told you. Don’t trust people in the recording studio.”
Ji-hoon lowered the car window a little. The smell of rain poured in, carrying the unfinished melody his mother had sung and the sound of Yoo-jin’s footsteps disappearing behind the door.
For the first time, the warning didn’t frighten Ji-hoon.
It only made him want to know why Min-woo was so afraid of Yoo-jin.