Chapter 172
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How long I’ve lived is no longer even worth talking about, and I don’t know exactly myself.
When I was addicted to antidepressants, or when I was repeating unconscious regressions, my sense of time was a mess.
There were times when it felt like only a week had passed, but months had gone by.
But one thing was certain: I had lived through a span of time that was difficult even for me to estimate.
And I had also built up an equally difficult-to-estimate number of connections.
At one point, I’d found it painful to encounter people I’d known in past lives.
We had definitely been close enough in a previous life to comfort each other through our traumas, but I was the only one who remembered that.
If I showed familiarity, they looked at me with wariness.
So I realized something.
For me, connections weren’t context between people.
For a regressor, someone whose every context vanished with a single regression, connections were familiar patterns of behavior—“If I act like this, that person reacts like that.”
In that sense, the GOTM guys were connections and ties more familiar to me than anything else.
I had spent close to ten cycles with those guys—though the early members had been swapped out—and I knew what they liked and what they hated.
So I knew what Dave Logan meant when he said to me,
“Edward was spouting nonsense. Said you’re the greatest guitarist.”
This wasn’t suspicion, and it wasn’t him picking a fight.
It was just an indirect way of saying he wanted to hear me play guitar.
The dishonest bastard.
“The greatest is Eric Scott.”
“Not Slowhand?”
“At that level, isn’t it just a matter of taste?”
Slowhand was the nickname of Eric Clapton, who became a god of the guitar through the aesthetics of slowness.
Dave Logan was a devoted believer in Eric Clapton, but the funny thing was that he himself couldn’t play slowly.
Thinking that, I looked around at the GOTM members.
Drummer Andrew Gunn.
Guitarist Dave Logan.
Bassist John Sky.
Keyboardist Steve Lipgren.
And the team I’d been part of, as the lead vocalist, second guitarist, second keyboardist, and second bassist, was……
“Grammy Award for Album of the Year! And the glorious winner is……!”
“Gram Of The Minute!”
“GOTM! Congratulations!”
GOTM.
At that moment, I felt my mood churn.
It was strange.
Meeting connections from past lives was something far too familiar to me, and it wasn’t something that should make my emotions fluctuate.
Of course, regression depression did flare up regardless of time or place.
I’d been depressed even when Sedalbaegil released our first album.
But right now, this was far too out of nowhere.
Besides……
I didn’t think I was particularly depressed.
It felt like some other emotion was stirring in my chest, but I couldn’t quite identify it.
Just then, the door opened, and Eddie and Eddie’s manager, Alex, came in.
It seemed they had bought a mountain of pizza and fries from somewhere.
“Did you say hello?”
“What kind of greeting is a handshake that stands in for instruments?”
Dave Logan grumbled.
He seemed quite disappointed that he hadn’t gotten to hear my guitar.
He’d be hearing it soon anyway. Honestly.
Ignoring Dave Logan’s grumbling, I shook hands with Alex.
“How have you been, Alex?”
“I’ve been well. And I’ve been diligently following your news. If I’d offered a million dollars, would you have signed with us?”
Alex, who had come to Korea because of Eddie, had offered me an enormous signing bonus.
He’d said we could calculate Sedalbaegil’s signing fee separately, but for starters, he wanted the singer named Han Sion to belong to HR Corporation.
Naturally, I refused.
I intended to be active in Korea.
Alex still seemed regretful about that.
Honestly, even for a million dollars, I wouldn’t have gone, but I should at least say something nice.
“If it was a million dollars, maybe I would have gone.”
“And now it’s too late?”
“It is. Bring me about ten million dollars.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to sign Beyoncé for that kind of money?”
“That’s true.”
We chatted with laughter, and at the end of it was a distribution contract.
“Even if you don’t work in the U.S., it wouldn’t be bad to sign at least a distribution deal. It was a shame there was no additional promotion at all when you made it onto the Billboard chart.”
HR was not a place I had ever worked with.
It was like the mecca of the traditional white music industry, so it wasn’t an appropriate place for a person of color like me to be active.
If I signed with HR, the people who supported me might be disappointed.
But if I was mainly active in Korea, HR might actually be better.
Thinking that, I only gave off a positive nuance.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Now, now. Save the boring stuff for later. Let’s record first. We don’t have that much time.”
At Eddie’s words, I shook my head.
The GOTM guys had a strong desire to improve, and they were the type to charge straight toward their goal.
Even after earning an absurd amount of money, they were the sort who thought more about investing it into the next album than about how to spend it.
That was why I had chosen them, and why they had been with me.
There was no way these guys would trust me based on a few words from Eddie.
“Let’s play once.”
Saying that, I called Producer Kang Seokwoo.
There were cameras set up, but I’d asked him to contact me if it looked like an event was about to happen.
A short while later, the Self Made filming team flooded into the studio HR had rented.
Even though it was an incredibly spacious place, it became packed.
“What are we going to play?”
“Who knows.”
My mood was still strange.
I wasn’t depressed, but should I say I felt gloomy?
No, this wasn’t gloom either.
One of the reasons I still loved music was that it told me the answer when I didn’t know what my emotions were.
I picked up the guitar and began to play.
The overall framework was “Da.”
It was the song I’d made after regressing, while thinking back on GOTM, and the one I had titled “Kkundeur-i” in Korean.
Eddie had taken it and arranged it, and while I hadn’t liked it much at first, I liked the arrangement now.
As my guitar began to pour out its cry, I could feel Dave Logan’s expression change drastically.
The aesthetics of slowness.
Because he had sensed me imitating Eric Clapton’s playing.
But it would be too incredible to dismiss as mere imitation.
I had practiced it over countless years, after all.
Among the artists quietly listening, the first to join in was drummer Andrew Gunn.
A strange guy who loved the hi-hat.
And yet he was a guy who knew how to unleash thunderous sounds.
The moment Andrew Gunn started playing the drums, a house was built in an instant.
The guitar filled its living room, and the bassist and keyboardist filled its rooms.
But Logan still couldn’t come in.
Because I wasn’t making room for him.
He could force his way in if he wanted to, but if he did, he would have to accept that the performance would “drop in quality,” and he couldn’t bring himself to accept that.
Dave Logan’s face reddened.
Even when he was playing guitar at a drug rehabilitation center in Chicago while suffering from hand tremors, Logan had said,
“My hands don’t even need to be fine. Even like this, I’m the best.”
Even if others didn’t acknowledge him, he believed in the talent he possessed.
And in truth, it was real talent.
Though it would take some time to fully bloom.
So Dave Logan had encountered a wall for the first time.
Of course, I’m not saying I was the best guitarist on Earth.
If we’re talking purely about guitar skill, there were a few people who played better than me.
Hm, could I count them on ten fingers, roughly?
No?
Five fingers?
But I was someone who knew the direction of Logan’s talent very well, and I could become a wall larger than anyone else.
Regardless of Logan’s reddening face, the drummer, bassist, and keyboardist’s faces brightened.
Because playing with me was enjoyable.
At that moment, unable to endure it any longer, Logan crashed his way in.
He wasn’t aiming for harmony.
Nor was he trying to beat me.
He was simply trying to show that this was what his guitar was.
From that point on, it was a rodeo.
I grabbed hold of Logan’s galloping guitar.
Whenever it tried to run wild, I blocked it.
Galloping and rampaging were different things.
If Logan learned that, he could become the greatest guitarist.
“……!”
He was probably frustrated.
Whenever he tried to rampage like usual, I got in his way with the melody.
If he ignored that, it would become dissonance, and he couldn’t tolerate his own playing creating dissonance.
That time passed.
“Damn it. I lost. You’re a genius.”
The performance ended.
But I didn’t stop.
This time, I picked up the bass and repeated something similar.
John Sky wasn’t a bassist with clear strengths and weaknesses like Logan.
In a way, he was similar to Choi Jaeseong within Sedalbaegil.
Someone who balanced things out.
Bass was originally that kind of instrument, too.
What John Sky needed wasn’t technique, but mindset.
The confidence that the bass could lead the sound.
The belief that he could become the protagonist.
After the bassist, I gave the keyboardist advice through performance.
“Damn, does this even make sense?”
The reaction from the people was explosive.
It wasn’t easy to show various possibilities with various instruments within the same song.
Especially while considering the individual traits of each performer.
But I could do it, and it seemed that shocked Eddie and Alex.
Their expressions entered my sight.
Eddie was entranced, and Alex was regretful.
He was probably deeply sorry that he hadn’t been able to sign me.
Producer Kang Seokwoo was absolutely thrilled.
It may have been because he had good footage to use, but Korean men around Producer Kang Seokwoo’s age had a certain romance about group sounds.
He had never shown it, but I already knew he liked band sounds.
Of course, the ones most shocked were the GOTM members.
No, they weren’t GOTM yet.
I’d heard they were still deciding on a name.
At first, they had shown a slight resistance to my playing, which pushed and pulled them around as I pleased, but at some point, it had left the realm of reason.
It was in the realm of emotion.
But the more I played like that, the more my emotions settled.
And finally, I realized what the true identity of my emotion was.
It wasn’t depression, and it wasn’t gloom.
The emotion making my chest ripple was regret.
It wasn’t that I regretted becoming strangers with GOTM after meeting them again.
I was someone used to that sort of thing.
But while looking at the GOTM members, with whom I had shared joy and hardship for decades……
I thought of Sedalbaegil.
Someday, they would become like this too.
In my next life, when I was challenging myself as some idol again, the members of Sedalbaegil would probably be scattered apart.
Maybe Coming Up Next wouldn’t become popular, so they might not debut, or the program might not even be produced at all.
The four of them except me might all become trainees at Ryan Entertainment and debut as Takescene’s next group.
But whatever the case, I would no longer be in their lives.
Even if we became part of the same team again, the time I’d spent with them would vanish forever.
That snapped me awake.
I was probably in a good mood these days.
To put it a little more boldly, I might even be happy.
It wasn’t easy to objectively grasp happiness, but it had been quite a while since I’d suffered from regression depression.
The frequency of my nightmares had decreased too.
But happiness didn’t solve anything.
So before regret came for me, I had to challenge myself.
Throwing away all ordinary things.
Leaving behind what seemed obvious.
“……!”
The moment that thought occurred to me, I sprang to my feet.
When the performance suddenly cut off, the keyboardist Steve Lipgren was flustered.
“W-was my playing that bad?”
He was a timid guy.
But I shook my head.
“Now everyone knows what they need to practice, right? Let’s meet at this time tomorrow.”
Then I left the studio.
When I returned to the dorm, I saw the Sedalbaegil members playing a board game with extremely serious faces.
“What? Why are you back so early?”
“Is filming already over?”
There weren’t even cameras set up today, yet they were so consistent.
Looking at them, I opened my mouth.
“I have a favor to ask.”
“A favor?”
Lee Ion tilted his head.
“What is it?”
“Our second album. I want to prepare it.”
“Our second full-length album?”
“Yes.”
It might have been selfishness on my part.
The members hadn’t fully savored the success of our first album yet.
Even though we had achieved such huge success, we hadn’t even done much broadcasting activity.
But I decided to become a brat.
I felt like throwing a tantrum.