Episode 94: Special Lesson (2)
“Ah, Yujin-ssi, come on in.”
The familiar faces of the engineers—who now seem to have become my dedicated work team—greet me as I step into the recording studio.
“Thank you for gathering on such short notice.”
“Thank us for what? It’s a chance to watch Yujin-ssi work live—of course we had to come.”
“Huh? Didn’t you say we could speak casually?”
When I point out that the same person who said we could drop formalities during the <Mysty> wrap-up is now using polite speech again,
“Hahaha… I was going to, but… after seeing how fast you put Hylliy at #1 on the charts, I figured it might not be a good idea…?”
Chief engineer Lee Jun-min averts his eyes slightly while making an excuse that’s barely an excuse.
“Come on, that’s not a thing. It’s awkward for both of us if you pick it back up after putting it down. Please, just speak comfortably.”
“I’ll do half-polite, half-casual then. If I start calling you ‘Yujin-ah’ right now, we might actually get stoned.”
“No way.”
“No, seriously. Right now you’re MyWay’s supreme GOAT Dae-Yujin-nim. Even if it’s not stones, you’ll definitely get some side-eye.”
At my ‘Is it really that bad?’ reaction, Shin Jong-hyeop—the youngest of the three but still older than me—waves his hands and answers.
Well, if I’d come alone, it would’ve been perfect icebreaker material, but right now it’s a little awkward.
Because I didn’t come alone.
“But who’s the person next to you…?”
Thankfully, the only female engineer, Won Hye-yeon, smoothly changes the subject at the perfect moment.
“Ah, this is Gong Ji-woo, the composer who wrote this song. I brought him along to watch.”
“Ah! Welcome! I’m engineer Lee Jun-min.”
“Hello… I hope I’m not just getting in the way…”
Even now, Ji-woo still hasn’t completely given up on escaping, but
“No way.”
“You’re the composer—of course you’re a stakeholder.”
“Please relax.”
The three engineers, who don’t know the circumstances that dragged Ji-woo here, respond with pure sincerity, and his clumsy escape attempt fails once again.
The real reason Ji-woo wants to run away is separate.
“Shall we start right away?”
“Wait a second. There’s still someone coming…”
“Excuse me.”
“Ah, there he is. Come on in.”
The door cracks open slightly, and a head peeks in to greet us—it’s Tae-oh.
Behind him, Yoo Phillip, Jung Bong-kyu, Shim Minseok, and finally Yeom Kyuha—the full debut lineup of Orion—step in one by one.
“Oho~! So these are the kids Yujin-ssi is in charge of.”
“Yes! Hello!”
““Hello!!””
Lee Jun-min recognizes them immediately, and the boys—led by Yeom Kyuha, who has somehow become the de facto leader—bow deeply in unison.
“Wow~ Look at that perfect timing. How hard have you been working these kids, Yujin-ssi?”
“Come on, ‘working hard’? They were already good before I took over.”
“Hmm. Alright, I’ll buy it. You didn’t call them just to make them greet us, right?”
“No. <Blue Poem> and <First Step> share some emotional overlap. I called them here for a lesson of sorts. If it’s inconvenient for you, I’ll send them out.”
This is exactly why Ji-woo wanted to bolt.
On the way here, when he saw even the Orion members being called in, his face turned deathly pale.
He was so embarrassed he started doing full-on headbanging.
To someone else, the current situation might feel like a public execution.
But I created this setup precisely because
“I like this the most. The raw, live reactions during recording. Hearing the same words inside the booth just hits different—gives me chills.”
Someone once told me that was the best way.
And that someone was none other than future Gong Ji-woo himself.
‘Though he doesn’t know it yet.’
There’s nothing better than dopamine to lift a crushed mood.
That unique taste of his didn’t suddenly appear after turning thirty.
While I hold back a laugh inside at the thought, the engineers exchange glances, nod, and speak up.
“If the producer says it’s fine, who are we to argue?”
“Exactly.”
“You guys are lucky. You don’t get to see something like this just anywhere.”
““Thank you!!””
“Alright, everyone who’s coming is here. Shall we get started?”
The loud, spirited reply from the Orion members brings satisfied smiles to the engineers’ faces—which is, unfortunately for Ji-woo, a bit of a tragedy.
When those visuals are paired with such overflowing confidence, even guys can’t help but stare.
The only person who notices the last flicker of hope vanish from Ji-woo’s face is me—the one who dragged him here in the first place.
***
“This world might hurt you so much.
Even if these moments are too hard to bear.”
The voice echoing through the microphone in the studio carries a refreshing, chest-opening clarity.
“Wow… so this is what it looks like when Yujin-ssi gets serious with live vocals.”
Shim Minseok, the youngest in Orion, lets out that exclamation after just one line.
Hearing that mutter from behind,
‘If he’s already this shocked, we’re in trouble.’
The three engineers can’t help but think the exact same thing, as if they rehearsed it.
The reason comes from the other side.
“No, Minseok-ah. This isn’t his real thing—this is literally just warming up.”
Kang Tae-oh, who has seen his ‘real’ side multiple times unlike the other four members, says what the engineers wanted to say instead.
“Don’t worry about it.
Somewhere far away,
Someone is definitely
Waiting for us.
Our blue spring, you and I.”
As the chorus ends and the interlude begins,
“This is just a warm-up…? Seriously…?”
“Yeah. Like hyung—no, Teacher—said earlier. Just lightly warming up the throat.”
As the interlude plays, Shim Minseok forgets to use honorifics with the one-year-older Kang Tae-oh and mutters, and Tae-oh quietly lets the unintentional disrespect slide.
Because he knows that if he hadn’t watched Han Yujin’s stages on <Blind Singer> or stood on stage with him multiple times during the <Blind Tour>, he would’ve had the exact same illusion.
“How is a warm-up better than when I’m singing my absolute hardest…? Hyung, I feel like my spirit’s breaking… How did you endure it, Tae-oh hyung? If I come in second after Teacher, my mentality would be completely shattered.”
“It’s okay. I was like that at first too. Just give up. It gets easier once you accept that Teacher lives in a completely different world from us.”
As the two vocal lines chat,
“What did Tae-oh just say?”
“Self-deprecation, obviously. To us, he’s still a monster.”
Jung Bong-kyu and Yoo Phillip add their two cents for a moment.
“Focus! Teacher’s doing this right in front of us—don’t you want to learn at least one thing?”
Yeom Kyuha’s commanding remark that instantly reins in the members makes the watching engineers struggle to hold back their laughter.
But there is one man reacting completely differently from both the Orion members and the engineers.
‘This… is a song I made?’
Han Yujin doesn’t properly sing the first verse.
He just lightly does one line, goes “Ah, ah” to warm up his throat,
“Okay. This should be enough.”
And repeats that a few times before stopping the MR playback before the first chorus even begins.
Even with just that, Ji-woo can clearly tell the song has transformed into something completely different from when he recorded the guide.
‘Uh…!’
In that instant, Gong Ji-woo feels a heavy, suffocating pressure around the back of his neck, like something massive is weighing him down.
Unfortunately, that crushing feeling is all too familiar.
‘Why now of all times…!’
Lately, this exact pressure has been sabotaging every attempt he makes to work—whether on sheet music or the computer.
Whenever he tries to start, this suffocating pain comes crashing in, making it impossible to do anything properly.
He came here hoping that reaching out to Han Yujin—the one person who had extended a hand—might make a difference, but
‘Was that a mistake…?’
What had at least spared his daily life until now has finally crossed that line too.
‘I can’t do this… I have to go home…’
He doesn’t have the confidence to endure it anymore.
If Han Yujin tries to stop him, he probably won’t be able to shake him off.
Just as Ji-woo starts looking for the tiniest opening to slip away,
“Hello.”
A soft voice gently grabs hold of his ankle.
“Gong Ji-woo-ssi, right? Hello. I’ve really wanted to meet you. I’m Kang Tae-oh.”
“Me…? Why me…?”
Even though he asked, he wasn’t actually curious.
For Gong Ji-woo, the only thing that mattered right now was getting out of this place as fast as possible.
But,
“I really love the song ‘Too Painful to Hold’ that Joo-an hyung debuted with. You’re the one who composed it, aren’t you?”
“Ah…”
The ballad ‘Too Painful to Hold,’ which became Park Joo-an’s debut song.
A track that nearly disappeared forever under the name “noname082” in Gong Ji-woo’s computer, it didn’t achieve explosive success amid the flood of idol releases.
Still, it stayed in the top 30 on the charts for nearly a month, spawned quite a few covers, and delivered meaningful results to Park Joo-an.
The moment that title reached his ears, the heavy pressure that had been crushing Gong Ji-woo surged dramatically in intensity.
And only then did he finally realize.
What this pain really was.
‘This is…’
But,
“We have to work hard too. To receive songs as good as ‘Too Painful to Hold’ or this <Blue Poem> from a composer like you.”
Just before he could confront the true nature of what had been tormenting him, Kang Tae-oh’s short, earnest vow flew in.
BOOM!
Gong Ji-woo felt as though a massive hammer had slammed into his skull.
“Yujin’s song, not mine…?”
“Yes! The songs Teacher makes are great, but the ones you compose are really good too, aren’t they? Honestly, I’m greedy—I’d love to sing <Blue Poem> too, but… I already heard it’s a song you made to give to Teacher, so I won’t be greedy about this one.”
At Kang Tae-oh’s continuing words, Gong Ji-woo suddenly understood.
The shock wasn’t aimed at his head.
It was aimed at the crushing pressure that had been weighing him down.
“Hey, Kang Tae-oh. Focus!”
“Ah, sorry… I’ll work hard so that someday a composer will want to give me a song. When that time comes, please take care of me.”
Even after Han Yujin’s sharp scolding flew across the studio, Kang Tae-oh stubbornly added one more—no, two more—sentences before returning to his spot.
Watching that, Gong Ji-woo finally faced it head-on.
The shattered emotion: inferiority.
‘I already knew.’
‘Too Painful to Hold.’
It started in his hands, but the one who completed it so that people could love it wasn’t him—it was Han Yujin.
He had simply refused to admit that he harbored such strong feelings of inferiority toward Han Yujin.
It felt too shameful to be jealous of the person who had reached out to him.
But,
‘Yujin lives in a different world…’
Even though his head understood, his heart had refused to accept it.
Now, he felt like he could finally let it go.
‘Still, my songs are good too…’
Because the single sentence from a boy much younger than him had completely smashed the narrow-minded refusal to accept that simple truth.
‘I’m going home.’
The same resolve as before, but now with a completely different reason.
Among the ruins of his shattered inferiority, melodies, rhythms, and all kinds of musical ideas that hadn’t appeared in recent days began flooding in.
The reason had changed, so the method changed too.
Before, he had planned to sneak away.
Now, he looked straight at Han Yujin.
“Why, you got something to say?”
Han Yujin hangs up the headset, strides over, opens the door, and asks.
“Yujin-ah. I’m heading out.”
Gong Ji-woo said that.
Fully prepared to shake him off if he tried to stop him.
“Then go. Don’t get in the way.”
Contrary to Gong Ji-woo’s expectations, Han Yujin didn’t try to stop him.
Instead, the seemingly curt response surprised him for a moment.
“Thanks.”
Even if it was Han Yujin, he probably hadn’t orchestrated this whole situation after seeing right through him.
Still, he felt he had to say this.
“Take good care of my song.”
At that closing remark, Han Yujin smiled confidently and closed the studio door.
That was answer enough.