Chapter 2: Late-Night Dorm Jam
I didn’t stop running until the burn in my lungs overshadowed the fire in my head. The city blocks blurred into a streak of neon and shadow, my breath coming in ragged clouds that vanished into the damp evening air. I ended up at the wrought-iron gate of our off-campus house, a narrow, tilted thing shoved between two taller buildings. Light and the distorted thump of a bassline spilled from the living room window.
I shoved the door open, the warmth and noise hitting me like a wall.
“Incoming!” Lily’s voice, a melodic shout, rang out from the floor. She was sprawled on a pile of mismatched cushions, a green bottle of soju in one hand, her phone in the other. A portable speaker beside her pumped out a glitchy, hypnotic beat.
Rima was cross-legged by the coffee table, her laptop glowing on her knees, fingers tapping keys. She didn’t look up. “You’re sweating. And you look pissed. Good. We need angry chords.”
“Where’s the fire, Paan-pan?” Lily giggled, taking a sip. Her cheeks were already flushed.
“Just ran.” I kicked off my sneakers, my socks sliding on the polished floorboards. The familiar chaos of our space—the scarred furniture, the music posters, the sheer accumulation of our lives—acted like a balm. The sterile perfection of the academy couldn’t survive here.
“Bullshit.” Rima finally glanced at me, her dark eyes sharp. “Your ‘I just ran’ face and your ‘Ahyeon breathed in my direction’ face are the same face. Which was it?”
I grabbed a cushion and dropped onto the floor beside Lily, leaning back against the sofa. The beat from the speaker was catchy, all weird synth stabs and a head-nod rhythm. “Both. It’s a versatile face.”
Lily shoved the soju bottle into my hand. “Hydrate. Then vocalize.” She tapped her screen and the beat changed, morphing into something darker, with a deep, resonant sub-bass and a ticking, anxious hi-hat. “Rima made this ten minutes ago. It’s missing something. It’s missing you.”
I took a long pull from the bottle. The soju was cold and sharp, cutting through the dry ache in my throat. The beat was good. It felt like the inside of my skull right now—tense, spacious, with a deep, rumbling threat underneath.
“It’s missing a lot of things,” Rima muttered, tweaking a dial on her screen. “But yeah. A voice would help.”
“Freestyle,” Lily demanded, poking my arm. “Right now. No thinking.”
“I’m always thinking.”
“That’s your problem!” Lily rolled onto her stomach, propping her chin in her hands. Her expression was dead serious, which on her was still somehow adorable. “You gotta just… vomit the words out. We’ll clean it up later. Go.”
I closed my eyes. Let the sub-bass vibrate in my sternum. The ticking hi-hat was a clock, a countdown. I didn’t search for metaphors. I just opened my mouth and let the first thing that formed in the back of my throat fall out.
My voice was a low murmur at first, just riding the rhythm. Solid ground, solid sound, they wanna box me in, bury me down… It was clumsy. Then the flow found its groove, my cadence locking into the ticking hat. They hand out compliments like counterfeit bills, smiles that could pay for the pharmacy bills… I was circling the thing, not naming it. Observe the technique, a detached little glance, is that interest or just professional chance…
I cracked an eye open. Rima had stopped typing, was just watching me, a faint smirk on her lips. Lily was mouthing the words along with me, her head nodding.
I dug deeper, the soju and the safety of the room loosening the knot. The words got sharper, less veiled. She speaks in poison dipped in sucrose, a masterpiece of deceit, I’m just the focus… He reads the waveform but not the nerve, gives a critique I don’t have the spine to deserve…
I trailed off, my last word hanging in the air, swallowed by the next bar of the looping beat.
For a second, silence. Then Lily exploded. “YES! The sucrose line! That’s a bar! That’s a whole damn bakery!” She scrambled up and hit a button on the speaker, killing the music. The sudden quiet was ringing.
Rima saved the project file with a decisive click. “It’s a start. You’re dancing around the subject, though. Who’s ‘he’?”
I took another drink, avoiding her gaze. “Nobody. Just a metaphor.”
“You’re a terrible liar.” Rima stretched her arms over her head. “Let me guess. Tall, broody, thinks listening is a personality trait.”
Lily’s eyes went wide. “Seita? Oh, this is better than soju. What did he do?”
“He didn’t do anything.” The defensiveness in my voice was pathetic, even to me. “He was in the lab. He heard me spit some trash after… after the eval. Said it was performative anger.”
Rima snorted. “Okay, and? He’s not wrong.”
I shot her a look. “Whose side are you on?”
“Yours. Which is why I’m agreeing with the only person in that building who might have a functional brain.” She leaned forward. “Paan, that track you did after the stairwell thing? It was hot fire, technically. It was also basic as hell. You were mad at Ahyeon, so you made an Ahyeon diss track. That’s what every kid in freshman cypher does. It’s beneath you.”
The truth of it, from my best friend’s mouth, stung worse than Seita’s clinical version. I looked down at the bottle in my hands. “He used Professor Kang’s words. ‘Solid. Grounded.’”
Lily made a noise of pure disgust. “I hate that. They say ‘unique’ to weird voices and ‘solid’ to real ones. It’s coward-speak.” She scooted closer, her energy softening. “What do you think was wrong with it?”
“I don’t know.” The admission felt like pulling a splinter. “It just felt… like I was watching myself be angry. Like he said.”
Rima nodded slowly. “So the problem isn’t that you’re angry. The problem is you’re making art about being angry, not art from being angry. There’s a difference.”
The room sat with that for a minute. The streetlamp outside cast long, shifting shadows through the window.
“I don’t know how to do that,” I said, my voice quiet.
“Then stop trying to make art,” Lily said simply. “Just make noise with us.”
She grabbed her phone again, scrolled, and a new beat burst from the speaker—an absurd, upbeat, jazzy sample from some 70s game show. It was impossible, ridiculous.
“Harmonize!” Lily commanded, and before I could protest, she opened her mouth.
What came out wasn’t her talking voice. It wasn’t even her singing voice. It was a powerhouse, gospel-infused roar that shook the dust motes in the lamplight. She belted a nonsense syllable, holding a note so big and clean and vibrant it seemed to physically expand the room.
I laughed, incredulous. Rima cackled, and then in her lower, raspier register, started harmonizing a third below, adding a layer of grit to Lily’s shine.
“Your turn, Paan!” Lily shouted, not breaking her hold.
I shook my head, but the sound was infectious. I let my voice fall underneath them, finding the root note, my deeper tone anchoring their flight. It was terrible, objectively. Clashing. Over-the-top. We sounded like a train wreck in three-part harmony.
We held it until our breath gave out, collapsing into each other, wheezing with laughter. My ribs ached. The frustrated coil that had been tightening in my chest all day was gone, dissolved in the shared, stupid noise.
We spent the next hour like that. Passing the bottle. Queuing up increasingly dumb beats. Rima spit a vicious, hilarious verse about our landlord’s ugly car. Lily tried and failed to rap, dissolving into giggles every other bar. I sang an old song my grandma loved, my voice quiet and raw without a microphone, and they just listened.
This was the truth. Not the stairwell, not the lab. This floor. This mess. This sound.
My phone buzzed on the table. A notification lit up the screen.
> Academy Group List: New Project Assignment.
> Pairings for the Mid-Term Collaborative Performance are now posted. Mandatory partner meeting tomorrow, 10 AM, Studio B.
> See attached list.
The laughter died in my throat. I reached for the phone, my finger hovering over the screen.
“Open it,” Rima said, her earlier levity gone.
I tapped.
Scrolled.
Found my name.
Park Paan – Vocal/Rap --- Kim Seita – Production --- Assignment: Original Song & Full Performance.
The world narrowed to the glowing text. A forced collaboration. With him.
And then, two lines below:
Lee Rima – Dance/Rap --- Kang Junmin – Production.
A sharp, delighted gasp from Lily. “No way. Rima, you’re with Junmin?”
Rima’s face went perfectly, dangerously still. The legendary tension between her and the cocky, brilliant producer Junmin was academy folklore. “Perfect,” she said, her voice flat.
But my eyes were locked on my pairing. This wasn’t chance. The professors had seen the tension, the glances, the conflict. They were throwing us together on purpose. To see what would spark. Or what would burn down.
Seita’s question echoed back, now laced with a new, unavoidable context.
Who are you trying to beat?
I looked at my friends’ worried faces, then back at the cold, official font on my screen.
Now, I had to answer it.
Now, I had to answer it.
The text on my phone screen seemed to pulse, a tiny black-and-white guillotine. Kim Seita – Production. The name was a clinical diagnosis beside my own. Original Song & Full Performance. Those words meant weeks. Hundreds of hours. Shared space. “This is a targeted attack,” I said, my voice hollow.
Rima snatched the phone from my hand, her eyes scanning. A low whistle escaped her. “Junmin. Of course.” She tossed the phone back onto the cushion like it was contaminated. “They’re engineering drama. This is reality show bullshit.”
“Or they think you’ll actually make something good together,” Lily offered, ever the optimist. She wilted under our simultaneous glares. “Okay, fine. It’s warfare. But this is your chance, Paan. Show him what ‘solid’ really builds.”
The problem wasn’t showing him. The problem was being stripped bare in front of him, piece by piece, for a grade. He’d hear every half-formed idea, every false start. He’d witness the clumsy architecture before the building stood.
My phone buzzed again. A direct message, not from the group list.
Unknown Number: This is Seita. Studio B. 10 AM. Don’t be late.
No greeting. No question. Just an instruction.
Me: I know how to read a group email.
The three dots appeared. They hovered. Then disappeared. No reply. That silence was more infuriating than anything he could have typed.
---
Studio B at 9:58 AM smelled of lemon disinfectant and decades of nervous sweat. Morning light cut through the high windows, illuminating floating dust over the glossy floor. I stood with my back against the mirrored wall, my bag at my feet, already regretting my reply. It felt childish now, in the quiet.
The door opened at 10:00 exactly.
Seita walked in, a weathered leather satchel slung across his chest, a tablet tucked under his arm. He wore the same dark, nondescript clothes, a uniform against the peacocks in this school. He saw me, gave a single, slight nod, and walked to the center of the room. He didn’t apologize for the text. He didn’t mention it at all.
“We should establish workflow,” he said, placing his tablet on the ground. He pulled out a coiled cable, a small audio interface, his movements efficient and devoid of ceremony. “I track everything. I’ll send you stems and mixes as we go. You need to learn my file-naming system.”
I didn’t move from the wall. “Workflow. Right. Or we could start with, I don’t know, an idea? A concept? A key?”
He looked up, his expression flat. “The idea is your department. My department is capturing it accurately and framing it. I can’t frame nothing.” He plugged the interface into his tablet, the small lights flickering on. “What do you have?”
The challenge in his tone, so passive and sharp, pricked at me. I had nothing. Just the residue of last night’s soju-fueled noise and the acidic memory of Ahyeon’s whisper. He feels sorry for you.
I pushed off the wall. “What I have is a question. Why did you agree to this?”
He paused, his finger hovering over his screen. “I didn’t. It was an assignment.”
“You could have requested a reassignment. Everyone knows you and Junmin have that pull with the senior producers.” I took a step closer. “So why didn’t you?”
He finally met my gaze, and for a second, I saw something behind the professional glaze—a flicker of genuine, weary surprise. “You requested a reassignment?”
My silence was answer enough.
He shrugged, looking back at his tablet. “Then we’re both here. Start singing something. Anything. We’re burning time.”
Frustration tightened my throat. This was impossible. I turned away, staring at my own reflection in the vast mirror—the defiant posture, the clenched jaw. A performer with no audience but a recording device. I closed my eyes,