Chapter 24. The First Song
Old things are worn out and get weeded out.
Things, buildings, land, people.
Right next to tall apartment buildings, the low buildings that could not keep up with change clearly showed the gap between old and new.
People with hair gone gray with age gathered under trees that were even older than they were.
“Ha! I beat Ddori!”
“Wow. Sir, you are amazing!”
“So are we having a fried chicken feast today?”
“Of course! Today Ddori is buying!”
The old men seated on the wooden platform chattered noisily.
“Chicken delivery.”
The motorbike pulled up, and Grandpa Juseongdol, wearing a sullen expression, handed over his card.
“You ordered so much that one whole chicken is on the house.”
“Mm. You have the right attitude for doing business. What chicken place is this?”
“This is Angane Chicken.”
“All right. It is our first time today, but we will be seeing each other often from now on.”
“Thank you, sir!”
They could not see his face under the helmet, but the bright, clear voice that came from it had so much energy that the old men smiled broadly.
“You have a nice voice. You could be a singer.”
One grandmother took the chicken and rolled her eyes.
“What singer, as if anyone can just be one.”
Grandpa Juseongdol finished paying and turned away with a sharp twist.
It was not that he regretted the money, it was that the janggi game he had just lost felt so unbearably unfair.
There was absolutely no way Old Man Gong could have seen that move.
“By the way, that practice room still has no owner?”
“I do not know, that fellow is a bit picky, you know.”
“Just give it to some kids who really work hard at singing. Do not go making young folks fret for nothing.”
“Shut it! It is mine! I will decide what to do with it.”
Grandpa Juseongdol moved away from the group and took out a cigarette.
“Excuse me… sir?”
The chicken delivery rider was putting away the card terminal, then turned his head toward the old man next to him.
“Yeah?”
“If you mean the practice room…”
“You know, that thing where they go thump thump. Dugu dugu, cheng, like that.”
“Ah, you mean the music practice room?”
“That is right, that is right.”
“Where is it?”
“You know that shopping block at the intersection right up ahead? The one with Sharing Bank in it. It is there. It is empty right now…”
“Ah… it is still there?”
“Eh? You know the place?”
“Ah… yes.”
The helmet turned toward Juseongdol, who was standing a little ways off with a cigarette in his mouth.
“He has gotten really old.”
“Then I will be going.”
“Sure! Thanks for your work. Drive safe!”
The old men waved their hands to the delivery rider who had brought them their precious fried chicken.
It had already been a week.
The service job suited him better than he expected.
Wearing a helmet that completely covered his face gave him a new kind of freedom.
Even when people looked down on him, he did not get very angry.
That unfamiliar feeling was actually fun.
He had grown up learning how relationships worked while being surrounded by people who were always watching his mood, so these emotions he was feeling for the first time were new.
He did not have to manage his expression, and he did not have to hide his gaze.
For Chunggi, the helmet was truly like an amazing privilege.
“Wow. You are fast! You are better than my husband.”
“The only rebellion I ever really managed was riding a bike.”
“Anyway, seeing how quickly you are adapting, you are really something. You were a chaebol, after all.”
Chunggi gave a bitter smile.
“Not everything works out just because you have money.”
“Yeah, right. What a load of crap.”
Sangjeong frowned as he handed over the packaged chicken.
“Stop with the rich boy talk and go deliver this.”
“Yes, boss!”
Chunggi quickly put on his helmet.
An invincible helmet.
It was a freedom he had not been able to obtain even with money.
“So… I did tell them it was because of my paper… but some of the pregnant women might be a bit sensitive, so you might have to watch the mood and…”
Obstetrician Rokyeong looked anxiously at the pregnant women gathered in the auditorium.
Understanding his worry, Jinhyeok smiled brightly.
“There is no way the mood will turn bad. You do not need to worry.”
At Jinhyeok’s request, they had recruited pregnant women.
They handed out a questionnaire with a rough title like “The effects of prenatal education through music,” and used his paper as an excuse.
Since he had shown his face a few times in the media, recruiting went smoothly.
Even so, if there happened to be a pregnant woman who was negative about this kind of thing,
and word spread even on a mom café, his obstetrics clinic would be in for a hard time.
In this way, forty pregnant women had been gathered.
From five months along to full term, expectant mothers with hope in their bellies had come together.
Jinhyeok plugged his bass guitar into the amp. What they would be doing today was recording source material for an audio track.
He had studied various things on YouTube, and now he was going to record the voices of the pregnant women who had gathered.
When he turned on the power, a bit of noise came through.
He had no intention of standing on stage.
The stars of this music were entirely the pregnant women.
He sat in an inconspicuous spot at the corner of the stage.
There was no need for the pregnant women to concentrate on him.
They only had to feel the other heart inside their bellies.
At Jinhyeok’s signal, Rokyeong turned on the projector.
Soon, information about prenatal education filled the huge screen.
The pregnant women focused on the screen on the platform, and while no one knew, a very small vibration began.
Very softly, as if tickling their hearts with care.
Jinhyeok closed his eyes and pictured the sound of the babies’ heartbeats in their bellies.
Ever since she had gotten pregnant, Hyeonju had become a slave to information on the internet.
The first time is difficult for anyone.
Her mother lived in another region, so it was hard to ask her about things as they came up, and more than anything, it was hard to believe that the information of older people was accurate.
Back then, all they would have had were things they heard by word of mouth from older, more experienced people.
That was why she joined a community for pregnant women and spent half her day swimming in that sea of information.
Most of the general content was the same, but once you got into details, everyone said something different.
There were so many different opinions and cases that you could not really say any one of them was “the answer,” and the direction of her prenatal plans changed several times a day.
So she became even more frustrated.
She had looked up every single thing people said was good for prenatal education, and she did the aquatic exercises everyone said the baby would like.
Even so, the frustration never went away.
How could she give birth to a healthier baby?
How could she have a smarter child?
How could she help them have a more outgoing personality?
How could she…
Even just a moment ago, she had been reading someone’s blog on her phone.
She had come here because it was an event related to prenatal education.
The words on the big screen were things she had already studied.
She yawned without meaning to.
Looking around, the other pregnant women did not look much different.
“Hm?”
She had not noticed at all, but she thought she heard some kind of sound.
Thump, thump.
“Music?”
It was too simple to be called music, and it was too quiet to say she was hearing it with her ears.
It was more like it was echoing from inside her body.
From the moment she felt that thumping, she could no longer see the letters on the screen.
At some point, she felt that sound grow louder, and a gentle voice reached her ears.
That sound was like sunlight on a spring day and made her feel so at ease.
Thump, thump.
“Can you hear it?”
The sound was so beautifulthat she found herself humming along to the melody without thinking.
She could hear a similar sound next to her. Apparently, she was not the only one feeling this mystery.
As she hummed, the baby inside her belly bubbled.
“Ah. Is this a kick?”
The first time she felt that bubbling feeling, it was so lovely that her chest ached.
Why, why was she only now learning this feeling?
The life she was carrying was so precious just by existing.
Healthier, smarter, more outgoing.
Did the child have to be “better”?
Why? Was she going to be disappointed otherwise?
Just having come to her like this was already something to be so thankful for.
What more had she been greedy for?
For some reason, her vision blurred with a nameless sense of guilt.
She had wanted a daughter.
So her husband had quit coffee, they had eaten fruit, she had changed her diet, and they had even timed things.
The thrilling fifth month.
“Wow, your baby’s fingers are really well formed!”
Well formed?
It meant the baby was a boy.
She remembered that day not long ago when she had resented the obstetrician for no real reason.
Hadn’t the baby’s nickname been “Morning Star”?
When she remembered everything she had said while rubbing her belly as if talking to a daughter over the past months, her heart felt like it was being torn.
The baby’s sex would have been decided the moment the child was conceived, so what had the baby been thinking for those five months?
“Mom, do you not like me because I am a boy?”
Thinking of how the baby might feel, she closed her eyes and hot tears ran down her cheeks.
What had she done to a child who should have been nothing but blessed?
“I am sorry. Baby, I am really sorry.”
With the tears streaming down, she could not lift her head.
Just then,
thump, thump.
The baby moved.
“It is okay, Mom,”
as if to comfort her.
Feeling that small movement for the first time, she found herself smiling.
On a face still streaked with tears, the child put a bright smile.
“Ah… so this is what it feels like.”
Perhaps this was the first time she was truly connecting with her child.
Not as a being she had to make into something, but as a life that was itself a blessing
just by existing.
The fact that she was carrying a new life was, in itself, a miracle.
She had to tell the baby.
“Mom really loves you.”
Soft singing voices of pregnant women echoed through the entire auditorium.
“I love you, baby.”
The voices she heard here and there suited the music so perfectly that it was like they were putting in harmonies they had agreed on beforehand.
The thumping sound she had heard in her ears disappeared, but the mothers’ song continued.
No one had told them to, yet everyone was singing with the same feeling.
Rokyeong looked at his hands, soaked with sweat.
Back then, he had only heard about it from the pregnant women; he had not seen it with his own eyes.
In truth, even after asking him to make the music, he had laughed hollowly and shaken his head the next day.
There was no way such a thing could happen.
It had just been an illusion born from the pregnant women being too focused.
Out of a million cases, there might be one in which a heart that had grown weak began beating again.
It was more realistic to think that that couple had broken through that kind of extreme odds.
Yes, one in a million, that alone would already be a miracle.
So if he could just get a piece of music that comforted the pregnant women’s hearts, he had intended to be grateful for that.
But then he had asked for a position as burdensome as this.
He had said the words, so he would at least help this far.
He had not had big expectations.
Since he already knew, he could hear the sound of the bass guitar he was playing even before the pregnant women could.
An incredibly small sound.
Would this sound really reach the pregnant women sitting there?
As expected, it did not seem like they were hearing it.
Some were yawning, some had started looking at their phones.
The information on the screen would have been things they already knew.
Even to him it looked like an obvious, boring combination of text.
His voice began to ring out quietly, but there was no way they could hear it.
He was thinking that he should wrap things up at a reasonable point, when the pregnant women began to hum along with the sound.
Then, one pregnant woman started crying.
No, she was just the first one he had noticed; women all around were wiping away tears.
What should he do?
Should he stop this here?
Had they not said their hearts felt lighter that day?
Why was everyone crying?
As Rokyeong floundered in confusion, the bass guitar that had been audible only faintly
was now booming.
Was this another illusion?
As if it had been loud from the very beginning, it vibrated through the auditorium so naturally.
And the pregnant women started to sing, stroking their bellies.
Their voices grew louder, and as if they had practiced, matching the melody,
“I love you, baby,”
was heard here and there.
Just as when the sound had grown louder, so naturally, the bass guitar sound vanished.
He stared blankly at the corner, and there he was, smiling brightly and holding both his hands up.
The administrator of the community for pregnant women in the northern Seoul area glared at the monitor.
There were quite a few companies that disguised themselves as pregnant women and ran ads, so the conditions for joining that internet café were strict.
First, you had to send the administrator a picture of your fetus and a pregnancy confirmation.
If they allowed more and more companies to advertise beyond the verified partner companies, the information quality of the café would go down.
Even with such strict admission requirements, the reason it could still boast the largest scale even within Seoul was that “clean information quality.”
She checked the authors of the posts that were going up now, and all of them were pregnant women who had followed the proper procedures.
When she checked the information they had sent, the obstetrics clinics they were going to were all different.
“Neulpureum Obstetrics and Gynecology is seriously amazing.”
“Thanks to the director at Neulpureum, I learned what kind of existence my baby is.”
“Neulpureum is the real deal.”
“I got real healing there. Highly recommended for depressed moms.”
“Why did I only find this place now. I was really moved. Moved to tears.”
“I am changing clinics tomorrow. My second is definitely going to be at Neulpureum too.”
The board was being plastered with posts about “Neulpureum.”
Advertising agencies had enough sense not to work this blatantly.
She had been frowning so hard that it felt like a cramp was forming between her eyebrows.
“I think it was Neulpureum a few days ago too…”
Back then, all the posts had been from pregnant women at that clinic, and when she had deleted a couple of posts that were completely over the top, she had received dozens of protest messages.
An ad company would not bother to send protests.
And the content was ridiculous.
Talk of some spontaneous chorus, heartbeat music, people bursting into tears. Most of the posts were unbelievable.
“Has some new religion sprung up?”
This was how fanatics behaved.
Unable to do this or that, the administrator could only tear at her poor hair.
“Ah! What on earth is this Neulpureum place!”
“What on earth is it that has you concentrating so hard?”
Two friends walked over to Jinhyeok, who was in the corner of the chicken shop fiddling with a synthesizer.
“If I told you I could perform a miracle, would you believe me?”
The two friends tilted their heads at the sudden question.
“It is still a bit rough… you guys probably will not feel anything big…”
Jinhyeok raised his hand high toward Seonha, who was coming in after tucking a blanket around the sleeping Seojun in the Rolls-Royce.
“Noona! Try listening to this once.”
“Huh?”
Seonha’s eyes went round as she accepted the headphones.
Jinhyeok worked on the laptop, and Seonha, wearing the headphones, closed her eyes.
T/N: lmao is this a new cult in the making? Imagining the pregnant ladies singing in chorus was a little eerie ngl
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