The rain had just stopped when Minjun stepped quietly out the rusty rooftop door of the old apartment building he'd called home for eighteen years. The door creaked the way it always did, loud enough to wake his mother if she wasn't already snoring in her room below. He paused, listening. Only the hum of the refrigerator and the muffled cough of the neighbor's TV through the thin walls. Safe.
The rooftop smelled like wet concrete and distant exhaust fumes. Puddles caught the pale glow of the city's neon signs, shimmering red, blue, and white like spilled secrets. He pulled up the hood of his oversized grey sweatshirt, one sleeve torn at the cuff where the seam had given up months ago. He liked that it looked worn out — like him, maybe.
In his left hand was his notebook. It was cheap, lined, the kind you could buy at any corner stationery store. But its pages were priceless to Minjun. Inside were verses written on buses, bridges, the back stairwell of his school. Hooks that came to him while washing dishes at the café. Chord progressions scribbled during math class when the teacher's voice turned to static in his ears.
Minjun crossed the rooftop, careful not to slip on the wet patches. He perched himself on his usual spot — a low concrete ledge right by the rusted railing. From here, the whole city stretched before him. He could see the blinking signs of Mapo-gu's fried chicken joints, the glass towers of Gangnam in the far distance, the Han River glinting silver under the half-hidden moon.
He always came up here when it got too loud in his head. When the lectures about "realistic futures" and "good universities" tightened around his chest like a belt he couldn't breathe through. When his father's silence at the dinner table felt heavier than any argument. When his mother's voice — half worry, half exhaustion — asked, "Why can't you be like Jihye? Why can't you just study?"
Minjun pulled his knees up, balanced the notebook on them, and flipped through the pages. A corner was wet where the rain had splashed through the broken rooftop window once, but he didn't mind. His fingers traced over the lines he'd written at sixteen: "I want to be more than background noise." It made him smile. He pressed his pen to the blank space under it and whispered the words out loud.
"I want them to hear me."
He closed his eyes, letting the wind slap his cheeks cold. Then he hummed the chorus he'd been working on for weeks. Soft at first, almost shy, until the words found him:
"I'm a ghost in the crowd,A name they forget,But when the lights burn down,I'm the one they won't forget…"
He stopped, repeated the last line, felt the melody catch on his tongue. He could already hear how it should sound — the faint strum of his old guitar, maybe a simple beat under it, his voice rising with a rasp that came when he didn't sleep enough. He imagined a tiny studio room, padded walls, a cheap mic duct-taped to the stand, his breath fogging up the pop filter. He imagined recording until dawn while the city below him never knew his name.
One day, they would.
A cold gust blew through him and he hugged his knees tighter. He thought about the audition last month — the one he didn't even tell his parents about. He'd stood in a line with seventy other kids at 6 AM outside a glass building in Apgujeong. He'd held his guitar tight to his chest like a shield while trainees with perfect hair and perfect smiles eyed him up and down.
He'd sung his own song. A judge barely looked up from her clipboard. Another whispered something to a man in a suit who never even glanced at Minjun's face. They told him, "Your voice is good, but you're not what we're looking for right now." That was the nice version.
He'd ridden the subway home with his guitar case on his knees, the rejection echoing in his head like a broken record. But instead of sleeping, he'd come up here and written another song. He always did. Because he knew the only thing worse than failing was giving up the only thing that made him feel real.
Minjun glanced at his phone — 3:08 AM. He should go down soon. He had to wake up at six to open the café. If he was late again, his manager would cut his hours, and he needed every won he could get. Guitar strings didn't pay for themselves. Neither did USBs to hand out demos that nobody listened to.
He pulled out his earphones — one side was taped where the wire had split. He pressed play on a rough recording of his latest draft. It was full of static, recorded in his bedroom under a blanket so his mother wouldn't hear. But to him, it was the purest thing he owned.
He mouthed along with the melody, eyes half closed. He pictured himself on a stage, sweat dripping down his neck under blinding lights, his voice echoing over a crowd of thousands who knew every word by heart. He pictured the moment the beat dropped, and his name — Minjun — was chanted by people who had never known he existed before tonight.
And in that fleeting second, on this forgotten rooftop in a city of millions, Minjun didn't feel like a nobody. He felt infinite. He felt possible.
He stayed until his phone battery died and his fingers went numb from the wind. Then he stood, stretched his stiff legs, and whispered to the dark city, like a promise only the night could hear:
"Wait for me. I'm coming."
He slipped the notebook back into his hoodie pocket, tucked his pen behind his ear, and ducked through the creaking door before the dawn could catch him dreaming.