"Before the First Note"
Before him, my world was quiet.
Not peaceful.
Not calm.
Just… muted.
Muted in the way old radios sound when the dial is stuck between stations. That soft hum of almost-something that never becomes music. That never resolves into anything clear.
That was my life: the background hiss between frequencies. Always listening, never heard. Always observing, never seen.
I learned early that quiet is safer than loud.
In middle school, I spoke too softly. Teachers always mistook it for disrespect. Kids mistook it for weakness. I learned to lower my eyes, fold my arms over my chest like armor, and keep my answers in my throat where they couldn't be used against me.
When I discovered headphones, it was like discovering oxygen.
Music didn't ask questions. It didn't look at me with pity or suspicion. It didn't demand smiles or eye contact. It just played.
Pure. Honest. Free.
I taught myself to hear the difference between a C major and an A minor before I knew how to ride a bike. I memorized the warmth of analog hiss, the brittle edge of digital clipping. I learned to love how sound could fracture, bend, heal. How it could fill empty spaces the way people never quite managed to.
By the time I entered university, I had already accepted it:
I would never be the frontman. Never be the one under the spotlight, guitar slung low, crowd screaming.
I didn't want it.
I wanted to be the one backstage.
The one who made sure the frontman could be heard.
There's a different kind of magic in that—
When you understand that silence isn't absence.
It's potential.
Every breath before a song begins? That's me.
Every pause between lyrics? That's me, too.
The invisible hand shaping what people feel, even if they never realize it.
That's what I loved.
That's what I trusted.
And then he came in—
Like noise. Like chaos. Like a fire alarm in a library.
Kang Min-woo.
His voice arrived in my life before his face did.
A campus performance, three months into my first semester.
I wasn't even supposed to be on sound duty that night.
The assigned student flaked, and someone in the music department grabbed me at the last minute, shoving a headset into my hands and pointing at the console like it was a punishment.
"Just make sure the vocals aren't drowned out," they said.
I nodded.
And then I heard him.
He wasn't perfect. His pitch bent slightly on the bridge. He sang like he didn't care if the note landed squarely or splashed on the edge.
But there was something—
Something in the tone.
A rawness.
Like he didn't just want to be heard—he needed to be.
And the crowd? They loved him.
They screamed his name like he was already a legend.
I remember sitting there, one hand on the volume fader, frozen. Not because of his popularity, or his showmanship. I'd seen plenty of performers who knew how to wink into a spotlight.
No—
It was the way his voice cracked right before the final chorus.
Like his heart had stuttered in the middle of a sentence, and the music was the only way he knew how to finish it.
That imperfection made him real.
And I hated it. Because it made me feel something.
I thought, at the time, it would be a one-off.
He was just another senior with a good voice and a fan club. Someone too loud, too wild, too far from my world.
But like a persistent melody, he kept coming back.
I'd catch glimpses of him after class—guitar slung over one shoulder, always laughing with someone, always seen.
Or in campus videos, tagged relentlessly on social media, singing at festivals and talent shows and rooftop parties I'd never be invited to.
And then—
One ordinary afternoon, in a cafeteria packed with noise and light and people I carefully avoided—he walked up to my table and asked if the seat was taken.
Just like that.
No warning.
No intro.
I hadn't even realized anyone was standing there.
He dropped into the chair like we'd known each other for years, introduced himself like it was inevitable, and invited me to the Music Club rehearsal like it was already decided I'd say yes.
He didn't ask if I wanted to be part of his world.
He simply made room in it.
That's what terrified me.
Because I had spent years building walls out of silence.
And he—he had no interest in walls.
Min-woo talked in rhythms. His voice moved like a song—sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow, always just a little off-beat, like he was jazz improvising his way through life. He asked questions I didn't know how to answer, and noticed things I didn't want noticed. Like how I always sat near the mixing booth. Like how I kept one earbud in even when I wasn't listening to anything. Like how my fingers never stopped tapping, searching for a beat to anchor me.
He wasn't just loud.
He listened, too.
And that—
That's what ruined me.
The first time I worked with him in the studio, I didn't say more than a dozen words.
He didn't mind.
He sang, I adjusted the levels.
He strummed his guitar, I adjusted his EQ.
He laughed, I stayed silent.
But something shifted.
Not all at once. Slowly. Like two frequencies slowly bending toward each other, trying to find harmony.
I began to notice the way he hummed under his breath between songs. The way his eyes narrowed when lyrics didn't feel right. The way he treated his bandmates—teasing, protective, sometimes impatient, always loyal.
He was a storm in sneakers.
And I was the eye.
Somewhere between rehearsal and ramen cups under streetlights, I realized:
He wasn't just invading my silence.
He was teaching me how to make noise of my own.
The scariest part?
I didn't want to stop him.
Maybe I had always been waiting for someone like him.
Someone who didn't try to fix me.
Someone who didn't ask me to be louder, or different, or more.
Someone who just wanted to make something—with me.
I used to think sound was enough.
That as long as I had music, I didn't need connection.
That frequencies and waveforms were better companions than people.
But he made me realize—
The best songs aren't the ones that sound perfect.
They're the ones where the cracks show.
Where the emotion bleeds through the distortion.
Where two different voices try, and fail, and try again—until they meet in the middle.
Before him, I lived in silence.
After him, even my quiet had meaning.
If I could go back—
Back to that cafeteria seat, back to the moment before he offered me a job I didn't want but somehow needed—
Would I walk away?
No.
Even knowing what it would cost.
Even knowing what I'd lose.
I'd still let him ruin my silence.
Because for the first time—
It wasn't silence anymore.
It was the start of a song.