- Commonalities of First Love (1)
What am I to Na Jihan?
What makes him want to be the only one for me, hate it so much when someone else captures my curiosity… and how can he act so nonchalant after kissing me?
While I cherished that emotion as immense and serious as a lifetime, that jumbled mixture of feelings also felt distant.
‘You can’t expect love from me.’
Unlike me, who wanted to separate love and friendship from that huge mass, Jihan seemed reluctant to extract love from it, even if it existed.
So our first kiss was buried as if it never happened. Jihan treated it as if it was nothing, and I didn’t want to bring it up.
But since we couldn’t completely erase what had already happened, our awkwardness persisted sluggishly for about a month afterward.
Regardless of how messy my one-sided love was, time flowed well. Fortunately, Jihan and I were people who knew how to separate work from personal matters, and this subtle resentment didn’t negatively affect our comeback preparations.
And so came September.
Preparations for Arcus’s first album, <Start Button>, proceeded breathlessly. The title track had already completed music video filming, and recording for the other tracks was almost finished.
The members’ requests to participate in producing were accepted. CEO Han Seonggyeong was delighted, saying he had been planning to suggest it once we were more established.
‘Your senior group Days started that way too. Was it around their second album? Yuwon handling choreography, Hwijeong composing, and Dojin helping with lyrics. Now the A&R team complains they have less and less to do.’
‘They were promoting with a digital single recently; was that also made by the sunbaenims?’
‘Of course. That day will come for you too. So keep up the good work.’
Just being on stage makes me happy, but I wonder how it would feel to show the world a song created solely by our own efforts.
To reach that moment, I needed to work even harder than now. I frowned and groaned, “Ugh…”
My vision was filled with irregularly written sentences, words jotted down as they came to mind, and traces of crossed-out lines whenever something didn’t seem right.
For one of the tracks on this album, “First Love,” I was solely responsible for the lyrics. While I had only participated in other songs, Han Seonggyeong gave me the opportunity to handle this one entirely by myself.
I had already drafted lyrics that matched the demo track. The response from both the company staff and members was positive.
However, when I actually sang it, something felt oddly off. Feeling I would regret it if I didn’t fix it, I had already secured permission to finalize a revised version during the holiday break before completing the recording.
So during this Chuseok holiday, while the other members went to their family homes, I once again became a ghost haunting the company building.
“‘First love, you in my memories’… this expression is too common. The pronunciation also seems harsh.”
I wondered if there were words that could be gentler yet still integrate organically with the other songs. I pressed the blunt end of my fountain pen against my lips, deep in thought.
“‘Dream state’… no, that pronunciation is harsh too. ‘Fever’?”
When I form a line, I write it down neatly, pronounce it aloud, and then sing it to the melody. After that, I check how it harmonizes with the lyrics before and after.
While carefully adjusting the lyrics according to the rules I’d developed over the past few months, a gray shadow fell across my small notebook.
“You’re using the fountain pen well? Glad I gave it to you.”
“…Sunbaenim.”
Bae Dojin, dressed in a tracksuit, looked down at me with a grin.
“Not going well?”
“I’m in the final stage, just need to adjust a few words. It’s a song with only Korean lyrics. I want it to sound as good as possible to the ear.”
“I understand that feeling.”
Bae Dojin, wearing his cap backward, sat down next to me.
“When I write lyrics, I try to avoid English as much as possible too. There are other members who handle English better anyway.”
“That’s right. I usually get advice from Joo Lee Seon for English lyrics.”
“May I take a look?”
“It’s not written very neatly, so it might be uncomfortable to read.”
“This is quite good handwriting.”
Contrary to my expectation that he would just peek briefly and leave, Bae Dojin helped with the lyrics quite enthusiastically. When I showed him the draft, he asked me to sing it, then circled parts that caught his ear and helped me think through them.
‘They say he handles most of the lyrics for Days’ songs.’
He certainly had a knack for coming up with melodious words. Thanks to him, parts where I had been stuck were quickly resolved.
“Want to sing it again with the changes?”
Fortunately, I had the instrumental track on my tablet nearby. Although it was a bit embarrassing, I was grateful for his help, so I sang as sincerely as I could.
– The painfully emerged feelings, my first love has slipped away
The place you left will never be filled again
Searching for our memories with the tip of my tongue
Perhaps because both the title and theme were “First Love,” this song was especially meaningful to me. While it was partly because it was my first solo lyric-writing project, I think this song would have been the most special even if I had written lyrics for all the other songs.
First love, and unrequited love. Those words inevitably made me think of Na Jihan.
– If I had known first love would hurt like this
I should have tasted someone other than you
But I couldn’t swallow anything else, it would only have been you
I would only have ached for you
“I felt it when reading it too.”
Bae Dojin said while fiddling with the fountain pen I had put down.
“But hearing it sung makes it sound even sadder. Is that because you’re singing it, Seowoo?”
“Ahaha.”
“Is this from personal experience?”
Was this his way of teasing, asking something he already knew? I felt slightly annoyed and wanted to glare at him, but quickly remembering he was my industry senior, I answered politely.
“A little.”
After briefly checking his expression, I asked:
“…Does it sound too pitiful?”
“No, haha. Not to that extent. I expressed myself poorly. It’s more like poignant rather than sad.”
“…”
“If this is from personal experience, it’s fascinating. Is this what first love feels like to you, Seowoo?”
I looked at the neatly written lyrics in my notebook.
I couldn’t swallow anything else, it would only have been you. I would only have ached for you.
The lines I had written while thinking of Na Jihan entered my vision diagonally.
“I think so. If I had to be specific, it feels closer to unrequited love than first love.”
“My unrequited love wasn’t this touching and innocent.”
I blurted out:
“Unrequited love is supposed to be messy. It makes people feel small.”
“It makes them childish too.”
Surprisingly, we understood each other. I glanced at Bae Dojin.
He twisted open the cap of the fountain pen and began doodling in a corner of my notebook. When I wondered what he was drawing, I saw it was a tooth shape. After drawing a couple of molar shapes, he tilted the rightmost molar sideways.
Wisdom teeth. The teeth that supposedly emerge around the time of first love and cause pain if they grow incorrectly.
He seemed to be drawing this because I had compared the theme of this song to wisdom teeth, explaining that the English title was “love toothache.”
“The human heart is really strange. It seems like nothing special, but it’s hard to ignore. It’s not like I think about it to the point of dying every day, but I can’t forget either. Yet I’m not expecting anything. I know rationally there’s no possibility…”
“I can’t give up.”
I answered as if entranced.
“Since it wasn’t a feeling I started by choice, I wish I could at least end it by choice… but even that’s not easy, which is frustrating.”
I sighed while looking at the neatly written sentences. Sentences end with a period, but love isn’t like that. It can’t be clearly organized and neatly concluded.
If that were possible, I wouldn’t have spent a whole month thinking about my first kiss with Jihan. My heart wouldn’t be bouncing around like this because of him, who was both unbearably sweet and unbearably annoying.
“It would be easier if I could just give up…”
As I was lamenting, I suddenly came to my senses. When I turned my head, Bae Dojin was twirling his pen with a broad smile.
“…I’m sorry. For suddenly saying useless things.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. I thought it was cute. Just like relationship advice that kids your age would talk about.”
“Relationship advice…”
How did I end up doing something like that with a company senior? I was about to sigh deeply.
“Rather than senior and junior, I think I could give better advice if we were like close brothers.”
Bae Dojin asked with sparkling eyes:
“Have you thought about my proposal?”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
