The first blow didn't come with flashing lights or riot police. It came quietly — a text message from Jiwoo's landlord at 3 A.M., cold and simple: You have two days to move out. New tenant. No discussion.
Then Miri's freelance gigs started vanishing. One by one, her usual editor contacts stopped replying to emails. The tiny café that let them use its basement locked the door and posted a sign: Under Renovation.
Minjun knew exactly whose fingerprints were on every one of these sudden problems. He could practically hear Seojin's voice in every polite eviction notice and suspiciously timed "random inspection." Starline wasn't stupid. They knew a direct attack would only make Minjun a martyr. So they poisoned the roots instead — quiet, cold, relentless.
At first, the kids thought they could outpace the crackdown. They moved the shows faster, deeper underground. One night they performed in the half-finished top floor of an abandoned apartment block, the next they hijacked an empty lecture hall during exam week.
But the pressure grew.
One night, after a secret gig near Gangnam, Minjun and Jiwoo returned to the squat they'd been crashing at — an old studio above a shuttered laundromat. They found the door ripped off its hinges, their gear scattered across the concrete floor like someone had stomped through it all just to send a message.
Jiwoo's guitar — the old one, the one with the cracked pickguard and the faded sticker of his first band — lay in two pieces under the broken window.
Jiwoo didn't say a word. He just knelt beside it, hands hovering over the splintered neck like he could will it back together.
Minjun stood in the wreckage, breathing carefully through the rage bubbling in his chest. He knew Seojin wouldn't come in person. That wasn't his style. Seojin always let other people do his dirty work — lawyers, landlords, nameless goons paid in hush money and silence.
But this was a message, clear as a spotlight: Keep singing and we'll take everything.
The kids kept showing up, though. Each night more careful, more paranoid — new burner phones, coded messages, fake names scribbled in eyeliner on bathroom mirrors. They weren't just fans anymore. They were conspirators.
Minjun knew he should have been proud. He was — but pride alone didn't pay for Jiwoo's new guitar, or Miri's mounting debts, or the cheap motels they now crashed in for a few restless hours between sets.
Then came the bribes.
One morning, while they holed up in the back booth of a 24-hour tteokbokki shop, a man in a charcoal suit found them. He didn't sit down. He just dropped a thick white envelope on the table between Jiwoo's styrofoam cup and Miri's tangled charger cords.
"For your trouble," he said. Smooth. Unbothered. His eyes didn't even flick to Minjun.
Minjun stared at the envelope — the corner flipped open just enough to show stacks of crisp won. It probably smelled like Seojin's cologne.
Jiwoo's jaw tightened. Miri picked at a hole in her hoodie sleeve, her fingers trembling.
The man slipped a business card out of his coat. He didn't hand it to Minjun. He placed it on the table like a lawyer setting down an exhibit in court. Suh Management Group. A Starline subsidiary, of course — rebranded, hidden behind polite corporate jargon.
"Walk away quietly," the man said. "No more shows. No more stolen rooftops. You keep your fans, do some online streams if you must. Just stop playing this hero. It's bad for business."
Minjun looked at Jiwoo. Jiwoo's eyes flashed with all the words he wasn't saying. Don't you dare.
He looked at Miri. She didn't even look at the envelope. She was staring at him, wide-eyed, scared but steady.
Minjun pushed the envelope back across the sticky table. Slow. Deliberate. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to.
The man sighed like he'd expected this. He took the money, tucked it back into his coat, and leaned close enough for Minjun to feel the threat in his whisper.
"Then we'll do it the hard way."
He left without finishing his coffee.
The "hard way" hit them two nights later.
They'd found a half-forgotten subway station — closed for repairs, but the kids had keys. Someone had rigged a generator for the amps. Jiwoo had borrowed a battered secondhand guitar. Miri had a fresh stack of blank tapes to sell for a few won each.
They never saw the plainclothes cops until it was too late.
One minute Minjun was halfway through Rooftop Anthem, voice raw, fingers numb from the cold tiles under the abandoned tracks. The next, the lights flooded the tunnel — bright, blinding, a dozen flashlights cutting through the crowd.
Chaos. Screams. Sneakers skidding on damp concrete. Someone dropped an amp — it sparked, hissed, died. Jiwoo's shout vanished into the wail of a siren that didn't belong in an abandoned tunnel.
Minjun felt a hand clamp onto his arm, spinning him around. For one wild second, he thought he saw Seojin himself standing there in the chaos — but it was just a uniform, a badge glinting cold in the artificial light.
They dragged Minjun out into the night, wrists burning in cheap plastic cuffs.
In the back of the van, Jiwoo sat next to him, breathing hard, eyes unfocused. Miri was nowhere to be seen — maybe she'd slipped away, maybe she hadn't. Minjun tried not to think about that.
Outside, through the tiny barred window, Seoul blurred by. Neon lights, traffic, blinking billboards. Somewhere in that glittering city, the kids were still out there — running, hiding, planning. His chorus wasn't gone. But the system was awake now, and it was hungry.
As the van lurched through the city, Minjun closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to the cold metal wall. His pulse roared in his ears. His voice was all he had left — and Seojin had just declared war on it.
He opened his mouth and began to hum — soft at first, then louder, so Jiwoo could hear it too.
They can't arrest a song, Minjun thought. Not if we keep singing.
And he knew, even in that cold steel box, that this was far from over.