At ten sharp Park walked out of his bedroom with a notebook under one arm, deeply satisfied with himself, having spent the morning quietly bullying an entire industry without its knowledge.

In the times since he sat down Park had done three complete songs and not some half-finished verses or those tragic little voice notes people record at three in the morning and call genius because nobody around them has the heart to intervene.

Finished songs — structure, lyrics, melody, harmony, bridges, instrumental direction, and enough emotional weight that a good singer would sit down afterward and quietly wonder whether their own work was still employed.

There were other demos too.

Park had already shoved those into the not good enough corner of the notebook.

Which sounded arrogant as hell, and probably was.

Except not good enough meant something different for him now:

Any one of those discarded demos might have been the best thing an ordinary writer produced all year — hand it to a talented singer, tidy two lines, shift the key, and it would chart.

Park didn’t like them because they leaned too hard on his own voice.

The melodies climbed through awkward transitions, dropped without warning into darker low notes, then hauled themselves back up into ranges most singers would attempt once, fail, and then accuse the composer of having unresolved personal issues about.

They were built around him. His breath, his Male Siren range, control and his ability to move from something almost spoken into something enormous without the seam showing.

Another singer could get through them — after several months of training, a few private conversations with God, and a vocal coach who didn’t mind being hated.

The three songs Park had kept were different:

The first was a duet, though the word felt too small for it:

Two separate lead melodies written to circle each other through the verses before finally colliding in the chorus.

The singers could trade lines, cut each other off, answer, overlap, until the two voices stopped being two voices and became one argument. It would work between a man and a woman, two men, two women, lovers, siblings, enemies, friends — any pairing with enough chemistry to convince a listener there was history in the room.

Neither part existed to support the other. Both carried their own side of it.

With the right performers it could sound like romance. With a different delivery it became grief, or betrayal, or two people working out they’d loved each other several years too late.

The second was a slow-burn built almost entirely out of suspended notes and a high floating register.

Back on Earth somebody would have filed it as a power ballad, which made it sound louder than it was. It didn’t open by trying to flatten anybody. It started small, nearly fragile, and climbed by degrees until the final chorus sat somewhere far above where the first verse had begun.

A lyric soprano could own it.

So could a clean countertenor, or a tenor with a real head voice and the breath control to keep those long notes from turning into a public strangulation. The melody moved slowly and sat high, which meant an average singer would hear the first verse, become confident, and get politely executed by the chorus.

Park liked that one.

’A little cruelty keeps music interesting.’

The third was the flexible one.

Drop it for a baritone, lift it for a soprano, strip it to piano and voice, or open it out into a full arrangement — the melody sat in a broad comfortable tessitura, wide enough to show off talent without demanding one specific instrument to do it.

Any genuinely skilled singer could make it theirs.

’Genuinely skilled, I repeat... the song bent but it does not perform miracles.’

Frogs who’d been overpraised by relatives were still not invited.

Park had spent years sitting in waiting rooms listening to people croak their way through audition pieces with their whole chest, absolutely convinced, while somewhere behind them a mother who had never once told them the truth mouthed the words along.

He had developed opinions about it.

Unkind ones.

’A voice that belongs in a shower stays in the shower, and no key change ever invented is going to relocate it somewhere with an audience.’

He’d written all three with Peerless Male Siren and Mourner’s Tongue sitting behind his hands the entire time.

Park hadn’t simply written lyrics about longing and loss and second chances — he’d built the openings directly into the music.

Small deliberate spaces where a voice could breathe, crack, hold back, or finally come off the leash.

When Park sang them, those openings would be weapons:

The Siren would pull a listener in until his voice stopped being sound crossing a room and started feeling like something reaching into them. Mourner’s Tongue would locate whatever they’d been carrying around — something buried years ago, something they’d stopped mentioning — and lay one careful finger on it.

But the songs didn’t need him.

That was the frightening part.

Another singer would never produce what Park could, obviously. Yet the design itself still held a trace of it alll his abilities.

’Five percent, maybe. Less but enough to make a room listen twice.’

Enough to leave a small ache sitting behind after the last note for a decent singer to come off stage sounding more arresting than usual with absolutely no idea why.

He had written songs that carried a diluted version of him even when he wasn’t there.

’Dangerous. Also beautiful.’

He only needed one for the audition, and he already knew which. The other two could wait, because putting everything on the table at once would be stupid. Park wanted the agency impressed, unsettled, and desperate to get his signature on something.

He didn’t need them calling a priest thinking he was suddenly an angel from heavens.

’If the angels can compete that is.’

Park tucked the notebook more securely under his arm and slid both hands into his pockets as he crossed his private living room.

He’d changed out of the soft stuff he wrote in. The grey knit stayed — loose across the shoulders, sleeves shoved back toward his forearms — but he’d swapped into black trousers falling heavy over black shoes, a dark smartwatch on one wrist, and a black cap pulled low over the newly shaped hair, which hid enough of his face to make the remaining portion considerably more of a problem.

An outfit that read as perfectly normal until somebody knowledgeable started doing sums.

’Clean. Young. Relaxed. Dangerously handsome without looking like a man who’d spent an hour negotiating with a mirror.’

Park slowed outside the breakfast room.

Voices came through the doors. Emmeline. Aveline. Nobody else talking.

He stood there half a second longer, listening properly.

No Alexander. No Chancellor.

’Thank fuck.’

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