Posted on February 2, 2017 by csvtranslator — Leave a reply
While Jinho was absolved in his own thoughts, Max lightly tuned his guitar and touched his stomach.
“By the way Brother, aren’t you hungry? It’s been quite some time since we started.”
“Ah, come to think of it…”
Since he hasn’t eaten anything since meeting in the morning until then, he was naturally hungry. Although, he was simply too absorbed in the work to notice until now.
As soon as Max mentioned the fact, the two’s stomachs growled. Turning to each other, the two smiled.
“Kuku, for now, let’s go eat. Since I got the performance revenue from ajussi yesterday, my wallet isn’t thin so I’ll buy today.”
“Then I’ll be troubling you this time.”
Lightly biting down his tongue, Jinho helped Max clean up.
Saying he knows a good place, Max took up his guitar case on his back and led Jinho.
While heading downtown on a subway, Max got off at the Canal street and led Jinho into the Chinatown.
As the two walked down the street full of various chinese stores and merchants, Max and Jinho continued to talk about the album cover.
Max once again suggested using the picture for the inside cover instead, but Jinho firmly shook his head.
“Mr. Max, you said that the last album failed because the cover was bad. That would mean the cover is that important, right?”
“Probably?”
“Then please trust me and wait, Mr. Max. I’ll definitely draw a cover worthy of your trust.”
In the end, Max nodded at Jinho’s words.
And once again saying he’ll rely on Jinho, Max told Jinho that he’ll fully trust Jinho’s opinions.
As Jinho smiled at Max in assent, Max pushed open a door of a Chinese restaurant and went inside.
“Hello, my Mexican Brother who sells me Chinese food! How’d you been?”
“Ooh, Max! Haven’t see you in a while, so I thought you got hit by a train and died! Why haven’t you come around?”
“I’ve been a bit busy. I needed to make a new album, and picking out songs was a headache.”
“Kuku, do you even have a piece of head left to get a headache?”
“As expected of Mexican Brother. Your jokes are hilarious!”
Laughing hysterically, Max took a sit on an empty table.
Jinho followed Max and sat down on the opposite side, and glanced at the store.
A chinese diner in the middle of Chinatown, ran by a Mexican.
Jinho thought that it was quite a funny scene and took out a camera to take a picture of the store’s look.
“By the way, who’s the friend you brought? Is he going to work here?”
“Kuku, that joke’s killing it too! By the way, this Brother’s a Korean Brother. He’s not Chinese.”
“So what! I’m also a Mexican! Kiki. Honestly I’m better with tacos.”
Seemingly hitting off each other, the two bent over with laughter. (t/n: Hitting off :http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/hit-it-off-with-someone )
Jinho lightly smiled at the sight. The more he understood Max, Max’s endless charms made everyday feel new.
After talking and laughing on and on for a while, Max ordered for both Jinho and himself, and the Mexican owner went into the kitchen saying ‘got it’.
With only the two of them left, Jinho and Max sat down and put their heads together to decide what to do after lunch.
And within that short while, the Mexican store owner seems to have already finished cooking as he came out of the kitchen holding a dish in each hand, and placed them in front of the two.
“What are you talking so seriously about?”
“Ah, it’s about my album cover. This Brother is unbelievable at drawing, so I asked him for help.”
“Seriously? Max, it’s kinda hard to trust you with that huge bravado of yours, you know? What are you going to do if the cover ends up like the last album? Kulkul.”
“No worries. With this friend on the line, the album will have an absolutely amazing cover.”
Max used a Chinese spoon to shovel a mouthful of fried rice into his mouth. Watching from the side, the Mexican store owner continued to ask.
“So, what’s going to be the concept?”
“Hm, me shining?”
“You shining? Then the background is already set from the start.”
“Eh?”
Halfway through putting stir-fried beef into his mouth, Jinho stopped and asked back at the Mexican store owner.
In response, the store owner nodded his head and answered.
“Whatever anyone says, Max shines the most when he’s jamming on the streets. Especially when he’s jamming along impromptu with other musicians in East Harlem. I still can’t believe that you and that drummer who played with you that day are strangers.” (t/n: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jamming)
Snap!
Jinho snapped his fingers at the store owner’s words.
“That’s it! Impromptu jamming!”
A duet with other musicians and their own stories. Why didn’t he think of that before?
Rapidly stuffing the food down his mouth, Jinho gleefully smiled.
At the thought of a new sensation to feel, his face was full of excitement.
“Mr. Max, let’s eat quickly and go! Are you still not done? Should I help?”
“Ah, no, Brother. You are supposed to slowly savor the food when eating… okay. I’ll finish quickly, so just wait a bit!”
Seeing the burning light in Jinho’s eyes, Max hurried and began to stuff fried rice into his mouth.
*
Even though they spent the entire day on subway, the two got on the subway again to get to East Harlem.
Perhaps because he’s full, or perhaps because they’re going to a familiar place, Max’s face looked much more relaxed than before.
But Jinho wasn’t.
Although he suggested to go, Jinho gulped at the ghetto atmosphere felt as soon as they got off the subway.
Even though Jinho felt that the place he lived in was also a slum, the ghetto as a step above the slum.
Despite being an era when you can see Asians wherever you go, every passersby glanced at him once with both interest and suspicion.
As he passed another passerby staring at him with an eerie look, Jinho stuck closer to Max’s side.
“Um, Mr. Max?”
“Why, Brother?”
“Is… is this place really okay?”
Glancing at a Spanish man lying down in a corner as if dead, Jinho asked.
No, is he actually dead?
As Jinho held doubts, Max cheerfully laughed and lightly slapped his guitar case.
“What are you talking about? People live here too. And especially the people who like music live here! Being prejudiced isn’t good, Brother.”
Although Jinho wanted to ask if they perhaps use a human body instead of an instrument when playing music, Jinho painfully smiled along with Max.
And as they smiled along, the two arrived at their destination before they knew it.
A park with a concrete floor and a fence unlike a typical parks.
As if recently… or perhaps because the maintenance was lacking from the start, here and there along the fence seemed to have been ripped from something sharp, and the concrete wall for either tennis or squash was full of unreadable graffiti of various hues.
Because the graffiti was rather well done, Jinho’s eyes briefly lighted up, but the light soon went out.
After learning the graffiti’s meaning through his right eye, Jinho’s hands naturally shook.
‘East Harlem Gang…’
The image of the graffiti Jinho saw. Its hidden meaning was related to a gang.
Although he didn’t look close enough to learn more than that, Jinho realized that there was an atypical story behind the graffiti and turning away from it, he searched for Max. In the end, the only person Jinho could trust at the moment was Max.
Finding Max sitting nearby, Jinho started to walk up to him but stopped.
Hugging the guitar, Max had begun to strum the strings and play.
Listening to the sound of guitar that began to quietly echo, Jinho calmed himself.
‘Then, me too.’
As he watched Max sit alone in an empty spot and play, Jinho too took out his sketchbook.
Jinho’s hand holding the pencil no longer shook.
The fear was also gone.
Like how Max concentrated on playing his music, Jinho completely concentrated on drawing as well.
And after who knows how long.
One by one, people began to gather around Max.
The sight of the crowd wearing worn out clothes that dragged along the ground didn’t seemed normal at all.
Worried about Max as he drew, Jinho thought to slowly get up. Then, a black guy standing close to Max shouted.
“!”
A rap.
Matching Max’s guitar notes, the guy began to rap.
There actually was no part in Max’s song that’s fit for rap, but the guy interpreted Max’s song with his own gut feelings and freestyled. Although the rap lyrics were only about what he ate in the morning, what he did at lunch, what he’s going to do from then on, and of his usual everyday life, the tone and the flow wasn’t bad and went well with the guitar.
Naturally, a smile formed on Max’s mouth as he performed.
When the guy finished his thirty second long rap about his life, the crowd around him cheered.
“Ooh, Tomy! Aren’t you quite silver tongued today?”
“More! Isn’t there someone who can do better? Hey, we’re lacking too much bass. Oi, Philip. Come over here and start beatboxing!”
A large Mexican guy named Philip laughed kulkul and nimbly took a sit next to Max. Max too moved slightly to the side to let him sit. Even so, the guitar performance didn’t stop. Philip nodded and rode the guitar’s tune, then folded his hands together to cover his mouth.
‘Is that sound actually coming from someone’s mouth?!’
At Philip’s beatbox, Jinho’s eyes opened widely.
It was unbelievable that such a heavy and deep sound could come from a human’s mouth. But the funny thing was, it fitted extremely well with Max’s guitar.
As the mood heated up, the crowd seemingly forgot the cold as they cheered and showed off their own talents.
A guy who brought a pet bottle and hit a beat. A friend who’s clapping and cheering along. And even people who got on stage and rap again.
Various sounds chaotically mixed together, but in the center of it all, there was Max’s guitar.
Jinho too, with a feverish face from the excitement, quickly moved his hand on top of the sketchbook.
It felt as if something was slowly coming together.
But at the same time, he felt that something important was missing. A something important that could take the heart of the picture.
Just when Jinho thought so.
“I was once a boy…”
Through Max’s lips, the first line of his song Steamroller came out.
‘That’s it.’
Finally, the missing piece of the puzzle came together, and Jinho smiled satisfied.
Max’s vocal that shines within the various sounds. Listening to his voice, Jinho was finally able to finish the sketch.
*
“Good morning. I’m Carl Robert, the anchor of Hello, New York!”
“Hello, Jenna Swarovski here, reporting in the tenth year as Carl’s co-anchor. Hello.”
Hello New York, a daily 6am show.
Airing for over forty years on the same channel, the news channel was considered the face of New York’s news programs and called the start of the day.
Reporting the earliest on news of yesterday to anything new of today’s morning, Hello New York aired that day as well.
As expected of a news channel, grim news of traffic accidents and crime reports made up most of the news.
The male anchor, Carl looked at Jenna and shook his head.
“It’s rather gloomy to only report sad stories every time.”
“That why, we have prepared a heartwarming video for the end of part 1. Should we take a look? East Harlem, the place most avoided in fear of danger. It’s a surprise video that happened there yesterday!”
“I’m getting excited just from hearing your description. Then we’ll end the part 1 with the surprise video, and return in part 2!”
With Carl’s final comment, the screen switched over to the video.
As if it was taken with a phone rather than by a professional, the video shook excessively.
Some sort of crumbling sounds came out, and the voice of a man presumably the owner of the phone came out.
[OH. MY. GOD. THIS IS A HEAVEN!]
In the video, Max was passionately playing his guitar while various people performed their own musical talents in harmony.
The male’s finger suddenly intruded into the video screen.
[See that guy? He just did a killer rap. And what about that guy doing beatbox next to him? God, they’re amazing!]
The video continued to record Max. That is, the scene of Max steadfastly playing his guitar by himself.
Then finally, Max’s voice rang out. At the unfamiliar guitar melody and lyrics, everyone was momentarily surprised, but soon fell into Max’s song.
The crowd around him soon stamped out a beat that fit the song, sang along on chorus parts, and cheered Max on.
And when Max’s song ended after three minutes, the male recording the video jumped and shouted.
Saying that the only legal drug was music, he scratched at goose bumps on his arm. And as the phone turned, a sight of an Asian guy sitting on the floor came into the view.
Taking an interest in the lone Asian Jinho, the owner of the video walked up to him.
[Hey, bro! Whatcha doing down there?]
[I’m drawing.]
[Drawing?]
And with a short look at picture Jinho drew, the video ended.
< Miracle Drawing! 17. > End
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