The basement stage wasn't big enough anymore. Not for the signal. Not for the kids. Not for the roar that kept multiplying every time Seojin tried to kill it.
Minjun felt it in his bones — the pallet stage under his sneakers groaning with each stomp, the battered mic shorting out every time his sweat dripped down the frayed wire. The kids pressed so close they were breathing the same air, sharing the same heartbeat.
But it wasn't enough. If they stayed down here, they'd burn out in the dark — signal throttled, mirrors closed, pirate streams smothered one by one.
Minjun needed the sky back. The rooftop that started it all.
The plan came together in whispers under flickering basement bulbs. Miri mapped the rooftops that hadn't been locked down yet — abandoned offices, construction sites, half-built towers that the city forgot when the money dried up.
Jiwoo sorted the gear — no fancy rigs, just battery packs, wireless hotspots, old mics wrapped in plastic bags to keep the rain out.
Kids came and went, slipping out in pairs to scout stairwells and service elevators. A punk girl with a shaved head handed Minjun a burner phone wrapped in stickers that read TAKE IT BACK.
"Use this to trigger the relay," she said. "One push, it jumps your feed to the rooftops we've hijacked. Five seconds later, Seojin's lawyers will be scrambling to file injunctions they can't even translate in time."
Minjun closed his fingers around the plastic shell like it was a live grenade. "What about you?"
She smirked, eyes bright. "I'll be on the next roof over. I wanna hear it from up top."
They moved in packs — like ghosts, or thieves, or kids who'd decided the city owed them more than broken dreams.
At 3 a.m., they slipped through subway tunnels and side streets. Jiwoo rode the freight elevator of an unfinished skyscraper with a milk crate full of tangled cables balanced on his lap. Miri clutched her laptop like a holy relic, eyes flicking between stolen blueprints and cracked phone screens.
Minjun didn't say much. His throat was too raw. His mind too loud. He kept replaying the anthem in his head, over and over — not just his voice this time, but every shout from every stolen rooftop, every echo from every bedroom that flickered the feed back to life when the big towers tried to bury them.
The rooftop they picked wasn't special — just another half-built tower lost in the skyline, higher than most but not the tallest. It didn't matter. It had the sky. It had the wind. It had enough flat concrete to drop their borrowed speakers and a single standing light powered by a car battery.
By 4 a.m., the rooftop kids stood in a loose circle under the blinking city lights. Breath fogged in the cold air. Jiwoo dragged the last speaker into place with a grunt, testing the connection with a single drumstick tap that echoed down the glass skeleton of the building.
Miri checked the signal — a thin blue line dancing across her laptop. She turned to Minjun, her face lit by the glow of a skyline trying its best to drown them out.
"One push," she said. "You ready?"
Minjun's fingers tightened around the burner phone. The weight of it felt heavier than every contract he'd torn up, every stage he'd been locked out of. He looked at Jiwoo, then Miri, then the circle of kids who'd risked suspension, arrest, exile just to stand here in the wind with him.
He thought about Seojin — somewhere behind tinted glass, maybe watching the city for any sign of them. Maybe calling her lawyers in six languages at once. Maybe terrified that for the first time in years, she wasn't holding the leash.
He smiled. Small, cracked, unstoppable.
"Let's own the sky," he said.
The relay went live with a single click. A heartbeat later, the feed jumped — rooftop to rooftop, tower to tower. Construction cranes turned into antennae. Abandoned billboards flickered with shaky projections ripped from the kids' janky cameras.
In the dark sprawl of Seoul, tiny islands of light flared alive. People on midnight buses lifted their eyes from dead phone screens and gasped. Night shift workers in glass towers stepped away from their desks to see kids with mics and amps claiming the skyline like a constellation they'd named themselves.
Minjun stepped up to the single mic stand — no frills, just a battered stand duct-taped to a rooftop vent. Jiwoo counted them in with three taps on a snare drum wedged between two cinder blocks.
Miri's laptop streamed the signal live — shaky, glitchy, unstoppable.
When Minjun's voice hit the mic, the wind stole half of it — but the half that survived was enough. The city below caught it, passed it on, bounced it off cracked windows and stolen Wi-Fi.
He didn't bother with polished verses. He sang what came — rooftop chants and basement beats, fragments of the anthem stitched together with every shout he'd heard in the alleys and stairwells.
Jiwoo slammed the beat so hard the snare cracked. Miri's fingers danced over her keys, rerouting the feed every time Seojin's people tried to kill it.
The kids behind Minjun screamed every word they knew, fists in the air, hair whipping in the wind. It didn't matter if the feed lagged or glitched — somewhere halfway across the world, another rooftop answered. And another. And another.
By sunrise, the city skyline glittered with a new constellation — screens and projections on rooftops, signals bouncing through coffee shops, underpasses, empty train cars.
Seojin sat alone in her office, eyes locked on a dozen frozen screens. The takedown notices looped endlessly, each one a reminder that the rooftop had slipped through her fingers like smoke.
On the highest point of that half-built tower, Minjun gripped the mic, voice torn raw, heart pounding out the last beat of the night.
He didn't care about stardom anymore. Didn't care if the labels called him tomorrow begging to buy him back. Didn't care if they blocked every official feed left.
Because here — under the bleeding sunrise — the rooftop was his. The rooftop was theirs. And tonight, they'd owned the sky.