A month later, the city looked the same from the ground — neon signs still flickering above ramen shops, subway cars rattling under tired feet, glossy idol ads plastered across every bus stop. If you didn't know where to look, you'd think nothing had changed.
But on the rooftops — everything had.
Minjun sat on the ledge of an old office tower near Mapo. The air was warmer now; spring crept in under the concrete and steel, curling around him like a promise. The sunrise broke open the city in shades of gold and soft blue, painting the skyline that once felt like a cage into something wide and alive.
Below him, traffic was already humming awake. Somewhere, Seojin's new trainees were probably in a sterile practice room, reciting lines they didn't write to beats they didn't feel. He should have hated them — but he didn't. They were just kids like he'd been, dreaming inside someone else's box.
Minjun's box had been broken open. The rooftop made sure of that.
He didn't go back to the basement — it was gone now, sealed off when the landlord figured out the city's hottest ghost signal had been born under his leaking pipes. Didn't matter. New basements, new rooftops — they sprouted like weeds every time someone tried to stomp them out.
Now, instead of one hidden stage, there were dozens. Scattered rooftops across Seoul. Hidden stairwells. Shipping containers turned into pop-up studios. The rooftop kids — once just a handful of runaways and dreamers — were now a city-wide constellation, blinking alive whenever a mic crackled to life.
They called it the Rooftop Circuit — part rumor, part urban legend. No managers, no contracts, no stage lights bright enough to blind you to your own words. Just a kid, a beat, a borrowed amp, and the city holding its breath.
Miri didn't bother trying to patch the old pirate feeds anymore. She built something new — an encrypted relay that bounced signals through servers nobody could trace, an open-source pipeline that anyone could hijack if they had a verse worth shouting.
Kids from high schools he'd never heard of sent him voice notes at 3 a.m., raw demos of beats thumped out on lunchroom tables. Some were off-key. Some were genius. All of them were real. That's what mattered.
Jiwoo ran pop-up gigs in abandoned garages, part-time emcee, part-time roadie, full-time chaos engine. He called Minjun whenever a new rooftop stage needed a verse to burn it alive. And Minjun always answered.
Sometimes, he thought about that first rooftop — the cheap plastic chair, the city humming under his sneakers, the mic duct-taped to a broom handle. How small his voice had felt then, whispering verses into a night that barely cared.
Now, the rooftop didn't just listen. It sang back.
Minjun pulled his phone from his pocket — not the burner, but a battered old flip phone he refused to trade for a shiny new slab. The screen lit up with a single name: Miri. No greeting. Just a location, coordinates for another hidden rooftop above an old shopping arcade in Dongdaemun.
One more? the text read.
He smiled, thumb tapping back: Always.
The city was waking up now — real people, real lives, real bills. Some of the rooftop kids would clock in at day jobs later, flipping burgers, stacking shelves, grinding through college lectures. But tonight, they'd climb stairs and elevator shafts, hauling amps and crates onto cracked concrete and rusty rebar.
They'd point a single mic at the night sky and dare the city to listen.
He swung his legs off the ledge, feet scraping the rough brick wall. The wind caught the edge of his battered denim jacket, flapping it like a flag no corporation could buy. Somewhere behind him, a kid tuned an old guitar. Another kid scribbled lyrics onto the back of a delivery receipt. Another wired up a battery pack to keep the signal alive when the grid tried to snuff it out.
No contracts. No guards at the door. Just rooftops and sky.
He knew Seojin was still out there, rebuilding her empire, signing new kids who didn't know any better yet. But maybe — just maybe — the rooftop was louder than her lawyers now. Maybe the city had remembered how to listen.
Minjun stood up, hands shoved deep in his pockets, phone clutched tight like a secret he'd never sell. He didn't know if this would last forever — revolutions rarely did. Labels would adapt. Lawyers would evolve. The city would try to pave the cracks smooth again.
But tonight, tomorrow, next month — the rooftop would not sleep. It would wait for any kid with a voice too loud to hold inside four walls.
He climbed the last ladder to the next rooftop. Jiwoo was already there, setting up a single cheap mic stand. Miri lifted her phone in greeting, eyes squinting in the first light of dawn.
Jiwoo looked back at him, grin wide as the skyline. "Ready to wake them up again?"
Minjun didn't answer with words. He stepped up to the mic, felt the wind catch his hair, the city catch its breath.
And he sang.