Chapter 147: A Full Day’s Honest Work

The studio became quieter once they were gone.

Léonie remained at the console staring at the sessions. The engineer leaned back. The composer looked over several notes he’d made, while Viktoria stood nearby wearing the small satisfied like she had watched everyone else step onto a rake and decided warning them would reduce the educational value.

"You undersold him," Léonie said.

Viktoria raised an eyebrow. "Did I?"

"You said exceptional. Exceptional is a nineteen-year-old singing beautifully and writing several good songs. This little bastard changed an arrangement while performing it, repeated those changes on command and then improved them again because apparently the first miracle bored him."

The engineer pointed toward the screen. "His timing’s ridiculous."

"His ear is worse," the composer said.

"For us?"

"Exactly."

Léonie leaned back.

She hadn’t watched Park’s audition recording. She’d been busy, and she’d privately assumed senior management had caught the usual entertainment-industry disease where one beautiful kid had a great audition and grown adults immediately began discussing the second comingbefore lunch.

Besides, if somebody had asked her yesterday who NX’s strongest new music signing was, she would have named the girl currently working in Studio Two without hesitation... CJ was it?

Today? Fuck.

The engineer looked toward Viktoria. "He’s really nineteen?"

"Nineteen."

"That’s professionally disgusting. He should legally be worse at something."

Viktoria smiled. "But he flirts too much."

Léonie glanced at her.

__

Sloane’s lunch was quieter for a different reason.

She’d known Park was talented. NX hadn’t fought so hard over creative access and music rights because they thought he might become pleasantly competent one day. She’d read the notes, heard the soft praise of his talent and watched senior people negotiate around him with the careful hunger of people trying not to scare away something valuable.

She simply hadn’t heard him like this.

Now she understood some of the arrogance.

Self-awareness was probably the fairer word.

Park knew exactly how good he was because pretending otherwise would have required lying and fuck humility was one of the few performances he had no interest in giving.

Sloane watched him attempt to negotiate 6 pieces of broccoli down to 2.

"I ate 2 already," Park told Quinn. "That demonstrates good faith."

"You have 6 remaining."

Sloane smiled into her drink and quietly accepted that she’d made the right career choice; the boy sitting opposite her wasn’t merely some promising actor who happened to sing.

If she handled this properly, Nathaniel Park was going to become extremely fucking expensive.

That meant more work, fortunately, Sloane remembered percentages.

Her concern recovered beautifully.

Park returned after lunch without the slightest idea several professionals had spent his absence revising their understanding of him.

__

Viktoria fixed that immediately.

"We want the rest... the originals from your audition."

"All 6?"

"All 6."

Park stared at her. "I was told this was a full-day session. How are you adding more day to the day?"

"By using the hours you haven’t lived yet."

Back into the booth he went.

The afternoon didn’t require rebuilding every song from scratch. Some received fuller guide arrangements while others were recorded more simply so Léonie and the production team could work on them later. One needed guitar, another sat better over piano, and on one rhythmic section Park abandoned both and tapped the pattern against his thigh until the producer understood exactly what he wanted.

The worrying part was how quickly everything stuck.

Hours of singing should have begun leaving little cracks somewhere. Breath becoming less stable. Pitch drifting. A difficult passage getting uglier as fatigue settled into his throat. Instead, Park’s body seemed almost offensively determined to keep giving him what he asked for. His breathing remained steady, his jaw loose, his tone clean, and when anything went wrong, Park usually stopped before the engineer did.

Late afternoon brought the 2 emotional songs.

Park remembered what had happened during the audition, so this time he spared everyone the embarrassment of watching their faces and emotions.

The first song ended and nobody spoke immediately.

Park drank water and studied the opposite acoustic wall with great respect.

The second song was worse.

Or better.

Depends whether making a middle-aged recording engineer stare at his console with the expression of a man suddenly remembering every unresolved argument with his father counted as a professional achievement.

They’d then created a rule:

"When Nathaniel Park sang something like that, place your dignity somewhere safe before he started and retrieve it afterward."

They should have stopped there; unfortunately, prolonged exposure to Park had begun damaging professional judgment.

The composer suddenly remembered something from the audition.

"The 2 songs."

Park saw his face and immediately said, "No."

Léonie looked between them. "What 2 songs?"

"Nothing."

Viktoria smiled.

Park pointed through the glass. "Don’t."

The composer, explained that Park had mentioned 2 originals he considered practically unusable for ordinary singers because he’d written them around things his own voice could do.

Léonie’s interest sharpened instantly: "Sing one."

"No."

"Why?"

"Because then you’ll get ideas."

"I already have ideas."

"Exactly the disease."

Viktoria leaned toward the talkback. "Do one."

Park looked at her and she gave him that deceptively sweet smile, ash-brown eyes steady on his through the glass.

’Cute little tyrant... how can I refuse her.’

"You enjoy ordering me around." He said.

"I’ve discovered it’s pleasant."

"That sounds dangerously personal."

Her lips puckered.

Léonie looked between them. "Can whatever this is wait until after the song?"

"There is no this," Viktoria said.

Park raised one finger. "I wasn’t consulted."

The engineer dropped his head.

Even Sloane laughed.

Viktoria stared at Park. "Sing."

He smiled. "Yes, ma’am."

Park chose the less ridiculous of the 2 songs, which turned out to be a deeply unfortunate description for everybody else.

The first section lived low in his voice, warm and intimate, each word clear without losing the softness beneath it... the melody climbed, and his voice simply changed shape with it with no ugly break orvisible struggle. One phrase gained a rough edge because the emotion wanted it, the next became smooth again, and when the melody dropped, Park followed it down without sacrificing the thread running through the song.

The technical absurdity wasn’t what truly ruined the room.

The feeling remained; the composer lowered his tablet while Léonie’s hands stopped above the piano... even Viktoria’s little smile disappeared.

Park let the melody descend naturally, returned to the low register where he’d begun and finished so softly that the waveform narrowed almost flat before the final note disappeared.

Nobody said anything for several seconds.

Park removed the headphones and looked through the glass at a group of adults who had collectively spent decades studying music and currently seemed to be wondering whether that education had been a pyramid scheme.

He smiled.

"I told you it was annoying."

Léonie eventually pressed the talkback: "What the fuck are you?"

Park considered it. "Nathaniel?"

The assistant engineer folded forward laughing while the engineer covered his face.

Sloane leaned back slowly, and somewhere inside her professional little heart the numbers attached to Nathaniel Park’s future gained several extra zeroes that she almost felt sorry for the industry but when she remembered her percentage.

The sympathy died peacefully.

By the time Studio Five finally released him, Aurora outside had already surrendered most of its daylight.

Park stepped out of the booth tired, hungry again and so stupidly happy he didn’t bother hiding it.

Léonie remained behind the console with 9 songs sitting across the day’s files, 3 heavily developed and the others recorded in different stages, plus one final performance whose principal contribution to music appeared to be damaging several reasonable assumptions about nineteen-year-old male singers.

There would be plenty left tomorrow. Arrangements, instrumentation, vocal stacks, edits, mixing later, mastering after that, and probably several meetings where otherwise respectable adults argued for 40 minutes about whether one drum sounded too emotionally available.

Park didn’t care tonight; he’d done it.

Before leaving, he stopped beside Léonie and offered his fist" Thank you so much."

She stared at it before bumping hers against his.

"You’re fucking talented," Park said.

That surprised her.

He smiled. "Seriously. I loved working with you."

Some of the exhaustion left her face. "You weren’t completely terrible either."

Park pressed a hand to his chest. "Careful. I’ll get emotional."

"Go home."

Viktoria was near the door... Park slowed beside her.

"No," she said immediately.

He looked innocent. "But I haven’t done anything."

"You’re thinking about it. Goodnight, Nathaniel."

Park leaned slightly closer without touching her, smiling down at those suspicious ash-brown eyes. "Goodnight, Viktoria."

Something about the way he said her name made her eyes narrow.

Park’s grin deepened.

"You’re very pretty when you’re trying to survive me."

"Go."

"Yes, ma’am."

He finally left before Quinn promoted herself from security professional to homicide investigator.

The door closed behind him.

Léonie waited a moment before looking at Viktoria.

Léonie gestured toward the screens. "You told me he was exceptional. You didn’t tell me somebody apparently built a beautiful nineteen-year-old in a laboratory specifically to make the rest of us question our career choices."

The engineer raised one hand. "I’d like that in the official report."

Viktoria laughed.

Several floors below, completely unaware Studio Five had just spent an entire day developing a professional crisis around him, Park stepped into the elevator beside Quinn and Sloane, checked the time and asked the question currently occupying the largest part of his mind.

"What did the kitchen make for dinner?"

Sloane stared at him.

Quinn checked her phone. "Steak."

Park’s entire face brightened.

Sloane watched him for a second. This nineteen-year-old had just spent a full day making veteran music professionals reconsider gods, genetics and several decades of training, and apparently steak had already become the most important development in his life.

For reasons she couldn’t yet decide were comforting or horrifying, that made Nathaniel Park feel considerably more human.

***

A/N: I will be cutting pit details and give less details from now on, from here we go fast guys.