ES Entertainment CEO Oh Dong-cheol plopped down on the sofa.

“Phew. Sora, you startled me. Don’t open the door like that.”

“The door isn’t the issue right now! This is!”

Seo Sora held out two sheets of paper.

Oh Dong-cheol took the sheet music.

“This is your debut song. Why? Did you love it so much that you had to come see me? Are you suddenly overflowing with respect for me?”

“Ah! Not that, look at the back! There’s more sheet music on the other side. Let’s sing this song. Please?”

The CEO flipped the sheet over. There was indeed music written on it.

Oh Dong-cheol shook the paper in frustration.

“Sora, no matter how much you dislike the song I picked, you can’t just bring me some hastily scribbled sheet music and say we should sing this instead. If even you start treating me like this, I’ll be really hurt.”

“That’s not it! Look at it more carefully.”

Oh Dong-cheol lifted the sheet and muttered,

“I don’t even want to look at such half-hearted doodl—”

His voice trailed off, and his eyes widened.

He used to be a famous singer. Though an accident a few years ago forced him to quit due to a throat injury, the songs he once performed were still popular choices at karaoke.

He could read sheet music far faster than Seo Sora. Even without singing out loud, he could play the melody in his head.

Oh Dong-cheol stared at the notes in shock.

“What is this?!”

“A song!”

“Where did you get this?”

Seo Sora hesitated.

“Why? Is it a song that already exists?”

“I’ve never seen it before!”

“Right? Right?! But just in case, can you check? I couldn’t find any lyrics that matched when I searched online, but I don’t know how to check the melody.”

“Of course we have to check! Hyung-jin! Do something about this!”

Kim Hyung-jin used to be Oh Dong-cheol’s manager. Now, he was the manager, the director, and the last remaining employee of this agency.

He couldn’t read sheet music as well as Oh Dong-cheol, but judging from his reaction, he could tell this song was something special.

“On it!”

He quickly sat down at the computer and input the beginning of the sheet music into a program. He was in such a hurry that he only entered the first few lines before running a search.

The result came back immediately.

“No matches!”

“Enter the rest and check again!”

Kim Hyung-jin operated the program again, inputting the remaining notes. Oh Dong-cheol and Seo Sora swallowed hard as they watched.

After rerunning the program, he announced the result.

“Still nothing. If this program can’t find a match, at the very least, it means the song has never been released in Korea.”

“What about the lyrics?”

“No matches there either.”

“And internationally?”

“This program covers the U.S., Europe, South America, and Southeast Asia. Nothing. Unless it’s some indigenous Amazonian tribal music…”

The program couldn’t detect slight modifications or deliberate plagiarism, but one thing was clear: No identical song existed.

Oh Dong-cheol took a deep breath and, staring at the sheet music, began to sing.

Unlike Seo Sora, he sang the unfamiliar melody without a single mistake. Though his injured throat meant he couldn’t sing as well as before, he could still sing well enough for an average listener.

Manager Kim Hyung-jin, listening to his performance, realized the value of this sheet music.

“Ah… It’s good.”

Seo Sora eagerly agreed.

“Right? It’s really good, isn’t it?”

Suddenly, the song cut off.

Kim Hyung-jin asked Oh Dong-cheol,

“Why did you stop?”

Oh Dong-cheol stomped his feet.

“There’s no more song! Sora! Where’s the rest of this song? What is this? Are you trying to hold the second half hostage? Is this how I raised you?!”

“I gave it to you!”

“When?!”

“It’s in your hand!”

Oh Dong-cheol looked down. There was a second sheet.

“…This is a flyer for a jokbal restaurant.”

“Turn it over.”

Oh Dong-cheol flipped the flyer. The second half of the song was scribbled on the back.

“Why… Why is it written on this…?”

A sudden thought hit him.

“This composer… Did inspiration strike so suddenly that this was the only paper around? Did they write the entire song in one go?”

Oh Dong-cheol, still staring at the back of the jokbal flyer, finished singing the song. Even without accompaniment, it sounded beautiful.

With an almost fiery intensity, he turned to Seo Sora.

“Who is this composer?!”

Seo Sora hesitated. Even she couldn’t believe it.

“Ah, well…”

“Look at the way they wrote on the flyer! This was definitely composed in one shot! This is a genius!”

Seo Sora firmly denied it.

“No. Definitely not a genius.”

“They’re a genius!”

“No, they’re not.”

“Then who is it? How can you be so sure? Do I know this composer?”

“Ah… They’re not actually a composer.”

“They’re not? Then who?”

“…Their job is a police officer.”

Oh Dong-cheol froze for a moment, then burst into laughter.

“A police officer? Why would someone with this talent be a cop? Ah! They must not realize their own musical ability!”

“Really?”

Oh Dong-cheol immediately shook his head.

“No, that can’t be it. Someone who writes a masterpiece like this must know their own talent.”

“So, not that?”

“They know they’re talented, but their financial situation forced them to become a cop! That’s it! They need a steady paycheck! But with this talent, they could earn way more as a composer!”

“That’s not it. Their family is well off.”

“Really? Then maybe they became a cop because of a criminal they wanted to catch? A personal revenge story?”

“Their parents are alive and well.”

Oh Dong-cheol was flustered.

Every theory he came up with was immediately shot down.

“…Then why are they a cop instead of a musician?”

Manager Kim Hyung-jin spoke up.

“Sir, I see ‘Oppa Wannabe’ written on this sheet.”

Oh Dong-cheol hesitated.

“Huh? Is that their nickname? But… ‘Oppa’? Sora, are you dating this composer?”

Seo Sora’s face twisted.

“Are you crazy?”

“Oh, no? Then why do you look so scary?”

“I said no!”

“Then how do you know them so well? And why do you call them Oppa?”

“Because he’s my brother.”

“Right, if he’s older, calling him Oppa makes sen—”

“No, I mean my actual brother.”

“…Huh?”

Seo Sora fumed as she recalled what happened at home.

“That lunatic of a brother stole all my cosmetics! And left that sheet music as payment!”

“Uh… And this ‘Oppa Wannabe’ thing?”

“I called him a clueless wannabe. And he just wrote it down. He holds grudges.”

Oh Dong-cheol stared at the two sheets again.

One was written on the back of the sheet music that Seo Sora printed out. The latter part of the song was written on the back of a jokbal restaurant flyer. At first, I thought he had just jotted down an impromptu melody, but this was a complete song from beginning to end, including lyrics.

'Right. I was so shocked at first that I misunderstood, but he couldn’t have written this in one go. He must have composed it beforehand and then, when his sister teased him, he impulsively wrote it down. No matter how much of a genius he is, there’s no way he could have written both the melody and lyrics perfectly in one sitting.'

But right now, the important thing isn’t whether he wrote this song in one go or copied down something he had already composed.

Boss Oh Dong-cheol slammed the table with both hands, making a loud noise, and called out to Seo Sora.

“Sora!”

“Geez, you scared me. Why do you keep shouting?”

“Sora!”

“What?”

“You need to debut!”

“Didn’t you say you’d debut us? With the song you bought earlier.”

Oh Dong-cheol waved his hands dramatically.

“We’re not using that! Actually, I haven’t even bought it yet! The really good songs go to Angels or the girls’ group, and they tried to push this one on me! After all the help I gave that guy in the past! No way! I won’t use it! I’ll crush his pride completely!”

“Then what about us?”

“Obviously, you’ll sing this song! You have to debut with this song!”

Seo Sora had been bothered by one thing for a while now.

'My brother is a musical genius? No matter how I think about it, that doesn’t make sense.'

“Um, boss. My brother is a bit of an eccentric, you know? What if he copied this song from somewhere?”

“I just checked! There are lyrics too! And the lyrics are amazing! Where could he have copied this from? Until yesterday, this song didn’t exist anywhere on this Earth!”

“R-Really? That’s impossible….”

Manager Kim Hyeong-jin spoke up.

“I’ll keep looking into it, but I don’t think he copied it. It feels completely new.”

“Well, if even the manager says so, then I guess it must be true. Still, it’s really strange.”

Oh Dong-cheol urged her on.

“So call your brother, the detective-composer, right now. Let me talk to him. Let’s meet today—no, right now—and sign the song contract!”

“Well… his phone is off.”

“Huh? Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s too busy chasing criminals to answer. My brother’s a detective, you know. A detective who goes after bad guys.”

“Oh….”

At that moment, something he had forgotten in his excitement over the sheet music came back to him.

'Ah! Seo Sora’s brother is the very detective who caught the serial killer and rescued Nana!'

Boss Oh Dong-cheol and Manager Kim Hyeong-jin treated Seo Sora like a star and even escorted her home. It was a special service they wouldn’t normally provide.

On the way back, Kim Hyeong-jin asked,

“Boss, does Sora have another older brother besides Detective Seo Jung-woo?”

“No. According to the family records, she only has her parents and one brother.”

“Then Detective Seo is really incredible. He’s busy catching criminals, yet he managed to compose such an amazing song. Of course, we still need to confirm if he really wrote it.”

“Sometimes, when inspiration strikes, a song just comes out all at once.”

“But our original plan was to use the fact that the detective who rescued Nana is Sora’s brother as a promotional hook, right?”

“Once we confirm he really wrote it, we’ll make a huge splash. It’s like fate keeps pushing everything in our favor!”

Seo Sora returned home and opened the front door.

“Seriously, where have you been that you couldn’t even—”

She stopped mid-sentence.

The Seo Jung-woo she had been searching for all day was sprawled out on the sofa, munching on snacks while watching TV.

Seo Jung-woo spoke casually while eating.

“Didn’t know they still made Saewookkang.”

Seo Sora was speechless.

She had pressed the call button over twenty times because of Oh Dong-cheol’s constant nagging. His phone had been off for so long that she even ended up apologizing to Oh Dong-cheol out of guilt.

And yet, here he was, lying on the sofa eating snacks.

She screamed.

“What the hell! Why didn’t you answer your phone if you were just sitting here?!”

Seo Jung-woo turned his head. She looked exactly like Seo Sora from the other world, but her personality seemed worse. However, at least this version of her was less dangerous. No matter how angry she got, she wouldn’t shoot a gun here.

He remembered a university professor in the other world explaining the theory of parallel dimension divergence. Thanks to that professor, he now understood that this Seo Sora was also his real sister.

“Ah. So a person’s environment really does shape their personality.”

“What nonsense are you talking about?!”

“Is the environment here worse? That can’t be. This world is much more peaceful.”

“Shut up! And where did you hide my cosmetics—”

Seo Sora suddenly snapped back to her senses.

'Wait! This isn’t the time to be nagging him!'

She quickly softened her tone.

“Oooo~ppaaaa~”

Seo Jung-woo was a little surprised.

'Huh? She can talk to me like this?'

The Seo Sora from the other world only spoke like this when she was about to ask for a huge favor.

Without thinking, he asked her the same way he would in that world.

“What big favor do you need this time?”

This world’s Seo Sora accepted that response as natural.

“It’s about the song you wrote on the paper today.”

“Song?”

“The one on the jokbal restaurant flyer.”

“Ah, If We Could Meet Again?”

Seo Sora nodded excitedly.

“Yeah, yeah!”

Seo Jung-woo smirked slightly. She really was just like the Seo Sora from the other world.

“You mean that scribble by a total amateur who knows nothing about music?”

“Ugh, seriously?! You’re gonna be like this?”

“Why just say ‘ugh’? Why not finish it with ‘damn’?”

“I wasn’t going to say ‘damn’! Really!”

Seo Jung-woo chuckled and asked,

“You like the song?”

“It’s amazing! But… did you really compose it?”

Seo Jung-woo hesitated instead of answering immediately.

“Uh….”

“Our boss says no song like this has ever been released anywhere on Earth.”

“Yeah. This is the first time this song has appeared on this Earth.”

Seo Sora’s eyes sparkled.

“The first time today? I knew it! And the lyrics too?”

“Yeah, the lyrics too.”

In truth, this song had been composed years ago in another dimension by a hunter named Park Cheol-woo who fought monsters. There was no way it could exist in this world.

Seo Sora jumped up and down with excitement.

“Seriously?! Wow!”

Seo Jung-woo hesitated over how to explain this. He couldn’t reveal the truth about parallel dimensions. He could prove it, but it wasn’t something to casually bring up.

Before he could say anything, Seo Sora was already on the phone with Oh Dong-cheol.

“President! It’s true! My brother wrote both the lyrics and music! Yes! Yes! Right! Huh? Now?”

She turned to Seo Jung-woo.

“Oppa, our president really wants to meet you.”

“Huh? Me?”

“He’s coming right now. He just dropped me off, so he’s nearby. Oppa, okay?”

“Uh… Sure, why not.”