The first grey light of dawn crawled over Seoul like a bruised promise. From the rooftops of Mapo to the neon spine of Gangnam, the city was awake — not with its usual hum of traffic and subway announcements, but with a strange, electric hush. Like the city itself was holding its breath.
On one rooftop — the same one where Minjun had once stood alone humming to the sleeping skyline — twenty kids stood now, shoulder to shoulder, shivering in the pale dawn breeze. Some held speakers, some had drums made from plastic buckets, some clutched cheap guitars with broken strings they'd restrung with fishing line.
They looked like punks, dropouts, overworked students. But this morning, they looked like an army.
Below them, the street was alive. Last night's rooftop echoes had pooled into the alleys, dripping down into the veins of the city. It was no longer just kids humming alone with earbuds. The echo had become a chant. The chant became a crowd.
People poured out of half-closed convenience stores. Kids skipped cram schools and side jobs. Workers slipped out of kitchens, garages, delivery vans. Old punks who'd never left the scene, buskers blacklisted for speaking out, even a few idols who'd seen the same contract threats Minjun once did — they all drifted toward the hum, drawn like iron filings to a magnet.
By 5:30 a.m., Hongdae looked like a festival. A ragged, dangerous, glorious festival.
Miri's friends worked the edges — kids with phones and power banks taped to their arms, pushing the stream out over every app that hadn't yet banned them. Jiwoo's old dance crew cleared a makeshift circle on the cracked asphalt. Speakers stacked on crates blasted the rough rooftop anthem over and over — raw, looping, unstoppable.
No sponsors. No lights. No PR rep telling them how to smile. Just the raw sunrise and the chorus echoing between concrete walls.
Minjun sat hunched in the back of a prison van two blocks away. His wrists were zip-tied tighter than ever, plastic biting into bruised skin. Beside him, Jiwoo breathed through his mouth to keep the taste of blood and stale sweat from making him gag. Miri sat between them, wrists tied too, eyes wide behind cracked glasses.
None of them said a word. But they didn't have to. From the tiny mesh window behind the driver's head, they could hear it: the echo, swelling louder with each block the van crawled closer to the precinct gates.
Inside the precinct, Seojin had barely slept. Her hair was perfect — it always was — but the phone glued to her palm buzzed non-stop. The label boardroom was a war room now, a nest of PR managers, lawyers, and men in black suits who kept barking about "control" and "containment."
When she peered out the tinted windows, she saw the storm brewing: kids on every block, some chanting, some recording, some just standing there like silent ghosts — reminders that her cage for Minjun wasn't big enough to hold the rooftop he'd built.
She hissed at her assistant, "Double the security. If one of those street rats gets near the gates, we're finished."
But deep down, she knew it was already too late.
The van lurched to a stop. The rear doors banged open. Hands yanked Minjun out first — half dragging him, half parading him like a trophy they needed to keep hidden. But the second his boots hit the asphalt, the rooftop kids saw him.
They were pressed up against the barricades — young, sleepless, hungry-looking. But they didn't flinch when the riot shields pushed them back. They raised their phones higher. They chanted louder.
"WE! ARE! ROOFTOP!"
The chant slammed against the walls like thunder.
Jiwoo stumbled out behind Minjun, hands still bound, eyes half-shut from the bruises. When he heard the chant, his grin split his swollen lip wide open again — but he didn't care. He bared bloody teeth at the riot line like a promise.
Miri was the last out. She nearly fell when her foot caught the van's bumper. One of the rooftop kids lunged past the barricade to catch her elbow before the guards yanked him away, shoving him back into the tide of bodies.
For a split second — barely a heartbeat — Miri looked at that boy's face. Just another trainee who'd given up his audition for this. He mouthed something she couldn't hear over the chant. She didn't need to. She knew what it was: We've got you.
A whistle cut through the noise. Minjun flinched. He turned his head — and there, pushing through the riot line, came a new wave of rooftop kids. They didn't carry weapons. They carried buckets, sticks, old guitars, beat-up amps, speaker mics duct-taped to batteries.
They set up right there — in the street in front of the precinct. One kid plugged in an ancient keyboard that screeched with feedback before finding the key. Another banged out a beat on an upturned trash can.
And then the rooftop anthem rose again — not a recording this time, but a thousand raw, defiant voices crashing like a tide.
Minjun's guard tried to shove him forward, but he planted his feet. His wrists were bound, but his spine was straight. He locked eyes with the rooftop kids behind the barricades — kids who'd skipped sleep and safety just to stand here and hum his song back at the people who called him worthless.
Jiwoo leaned into him, shoulder to shoulder. Miri pressed her forehead to his shoulder blade for a heartbeat — a grounding touch in the riot's roar.
"Storm's here," Jiwoo murmured, half laughing through broken teeth.
Minjun laughed too — sharp and ragged. "Let's get wet, then."
A ripple of movement up front — riot shields parted just enough for Seojin herself to step through, heels clicking on rain-damp asphalt. Her expression was perfect, plastic, frozen into a PR smile that barely covered the pulse jumping in her neck.
She stopped a meter away from Minjun — close enough to hiss so only he could hear: "End it now. Call them off, Minjun. Do it, or you're done. Forever."
Minjun's eyes flicked over her shoulder to the rooftops beyond. The sunrise was bleeding gold behind a jungle of antennas and billboards. And from every rooftop, the anthem rose — louder, rawer, defiant.
He leaned in just close enough for her to feel his breath. "You don't own the rooftop," he rasped. "And you don't own me."
Behind them, the barricades buckled — not with violence, but with sheer noise. Kids climbed lamp posts, rooftops, cars, chanting Minjun's name woven into the rooftop chorus.
The guards tensed, riot shields braced.
Above it all, the storm broke — not of rain, but of voices refusing to go quiet.
Minjun smiled, bruised and chained but free as the dawn cracked open over Seoul.