Minjun's footsteps echoed through Starline's polished hallways like a war drum. He didn't run — he walked, head high, daring every camera lens and security guard to try and stop him now.
No one moved. The suits standing by the elevator doors didn't make eye contact. The receptionist pretended to fuss with a stack of folders. Somewhere in those walls, Seojin was still frozen behind his glass fortress, calculating how to bury him — but for once, Minjun felt the ground tilt in his favor.
He stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the lobby. As the doors slid shut, he caught his own reflection in the mirrored wall — hair a mess, eyes ringed with sleeplessness, but burning with something wilder than any pop idol shine: freedom.
By the time his shoes hit the pavement outside Starline's tower, the city had begun to buzz. Word moved faster than Seojin's lawyers ever could. Miri's hack of the rooftop feed — even the part where Minjun was dragged away — had spread like a spark to dry grass.
The kids were waiting for him. Not just the rooftop faithful — but new faces too. Delivery riders, students skipping cram school, construction workers with dusty uniforms. All standing in knots along the sidewalk, eyes flicking between the tower's revolving doors and the sunrise painting the city in pink and gold.
When Minjun stepped out, a single cheer cut the morning fog. Then another. Then a hundred voices lifted together, no microphone, no stage — just raw chorus. His chorus.
Jiwoo materialized from the crowd like a stray cat, grinning wide with half a cigarette tucked behind his ear. "Took you long enough, superstar," he said, clapping Minjun's shoulder so hard it stung.
Behind him, Miri pushed through, still clutching the battered tablet — the same one she'd used to broadcast the betrayal to half the city. She thrust it into Minjun's hands. "You ready?" she asked, eyes bright and tired all at once.
Minjun looked at the cracked screen — the last frame frozen on Seojin's shocked face, the contract folder half-open. He thought of all the nights he'd sat on rooftops, dreaming of singing loud enough to shatter skyscrapers.
"Yeah," he said. "Let's break their windows."
They didn't plan it like a concert. They planned it like an uprising.
First came the rooftops — every kid who'd ever memorized his lyrics opened windows and fire escapes, blasting bootleg recordings from secondhand speakers. Guitars were tuned on stairwells, old radios rigged to replay his first rooftop anthem on loop.
Then came the streets. Miri's network hijacked digital billboards with hastily edited footage of Minjun walking out of Starline's lobby. Jiwoo posted the contract loophole — every shady clause, every trick Seojin had used to chain kids to glossy cages.
The hashtags exploded: #ChorusIsOurs, #RooftopRevolt, #FreeMinjun.
Minjun stood in the middle of it all, a mic duct-taped to a power pole on a small street behind Hongdae's main drag. No stage. No spotlight. Just the city itself, echoing back every word he gave it.
He started soft. Rooftop Anthem bled into Hunger Songs, the one he'd written on a napkin in the trainee dorm when ramen was a luxury. Jiwoo hammered out rhythms on an overturned crate while Miri live-streamed the whole thing on four different channels.
The crowd swelled with every verse — students holding up their cracked phones, ajummas swaying along as they handed out cheap coffee and fried buns to kids too excited to remember to eat.
Between songs, Minjun told them the truth: how Seojin hoarded dreams like currency. How every bright trainee smile came with chains in fine print. How the only way to break it was to sing loud enough to drown out the suits.
Hours bled into dusk. The sun dipped behind high-rises, painting the rooftops in bruised purples and fierce reds. Police showed up — but the kids didn't scatter. They just shifted, reshaped the crowd like flowing water, too many for cheap riot shields to break apart.
Somewhere on the edge of the square, a kid barely older than Minjun's brother held up a homemade banner: WE ARE THE CHORUS NOW.
Minjun saw it and felt his chest crack open, something molten and unstoppable pouring through his veins.
He switched songs mid-set — No Contract, No Chains, a track he'd never finished recording in Starline's studio because Seojin hated it. Raw chords, ugly and beautiful, every note a middle finger to polished pop facades.
Jiwoo shredded the guitar so hard two strings snapped, but the chorus kept going. Miri stood on a stack of milk crates, screaming the bridge like her throat was made of iron.
Above them, rooftops flickered to life — phones waving like lighters in the night. People on balconies leaned over to film, windows thrown open to catch every echo.
Minjun climbed the power pole halfway, gripping the mic in one hand, balanced on rusty metal like the rooftop kid he'd always been.
He could see the Starline tower from here — cold glass reflecting the riot of light and sound below.
He leaned into the mic, breathless, voice hoarse but unbroken.
"Can you hear us now, Seojin?" he shouted, the words carried by a thousand phones and a thousand voices. "You can bury a contract — but you can't bury a chorus!"
The roar that answered him wasn't just a cheer. It was a promise.
And when the police finally moved in, shoving through the edges of the swelling crowd, Minjun didn't run. Neither did Jiwoo. Neither did Miri.
Because there were too many voices now — too many rooftops singing the same words back to the city that tried to silence them.
The revolution wasn't in the songs alone. It was in every kid who stood their ground and shouted, We are ours.
Minjun held his mic high, teeth bared in a grin so wide it hurt. He closed his eyes and let the chorus carry him, every rooftop a stage, every alley an echo chamber.
He'd started this alone, on a cracked rooftop under indifferent stars.
Now, the whole city was his stage — and the revolution had only just begun.