The riot cops came at dawn.Minjun knew they would. He'd felt it in the air the night before — the way the city had thrummed under his feet like a giant heartbeat, too loud to ignore.
He'd barely slept, stretched out on the cold concrete of the rooftop where it all began — Jiwoo's old hideout, the one with rusted railings and cracked tiles that still bore the faded spray paint of Minjun's first lyrics. Miri lay a few feet away, curled up with her tablet still clutched to her chest like a shield. Jiwoo snored with a guitar across his stomach, a half-finished cigarette stuck to his lower lip.
Below them, Seoul didn't sleep either. The streets still hummed with scattered pockets of kids who refused to go home. Their songs drifted up in snatches — bits of Minjun's verses woven with new ones, raw and imperfect but alive in a way that polished studio tracks never were.
Minjun sat up when he heard the trucks.First the low, heavy rumble. Then the whine of megaphones. He crawled to the edge of the rooftop and peered over.
A line of riot police snaked down the street like an armored centipede. Black vans marked Police Tactical Unit idled behind them. News cameras clustered at intersections. Drones hovered overhead, tiny blinking eyes that turned the kids into criminals with every frame they broadcast.
Jiwoo woke with a groan. "Is it breakfast already?" he muttered, only half-joking when he saw the street below.
Miri sat up, hair tangled, dark circles under her eyes. She didn't even bother to curse. She just opened her tablet, fingers flying across the cracked screen.
"They're blocking the main square," she said, voice calm in the way only someone running on zero sleep could be. "News feeds are calling it an illegal gathering. Seojin must've called in favors. They're pushing the 'public safety' angle."
Minjun laughed — a short, bitter bark that echoed off the broken railings. Public safety. That was always the excuse when someone like Seojin felt threatened.
Jiwoo pulled himself up, guitar still strapped around him like a shield. "So what's the plan, fearless leader? We gonna stand here and hold hands until they drag us down?"
Miri didn't look up from the tablet. "The plan," she said, "is to make it hurt. If they're going to shut us down, we're going to make damn sure the whole city sees it."
Below them, the kids on the street saw the police line closing in and didn't scatter. Instead, they linked arms. Some dragged old pallets and plastic chairs into barricades. Someone wheeled out battered speakers and hooked them to a generator stolen from a nearby construction site.
And above it all, Minjun's voice — bootleg recordings, rooftop echoes — spilled from balconies and cracked windows, drowning out the barked orders from megaphones.
Minjun ducked back from the edge. His hands shook as he grabbed Jiwoo's guitar — the same battered acoustic that had carried Rooftop Anthem across half the city.
Jiwoo raised an eyebrow. "You sure? You got a plan for when they bash your pretty face in?"
Minjun flashed him a crooked grin. "Yeah. Sing louder."
He stepped onto the broken metal ladder bolted to the far side of the roof. One slip and he'd break his neck, but the thought made him laugh harder. He climbed to the very top — the old water tank, rusted but solid enough to hold him.
Miri aimed her tablet at him, streaming live. Somewhere, a dozen rooftop cameras flicked to his feed.
He strummed a single chord — harsh, out of tune — and felt the sound ripple down to the street. A few heads turned up. Then more. Then the barricades below burst into ragged cheers.
Minjun lifted his chin. His breath frosted in the dawn air. His voice, raw from smoke and shouting, cracked on the first note — but the city caught it, carried it back to him a thousandfold.
He didn't bother with a speech. No slogans. No manifesto. Just the song that had started it all — Rooftop Anthem. The same three chords, simple enough for anyone to follow.
Jiwoo scrambled up beside him, plugged in his cheap electric guitar to a battery amp, and let it scream. Miri held her tablet up like a flag, her eyes wild as the feed jumped from rooftop to rooftop.
Below, the police line advanced. Shields locked, batons ready. The kids chanted louder, fists in the air.
And then the first stone flew — from someone behind the barricade, a single arc that shattered against a riot shield. The line shuddered. The megaphones roared threats. But the kids didn't break.
They sang instead. Hundreds of voices in defiance of polished boots and tear gas. A rooftop choir for a city that was tired of silence.
Smoke bombs bloomed. Minjun's eyes stung. He coughed mid-verse but didn't stop. His fingers bled on the guitar strings — he didn't stop. Jiwoo screamed backup harmonies into the wind. Miri laughed through her tears, streaming the clash to every phone that could hold a signal.
And Seoul — beautiful, brutal Seoul — answered back. Windows swung open. Neighbors banged pots, poured buckets of water on advancing cops, dragged dazed kids into doorways to hide.
The rooftop was shaking under Minjun's feet. Or maybe it was him, rattling with the adrenaline that felt like a second heartbeat.
One baton swing away, the barricade cracked. Kids stumbled, scattered — but only to regroup down side streets, popping up behind the line like ghosts.
Minjun saw the first flames then — a pile of old crates at the barricade's edge catching fire from a stray spark. It danced in the smoke, a living thing that turned songs into something bigger.
Fire on the rooftops. Fire in their throats.
He knew this couldn't last forever. The tear gas would roll in harder. The black vans would swallow up bodies by the dozens. Seojin would spin it as chaos, as proof that kids with guitars were dangerous.
But right now, it didn't matter.
Because the city was awake. The city was singing. The city was burning with him, not for him.
Minjun dragged one last chord from Jiwoo's guitar — a ragged, triumphant scream of metal and wood and blood.
Then he threw his head back and howled his last line into the smoke-choked dawn:
"This rooftop is ours!"
And for a moment — one perfect, riotous moment — it truly was.