Work Text:
The commission email had come in that morning. Coff Cafe wanted a jingle for a seasonal drink, some kind of iced yuzu thing with a name that was trying too hard. Sunna couldn't remember the name already. Something with "bloom" in it. The brief said upbeat, fifteen to thirty seconds, needed a vocal hook. They'd attached a sample from the singer they'd hired.
Sunna read the brief twice, which was one more time than it needed, and opened the sample.
The singer had a really nice voice. Warm in the lower half, the kind of warm where even a fifteen-second sample sounded like you could buy whatever she wanted to sell. She stayed right on pitch the whole way through without it ever sounding like she was trying, which was harder to do than people thought. Up high she got a little shaky, and Sunna could hear the spot where the voice started to break, but that was normal. Everyone had a ceiling. Sunna's own voice had a ceiling at about the second floor, which was why she wrote songs instead of singing them. The lower half had this sweetness to it that Sunna kept replaying because she liked how it would feel under a melody. Like putting warm light on something. This singer could carry a hook if Sunna knew what she was doing.
It was a jingle. She'd done things like this before, sort of, and the brief was pretty clear about what they wanted. She just had to not overthink it.
She put her headphones on and the room went away.
Nangong's rehearsal bass through the wall, Aria's singing voice, and the air conditioner hum disappeared and it was just her and the keyboard. The brief wanted upbeat, fifteen to thirty seconds, with a vocal hook. Easy enough. Her right hand found a place on the keys before she'd picked one, four notes climbing, a pause, then dropping back down to land. Her hands just went and she followed. She played it back and there was a feel on the upward part that made you want to hear what came next. She played it again. The pause gave the singer space to breathe and the climb gave the whole thing this brightness that she liked. She played it a third time because two times could be a fluke but three times was basically science.
The verse came next, something that would lead into the hook without getting in the way of it. The rhythm was too stiff at first so she nudged it behind the beat and that loosened it up. She'd tried an actual key change first but that was way too dramatic for a coffee ad. She was writing a jingle, not a piece for the Angels.
The melody kept wanting to go higher. The hook was supposed to climb, that was the whole point, but the verse was doing it too, each phrase reaching a little above where the last one started. She noticed and figured she'd pull it back later if it went past where the singer sounded comfortable. She played it again to make sure and it still sounded right, which meant it actually was right and she could stop playing it now. She played it one more time.
It wasn't done yet. She still wanted to figure out the arrangement, and there was a sound she kept hearing under the hook that she hadn't built yet. But she had enough to send, and the client would probably want to hear that much before she went further. It had more personality than most jingles she'd heard from Coff Cafe, but that was a good thing. Probably. Hopefully. It was a good thing unless they wanted it to sound like every other jingle, in which case she was in trouble, but she was going to choose to believe it was a good thing.
She opened the reply, typed "First draft attached, I hope you like the melody and structure!" read it over twice to make sure it didn't sound weird, then read it a third time because the second read had made her worry that "structure" sounded too formal, decided it was fine, and sent it.
When she took her headphones off the livehouse filled back in around her. Nangong's bass was thumping through the wall again and Aria was laughing down the hall. She'd been sitting for a few hours and she felt her back having opinions about that. She stretched until something popped and reached for the water bottle she'd put down when she started and hadn't touched since. Room temperature. Gross. She drank it anyway.
The hook was good. She was pretty sure the hook was good. She caught herself humming it while she stretched her legs and figured that was a decent sign.
—
Then something freezing pressed against the back of her neck and Sunna yelped and grabbed at her headphones before they went flying.
Nangong was already leaning past her, sweaty from rehearsal, smelling like the practice room. Her wings knocked against the doorframe as she reached over to set the cold can on the desk. She was looking at the screen.
"What's that?"
"A commission."
"For who?"
"Coff Cafe. It's a jingle for their new drink or something."
"You're writing music for coffee."
"It's paying work."
"Our songwriter is writing a coffee jingle."
"Don't you have rehearsal?"
Nangong picked the can back up, cracked it open, and took a long drink while still looking at the screen like she had more to say. She just pointed at Sunna with the can and said "Don't think too much, big dummy," and she was already out the door before Sunna could answer.
Sunna straightened her headphones and found her place on the screen. Her neck was still cold where the can had been. She rubbed at it. Nangong's version of being nice was basically assault.
—
A day later, the reply came in while she was eating a cupcake she'd bought from the place on the corner, the one with the little cat faces piped in frosting that were too cute not to buy even though they were always too sweet. She almost didn't check the email right away because the cupcake was really good and she had frosting on her fingers, but she checked it anyway because not checking would have been worse than waiting.
The client was nice about it. They said the melody was strong and the structure worked well, and then they said the vocal line was too high for their singer and could she bring it down, especially in the verse and the bridge. They'd attached notes on specific phrases.
Sunna read it three times. They were right and that was the thing. She'd listened to the sample. She knew what that voice should be doing. She'd written right past it anyway and sent it like she hadn't even heard the file they gave her. That was embarrassing. Her ears had heard the sample fine. Her hands had just ignored it, which was rude of them.
She wiped the frosting off her fingers, put her headphones on, and opened the project. Okay. She could fix it.
The hook could stay. The climb was the whole point and the singer could get up there for a second before it dropped back down, so that was fine. The verse was the problem. She played the original and heard it right away now that someone had pointed it out. It sounded good in her head but it wasn't for her head. It was for someone else's voice.
She started bringing things down. The first phrase she dropped by a third and it fit, but it lost this openness that she'd liked. She played it a few times trying to find where the openness went. The openness had given the sound room and now it was tighter and more careful and it sounded like exactly what it was, which was a melody that didn't fully want to be there.
The second phrase she rebuilt completely because just changing it wasn't enough. It needed a different feel, something that stayed in the mids without ever reaching. She found one that worked after maybe fifteen minutes of trying things and deleting them. It was good. The singer would sound good on it. It didn't have the charisma that the original had, but the original wasn't for this singer, so that didn't really matter. She told herself that and mostly believed it.
The bridge was harder. She'd liked the bridge. Really liked it. The way it opened up had been her favorite part of the whole jingle, and now she had to make it open up less because the voice couldn't go where the melody wanted to take it. It felt like folding up something that was supposed to be unfolded. She tried three different versions. The first was boring. The second was okay but it didn't sit right with the new verse. The third she kept because it finally worked even though it wasn't what she would have written if nobody had told her what to write. She wasn't sure if that was how commissions were always going to feel or if she'd get better at it eventually. Maybe both.
She played the whole revision from the top. The hook still landed. The verse was a bit lower and the bridge turned without feeling like it was going past what it could do. It sounded correct. The singer would be able to do every phrase and the melody moved well enough. It just didn't have the thing the first draft had, that brightness where the jingle pulled upward and upward and the whole thing felt like it was lifting off the ground.
She liked the first version better. That was a silly thing to feel about a coffee jingle, but she did.
She saved the revision, attached it to the reply, and wrote "Sorry for that! Revised draft attached, I adjusted the vocal line from what you said in your notes, let me know if this works better." She read it twice and sent it.
—
The next email was a list.
Could she shorten the second bar by half a beat. Could she pull the held note on the third phrase back a little, it was hanging on too long. Could she try making the bridge sound a little brighter. Could she check whether the vocal entry on the hook came in a beat too early or if that was intentional.
It was intentional. It worked because it came in early. She kept it and changed everything else.
The second bar she trimmed. That took about three minutes. The held note she shortened and it sounded fine, maybe even better, though she couldn't really tell anymore because she'd been listening to this jingle for hours and all the phrases had started sounding the same. The bridge she brightened by changing one chord, which took about a minute and was the easiest fix on the list. She wasn't sure why she hadn't done it that way in the first place. Probably because the other version had sounded more interesting, but interesting wasn't really what they were going for. Interesting was for Angels stuff. This was a jingle. Jingles wanted to be bright, not interesting. She changed it.
She went through the rest of the notes one at a time. Each one was small. None of them were hard. She just had to do them, one after another, and each one took a few minutes and then she moved to the next one. It was like filling out a form except the form was music and every box she checked sounded a little more like what the client wanted and a little less like anything she'd remember writing.
When she finished she played it through. It sounded exactly like a Coff Cafe jingle. The hook was still good, she thought. The rest of it did what it was supposed to do.
"New version attached! All notes addressed. Let me know if anything else needs adjusting." She didn't agonize over the wording this time. She just sent it.
The reply came back faster than she expected, maybe an hour later while she was lying on the floor letting her back recover from the chair. They liked it. The payment would process today. They even said the hook was catchy, which was nice of them.
She checked her account a couple of times over the next hour, not because she was worried but because she kept thinking about it and then her phone was in her hand and at that point she was already there so she might as well look. The deposit showed up in the afternoon. It wasn't a lot, but it was more than she usually had, and the number looked like dinner. She hadn't been to Simmer in a while.
She texted the group chat. "Dinner tonight? Simmer?" Nangong replied in about four seconds with a string of emojis that Sunna took to mean yes. Aria sent "Yay! I've been wanting hotpot!!!!!!" Six exclamation marks, which sounded about right for Aria and hotpot.
Her headphones went on the desk and she stretched one more time.
—
Simmer was loud and already packed when they got there, which it always was because why wouldn't one of the best hot pot places be popular? The steam coming off the tables near the entrance hit Sunna in the face before she even sat down. Their usual spot by the window was taken, so Nangong grabbed a table near the back and dropped into the booth like she owned the place, folding her wings behind her without even checking.
Aria slid in next to Nangong and Sunna took the other side. The table already had the split pot going, one side clear broth and one side red, and the broth was starting to bubble. The steam smelled like ginger and chili and Sunna was already hungrier than she'd been five seconds ago.
Nangong had the menu. She always had the menu.
"Lamb, beef, the shrimp paste balls, lotus root, and two plates of greens because Cecilia will ask if we ate vegetables and I don't want to lie." She looked at Sunna. "Anything else?"
"Tofu."
"You always get tofu."
"Because I like tofu."
"Get something exciting for once."
"Tofu is exciting."
It was. People underestimated tofu all the time and Sunna thought that was unfair.
Nangong looked at Aria for support. Aria was reading the drinks section of the menu with a level of focus that suggested she found it genuinely fascinating. "They have a new taro milk tea! Sunna, look, it comes in a purple cup!"
"That does sound good," Sunna said, which was true because anything that came in a purple cup had at least a thirty percent chance of being good based on color alone.
"Taro milk tea, tofu, and a personality. Got it." Nangong flagged down the server before Sunna could respond to that, which was probably on purpose.
The food came fast. Nangong started loading the spicy side immediately, dropping lamb in like she was feeding a furnace, and Sunna put her tofu and lotus root in the clear broth where they would cook at a reasonable pace and not come out tasting like fire.
"You know that broth is basically hot water, right?" Nangong said, already fishing out her lamb.
"It's got goji berries in it."
"Wow. Goji berries. Really living on the edge."
Aria had been carefully arranging her shrimp paste balls in a circle around the edge of the spicy side, evenly spaced, like she was decorating a cake. She looked up. "Is there a reason the spicy broth is so much redder this time? It looks different from last time."
"They probably added more chili oil," Sunna said.
"Or they're trying to kill us," Nangong said. "Either way." She ate a piece of lamb that had been sitting in the red broth for maybe forty seconds and her eyes watered. She kept chewing.
Sunna watched Nangong's face go through about three stages of regret and said nothing because the payoff was always better if she waited.
"It's fine," Nangong said, reaching for her drink. Her eyes were definitely watering.
"That's not spicy tears, Xiao'Yu. That's a whole performance."
"Shut up."
Aria was looking back and forth between them. "Aw. You two are always like this! It's so cute!"
"We are not always like this," Sunna said, at the same time Nangong said "She started it," which wasn't even a little bit true.
The food kept coming and the table filled up. Nangong stole a piece of Sunna's tofu, tried it, made a face, and put it back, which was disgusting and also completely normal. Aria ate her shrimp paste balls one at a time, slowly, like each one deserved individual attention. Sunna found noodles next to her all of a sudden and she didn't remember when she picked it up and she ate it anyway. The world got soft around the edges and the colors blurred and it was actually kind of nice like that. Just shapes and steam and the sound of her friends arguing about chili levels.
Sunna noticed that Nangong's plate already had two empty skewers on it and a pile of chili seeds she'd picked out after insisting the spice level was fine. Aria had finished her circle of shrimp paste balls and moved on to the greens. She held up a piece of bok choy with her chopsticks and looked at it. "Do vegetables taste different when they're cooked in spicy broth versus clear broth? Like, does the vegetable itself change?"
"Yes," said Nangong.
"Not really," said Sunna.
They looked at each other.
"It absorbs the flavor," Nangong said.
"It absorbs a little of the flavor. The vegetable is still the same vegetable."
Aria put the bok choy in the spicy side and then immediately put another piece in the clear side. "I'm going to test it."
"That's the scientific method," Sunna said.
"That's a waste of bok choy," Nangong said.
The pot kept bubbling. Sunna fished out her tofu and it was perfect. Soft and hot and it had picked up just enough flavor from the goji berry broth to taste like something without losing what made it tofu. She'd timed it right. Getting tofu out at the right moment was an underappreciated skill. She ate it and reached for another piece and it was good. The whole table was good. The steam and the noise and Nangong stealing things off her plate and Aria conducting vegetable experiments and the broth bubbling away. She could sit here for a really long time.
When the check came Sunna picked it up before Nangong could reach for it.
"Since when do you treat?"
"I had a good week," Sunna said, which was true in a way that didn't need explaining.
Nangong held the look for about a second and then went back to picking chili seeds off her plate. Aria said "Thank you, Sunna!" and Sunna said "Don't worry about it" and that was that. She paid and they were done.
They walked out into the evening air and Sunna listened to both of them and didn't say much. The night air was cool after the restaurant and she could still feel the heat in her face from the steam. Aria was explaining her bok choy findings to Nangong, who was pretending not to be interested, and Sunna walked behind them and that was fine. That was a really good way to walk home.
—
The studio was quiet after the restaurant. Sunna sat down at the keyboard and Aria pulled her chair up next to her, close enough that their arms were almost touching. The screen was still open to the jingle project, so she closed it and pulled up the track they'd been working on before the commission had eaten her week. It felt good to see it again.
She played the opening phrase and her hands went where they went and the melody came out the way it had been sitting in her head. Aria hummed the first few notes back and then sang them and it was right. Sunna played the next bar and Aria followed it down and that was right too. She didn't have to play it twice. It was just right the first time, which was the best feeling in the world, or at least the best feeling she knew how to describe.
She kept going. The verse took shape and Aria kept pace with her, picking up each phrase as fast as Sunna could play it. It was quiet except for the keys and Aria's voice, which was right there next to her instead of coming through headphones, and Sunna could hear the way Aria breathed between the notes. She liked that sound. Not the notes, those were good too, but the breathing part, the part between the singing that was just Aria being there. She tried a wider interval on the bridge phrase, the kind she hadn't been able to use on the jingle, and Aria caught it and held the note and it sounded exactly the way Sunna had heard it in her head. She didn't have to pull it back. She didn't have to make it smaller. Aria just went there.
They ran through the whole thing once and Sunna stopped to mark where the bridge landed. Aria leaned over to look at the same spot on the screen.
"The phrase before the bridge," Aria said, "can we try holding that one note a little longer? I think it wants more room before the turn."
Sunna played it and held the note and Aria was right, it did want more room. She liked that Aria heard that before she did. She fixed it and saved.
Aria leaned her head against Sunna's shoulder. Warm, the way she always was. Sunna could feel it through her sleeve. They were both looking at the screen and the next section was waiting and her hands went back to the keys.