Episode 1: Footsteps in the Moonlit Alley, Dream of the Slow Cat

At just past midnight, the heart of the huge complex metropolis ‘Neon City’ was still racing at a maddening speed. On the outer walls of the 80-story skyscrapers soaring into the sky, huge hologram billboards flashed hundreds of times a second, and a magnetic levitation monorail installed 20 meters above the ground cut through the air with a roar, leaving a blue afterimage. The self-driving electric cars densely packed on the road honked their loud electronic horns as if they would not tolerate even a 0.1 second delay, and the faces of people crossing the crosswalk at a brisk pace without taking their eyes off their smartphone screens for even a moment were filled with extreme fatigue and nervousness.

'Go faster, go higher, be even one second ahead of others.' That was the one absolute law that governed this dazzling yet cruel neon city. Even music was no exception to the frenzied speed battle. The songs that occupied the top positions on the music streaming charts were instant noises with extreme hyper BPM, provocative synthesizer beats, and provocative hooks optimized for short-form challenges in a short running time of less than three minutes. A world where if you don't excite the listener's ears within 10 seconds, you are skipped mercilessly, and if you don't go viral within 2 weeks, you end up in the trash can.

However, the gait of a girl walking alone on the wet cobblestone floor in the back alley of the old old city, just a hundred meters away from the flashing neon sign of Main Street, was strangely slow and calm. Sera. I'm seventeen this year. She was a girl with a neat figure of 162 centimeters tall and a flexible and slender silhouette typical of the cat beast people. White and soft cat ears sticking out from between the silver hair that hung down to her waist gently swayed in the night wind, and her trademark black cross-shaped hairpin was firmly fixed on the left bangs.

The slender legs stretched out beneath the oversized black techwear hooded jacket, fluttering blue straps, and black shorts maintained a steady, heavy stride even in the chill of the late fall night. An old leather bass guitar gig bag as tall as a person was hanging heavily on her back, and she was hugging Popo, a sky blue plush fish doll with threads bursting here and there because it was worn out, tightly to her chest.

'Tap, knock, knock.' Every time the soles of Sarah's old sneakers stepped on the wet cobblestone floor, a regular, heavy sound spread quietly along the red brick wall of the alley. My shadow reflected in the moonlight,

Footsteps moving at a slow pace. I endure even in the dark,

Even if the end is far away... a low hum escaped from between Sarah's red lips. To the ears of city people accustomed to fast and stimulating music, it might have sounded like a boring, slow-moving complaint, but underneath the melody, a heavy 4-beat heartbeat that shook the earth was alive and breathing. A low saxophone sound came from the window of ‘Nocturne’, a small jazz pub with a blinking red neon sign on the second floor of an old brick building at the entrance of an alley. Sarah stopped walking and looked up at the window.

As a child, she had a weak heart and could not run around and play as much as other children. When children of her age played tag and ran ahead in the alley, Sarah always had to sit down on the side of the road, out of breath, and look at the backs of their heads.

The teasing of 'slow-ass Sarah' and 'broken wind-up doll' cut into her delicate heart like a shower of rain. The children believed that only running fast was victory and justice, so no one looked back at Sarah, who fell behind. However, in the summer when she was ten years old, on a remote beach in the East Sea of ​​Gangwon-do, where she went to visit her grandmother while holding her hand, Sarah had a fateful encounter that she would never forget for the rest of her life. A midnight sandy beach where the moonlight shattered like silver scales. A small and delicate baby sea turtle that had just hatched from an egg was crawling towards the strong night wind and fierce waves.

Hungry seagulls were flapping their wings to threaten him from behind, and cold sea water was rushing in, pushing him backwards and knocking him down several times, but the baby turtle never turned around. Scraping the rough sand with its four fins, it moved forward heavily in time with its own breathing, but without stopping for even a moment. And when she finally swam powerfully toward the deep blue sea in the embrace of a huge wave, young Sarah felt a thrill that threatened to burst her heart.

'It's okay if it's not fast. Even a turtle will eventually be able to cross the ocean if it doesn't stop even for just one millimeter.' The small footprints left on the sand that night became indelible calluses and starlight in young Sarah's heart. No matter how much the world criticized her and pointed fingers at her, asking why she was so slow, Sarah decided to walk silently, keeping her breath like a turtle. After returning from the beach, at the age of twelve, Sarah held in her hands a turquoise Fender jazz bass guitar she had found at a shabby used music store.

Unlike the electric guitar, which monopolizes people's attention by playing dazzling solos, or the flashy drum beats that rush like a storm, the bass is an instrument that stands in the darkest and most shadowy corner of the stage and silently supports the foundation of the band. People are crazy about flashy guitar solos or high notes of vocals, but what really makes people's hearts pound and feet stamped is the deep, low-pitched waves emitted by the bass.

“It’s like a turtle...” When I first plucked the thick E string (4th string) at a musical instrument store, a heavy resonance was transmitted through my fingertips and throughout my body. 'Dung-dung-dung-.' It was like the heartbeat I heard in my mother's womb, and like the breath of a turtle swimming on the deep bottom of the sea at night. Sarah plucked the bass strings every night until it bled. Even when the calluses on the tips of my fingers burst and ooze out, I carved out honest 4-beat and 8-beat grooves to the cold metronome beat. While other children were practicing flashy speed and rapid technique, Sarah dug deep so that even if she struck just one note, it would embrace and resonate throughout the entire space.

But honest, slow music had no place in this city. At the audition for the Applied Music Department at Arts High School, the judges snorted after hearing her performance. "What is this? Who listens to this boring 70's soul rhythm these days? The BPM is only 80! These days, the default is over 140! Why did you sell your agility when you say you're a cat beast? You can't keep up with trends at all." When the rejection notice coldly arrived, Sarah did not cry. Instead, she hugged Popo, the blue fish doll she held close to her chest, and carved small letters on the back of her bass guitar head with a knife.

‘The slow tortoise moves along. 'I don't stop, I run until the end.' 12:40 p.m. Sarah was slowly climbing the narrow and steep slope of the old downtown of Neon City. An old public phone booth stood at the corner of an alley with faintly flickering streetlights. Now, decades after the introduction of smartphones, the red booth is covered in white dust because no one is using it. But every Friday night, Sarah would stop in front of this booth and look at her reflection in the glass window. A seventeen-year-old girl reflected through the glass window.

The tips of his silver hair were wet with sweat, and his black techwear jacket was zipped all the way to his neck. The neon lights of the city were reflected and flickering in the blue eyes, but those eyes did not show the anxiety of a lost child.

'If I go there tonight, will the road really be open?' In her jacket pocket was a crumpled leaflet. [Underground live club ‘TURTLE ROCK’ open mic and session recruitment]

Regardless of genre, regardless of age. However, soulless machine sounds and pretentious locals are rejected. We only welcome performers who can truly hear the sound of their heart. Every Friday night at 1pm, on the 2nd basement floor of the old city center. 'Turtle Rock.' When she first saw the name of the club, Sarah got goosebumps all over her body. Because it felt like a call of fate, too miraculous to be a coincidence.

“Turtle’s Rock…” Sarah fiddled with the leaflet in her pocket with her fingertips. Tonight was the day the audition was held. Many unknown indie musicians will gather to showcase their music, but most of them will show off flashy guitar solos, dreaming of being in the spotlight of a rock star. Will the silent, quiet cat girl's heavy bass solo be recognized on that rough and demanding underground stage? Sarah's tail peeked out from a gap in the back of her hooded jacket and slowly swayed as if she was nervous.

But her steps did not stop. 'Bow, bumble, one step at a time.' She muttered a spell and took a step toward the iron stairs leading to the basement of the red brick building beyond the hill. As we reached the entrance of the iron stairs, the vibration of a heavy drum kick coming from deep underground came up the wall. On the old, rusty iron door, there was a turtle shell mark roughly painted with yellow spray paint and the red neon letters 'TURTLE ROCK' glowing faintly. The smell of cigarette smoke and beer seeping through the cracks in the door, and the unique acrid smell that comes from old amplifier vacuum tubes as they heat up.

It was the smell of an underground cave where raw music breathed, completely different from the flashing neon city on the ground plastered with all kinds of pretense and artificial filters. Sarah tightened the shoulder strap of her gig bag tightly again. Then, he stroked the soft cloth of the blue fish doll held on his chest and whispered quietly.

“Popo, let’s go. It’s time to start our song.” Her calm hands gripped the cold iron handle. The heavy iron door opened with a sharp squeak, and Sarah's small shadow slowly seeped into the red lighting of the dark basement. No matter how far away the Milky Way is in the night sky

The little turtle crawling toward the sea doesn't stop. No matter how quickly and heartlessly the world shouts,

The heavy heartbeat inside me beats to my beat forever. The long and great musical journey of the slow cat girl Sarah was coming to an end with the opening of the first door to this dark basement. The night of Neon City never sleeps. The sky seen from the ground was a gray curtain with not a single star visible. A commercial advertising beam sent by a satellite flashed between skyscrapers with tens of thousands of metallic trusses and fiber optic cables tangled like a spider's web. A huge beverage can was floating in the night sky as a 3D hologram, emitting the refreshing sound effect of ice crashing throughout the city, and the media facade on the outer wall of a high-rise building was changing stock quotes and real-time SNS trend keywords every second.

People filled the streets, walking quickly like moths fascinated by the flashing artificial light. The smart watch worn on the wrist vibrated at the slightest drop in heart rate and warned of 'lack of activity', and the wireless earphones in the ears shook the brain with hyper-streaming music that changed songs every 30 seconds through artificial intelligence analyzing the listener's tastes in real time. A world that leaves no room for thought, a huge mechanical city that defines slowness as a disease and a sin. In the midst of that cruel speed battle, Sarah stayed in her own time.

"Phew..." Sarah's breath turned into white vapor and dispersed in the cold late fall air. Her white cat ears fluttered as if sensing the subtle temperature of the night breeze. Cat beastmen were originally a race of people who were agile and had excellent reflexes. However, Sarah suffered from a rare heart disease called congenital ventricular septal defect since birth. My heart beat slower than others, and even if I ran even a little faster, I felt heart-rending pain and had trouble breathing. During physical education classes at school, Sarah had to sit idly in the shade in the corner of the stands.

Sarah would always ask herself, looking at the sleek backs of leopard or cheetah children running like the wind on the playground track in the distance. 'Why was I born like this? 'Why can't I keep up with the pace of the world and always be left behind?' The children's ridicule was always cruel.

“Hey, slow cat! Aren’t you a slug and not a cat?”

“Why does he come to school if he can’t even run? He’s just a distraction.” Tears welled up in her eyes, but Sarah couldn't fight back even once. I just silently lowered my head and looked at the pebbles at my toes. Isolation and alienation were the darkest shadows that dominated young Sarah's childhood. But what saved Sarah from the bottom of despair was the sea turtle she met in a small fishing village on the East Sea in the summer when she was ten years old. The sound of the waves I heard while lying on the floor of my grandmother's old tiled house. One bright night in the month, Sarah couldn't sleep and walked alone to Mongdol Beach, where she witnessed a procession of baby sea turtles digging into the sand and coming out into the world.

Thousands of baby turtles were crawling toward the blue sea all at once. Their legs were short, their shells were heavy, and their steps were dangerously slow. Seagulls hovering in the night sky plummeted and snatched them up, and rough waves came and threw them back onto the sandy beach. Young Sarah felt heartbroken and cried, holding the turtles in her hands and trying to put them into the sea. But at that time, her grandmother came up from behind and gently squeezed Sarah's small hand to stop her.

“Sera, don’t touch them. Those children have to cross that sand under their own power. Only by scraping the rough sand to strengthen their legs and experiencing the cold of the waves with their own bodies can they become real turtles that can withstand the water pressure of the deep sea.” Under her grandmother's warm touch, Sarah held her breath and watched one of the smallest and most delicate turtles. Even when the other brothers were swept away by the waves and the strong wind blew sand into their eyes, the little turtle did not stop crawling even for a moment. Just 1 centimeter.

Even just 1 millimeter forward. Its short fins scratched the sand until it bled, and eventually the white foam that rushed in gently enveloped its small shell. And the next moment - he rode a huge wave and swam soaring into the heart of the blue sea.

'If you don't stop... if you walk to the end... even a turtle can become the master of the sea.' That small fire that was planted in Sarah's heart that night burned without ever going out for seven years. The same was true for my fateful encounter with an old turquoise Fender jazz bass at a musical instrument store. When she first went to music academy, the instructor suggested Sarah play a keyboard or acoustic guitar.

"Girls with small hands and weak bodies like Sarah prefer instruments with light fingering. The bass strings are too thick and the neck is long, so it's easy to get arthritis in the fingers. Moreover, in band music these days, the bass is almost always made with a computer virtual instrument (VST), so no one wants to learn a real bass." But Sarah couldn't take her eyes off the turquoise bass that was standing covered in dust in the corner of the music store. Vintage Fender Jazz Bass from 1975. A heavy alder body with a maple neck stained with age, and an old body with paint peeling off and scratches in various places after going through numerous stages.

It looked exactly like the shell of an old sea turtle, covered in barnacles and scars after crossing tens of thousands of miles of rough ocean. Sarah placed the bass on her lap with trembling hands. It was heavy. The massive weight of 4.5 kilograms weighed down my shoulders and knees. But when she plucked the thickest 4th E string with the tip of her index finger- 'Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu'. The heavy resonance that penetrated Sarah's entire body and was transmitted to Sarah's ribs and heart was the heartbeat she had been searching for all her life.

It was not the false beat of a rapidly turbulent world. The lowest, deepest, sound of life bubbling softly and persistently like magma in the earth. “I’ll use this instrument.” From that day on, the heavy bass sound continued in Sarah's room every night. As the blisters formed and burst on the tips of her fingers dozens of times, hard calluses formed on the tips of Sarah's fingers. Sarah did not brush lightly like a piano key. I dug deep into the strings with my fingertips, savoring the rough and heavy ‘attack’ of the strings hitting the frets of the neck and the rich, long sustain that followed.

Metronome sound at BPM 60. 'Knock, knock, knock, knock.' In the extremely slow beat that everyone shakes their heads at, Sarah discovered the vast space of silence that exists between notes. Music wasn't just about filling up the notes. If the notes were spared and saved, even if a single note was thrown, if that note could shake the listener's entire soul, that was true music. Sarah muttered to herself as she played with the tail of the sky blue fish doll ‘Popo’ attached to her chest.

“Popo, why are people in such a hurry? If you only look ahead and run like crazy, you will miss the scent of wild flowers blooming on the roadside and the beauty of the sunset sky...” Popo’s cloth eyes sparkled gently under the moonlight. Sarah adjusted her bag strap and started walking again. We will soon arrive at the legendary live club ‘Turtle Rock’ in the old city. No matter where it was or how the adults gathered there looked at her, Sarah had no intention of backing down. The moment when he would reveal to the world the 7 years of loneliness and tears he had kept inside his shell, and the bass melody he had forged so tightly was just around the corner.

The dark alleys of the old city center were lonely, like debris left behind after the noise of the day had disappeared. The sound of rainwater dripping under the tin eaves, the sound of an old tin sign screeching and shaking in the wind blowing from somewhere, and the rustling footsteps of a stray cat creeping next to the trash can. Sarah listened to all those subtle sounds. Her pure white cat ears sensitively changed their angle towards the source of the sound. The hearing of cat beasts was three times more sensitive than that of humans. The sounds of the world that I heard with my sensitive ears were always too loud, too fast, and too sharp.

The people in the city spoke aggressively, and the friction sound of the subway was like an eardrum-piercing scream. But the low notes of the bass guitar she carried on her back were different. The frequency that occurs when the E string of a bass guitar vibrates is approximately 41.2Hz. This infrasound, located at the bottom of the human audible frequency, was a wave that was felt not by the ears but by the cells and bones of the entire body. It was warm, like the sound of blood flow from the umbilical cord that I heard in my mother's womb, and it was long and heavy, like a deep-sea current flowing thousands of meters deep at the bottom of the ocean.

‘Why are you leaving such a difficult situation? 'What's the point of just learning piano or violin like everyone else?' As a child, her mother always clicked her tongue when she saw the bass guitar, which was too big and heavy for Sarah's slender body. But Sarah knew. The world is full of people who make high, brilliant sounds like violins. It was a world where everyone shouted loudly about how good they were and showed off their presence by interrupting others. However, no one was willing to quietly support the steps of others in a low place.

When everyone was trying to become a melody, the presence of the bass, which silently became the framework and pillar, was like a real turtle's shell supporting this unstable and dangerous world. Sarah passed the old public phone booth and finally stood in front of the rusty iron stairs leading down to the basement of the red brick building. The touch of cold metal passed through my palm as I held onto the stair railing. In the musty smell of mold and old beer coming from the basement, Sarah took a deep breath. My heart began to beat slowly but regularly without any fluctuation.

'Thump, thump, thump, thump.' Sarah's steps, going down the stairs one by one to her own beat, were grand and firm, like the first steps of a sea turtle that crossed the continent after enduring eons of time. Under the old streetlights of the old city center under the moonlight, Sarah stopped for a moment and carefully took down her bass guitar bag. The luster of the turquoise body slightly shines through the gap in the zipper of the leather case. This instrument was not a simple combination of wood and metal. It was the only backbone that supported Sarah's scarred childhood, and the strong buoy that kept her from drowning in the world's cruel pace.

When Sarah was young, the doctor told her parents: "This child's heart ventricular wall has not completely closed. Excessive exercise or strenuous activity puts a fatal strain on the heart. Never dream of running or fighting for the rest of your life. You must live at half the speed of others, just breathing quietly." That diagnosis was tantamount to a death sentence for the cat family. In a family where hunting, running, and the flexibility and speed of jumping over tall branches were the pride and survival method of the family, a cat girl who couldn't run was treated as an ominous defect.

Relatives gathered every holiday and whispered behind Sarah's back. “Will that child be able to earn a living when he grows up?”

“It’s so pitiful that a cat can’t even chase a mouse.” The only person who hugged Sarah at such times was her maternal grandmother who lived on the East Sea beach. Grandmother always put her ear to Sarah's chest and whispered softly. “Sera, listen to the sound of your heart. It beats a little slower than others, but how deep and magnificent is it? Everyone in the world runs around bouncing around like a rabbit and lives without even knowing how tired their heart is. But you embrace the quiet sea within you. A person who knows the depth of that sea is never shaken by the impatience of others.”

Grandma's words always became the warmest light as Sarah walked through the thorny path of this rough world. And tonight, Sarah was about to light the lamp and knock on the basement door. Sarah's old sneakers stepped on the wet cobblestones and stood in front of the iron door. The beat of a rock drum vibrates faintly beyond a rusty iron door. It was the primordial heartbeat that resonated in the underworld, cut off from the rest of the world. Sarah finally grabbed the handle.

‘Grandma, please watch. Sloth Sarah takes the heaviest turtle steps in the world tonight.