Neon Shadows

The rooftop never sleeps — but Minjun does. Sometimes. When the neon glare softens enough to let him close his eyes, when the drums fade under the hum of traffic, when Miri's soft muttering of code stops echoing through the concrete skeleton they've made their second home.

Tonight, though, sleep doesn't come.

Minjun's perched on the ledge of an old shopping complex that the city forgot. A washed-out sign below him still flickers the ghost of its name in cracked red bulbs — Sunrise Plaza, a lie if he'd ever heard one. The real sunrise here is the city itself, all glass teeth and neon veins, never truly dark, never truly quiet.

He likes this rooftop more than the newer ones they've claimed — the old concrete here feels alive, stained by the echoes of kids who used to smoke here behind security's back, bored office workers who snuck up here to spill secrets over bad coffee. Now it's his secret — his stage when he wants no cameras, no relay, no feed buzzing in his ear.

Tonight the relay is dead. The amps are hidden under a shredded blue tarp, the cables coiled like sleeping snakes. The only thing alive is the cheap mic in his hand, frayed tape wrapped around the handle to keep the wire from splitting. It's not plugged in. He doesn't need it to be. Sometimes he just needs the feel of it — cold metal, solid weight. A reminder that his voice, even alone, still matters.

Below him, the city moves — Friday night kids staggering home from bars, old men selling tteokbokki from battered carts that steam like tiny volcanoes. He wonders if any of them hear the rooftop when it sings. He wonders if any of them care.

A soft scrape behind him breaks the thought. Minjun doesn't flinch — he knows that scuff, the drag of beat-up sneakers, the slight pause like the person's asking permission to interrupt a ghost.

Jiwoo appears from the stairwell, hair half hidden under a cheap beanie, two paper cups balanced in one hand, the other shoved in his jacket pocket to keep warm.

"You look like you're about to jump," Jiwoo says. He drops down next to Minjun on the ledge, so close their shoulders brush. He hands over one cup — cheap coffee, gone lukewarm already. Minjun takes it anyway.

"Not tonight," Minjun says, his breath fogging in the cold. He doesn't drink yet. Just lets the steam rise into the city that tries so hard to swallow every rooftop whole.

Jiwoo sips his, humming around the rim. "You've got that look."

"What look?"

"The one that says your brain's eating itself alive again." Jiwoo nudges him with an elbow. "Spit it out."

Minjun taps the mic against his knee, listens to the hollow clink of metal on concrete. "What if the rooftop's not enough anymore?"

Jiwoo's coffee stops halfway to his mouth. He frowns. "Not enough? You built this. The rooftop is the point."

"Is it?" Minjun stares at the city. "Every rooftop we light up, they try to shut it down. Seojin's scouts. New contracts. Fake solo deals. I heard they signed two kids last week — just kids who showed up to a Circuit pop-up once. Now they're selling them back to the same system we broke."

Jiwoo runs his thumb along the seam of his cup, picking at the cardboard like he wants to tear it apart. "So we're inspiring them, and they're buying what they can't kill. That's the game, isn't it?"

"I don't want to be a brand, Jiwoo," Minjun says, voice low. "I don't want the rooftop to be something they can slap on a sneaker ad."

A voice cuts in, dry and sharp as static. "Then make it something they can't own."

Minjun doesn't turn. He knows that voice too. Miri drops down beside them, laptop bag swinging against her hip. She's got dark circles under her eyes, her hair tied back with a scrunchie she probably stole from someone's bathroom two rooftops ago. She sits cross-legged, folds into the cold concrete like she's always belonged here.

Miri flicks open her laptop, the faint glow painting her face a sickly blue. "So what's the new gospel, Prophet Minjun? What keeps the rooftop alive when the system keeps stealing our echoes?"

Minjun looks at her, then Jiwoo. The old rooftop trio. The basement kids. The ghosts who keep showing up every time the city tries to bury them.

"I don't know yet," he admits.

Jiwoo barks a laugh. "Perfect. Let's wing it then. It's worked so far."

Miri's fingers tap the keys, nails clicking like Morse code. "The relay's solid. But Seoul's not the only city with signal dead spots. Busan. Daegu. Fukuoka. Taipei. Manila. Chicago. We scatter the feed like fireworks — no one rooftop to shut down."

Jiwoo perks up. "A roaming Circuit?"

"An infection," Miri says, grin sharp. "Viral rooftop pop-ups in cities they can't gentrify fast enough. No schedule, no map. The only way to know is to listen for the signal."

Minjun closes his eyes, lets the words settle. His brain races — new cities, new rooftops, new kids clambering over fences with half-broken mics and half-finished verses.

"Underground forever," he murmurs. "No press releases. No merch. Just noise."

Miri shrugs. "If they want to buy it, they'll have to buy the entire skyline."

Jiwoo laughs, voice loud enough to bounce off the old ventilation shaft. "Good luck trademarking concrete and stolen antennas."

Below them, the wind shifts — a gust strong enough to rattle the rusted billboard behind them. The city breathes it in, unaware that three kids just decided to set its rooftops on fire all over again.

Minjun lifts the dead mic, balances it on his palm. Not plugged in. Not yet.

He pictures a kid somewhere in Daegu — sitting on a rooftop with cheap earbuds, bootleg relay link in his inbox, wondering if he dares to hum along. He pictures a girl in Manila hacking together a janky amp from an old car battery just to feel the rooftop beat in her bones. He pictures shadows flickering across concrete walls — kids claiming a night the city forgot to fence off.

He lowers the mic, looks at Miri and Jiwoo — the only two people in the world who've never asked him to sign away his name.

"One more rooftop?" Minjun asks.

Miri's grin says everything. Jiwoo taps a drumbeat on his knee, the first echo of the next riot.

And high above Seoul, under neon shadows, three kids sip cheap coffee and plan the next revolution — one rooftop at a time.