The studio was a box of shadows, dim and cramped, its walls layered with acoustic foam that muffled the world outside into an indistinct hum. The only light came from the faint, sickly glow of a single desk lamp, its bulb flickering faintly like it was considering giving out. The air hung heavy with the stale remnants of cigarette smoke, clinging to everything—the leather of his jacket slung over a chair, the scratched plastic of the mixing console, the pages of a notebook left open and bleeding ink onto the desk.

Taeyang sat hunched in a secondhand chair, its leather cracked and peeling under the weight of countless hours spent chasing something intangible. His combat boots rested against the edge of the console, their soles scuffed and worn. A half-empty coffee cup sat within reach, its contents long gone cold, the rim stained with faint smears of ash from his fingers. The ashtray beside it overflowed with Marlboro butts, tiny gray towers crushed under the weight of his thoughts.

He flipped through his notebook with fingers stained faintly yellow, searching for the phrase that had burned itself into his memory earlier that day. The pages bore the marks of restless nights—smudged handwriting, lines crossed out so aggressively that the paper had nearly torn. A few flecks of ash clung to the edges of the pages like scars left from battles fought between inspiration and frustration.

Outside the booth, the mixing console’s small digital screen pulsed with the soft glow of looping waveforms, a rhythmic heartbeat in the otherwise silent room. A track played on repeat, a skeleton of a beat that he’d spent hours building earlier—gritty, uneven, but alive in its imperfection. The bass was heavy, the kind that rattled your chest even when played in a whisper. It filled the room like a pulse, syncing with the frantic tapping of his fingers against the desk.

His dark eyes burned with a mixture of exhaustion and determination, scanning each line like he was trying to decipher a code only he could see.