Chapter 222

Translator: Dreamscribe

"Huh? That's strange."

Kim Tae-jun, a reporter at 'Monthly Performance', tilted his head as he dug through a stack of documents.

"What's strange?"

Seo So-heon, his senior, looked over at him and asked.

"Han Gyeo-ul's Homecoming Recital. There's no ticket? I'm sure I gathered everything that came in right here...."

So-heon chuckled and said,

"Ah! Han Gyeo-ul. You won't find one no matter how long you look. She doesn't hand out tickets."

"What? What does that mean?"

Tae-jun asked again, not catching her meaning.

Performers with an upcoming concert send envelopes to the magazines, practically every last one of them, without exception.

Inside is usually the same set of things.

A polite greeting, a biography, a profile photo, and about four complimentary tickets enclosed along with them. Reporters treated it as a matter of course. Half the seats at a classical concert are filled by acquaintances and industry people to begin with. And from the performers' side, inviting a few reporters into seats that would sit empty anyway was hardly a loss.

"Exactly what I said. Han Gyeo-ul is one of the few pianists in this country who can sell out completely."

"Wow! So that's actually possible in Korea? It's the first time I've seen it."

Tae-jun's mouth fell open.

The Three Major Concours, famous the world over. Yet the reality of the Korean classical music world was that even the performers who won them couldn't fill a hall.

"It's a really unusual case. She isn't even a Three Major Concours winner."

"Now that you mention it, that's true. Though she does have that Tchaikovsky win from her junior days. Honestly, it's a little strange. When she was young, Han Gyeo-ul was a 'competition machine', wasn't she? She swept first place at every contest she entered."

That was the period when she'd drawn attention as the country's finest prospect.

Flawless technique, textbook interpretation, playing that gave a judge nothing to criticize. Everyone assumed Gyeo-ul would keep rising like that, but at some point her playing changed.

Sometimes she drew out silences that weren't written in the score. Her tempo and dynamics turned free, and on certain days she was excessively emotional. There were even times when her interpretation of a piece differed from concert to concert.

In a concours, where points are handed out category by category, that was a fatal flaw.

"She only placed fourth at the Queen Elisabeth Competition she entered recently, too."

"But isn't it strange? Even though she isn't winning, the estimation of Han Gyeo-ul as a pianist hasn't dropped in the slightest. It'd be more accurate to say it's shot up. The ticket power says it all."

"Isn't that just because she became a YouTube star?"

So-heon shook her head.

"Don't take the public lightly. Do you think there've only been one or two performers who went briefly viral online? Han Gyeo-ul did have more impact, I'll grant you that."

The video of her duet with Seo-ha at the New York Phil had racked up over ten million views, a rare feat for a classical performance.

"Then what's the reason?"

He wore a puzzled look as he went on.

"Honestly, most performers in this country are barely scraping by, right? I happen to know a Queen Elisabeth winner personally.... ugh, I can't even describe it. Teaching students by day, playing accompaniment gigs at night, heading down to the provinces for concerts on weekends. Isn't the usual thing to hang on like that, save up, and put on one recital out of your own pocket? But Han Gyeo-ul has been invited to play with the New York Phil for several years running now. And on top of that, a sold-out Homecoming Recital at the Seoul Arts Center...."

So-heon put on a teasing expression.

"Why? Does it seem unfair to you?"

"If I were a major concours winner, I think I'd feel horribly cheated. And people say openly that she sells well because her face is pretty."

She leaned back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling.

"There's nothing to feel cheated about. It just means what people actually want to hear isn't technique."

"Sorry?"

"There are far too many performers in Korea these days who play well. Odd, isn't it, when the base for classical music here is so pathetic?"

Monthly Performance was the largest classical journal in Korea, but its average sales didn't even reach ten thousand copies. It had long since been reduced to a trade bulletin read only by industry insiders.

"That'd be thanks to the elite training system."

"Right. They're made to practice for hours a day before they even turn five. And if they show talent, the parents throw themselves into it like they're raising a national team athlete. So how well do you think they end up playing?"

"But the market is small."

So-heon nodded.

"Exactly. Han Gyeo-ul broke out of all that. She seems to intend to keep entering concours, but she's going to play her own way."

"Will that work out?"

"It'll be hard. Do you think Frédéric Chopin could win if he were reincarnated and entered the modern Chopin Competition?"

"Huh? Uh.... hmm."

After thinking it over for a long while, he shook his head.

"That's ironic."

"It means technical perfection and great art aren't the same thing. You should go and hear it for yourself this time."

"There are no tickets, so I'd have to listen standing up. Sunbae, you're getting on in years, would you be all right with that?"

So-heon snorted. "Hmph!"

"You can stand on your own. I booked my ticket ages ago."

"...Traitor."

So-heon hummed to herself, using Tae-jun's wounded expression as her accompaniment.

Twenty years as a lover of classical music.

Avoiding mistakes, safe interpretations. Correct-answer playing with one eye on the scoring sheet. At some point, listening to performances at competitions had stopped being any fun for her. She went out of obligation, because it was her job.

When even the experts couldn't identify a performer by sound alone, what more was there to say?

Then, at a concours she'd gone to cover, she encountered Gyeo-ul as a grown woman.

Her playing, heard for the first time since her junior days.

It was a shock.

Could a person change this much?

She heard things that weren't in the score. Pain and sorrow, regret, and happiness. What filled every last blank space of the score, leaving none of it empty, had to have been her emotions.

That raw feeling, beyond any technical polish, she delivered to the audience without a moment's hesitation.

That performance hurt so much that So-heon wept in her seat.

That day was winter.

The season of the year Seo-ha enlisted.

* * *

[Han Gyeo-ul Homecoming Recital]

An enormous banner hung in the most visible spot at the entrance of the Seoul Arts Center.

Gyeo-ul in a wine-colored dress, hands resting on the keys, eyes lowered.

"She really is pretty."

Tae-jun muttered it absently, gazing up at the banner.

"Looks are one of a performer's strongest competitive edges too. Anyway, how long are you going to stand there staring? Aren't you supposed to be covering this?"

"Huh? Yes!"

Gyeo-ul's recital was news material.

On an ordinary day the lobby would have been overflowing with music professors in worn-out suits and students lugging instrument cases, but today it looked like the red carpet at a film festival.

"Oh, that person over there! Isn't that Lee Min-ju? The one who played a pianist in that drama!"

Tae-jun pointed, his mouth hanging open.

Flashy fashion and sunglasses.

Top actress Lee Min-ju was cutting across the lobby with her manager in tow. And she wasn't the only one. Members of boy and girl idol groups armed with trendy outfits, and even the variety stars who'd recently become the hottest names.

So-heon couldn't help letting out a snicker.

"Somebody wants to look cultured, I see, and Han Gyeo-ul is the perfect subject for it. The entertainment world seems to have its eye on her too."

What that crowd was consuming wasn't the music but the brand called Han Gyeo-ul.

Still, there was no need to be cynical about it. Classical music getting any attention at all, even this way, was something to be thankful for.

First floor, second floor, all the way up to the third.

The 2,500-seat Seoul Arts Center Concert Hall was packed.

In the front row sat the conglomerate chairman who had sponsored her since childhood and the Ten-Million Actor Ji Sung-hoon. Beyond them were family members and the pianist Lim Seon-hwa, known as Gyeo-ul's mentor.

'Whose seat is that?'

The far right end of the front row.

A seat where, once she sat down at the piano, her face would be visible straight on.

Ten minutes before the performance.

One empty seat stood out conspicuously.

A murmur rose from behind.

Seon-hwa turned her head.

Someone was walking up the aisle. A tall man in a navy tuxedo. His hair was swept back neatly, and she was just thinking what a pleasant sight he made when,

'Hm?'

The entire hall was looking at him.

"Who is that?"

Tae-jun, who had barely managed to snag a returned ticket, nudged So-heon's arm and asked.

For a moment, an article she'd seen a few days earlier flashed through her mind.

"Yu Seo-ha?"

"Hup!"

Startled, Tae-jun clapped a hand over his mouth.

A man whose name the entire nation knew, yet who was almost impossible to meet in person. Even his photographs had barely circulated. The best-known ones were from the Fields Prize ceremony, plus a handful taken when he presented his paper, and that was all. Naturally the public couldn't help being curious.

His share in the attention that piano duet video with Gyeo-ul had received was probably not small, she guessed.

"Wasn't he all about the mystique? I never imagined he'd turn up somewhere like this."

That rumor was certainly making the rounds.

It had started with something a famous variety show PD let slip as a joke on air.

"Right now the number one name on every casting list in broadcasting is the mathematician Yu Seo-ha-nim."

The studio dissolved into laughter on the spot.

Because the idea was ridiculous.

The youngest Fields Prize laureate in history, and currently the most closely watched brain in the world. And yet what the public knew about him was astonishingly little.

Never mind television appearances, he didn't respond to interview or advertising offers either.

Even a curious look at his SNS turned up nothing but traces of mathematical debates with famous professors abroad. And so the public's unsatisfied curiosity had only kept swelling.

"He looks insane in person."

Tae-jun whispered it softly into So-heon's ear.

Above the deep navy tuxedo, his long limbs gave him the effortless lines of a model. More than anything, the halo effect of having won the Fields Prize in his teens was tremendous.

Even to her eyes, there was an aura about him that felt untouchable.

Murmurs rose from all around the hall.

"Is that really Yu Seo-ha?"

"Must be. There's a bodyguard behind him."

"He's way better looking than I expected. That decadent look is exactly my type."

"There was a rumor he's dating Han Gyeo-ul. No way it's actually true?"

When people started reaching for their phones, an usher hurried over to stop them.

Yu Seo-ha, like a man unaccustomed to that sort of reaction, looked briefly bewildered, then quietly walked on and took his assigned seat.

The lights went down.

A moment later, Gyeo-ul walked out onto the stage in a red dress.

A sleek design that left her shoulders bare. The hem brushed lightly across the stage floor. As the lighting came down, the color of the dress deepened.

Clap clap clap!

Gentle applause filled the concert hall.

Gyeo-ul bowed at center stage. She looked beautiful and elegant at once. The audience couldn't tear their eyes away from her, as though under a spell.

So-heon noticed that Gyeo-ul's gaze lingered a beat longer on the right side of the front row.

She bowed once more, then turned toward the piano and sat.

Hoo.

Gyeo-ul closed her eyes and drew a deep breath.

A pleasant tension honed her senses to a fine edge. And no wonder, since Gyeo-ul had spent the past year waiting for this one day. She had poured more time and effort into it than into any concours she'd ever entered.

It had been maddening.

Herself, fretting from a distance, catching news of where he'd gone and what he'd done.

But she couldn't simply walk up to him and clear the air, either.

She had never been comfortable putting her feelings into words.

The sensation of his hand taking hers inside her coat pocket that night was still vivid.

That he'd left without a word after all that was outrageous, and yet she also thought it was very much like Seo-ha.

She'd thought about many things while they were apart.

If he ended up with someone else, would he have to ask permission whenever he needed a piano Stabilization Session? He'd have to explain her reasons in tedious detail.

The thought alone was unbearable.

That was a secret history the two of them had built, hers and Seo-ha's alone. Gyeo-ul could not allow anyone to wedge themselves into it.

Could she convey what was in her heart through her playing?

Not abstract feelings like joy or sorrow, but something far more specific, far more private. Still, Gyeo-ul had a groundless confidence about it.

'We're bound by soul, aren't we? Then he'll understand at least this much.'

So listen carefully, Yu Seo-ha. I'm only playing this once, today.

*****

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