CC 04

Chapter 04

## 2. The Melody Is Not Yet Over (3)

Hyerim is a prodigy who majored in violin at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna in Austria and returned home.

But making a living from classical music in South Korea was not easy.

The Banpo Orchestra, which she entered after auditioning and waiting a full eight years for an opening. The members all had extraordinary academic backgrounds and skills, so her pride is immense.

But the performances that come only once or twice a year, like beans in a drought, gave her a thirst for the stage.

Street performances she began out of a simple desire to play. The response was better than expected.

Koreans, who inherently love music and excitement, lend an ear to music they happen to encounter on the street and gladly applaud.

Today she had a dinner appointment with the orchestra’s conductor.

After finishing her makeup at home and changing clothes, about an hour and a half remained. She couldn’t be late for her appointment with the conductor, so she started getting ready a bit early, and now the time hung loose.

Since the appointment was at a restaurant near Banpo Hangang Park, she wanted to do a street performance for just an hour.

Originally, she intended to keep her distance and perform if someone was playing the piano, but since the piano was empty, she took the slightly cooler space under the roof first.

And all these coincidental inevitabilities made this moment come to pass.

Hyerim, whose body shuddered at the shock of the piano performance that suddenly cut in, was so startled she skipped two notes. Desperately gathering her wits, Hyerim thought this for the first time.

‘Cutting in suddenly without prior coordination—how rude.’

Of course, such things happen frequently in street performances. Sometimes such an encounter is truly welcome, and sometimes it’s twice as enjoyable as playing alone. That is, when the other’s level matches your own.

Right now, Hyerim is trembling every moment as if struck by lightning in her astonishment.

Ascending figurations and strong harmonies.

The will to hold on to the very end.

Emotion hides within every note.

The storm-like figurations of the right hand sweep through the entire piece.

Even in the fierce wind, the singing melody is not lost.

A heroic melody above storm-like figurations.

A performance as if poetic fury and the power of nature are being liberated upon the piano.

Hyerim desperately follows the piano and screams in her mind.

‘There is poetry and drama within the performance!’

She swears this is an emotion she has never felt before.

A completely different feeling from when she existed as a single member of an eighty-strong orchestra.

‘Rather, I’m becoming the burden.’

It’s not the other who is imposing—she herself is becoming the nuisance. Hyerim, who had been desperately continuing her technical performance, at some point felt as if the piano was speaking to her.

The final rushing wind, a tragic conclusion.

The cold stillness after the storm has swept everything away.

They seem to be saying this:

‘Have you ever thought about the resonance sharp and beautiful as wind brushing over ice, the sorrow and resolve contained in winter’s breath, the passion bursting forth within frozen time?’

Hyerim suddenly burst into tears.

‘I.’

What music have I been making all this time?

Her professors taught countless times that music is the art of emotion.

But to make a living from music, she had no choice but to focus on acquiring technique rather than expressing emotion. Within the short audition time, it was an unavoidable choice to demonstrate her skill.

The flight of the soul racing through the blizzard.

The melody of unbroken will even in the bitter wind finally came to an end.

But Hyerim could not open her eyes.

Because she felt that if she opened them, the tears welling up would come streaming down.

There is no applause.

No cheers.

Only silence.

Hyerim, curious about the pianist who had given her an experience akin to a vision, hurriedly wiped the corners of her eyes with her sleeve and turned toward the piano.

“Uh… gone?”

The dazed gazes of the audience are directed not at her but at some distant place.

Hyerim follows their gaze and looks at the person at the end of it.

What Hyerim saw was the retreating figure of a man in a black hood running at full speed.

“Ah… w-wait!”

But he seems not to have heard, running at full speed.

She isn’t sure if she heard correctly, but his shout seemed to say this.

“Aaah! I’m going to be late for my first day of work!”

What does that mean?

Hyerim’s hand, extended as if to grab the man’s retreating figure, slowly falls.

‘Who was that?’

A belated cheer and applause burst out like a flood.

* * *

Ahn Sunghoon, who served as head chef at The Modern, a two-Michelin-star restaurant in New York, and returned to Korea to take charge of the kitchen at Gabriel, a high-end restaurant in the Banpo district, is notorious for his fastidiousness when it comes to cooking.

Of course, it’s also true that Ahn Sunghoon’s fastidiousness put Gabriel—previously just a high-end restaurant—on the Michelin Bib Gourmand list last year.

“Vegetable doneness! Do it again!”

Ahn Sunghoon dumps an already completed dish into the trash.

The six cooks who were working crane their necks.

“Yes! Chef!”

It’s an everyday occurrence.

Outside, beautiful music flows and guests dine at leisure, but the kitchen is always a battlefield.

One seating passes, and now it’s time for the second seating’s guests to enter. Ahn Sunghoon checks the kitchen and looks at the dishwashing station. The back of the part-timer starting today is visible.

‘Not a single break.’

Ahn Sunghoon first does the hand-washing and inspects the dishes that have come out of the dishwasher.

‘Perfectly clean.’

Firing the previous dishwashing-only part-timer had been Ahn Sunghoon’s choice. Because there had been stains on the dishes going out to guests.

He let it slide once, but when it happened a second and third time, he couldn’t stand it and fired them. Thanks to that, only the owner suffered, having to hurriedly find a new part-timer.

Ahn Sunghoon looks at the part-timer’s back and nods.

‘Still need to watch, but a pretty decent worker.’

Above all, it’s good to see them working hard and enjoyably. They’re tall and their frame is so big that it would obstruct the flow if they entered the kitchen, but since they don’t leave the dishwashing area in the corner, it doesn’t matter.

Ahn Sunghoon claps and shouts.

“Alright! Next seating’s guests are entering! Everyone stay sharp!”

“Yes! Chef!”

The restaurant’s hall.

Guests with reservations for the second seating are entering, guided by the servers.

A familiar face is visible among them.

It’s Hyerim, who had been performing on the street at Banpo Hangang Park.

“Conductor, I’m telling you, it’s true. A real genius pianist.”

“Haha, Hyerim, really. Geniuses disappeared after Mozart.”

“Ah, frustrating. Why won’t you believe what I say?”

“Couldn’t it be a professional pianist who hid their identity and cut in?”

“That might be. But as far as I know, unless it’s Jo Sunghan, who won the International Chopin Competition, no one can play like that. I’ve never done a collaboration like that in my life.”

“Haha, calm down, calm down.”

The appetizer has arrived, but Hyerim’s mouth simply won’t rest.

“It was as if the piano was reciting poetry. It felt like it was speaking to me. Telling me to think. To think deeper. To express it through performance.”

Jeong Myeonghwan, the conductor of the Banpo Orchestra, gazes quietly at Hyerim and falls into thought.

‘To think there’s a pianist who excites the normally calm Hyerim like this.’

Who on earth could it be?

Who could recite poetry with the piano and speak through performance to their collaborator?

‘Moreover, there’s something strange in what Hyerim said.’

That a lesson was hidden within the performance.

Someone who can impart a lesson not through words but through performance to a prodigy who graduated from the Vienna Musikverein in Austria. How many people in the country could do that?

‘Maybe Jo Sunghan really has appeared.’

There aren’t many who can perform Chopin to that degree of depth.

Chopin’s music is easy for beginners to play, difficult for intermediates, and reaches hellish difficulty at the advanced level. Because he was a composer who focused on emotion over technique.

Following the technique is also difficult.

But conveying emotion is a matter of another dimension.

“Haha, I’d love to meet him once too.”

“I’m going to go to Banpo Hangang Park every day starting today. If I keep waiting, won’t I meet him at least once?”

Jeong Myeonghwan smiles with his eyes.

“Well, there are connections that come only once in a lifetime.”

“Conductor! That’s too mean. I’m truly desperate. He’s the person who shattered in an instant the wall I couldn’t break for so long. I must meet him again.”

Jeong Myeonghwan, after finishing the street performance and returning, examines Hyerim, who is carrying her violin case, then looks at the stage. The stage happens to be empty.

“Then that wall you say was shattered—may I hear it?”

“Here?”

Jeong Myeonghwan raises his hand, calls a waiter, and presents his business card.

“I’m Jeong Myeonghwan, conductor of the Banpo Orchestra. How much time until the next stage?”

“Yes, the second seating’s stage is a string quartet, in fifteen minutes.”

“This beautiful lady here is a violinist in our orchestra. May she play one piece? I’ll vouch for her skill.”

“I’ll ask the owner and get back to you.”

Jeong Myeonghwan nods and looks at Hyerim with a smile in his eyes.

“If Hyerim has shattered a wall, it will be of great help to me as her conductor. So I’d like to hear it.”

Hyerim thinks for a moment, then opens her violin case.

“Yes, Conductor. Listen and judge for yourself.”

* * *

The gushing sound of water.

The sizzle of steaks being grilled by the cooks.

The shouting coming from the kitchen.

Suho listens to all those sounds as he immerses himself in washing dishes. Originally a neat freak, he tolerated not a single speck on the dishes. Even if a bit slow, careful and clean. That is his nature.

At some moment.

Piercing through all that noise, the sound of music comes faintly.

A melody clearly rising even through the gushing water of the dishwashing.

A note blooming on the strings shook the depths of his heart.

Within the quiet tremor, emotion slowly blossomed.

When a wind-like melody brushed his heart, comfort seeped in through the tremor.

A flower of a smile blooms on Suho’s face.

‘”Summer” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. A good performance.’

A piece well suited to this summer day. It must be the performance of a good violinist. A little better than the one he met earlier.

‘I hope the performer I met today also grows a bit more and becomes a wonderful musician. She was someone with plenty of talent.’

Suho had no idea, not even in his dreams, that this performance was by the same person he had just met.

And Hyerim, performing in the hall, also has no idea, not even in her dreams, that at this very hour the pianist she so desperately wants to find is washing dishes in the kitchen, listening to her performance.

They were searching for each other, but could not see each other.

They were characters in the same story, but were not in each other’s scenes.

Ironically, the person most astonished in this scene was Jeong Myeonghwan.

Because he had personally selected the violinist, he was the person best able to judge Hyerim’s skill more objectively than anyone.

Hyerim’s words rose in Jeong Myeonghwan’s mind as his wide-open eyes trembled.

‘He’s the person who shattered in an instant the wall I couldn’t break for so long. I must meet him again.’

Who could it be?

The mysterious pianist who raised Hyerim’s level by a full grade in an instant. Strong curiosity appears on Jeong Myeonghwan’s face.

Lightning flashing over a sweltering field and pouring rain were drawn before his eyes.

Stillness and intensity alternated, and emotions surged along with them.

It was an intense experience embracing both the heat of midsummer and the storm at once.