Chapter 3: Pa.s.sionately 1
On the first weekend since the admission into Future Arts High.
Song Mirae rested her chin on her hand and stared at the girl in front. She had black hair tied tightly, eyes slanted up, and n.o.ble-like facial features. Whether she was aware of gathering the eyes of all the men inside the coffee shop or not, she was completely focused on the exercise book.
It was her friend, Lee Suh-ah.
Stirring the coffee for a bit with a bored expression, Song Mirae opened her mouth.
“Do you have to study when you’re with me?” I’m really bored to death.”
“Who was the one that brought me out? Don’t talk to me. I need to focus.”
“Why do you even need to study; wouldn’t you come first again even if you didn’t?”
Lee Suh-ah’s busy hand came to a halt.
“Who knows. This time there’s someone studying hard so I need to be prepared.”
“Sigh…”
Song Mirae collapsed on the table. She had somewhat seen it coming but it was like a steel wall. Her friend who was obsessed with first place for some reason, showed no signs of ever playing with her.
Taking a picture of the studying Lee Suh-ah, she started to complain on the SNS.
[My friend’s not playing with me T.T]
Loads of comments were soon put up.
Lee Suh-ah was bad. Who’s this person, she’s cute. That cafe’s nice… Grinning at the comments, Song Mirae suddenly thought of something and opened her mouth.
“Oh yeah, is your concerted music practice going well? Ah you must be~ you betrayed your friend after all so must be doing well.”
“I said it wasn’t betraying. They came first and I said to them already.”
Song Mirae gave a pout.
“Tch. And it had to be a group with Jo Yunjae. He’s not good at singing right?”
Lee Suh-ah raised her head. ‘Did I finally succeed in making her interested?’ thought Song Mirae as she faced her bright eyes at Lee Suh-ah.
“Not as good as me.”
“I knew it. I knew he was bad, looking all lazy and stuff.”
‘A little different…’ thought Lee Suh-ah.
Indeed, he was worse than Lee Suh-ah in terms of singing. His vocal range was limited and resonance was unsatisfactory. He lacked breath and the longer a song went for, the more mistakes there would be.
After some consideration, she came to a conclusion.
“Hmm but… he’s a bit unique.”
Unique. It was a vague word but she couldn’t come up with a better word than this.
“Unique?”
Lee Suh-ah suddenly thought back to what happened two days ago. On the day when the group members had gathered to pick the song, Jo Yunjae had talked with confidence, and with a flick, picked a song.
And his singing.
It wasn’t fancy or skilful, but there was something different from other kids. Thinking back, that was the same during the sight-reading as well – more detailed, or something? It was the same pitch and same sound, but it sounded better.
She hadn’t even received this kind of feeling from Kim Wuju… Quickly stopping the thoughts that threatened to go further, she concluded.
“In any case, it wasn’t bad.”
“Really? Tch.”
Song Mirae openly showed her dislike with a scoff and placed the cup of coffee down. Watching the coffee inside the cup dancing with the wind, Lee Suh-ah tilted her head.
This girl wasn’t the type to hate others like this, but she was so open with it too. Did they fight?
“You hate it so much whenever there’s a talk on Jo Yunjae. Did something happen?”
“Did I not tell you?”
“Tell me what”
Gulping all the coffee in, she pushed her body forward and complained.
“That guy, he suddenly told me to be a mezzo during the interview.”
*
“Fu…”
Deeply breathing in and raising my head, there was a door. A deep brown wooden texture, with the number [210] hanging on it, and there was also a red mark signalling that it was a reserved room. I seemed to have come to the right room.
After staring at the door of the practice room for a while, I slowly paced forward as several thoughts pa.s.sed by my head.
It was the Monday after the intense practices with Chloe during the weekend, and the first Specialist Prac lesson that I had been looking forward to had arrived before me.
“…”
Quietly raising my hand up, the cold door k.n.o.b reached into my fingers. A heavy weight was conveyed through. Only the doors of practice rooms had that strange heaviness, stickiness and pressure.
It was something I became accustomed to, yet was unable to completely become used to.
Cutting off the slight feeling of nervousness, I slowly opened the door. Along with the sound of a click, the inside of the practice room came to view.
Canterbury’s placed here and there, with one small desk and a black Upright piano, as well as a large man barely fitting in on the tiny seat.
Teacher Kwak Jungsoo.
“h.e.l.lo. I’m Jo Yunjae who had applied for the lesson.”
“…”
When I glanced at him after slightly lowering my head, his hair with signs of white hair was visible, and the head that was twice as big than mine, as well as his tough build. Teacher Kwak Jungsoo who I was meeting the second time after the staffroom, was still ma.s.sive.
The teacher saw my arrival with a glance and signalled to a seat next to him.
“Sit.”
“Yes.”
Sitting properly on the chair, I turned my body towards the teacher.
It was different seeing him from the front. He was so big that the pressure he gave off was immense.
A size that was around three times of mine; he wasn’t super tall, but was thick. Rather than saying he was fat, it was more correct to say that his bones themselves were thick.
Was he really a pure Korean…
The time we used for a.n.a.lysing each other was soon broken by the teacher’s words.
“First, sing.”
A surge of emotions came flooding out from the heart. Starting off with no greeting, sudden words and his att.i.tude only seeking for songs.
Really,
He was the same.
Hiding the trembling voice, I barely opened my mouth.
“Yes.”
I stood up from the seat.
Song. He would hear the song and determine what kind of person I was. I expected this to happen, as it had been the same 20 years ago. The only difference would be I guess… the fact that I wasn’t forced into his hands and that I had asked for his teaching myself.
“…”
I could see his sharp gaze facing at me.
Gaze.
In the past, I had been afraid of those eyes. I trembled like crazy thinking that he hated me and ruined the first impression.
But now, I knew that that was his own way of teaching. How would you stand up on the stage if you couldn’t even handle one person’s gaze? When I looked directly back at him, there was an unusual light entering his eyes.
“Ah, ah.”
Lightly preparing my throat, I opened my mouth and sang.
The aria from The Magic Flute.
“Dies Bild–…”
I had practised but as expected, the perfect sound did not come out.
However, that didn’t matter, I just needed to sing my best. In the first place, what the teacher wanted to see was a song with positives and negatives, not an audition song meant to hide my negatives.
“…dann mein.”
The rhythm was off, breath wasn’t maintained and the resonance was lacking. But it was a song filled with my everything, and the teacher that had listened it to the end,
Looked at the skies for a bit and fell in thought.
“Hmm…”
Ah this is getting me nervous. It was the first song in front of the teacher but I didn’t really like it. Thoughts like, I should’ve practised harder, the breaths were too small, should I have eaten some raw egg beforehand, stormed through my head.
What did the teacher say back then after listening to my song again?
“Pathetic.”
Right, he had said that.
A little smile left unconsciously resulting in the teacher staring at me like a crazy person. Ah, poker face, poker face.
When I barely went back to a serious expression, the teacher started his words after staring at me.
“The basics are trash. You do not even have the qualification to sing this song. For example, there are conditions like height above 150cm, and age above 10 when riding roller coasters right? You have failed those conditions. Not to mention the fun roller coaster ride, you are not even allowed to line up for that in the first place.”
“…”
Precise.
After scarily looking down at me, the teacher changed his expression to a smile.
“But the vowel p.r.o.nunciations were strangely perfect. I E A O U – I like how they make sounds with the same bright tone. The acting is good too. Have you done opera acting before? Who did you learn it from?”
I didn’t know what to say and came to a stop. I couldn’t tell him that I learned it from the teacher himself right? Although he ended up complimenting himself, the teacher glanced over my body and came to a conclusion.
“No, there’s no way you’ve learned it before. You wouldn’t have this body if you did… then did you learn it by yourself? It is worthy of compliments that you don’t have any bad habits then.”
“…Thank you”
“But you see…”
Raising his back and stroking his chin, the teacher made a frown, seemingly finding something not to his liking.
“Why did you pick this song? When I looked at your prac application form, this was supposed to be the song for the Improvement Concert. I’ve said it before but you do not have the preparations to sing this song yet.”
“I judged that I would be able to prepare for it in time.”
“Hmm…”
The teacher looked down at me with a strange light filling his eyes.
Did it sound too overconfident?
But it had to be a song at this level to at least get some good marks so I had no real choice. The teacher stood up from the piano seat, and along with the creakings of the chair, he opened his mouth.
“For you to sing this song, you must fulfil three conditions. 1 – breath, 2 – high notes, and 3 – understanding of the song.”
After walking around the room, he placed his hand on my shoulder, as a heavy weight was added onto my shoulder.
“You’re saying you can do these three in 3… no around 2 weeks now huh. Are you confident that you can finish these in 2 weeks? I’d say 2 weeks is hardly enough to better your basics though?”
2 weeks.
Indeed, he was right.
Perfecting a song was that much of a hard thing to do. Matching the breath and vocal range were the basics of basics – you had to be able to incorporate emotions into every single verse and feelings into every word.
In addition, words had to be separated into consonants and vowels, with the mouth properly changing shape according to the consonants, while the vowels had to have the tone added to them.
After all, making a sound was different to singing a song.
Interpreting and understanding the song. Singing sad songs in a sad tone, and happily singing joyful songs – the minute details that made up those things were that difficult to master.
However…
I already had those things.
“… 2 weeks is enough.”
When I replied with my eyes directly facing his,
The teacher gave a smile.
Teacher Kwak Jungsoo who had been staring down at me seemed to find it interesting and turned towards the sky.
“Full of confidence. Right. If you’re an opera, a tenor, then you must have that level of vigor at least. You sound as if you’re done with a.n.a.lysing the song? It feels like you think practising the basics is enough. From what I heard there indeed seemed to be some level of a.n.a.lysis done…”
He was sharp as always.
Looking at me pulling my chin back, he crossed his arms.
“Good, try your best. Let’s see if you truly will be able to sing this song or not.”
“Yes.”
“Of course, if I see next week that your preparations are not enough, then we’ll immediately change to a different song. Just singing something like Sento Nel Core should do.”
“Yes.”
Seeing me answer firmly, the teacher raised his eyebrows up and fell into a deep thought. What else is there… I think I’ve answered everything.
Twisting his head, he asked.
“You.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you decide not to enter any concours? It seems like it wasn’t because you were just scared to do so, is there a special reason for it?”
To the sudden question, I thought while blinking my eyes.
A special reason?
There wasn’t anything like that.
It would be impossible to go through the preliminaries with this body anyways so I decided not to partic.i.p.ate. Making stage experiences wasn’t anything important for me either.
‘I’m already busy focusing on school studies so is there a need to waste both money and time for no reason…’
But if I told him that, he would slap my back saying, stop showing off and immediately partic.i.p.ate in one.
What should I say?
Seeing the teacher gaze at me with eyes that said, ‘There will be some reason for it. Some very important reason,’ a shiver went down my spine.