“You two knew each other?”
Sujeong muttered as she watched Seoha leave in a hurry.
Gyeoul was a famous figure known to anyone who had attended the same school. It wasn’t a common name, so it probably wasn’t someone else with the same name.
Come to think of it, the two of them were even the same age.
“What’s with your face? You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”
At Theo’s question, Sujeong forced a smile.
But even she didn’t understand why her heart felt so uneasy.
* * *
Arranging a piano piece for an orchestra required an extremely complex process.
‘Music is, in essence, mathematics.’
Pythagoras devised the seven-note scale on the framework of mathematical thought.
Divide the length of a string in half, and the pitch rises by an octave; shorten it to two-thirds, and it becomes a perfect fifth. Intervals that sounded pleasant to the ear could always be explained through integer ratios, and that order became the foundation of modern music.
“Can you tell me now? What did I miss?”
Lawrence asked, staring straight at Seoha. Anxiety and anticipation were mingled in his eyes.
He had lived with music for decades. He also had confidence in his ability to handle the enormous apparatus called an orchestra as if it were his own limbs.
When he opened a score, he could instinctively sense which part should come to the forefront and at what point the density should be stripped away.
And yet, before this piece, he could not feel certain. He was so frustrated he could hardly breathe.
Seoha fell into thought.
‘Is it all right to explain this?’
This piece had been written by him when his obsession had reached its peak. Every single note contained calculations to a nauseating degree, and every element of the piece had been designed to interlock like precise cogwheels.
Seoha looked down at the score.
It felt as though he were facing a part of himself he had never wanted to show anyone.
“Are you not going to tell me?”
Perhaps growing impatient, Lawrence’s composure began to vanish from his face.
Seoha let out a sigh and answered in a quiet voice.
“...The frequency.”
“Hm?”
“The frequency ratio is wrong.”
An octave is an interval in which the frequency forms an exact 2:1 ratio.
One octave above middle C (261.63 Hz) is 523.25 Hz, and one octave below it is 130.81 Hz. He had divided the piano’s lower register between the cello and double bass, but here, because of the range limitations of the instruments, the frequency ratio had collapsed.
Lawrence looked blank.
“There’s a lot more besides that...”
After opening the score, Seoha began explaining, one by one, the errors he had made.
“Look from measure 17 here.
Ascending major third from C to E, ascending minor third from E to G, from G...”
He rapidly wrote numbers beneath the staff.
“If you convert each interval into semitone units, you get 4, 3, 7, 7, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. It’s a variation of the Fibonacci sequence. The sequence is 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13... I arranged the remainders after dividing these by 12 in reverse order.”
Lawrence slapped his knee as if he had realized something.
“By 12? Jesus! So it was intended for the pitches to cycle within a single octave!”
Seoha nodded.
Lawrence looked again at the score he had drawn.
“When you divided the violin part, Professor, you added one more voice. Three became four, and four became five. The balance of the sequence was broken.”
With a serious expression, Lawrence began discussing with Seoha how to correct it.
Gyeoul, who had been listening from the side, felt her eyes spin.
‘What is this? It’s scary. Is this really a conversation about music?’
To Gyeoul, music had always been the realm of emotion.
Her playing changed depending on her mood. Even on clear days and rainy days, her tone color changed.
Of course, Seoha liked that aspect of Gyeoul’s playing very much.
Lawrence, too, did not know mathematics well.
But through experience, he had learned that orchestration itself was a highly mathematical act.
Mathematics and music.
Their methods were different, but the conclusion they reached was the same. They were speaking different languages, and yet somehow, their meanings came through. Thinking that, Gyeoul smiled faintly.
“So what is it you want?”
With his question resolved, Lawrence asked Seoha with a refreshed expression.
“Pardon?”
“Did you want this piece to be performed? Or are you satisfied with it simply existing?”
Seoha was silent for a while, then quietly reached out and closed the score. It was not a piece he could let others hear.
Lawrence’s face was filled with regret. But the composer’s wishes had to be respected. Just as he was about to rise from his seat, Gyeoul stared intently at Seoha and said,
“Why? I like this one. You said it can even be arranged for orchestra now!”
Seoha shook his head.
“It has no narrative arc. This piece is like a diary where a gloomy everyday life continues without incident. No one would like it.”
Lawrence laughed in a low voice.
“That is certainly one aspect of it. But you’re wrong to say no one would like it. The prose style of that diary is exceptionally elegant. Furthermore, someone may recognize the structural beauty of the piece hidden within it.”
Hadn’t he himself been captivated by it and come all this way?
“That’s what I’m saying! There’s no way a piece like this can just be left as a study! It would be a loss to music history.”
“Even so...”
Seoha trailed off, as if reluctant.
“Yu Seoha.”
“Hm?”
“How do you think I’d feel if some mathematician made a brilliant proof and just hid it away? As one musician, I want to see this piece come out into the world.”
“...”
Seoha’s face was full of stubbornness.
Left with no choice, Gyeoul decided to use the card she had kept hidden away.
“Do you remember how you promised to grant me one request before?”
Seoha flinched.
“I remember.”
“I’ll use it now.”
Gyeoul knew Seoha well. Once he made a promise, he always kept it.
Lawrence looked at the two of them with an interested expression.
“...Fine. But not like this.”
If it were revealed as it was, he felt he would want to sink into the ground from embarrassment.
“Then?”
“I’ll write a second movement.”
The time when he had written Ducky’s Theme was before he completed the Four Color Theorem.
It had been his darkest, most hopeless period. Since then, the image of Ducky within him had also changed considerably.
“What?”
His tone made it sound as if he were ordering one more cheeseburger.
Seoha took a notebook out of his bag. It was not staff paper for composition, but an ordinary exercise book.
Scratch, scratch.
As lunchtime approached, people began flooding in. The restaurant grew noisier and noisier. A line formed in front of the counter as people waited to order.
“No pickles on the burger, and add two slices of cheese.”
“Can I upsize the drink?”
“For here. Please cook the patty well done.”
Sssssizzle—
The sound of meat cooking on the grill, the bang-bang of a fry basket being shaken, and the voices of employees calling out numbers all mingled together.
Someone must have dropped their food, because they began floundering in panic, and laughter burst out here and there.
Scratch, scratch.
But Seoha’s eyes were fixed only on the paper. As if he could not hear any of the surrounding noise at all.
Unidentifiable symbols piled up in the notebook.
Numbers inserted themselves between notes. Fractions appeared above rhythms, and beneath the measures were sequences that looked like matrices.
Sitting across from him, Gyeoul quietly watched him.
Seoha was completely absorbed in composing.
His long, slender fingers moved as they neatly held the pencil. Blue veins appeared and disappeared on the back of his hand. Even the way he frowned as if something were not working out became a picture.
Gyeoul knew that expression of Seoha’s.
Thump, thump.
To hide the sound of her heart suddenly racing, Gyeoul needlessly drank through her straw with a slurping sound.
How much time had passed?
When the shop had quieted down again, Seoha put down his pen.
“It’s finished.”
“May I see it?”
Lawrence hurriedly took the notebook.
But the score Seoha had written was something only Seoha himself could understand.
“Mm... Do you play at all?”
When Seoha nodded, Lawrence took out his phone.
Beep, beep, beep, beep—
“I have a favor to ask. Could you arrange an empty practice room for me? A hall would be even better.”
Surprisingly, MIT had a professional music program, the Music & Theater Arts Section.
It was a place where composition, orchestration, and research on the convergence of music and science were conducted. With a single phone call, Lawrence was able to easily secure a hall.
Click—
“Let’s go at once.”
Lawrence hung up and stood.
When they stepped outside, cold air brushed their faces. Gyeoul glanced back.
‘My God. I can’t believe I’m actually seeing this.’
It was said that Mozart often wrote music in restaurants.
The anecdote that notes he had scrawled on napkins later became masterpieces like The Marriage of Figaro had been passed down like a legend in music history.
As if he knew the way well, Lawrence walked ahead and turned deeper into the campus.
Killian Hall.
It had a small number of seats, but it was famous for its highly accurate acoustics. At the center stood a Steinway grand piano.
He went up onto the stage and clapped once.
Clap—
A short resonance traveled along the walls and returned.
Lawrence nodded in satisfaction.
“This will do.”
Seoha sat in front of the piano.
After taking a moment to steady his breath, he placed his hands on the keys.
Ding—
It was the first movement.
It was a piece he had already played dozens of times, but music was, by nature, realized most accurately in the hands of its creator.
‘His playing ability is quite good as well.’
It did not reach the level of a professional, but it was more than enough to present his own piece.
His expression looked pained.
As though sinking slowly into the sea with a weight tied to him, Seoha soaked into the emotions of that time.
‘What kind of life must he have lived...’
A single theme transformed through various mathematical laws.
‘This is the world Seoha lives in.’
Gyeoul felt as though she might cry.
It was so heavy and so lonely. The time he had spent supporting himself without relying on anyone, the weight of that pain, was conveyed heartrendingly through the music.
The first movement ended.
Seoha immediately began playing the next page.
‘Huh?’
Lawrence’s eyes widened.
The center of the harmony had shifted. The pattern that had repeated in the previous section was nowhere to be seen.
And yet, the piece still felt unified.
Lawrence unconsciously began counting the harmonies.
‘C–F–B♭–E♭...’
Lawrence swallowed his breath.
The harmony had not changed. He had inverted the entire structure of the piece.
‘This young man truly does like Bach.’
The intervals that descended in the first movement now ascended by the same distances in the second movement. But it was not merely the direction that had been reversed. The notes that had created tension became lighter. Chords that had been intentionally unstable were, one by one, finding harmony.
Like a Bach fugue, he had used retrograde and inversion. But it was far more advanced than that. Perhaps because the elements he used for symmetry were not just one or two.
‘How many calculations went into this?’
The entirety of the second movement was a device for mathematical contrast with the first movement.
A beautiful structure, an elegant melody, and deep, profound emotion.
‘Magnificent. It is a masterpiece.’
At last, Seoha’s performance reached the point corresponding to the deepest abyss of the first movement.
Seoha straightened his back.
Then he drew in a deep breath.
Boom—
The intervals that had been suppressed throughout the entire first movement now pushed one another upward and exploded.
The resonance and melody struck the walls and ceiling, then poured back down onto the stage.
The emotions that had been held down were released all at once.
Tears streamed from Gyeoul’s eyes.
The performance ended.
Seoha looked relieved, as though he had vomited out something he had been holding in for a very long time.
Lawrence, as if shocked, could not say anything for a while.
“It seems you may have chosen the wrong major.”
Lawrence was certain.
Seoha had more talent for composition than for mathematics.
He shook his head as if feeling sorry.
A mathematician had written a piece of this level. He could already see, without needing to look, how many composers that fact would drive to despair.