The curtain call continued.
Lawrence disappeared behind the stage and reappeared five or six times, yet the audience’s standing ovation showed no sign of stopping.
Led by the maestro’s hand, Gyeoul stepped toward the front of the stage.
Facing the flood of spotlights head-on, the two of them bowed their heads. Was it because of the passionate performance?
Her neatly pinned-up hair had come a little loose and clung to her neck, but even that seemed like a calculated piece of staging; Gyeoul was sorrowfully beautiful.
Clap, clap, clap!
The lingering emotion of the stage still had not faded.
Once again, she took Lawrence’s hand and bowed gracefully at the waist.
Waaaaah—
Amid the audience’s cheers, Lawrence spoke.
“Gyeoul, it seems the audience has no intention of letting you go just yet.”
Lawrence gestured toward the seats with his chin and smiled. Just as he said, far from gathering their coats, the audience was in a frenzy, as though possessed by something.
Even Lawrence had seen only a few times in his life the sight of New York’s discerning music lovers displaying such naked yearning.
“Would one more piece be possible? If we don’t calm this heat, I fear it will be difficult to go home tonight.”
Gyeoul thought for a moment, then smiled mischievously.
She exchanged a few quiet words with Lawrence. He raised his thumb as if to say it was a good idea, then walked toward the stage staff.
A few minutes later, Lawrence appeared onstage with a microphone in hand. With a face full of mischief, he addressed the audience.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. To repay your fervent support, we have prepared a special order.”
The murmuring seats fell silent. Everyone looked expectant, waiting to hear what would come from Lawrence’s mouth.
“Allow me to introduce the composer of the miraculous piece we heard today.”
When he pointed to the second-floor balcony, everyone’s gaze shifted.
Click—
No sooner had Lawrence finished speaking than a dazzling pin light illuminated Seoha’s seat.
At the same time, Seoha’s clearly flustered face appeared in close-up on the screen.
His disheveled hair, flushed face, and wide eyes filled with disbelief took up the entire screen.
“My God, he was that young?”
“He’s the one who made Oracle, right?”
“No way! That kid wrote that harrowing piece?”
Whispers of astonishment rose here and there. As Seoha dazedly stood from his seat, the audience members sitting by the aisle began making way for him all at once, as if by prior agreement.
While he made his way to the stage, the applause refused to die down. At the center of the stage, Gyeoul held out her hand as if urging him to come quickly.
On a stage where thousands of eyes were focused, the pianist in her dazzling dress and the mathematician in his ordinary suit stood side by side, and the heat in Geffen Hall grew even hotter.
Seoha awkwardly whispered into Gyeoul’s ear.
“What are you thinking! You know better than anyone that I don’t have the skill to stand on a stage like this.”
“So what?”
Gyeoul smiled playfully and pulled him by the hand.
Seoha hesitated before sitting down in front of the piano.
“No helping it.”
Everyone was watching him with expectant eyes. In a situation like this, running away would be disrespectful to the audience.
“What piece are we doing?”
When Seoha asked with his eyes, Gyeoul leaned in slightly and whispered so quietly it was barely audible.
“Huh?”
His eyes widened.
While learning piano from Gyeoul, Seoha had played many four-hand pieces. There were a few pieces he knew that would be suitable for a setting like this.
But Gyeoul’s request was something else entirely.
“Are you serious? Here?”
“Trust me.”
In the silence, Gyeoul placed her right hand on the keys. Seoha, too, brought his left hand to the lower register.
Their gazes briefly tangled, and the piece began.
“Beethoven Virus,” a radical reinterpretation of the third movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 8, Pathétique.
Before the assembled classical experts of the highest caliber, a cheeky prelude rang through the hall.
It was a piece she had played for fun for Seoha, who had known little about classical music; whenever she grew tired of studying math in the music room, Gyeoul would play pieces from all kinds of genres.
Her fingers moved with fluid grace, pouring out a lively melody. As if his body remembered, Seoha’s left hand kept pace as well.
“Those… those brats!”
Watching from backstage, Lawrence’s face turned pale.
The audience, who had been wondering what piece it was, also could not hide their shock once the main melody rang out.
Geffen Hall was a place like a holy ground of classical music. For that reason, the New York Philharmonic’s selections were always made with the utmost care.
Even when performing modern classical music, it was important to preserve at least a minimum of dignity and artistic justification.
And yet in such a place, on such a stage, before classical music lovers who were second to none in their conservatism, a crossover performance was unfolding.
As though openly mocking empty formalities, the selection and performance were filled with nothing but raw energy and dopamine.
“Their breathing is good. It’s as if one person is playing.”
“It doesn’t seem like their first time, does it? Were they already acquainted?”
“I had a prejudice because I heard a mathematician composed it, but his performance is solid.”
Once the shock passed, the music came through.
A fast tempo and an addictive melody. When outstanding performers set out deliberately to stimulate the peripheral nerves, the body reacted first.
Even New York’s aficionados, who had insisted on orthodox classical music, began tapping their feet in time with the beat.
Sensing the air in the hall change, Gyeoul smiled.
“After an expensive French course, you naturally start craving something stimulating.”
Seoha, too, seemed to have relaxed and was now enjoying the music.
Each time they moved on the narrow bench, their shoulders lightly touched. The familiar scent of shampoo lingered at the tip of his nose, and before he knew it, the brilliant lights of Lincoln Center had turned into the fluorescent lights of the music room at the gifted high school.
“Hey! Let’s try it like this this time.”
Gyeoul’s left hand suddenly invaded his territory. Without panicking, Seoha stretched out his right hand and snatched up the space on the keyboard that she had left empty.
There had been no agreed-upon arrangement. On a sweltering summer day in high school, they had thrown away the score and fought a childish battle as if wagering on who could arrange the piece more flashily, and now that battle was being reenacted on the stage of Lincoln Center.
“Good Lord!”
“Is that even possible?”
Seoha rose from the bench and crossed his right hand with Gyeoul’s left.
Gyeoul had wanted to properly introduce Seoha the performer to people. How astonished she herself had been when she first saw this…
Gyeoul was now playing both the bass and the main melody of the piece. Then what about Seoha?
She had intended to put him in a bind, but astonishingly, Seoha played the contrabass with his left hand and the harmonies of the winds and violins with his right.
It was like an orchestra played on a single piano.
When Gyeoul had asked how such a thing was possible, Seoha had replied with an indifferent expression.
“Because harmony is mathematics.”
As a soloist, Seoha was a performer of insufficient ability, but when supporting a performance, he became an accompanist with a talent found nowhere else in the world. Seoha was a monster of ensemble.
Seated in the front row, the critic Stephen Gould’s eyes gleamed. He had stopped his pen and was quietly staring at the stage.
A New York Philharmonic concerto, and at Geffen Hall of all places—he had felt displeasure at the fact that a crossover piece like “Beethoven Virus” was being performed here.
But as the piece developed, the furrow between his brows deepened.
“Surely this is improvisation?”
Gould murmured under his breath.
His ears, honed over a lifetime in classical music, could not be fooled. Each time Gyeoul playfully threw in a variation, Seoha filled the sudden gaps in the harmony without the slightest hesitation.
It was a grand, three-dimensional sound hard to believe was coming from a single piano.
“They’re enjoying it. Sincerely.”
The solemn atmosphere from the beginning of the concert had long since vanished.
Gyeoul’s sweat-damp hair flew as she smiled with a child’s innocent delight. In the eyes of the boy mathematician who had been so awkward, too, there was clear proof that he had been captivated by the game called music.
As the piece rushed toward its climax, their hands mingled again over the keyboard.
The improvised back-and-forth, crossing in and out of each other’s territory, drove the viewers’ dopamine to its limit.
Gyeoul looked at Seoha with smiling eyes.
“Are you having fun?”
Seoha nodded.
“Incredibly.”
Once he immersed himself in the music, not a single other thought occurred to him.
A thrilling vibration ran through his fingers on the keys. Gyeoul gave him a subtle look, then reached out with her left hand and stole the bass register.
It was a role reversal.
Taking the baton, Seoha’s right hand seized the brilliant theme in the high register.
His hand began racing madly across the keys. It was a strange sight, the two of them playing with their arms crossed.
Through the medium of music, the two were powerfully synchronized with each other.
At the dazzling performance that rang out without the slightest error, the audience let out deep exclamations.
Their bewilderment lasted only a moment; even Lawrence, standing backstage, had a smile spreading across his lips.
“So this is youth.”
Unpredictable choices, uncontrolled energy. And yet, strangely enough, the musical completeness was high. It was a performance worthy of being presented at Geffen Hall.
When he was young, there had been a time when he, too, had made all kinds of fearless attempts. Had he also been smiling like that onstage back then?
The dazzling energy emitted by young talents spread through the hall like blazing flame. The audience felt a chill thrill crawl up their spines.
Bang—
The final finale.
As though by promise, the two pairs of hands shot up into the air and stopped.
The silence lasted only an instant.
The audience sprang to their feet all at once.
“Wow! Amazing!”
“Bravo! Bravo!”
“Unbelievable!”
Were these truly the same cultured aficionados?
Thunderous cheers rang out from everywhere, and some people were stamping their feet in excitement as if they were at a rock concert.
The audience showered unstinting praise upon the two who had shown them a magical performance.
“Hah, hah.”
Seoha panted for breath and looked to the side.
With a haughty expression, Gyeoul held out her palm. Seoha took her hand. And together, they bowed their heads toward the audience.
Waaaaah!
Wheee—
Clap, clap, clap!
Cheers that seemed ready to bring down the hall, the sound of someone whistling, and even the orchestra members had come out at some point, laughing and applauding.
What they all had in common was that everyone was smiling brightly.
Beside Gyeoul as she raised her head stood Seoha. His face had regained its composure, as always.
“Damn it!”
She felt like she might cry.
Gyeoul turned her head so her expression would not be seen. And inwardly, she prayed quietly.
“If this is a dream, let it be a long summer day’s dream from which I do not wake for a very long time.”