Ba-ba-bam, la-ba-la-zza—.
6 AM. The alarm went off.
Seoha shot up out of habit and looked for his wash bag.
‘Ah... It’s not school, is it.’
It was March.
The new semester had begun, but Seoha, who had been approved for early graduation, no longer needed to go to school. He had simply been told to come in a few days for the diploma and award ceremony.
When he opened the window, the chilly dawn air flooded into the room.
Seoha picked up his phone and checked his messages.
—When can we meet?
The message showed as ‘Read.’ But there was no reply.
Not yesterday. Not the day before.
His finger hovered over the call button.
Riiiing—.
After a few rings, the call cut off.
Gyeoul was clearly avoiding him.
‘Strange.’
She was a diligent person.
The type to speak up clearly if something was bothering her. This kind of avoidance was unlike Gyeoul.
A sudden, ominous thought crossed his mind.
“Let’s go.”
He transferred buses twice and arrived at school.
A gray hoodie and sneakers. It was camouflage in the science track, but in the arts track, it was an outfit that stood out far too much.
Several gazes latched onto him.
“It’s a science track kid!”
“Huh? That’s him, right?”
Seoha didn’t slow his pace.
After confirming the music room was empty, he checked the practice room, but another student was practicing inside.
He waited for the performance to end, then knocked lightly on the door.
“Excuse me. I’m looking for Han Gyeoul, a second-year.”
A piano student with her hair tied back turned to look at him.
“Gyeoul? She didn’t come today either. I haven’t seen her all week.”
“You mean she hasn’t come to school at all?”
“Yeah, it’s weird.”
“Could it be school refusal or something?”
At Seoha’s suspicious gaze, the girl flared up in anger.
“Don’t get weird ideas! You have no idea how much we adore Gyeoul...”
Seoha bowed his head in thanks.
He sat on a bench and tried to organize his thoughts.
Something had happened to Gyeoul.
Something important enough that she couldn’t come to school, and something she wanted to hide enough that she wouldn’t answer his calls.
He suddenly remembered a conversation they’d had.
“What if, hypothetically, you get sick during break? I won’t be there then...”
The expression on Gyeoul’s face as she looked at him with worry.
‘What did I say back then?’
“It’s fine. You’ve made it this far just fine. You can find a way to handle it yourself.”
Gyeoul had nodded, seeming relieved.
“If you ever need me, come find me at home.”
He scrolled up and found the home address she had sent him.
[xx-gil, Daesagwan-ro, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul]
A neighborhood he had never been to, but he had no time to hesitate.
Seoha went to the terminal and boarded a bus bound for Seoul.
[Seat 44]
He didn’t like the number.
He hastily plugged in his earphones and searched for music.
[Han Gyeoul Private Session Vol. 3]
The bus entered the highway and began to pick up speed.
Seoha closed his eyes and pressed play on the CD player.
A performance by Gyeoul, for Seoha alone.
The studio’s high-performance microphone had even captured the sound of Gyeoul catching her breath.
Doom—, Doom—.
A flowing melody spread as the right hand joined the steady rhythm created by the left.
Having reached a considerable level in piano himself, Seoha finally understood.
Gyeoul was an incredible pianist.
In the music room, the studio, at competitions—she gave a different performance depending on the venue. Seoha thought that perhaps she instinctively grasped the acoustics and sought out the best possible sound.
He got off at the terminal, transferred to the subway and then another bus, and made his way to the address.
Seoha was already quite exhausted.
The road gradually narrowed. But conversely, the walls grew taller.
Every gate had a small nameplate and intercom attached.
Only when he arrived at the blue dot on the map did Seoha stop walking.
A granite wall about twice the height of a person, with neatly trimmed trees rising above it.
Seoha checked the address once more.
It was unmistakable.
Intimidated by the sight of a mansion that looked like something out of a movie, Seoha paused briefly, then pressed the doorbell firmly.
Ding-dong.
A woman’s voice came through.
“Who is it?”
“I’m Yoo Seoha, a friend of Gyeoul’s.”
A brief silence.
But soon, along with an electronic tone, the iron gate opened.
Squeak.
Inside, a woman wearing a neat ivory blouse was standing there.
She had eyes resembling Gyeoul’s, but an unmistakable exhaustion showed in her expression.
“You’re Yoo Seoha, yes?”
She nodded as if she knew him, then forced a smile.
“Yes, I’m sorry for showing up so suddenly. I couldn’t get in touch with Gyeoul. Is something wrong?”
She didn’t answer.
She simply gestured for Seoha to come inside.
A vast, lavish living room unlike anything he had seen in his life.
Several expensive-looking paintings hung on the walls. Even Seoha, who had no eye for art, could guess that the person who had designed and decorated this house possessed an extraordinary aesthetic sense.
She sat on the sofa and spoke with difficulty.
“Gyeoul... isn’t feeling well right now.”
“Is she sick?”
At Seoha’s urgent voice, she smiled faintly and shook her head.
“It’s probably nothing serious. She just messed up a competition. But I think the shock was so great that she hasn’t been able to break out of her slump.”
“Ah...”
Seoha let out a sigh of relief.
“Thank you for coming, but I don’t think my daughter wants to see anyone right now. By the way, were you and Gyeoul close?”
At her question, Seoha thought for a moment, then took out CDs from his bag.
One, two, three.
Her eyes widened at the CDs stacking neatly on the table. Then she burst out laughing as if she understood.
“So that’s why it was strange when she said she was going to the studio. She usually hates recording so much...”
Thinking she had misunderstood, Seoha hastily tried to explain.
“Ah... There’s a special reason between us.”
“It’s fine. Gyeoul is in the practice room, so go on in.”
She shook her head and stood up.
Seoha also got up hesitantly and followed her down the hallway.
‘Incredible.’
One entire wall of the living room was occupied by trophies.
Dozens of plaques and photographs,
international competitions, youth piano festivals, various newspaper articles. In them, Gyeoul was smiling with a bright expression.
“This way.”
Gyeoul’s mother pointed to the end of the hallway.
A dark wooden door was visible.
A small nameplate hung on the door. Crooked metal letters were engraved into the wood.
[Han Gyeoul’s Practice Room]
“She made that when she was little, overjoyed to finally have her own practice room. Her father had it made into a door sign.”
Seoha stopped briefly in front of the door.
He had expected to hear piano sounds, but he couldn’t sense any movement from inside.
“These days she stays in there all day.”
“Is she practicing?”
“I’m not sure. I think she’s just looking at it...”
Click.
The door slowly opened.
* * *
Gyeoul was lying on the practice room floor.
Lights glimmering beneath a black glossy surface,
in a silence as if the world had stopped, she stared blankly at the piano.
“Why are you in there if you’re not even practicing? If it’s hard, just rest in bed.”
Gyeoul didn’t answer.
She would just go into the practice room, close the door, and lie down on the floor.
“Mom, then I’ll grow distant from the piano.”
Even if she couldn’t play, she wanted to be by its side.
Until recently, she had spent all day in front of the piano, but now she didn’t have the confidence to press a single key.
The stage from that day replayed in her mind.
The hot lights, the audience’s sighs, and her trembling hands. All of it was still infinitely repeating inside her, never ending.
Click.
The firmly closed door opened.
As Seoha stepped into the practice room, Gyeoul turned her head. Their eyes met.
“Kyaaaaah!”
Gyeoul screamed and turned away to hide her face.
“Wh-why are you here?”
“Because I was worried, obviously. Why didn’t you reply to my texts?”
“Wh-what do you expect, showing up like this all of a sudden?”
“Because I don’t have much time left.”
“...”
Gyeoul tried to speak, then closed her mouth again.
“...Wait a minute.”
As if determined not to show her face, she walked strangely while staring at the wall, then slipped out of the practice room.
When Gyeoul returned thirty minutes later, she looked neat and tidy.
“Who are you?”
Light makeup and hair neatened with a blow dryer,
dressed in a neat white one-piece and a beige cardigan.
“This is the real me.”
A proud expression and confident gestures. It was Gyeoul’s usual self.
But when her eyes met Seoha’s, she slightly averted her gaze.
“Sorry, as you know, my memory is too good.”
Seeing a healthy Gyeoul, jokes came easily.
“Stop talking nonsense! What is it? Do you need a therapy session?”
At the unexpected words, a sharp pain throbbed deep in Seoha’s chest.
All this time, he had only been indebted to Gyeoul. He had been healed by her performances and had even gained important mathematical clues. It was a debt that couldn’t be repaid by merely teaching her some math.
Yet even in this situation, Gyeoul was worried about him.
“Tell me in detail. What happened?”
Gyeoul hesitated for a moment, then began to speak with an expression as if she might cry.
“That day, my luck was really bad.”
She had a restless night before the competition.
Perhaps because she had slept strangely, her neck was stiff and her fingers wouldn’t even move properly.
“That was the first time in my life I failed the preliminaries.”
Seoha suddenly had a question.
“Wasn’t it simply because you weren’t in good physical condition?”
Gyeoul sniffled and shook her head.
“Of course I thought so too.”
At the next competition, Gyeoul had been in perfect condition.
But the moment she confidently pressed the first key on stage, she knew.
Her fingertips were stiff.
But it wasn’t just because of nerves.
The feeling of the keys depressing, the vibrations of the sound resonating—none of it reached her fingertips.
‘It was definitely fine during practice...’
The second preliminary failure was a much bigger shock than the first. There was no excuse.
“You remember the day I failed the first preliminary round?”
At Seoha’s question, she nodded. Gyeoul remembered everything from that day.
“Tell me slowly. Everything!”
Seoha’s eyes grew serious.
‘This is the realm of psychology.’
He had devoured dozens of books on psychology and psychiatry.
Following mathematics, physics, and computer engineering, psychology was Seoha’s fourth field of expertise, so to speak.
Listening to Gyeoul’s story, Seoha was able to diagnose her condition with relative accuracy.
Sensory Dissociation, where psychological trauma and the disconnection of physical sensation occur simultaneously.
Gyeoul’s brain was recognizing the stage as ‘danger.’
Her detailed memory was acting like a conditioned reflex, sending signals to her fingers not to move.
But it was still in the early stages.
‘What she needs is a single success, and a Safety Memory capable of overcoming the fear.’
“Wait...”
He thought there might be a way.
Gyeoul’s performances brought Seoha stability. This meant their frequencies matched.
In neuroscience, this was a phenomenon called ‘neural synchronization.’
Then couldn’t Gyeoul also find stability in his heartbeat?
It was at least worth testing.
Seoha stood up from his seat.
At his serious expression, Gyeoul gulped.
“Han Gyeoul, listen to me without misunderstanding.”
“Okay.”
Gyeoul, seated on the piano bench, looked up at Seoha.
“Would you bring your ear to my chest?”
Her face turning bright red, Gyeoul covered herself with both hands as if protecting her body.
“Are you crazy?”
A glint of contempt flashed in her eyes.