Haewon had nothing he wanted. It had been like that since he was young. There was nothing he wanted to have or become. His father, who pitied him, poured money into Haewon’s special education, saying that if he had no interest in studying, he should be good at at least one thing. Haewon’s father thought that if he resembled his biological mother, he would have a talent for the arts. He made him try everything from piano, painting, and horseback riding, to violin.
Among them, he played the violin the longest. When he was young, he won awards at competitions he entered without knowing anything about it. He entered Yewon Arts High School as a violinist and entered university as a violinist as well.
When he was attending music school, he had a Guadagnini that even professors coveted. The curves of the nearly 300-year-old European spruce were graceful and its tone was deep and delicate.
It took him six years to graduate from university with the best instrument, and he entered the Hankyung Foundation’s best orchestra in Asia and left within a few months.
If it were a place where one could persevere and graduate, Haewon would have persevered in the orchestra and graduated somehow. But it was not a place to graduate. When Haewon left the symphony orchestra, he told his father that he was going to become a freelancer.
His father was a layman when it came to music. Just as he took it literally when a college student in music school told him that nine-year-old Haewon had the talent for absolute pitch, he accepted Haewon’s transition to freelancing in a similar way. He saw freelancing as something better than the Hankyung Symphony.
After all, Haewon was a violinist. He was a performer recognized enough that a talented composer specifically wrote a violin solo for him and nominated him.
Although he had little work outside of that, he was a freelancer who could make a living even without giving private lessons. Because his father was rich.
The summer sunlight was transparent and warm. Thanks to the hotel’s air conditioner running full blast, the temperature inside was low enough to require a cardigan. The sunlight covered Haewon’s body like a warm blanket. The goosebumps and chills that appeared for a moment subsided.
The man reached out and picked up some crispy cooked bacon. A talented composer and producer, he was an American citizen, and as such, the way he ate and had sex was Western. However, his name was ‘Kim Jaemin’, which was quite Korean.
Haewon participated in several of the classical albums he produced. Among them was the so-called jackpot. His work was mainly done at home in the United States, and producing and recording were done at a studio in Seoul. When he came to Korea, he was a person who stayed for as long as several months or weeks, or as short as a few days.
“When I’m with you, it’s like…… time flows differently.”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Kim Jaemin said in a whisper. Haewon didn’t react much to his words, keeping his eyes fixed on the window. Although he meant it in a good way, he was neither happy nor flattered.
Ljfkbc kjr oecvjwfcajiis j ribatoei qfgrbc. Lf cfnfg ogfaafv, jcv tf cfnfg xcfk atf wfjclcu bo gfraifrrcfrr. Pa kjr cjaegji obg Blw Ajfwlc, ktb ilnfv j yers ilof, ab offi atf njief bo alwf vloofgfcais ogbw rbwfbcf ilxf tlw. Blw Ajfwlc kjr ajxlcu la kfii. Lf rffwfv ab atlcx atja mbwlcu ab Vfbei ab kbgx kjr ilxf j njmjalbc ab atf Zfvlafggjcfjc.
Whenever he got off at the airport, he would call Haewon, who would never turn him down. After the bacon, he picked up the bread. Breadcrumbs fell onto his shirt.
“Practice well. I won’t go easy on you when we start recording.”
“Like when we have sex?”
He laughed out loud at Haewon’s words. He lazily leaned his body against the back of the sofa.
“Let’s give it a try.”
He muttered to himself, looked back at Haewon, and continued speaking.
“In a studio when no one is around.”
“Every recording studio has CCTVs installed these days.”
“Oh, is that so?”
He sighed, scratching the back of his head roughly as if he were truly disappointed.
Haewon felt comfortable with him. He liked that he didn’t go overboard with his jokes, and he liked his neat clothing style, Western-style eating habits, and sex. The best thing about it all was that he would return to the United States after a certain period of time.
He was clearly aware of his situation and had reason to control his impulses. He didn’t force Haewon to feel a certain way. He didn’t even try to control him.
When he left, they were completely separate objects. Even while they were together, they didn’t make any future plans. It was probably comfortable as it was an easy-going relationship with no proper foundation. Neither of them liked being clingy with each other.
“You’ve at least taken a look at the sheet music, right?”
“I haven’t even opened it yet.”
The man chuckled. This was something that a composer should not tolerate. Kim Jaemin laughed often. It meant that he liked him. The number of times he smiled felt somewhat wasteful.
∞ ∞ ∞
Haewon played the violin for four to five hours a day. He had been doing this for 20 years, and although he told Kim Jaemin that he was very lazy and found it bothersome, he rarely skipped practice.
He didn’t do it because he wanted to, but rather out of habit. For Haewon, practicing had become part of his daily routine, like washing his face and brushing his teeth.
The tips of his fingers were calloused and his fingernails were always sharply trimmed. Sometimes he hated feeling stuck in a box like this. When he straightened the bridge, which seemed to be slightly bent, the sharp metallic sound of the four strings struck his ears, sounding strained.
He focused on each note using the entire bow. Every time he moved the bow, the heavily applied rosin settled down like dust. He closed his eyes and turned the peg to tune the string to the note A. He did it yesterday too, but after a day, the string became loose and went down about a semitone.
He closed his eyes and slowly played Bach’s Partita No. 2, starting from the first movement and continuing through to the Sarabande.
Kim Jaemin recommended modern music, but Haewon liked classical music. He liked Bach’s Partita No. 2, especially the unaccompanied sonata, Chaconne, which he used to play every time he practiced.
Although Haewon didn’t memorize the entire partita, he was able to play No. 2 entirely without sheet music. He also liked Vitali’s Chaconne but played Bach’s Chaconne more often.
The heavy Adagio in D minor could be like a funeral dirge to see off someone’s death, or it could be as gentle as the solemn smile of a strong man.
Haewon frantically moved his bow. Fingers, which were unusually longer than those of ordinary people, pressed hard against the fingerboard. He pressed the bow so hard that the string seemed like it would break, and when he opened my eyes, time had already passed.
The professor who taught him said that he felt tense every time he listened to his partita. He said he was anxious that the string would break while playing the string with such strength, and Haewon used to have stiff pain in his wrist as well as his entire arm when he played the partita.
In the soundproofed officetel, only the noise he made echoed in emptiness. Even though it was on the main street, he couldn’t even hear the car horn. After Haewon finished playing, he had a habit of staring out the window of the empty officetel. As if there was someone there where only the gray city was visible.
The sheet music composed by Kim Jaemin was spread out on the music stand. It was a violin solo song that was used as the OST for a hit drama, then remade and released full-length in an official album with a few songs in addition to the main track.
Thankfully, Kim Jaemin rejected the top soloists recommended by the record company in favor of Haewon, an unknown violinist who had just come out of the Hankyung Symphony. Haewon also knew that sex was not the price. It took time to persuade the producer, but Kim Jaemin thought that Haewon’s rough but sharp and delicate phrasing, which used the bow well near the bridge, was perfect for this piece.
The score was not that difficult. The first performance was completed in one go with almost no mistakes. Everything about Kim Jaemin was to his taste, but not his musicality. It was ephemeral, provocative, and not classical. This was a matter of preference.
After practicing a couple more times, he lost interest, so he put the violin away in its case.
Haewon spent the day lazily. After 9 AM, he woke up, took a shower, warmed up some bread in the toaster, chewed a piece, swallowed it, and started practicing the violin before his hair was even dry. He played the violin almost every day, for as little as two hours or as long as four or five hours.
When he practiced, he mainly played songs that he had memorized or received guidance on. He didn’t want to have preconceptions about new songs, so he learned them through lessons from his professor. When he happened to hear a performance by a famous soloist, he tried to find the piece they played, but in general, the repertoire did not change.
When he finished practicing, he was hungry. Haewon did not cook. He could buy side dishes and soup at a store, and even Haewon knew how to cook rice. He would wash the rice and put it in the rice cooker, and nowadays, the rice cooker would even tell him kindly that the rice was ready and that he could eat it.
After filling his stomach, he would put on his ball cap and go out into the street. He would walk aimlessly among the busy pedestrians, go into a bookstore to look at books, and sit in a cafe to kill time.
He would come home and turn on the TV around the time a normal office worker would get home from work. He didn’t watch it and just left it on for noise in the background. The silence of the place where even the noise from the street could not be heard because of the soundproofing was unbearable.
