SSL 5

“Wasn’t Kang Doyoon good?”

After music class ended, the girls chattered as they walked down the hallway.

“Was he good? Wasn’t Yeonkyung’s hand speed much faster?”

“But Kang Doyoon’s piece was better, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, really? I was thinking, what kind of piece did he even choose.”

“Ah, you think so? I got major goosebumps. You know that part in the middle where the notes suddenly get really dense. That part, the teacher said it was different from the original. That it was an arrangement.”

“Well, you’re a weirdo. You like avant-garde stuff like that.”

“Hey, you little….”

The sound of laughter. A tall girl with long, curly hair that looked like it had been permed laughed especially loudly. The one who was just called a weirdo.

Jaehyun’s group was walking right behind them. He did not mean to eavesdrop, but their voices naturally entered his ears. The class president, Kim Yoon, who had been listening quietly, tossed out a remark to the person next to him.

“He was good.”

“Good at what.”

Woo Jincheol furrowed his brow, looking displeased.

“He made a ton of mistakes. It only sounds good to people who don’t know any better. He just kind of glossed over things and moved on.”

“Isn’t glossing things over well a skill in itself?”

Kim Yoon laughed, holding his flute case. Jincheol muttered, “bullshit,” then cursed again upon seeing Jaehyun’s face.

“What’s with this bastard again?”

“Huh? What, why.”

“You’re grinning like a moron.”

“Since when.”

Jaehyun quickly feigned ignorance. Jincheol stared at him for a moment before turning his head and spitting out another comment.

“Anyway, that bastard usually looks like such a loser, so even doing just that much makes him stand out.”

“You dislike him so proactively, huh? Are you secretly interested?”

“Ah, crazy…. That’s not it. Last time, with Park Kanghyuk from Class 1….”

When Kim Yoon asked with a smirk, Jincheol looked disgusted and started whispering something. Jaehyun, only half listening, glanced behind him. Doyoon was not there.

During classes that required moving to a different room, Doyoon was usually the last to leave and the last to return. He would start moving after all the other students had left the classroom, and when returning to the homeroom from the other classroom, he would also slowly follow alone after everyone else had gone.

It seemed he was even later today. It looked like he was still sitting in the music room. Well, if he had followed right behind, the other students might have tried to talk to him, which he probably would not like. After all, there had been applause and cheers right after his performance ended.

At that moment, Doyoon’s expression had been extremely poor. His face had turned bright red as he clenched his teeth and returned to his seat. For a kid who always sat there with a pale, expressionless face, it was the first time I had seen his complexion change so drastically. It seemed he was the type to get very nervous in front of others.

In truth, Doyoon’s performance was not technically outstanding. What Woo Jincheol and the other girl said was right. Girl number 7, Lee Yeonkyung, had perfectly executed a much more difficult piece. Doyoon had made many mistakes and there were quite a few parts he glossed over. Fundamentally, his hands were slow.

Still, his interpretation of the piece was interesting, and the parts he arranged here and there were also good. The most amazing thing was that I could understand it. How Doyoon had interpreted the notes, and how he had arranged them.

Listening to him, I was immediately reminded of how he would chaotically underline passages in the Korean literature textbook. The way he would draw lines crisscrossing between lines and columns, and even circle particles or commas. That was not the right way to read text. It would only become incoherent.

But it worked for music. He mixed the tonality of the 8th variation into the middle of the 5th, and slowed down the end of the 7th with the rhythm of the 6th. While moving freely back and forth, horizontally and vertically, between musical phrases, he also emphasized and played every single note, one by one, without discrimination, right where it stood. Even the empty spaces like breath marks were made to stand out as clearly as the notes themselves.

Thanks to that, it was not a performance that flowed like water, but rather one like an abstract painting, filled with dots scattered across the screen without direction, like pointillism. A compositional method similar to what I had seen a few times in various art books, thanks to my noona. It was interesting. Besides…. Jaehyun replayed the memory.

<I like number 4. Ah, and number 8 is good too.>

<The Goldberg Variations. I will… be playing… from number 4 to number 8.>

It could not be a coincidence.

This was not a matter of being self-conscious. For things to line up this perfectly, it would be stranger to think it was a coincidence. In terms of a test question, that would be choosing the wrong answer. The correct answer is that ‘Kang Doyoon intentionally selected pieces that included numbers 4 and 8 for Cha Jaehyun to hear.’

He felt a sense of pride. He had been so reluctant when I asked him to try playing it on the keyboard at my house. Was he embarrassed because he had not practiced enough? Or, maybe he just did not like the keyboard as an instrument? As he was mulling it over, a single word grazed his ear.

“…so Kang Doyoon was an outcast in the entire school throughout middle school.”

“Did Park Kanghyuk say that?”

“Yeah. Park Kanghyuk said he was in the same class as Kang Doyoon in the first year. Their houses were close by too.”

“What were you talking about?”

Jaehyun belatedly chimed in.

“I was lost in thought for a second and didn’t hear.”

“Ah, that.”

They had just about reached the classroom. While Kim Yoon was unlocking and opening the front door, Jincheol and Jaehyun stood to one side of the hallway and talked for a moment.

Woo Jincheol lowered his voice and whispered for a good while. It was something that happened in the first year of middle school. Park Kanghyuk said he saw Kang Doyoon late at night on his way back from his private academy. What that guy was doing, crouched down in the shade of a shrub on the lawn of a park near the apartment complex.

Kang Doyoon had always been subtly ostracized anyway. Because the kid was a bit strange. But he said that after Park Kanghyuk spread a rumor about that incident throughout the entire school, he started getting seriously bullied. As all the kids began to shun Doyoon, they would pretend not to see even when Park Kanghyuk’s group openly tormented Doyoon. Whether it was locking him in a locker room cabinet for the entire gym class, or taking his shoes or textbooks and throwing them away.

After finishing his story, Woo Jincheol grinned as if he had shared a delightful secret. However, his expression changed when Jaehyun also smiled faintly and uttered a chilling remark.

“That Park Kanghyuk is a fucking asshole.”

“Huh?”

“I didn’t know he was the ringleader of school violence in middle school. That’s disgusting. And to think I hung out with him all this time.”

“Hey, how is that level of stuff school violence? And, didn’t you just hear? That bastard Kang Doyoon was the one doing some psycho shit.”

“Stop trying so hard to make excuses.”

Jaehyun said, without letting his smile fade.

“You gang up on one person and torment him, and you have so much to say. The ones who bullied are in the wrong. Even if he really is a psycho, Park Kanghyuk and his friends are ten times more psycho.”

“You always take the side of losers like him in situations like th—”

“And you’re just the same, passing around this kind of stuff like it’s some fun gossip.”

Jincheol stared at him blankly. A moment of silence. Jaehyun met Jincheol’s gaze with an expressionless face, then at some point, he whirled around and headed for the classroom’s front door by himself.

But as soon as he turned, his eyes met someone’s, and he inadvertently slowed his pace. A short boy with plump cheeks. Song Youngsoo.

He was a kid who sat in the very back. He was not someone who stood out, but he seemed to get along well with a couple of his friends from the comics club. That Song Youngsoo was standing in a corner of the hallway, looking this way with an unusually pale face. What is this?

Was he standing there eavesdropping on our conversation? Why are there so many people interested in other people’s gossip. His already foul mood sank even further. When he returned to his seat, Yang Juhwan, who was sitting in front, saw Jaehyun’s expression and half-opened his lips, as if about to ask what was wrong. But just before he could, a loud voice boomed from the front of the classroom.

“Hey, Cha Jaehyun you son of a bitch. Why do you always act like this sometimes?”

Woo Jincheol was walking this way, his face flushed red. Jaehyun, who was about to sit down, deliberately tilted his head and looked back.

“Like what?”

“Are you acting all high and mighty by yourself, you fucker.”

“Why are you suddenly flipping out. Are you sick somewhere?”

“Hey, hey.”

“Dude.”

Yang Juhwan quickly stood up to intervene. Kim Yoon had also approached at some point and separated the two of them, pointing to their respective seats.

“Stop it. Go and sit down. Don’t make things hard for your class president. Okay?”

“….”

Jaehyun looked around. The classroom had suddenly become quiet. The other students had stopped what they were doing and were staring this way. The two tallest boys in the class creating a hostile atmosphere had made them shrink back.

Woo Jincheol, his eyes blazing, was the first to back away, muttering more curses under his breath. Jaehyun also plopped down in his seat and, almost unconsciously, turned his eyes toward the window.

Doyoon had not arrived yet. Of course. Having left the music room that late, he was probably, at best, just coming up the stairs now. If he had thought Doyoon was nearby, he would not have even tried to listen to Woo Jincheol’s story earlier. Staring at the empty seat, Jaehyun recalled two numbers. 41 points, 43 points.

In his third year of middle school, Doyoon’s Korean and English scores hovered in the 40s. His other humanities subjects were similar. Was he simply lacking in skill, or was it hard for him to concentrate because school life was so difficult? If even his textbooks were being taken away, it could have been the latter.

His heart pricked inside his chest. A damp, unpleasant feeling, as if he had drunk dirty water with his ears. Just before the bell for fourth period rang, Doyoon finally walked in slowly from the back of the classroom and sat down. Only then did Jaehyun turn his gaze away from the window.

Even by lunchtime, Jaehyun had not exchanged words with Jincheol. During lunch, Woo Jincheol went off to the school store on his own. But during fifth period gym class, they were in the same group, and during the break in sixth period, they were back to sitting around together, smiling, albeit awkwardly. They had barely spoken to each other directly, but they chatted with Kim Yoon and Yang Juhwan between them.

“Finals are in exactly two weeks. Everyone study well. Class president, lead the greeting.”

As soon as the end-of-day homeroom was over, Jaehyun stood up from his seat. Jincheol came over and clapped a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, you wanna go to the club room and solve some problems before you go? I got a math cheat sheet from a student council sunbae.”

“…The student council hands out that kind of stuff too?”

“I didn’t know either, but they gave it to me when I asked.”

Jaehyun felt a little awkward. He could feel that Jincheol was trying to be nice and make up, so it was burdensome to refuse, but he had no choice.

“What can I do. I changed my part-time job shift again. I have to go now.”

“No, what the…. You work your part-time job even during finals?”

“You think they’d make an exception for something like that? I work right up until the day before. Anyway, thanks. Can you show me the cheat sheet later?”

“Pizza bread.”

“Okay.”

Replying, Jaehyun gave the guy’s shoulder a light punch, slung his bag on, and slipped out the back door. Today, convenience store part-time job from 5 to 10 PM. In exchange, he did not work on Saturday.

Jaehyun had asked his friend to switch shifts for him this time. It was because he wanted to keep at least one day of the weekend completely free. He wanted to focus solely on his study session with Doyoon. Since Doyoon was a kid who concentrates well, he figured he could rapidly boost his results even more by sitting next to him and teaching him continuously for about six hours.

As for Jaehyun’s own finals preparation, it was already almost finished anyway. If you review every day, you do not really need to study separately just because it is exam period. Let’s just raise Doyoon’s grades. Not just his overall average, but for math, if he could just fix his calculation mistakes, he could easily aim for first place in the whole school.

Then Doyoon himself would be happy, but the attitude of the kids in the class would also change. Just like during music class today, the kids would see Doyoon in a new light. It meant that they would not just stop looking down on him, but would actually be in awe.

For some reason, that thought made him very happy. After finishing his part-time job, Jaehyun slept well, went to school, and after school, he came home, finished preparing for the tutoring session, and made a simple dinner for himself. After airing out the place, washing the dishes, and cleaning up, the doorbell rang at 9:25 PM.

“Come in.”

Doyoon came in, neatly taking off his sneakers and placing them in the shoe cabinet. On weekends, 1:30 in the afternoon, on weekdays, 9:30 at night. He said he could not come any earlier.