Dedicated to Liv Chanin, who has only ever been a source of much-needed encouragement when writer's block rears its ugly head.
To us, and the stories that live inside us, the ones that only we can tell.
Happy birthday.
...
The music should have soared.
It should have filled the high-vaulted arches of the concert hall, pressed fresh meaning into the chests of a restive audience, and drawn the fractured, exhausted ranks of the Seoul Philharmonic Symphony back together, if only for one aching hour.
Instead, a thin, brittle chord wavered in the air, hung undecided, and then snapped.
The silence that followed was suffocating—a silence edged with embarrassment, not awe.
From his perch in the nosebleed seats, Kang Do-hyun could feel his jaw clench so hard it hurt. He watched the conductor—a graying man of uncertain age and no particular skill—wince at the closing smatter of applause. The orchestra trailed offstage, heads down, instruments clutched tight to chests as if they could protect themselves against disappointment.
Do-hyun waited until the last of the concertgoers funneled into the velvet dusk, their breath pluming like smoke in the chilly air, then moved, long legs eating up the distance to the stage door. He didn't speak as the other musicians trickled past him, but their glances stung with the same wordless shame he carried like an extra violin case.
They were dying. Not with drama, but with the gradual, miserable erosion of mediocrity.
Rumor, as always, spread before truth: a new conductor—some "miracle worker" imported from Europe, a beta (of all things) with a knack for the impossible. The board's Hail Mary before the final curtain fell.
Do-hyun pressed a hand to his temples, desperate for relief... or revolution.
…
Across the city, in a small apartment cramped with boxes, naked bulbs buzzing over open scores, Seo Jae-min read the orchestra's file for the fifth time.
Outside, Seoul flickered with infinite possibility beneath the light snow that had begun to fall, blanketing the city in an infinite, muffled quiet; inside, he was still, face lit cold by his laptop's glow, eyes sharp and expressionless. His passport—stamped, battered, and newly returned—sat at his elbow beside stacks of musical scores.
The offer letter remained unsigned.
Soon, he would answer. Soon, he would step on stage for the first time since the disaster that had almost ruined him. Soon, Seoul would see him—beta, conductor, stranger. He'd make sure his scent blockers held.
He thought, not for the first time, of hunger: not only the craving for applause, but for something deeper. Music had once been enough.
He hoped, this time, it would save him again.