Chapter 82
One sheet of music after another.
With every page she turned, Giselle's pupils shook violently.
'What on earth...?'
A groan that never quite escaped her lips circled the inside of Giselle's throat.
As a long-lived race, as an elf,
she had lived through ages and seen countless scores.
From humans' crude folk songs.
to noble, beautiful melodies passed down under the blessing of the World Tree.
In fact, though almost no one knew it.
only she understood that the motif of 'Für Elise,' which had recently swept through the music world, came from a very old oral folk song.
'Nina nina ni, ogre-da.'
As a beautiful melody that reinterpreted a folk song with those playful lyrics, it was excellent, but that aside.
But this score before her.
Will-o'-the-wisp.
Her first impression was that it was so rough she could believe it was less music and more a violent scribble of splashed black ink.
If that were all, of course she would have protested the choice of piece, but
the composer's intent revealed on the staff lines began to settle into her heart.
Chromatic progressions.
A feast of double notes pouring from both the right and left hands.
It wasn't just that there were many notes to play; their arrangement and structure were devilishly technical as well.
It twisted the performer's finger joints in bizarre ways
and seemed to ripple as if trying to test the limits of ligaments and muscles.
'You expect me to play this...?'
Giselle swallowed dryly.
So outrageously virtuosic that the grandiose term 'transcendental technique' seemed fitting, as if every kind of rapid-fire technique a pianist could imagine had been condensed into one piece.
Allegretto.
A little faster, and lightly.
To demand such complex and bizarre technique while also having it played featherlight and playful...
Franz Liszt.
What kind of life had this human with such an unfamiliar name led, to be able to imagine such music in his head?
Had he been born with twenty fingers instead of ten? Or was he a magician who had transformed the piano from a percussion instrument into a part of his own body?
All those doubts filled her head, but
the doubts were only the tip of the iceberg in her mind.
Deep in Giselle's heart, excitement close to a shiver was boiling up.
'Beautiful.'
She had no choice but to admit it.
The progression of these obscure harmonies, which replayed in her mind just from following them with her eyes, was chillingly captivating.
A talent she would steal even if she had to sell her soul to the devil.
Like the term will-o'-the-wisp itself, the densely packed notes were like bluish flames rising from a swamp, like a mischievous fairy's prank leading people to their deaths.
If you were a pianist...
it radiated such intense magic that you simply couldn't endure without trying to play it at least once.
Therefore,
Giselle raised her head and looked at the audience.
People whose eyes sparkled with overflowing curiosity, waiting with pounding hearts for the moment the performance would begin.
Yes.
Even if I can't fully master this piece, what problem would that be?
I am a pianist.
And a pianist is someone who must, right now, be able to give the best performance they can.
“Boris.”
“Yes? Yes!”
At Giselle's sudden call, Boris, the human pianist who still had his nose buried in the score, hurriedly lifted his head and answered.
Though she felt jealous of his youth and dazzling talent, precisely because of that Boris's future was all the brighter.
If only he were given a little more time.
If she let him hear even an imperfect performance.
If it were Boris.
wouldn't he play this piece, which even Giselle herself felt she might not be able to fully digest, in a somewhat more complete form?
As the senior who had first placed her hands on the keys.
it would also mean showing trial and error first to a junior walking the same path.
It was only Giselle's guess, but
it was also a chance to give the first performance—the premiere—of a score she was seeing for the first time today.
“I'll play first, roong.”
As for technique alone, this magnificent yet terrifying monster could be called a masterpiece—but what sound would it howl from her fingertips?
It was time to find out.
From the tips of Giselle's fingers,
the illusion of will-o'-the-wisps began to flicker.
* * *
There had been no advance publicity at all, the plan itself had been improvised, and nothing at all, including admission revenue, had been calculated.
It was a hastily prepared concert for the sole sake of one great being, but
“To think so many varied tones could come from a single instrument...”
“Dad! I, I want to learn piano...”
“Whoa, doesn't that make your wrists twist up?”
“This kind of entertainment is nice. Music is good, and I'd like events like this to happen often.”
Even passersby who knew nothing about music also praised the sudden piano battle, and
“So it was true that Giselle's era was over and Boris's era had come.”
“Huh? No matter how you look at it, senior Giselle sacrificed first sight-reading and the premiere for her junior. The piece... was really impossibly difficult.”
“Don't talk nonsense, roong! Big sis Giselle is the greatest pianist, roong! The pride of the southern elves, roong!”
“How, how can a piece like that exist? How can a piece like that? I, I, I can't...!”
“Can't I get the score separately? My urge to take on the challenge is boiling over!”
“It's the first concours, so I hope there's a second one too...”
Musicians and music critics who had come after hearing word of mouth also generally left satisfied reviews.
The two pianists, properly bewitched by the will-o'-the-wisp.
Giselle showed an unconventional performance that lacked polish but was packed with improvisation and her own interpretation.
Through Giselle's performance, Boris checked his own musical ideas and succeeded in reproducing the flow of the piece itself as faithfully as possible.
And that wasn't the end of it; with their spirits stirred up for the first time in a while, the two pianists kept trading pieces and playing each other's music, or performing famous works, and as a result the concert went on without pause.
At first, it was the usual Peach World Tree Square, with not that many people gathered.
“Bravo!”
“So coollll!”
“Music is the best, music music!”
By the time it ended, aside from the good children who had gone to bed early, almost everyone living around the western square of the capital had come to watch the spectacle, to the point that it was a scene, if only slightly exaggerated.
Duke Schneisen and Duke Vertus alike were carried to an outcome neither had expected.
And.
The mastermind who, by casually tossing out Liszt's score under the label of a 'difficult piece, super-great piece,' ended up either crushing budding pianists' enthusiasm or inflaming it all the more.
Kim Yul.
“Heeheehee, hehe!”
“Ohoho! This is amazing, desuwa!”
was grinning in satisfaction together with the elf young lady who had sniffed out CEO-level money and was cackling beside him.
The more interest in the piano rose, the more 'Beethoven's' popularity would naturally soar—it was obvious.
Kim Yul had distributed flyers containing a collected summary of the chapters serialized so far,
and Chloe printed scores of 'Für Elise,' 'Piano Concerto Cadenza,' and so on, selling them at a very high price to the musicians gathered for the concours.
The labor was done by Nureongi,
and the money was taken by Kim Yul.
Of course, Nureongi, too.
“Whee! That was fun! I think it’d be nice to do this again!”
was happily purring, buried against Historié's chest.
It could be called a victory for everyone.
* * *
To a young adult living in modern-day South Korea,
the four words 'owning a home' could be a lifelong goal, or they could be an empty echo that felt unreal.
I was the same.
Every time the deposit went up, I hopped from place to place like a rabbit.
Someday, my dream was to have a house in my own name, even one with a bathtub.
Of course, reality was always like a squirrel on a wheel: whenever I was about to save money, house prices would rise faster, and whenever I got impatient and put money into stocks, bad news would strike with uncanny timing.
Fuck, Trump, bro!
At this rate, we're all gonna die!
...But that was already in the past.
“Ahh, such a lovely resonance...”
Reclining in a fairly cozy bathtub, I listened to the piano melody drifting from far away and soaked in the warm water.
The dream of owning my own home, unfulfilled in my previous life.
It was only after I got transmigrated into Fantasy Land that I could finally make it happen!
Of course, well, I did end up borrowing quite a lot from the elf, but still.
Thanks to the piano battle that had taken place a month earlier, a piano boom was now sweeping the imperial capital.
As expected, Beethoven's popularity, richly buoyed by the trickle-down effect, had also shot up vertically.
If this pace held, I'd pay it off in no time and end up with a truly 100% perfectly exact sweet little house of my own.
I also confirmed that the second-floor study's door connected to the laboratory, and that the remaining space could be used freely.
If I missed modern conveniences, I'd go to the lab.
If I felt like living the fantasy life, I'd lounge around at home.
This is the good stuff.
If this isn't the good stuff, then what on earth is?
As for towel quality, I couldn't tolerate Fantasy Land's, so I dried off with a towel brought out from the lab and finished my bath.
With the piano still sounding faintly in the distance,
I ignored the giggling, yap-yap barking of Nureongi and quietly headed to the lab.
This was the biggest turning point.
I'd already subtly laid the groundwork several times with unexplained headaches and dizziness, and so on...
Beethoven had been driven into the deepest pit of despair by hearing loss,
and paradoxically, hearing loss was also what made Beethoven into the greatest of composers, so I couldn't gloss over it.
If I didn't handle this point delicately,
- I'm dropping this. Writer, you should go work loading and unloading instead.
- I'd rather go to work than spend time reading this.
- Did you have fun writing this? I hope so.
- Kim Yul... repent.
- Aza-za-za! Breath attack!
- Death, desuwa!
All kinds of mental attacks.
Maybe even physical attacks would come for me.
I took my laptop out of the lab, sat in the workshop, closed my eyes, and listened closely to Historié's performance.
Of all things, it was music composed just as the hearing loss began to seriously worsen.
Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8, Pathétique, was caressing the entire mansion with its wistful melody.