Faster 9
“Ah… I failed my concour…”
I stopped fidgeting with the phone and turned my eyes to the side.
Lunch time. Under the long rays of sunlight, I could see Noh Jusup lying down on his desk. After rolling his head around and writhing his body in agony, he pulled his hairs out.
“I failed…!”
“…What do you mean. The results are not even out yet so how would you know whether you’ve failed or not?”
“It’s gonna come out soon! Besides, I already know without even seeing it. Haa… I’m feeling ominous…”
“…”
Did the prelim results come out after a day? I wasn’t sure and just tapped on Noh Jusup’s shoulders.
“Hey. Heavy work in youth is quiet rest in old age okay? It’s alright it’s alright. Youth is meant to be painful right. When I was young huh, I applied in all sorts of concours despite failing in all of them. I just thought of all that as experience. Ku… those were good times.”
“What in the world are you saying.”
I was teasing Noh Jusup with a few grins and found Lee Suh-ah watching us from the side with a strangely confident expression.
Since it occurred to me, I turned my head over and asked Lee Suh-ah.
“Did you do well?”
“Of course I did.”
“Unlucky.”
With a grin, I stared back at Lee Suh-ah who glared at me before suddenly thinking of the composing thing. After the various tests, she mentioned that the song would be finished soon and she was certain that it would be finished within a week.
…We needed to find a soprano as well.
“Oi Lee Suh-ah.”
“…Now what”
“Do you have time? An upperclassman I know is from the composing department and she needed help for her Improvement Concert…”
Stealing a glance towards Song Mirae, Lee Suh-ah immediately gave a reply.
“I have a concour during that time.”
“Oh you do?”
A concour huh… that can’t be helped then. She must be busy so I couldn’t force her to help. Besides, since sunbae said that we could find an outsider if we couldn’t find a soprano, it didn’t really matter. I was shrugging my shoulders when Song Mirae chimed in from the side while sparkling her eyes.
“Hey Yunjae! I have a lot of time~”
“…Is that so.”
Replying blankly, I contemplated.
Song Mirae.
It’s good since she’s a mezzo soprano but… her attitude made me feel uncomfortable. She was appealing openly while blinking her eyes.
“Un. I don’t have any concours and… another sunbae asked me to help with the presentation but I don’t really know him so it’s a bit, yeah~ Ah! It would be nice if I could do it with someone I knew~”
…At this point, even I could realise that it would get extremely annoying if I was to get involved with her.
“I see. But I’m going to do it with Dasom.”
“Un…?”
Quickly averting my eyes from the blank-faced Song Mirae, I stared at Han Dasom.
“Dasom. You’re okay right?”
“Okay.”
“Didn’t you ask Suh-ah just then…”
“Dasom do you want to sing one right now?”
“Okay.”
Han Dasom who had nodded without even listening to my words came to a sudden stop and blinked her eyes.
“What…?”
“Let’s do a song right now.”
“Now?”
“Yeah.”
“…?”
*
The UCC contest – a contest made suddenly to promote and publicise the school. A creative mind and increasing the activity… all that explanation meant nothing and it all boiled down to who got more views on youtube. On top of that, it was a competition with only one video allowed so the objective was simple.
It was to buy the interests of the people, which was an objective that could be considered the fundamental goal of us, the performers.
“Are we really just filming like this…?”
While Han Dasom was touching her hair in anxiety, I looked around the surroundings.
The classroom.
In the middle of that class that was in a rowdy atmosphere, Han Dasom and I were sitting on the other sides of one desk.
“Yunjae. Can I go to the bathroom first? I didn’t wear any makeup…”
“It’s fine. Do it naturally.”
“But…”
“That’s more like a student so it’s better.”
“…?”
Seeing her tilt her head, I smiled. What did we have to do to gain a lot of views? We needed to gather the interests of the people through attacking what people wanted to know, and the things they wanted to see. In that sense, ‘Han Dasom and my morning live’ was enough of a topic to go viral.
[How would the students of the prestigious arts school, ‘Future Performing Arts High School’ spend their days?]
It was a video that perfectly answered that question. Lee Suh-ah who had been watching us set things up crossed her arms.
“What are you trying to do?”
“We’re going to sing.”
“Here?”
“Yeah.”
She gave a frown.
“So… a song, without any preparations in the middle of a class like this? And you’re going to hand that into the contest?”
“Yeah.”
“…Is that going to be good enough?”
“We’ll make it good enough.”
“…”
I watched Lee Suh-ah make a blank expression with a grin. I could read her thoughts from the expression that asked, what was so special about performing arts students singing?
In fact, there was nothing special about it.
Performing arts students were quite the attention seekers so a singing video was nothing unique. Perhaps on youtube, there were already tens and hundreds of such videos already.
She was trying to ask how I could win against Song Mirae who had thousands of subscribers with such a common video. The background was the middle of a classroom without any preparations as well.
However,
It had to be the classroom in fact.
“What are they doing?”
“They’re singing apparently.”
“Kukuk. Jo Yunjae and Han Dasom again?”
The students that had been enjoying their lunch time inside the classes all started to observe us noisily. They seemed to be enjoying an event that was suddenly happening in the middle of their boredom.
I opened my mouth and talked to Han Dasom who had been stealing glances at them.
“Dasom. Is there any duet song you know?”
“A duet…? No…”
“None? Even from pop songs?”
Tilting her head, Han Dasom replied.
“I know a lot from pop songs but… are we singing a pop song?”
“Yeah.”
Noh Jusup who had been watching on from the side let out a snicker.
“An opera student singing a pop song? Is it going to be comedy? Kukuk.”
“What do you mean comedy? I’m completely serious.”
“What? Are you good at singing pop songs? It became really weird for me after learning opera.”
Seeing Noh Jusup with his widened eyes, I gave a nod. Indeed, there were those kinds of people as well.
Because the direction opera and popular music faced were different, it was hard to sing one after getting used to another. And especially if it was a student who was in the middle of learning, he would be more confused by it.
Of course, once you get the knack of it, the change from pop songs to opera was easy.
In the end, they were both songs.
Turning my head, I looked at Han Dasom once again.
“So, what duet songs do you know? Pick one from here.”
“Uun…?”
When I pushed my phone out, Han Dasom started to diligently go through the list I provided. It was a list I made after a hard work of searching for songs last night – a list of duet songs that were popular these days.
Han Dasom who had been sliding down the screen raised her head.
“I know almost all of them…”
“Really? Then let’s do this.”
When I pointed at a song with my finger, Han Dasom nodded her head in response.
‘All for you’.
It was a relatively old song but after being put in as an OST of a popular drama, it had similarly started getting popular. I actually wanted to do this and it was a good thing that Han Dasom knew it.
Folding my arms across, I thought.
“Good…”
With this, everything was lined up.
The things the viewers would love to watch. And from those, something that could make the most out of the special feature called ‘Opera department of Future Arts High’, what would there be?
It was simple.
Singing.
However, who would watch it if we were to sing an opera song? Although I felt it was unfortunate as an opera singer myself, pop songs were more liked by the populace and that was why we were singing a pop song.
Then, the keyword would be something like this.
‘The opera students of a prestigious arts school singing pop songs?’
Even this was enough of a hooker but it was still slightly weak.
It was time to add in some spices – a spoonful of school life which every citizen would have experienced at least once; another spoonful of love which was the most popular preference, and to top it all off, a viral song.
This would be enough to expect the result right?
‘A video of opera students of a prestigious performing arts school singing love songs inside the classroom.’
The thumbnail could be something like us looking at each other inside the classroom, since Han Dasom had a good appearance as well. Seeing me nod my head, Han Dasom suddenly opened her eyes wide.
“Are we… singing that here…?”
“Un? It’s more appealing to do it inside the class okay? Everyone has been to a classroom at least once so if something special happened there, people would be intrigued.”
“We’re singing this song while facing each other and… uploading it on youtube…?”
Lowering my gaze down to the phone, the title of the song entered my sight.
‘All for you’.
Hmm. Perhaps it was a bit too sweet and she might be uncomfortable singing that.
“Is it too much? Then we can sing another…”
“No no! Good! It’s very good!”
Seeing Han Dasom quickly grabbing onto my hands, I let out a grin.
Cute.
Finally, the filming had begun.
Chloe held onto the camera from a distance while Han Dasom and I sat facing each other with a table in between. When I stared at her with my chin resting on my hand, the distance became even smaller.
Han Dasom who had flinched slightly at my action soon smiled and rested her chin on her hand as well before staring at me. I did discuss having this as the concept and she was following quite well.
“Should we sing?”
“Un.”
With my phone I played the song as a dull sound started flowing out from the phone – a somewhat blurry and bad sound quality. But wouldn’t this in fact touch the young hearts of the audience?
Having that hope in mind, I turned my gaze towards Han Dasom as her lips slowly moved in line with the accompaniment.
“It’s already been a week, since you haven’t called…”
I could hear the still-soft voice of Han Dasom. The timbre that seemed to tickle the ears had no signs of the previous lack of confidence and was filled with her own sentiments already.
Her basics had improved a lot perhaps due to her hard work and the skills were stable as well.
This was definitely not the level of a high school freshman… She really had developed a lot. I was smiling, feeling proud before opening my mouth due to it being my turn to sing.
“Actually, I hid my heart…”
A light blob of breath left the mouth as a rich resonance filled the classroom. Hearing that, Han Dasom’s expression eased slightly and a sense of relief filled my body.
Thank goodness.
I was slightly unsure and had practised last night and found out that I had indeed rusted quite a lot. Even then, experience was really hard to lose I guess, judging from how I could sing properly like this.
I mean, it wasn’t unbelievable.
Pop songs.
After letting go of opera and playing around, I did sing pop songs a lot as well. Raising my lips slightly, I matched my eyes with Han Dasom’s.
“For you–”
The two voices intertwined without a single unpleasantness and hearing that sound, I gave a smile. Han Dasom hadn’t forgotten the thing I had mentioned before.
A special aspect of pop songs.
Pop songs that used mics to sing could diverge from the ‘spherical’ songs that were a signature of opera songs. They could be more angular and specialise in several various aspects.
They could be sharpened to dig straight into the ears or could be blended thinly to incorporate breaths into it. It was also possible to put strength into every single word of the lyric to increase the likelihood of relaying the message.
As the compensation for throwing away the great resonance, pop songs had thus earned aspects that could make them popular with the populace.
“Are you okay with someone like me–?”
While lightly heaving out breaths, I thought.
That’s why, the change from opera to pop songs was easy yet difficult. The tendency to make every sound spherical was within the premise of habits so it was difficult to change. It could be considered as the minor version of ‘changing faces’ that I had learned.
But if we could forget that habit slightly and try hard to portray every single part of the lyric on top of that,
That was enough to input the softness that was unique to pop songs into the voice.
“I will look at you forever…”
The accompaniment came to an end and our eyes blinked at the same time. When my eyes were about to catch sight of the flushed cheeks of Han Dasom,
The song ended.
“Ohh~”
“What was that?”
Along with the sounds of claps, I could hear the boos of the kids filled with giggles. Glancing around, I found out that everyone was showing different reactions – there were those that only clapped with smiles, students that pointed their thumbs towards the ground while giving boos as well as those that were staring blankly in a mindless state.
This… I thought the school atmosphere would be highlighted better during the day and had decided to do it during the lunch time but there was a downside like this.
With a grin, I turned my gaze towards Han Dasom. I wanted to see what her reaction was and found that it was surprisingly relaxed, as she gave off the aura that she had finished her song with her lax expression.
“…”
Seeing that expression, a memory of the past resurfaced.
Han Dasom and I, who had been practising in the backyard of the school. The Phantom of the Opera she had sung and the reactionless crowd.
“You guys are really good at singing pop songs though.”
“Well done.”
“Are you filming it? Wow.”
…However, it had changed into this. Although there were giggles mixed in the applause, there were this many people already that liked her songs. Thinking that it would be nice if this could atone even slightly, I met my eyes once again with Han Dasom.
“Sorry.”
After blinking her eyes, Han Dasom gave a bashful smile.
“Un, it’s fine. Give me some time…”
“Huk!”
Turning my eyes over, it felt like the sound had come from Chloe.
…What was this foreboding feeling?
With a sulky expression I stared at Chloe and she seemed to be quite dumbfounded. After walking up like that, Chloe carefully handed the camera over to me.
“What is it?”
“That…”
It didn’t seem like she would give a reply.
Don’t tell me she didn’t film it at all? No way right? Chloe can’t be that stupid right…
“…”
Quickly, I fidgeted with the camera and checked the galleries and found a video that had been filmed today. Good, so she did film it.
Feeling a sense of relief I played it and…
The screen that trembled without a stop entered my eyes.
“Wow…”
The camera walking was an artwork itself.
After pointing it at my face and then at Han Dasom’s, it went further back before quickly running in towards us. I could imagine Chloe moving hurriedly and a smile crept up unconsciously.
…If this wasn’t a calm ballad, it would have been quite good.
With a flick, I turned my gaze over to Chloe and she gave an empty laugh.
“Huhuh…”
Well,
We had to film it again.
“Seriously…”
Shrugging my shoulders, I smiled.