Chapter 152
Chapter 152
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Vine
Chapter: 153
Chapter Title: Reviving Young Jade's Piano
-----------------------------------------------------------------
I can't wrap my head around how the world works anymore. An eight-year-old kid topping the Melboard chart?
But that eight-year-old is Heo Ok's grandson. If he's inherited that dazzling talent she possessed, the one I'd witnessed myself, then maybe it's possible?
"Seven, even I wasn't that good at eight."
But Heo Ok denied it.
He takes after her, sure, but his talent is something else entirely.
Whatever. It doesn't matter.
"So the kid takes after your piano?"
"Yeah. Yeonwoo, come here!"
As the attention lingered, Yeonwoo, who had retreated behind the bar, approached the two at his grandmother's call.
Liam gazed at the child nearly ninety years his junior.
Round it up a bit more, and the age gap between them would be a full century.
"Yeah, what a cute kid. You're the one who's good at piano?"
Yeonwoo looked at the oldest person he'd ever met in his life.
Older even than Park Jeong-hoon.
The man, who seemed closer to his final days than those he'd already lived, had porcelain-white skin dotted with age spots and a Santa-like beard.
His eyes were faded and cloudy, but the moment they fixed on Yeonwoo, they sparkled.
"Yes, Grandma taught me."
"Then you must play a lot like her?"
At Liam's question, Yeonwoo paused to think before answering.
"I used to, but not anymore. I've found my own piano."
A flicker of disappointment crossed Liam's face at Yeonwoo's words. It seemed the piano Liam longed for was one he'd never hear again.
Reading Liam's expression, Yeonwoo spoke up.
"But if you ask me to play Grandma's piano, I can."
"Your grandma as she is now?"
"No, I can do her piano from when she was young, too."
As he said this, Yeonwoo glanced at Grandmother Fairy flitting about as if it were her home turf.
With her friend's help, recreating young Grandma's piano would be a breeze.
Reading Yeonwoo's confident expression, Liam let out a thoughtful hum.
No matter how he turned it over in his mind, an eight-year-old replicating Jade's piano? Impossible.
That skepticism was plain as day.
But Heo Ok's unshaken expression after hearing the boy, and the bartender gazing at the kid—young enough to be his son—with envy in his eyes... it made it hard not to believe.
"Go call my boy."
Liam instructed the bartender, who cleared out and dashed off somewhere.
And soon enough.
"Huh? I was just coming out because I heard a world star was at our place... and you're... Jade?"
"Look how big that little squirt got."
"Squirt? I was in middle school back then! You were shorter than me."
Liam's son, Craig, snorted but his eyes brimmed with delight.
"Cut the chit-chat, punk. Get this kid up on stage."
"What? Uh, is that okay? We'd be honored, but Jade, you cool with it?"
Craig knew exactly who Yuin was.
Unlike his father, whose tastes had frozen in time, Craig enjoyed jazz and all kinds of music in equal measure.
"Ask the kid and his dad, not me."
"Right? Oh, my apologies. I'm Craig, the owner here. Mind if I put Yuin up on that stage?"
"Yeonwoo, what do you think? Wanna go up?"
"Yeah, Dad!!"
"My son's on board. Please do."
"We're the ones honored. Stage is free right now... wanna head up?"
At Craig's question, Yeonwoo turned his gaze.
There were two pianos on stage. One upright, one grand.
Curiously, fairies were clustered thickest around the upright.
Grandmother Fairy sat right at the center.
Yeonwoo eyed the upright piano as he followed Craig's lead onto the stage.
Tucked in the corner, it sat forlorn and shabby.
What was its deal?
"Mister, what's that piano?"
"Hm? Oh, that's the one we had before the place moved. Yeah, around when Jade first showed up, so it's easily over forty years old."
So that's why Grandmother Fairy and the other fairies were swarming it?
"It's been played by some famous jazz pianists too. Paul Gibson, Hank McGuff, that sort."
"Oh, I've heard of them!"
Yeonwoo nodded.
He knew those pianists.
Still...
When they stare at you that desperately, how can you say no?
Yeonwoo sighed deeply at the fairies gazing up at him pleadingly, as if begging him to play it.
He didn't prefer uprights, naturally, but since it was the one Grandma had played, he was curious too.
"Mister, mind if I play the upright?"
"That one? Go for it."
"It won't break?"
"My dad's kept it maintained daily, so no worries there. Might need a little tuning."
Like the seventy-year-old bar table where Liam held court, that piano was precious to him.
He maintained it daily, ready to play at any moment.
Waaaaaaaaah!
As Yeonwoo took the stage, the crowd—already aware Yuin was here—erupted in thunderous applause.
Yeonwoo paused, gave a polite bow from the waist, then sat at the piano and tested the keys one by one.
"How is it?"
"You must tune it too. Sounds fine to me."
Yeonwoo's sharp ears picked up a few off notes, but that was forgivable.
Why?
No one else here but him would notice.
'Alright then... what was Grandma's young piano like?'
At Yeonwoo's question, Grandmother Fairy eagerly played a snippet of young Heo Ok's performance.
'Got it.'
A bit rougher than current Grandma, but bolder, flashier technique.
Yeonwoo nodded and eyed the mic.
He'd asked for a short intro before starting.
"Hello, I'm Yuin. I heard my grandma played piano here when she was young. They say she played this one too. It feels like a special moment for me and her. So today, instead of my piano, I'll play hers for you."
With that, Yeonwoo took a quick breath and placed his hands over the keys.
Liam, not content with his usual spot, edged closer.
How far was it again?
Right, this distance.
He gauged the spot where he'd listened to Heo Ok back then and took a seat at an empty table.
Would the kid really recreate Jade's playing from that era?
Doubts lingered as the piano began.
Modern jazz?
No, even if he didn't follow current songs, he knew this wasn't today's trend.
Around the 1980s, when people tired of free jazz's heyday turned back to modern jazz, sparking the neoclassical jazz boom.
Exactly that era. Heo Ok's jazz.
No original tune, but the style screamed it.
Liam closed his eyes.
A hazy memory sharpened in his mind.
-Jade, ease up or they'll smash a beer bottle over your head just for talking. Show some restraint?
-Seven, those stinking bastards won't get a bottle to the head even if they shove their faces in my grill and open their mouths. They reek. Do folks here not brush? White, Black, doesn't matter.
-Hahaha, plenty of filthy ones, yeah. Shop's closing—Hennessy?
-That pricey stuff?
-Play piano for it.
-Deal.
It was always like this.
He'd provide pricey cognac back then, and Heo Ok would pay with piano.
Her playing was worth more than one cognac, but it was their way of showing friendship.
"What're you doing, Seven?"
"Hm?"
Lost in the playing, reliving memories of the past, Liam opened his eyes at the voice behind him and turned.
Heo Ok handed him the Hennessy she'd been saving for him.
"Listening to the performance means I gotta pay up, right?"
"Heh heh, yeah. Almost forgot."
Liam chuckled and poured an appropriate amount from his stashed Hennessy into the glass she offered.
"And orange juice for your grandson. Too young for Hennessy."
"Sounds good."
Liam smiled and turned back. Yuin's rendition of Heo Ok's piano continued to ring out beautifully.
Thanks to Yuin's music, the Blue Bottle—which had felt too slick and modern—felt like it was back, warming his heart.
"Man... feels like I could die without regrets now."
"Why not stick around to a hundred while you're at it?"
Liam scowled at Heo Ok's words.
"Kid doesn't get it yet, but at this age, living's hell. What's the point of dragging it out?"
Heo Ok pointed at the stage.
"Look at my boy. A genius not just in jazz, but music overall."
"So? You want me bragging about grandkids till I'm a hundred?"
"No, aren't you curious what music he'll create going forward?"
At her words, Liam looked at Yeonwoo.
The kid was just wrapping up.
-Whoa, I planned to stop here, but the vibe's too good. Who knows when I'll play a spot like this again? So this time, let me share my piano.
Pleased with the stage, Yeonwoo launched into his own.
"Hm...!"
Yeonwoo's jazz was different.
An exotic jazz unlike any current genre, presented freely.
As if declaring this was jazz's new direction.
Liam, averse to jazz's diversification with the times, found Yeonwoo's appealing.
It approached established generations without resistance, yet wasn't boring or simplistic for the young.
"That kid... he's the one to lead the era?"
"Told you."
"Did you...?"
He watched, entranced, as Yeonwoo played.
He might not listen to modern jazz, but he knew it was fading.
He knew jazz was becoming archaic and dull to kids, like classical.
Proof? Turn on the TV—no jazz. Everywhere you went, it was gone.
Tourist traps like the current Blue Bottle aside.
"What do you think? Wanna keep watching?"
Liam nodded, eyes on Yeonwoo's increasingly dazzling performance.
That kid might revive jazz to the top.
"...A hundred's nothing. Gotta live long enough for the Guinness record."