Absolute Pitch
Ta-da-dan—
Ham A-yoon's playing was the sort of thing one could fairly call perfect. Her fingers moved with absolute certainty, and every phrase landed exactly where she had meant it to. Set before any listener at all, it would have drawn a sigh of admiration without the slightest cause for shame.
And yet something was wrong.
Why?
In that very moment Sua felt a faint, nagging dissonance. It was like standing before a splendid puzzle with a single piece missing—some nameless lack. She couldn't have said what it was, only that something terribly small had been left out.
How long passed after that? While Sua was still turning the missing piece over in her mind, Ham A-yoon's performance came to its end. She rose from the bench without so much as the air of someone who had done anything remarkable.
"You wouldn't tell us you're not casting A-yoon after hearing that, would you? Her acting already stands on its own, and then she plays the piano like this. She is Kim Sohee, through and through, isn't she?"
The manager in the ball cap pulled low over her brow let her gaze settle on Sua and Kim Iseo.
"Director Go Taemin needn't trouble himself to answer. I'm sure the newcomer's side felt it just as clearly."
Sua looked quietly around her. Ham A-yoon's playing had turned the whole mood of the room. Even the people nearest Sua wore the look of being badly shaken.
That was when Kim Iseo bit down on her lip.
"To think she was at that level..."
A moment later she leaned in and whispered.
"Sua, we may be better off simply yielding this one."
"What?"
"To begin with, it would be unwise to make an enemy of Ham A-yoon's camp."
The explanation that followed was not a difficult one. Ham A-yoon was a winner of an international piano competition. She was an actress with an agency of one, but not the sort of agency that starts with a single person because it has no power behind it. Ham A-yoon herself was a corporation on two legs; the agency had merely been built around her after the fact.
"Mm."
"And quite apart from Director Go's wishes, a good share of the production team already seems to want her. There's nothing to be gained by forcing a head-on fight here."
In other words, Sua's side should be the first to offer a withdrawal, and the whole matter could then be settled amicably. Even to Sua's ear it sounded reasonable enough. It would mean giving up Starting Tomorrow, Crescendo, but it was also the surest way to keep the conflict ahead of them as small as possible. Kim Iseo had chosen safety over a gamble. Sua's safety.
But it did not go that way.
Sua did not step back.
"No."
She had not forgotten why she had come. A Grade 1.9 script. She had come to win the role of Kim Sohee, and she meant to leave with it in hand.
Her decision made, she opened her mouth.
"I want the role of Kim Sohee, too."
It was a goal that had only grown sharper in the instant she checked her Special Privilege again. On the off chance she might sidestep into some other part, she had looked at the compatibility, and Kim Sohee alone had fit. She could not let a Grade 1.9 script slip through her fingers. If she was going to be in this film at all, it had to be as Kim Sohee. So she could not retreat.
The manager in the ball cap cocked her head at a crooked angle.
"You just heard A-yoon play. And you're still going to try?"
"Yes. I'm serious about Kim Sohee. I care about the music, too. I'm confident I won't lose."
"What?"
"And I haven't had a turn yet."
Every eye in the room had piled onto her alone. Her heart was hammering, but she wrung out the courage to keep going. It was worth it. A Grade 1.9 script—and the very project that might let her graduate Musician.
"Only Miss A-yoon has played. If I get a turn too, that's fair."
"You can't be..."
The manager seemed too appalled to find the rest of the sentence.
"...Your turn isn't what matters right now, is it?"
Her brow twitched.
"Give you the turn and you still couldn't play like that. You understand? A-yoon won a competition. There's no reason to even try. You don't have to hold two sticks up side by side to know which one is longer."
So that was why it had sounded so good. Sua had no thought of belittling the performance; even her own ears, grown painfully keen, had been satisfied by that melody. Still, she asked again, and politely. She could not yield.
"You said the director never actually gave a firm answer. All you have is the production team's support, isn't it? Why not set long against short, just once? Fairly."
The manager said nothing.
"You have no reason to refuse. The moment we compare, the difference between us will only show more clearly. From your side, it might even be a chance to win still greater support."
Having said that much, Sua swallowed against a dry throat. She had answered by calling up Kim Yu-han's intelligence. Had it been all right? Did that count as a Sua Smart?
Meanwhile Ham A-yoon quietly narrowed her eyes. It was not displeasure. Only curiosity.
...What is that newcomer?
While she played, Ham A-yoon had doubted her own eyes. Never, in all the time she had been performing, had anyone failed to put on a face moved by the first notes. She had never found that remarkable. What she drew out of a piano was a melody the world itself had already certified.
And yet.
That blank face. Today was the first.
Today she had found her first exception, which was precisely why Lee Sua, that newcomer, had tilted her head. Why was music great? Because a person could be moved without understanding it exactly. Because hearing it could stir you even when you hardly knew what you were hearing. A melody steered human feeling with no need for language at all.
But Lee Sua had been different. If anything, her face had held a question toward the playing. No—a face that had gone looking for something lacking. Didn't she resemble Ham A-yoon's father? The only person in the world who had never acknowledged her playing. A foolish man who, even in the moment she seized a competition victory, had said that such things did not matter. Displeasure stirred in the pit of her.
She studied Lee Sua's face once more. There was nothing to fault in the looks themselves: a fierce impression cut along the sharp lines of the face, proportions that invited admiration, and, meeting every gaze in the room, a composure no newcomer ought to have possessed.
An ordinary newcomer would have run by now.
A film set was still, in the end, a place where people lived. Nothing good came of raising one's voice against industry hands, or against a power on the scale of Ham A-yoon, and making an enemy. And yet Lee Sua did not seem to fear any of it.
Where does that confidence come from? Does she actually know music?
Just as Ham A-yoon began to wonder, Sua's lips parted again.
"I want to play Kim Sohee. Sincerely."
"Hey, you—!"
The manager started up, ready to raise her voice in earnest, and never got the sentence tied off. For the first time, Ham A-yoon had caught her by the arm. Ham A-yoon spoke in her place.
"Fine."
A quiet nod came with the word.
"Then we do it this way."
In an instant every gaze in the room swung to her. She watched Sua for a long moment out of eyes empty of feeling, and then she spoke.
"The way I see it, an actress who plays Kim Sohee needs two things."
"What things?"
"First, the director's acknowledgment. Without that, skill exceptional enough to convince everyone else. What do you think."
Sua nodded. Unlike the manager, Ham A-yoon herself was saying that the director's will mattered most of all. For a moment, she looked different.
"I didn't get the director's acknowledgment. So I convinced the production team with skill. But you did get it. If you have the skill on top of that, I'll accept it and step back."
She did not wait for any answer. Her fingers moved as easily as water. One long, slender finger came down on a single key, and a clear note opened in the air. She did not stop at one. Two more followed, in order, each left hanging just long enough to be distinct. Then she folded her arms and looked at Sua.
"Well. How was it?"
"...I'm not sure what you're asking."
"Competing by playing would be unreasonable."
Ham A-yoon went on, unhurried.
"I'm a competition winner. You can't help playing worse than I do. So this is an absolute pitch test. Nothing heavy. Just tell me the pitches your ear heard. Manage that much, and I'll acknowledge your skill."
Sua blinked, quiet. Sudden as it was, she couldn't see a reason to refuse. Ham A-yoon's logic was perfectly sound, and this was a chance, in front of everyone, to show why she had a right to Kim Sohee.
The problem was that she could not remember the notes just played. For Sua, that was only natural. If it was a test, then say it was a test and then play. She had let the whole thing in one ear and out the other without a thought in her head, and now, after the fact, it was a test? What was she supposed to do with that? The silence stretched. Sua, Wronged.
"...Even this much is too hard?"
Ham A-yoon's brows drew in.
"There isn't much time left before Starting Tomorrow, Crescendo starts shooting. Music is something you're born with. Or something you learn as a child. If this is difficult, then studying from now still won't make Kim Sohee possible."
In truth, her attention was somewhere else entirely. Kim Sohee mattered, but what she wanted to confirm was the meaning of the face Sua had worn a moment ago. Why that expression? Why the same face as her father? A look that came of knowing nothing about music, of simply failing to understand? Or because she had seen something the way her father once had? If she did not confirm it, she thought she might go mad.
By then, of course, sheer stubbornness had begun to stir in Sua. No—if she heard it again, she was sure she could do it. She could die of how unfair this was. And at the same time she was curious. Just how good had her ear become? Wasn't this the perfect chance to find out?
And so her full lips parted.
"I'll try. Again."
"Mm."
Ham A-yoon was just about to press the keys once more. It happened in an instant.
"...!"
Her fur slippers shot out from under her, and her whole body lurched. Her hands flailed, scrambling for anything to grab, anything that might hold her up—but of course there was nothing there but the keys.
Crash—!
In the end she caught herself by slamming both hands down across the keyboard, and so she was spared the fate of hitting the floor. Or would it have been better if her body had taken the fall? A little further and she might have ruined the fingers that were as dear to her as her life. The thought of harm coming to the hands that had made her who she was left her dizzy a beat too late.
A-yoon's face crumpled.
"...I slipped for a second. Don't mind it."
She let out a heavy sigh and shook the tension out of her hands.
"All right. We start again."
She ran briefly through which notes she meant to strike. Her fingers were halfway down to the keys when, suddenly, out of nowhere, Sua's voice rang through the room.
Ham A-yoon's fingers froze where they were. At the same instant, everyone around them went still.
"I heard the A, and the F as well..."
"...?"
A-yoon looked at the girl in front of her. These were not the blank, sharp eyes from before. Strength had gone into the brows; it was the look of someone thinking a thing through in earnest.
"The last one. Was it D?"
And then those gemlike eyes turned to Ham A-yoon, as if asking whether that was the answer.
Only then did Ham A-yoon come back to herself. Turning over, slowly, what had just happened, she began to understand what the girl was trying to say. She had picked apart every overlapping sound in that slam? No. That couldn't be. That couldn't possibly be.
Ham A-yoon's gaze dropped to the stretch of keys she had caught herself on when she fell.