5
## Chapter 5 — La Campanella
“Haaaa…”
The owner of *Cheerful Curry Rice* let out a deep sigh while staring at the empty restaurant.
The reason she had started her own business after fifteen years as a housewife was because her husband had lost his job.
In order to survive somehow, she took out a loan using her husband’s retirement pay and opened a small curry shop.
At first, she had been confident.
Wherever people tasted the curry made from her recipe, it always received overwhelming praise.
She truly believed her original curry was among the top ten curries in all of Korea.
But self-employment wasn’t something that succeeded on taste alone.
Because of poor advertising and the restaurant’s secluded location, the place had remained completely empty for an
entire month, forcing her to seriously worry about the future.
‘Maybe… it’d be better to close the shop before we lose even more money.’
That was when—
Murmur murmur.
“…Huh?”
Suddenly, people started gathering in front of her restaurant.
It was a crowd she had never once seen during the entire month she’d operated in this alley.
And what had gathered them there was a beautiful piano melody.
♩♩♬♬♩♩♬
The part-time worker she had hurriedly hired that morning was playing the piano in front of people while wearing a
rabbit mascot costume.
“Wow…”
The owner of *Cheerful Curry Rice* became so captivated by the beautiful music that she even forgot she was supposed to
be working.
But the moment the performance ended, the part-timer shouted toward the crowd—
“O-Our Cheerful Curry Rice restaurant is holding an event! Starting now, if you order over 20,000 won and bring me the
receipt with a song request, I’ll play it for you immediately!”
“……What?”
Before she could even process what happened, customers flooded into the restaurant after hearing the announcement.
“Owner! We’d like to order curry! Which menu is over 20,000 won?”
“Huh? Ah… th-the two-person set with beef curry, chicken curry, and king prawn tempura is exactly 20,000 won…”
“Then we’ll take that!”
“Us too!”
“We’ll take the three-person set! Ah, and please make sure to give us the receipt!”
The people who came to hear the mascot’s piano performance each placed orders worth over 20,000 won.
At first, the sudden flood of customers left the owner flustered, but—
“Yes…! I’ll prepare everything right away…!”
Soon, her face bloomed with joy.
“Owner! We’d like to order too!”
“Yes! One moment please! Hahaha!”
Even at that moment, more customers continued lining up to enter the restaurant just to hear the rabbit mascot’s piano
performance.
The gloomy atmosphere that had suffocated the restaurant for the past month quickly came alive with energy.
---
There was one thing I had overlooked.
I thought the general public didn’t know much about classical music.
But I was wrong.
The difficulty level of the songs people requested while handing me their 20,000-won receipts was much higher than
expected.
“Can you play Chopin Etudes too? Black Key! Please play Chopin’s Black Key!”
“Chopin’s Black Key… y-yes…! I’ll play it right away!”
After finishing Beethoven’s *Moonlight Sonata, Third Movement*, which was already quite difficult, the next customer
requested *Black Key*, one of Chopin’s Etudes.
Chopin’s Etudes.
The word *etude* meant “study piece.”
In other words, Chopin’s Etudes were practice pieces he composed to improve his own piano technique.
And since they were created by Chopin—a pianist famous for possessing overwhelmingly brilliant technique—they were
naturally far from easy.
Every single Chopin Etude boasted hellish difficulty.
Thankfully, *Black Key* was considered “relatively” easier among Chopin’s Etudes.
Chopin Etude Op.10 No.5.
Nicknamed *Black Key* because it mainly used the black piano keys, it was one of Chopin’s most famous Etudes.
And despite my long break from piano, it was still a piece I could play immediately.
‘The score’s coming back to me too. Alright… let’s do this.’
Filled with confidence, I placed my hands on the keys.
That was when—
“Ah! First, please play it normally as Black Key, and then after that, play it using only the white keys!”
“…Excuse me?”
The sudden request completely caught me off guard.
“Play Black Key first… and then White Key after? What does that even mean…”
“Ah, is that impossible? They did it like that in *Secret*.”
…What was *Secret*?
I had no idea what they were talking about, but asking someone to transform *Black Key* into *White Key* was certainly
bizarre.
Still—
“…I’ll try it!”
“Wow, thank you!”
It wasn’t impossible.
Since *Black Key* mainly used black keys, transposing it into a white-key-focused arrangement naturally turned it into
*White Key*.
Of course, all the finger positions would change and feel unfamiliar, but that wasn’t a major issue.
After quickly gauging the hand positions, I began playing.
First, just as requested—
the original *Black Key*.
♩♬♬♬♩♬♬♩
“Ah! So this is Black Key!”
“Wow! He’s really only using black keys!”
Chopin’s *Black Key* was incredibly popular because of its jewel-like melody.
Anyone who had heard it before immediately reacted with admiration.
And next came the problem piece—
*White Key.*
The original piece began in G-flat major, but now I shifted it into C major, focusing mostly on white keys.
♬♩♩♩♬♩♩♬
“……Oh!”
“It’s the same song, but now he’s using white keys!”
The crowd erupted with excitement as if watching a scene straight out of a movie.
“It’s *Secret!*”
…So what exactly *was* Secret?
I still didn’t know, but unexpectedly, turning *Black Key* into *White Key* was pretty fun.
Since it was my first time playing it this way, my fingers had to improvise the score in real time as they moved.
The whole process felt fresh and exciting.
After finishing both *Black Key* and *White Key* just as the customer requested—
“WOOOOOOAH!”
The crowd cheered louder than before.
I too felt exhilarated hearing the applause.
My old piano teacher had valued rigid structure and rules, so she never once allowed me to improvise.
But improvisation was far more enjoyable than I had imagined.
The sensation of my fingers moving instinctively while improvising felt thrilling.
‘To think I’m improvising and rearranging a difficult Chopin Etude on the spot.’
The realization that I had accomplished something so difficult filled me with confidence.
It felt like there wasn’t a single piece in the world I couldn’t play.
Smiling brightly, I looked toward the next customer holding a receipt.
“Alright, next customer!”
“Yes, that’s me.”
A middle-aged man with an honest appearance stood there holding a 50,000-won receipt.
It was the highest amount any customer had spent so far, so I gratefully asked him:
“Yes, sir. What piece would you like?”
“Ah, I’d like…”
And then—
“Liszt’s *La Campanella*, please.”
“…!”
The final boss had appeared.
---
*La Campanella.*
It originally began as the third movement of Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 2.
A pianist heard the violin piece *La Campanella*, fell in love with it, and rearranged it into a piano composition.
That pianist—
was Franz Liszt.
The result became *Grandes Études de Paganini No.3 — La Campanella.*
Since it was arranged by Liszt, the king of piano, from a piece by Paganini, the “Devil’s Violinist,” there was no way
the difficulty could be easy.
The touch of two men often blamed for increasing the difficulty of both violin and piano created *La Campanella*—
a piece infamous for its utterly insane difficulty.
It couldn’t even be compared to *Black Key*, considered one of the easier Chopin Etudes.
But—
Hwaaa—
The moment I heard the name *La Campanella*, the score surfaced in my mind automatically.
Because the pianist my abusive teacher admired most had been Liszt himself.
To teach me dazzling techniques, she had focused almost entirely on Liszt Etudes during lessons.
*La Campanella.*
How many times had I played that piece as a child?
…I never counted, but it must’ve been thousands.
“Ah, would this perhaps be too difficult? Playing *La Campanella* without sheet music is definitely—”
“…No.”
With a bitter smile, I sat down.
“There’s no problem. I’ll play it right away.”
As soon as I placed my hands on the keyboard and prepared to perform, murmurs spread through the crowd.
“Whoa… he’s really playing *La Campanella*.”
“What’s that? Is it difficult?”
“You’d know it if you heard it. But it’s insanely hard. I heard even piano majors can’t play it without intense
practice.”
And there, amidst a crowd filled with both worry and anticipation—
♩♬♪♪
—I slowly began playing *La Campanella.*
“Wow…”
“It sounds like clear little bells.”
The beginning went smoothly, but as the piece progressed, my fingers became busier and busier.
It was said that Liszt, the composer of *La Campanella*, had extraordinarily long fingers.
Because my own fingers were average-sized, I had no choice but to move even faster to keep up with the stretches in
Liszt’s composition.
‘Again. That was a mistouch just now.’
‘T-Teacher… sob… there’s no way my hands can play these minor third trills…’
‘If your hands are smaller than Liszt’s, then you just have to work several times harder than Liszt! Again!’
And she had forced that piece upon me when I was still a child with hands far smaller than now.
The structure itself practically guaranteed mistakes, yet she always dismissed everything as a lack of effort.
‘…Damn it.’
Of all pieces, it had to be Liszt.
And of all Liszt pieces, it had to be *La Campanella.*
I thought I had overcome all my trauma, but as I played, cold sweat once again trickled down my back.
‘That rhythm was too fast just now. Again.’
…My teacher’s phantom voice had started echoing again.
And under that pressure—
Ding.
“…Ah.”
In the end, I made my first mistake.
At that moment, it felt as though time itself had stopped.
Like I alone was being dragged beneath the world into some endless abyss.
But then—
♬♪♩♩
‘……Huh?’
Before I could even recognize the mistake, my fingers pressed different keys.
And somehow, instead of ruining the piece, they covered the mistake and created a beautiful new chord.
‘……This.’
What I was playing now was definitely *La Campanella.*
But it wasn’t Liszt’s *La Campanella.*
Improvisation.
After earlier improvising *Black Key* into *White Key*, my fingers had unconsciously become accustomed to improvisation.
This wasn’t simple transposition anymore.
A much higher-level rearrangement was happening instinctively.
‘……Ah.’
At that moment—
the trauma from my teacher,
the happy memories with my mother—
none of it existed anymore.
There was only me and the piano.
♩♬♬♩♪♪♩
And so, in a world washed completely white where nothing else existed—
I continued playing like someone possessed.
---
Park Huiyeon.
The greatest female pianist in South Korea.
Fifteen years ago, she made her name known after winning a world-class competition and had since remained one of Korea’s
representative pianists.
While she was practicing for a concert scheduled a few weeks later, her phone suddenly began vibrating nonstop.
Bzzzz—
“…What now?”
Annoyed at the interruption, she picked up her phone and saw countless messages from her manager.
—Manager: Noona, have you seen this? You absolutely need to watch it.
Attached to the frantic messages was a video link.
Tilting her head in confusion, she opened the video—
and immediately froze in shock.
[Insane La Campanella Performance by a Street Mascot Part-Timer ㄷㄷ]
[Views: 3,785,159 — Uploaded 1 day ago]
“What…? How does some random street piano performance get 3.7 million views in a single day?”
*La Campanella.*
It was a piece she herself loved and excelled at.
Two years ago, when she won her competition, the *La Campanella* performance she uploaded had reached around one million
views.
“…Seriously. Just how incredible could this performance possibly be?”
Yet despite being the same piece, and merely a street performance at that, this video had vastly surpassed the view
count of her own performance.
Feeling her pride wounded, she pressed play.
“…What is this?”
On the screen—
a rabbit mascot costume was playing the piano.