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2 # Entrance Examination
“Where do you live?”
“My dad’s car is a Mercedes.”
“I live in Cheongdam-dong. And my mom told me not to hang out with kids who live in Gangbuk.”
Thirty whole minutes spent among the embodiment of pure malice.
“……”
After being confronted with human malice for the first time in a long while, Rian finally managed to make his way
through the interminable line and enter the kindergarten.
“Are you the guardian of Lee Rian?”
“Yes, I’m Kim Jin-ah. It’s Jin-ah, not Jin-a.”
The kindergarten teacher nodded matter-of-factly.
“You applied for the basic class, so the entrance exam won’t be particularly difficult. If you wait over here, Lee Rian
will take the test by himself…”
Before he knew it, Rian had been left alone in an unfamiliar room.
Seeing his mother forcing a smile and waving at him through the translucent window, it seemed that this sort of thing
was normal in the human world.
—Waaaaah! Mommy! Mommmyyy…!
—Stop crying! Did Mommy tell you to stop or not?!
Looking again, perhaps it wasn't so normal after all.
Rian let the various screams and shrieks coming from the adjacent room go in one ear and out the other before turning
his head.
Sitting in front of him was a man who looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties.
“Hello. I’m Teacher Lee Yong-hak. What’s our little friend’s name?”
“Lee Rian.”
“Okay, Rian. Why don’t you sit over here?”
Lee Yong-hak gestured toward a small chair placed across from him.
Perhaps because he was dressed in a crisply ironed suit, he gave off quite an academic air. Combined with the way he was
busily scribbling something on a sheet of paper, he looked exactly like a professor.
Of course, what Lee Yong-hak was writing was a checklist concerning ‘how long the child maintains psychological
stability after being separated from their parents.’
Without looking toward his parents even once, Rian simply stared back at him with an expressionless face.
Seeing this, Lee Yong-hak checked the box labeled ‘Very stable.’
It might have seemed a little heartless, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Parents in the Republic of Korea tended to believe that a place was more prestigious and special if it maintained a high
level through strict screening and intense competition while operating with only a select few students.
Apparently, something had to be difficult to get into before it could be considered special.
And this wasn't limited to kindergartens. The same principle applied to elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as
the private education market.
It was advice from his older cousin, who had spent many years working as a kindergarten teacher, so it was probably
accurate.
Of course, Lee Yong-hak, who hadn't even majored in early childhood education, had no interest in such deep matters.
“Does our Rian know how to play any musical instruments? It’s perfectly fine if he doesn’t.”
The boy paused to think before answering.
Only after about thirty seconds did he finally speak.
“Three.”
“Three?”
Lee Yong-hak nodded, pretending to be moderately surprised.
Three instruments at the age of five.
‘These parents aren't normal either.’
This was an era when the private-education craze had gone beyond being a craze and had become the norm.
And it wasn't limited to Korean, English, and mathematics.
‘At least those subjects are relatively well known.’
The arts were even worse.
Parents who believed that even innate talent could be compensated for through effort and money were everywhere.
Why else would they willingly pay expensive tuition to send their five-year-olds to music kindergartens?
Whenever news broke that a Korean performer had won a prize at a prestigious competition such as the Chopin Competition
or the Tchaikovsky Competition, inquiries about enrollment would pour in the very next day for exactly the same reason.
Whenever Lee Yong-hak encountered parents like that, he had mountains of things he wanted to tell them.
But he never actually said them out loud.
He already knew painfully well that those people weren't going to change just because someone told them otherwise.
“Really? Then why don’t you tell Teacher what instruments Rian can play?”
Several instruments flashed through Lee Yong-hak's mind.
Violin, piano, cello…
But the word that came out of the boy's mouth easily defied his expectations.
“Lyre, lute, and flute.”
The tip of Lee Yong-hak's pen froze.
“…Lyre? Lute?”
He wondered if he had heard wrong.
He had encountered children who said they played electric guitar, but this was the first time in his life he'd heard a
child name ancient instruments that seemed more suited to a medieval movie.
‘Did he just make that up?’
Only then did Lee Yong-hak raise his head and properly meet the boy's eyes.
If he were lying, he would probably avoid eye contact.
Yet the boy's eyes remained as clear as they had been from the very beginning.
Normally, the proper thing to do would be to have him actually play the instruments and verify his claims.
But even a highly successful private kindergarten like this one didn't have lutes or lyres.
Lee Yong-hak secretly furrowed his brow.
If things continued like this, they wouldn't even be able to test his sight-reading skills, much less have him perform a
prepared piece.
What on earth had the teachers outside been thinking when they let this kid in?
With a faint sense of hope, Lee Yong-hak asked,
“…Did you happen to bring an instrument with you?”
“No?”
That was when Lee Yong-hak became certain.
The teachers had done a terrible job handling this.
However, there were several facts that Lee Yong-hak didn't know.
—Waaaaaah! I don't wanna do itttt!!!
First, the boy screaming his lungs out in the hallway at that very moment was also named Lee Rian.
Second, unlike the Lee Rian standing outside, the Lee Rian in front of him had applied for the basic class rather than
the study-abroad class, which selected only the most elite students.
(Indeed. No matter how brutally competitive a private kindergarten was, they didn't give basic-class children
sight-reading tests.)
But since Lee Yong-hak didn't know any of that, he couldn't help but find himself in an awkward position.
Normally, this would have been grounds for elimination.
However, Lee Yong-hak didn't want to be that harsh on a five-year-old child.
So for the time being, he decided to skip the performance portion and start with rhythm and ear training.
It was still an exceptionally harsh test for kindergarteners.
They would be played short, edited classical music clips and have to distinguish whether the piece was in 3/8 time, 3/4
time, or 7/8 time.
‘Is this really okay for children?’
But what could he do?
His cousin, who had majored in early childhood education, had told him to do it this way, so he was simply following her
instructions.
—Yong-hak! Help your older sister just this once! You're on a break right now, so it's not like you're doing anything…
—Of course I'll pay you! And you said you wanted to teach little kids!
—What's with the banner? I'm sorry I didn't tell you beforehand. B-but the director said that if the winner of the
Tchaikovsky Competition came here, we should at least use it for publicity, so I couldn't exactly refuse…
—Director! No, Mom! Yong-hak is running away…!
“……”
The many things that had happened over the past few days flashed through Lee Yong-hak's mind in an instant.
But anyway.
Without letting any of it show, Lee Yong-hak played the recording.
At first, it was an ordinary 4/4 rhythm.
But then the rhythm subtly twisted and changed into 7/8 time.
It was an irregular rhythm that even upper-grade elementary school students who had received professional musical
training could easily miss if they weren't paying close attention.
Yet the boy's expression remained perfectly calm.
“It was four beats at first, but afterward, um… it was divided into seven.”
The terminology wasn't particularly sophisticated, but that wasn't a problem.
There was nothing strange about a child his age forgetting a term like ‘7/8 time’ for a moment.
‘Still, I guess he really has learned an instrument.’
Lee Yong-hak continued the test until he could give Rian a perfect score in rhythm.
The next test was ear training.
“From now on, Teacher is going to play you a piece of music…”
---
‘Humans really are incredible.’
Rian silently clicked his tongue in amazement.
‘At this rate, it's no wonder living to a hundred would be difficult.’
What other race would grind their souls away like this from an age when they couldn't even run properly?
And apparently, this was only the basic-class entrance exam.
What could little children possibly know at that age?
Even Rian himself hadn't learned much beyond the fact that King Sejong and Yi Sun-sin were great, and that if you bowed
to your elders during Lunar New Year and Chuseok, they gave you money.
—Can I keep listening to that music?
—Th-that’s fine.
Rian had actually finished the Hangul worksheets and elementary-school-level basic arithmetic his mother had given him
at the age of two because he wanted to spend as much time as possible listening to music on public broadcasting.
But he didn't know that this had played a major role.
Anyway, because of that, he had assumed that the children his age would all be roughly similar in ability.
But apparently not.
‘Is my knowledge lacking?’
It wasn't impossible.
After all, he'd lived as an elf for many decades longer than he'd lived as a human.
Even so, he hadn't expected to be inferior to children who had been teaching one another about social status based on
their parents' wealth since the age of five.
He'd dismissed them as mere children.
But now that he thought about it, if he didn't take this seriously, he was going to fail outright.
Considering that he'd traveled nearly an hour by car to get here, this ‘music kindergarten’ was clearly not some
ordinary kindergarten around the corner from his house.
‘No.’
He didn't want to waste his childhood on anything other than music.
“We're going to move on to the instrument performance portion now, but since we don't have any of the instruments Rian
mentioned, we'll just skip that part today…”
It sounded like a rejection.
Rian's gaze immediately shifted toward the instruments sitting at the back of the room.
A violin, a cello, a piano, and several different types of brass instruments.
They were instruments he was familiar with from occasionally seeing them on television since childhood.
Among them, he'd even played the violin and piano in his previous life.
Of course, they hadn't been called ‘violin’ or ‘piano’ back then, and their appearances had been somewhat different.
Still, they looked roughly similar, so Rian figured the method of playing them couldn't be all that different.
If Rian had been a professional performer, he wouldn't even have dared to entertain such a thought, let alone voice it.
But…
‘I’m about to get rejected.’
Unfortunately, he was a bard at his core.
In other words, he wasn't someone who cared much about formalities.
“I can do it.”
“Hmm?”
“I can play the violin.”
“……”
A brief silence.
Rian immediately understood what it meant.
But instead of doing what Rian was worried he might do, Lee Yong-hak simply smiled and nodded as though nothing had
happened.
Then he handed Rian one of the violins resting at the back of the room.
“Don't be nervous. Just give it a try. It's okay if you can't play.”
He even added something along the lines of, “Teacher won't scold you.”
It was consideration born from the common assumption that children capable of playing several instruments from a young
age must naturally have been raised by strict parents.
But Rian, who didn't even know how to properly hold a violin, was far too preoccupied to notice the consideration behind
his words.
‘Just like I saw on TV, put it against my neck, and hold the handle like this.’
He assumed a posture that looked roughly plausible.
It might have been enough to fool a few ordinary people.
But fooling Lee Yong-hak, a violinist who had won the Tchaikovsky Competition, one of the world's three major music
competitions, was another matter entirely.
Of course, Lee Yong-hak didn't feel offended by Rian's attempt.
Who could get angry at a five-year-old struggling to do his best?
If anything, he should have found it admirable.
‘He can't even produce a proper sound.’
So Lee Yong-hak merely smiled.
Just as uncles tended to smile when watching their young nephews.
And then Rian's hand moved.
Screeech—!
As expected, an unpleasant, grating sound characteristic of a beginner rang out.
‘Just as I thought.’
There was no way to produce a proper sound when his posture wasn't even correct.
A violin wasn't an instrument like a piano that produced a sound simply by pressing something.
It was incredibly delicate.
Even adults found it difficult to produce a proper sound after only a day or two of practice.
Rian was also furrowing his brow.
Was he frustrated because the sound wasn't coming out the way he wanted?
Screech—! Skk—!
Just as Lee Yong-hak decided it was probably time to stop him before the expensive instrument got damaged—
Zwaang—!
A perfectly clean note rang out as though by magic.
‘……Hmm?’
Lee Yong-hak's eyes widened slightly.
Then Rian nodded once, as though he'd finally figured it out.
Zwa-zwa-zwa-zwaang—!
And he began to play.
“……!”
With a remarkably lively tone.