Chapter 4.6 - Sorrowfully 6 (1/2)

Looking at my phone while lying down, I saw a white screen.

[Improvement Concert Scoreboard]

Hmm it was quite nerve racking. The result of the Improvement Concert – it was time for that result to come out.

“Fuu…”

After a little hesitation, I pressed on the link with my eyes closed, to summon the popup screen. Squinting my eyes open, I glanced at the words.

[Freshmen Improvement Concert Performance Ranking]

1st Place: Kim Wuju 100 points

1st Place: Lee Suh-ah 100 points

3rd Place: Chloe Denjelle 96 points

4th Place: Jo Yunjae 95 points

…

Un? Am I seeing things?

With blinking eyes, I double checked and found the same words.

4th Place. Jo Yunjae. 95 points.

95 points – only 5 points less than that Kim Wuju and Lee Suh-ah.

A little scream of ‘Ohh’ escaped. Iya… I got a higher score than I thought. Is this the power of a good selection of song? I don’t think I deserved such a high mark though.

“Uhuhu…”

Having a mark I could never have imagined back during the admission, a little croon came out subconsciously and things from the past resurfaced.

Back then, when I received the Improvement Concert timetables.

How depressed was I seeing my name hanging on the second week?

But I have succeeded in protecting my Improvement Concert and I had confidence in the mid-sem exams. There were too many students that didn’t study including the Opera department so as long as I could somehow triumph over Lee Suh-ah who studied quite a bit, a full scholarship was not merely a dream.

“Huhu…”

Grinning and checking the scores over and over again, I went over to the next tab which read [My evaluations]. Pressing on that link, more than a hundred evaluations appeared.

Evaluations, so what the freshmen music department students felt after listening to my song – I read one by one slowly.

Long posts, short posts, evaluations that focused on some main parts and ones that were done without much thought… there were a variety of them. Glancing through all that, I picked up only the practical ones.

[Anonymous]

…Overall it was a great performance, but it gave off a feeling that it was just soft. On some parts, wouldn’t it have been better to go louder…

With a nod, I copied the evaluation and pasted it into the memos. Indeed, because I was lacking breath, I had only sung softly. This kind of feedback is good.

Like that, I quietly went through the feedback on the positives and negatives of the performance when familiar names started to come out one by one.

[Jun Shihyuk]

…It was quite good.

His evaluations were actually quite positive. He didn’t write anything about my negatives? I became slightly nervous seeing his name so that was quite unexpected.

Next, was Han Dasom.

[Han Dasom]

…Overall it was so good. I’m not saying this because we’re friends… actually, are we even friends… I don’t know.

Why did she write a letter when she was supposed to write an evaluation? Does she not know that it would be read by me and the teacher?

Tilting my head, I went over to the next evaluations.

Noh Jusup, Kim Wuju and so on. Seeing familiar names made me grin while some baseless criticisms had me shrugging my shoulders as well, but it was interesting in general.

I was humming through when a strange evaluation appeared.

[Anonymous]

…PS) This pulling thing towards the ends of the words, can you not do them? Legit sounds like an old man. Also don’t eat stuff like chocolate and eat things that are good for the body.

Suddenly I felt my temperature rising.

What do you mean ‘like an old man’. It’s pissing me off.

I read on with deep breaths but realised it was strangely detailed. Talking specifically about chocolate… isn’t this Lee Suh-ah?

Enraged, I immediately sent a message to Lee Suh-ah.

[Me: Oi, this was your evaluation right —]

When I attached an image with it, the phone immediately rang signalling a reply.

[Lee Suh-ah: I don’t know who wrote it but there’s nothing wrong (laughing emote)]

Is that how you want to play it?

With twitching hands, I manipulated the phone to find an audio file. Here it was, a recording file from the lessons that I had hidden deep.

[Lee Suh-ah humiliation.m4a]

I double checked just in case and it played the sound properly. A ‘huek’ sound like the screech of a chicken. This was a humiliating voice that Lee Suh-ah had let out during the Concerted Music lesson.

It seemed like there was a mistake whilst making a high note but that wasn’t important. The only important fact was that Lee Suh-ah was extremely embarrassed by it.

Smiling like a villain, I immediately send the file.

[Me: Lee Suh-ah humiliation.m4a]

As soon as a sign that she had read the messages appeared, the phone vibrated.

[Lee Suh-ah: Ah what the heck is this!!!]

[Lee Suh-ah: Delete it right now!!!!]

[Me: zzz]

Ah it’s so funny. Lying on the bed, I grinned and laughed resulting in Noh Jusup next to me staring at me like I was crazy.

“What you doing?”

“Kukuk. In the middle of teasing Lee Suh-ah.”

Seeing my phone vibrate like crazy, Noh Jusup made a bitter face and heaved a sigh.

“Haa… good times.”

What’s this young’un saying?

After shaking his head acting old, Noh Jusup suddenly opened his mouth.

“Hey hey, did you see that? You guys were on youtube.”

“Un?”

When I tilted my head, he rolled all the way over till he was next to me and raised his phone up. I looked at it to see what it was and found a youtube video on the screen.

[The daily lives of Future Arts High students]

Noh Jusup pressed on the play button, and the video played from his phone – a scene of the familiar entrance of Future Arts High was visible.

Ah… I think I know what this is going to be about.

With a grin I stared at it and of course,

Suddenly Han Dasom and I appeared in front of the entrance and after a short conversation we started singing.

[Gloria…]

After one song, the video ended with me pointing things out to Han Dasom.

It’s pretty interesting, did someone take it on the way?

Lying back down on the bed, I opened my mouth.

“Someone must’ve taken it. Why so much fuss for something like that?”

“No, but the number of views on this is quite high.”

“How many?”

Giving a short reply I was about to resume my breathing practice when Noh Jusup’s voice entered my ears from the side.

“100k”

In the middle of breathing in, I stopped.

100k?

It was higher than I thought. While I was a little stiff, Noh Jusup grinned and continued.

“Hey there’s a lot of comments as well. Hukuk. They say you guys look good together? Hohoo~”

Letting his comment in one ear and out the other, I was practising when a sudden thought had my head tilt.

“But it’s just two students singing a chorus, does that normally get that many views?”

Scratching his stomach, he replied.

“Ah~ This is a channel run by Song Mirae. It’s quite popular? There’s quite a few subscribers.”

“Song Mirae?”

When did she come and take a video?

I soon lost interest after some thought and indulged in breath training. Opera singing was also a job that needed popularity to go on, so having videos taken would mean a higher number of people knowing us and was definitely a good thing.