Chapter 6.9 - Faster 9 (1/2)
Faster 9
“Ah… I failed my concour…”
I stopped fidgeting with the phone and turned my eyes to the side.
Lunch time. Under the long rays of sunlight, I could see Noh Jusup lying down on his desk. After rolling his head around and writhing his body in agony, he pulled his hairs out.
“I failed…!”
“…What do you mean. The results are not even out yet so how would you know whether you’ve failed or not?”
“It’s gonna come out soon! Besides, I already know without even seeing it. Haa… I’m feeling ominous…”
“…”
Did the prelim results come out after a day? I wasn’t sure and just tapped on Noh Jusup’s shoulders.
“Hey. Heavy work in youth is quiet rest in old age okay? It’s alright it’s alright. Youth is meant to be painful right. When I was young huh, I applied in all sorts of concours despite failing in all of them. I just thought of all that as experience. Ku… those were good times.”
“What in the world are you saying.”
I was teasing Noh Jusup with a few grins and found Lee Suh-ah watching us from the side with a strangely confident expression.
Since it occurred to me, I turned my head over and asked Lee Suh-ah.
“Did you do well?”
“Of course I did.”
“Unlucky.”
With a grin, I stared back at Lee Suh-ah who glared at me before suddenly thinking of the composing thing. After the various tests, she mentioned that the song would be finished soon and she was certain that it would be finished within a week.
…We needed to find a soprano as well.
“Oi Lee Suh-ah.”
“…Now what”
“Do you have time? An upperclassman I know is from the composing department and she needed help for her Improvement Concert…”
Stealing a glance towards Song Mirae, Lee Suh-ah immediately gave a reply.
“I have a concour during that time.”
“Oh you do?”
A concour huh… that can’t be helped then. She must be busy so I couldn’t force her to help. Besides, since sunbae said that we could find an outsider if we couldn’t find a soprano, it didn’t really matter. I was shrugging my shoulders when Song Mirae chimed in from the side while sparkling her eyes.
“Hey Yunjae! I have a lot of time~”
“…Is that so.”
Replying blankly, I contemplated.
Song Mirae.
It’s good since she’s a mezzo soprano but… her attitude made me feel uncomfortable. She was appealing openly while blinking her eyes.
“Un. I don’t have any concours and… another sunbae asked me to help with the presentation but I don’t really know him so it’s a bit, yeah~ Ah! It would be nice if I could do it with someone I knew~”
…At this point, even I could realise that it would get extremely annoying if I was to get involved with her.
“I see. But I’m going to do it with Dasom.”
“Un…?”
Quickly averting my eyes from the blank-faced Song Mirae, I stared at Han Dasom.
“Dasom. You’re okay right?”
“Okay.”
“Didn’t you ask Suh-ah just then…”
“Dasom do you want to sing one right now?”
“Okay.”
Han Dasom who had nodded without even listening to my words came to a sudden stop and blinked her eyes.
“What…?”
“Let’s do a song right now.”
“Now?”
“Yeah.”
“…?”
*
The UCC contest – a contest made suddenly to promote and publicise the school. A creative mind and increasing the activity… all that explanation meant nothing and it all boiled down to who got more views on youtube. On top of that, it was a competition with only one video allowed so the objective was simple.
It was to buy the interests of the people, which was an objective that could be considered the fundamental goal of us, the performers.
“Are we really just filming like this…?”
While Han Dasom was touching her hair in anxiety, I looked around the surroundings.
The classroom.
In the middle of that class that was in a rowdy atmosphere, Han Dasom and I were sitting on the other sides of one desk.
“Yunjae. Can I go to the bathroom first? I didn’t wear any makeup…”
“It’s fine. Do it naturally.”
“But…”
“That’s more like a student so it’s better.”
“…?”
Seeing her tilt her head, I smiled. What did we have to do to gain a lot of views? We needed to gather the interests of the people through attacking what people wanted to know, and the things they wanted to see. In that sense, ‘Han Dasom and my morning live’ was enough of a topic to go viral.
[How would the students of the prestigious arts school, ‘Future Performing Arts High School’ spend their days?]
It was a video that perfectly answered that question. Lee Suh-ah who had been watching us set things up crossed her arms.
“What are you trying to do?”
“We’re going to sing.”
“Here?”
“Yeah.”
She gave a frown.
“So… a song, without any preparations in the middle of a class like this? And you’re going to hand that into the contest?”
“Yeah.”
“…Is that going to be good enough?”
“We’ll make it good enough.”
“…”
I watched Lee Suh-ah make a blank expression with a grin. I could read her thoughts from the expression that asked, what was so special about performing arts students singing?
In fact, there was nothing special about it.
Performing arts students were quite the attention seekers so a singing video was nothing unique. Perhaps on youtube, there were already tens and hundreds of such videos already.
She was trying to ask how I could win against Song Mirae who had thousands of subscribers with such a common video. The background was the middle of a classroom without any preparations as well.
However,
It had to be the classroom in fact.
“What are they doing?”
“They’re singing apparently.”
“Kukuk. Jo Yunjae and Han Dasom again?”
The students that had been enjoying their lunch time inside the classes all started to observe us noisily. They seemed to be enjoying an event that was suddenly happening in the middle of their boredom.
I opened my mouth and talked to Han Dasom who had been stealing glances at them.
“Dasom. Is there any duet song you know?”
“A duet…? No…”
“None? Even from pop songs?”
Tilting her head, Han Dasom replied.
“I know a lot from pop songs but… are we singing a pop song?”
“Yeah.”
Noh Jusup who had been watching on from the side let out a snicker.
“An opera student singing a pop song? Is it going to be comedy? Kukuk.”
“What do you mean comedy? I’m completely serious.”
“What? Are you good at singing pop songs? It became really weird for me after learning opera.”
Seeing Noh Jusup with his widened eyes, I gave a nod. Indeed, there were those kinds of people as well.
Because the direction opera and popular music faced were different, it was hard to sing one after getting used to another. And especially if it was a student who was in the middle of learning, he would be more confused by it.
Of course, once you get the knack of it, the change from pop songs to opera was easy.
In the end, they were both songs.
Turning my head, I looked at Han Dasom once again.
“So, what duet songs do you know? Pick one from here.”
“Uun…?”
When I pushed my phone out, Han Dasom started to diligently go through the list I provided. It was a list I made after a hard work of searching for songs last night – a list of duet songs that were popular these days.