Chapter 11.8 - Act 11: Slowly 8 (1/2)

Seeing me remain standing with an awkward expression, the teacher let out an empty cough as he changed topic.

“Well, what I’m trying to say is that everything will be fine as long as you grow a bit taller. Even in my case, I received more attention from my master because of this size. So, how about you start drinking milk everyday from now?”

I gave a grin in response to his words and replied.

“Maybe I should.”

Even without doing that I would gain more than ten centimetres from where I was but it won’t be bad to grow even taller. Whilst having such thoughts, I was laughing by myself when the teacher changed the topic yet again, perhaps thinking that it was a silly imagination.

“Anyways, that’s all I discovered about your situation. Now the body and muscles have all found their spots so singing shouldn’t lead to an injury. So you can practise however you want for vocalisation methods and…”

“Yep.”

Although I had a rough gist about my own body’s situation, it felt nice to have it double checked. When I gave a nod, the teacher caressed his chin and threw a question.

“By the way, the society you joined this time around – why did you suddenly enter it?”

Society?

As I blinked my eyes from the sudden question, he continued while scratching his hair.

“Well, before I imagined that you would have done a good job by yourself but… RC Society was it? Whatever it was, the situation was worse than I expected.”

Hmm… it indeed isn’t in a good situation right now.

I rolled my eyes around avoided eye contact while the teacher started going through some points one by one.

“First, there are not enough members, and it seems to lack enough support. The teacher in charge is pretty much uninterested. Why did you have to join a society like this? You suddenly choosing to do a musical was also out of the blue as well.”

Listening to his words, I nodded and realised that the teacher still did not know why I was going for musicals and operas.

“I was thinking that maybe I should become an opera singer in the future.”

“Opera huh. Well, that’s normal.”

“And in order to get used to plays, I joined a musical society…”

After hearing up to that point, teacher Kwak Jungsoo immediately made a scowl.

“‘Get used to’?”

“Yes?”

Letting out a snort, teacher Kwak Jungsoo turned his gaze and matched his line of sight with mine.

“What grade are you in right now?”

Feeling a little overwhelmed by that, I replied.

“First grade, sir.”

“Right, first grade. Plus, it hasn’t been a year since you started properly learning vocalisation. Now, you can barely sing a few art songs and one or two arias here and there.”

“…”

Facing his eyes at me as I kept my mouth shut, he shook his head and continued his sentence.

“Yunjae. There’s a thing called procedure when learning right? For example in maths, you need to learn plus minus before going over to multiplications, divisions and equations. And in English, you learn the alphabet, memorise words and only then do you learn sentences.”

“You’re right.”

The teacher stood up on the spot.

“It’s the same with singing. First, you learn vocalisation and create enough space before you start slowly learning songs, from easy to hard, one by one. From lied to aria, after which you learn a group of arias in the form of one opera. A sequential procedure like that is the general format.”

“…”

While quietly listening, I nodded my head.

Indeed, when learning how to sing, the general method is to learn expressions and techniques firsthand, by singing various songs. Even if you know theory and basics of music in your head, a practical process to have the body adapt all that is required.

When compared to studying, it was similar to learning theory before memorising it by going through exercises.

And yet since I was babbling on about how I would write an essay straight after learning theory… for the teacher that was unaware of my 20 years of exercise book practices, it was natural for him to be baffled.

After all, he hadn’t heard me sing in the past half a year.

‘How should I explain this…’

While I was contemplating about the method, he glanced at me and let out a sigh.

“…Both vocalisation and height. Don’t be too worried about it just because I said a few things about it. Your talent is not bad so after you put in enough effort, there will come a day where it will see the light.”

“Yes.”

After seeing me accept his words in, he tilted his head.

“But the thing about joining a musical society, I don’t think it was you that just suddenly decided to… by any chance was it teacher Ku Mingi’s suggestion?”

Seeing his expression slowly changing for the worse, I quickly waved my hand.

“No no no. That… you know how Mister Dickson came for a master class last time?”

“I did hear about that.”

“That day, he had a personal meeting with a few students and shared some chat…”

When I finished every detail of Mister Dickson’s advice, teacher Kwak Jungsoo’s expression turned strange.

“Maestro Dickson did? He personally suggested that you join a musical society?”

“Um… yes he did.”

“…”

He stared deeply at me with a frown before soon giving a nod.

“There has to be some reason if the Maestro said that… well, doing it as club activities wouldn’t hurt so let’s just do it.”

As expected of Sir Dickson.

A free pass ticket without even much of an explanation.

Right when I felt relieved for successfully persuading him, teacher Kwak Jungsoo pressed his temples and opened his mouth.

“Okay. So doing a musical is fine but… your society is in a pretty bad state. There are few members and even those few people aren’t in a good relationship.”

That was true.

Seeing me scratch my hair, teacher Kwak Jungsoo let out a smile and tapped my shoulder.

“Especially the first grade girls. There was fire crackling in their eyes or something.”

“…They are indeed not that close.”

“What do you mean ‘not close’. They were blatantly fighting because of you. Han Dasom and Song Mirae, right? So which side are you on?”

From how the corner of his lips were jumping up, it seemed that he was enjoying it a lot. Feeling awkward, I heaved out a sigh while facing him.

“Not sure about Song Mirae but Dasom isn’t like that. She’s just following around because I taught her a bit on how to sing…”