Baekrin realizes he hasn’t dusted his home in months. Illuminated specks in the air turn his small Seoul apartment into a galaxy in the light. He thinks maybe he should clean before he leaves for America as his 23-year-old restlessness sends him meandering around the charming piano that takes up the majority of his living room. He’s been dawdling around the piano for nearly an hour—rearranging the books on the coffee table, kicking stray crumbs under the couch, scavenging for erratic Korean dollars until his searching drives him back to the piano.
Answering his instinctual calling to the instrument, Baekrin sits himself down and lifts his youthful hands to the white keys, hesitating before stretching his fingers down to the cool, ivory surface.
He’s relieved when the first few lines of his favorite tune dance out of his fingers flawlessly, but the notes quickly become slurred, his finger pads unable to catch the right keys. His hands freeze up completely and Baekrin lifts his wrists from the keyboard.
He inspects his hands curled over the black and white palette in front of him, as if he were protecting his dream by covering it up. He stares at hands that are now stiff and mangled, curling into his palm in rigid bunches. He stretches them apart, but they only go so far.
The unfamiliar sound of Baekrin’s front door opening echoes through the empty house. A moment later a young, tall man discovers the smaller huddling at his piano.
“You’re going to America?” are his first dispirited words.
“Chanhee,” Baekrin replies to his friend, “how did you find out?”
“Your mom told me.”
He smiles. “So she did.”
His 24-year-old companion sits down at the piano beside him, glancing first at his disheartened friend before inspecting the manuscript paper displayed before them. Baekrin’s scribbly handwriting depicts a complex piece; a stack of his unfinished compositions sits atop the piano.
“Have you been writing any more music?” Chanhee asks, flipping through Baekrin’s recent arrangement. There are only two pages.
“Not for a few days.”
“But you’re good at it.”
He presents his hands for his friend to see. “I can’t hold a pencil anymore.”
Chanhee takes the hands and examines them before gently trying to tug the fingers straight, but Baekrin pulls his hand away as it pains him. “Sorry. Do you know what it is yet?”
“The doctor said it might be rheumatoid or basal joint arthritis,” Baekrin says with a shrug. “I’m going to America to see a doctor that may be able to diagnose it and perform surgery to fix it.”
The two friends sit in silence, Chanhee eyeing the manuscript. Then he laughs. “You remember in high school your hands were famous?”
“People would approach me just to tell me how great my hands were.”
Chanhee mimics old voices that had long since forgotten Baekrin’s existence. “Oh let me see your elegant hands! Your hands are so beautiful Baekrin! You’re going to be famous one day!”
The younger laughs. “My hands would become famous before I do. People won’t be saying that about them after surgery, though.”
Disappointment sheds on Chanhee’s face. “It’s completely unfair. You worked so hard, we were supposed to debut together: guitarist and pianist, world tours, concert halls, etcetera, etcetera.”
“Chanhee and Baekrin, the leading global Korean duo,” Baekrin recites—an old verse from the friends’ childhood scripts. The two reminisce about a childhood of staying late after long school days to rehearse covers of BTS, Ed Sheeran, Lorie Line, and Yiruma. A long-anticipated and hard-earned dream that has collapsed at their feet due to Baekrin’s recent hand development. He lifts them once again to exhibit the crumpling fingers for the two to see.
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll become a model…or a translator. You don’t need your hands for that, right?”
“You know another language besides Korean?”
The pianist scoffs playfully. “No, but I’m only 23—it’s not too late to learn.”
A wolfish growl ripples up from Chanhee’s stomach. Baekrin chuckles and releases himself from his position at the piano, making his way into the kitchen. Chanhee follows, troubled. The kitchen and refrigerator alike are nearly vacant, due to Baekrin’s long-term plans to visit America. He pulls out leftover noodles and begins to heat them on the stove.
Chanhee is hushed for the few minutes they wait—a rare disposition for the sprite fellow. He finally says,
“How can you give up on piano so easily? It seems you’d be just as satisfied with another career.”
Baekrin turns to face Chanhee, an incredulous expression canvasing his features. “Easy?” He can see the piano in the other room from where he stands. The sunlight highlights the instrument flatteringly, illuminating the edges and revealing layers of dust on the surface. Even today he sees it as he’d seen it as a child: the most mysterious, magnificent creation of humankind—even after the invention of heated flooring.
Baekrin cringes. “I try to play every day, but every day the music gets shorter. My abilities are decreasing. I watch my hands shrivel up behind a wall that separates me from everything I’ve ever wanted and worked for—everything we’ve worked for.”
Chanhee’s face is riddled with rueful lines that contrast with his usual cheery self. Baekrin continues, “You’re the one that got me piano lessons, helped pay for my piano, booked me night gigs. Now I’m the one that’s falling short. I can’t even bring myself to call myself a musician.”
Chanhee shakes his head, smiling once again. “Baek—you gave me your father’s guitar. You convinced my family that music was a career worth pursuing, and never once doubted our elementary plans to become performers. You can write music like Mozart and play like Beethoven. You are a musician.”
Baekrin dishes up a bowlful of kimchi noodles and slides it across the counter to Chanhee. “I’m going to meet an end like Mozart too,” He raises his elbows, modeling his fists. “My hands aren’t beautiful like they used to be, but life moves on. I spent hours and hours as a child at the piano, and I still spend hours there…except I can’t play anything. If I’m not a world-famous pianist then I will focus on something productive.”
Chanhee swallows a mouthful of hot noodles. “But your passion isn’t in modeling or translating, it’s in that,” he points to the piano, shrouded in dust curtains. “You’re a pianist, Baek. Ever since you were little. I’ve known it, your family knows it, you know it.”
Baekrin feels a sudden alter in his heart. He grabs a stray dish on the counter and flings it across the room like a Frisbee; it explodes on the floor beside Chanhee in a flurry of dust and glass slivers. He leans against the counter and hangs his head, akin to a worn-out t-shirt no one wants to wear.
“I’m a failure, Chan,” he whispers hoarsely.
Baekrin’s words instantaneously transport Chanhee to a memory portraying the two of them as teenagers playing out for the first time. A pianist and guitarist nestled in the corner of a local coffee shop, resonating acoustic alternative.
They’d been lively that day, full of unsung melodies. It had been the first day their eleven years of ritual practice had paid off. Chanhee had never seen Baekrin so happy before—or after—that day.
As he silently watches his friend knead his fingers, he can’t imagine any other future. They’re both mid-college with degrees only in music performance, high on a dream slipping through their fingers.
Chanhee doesn’t want that future, though, without his other half. It was their collective pursuit of musicality that brought them to such a level of mastery.
Chanhee shoves a bundle of noodles in his mouth before grabbing the other’s arm. He leads the two of them back to the piano where Baekrin’s manuscript lies open among the music. Chanhee speaks.
“I read over this, it’s promising. It will be the first song you and I release.”
“Pardon?”
Baekrin watches Chanhee slurp up more noodles before proceeding. “You can’t hold a pencil, but you can write in your mind. Tell me what you need to be written. I’ll add chords for myself, and lyrics for you. When you return from America we’ll record and produce it.”
“But—”
“If anyone can beat the odds it’s you, and as long as I’m alive there is no failing. We’re going to tour and perform like we’d always planned, regardless of what the doctors say. You’re not a failure Baekrin.”
Baekrin stares at Chanhee, the oh-so-common enthusiasm gleaming in his eyes. He can feel his hands rigid at his sides, imagining them flowing expertly across black and white keys.
He turns and pinches up a pencil before dropping it into Chanhee’s palm.
“Alright,” he says, a smile sliding up his cheeks, “let’s get to work.”
Becoming Writer 2016 Anniversary Contest 