A Musical Genius Who Plays Memories - Chapter 1

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 1. Étude (1)

I am a fake.

Though I created countless songs, what remained with me in the end was the disgrace of being called a fake.

“Cough!”

Blood and phlegm mixed together from my violent coughing fell onto the handkerchief with a plop.

I roughly wiped the saliva and blood from my dirty beard with an old cloth and looked around the room.

Then a cracked mirror caught my eye.

There was a figure in the mirror.

Sunken cheeks, lifeless eyes, clumps of missing hair, and cracked lips.

An unkempt, messy beard and dried porridge that had spilled while eating were stuck to the clothes.

A dying person was preserved in that mirror.

That was me.

A fool who couldn’t even protect his own music was there.

“Those things that once shone so brightly have rotted away like this. No, they never shone in the first place.”

At the same time, I thought about how I had come to be in this dying state.

When I was young, I didn’t know what music was.

Just a passing sound.

That thing, which was nothing more than noise, suddenly pierced my ears one day.

It was a song played by the Piano Man at the club where my mother worked that became the catalyst.

It was, how should I put it, like heavenly music to me.

Looking back now, the notes and melody were crude, but there was something that made people happy.

I was drawn to it.

‘Won’t you learn music from me?’

Genius.

The possessor of heaven-given talent that people spoke of—that was me.

The Piano Man said so, and I followed him.

For someone from a Slave Family, from the bottom of society, being given the opportunity to learn something meant a chance that would never come again.

I studied hard.

Though theories like rhythm, melody, and harmony were boring.

The feeling of playing the piano with my hands, note by note, was so wonderful.

I thought that was happiness.

However, that brief happiness didn’t last very long.

The Piano Man—no, The Man—began stealing my songs and selling them under his own name.

I didn’t know this when I was young.

I was just grateful to be able to learn music.

Sometimes there were days when I didn’t receive a single penny.

Such days became more frequent, and I found this strange.

‘Your music isn’t popular.’

The Man said that.

But the music heard on the streets denied his words.

My songs were echoing through the streets—how could I believe what he said?

It turned out The Man had joined hands with a Distribution Company and had been fattening his belly by deceiving me for 30 years.

I was furious and revealed this truth to the world.

‘That person is a thief who copied my songs!’

No one listened to my cries.

The world wasn’t easy enough to listen to the words of someone from a Slave Family.

“Cough! Hack, cough!!”

Bang—!

“Are you alright!”

Having heard my coughing, my Friend from the next room rushed in urgently.

He quickly approached and examined me from head to toe.

I stopped my worried-looking Friend and said,

“Cough, I’m fine. Just had some phlegm stuck in my throat.”

“My friend, I’m the one who’s not fine. Such a healthy fellow has become like this…”

My Friend sat down heavily beside the bed and looked at me.

Though we had different jobs and lived in different environments, he was the only person who believed in me until the end.

That’s why I could speak my inner thoughts without hesitation.

“I think it would have been better if I had never learned music.”

“Then I wouldn’t have treated you either.”

“Right, I might have died much earlier. Without music, I would have just been a laborer from a Slave Family.”

I raised my right hand to look at it.

The hand that had played piano and various instruments was missing two fingers.

The index and middle fingers.

That was the price I paid for struggling to reveal the truth to the world.

“…Do you regret it?”

“Well.”

At one time, I made songs anonymously.

I created songs that were purely mine without any interference, and there were people who listened.

– No matter how much you crawl around, no one will listen to songs from a powerless guy like you.

The one who listened to my music happened to be The Man.

The Man took away my fingers and made it so I could never make music again.

Since he already had that kind of power, I had no choice but to suffer.

After my fingers were cut off and I was beaten, I somehow made it through the Mountain to my Friend’s house and barely received treatment.

Seeing me like that, my Friend said,

“Among the people I’ve treated, there was someone who did trade business. That person told me stories about the far East.”

“…Out of nowhere? Well, hearing a story before dying isn’t bad either.”

“Don’t say that. Anyway, that person said that in the East, there’s a concept called reincarnation.”

“Reincarnation? You mean being born again? Though it’s been long since I went to church, cough, it’s common sense that people go to heaven when they die.”

My Friend continued,

“That’s common sense for us Europeans. Eastern people believe that your next life is determined by how you lived this life.”

“How fascinating.”

“And you forget all about your previous life so you can live anew.”

I nodded and pondered what my Friend had said.

My life had been a series of things being stolen.

My talent and happiness were taken away.

I struggled to get them back, but now I’ve given up.

Having lived such a life, could I really say I lived righteously?

With complicated feelings, I asked my Friend,

“If you were to be born again, what would you want to do?”

If.

That word stuck in my throat.

For someone like me to live life again somehow felt shameful.

My Friend said,

“Of course I’d be a doctor. I like saving people. And I made quite a bit of money too.”

“So my friend was obsessed with money.”

“That’s why we became friends.”

My Friend and I laughed heartily.

After laughing for a moment, I once again spoke of what I wanted to do.

“I… if I were born again, I’d want to do music.”

“Of course you would. You love music.”

“I want to create music that is truly mine, that no one can take away from me.”

“….”

My friend remained silent.

He stared intently at my face.

We two had maintained our bond for a long time, watching the wrinkles increase with each passing day.

My friend would know better than anyone what kind of feelings I harbored.

That’s why I would make one final request of him.

My final music.

My final breath.

I took out the sheet music I had hidden on one side of the pillow and handed it to my friend.

It had taken quite a bit of effort to draw the notes using only my ring finger and pinky.

“This is…?”

“I started composing this after coming to your house. My hand is like this, so it’s messy, but you should be able to read it.”

“But… would it be alright for me to accept this?”

He was qualified to receive it.

More than qualified.

Because he was the one who treated me, a former slave, without pretense and watched over me as I strived to reveal the truth to the world.

He would surely do his utmost to fulfill my final wish.

“You’re more than qualified to receive it. Think of it as my gift to you. What you do with it is up to you.”

He slowly accepted the four pages of sheet music I handed him.

My friend repeatedly pursed and opened his lips for a long while.

After much contemplation, he finally spoke.

“…I will make sure to reveal your injustice to the world.”

“Thank you. Having you as a friend was great fortune.”

I slowly moved my body.

Unable to resist the overwhelming drowsiness, I thought I’d take a brief nap.

“Could you close the curtains? I’d like to take an afternoon nap.”

“Of course. Sleep well.”

I gently closed my eyes.

With my vision blocked, all sounds began to gather in my ears.

The sound of trees rustling in the wind, the fluttering of butterfly wings, my friend’s careful footsteps, the voices of people talking outside.

I could hear countless sounds.

Breaking through all those sounds, I heard my friend’s voice.

“Sleep well, my friend.”

I couldn’t answer.

Sleep was pouring over me so heavily that I forgot to respond.

Whether the curtains had been drawn or not, everything was dark.

All the sounds that had created gentle music suddenly fell silent.

In the pitch darkness, I fell into a sleep from which I would never wake.

As I drifted off to sleep, I remembered what my friend had said.

‘Reincarnation… Me, reincarnated? How utterly ridiculous.’

And so I quietly drew my last breath.

My death was as quiet as a calm lake amidst noisy gunfire.

***

‘…?’

From somewhere, the sound of a piano could be heard.

– Ding-♬

A low C resonated gently.

The next note was heard, and the one after that too.

Slowly, a single melody emerged.

‘This is the piece I gave to my friend?’

I thought my friend had called a pianist to practice it.

I understood his desire to hear my music performed.

Though I hadn’t expected him to call someone so quickly.

But something felt off.

Rather than listening to someone actually playing,

It felt more like recalling a song from memory.

However, that recalled melody was incredibly vivid.

‘What is this?’

I was confused.

And then some noise broke through my confusion.

The noise was chaotic.

The sound of people shouting something kept poking at my ears.

Strange beeping sounds also tickled my ears.

In this incomprehensible situation, I tried to open my eyes.

But they wouldn’t open.

“@*$*^(&!!”

I heard a woman’s voice.

It sounded muffled, like someone shouting underwater, so I couldn’t understand what she was saying.

What was certain was that it wasn’t a language I knew.

The way it rolled around seemed like a completely different language, not English or French.

“((@*$&@$(*&!!”

The woman shouted something again.

I couldn’t understand what was happening at all.

I just thought I was dreaming.

After all, words in dreams always sounded strange.

Smack!

But just as I thought it was a dream, I felt pain in my thigh area.

I had never even been hit by my mother as a child.

The stinging pain made me snap to attention, and a scream burst from my mouth.

“Waaahhh!!”

But my scream had changed into the crying of a newborn baby.

Tears streamed out, and the crying showed no signs of stopping.

Still, I could hear voices.

“@$#$%@.”

This time it wasn’t an urgent voice, but one that seemed relieved.

However, I had no time to worry about that.

‘What is this? Could it be that my body was experimented on like in novels?’

A novel that came out long before I was born contained such a story, so terrible thoughts kept flooding my mind.

So I put all my strength into opening my eyes to at least assess the situation.

But opening my eyes wasn’t easy at all.

When I tried to exert force, I lost strength instead.

While I was putting all my effort into opening my eyes,

I felt a cool breeze.

Whatever had been supporting me disappeared briefly, then something else supported my neck and bottom.

‘Eyes, please! Ah, finally!’

I worked hard to open my eyes, and finally saw results.

The light that had been filtered through my corneas began to show properly, little by little.

I slowly opened my eyes, and finally I could see the world.

“@%*….”

A man’s voice could be heard.

It was low and slightly cracked, as if he had lived a rough life.

That voice sounded muffled as if soaked in water.

And my eyes finally opened completely.

At first, bright light was blinding, then something large blocked my vision.

A voice was heard.

“Daddy….”

Clearly, it was a language I was hearing for the first time.

Yet somehow I could understand those words.

Everything began to come into view.

In a room with white walls, a man was holding me.

A rough-looking man with an unkempt beard was looking at me, smiling and crying at the same time.

‘I’m 39 years old though…?’

That’s what I said.

However.

“Waaaaah!!”

My voice didn’t cooperate.

It was sharp and high-pitched like a baby’s.

‘Hm? Hmm??’

I tried to make a sound once more.

“Eung-ya-ah-woong.”

“@$%@, daddy.”

I couldn’t understand what he said at the beginning, but I could clearly hear the word ‘daddy.’

However, I didn’t have time to think about that.

Based on what I could see and hear, my current situation was serious.

‘Don’t tell me I’ve become a baby?’

The reincarnation that Friend had talked about.

It seemed I had experienced exactly that.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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