Liar and Liar - Chapter 77

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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 77

Even though it was in Korean, perhaps because she had said something she shouldn’t have, it was hard to control her trembling. However, this too was something that must not be discovered by Frederick.

Danielle desperately held her breath to hide her trembling.

Conflicted feelings tormented Danielle’s heart painfully. She yearned to be understood while desperately hoping he would never know for the rest of her life. The conflicted feelings clashed with a thud, making her heart beat violently.

Facing Frederick who wore an unreadable expression, Danielle bit the inside of her mouth hard.

* * *

Before Eunho was diagnosed with a rare disease, Danielle’s family was certainly well-off. In other words, the reason Danielle couldn’t even play piano wasn’t because there was no money at home or lack of support, but because there was no time. No time to attend piano lessons.

Danielle, who was selected as a science prodigy at age 6, had no interest in other things. While other female students learned art, dance, instruments, and swimming, Danielle attended abacus and science academies in her spare time outside of the gifted program.

So she had to decide. Whether to go to taekwondo or piano lessons in what little free time she had.

Danielle’s choice was taekwondo, and eventually she became the only female student in her class who couldn’t play piano. But she had never felt regretful or embarrassed about it. She definitely hadn’t.

In Korea, it didn’t matter if you couldn’t play an instrument, but the United States was different. Especially in private schools, not being able to play an instrument was truly a symbol of the lower class.

Not only could she not join the orchestra, which could be considered an essential activity of private schools, but opportunities to perform at concerts were automatically forfeited.

And one more thing.

She couldn’t even enter the preliminaries to become partners with the boy she liked. That was more miserable and sad than expected. Even though she had been avoiding him because she didn’t want to encounter him, and had treated him with hatred.

“So the music festival duet performers are Rick and Stella in the end? If you look closely, they always do the big things together.”

“Stella is already doing dress shop tours. Picking out what to wear for the music festival.”

“Ugh, those two will be stuck together for a while again. Just the official practices alone are several times.”

Danielle got up from her seat, leaving the students’ conversation behind.

However, at the recital where all students were forced to attend and stay until the end, there was no escape. Stella appeared under the pin lighting, placing her hand in Frederick’s.

‘What’s so special about this.’

This is nothing. Danielle repeated obsessively to herself.

Compared to falling asleep in homeroom and waking up alone in the classroom because no one woke her up, this was just like a punishment of having to stand next to the trash can.

It’s not like someone threw food waste in her bag. It’s not like everyone was laughing at her when she was openly called The Ugly.

‘What’s there to hurt about.’

What exactly is there to be upset about. What reason is there to feel miserable. After enduring well without crying even once until now, what reason is there for tears to come at this moment.

In a corner of the darkened audience seats, Danielle gripped tightly the loose school uniform skirt that covered her knees. Even though she thought she should look away, her eyes stubbornly stared at the two figures in her view.

The two repeatedly looked at each other and made eye contact, sometimes bringing their arms close together.

Stella Bellabia in her pale pink dress was beautiful like an angel, and harmonized with Frederick Bastia like a painting. As if they were born for each other.

The melody created by four hands together scratched at Danielle painfully. Danielle finally recognized the pain.

‘It hurts…’

Once deeply torn, her heart remained tattered even after the recital ended.

Danielle tried to pull herself together. She couldn’t postpone the things she had to do because of trashy emotions that no one would acknowledge or that she couldn’t show.

Then one day, it was purely by chance that Danielle discovered a tutorial video of the duet that Stella and Frederick had performed on a video site.

‘…So this kind of thing exists too.’

Since Danielle hadn’t chosen music as an elective subject, she still didn’t know how to read sheet music, and she never looked up classical videos or anything like that.

When she clicked on the video of the piece she had already memorized by name, she saw the piano and hands filmed from above. Stick-like bars fell like rain, touching the piano as fingers simultaneously pressed the keys.

“…”

After staring at the video for a moment, Danielle rewound it to the beginning.

Then she raised one hand and pressed the desk with her fingers as if following the secondo part.

Danielle didn’t know what this action was for. She just clung to it because it was better than suffering in pain. At least she could set aside her thoughts.

She memorized all the key positions and timing with her fingers, and used the upright piano at the church for actual practice. To do this, Danielle had to deliberately take on the final cleaning duties.

Every time she finished cleaning and barely managed to sit at the piano bench, Danielle felt like the poor aspiring pianist she had seen in some movie. In the movie, he could only sit in front of the hotel piano after washing hotel dishes all through dawn.

‘This is completely different from just tapping on a desk…’

Naturally, actually pressing the keys of a real piano was completely unfamiliar. It felt like something unlike her.

However, Danielle threw all questions and doubts about ‘why’ into the trash.

The heart-tearing pain barely disappeared when she became able to perfectly follow the performance that Stella Bellabia had done. Although Danielle still couldn’t play even “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” which was a basic piano piece, she could skillfully play only the secondo part of the duet that Stella and Frederick had performed.

If she could turn back time, if she could audition again.

When she thought that she might be able to beat Stella now, Danielle’s practice, which had been obsessively focused on the same sections and measures, finally came to an end.

* * *

I guess I really am crazy somewhere.

Unable to face Frederick who wasn’t saying anything anymore, Danielle lifted herself from the desk she had been sitting on and headed straight for the door. Her steps were as hurried as a fugitive’s.

What was I really thinking when I practiced that piano piece.

‘And why did I blurt it out to Frederick again.’

What did I expect him to understand by rambling. Are you crazy?

The more she realized what she had done, the more Danielle just wanted to run away. Her heart beat painfully.

It wasn’t the pleasant fluttering of excitement. Like a time bomb, it felt like it would explode at any moment.

“Honey.”

At Frederick’s voice from behind her, Danielle’s heart dropped with a thud. Finally, the time bomb’s countdown stopped. But Danielle felt like she was dying rather than coming alive.

If she opened the door in front of her, she could escape. But Danielle couldn’t take another step. Because Frederick’s footsteps approached clearly.

The quickly approaching footsteps stopped behind Danielle, and before she could realize it, two arms embraced her from behind.

“Huk!”

She was only a little startled, but a strange sound popped out of her mouth. Like something a captured animal would make when caught by a hunter…

“What if you suddenly leave like that. When you do this, I get unnecessarily excited.”

A cool nose bridge rubbed against the nape of her neck. Before the heavy weight and warmth pressing against her back, what reached her first was Frederick’s scent.

‘This isn’t National Geographic or anything.’

Why is a jellyfish treating a person like a herbivore and making a fuss. Danielle chewed her lower lip.

“Don’t show me your back. Okay? Where were you trying to go?”

Somewhere you’re not…

‘I can’t say that… right?’

While she was pondering, Frederick began to act even more intensely sticky. He arbitrarily breathed in and out deeply against the nape of her neck repeatedly.

‘Hheup.’

“Don’t do weird things…!”

“Is it weird?”

When Frederick chuckled, Danielle felt like her head was clearing up. Perhaps because the sharp anger that shot up pressed down everything else.

“Not weird at all…”

His drawling voice seemed to stick to her skin stickily. It was terribly damp.

“Ah, I barely managed to hold back and came out.”

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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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