Chapter: 03
‘Am I not the top-ranked student? You listened to only my performance all the way to the end, so why didn’t you call my name?’
Aurelia had asked Professor Schneider that question countless times in her head. But when she actually faced Professor Schneider’s sharp gaze, the words only lingered in her mouth and refused to come out.
“Did you come here to ask why I’m not giving you the opportunity? Because you thought it was a mistake that your name wasn’t called?”
He had hit the nail on the head.
But since Professor Schneider had kindly, yet sharply, voiced the words that Aurelia herself could not bring herself to say, she slowly nodded.
There must have been a mistake.
“Aurelia, you’re different from those boys. They are the students who will enhance the reputation of the Zerphium Conservatory in the future, but you aren’t.”
The words that came from Professor Schneider’s mouth were difficult to understand all at once.
I’m not?
What am I not? Why am I not?
“Sit down. I already know that you didn’t draw my sheet music this time. Did you think that because you trusted your own abilities, you could take the exam under me and still come out on top?”
“That….”
She had nothing to say.
Professor Schneider was right.
Just as the classmate who had asked her to switch sheet music had said, Aurelia had thought the same thing.
Since she would be able to perform well anyway, she had believed that it didn’t matter which professor evaluated her performance.
“Yes, I already know that you’re good. But having talent and becoming a pianist are two different things. To be honest, I think the other professors are giving you false hope. You need to understand some things too. You’re graduating soon, aren’t you?”
Professor Schneider indicated the chair across from him with a glance.
Aurelia, who had been biting her lips and was now digging her fingernails into her palms, lowered her head and sat in the chair Professor Schneider had pointed to.
There were so many things she wanted to say, but she simply couldn’t bring herself to speak.
Why had he called students whose grades were lower than hers, while leaving her name uncalled? Why wouldn’t he give her a chance?
‘Is this favoritism too?’
Even so, Aurelia had thought that she had managed to survive reasonably well within that favoritism.
Talent always had a way of overcoming money.
That was why she could proudly say that she had achieved better grades than her classmates who lived more comfortably than she did.
“Do you want to join the orchestra as a supporting member?”
The light reflected off the silver frames of Professor Schneider’s glasses.
For some reason, Aurelia felt as though that light were taking aim at her, but she stubbornly forced herself to say what she needed to say.
“Yes, because it’s a good opportunity. Before graduating from the Zerphium Conservatory, it would be a good chance to build experience as a prospective pianist….”
“Enough.”
Aurelia squeezed out words that barely came from her throat, but Professor Schneider stopped her before she could finish.
Professor Schneider narrowed his brow deeply, pushed his glasses up, and glared at Aurelia.
“Aurelia Bernhard.”
“Yes, Professor.”
After saying Aurelia’s name, Professor Schneider remained silent for a long while despite her response.
It seemed as though, among all the countless words he could say, he was considering which ones would hurt her the most. Aurelia’s shoulders slowly drooped.
No matter how many times she thought about it, she couldn’t see how her own thinking was wrong, yet Professor Schneider’s voice and actions kept making her shrink back.
“As you live your life, you have to learn how to give up sometimes.”
At Professor Schneider’s words, Aurelia clenched her fists.
She didn’t even know what, exactly, she was supposed to give up.
All her life, wherever and whenever she went, Aurelia had been praised for her talent as a pianist.
‘No matter how much I think about it, this is my path. I don’t understand why I have to give it up.’
She was happiest when she was playing the piano, and that was why she had worked harder than anyone else.
Everything she had built up until now had been the foundation for becoming a renowned and promising pianist.
“From the beginning, Symphony Hall wanted to choose from among the male students. That’s just the way the world is. We can’t keep indulging a child’s tantrums forever.”
“But… I can do better than those students. I have done better. You know that too, Professor.”
“These days, there are many well-educated mothers. You could become a good mother too.”
“I want to become a pianist. Of course, someday I want to have a family too.”
“If you absolutely have to play the piano, you could become a teacher. Your skills are exceptional, so there will be many places looking for you. I told you. In life, everyone eventually encounters a wall that cannot be overcome.”
No sooner had Professor Schneider finished speaking than there was a knock at the office door.
Through the slightly opened door, another professor briefly showed his face, then noticed Aurelia inside and wore an awkward expression.
“I said you’re graduating soon, but you still have half a year left. So take your time during that period and think carefully about your future. It’s already gotten this late. You may leave now.”
Professor Schneider’s words were as matter-of-fact as could be.
As though he were crumpling up a piece of sheet music ruined by spilled ink and throwing it into the trash without a second thought.
“…Thank you.”
In the end, Aurelia couldn’t offer a single rebuttal to Professor Schneider. After bidding him farewell, she had no choice but to leave his office.
He was someone whose mind would not be changed no matter what she said, and she knew he had no intention of listening any further.
‘An impassable wall.’
Aurelia had never once imagined a future for herself in which she was not a pianist.
She had never even considered the possibility that there might be a wall standing in front of her.
That was why she felt even more powerless.
After returning home, Aurelia spent the entire day turning Professor Schneider’s words over and over in her mind.
Just as she had hidden inside a closet as a child and refused to come out all day whenever something sad happened, Aurelia lay wrapped in her blanket, lost in thought, until tears had gathered in her eyes.
‘I never once thought about it.’
She hadn’t grown up in a wealthy family, nor had she lived while receiving an extraordinary education, but everyone around her had always been on her side.
Her deceased mother, whom she could now barely remember without looking at photographs, had been the same, and her father, too, even if he initially opposed her, would ultimately do anything she wanted.
So Aurelia had always believed that her life would remain peaceful, just as it always had.
‘How foolish.’
She felt pathetic for never realizing that the peace she had taken for granted could be completely shattered by a single word from a professor.
After that one sentence had driven her to lock herself inside her own mental closet, Aurelia found herself unbearably pathetic, yet she couldn’t bring herself to come out from under the blanket.
It felt as though her will to live her life itself had been completely broken.
“Lily, are you sleeping? You haven’t even been eating properly…. Are you not going back to the conservatory anymore?”
“I don’t feel like it. I’m not going back to the conservatory either.”
She had never once thought that she lacked talent.
But what Professor Schneider had said wasn’t about talent.
‘I don’t want to do anything.’
From the moment she realized the reality she was facing, Aurelia could do nothing but curl herself up under the blanket, unable to bear the heaviness of her body, which felt like soaked cotton, and shed tears.
To think that after realizing the reality of her situation, the only thing she could do was cry like this, then fall asleep once she became exhausted, only to repeat it again.
‘Pathetic.’
Even while feeling pathetic about herself, Aurelia hugged the blanket with both hands as though it were a shield protecting her from this cold world.
At first, she was simply miserable.
Professor Schneider’s words wouldn’t leave her mind all day.
Whenever his voice echoed incessantly in her ears, Aurelia could only cover her face completely with the blanket and sob aloud like a child.
‘It’s unfair.’
The emotion that came after that was a sense of injustice.
The moment Aurelia pressed the piano keys at Aiden’s house, she had known instinctively.
She would never be able to forget this beautiful sound for the rest of her life.
‘I’ve never once been told that I don’t have talent.’
From the moment Aurelia began learning the piano until now, everyone who heard her play had been busy praising her talent until they were hoarse.
Even though she had started later than the other children.
‘Even the professors.’
Even the professors, who must have encountered countless students of every kind, praised Aurelia’s talent as unparalleled.
So of course she had no choice but to believe that she would become a pianist.
The emotion that had changed from misery to injustice eventually turned into resentment and anger, at the point when she no longer even had the strength to get up.
‘Why? Why can’t I?’
If that was how things were going to be, God should never have given her this kind of talent.
If she was going to be crushed before she could even begin, then wasn’t this talent not a blessing, but a curse?
