Even when he applied to the country’s most prestigious university – a place his cousins had failed to get into – his choice of major was severely limited. If he enrolled in business administration, it would be seen as a declaration of war against his relatives, who still didn’t welcome him.

Having lost the most beneficial advantage of blood ties, he weighed several options and finally chose the College of Engineering.

There were several reasons for his decision. For one, the business school had a large student population and frequent social gatherings among classmates, which could unexpectedly affect his sensory perception.

Although he believed he had done a good job of hiding the fact that he was experiencing a different world from others, the incident at the mansion – where he was pulled in by his cousins and had an accident – made him realize that he should avoid social settings as much as possible.

On the other hand, his synaesthesia – where sequences and formulas appeared as colors – proved to be a great asset in the sciences. Like Richard Feynman, who claimed to see distorted circles when someone proposed faulty logic, his synaesthesia instinctively told him what was right or wrong.

It was a unique seventh sense that no one else possessed. He also appreciated the atmosphere in science, where being a bit eccentric or not actively socializing didn’t lead to rejection.

It was only after graduation that he began to look for “Hyunseo” seriously. While he was adjusting to campus life and experiencing it for the first time, he simply didn’t have the time or capacity to look for her.

Besides, assuming that Hyunseo was around his age, there was no way to find her until she entered society. So instead, he put all his efforts into living each day to the fullest.

One day, after a few years had passed, he suddenly thought, “Hyunseo must have graduated from college by now.

It must have been around that time. Whenever he felt that spring was missing, he would occasionally go to the Gayageum performances and look for a performer whose music dripped from her fingertips like pink flower petals.

In truth, he had no real expectations of what he would do or say when he met her. To “Hyunseo”, he had probably been nothing more than the rude patient in the next room who was always making a racket.

And that had been years ago. If she even remembered that it had happened, that alone would be lucky.

It was much more likely that she wouldn’t recognize him at all.

He, too, had a clear understanding of his place. From the moment he became aware of his identity as “Lee Seol-won”, he had been an adopted child, and life had never been easy or comfortable.

Aside from his curiosity about who “Hyunseo” was – the girl who had lifted his spirits with her music, however briefly, during those difficult and lonely days – and his desire to see her just once, he knew that he had to live a life guided by precise calculations.

He had a duty to graduate from a university that no relative would dare look down upon, to build a solid career, and to marry without missteps so that the rest of his life would go as smoothly as possible.

Given his circumstances, he didn’t think too deeply about it. In fact, it felt clean and uncomplicated-their relationship had never involved names, faces, or even a single conversation.

He as a member of the audience below the stage, and she as an artist performing above it – that was enough.

All he wanted was to live the life he had been given as best he could, and on days when he needed rest or comfort, he would simply go to see her perform, to be touched by the cherry blossom petals in her music. That alone, he believed, was enough.

Sometimes he would go to performances by the national gugak ensemble, sometimes by community or private ensembles.

He even kept an eye out for smaller performances listed in local newspapers, as well as traditional music broadcasts on public television and radio. At this point, it would be fair to say that almost every gugak performance in the country had passed through his eyes and ears.

Yet “Hyunseo” was nowhere to be found.

At that point, he began to wonder and looked into the career paths of Gugak majors after graduation.

Surprisingly, very few of them were able to establish themselves as professional performers. Compared to Western music, traditional Korean music simply didn’t have as many performance opportunities.

Come to think of it, even at the Songun Art Hall, the vast majority of performances were musicals, seasonal concerts, or recitals with Western instruments such as the piano or violin.

Gugak as a genre was notoriously difficult to make commercially successful.

So… did Hyunseo perhaps take a different route?

Had all his efforts been in vain?

A sudden wave of dizziness washed over him. It was a sharp disappointment he hadn’t felt in a long time. The emptiness that shook him was so overwhelming that even he was startled by its intensity.

But growing up as an adoptee in the SW family meant you had to get used to resignation and compliance as quickly as possible. He forced himself to face reality.

It seemed he was too late to find “Hyunseo”.

If she had given up on Gugak because she had run into the hard wall of reality, then there was nothing to be done.

Most of all, Hyunseo herself must have felt the greatest sorrow and regret.

If only he’d met her sooner – if only he could have supported her in time. But he could only blame his own complacency for letting his guard down and missing that chance.

Maybe “Hyunseo” was something he had to let go of – just a short page in the memory of his youth.

It was just as he was beginning to let go of his expectations.

As he drove, he passed a small neighborhood square where a modest festival stage had been set up.

In truth, it was more of a one-time local event than anything worthy of being called a “festival. The emcee, holding a microphone, said something as an introduction, and soon a traditional Korean orchestra, each member holding a different instrument, entered the stage.

Out of habit, from all the times he had sought out gugak performances, he instinctively turned his eyes to the stage.

And there, amidst the deep navy threads of gayageum melodies, he came face to face with a fluttering handful of cherry blossom petals.

“Stop for a moment.”

“What?”

“Do you remember the name of the Gugak orchestra that performed?”

The driver, flustered, quickly got out of the car and returned with a flyer in his hand. He looked down at the name printed on it.

Gugak Orchestra ‘Gamanhan Sori’ (Silent Sound)

Beneath a pixelated, blurry photo of the performance was a list of what appeared to be the names of the orchestra members – dozens of them lined up in neat rows.

He scanned them quickly, his eyes searching for Hyunseo’s name.

But there was no one with that name among the listed members.

But there was a name that sounded similar.

“Hyunseo”… Hae.

“Seohae… Was that her name?”

He tried to say it out loud – Seohae.

Yes, Seo-hae. That was it.

It wasn’t Hyunseo, it was Seo-hae.

The realization surprised him, since he’d been pretending to be someone else for so long.

But strangely enough, the name Seo-hae fit her much better – the girl whose voice had always washed over him like a tide of blue.

A feeling of clarity washed over him.

His heart started to race.

It was the flutter of excitement for a person – something he hadn’t felt in a long time.

Traditional Korean music was said to be a difficult field in which to earn a stable income unless it was supported by the government or a financially stable foundation.

In this case, the answer was simple: he would become her silent patron and create a stage where she could continue to perform as long as she wished. He had no doubt that this was the right way to repay the comfort she had once brought to his life.

That’s what he had believed.

“…Why can’t it be me?”

But Hyun Seo-hae continued to defy his expectations.

At first, he had naturally assumed that she was the younger sister. After all, the audience was not a place where Hyun Seo-hae could be – it was not her rightful position.

Her place was on the stage, not under it. So he assumed, as he always did, that it was Hyun Eun-sae who had come to watch her sister’s performance.

In fact, he had occasionally met Hyun Eun-sae while watching Hyun Seo-hae’s performances over the years.

But from what he had seen, Hyun Eun-sae’s voice was a bit weaker than her sister’s. When Eun-sae spoke, it wasn’t the frothy waves of blue he associated with her sister – instead, light blue soap bubbles gently burst into the air.

He focused on the color that suddenly spread and blossomed against the dim backdrop of the audience.

Was it sky blue?

Or was it ocean blue?

“Stay with me. For a long time. You should.”

As those desperate words spilled out and the waves scattered in deep blue, he knew in an instant that something was wrong.

He felt a rush of dizziness.

Someone who belonged on stage, someone who was supposed to hold up one side of this performance, had come down to a place she should never have been.

And yet, no matter how hard she tried to imitate her sister, Hyun Seo-hae was still Hyun Seo-hae.

“You said my voice was like seawater, right? Then listen carefully. Whatever appears in front of your eyes will be washed away by the blue sea. That’s what the sea does, right?”

It was the first time.

The first time anyone had responded to his mention of synaesthesia not by accusing him of being delusional or questioning whether such a thing even existed, but by covering his ears with both hands and telling him to follow the sound of her voice alone.

The second time, as he fought off the effects of the drugs and awoke suddenly in the early morning darkness, he saw her face glowing faintly in the dim light.

She had probably fallen asleep watching over him, slumped uncomfortably in a chair with her eyes closed.

For a moment, he even forgot to move her to the bed. He just stared, transfixed – and then, like waking from a dream, it hit him like a bolt of lightning.

A planet he thought was far away in the sky had shifted its orbit – and was coming right at him.

From that day on, his life began to sail in a completely different direction.