Piano Keys | Kim Taehyung | ✓

‖ Spiccato ‖

●●●●●

Spiccato : (Italian- 'to seperate') A bowing technique for string instruments in which the bow bounces lightly upon the string. 

They both had never imagined that they would ever be separated. They always thought that they were inseparable, but fate had other plans.

●●●●●

THE PAST, DAEGU

I still remember the day when Iseul ran up to my house in the middle of the night, with tear stained cheeks.

I quietly let her in, clasping a hand over her mouth to muffle her sobs so as to not wake up my parents as I led her to the room I shared with my younger brother and switched on the small lamp beside my bed. Luckily, he was a fairly heavy sleeper unlike my sister who slept with my parents.

I sat her down on my bed and told her to take a deep breath to calm down. After patting her back gently, she told me why she had 'run away' from her house in the dead of the night.

She told me that her father had brought up moving abroad hesitantly that evening as his old college friend from medical school had asked him to come and work in a hospital in New York. She told me that a Julliard professor who had attended one of her piano competitions wanted her to apply for the school's advanced program and had asked her to send an audition tape. 

She told me that she had vehemently refused her father and kicked up a fuss as expected. She told me that she didn't want to leave Daegu, that she didn't want to leave me.

But I knew that her tears weren't simply due to that-It was due to the fact that maybe she did want to move, deep down- a fact that she hadn't realized herself. I knew that she had always dreamed about attending Julliard; that even though she wanted to stay, some part of her wanted to go.

So I hugged her tightly, rubbing her back and resting my chin atop her head as she sobbed into my chest; sobbed like she had never before.

It pained me, yes it did; but I had always known that she would leave so I tried to talk some sense into her and to convince her to listen to her father. After all, she was so talented, I was actually a bit surprised why she hadn't left yet.

And I knew that she would decide to go, not because I had told her to go and follow her dreams but because I knew her inside out. I had known that she would decide to go the moment she had told me about it, I had known even before she knew herself.

I was happy for her being able to chase her dreams, for I was the one who she told everything to-her dreams, her fears, her everything. 

But separating was hard, even more so because we had always been inseparable and thought that we would always be.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗

"Come here for a moment."

"What, why? Don't we need to leave? Your father told us to be back early today."

"Don't ask questions, just come here."

Iseul dragged me to the music room in our school. It was her last week in Daegu, her last week with me. I was trying to not let the pain show, the intense and excruciating pain in my heart; and I could tell that she was doing the same.

She forced me to sit down on the bench in front of the old wooden piano, so different from the sleek one she used which was now all packed and ready to be shipped off to America. She sat down next to me, and took a deep breath.

Then without saying any words, she simply started playing. At first I couldn't recognise the piece she was playing as I was solely focused on her but after a few seconds I did-It was something I had heard her play before, a piece that she loved.

It was Traumerei from Robert Schumann's Scenes from Childhood. 

And I couldn't help but be moved by it. Because the emotion conveyed was more or less befitting to our situation-In that piece, Schumann has reminisced about his childhood and through the music, I saw my own childhood spent with her. Each and every moment, each and every laugh we shared, each hug, each kiss, everything.

I remembered the time when she told me about soulmates. And I knew that my soulmate; the only girl I had ever loved, my other half, had to go away, miles away.

She broke down crying loudly in the middle of playing. It had never happened before-her stopping in the middle even if she was practicing; it hadn't even happened when she had broken her left arm-she still continued to play stating that it was lucky that she hadn't broken her fingers, only her arm.

I cupped her tear stained cheeks and forced her hazel eyes to meet mine. I didn't need to say the words out loud, didn't need to assure her for she knew what I wanted to say just like she always did.

She nodded a little and hastily wiped her cheeks, wiping those tears away. I gripped her hands and squeezed them, urging her to continue playing and she did.

When she finished she buried her head in the crook of her neck and thankfully didn't notice the lone tear that escaped my eye.

For that was her way of saying goodbye to me.

●●●●●