“Gina, where are you going?”
“I’m just going out for some air.”
“It’ll be cold at night… You should put on a heavier coat.”
“I’ll be fine for now.”
“Don’t go any farther than Pannington Station at night. It’s dangerous.”
“Yes, I’ll be back soon.”
For her walk, she wore the dress Liz had gotten for her, with a thin coat over it. She gave Helen an awkward smile when the woman urged her to put on something heavier, then left the house. She might be able to get away with it here, but back in Lausanne, she had managed to make it through every winter with this one coat.
The dance company audition had been a disaster, and with her future looking bleak, her thoughts were in turmoil. She wasn’t the sort of person who could sit quietly in a corner at times like this. Once she stepped outside, the river that had glittered silver by day gleamed black instead, clearly reflecting the rows of street trees and the buildings.
Even the darkness is beautiful in a big city. The smell of fish left behind after all the noise had died down was romantic, too. She began walking slowly through the fog-shrouded streets at night. Wasn’t there some decent job she could do?
Liz’s money would cover her boarding fee for a few months, but she couldn’t keep asking her mother for help. She headed toward the street where she had seen all the cafés and pubs during the day.
As she ambled toward the area near Pannington Station Helen had mentioned, she heard singing from somewhere nearby. At first, she thought it was a woman’s voice, but as she drew closer, she realized it was a clear, ringing male voice. A crowd had spilled out of the shop, and curious herself, she edged right up to the front of the building.
Café Müller. The café, named with a German-style name, seemed to be both a coffeehouse and a tavern. A young curly-haired boy stood in the middle of the establishment, singing, while several customers seemed completely absorbed, their hands folded politely as they wore expressions of utter rapture. They serve alcohol, too. Is it really all right to have a child doing this in the middle of the night?
You don’t have to try to be good. Just do whatever your heart tells you. She sat at a wooden table in front of the shop, resting her chin in her hands, and recalled something Liz had once told her. Clumsy, without any flashy technique, but beautiful in its rawness. The boy was making his voice sound exactly like those words.
Liz really did know everything. I’m telling you, my mother’s word is gospel. Once again, she thought of the man she had seen during the day. Those city slickers don’t know the first thing about anything, she thought.
That man, Eugene Han, was the son of one of the city’s leading families. His family was said to have had a distinguished reputation for supporting Oxpin’s entire arts and culture scene since the time of his great-grandfather. The reason that description was in the past tense was that after his father died, Eugene Han had ostentatiously cut off all the funding.
As a result, the oldest and most traditional theater in the heart of Oxpin had been forced to close. The same had happened to an arts academy that had been prestigious for generations.
Several of the theaters and academies that had once held sway over Oxpin were shut down or changed hands, and Eugene demolished the central theater in the square most favored by the aristocracy. In its place, he built the grandest and most extravagantly enormous opera house of them all.
And then there was the dance company named after the theater, followed by the founding of an academy. His intentions became more blatant by the day. He meant to monopolize everything.
People said he was treating sacred art like a way to turn a profit, that it was vulgar and disgraceful, but the fallen aristocrats had been driven to the edge of a cliff. In the end, they had to bow at the feet of—or flatter—the very people of color they had secretly looked down on and despised.
From the moment he was adopted, his existence had always been a hot topic in conservative high society, a morsel for every mouth to chew over and pass around. His adoptive parents had been teachers with profound knowledge and discernment in every area of the arts.
Everyone in Oxpin knew that the mysterious, dark-eyed boy the couple had brought home from somewhere and raised had gradually revealed an extraordinary genius in the dance world. But the fact that he had suddenly vanished without a trace one day had also given everyone ample cause to pick him apart.
There were endless rumors: that he was born out of wedlock, that they had bought and sold the child like a slave. But not one rumor offered a satisfying explanation for Eugene’s existence. He reappeared in the face of all that talk only after he had grown into a proper young man.
Eugene Han. The man who returned had immediately forced everyone to call him by a different surname, and, as everyone knew, he shook Oxpin through profoundly irrational and violent means. Naturally, the rumors swelled out of control.
People widely whispered that this insolent bastard of unknown origins had no gratitude for the family that raised him, had ruined them, and had killed his adoptive parents to seize their entire fortune. After all, why would a young man go out of his way to change even his surname for no reason?
“Miss, are you going to order?”
“Oh, no, it’s just… Are you hiring here, by any chance?”
Just then, one of the employees came over with a tray and asked her. Thinking this was her chance, she hurriedly mustered her courage and brought up the matter.
“Well, I’d have to ask Mr. Chris.”
“Mr. Chris?”
“The owner.”
“Oh… Then I’ll have a beer.”
She had nothing more to say, and it felt awkward to keep sitting there without ordering anything, so she asked for a beer. Looking around, she seemed to be the only woman sitting alone and drinking. Of course, she was getting sidelong glances everywhere she went.
She sighed and drained the rest of her beer. Someone sat down in the chair across from her. When she looked up, it was the boy who had been singing in the shop moments earlier.
“Hi.”
“…Uh, hi.”
“I’ve been watching you.”
“Me?”
“Do you need a job?”
After exchanging greetings as quickly as roasting beans, the boy, friendly as could be, abruptly brought up a job before she had even asked. Had he heard what she’d been saying earlier? The fact that he had raised the subject she hadn’t even mentioned made her feel as though someone capable of solving her problem had appeared, and she found herself intrigued.
“Yeah, but they said I have to ask the owner.”
“Tell me.”
“You?”
“Yeah. The owner’s busy right now.”
“You can tell him?”
What a stroke of luck. Could she really solve the problem of making a living that had been weighing on her just one day after arriving in Oxpin? Her eyes widened as she asked, and the boy grinned, stretching one side of his mouth, then nodded.
“But you have to audition. Can you sing?”
The unexpected question took the wind out of her sails. Another audition, after the humiliation she’d suffered that afternoon? And what kind of shop judged singing and dancing before serving ability? If she hadn’t spent her childhood following Liz around at work, she might have been suspicious first. But after hearing this boy sing, her guard had already dropped once.
“Um… I can dance a little, but I can’t sing.”
“Then come with me.”
The boy sprang to his feet with a light movement, pointed in one direction, and started walking. She hesitated for a moment before following him. After passing the riverbank lined with taverns, Pannington Station came into view, and the boy turned down a back street behind the station. She had long since forgotten Helen’s warning.
“So you just sing at that shop and get paid?”
“No, I serve, too. I only have to sing when someone requests it.”
“I see… I want to make money, too.”
“I’ll make that happen.”
“How…?”
As she followed him a little farther, she spotted a street musician playing a bandoneon in the middle of a square. Beautiful, delicate notes rang out magnificently. The boy sat down right beside the musician, then opened his palm and waved it in front of her.
“Come on. Try it.”
“Here?”
Everything had happened in the blink of an eye, and she hadn’t had time to prepare herself. Hesitating, she quietly walked toward the center of the square a moment later. Thinking of it another way, if she compared it to the countryside of Lausanne, which she had roamed to her heart’s content, it was a remarkably fine stage for something thrown together on the spot.
The boy was cheering with a huge smile on his face, clapping his hands in time with the music. In truth, if she wanted to shake off the loneliness that crept over her body beneath the moonlit sky in this unfamiliar land, this was the only way.
In her experience, when she felt like this, she needed to move, so she danced however her instincts led her. With no arrogant judge anywhere in sight, she felt freer than ever.
“That’s crazy! You’re so good!”
The bandoneon melody gradually sped up to match her movements, and soon the music changed. That old man knows what he’s doing. She became more and more caught up in the rhythm.
She hadn’t noticed while dancing, but when she looked toward where the boy had been sitting, he was now jumping up and down, wildly excited.
Whoo! Just then, she heard a whistle from somewhere. She thought she had imagined it in the frenzy of the dance, but the bandoneon abruptly stopped. Men in uniform were running toward them.
The musician had already made a quick escape, and the men grabbed both her and the boy by the collars. They didn’t look like police. They seemed to be guards.
“Wait, why… Why are you doing this?”
“You can’t dance here.”
“I didn’t know!”
What kind of place was this, anyway, to be so uptight? She turned her head and tried to look up at the buildings looming in the darkness, but there wasn’t enough light, and the fog was too thick to see clearly. Only then did she remember what Helen had said before she left.
She couldn’t cause trouble the moment she arrived and make things difficult for Helen. She looked at the boy as if asking him to do something, but he already wore an utterly resigned expression.
“Just let us off this once. We won’t do it again….”
Like they’d let them off. She snorted at the boy’s halfhearted attempt. Just as she was about to squeeze out some words with the most pitiful expression in the world and open her mouth, she spotted a Ford parked in the distance. She had been too distracted to know how long it had been there, but someone got out of the back seat and began strolling toward them.
“Oh my God.”
As the figure slowly came closer, she recognized the man: Eugene Han.
It was unpleasant enough to meet again after only a few hours. Now, even seeing that same face failed to stir the slightest sense of welcome, and she decided they were truly destined to be enemies. He looked down at her and the boy in turn with the same dry gaze she had seen in the audition room, while the guards hurried over to him and bowed their heads.
“My lord.”
“Go.”
“Won’t you be turning them over to the police…?”
“They’re members of my company.”
“Ah, yes. Understood.”
Members of his company? She brushed off the hem of the dress the guard had gripped, then looked at the man again. At a single word from him, the men turned around and tramped back the way they had come. A strange impulse came over her, and she raised her voice sarcastically.
“I’ve never heard of a rule saying you can’t dance.”
“Your world isn’t the whole world.”
“Miss Grinnell.”
“Yes?”
“If you’re going to learn under me, talk less and speak with your body.”
“Now that I know your name, next time I’ll discipline you immediately.”
Her heart began pounding at his words. The man turned and strolled away, then started the Ford and drove off. The moment he disappeared from view, she left the boy standing beside her and began running somewhere—anywhere. She passed the cathedral stabbing up into the night sky, the intersection busy with carriages and pedestrians, and the street where she had bought a cheap ham sandwich. Soon, the stone building that housed the audition hall came into view. Breathing hard, she quickly read the notice posted on the enormous entrance. At the very bottom of the roster, written in neat rows of type, was Gina Grinnell—her name.