The last class of the afternoon was Nordic folk dance. At the hour when everyone else was heading home, after finishing the day's schedule, Gina entered the practice room Eugene had assigned yesterday, feeling as if she were being dragged there.
She had practiced until late at night, just as he had told her, but with no one there to watch her, she had no way of knowing whether the exact movements had become ingrained in her body.
All she could do now was wait for the evaluation. Once she let go of her worries, she actually felt more at ease. She sat down on the floor and began stretching. Since it was the season when late autumn was giving way, the practice room had grown quite dry and chilly after sunset.
She was loosening her hands and ankles, stiffened slightly by the cold, when the practice room door opened and a man walked in.
“Good evening, Mr. Han.”
Still seated, she greeted him, and he returned a lofty, concise bow. For some reason, he had taken off the heavy jacket he usually wore and was dressed in a white shirt. Approaching in the considerably lighter outfit, he flung what he had been holding down in front of her. When he glanced at it, she saw that it was a pair of ankle warmers and a bolero the other dancers always wore when they began stretching. They were so expensive that she had never been able to buy any for herself.
“Put them on. You can get hurt moving in winter before your muscles have warmed up.”
“...Thank you.”
Leaving her staring dumbfounded at the sweat clothes knitted from fine yarn, Eugene walked straight over to the piano.
As she put on the warmers and bolero he had given her, the piano keys rang out without warning.
He really wasn't going to give her even a moment to rest. The man played Tchaikovsky as accompaniment, and she hurriedly began the first movements of her warm-up.
She had feared as much, but it went on for a full hour. Had he shown off that grand mercy just for this? She had thrown off the sweat clothes long ago, and with the music continuing without a single break, sweat poured down her face, neck, and spine as she was forced to keep moving.
So this was what private instruction was like. Had Lori and Peter—no, had the children of high society—gone through this every day? At last, the man finished playing and stood up. At the same time, Gina slipped away from the barre and sank down onto the floor.
“Miss Grinnell.”
“...Yes?”
Before she could even catch her breath, she heard him call her. She answered with difficulty and looked up at him from where she sat. In Eugene's hand was a heavy device she had never seen before.
“Have you seen this before?”
“No.”
“Then you will have to get used to it from now on.”
The unfamiliar-looking device was called a metronome. When the man pulled its weighted rod to one side, it began moving back and forth in steady repetition, producing a regular metallic click.
She had no time to be surprised by its unfamiliar principle. At the urging look he directed at her, she had to get back on her feet.
She had taken all sorts of dance classes continuously from morning until now. And yet they were starting again. Her body already felt like a rag, but the man began speaking as he calmly rolled up the sleeves of his shirt over his thick forearms, as if this were only the beginning.
“I can't put a fake dancer with nothing but potential on my stage.”
“From now on, creating the substance is your responsibility.”
“Yes.”
“Take the barre. Move while maintaining the tempo you hear now.”
Her head throbbed as she pictured what lay ahead. There was no choice but to obey his command. The man's tall figure passed before her eyes.
After some time had passed, she no longer knew what she was doing. She simply moved her arms and legs as her muscles followed his instructions and her senses guided her.
Sweat ran from her forehead down her neck or fell from the tip of her nose. Gradually, instead of the melody, the metronome's suffocatingly even beat began pressing in on her.
“Can't you hear it? Your body is slower. Again.”
The man slowly circled her, adding sharp comments like lashes of a whip whenever she took one of the prescribed poses.
“This is an absolute mess.”
For once, she had no time to be hurt or react to every word he said, as she had in the past. When he said she looked heavy, she tried to shake off the tension. When he said her balance was wrong, she straightened her body.
“Not even close. Relax your body, Grinnell.”
“Don't look at the mirror. Your posture is crooked.”
From then on, she knew only by sensation whenever the man passed close by her. She moved as if the only thing left in her was the desire to somehow force herself into the standards of Eugene Han, who never seemed to know satisfaction.
She had never danced like this in Lausanne. Even as she gradually felt her body nearing its physical limit, all she could think about was surpassing it.
“You have no control at all. You should have stopped right there.”
“You're paying attention only to your legs, so your arms look like a wooden doll's.”
How much time had passed? Eugene was suddenly standing right in front of her, his hands clasped behind his back, pouring out his vicious criticism as though she were the only target in the entire world.
It was then that the metronome's steady beat began to slow. Immersed in her movements, her focus shifted to the man standing in front of her. Predictably, as always whenever she encountered him, her eyes were drawn once again to his matching complexion, black hair, and straight bridge of his nose—the features that caught her attention as if she had been bewitched.
Was it the pull of a kindred spirit? The feeling of being left alone with him beneath the sky for the first time was not at all unfamiliar. His eyes seemed to seethe with blood and, at the same time, to contain an abyss she could not read. They held her gaze with an insistence she could not resist.
I heard he injured his ankle badly when he was young. In that fleeting instant, as countless thoughts passed through her mind, she realized she had lost the beat.
“Gina Grinnell.”
At the same time, an outside force lifted her chin a handspan, and the entire movement collapsed.
Even though she was so out of breath she felt she might die, she held herself upright, her gaze tangled with the man whose brows were drawn tightly together.
She did not know why she had chosen that exact moment to look at his ankle. She thought she deserved to be scolded for losing her concentration. A dancer who could not completely abandon her self-consciousness had only disgrace waiting at the end of her path.
Eugene held her gaze for a long while as if taking aim, then quickly lowered the hand that had lifted her chin. His expression said that even this much was not enough for him to forgive her.
Though he had not gripped her very hard, the tip of her chin where his fingers had touched burned hot.
“What are you looking at?”
“If you truly felt a sense of danger, you could never have performed that pathetically.”
“I'll do it again, Mr. Han.”
“Did I overestimate you?”
“...No, sir.”
“I hope that's true.”
“Stay behind every day at this hour.”
Perhaps his mood had been thoroughly soured. Even after her obedient answer, Eugene turned away coldly. She watched him leave, continuing to draw in the breath that had risen to her throat.
Soon, the scrape of the practice room door closing echoed through the room. Only then did exhaustion sweep over her, leaving her helpless. She threw herself down on the floor as if casting away the body he had worked to the point of ruin.
She covered both eyes with her damp arms, soaked through with sweat. Along with the relief of finally being free came a vague fear that, despite having done everything she could, she might still have disappointed him.
“Gina! Gina Grinnell!”
She woke to muscle pain comparable to having been beaten all over, rendering every lesson she had taken up to now meaningless.
It was the voice of Mrs. Fritz, the dormitory matron. Oh no. She shot upright and rubbed her aching shoulder, seized by anxiety.
Mrs. Fritz was apparently making her rounds of the dormitory after all the company members had gone to work, a heavy bundle of keys clinking as she wound it around one hand.
“It’s time. Aren’t you getting up?”
“Time?!”
Even running at full speed from the dormitory to the practice building took nearly ten minutes, which meant she was effectively completely late.
Oh, come on. You could have woken me up. She hurriedly grabbed only the warmers from the desk and rushed past the empty bed beside hers. She had gone to sleep groaning from exhaustion the night before, and now she had slept in on top of that.
At this rate, it would be one humiliation after another. She remembered how she had shown off while teasing Lori that morning, only to end up embarrassed. Forget the muscle pain—she just forced her feet to pound the ground faster and faster.
Just a little farther. She ran without stopping and reached the front of the practice building. As she was about to cross the entrance, the black Ford she had seen before pulled up in front of the building.
She stopped instinctively, her eyes turning toward it. Eugene Han got out of the back seat first, followed by a woman wearing sleek, expensive-looking shoes.
Even Gina, who knew nothing about her, could tell that the woman possessed an aura from head to toe and was extraordinarily beautiful. Eugene escorted her with the practiced ease of someone performing an everyday duty.
Oh, no—she was late. She had absentmindedly followed the picturesque sight of the two of them standing together with her eyes, and only then came to her senses.
She quickly turned around and ran back across the corridor to the practice room where they warmed up.
She flung open the practice room door, and everyone's eyes turned toward her at once. Unexpectedly, though, it seemed class had not begun yet.
Thank God. She had hated the thought of catching the man's attention more than anything, and if being late meant she would have to stand at the front as punishment, then for once she was happy to offer thanks to a God she did not even believe in.
She stood beside Lori, whose eyes met hers, and shook her head as if to say, Don't even ask.
“But why hasn’t class started yet...?”
“Looks like the choreographer is coming today.”
“The choreographer?”
Having never performed on a theater's grand stage, Gina could not guess exactly what role a choreographer played within a dance company. She merely nodded at Lori's words.
Just then, the door opened, and Eugene entered with the woman Gina had seen outside. Everyone except Gina began murmuring.
“Good morning, everyone.”
“Good morning, Mr. Han.”
As usual, the man entered, clasped his hands behind his back, slowly surveyed the room, and spoke.
“This is Lily Burnett, who will be co-directing our choreography with me.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, company members. I’ve heard the standard here is high, and I’m very excited.”
Oh my God. It really is Lily. As the woman continued her introduction, exclamations resembling sighs of admiration rose from the clusters of dancers around the room.
Every unhurried step she took overflowed with grace, and her beautiful, rippling brown hair fell all the way to her lower back.
Her tall frame, with its long, straight arms and legs, suggested that she was a dancer, but it seemed that Gina alone was unaware of the woman's fame.
“Who is she, anyway?”
It was only after the lesson ended and she ran into Lori again in the lounge that she finally heard the story.
Lily Burnett was one of Europe's leading ballerinas, famous across the continent—and Eugene Han's fiancée.