While waiting to draw a number, I started a conversation with a twenty-two-year-old Korean-Canadian boy beside me. He was a heavy-looking male dressed in a neat suit with a white bowtie named Young-woon, or “Kangin” as he insisted that I call him, who had soft features marking his face which made him look somewhat like a raccoon. It was too bad he could not speak Korean, though.

“Where you from?” I asked absentmindedly in my broken English.

“I was originally from Korea but I grew up in Canada,” he replied with a smile.

“I from Korea only,” I pointed to myself proudly.

Kangin laughed a little bit. “Is this your first international competition?” he asked in a mellow voice. “From what I have heard, you are quite young.”

I forced a smile. “No, it’s not my first,” I slowly pronounced every syllable, half because I was careful with words and half because my English was not at all fluent. “I have been to two before.”

“Wow,” he raised his eyebrows. “You must be very good, then.”

“Oh, no!” I waved off his compliment. “I very amateur. Who you think play good?” I questioned out of curiosity.

“Oh, everybody here plays very well,” he half-rolled his eyes as if to say a tacit ‘DUH’. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be in the competition in the first place. But if you want my opinion, Jungsu plays the best.” He unobtrusively pointed to the boy with blonde hair sitting in the front row, next in line to draw his number.

“Why you think that?”

“His stage presence and his daring,” Kangin explained with admiration. “He does things his way, and he is not afraid of doing the unimaginable. Audiences call him 'Leeteuk' because of his special musical interpretations. Not only that, he has stunning technique and always makes sure he understands his music before he attempts at any performance.”

Leeteuk looked over his shoulder at us after taking a number out of the box and grinned widely. He was awfully pretty, and had a very charming smile with a faint dimple on one of his cheeks. Kangin looked down shyly while I smiled back.

“He very beautiful,” I whispered to my new friend. “Almost like a girl.”

Kangin only nodded slightly and looked at Leeteuk’s back. His eyes had the longing aura that I always had whenever I looked at Yunho. “We have the same teacher, and we always enter the same competitions. I have competed against him for six years already.”

“Six years?!” I widened my eyes.

“He usually wins, but sometimes I win.”

“And if you no win?”

Kangin sighed. “I go to the next competition and try again there.”

I leaned back in my chair. “Really?”

His eyes softened. “Well, we are professionals.”

“What? So all people here are professional concert pianist?” I gaped, my eyes widening. ‘Because if they are, I definitely have no chance for gold, that’s for sure.’

“No, not exactly,” he explained with sad eyes. “We are professional competitors.”

I didn’t know what that meant in Korean, so I gave him a confused expression.

“Professional competitors are just people who compete in competitions in hopes of becoming professional concert pianists one day,” Kangin started babbling quickly in English (I assumed that he was just good at talking in general). “We basically compete so that we attract attention from other jury members and hopefully launch a career from there…”

I could not help but giggle in unknowing nervousness. “Sorry,” I apologized in my heavy Korean accent, “Can you talk slower?”

“Look at the top of your program,” he said. “It must have a translation.”

Sure enough, at the top of the Korean-translated program, I saw the words “professional competitors” on it.

The idea hit me like the crack of a baseball bat against the ball. ‘All these people here,’ I realized, ‘basically compete for a living.’

“So, you all keep competing? When you stop?”

Kangin shrugged. “We’ll keep competing until we become famous or are able to start our own careers. That’s what I’m going to do.”

“When that happen?”

“Nobody knows when they will become successful. Maybe in six days, maybe in six years.”

“Why you compete?”

“So that I will have a chance of becoming a concert pianist. Everybody here wants to be one, but only the really lucky people will have a chance.”

“Who you think won’t have chance?”

Kangin clicked his front teeth together and motioned to a man with gelled hair. “That man named Kangta. He’s already thirty-five.”

“And he still compete?” I gaped incredulously.

“In every single competition that he is eligible,” he nodded. “He will never become a concert pianist, though; he is too old and too experienced, and this society wants young fresh musicians with potential and talent. He’d make a great professor, but he only wants the thrill of performing on stage, so he keeps competing anyways.”

My mouthed formed a lower-case ‘o’.

“I feel pity for him,” Kangin instinctively patted me on the shoulder. “It’s like he’s obsessed with competitions.”

I said nothing.

```

After the orientation and the drawing of lots, I started to really regret going to Belgium.

“Of all the numbers I could have picked out of the box, why did I get number 2? That means I’m playing tomorrow!” I threw myself facedown onto the bed once I stepped into the heavily air-conditioned hotel room, ignoring the pain I inflicted on the bridge of my nose.

“Look at the bright side,” my professor shrugged. “At least you aren’t the poor boy who got number 1.”

“Yes, but I perform right after him! That’s bad enough!” I snapped, my voice muffled into the sheets. Poor Kangin was the lucky competitor performing first. Either way, I didn’t run to the practice rooms fast enough to sign my name up, meaning that I would only have one hour before my performance time to warm up and put myself together. Joy.

Yunho sighed and my back. “You’ll do fine, Jaejoongie. Just play like a star. Play as if it was the last performance of your life.”

I terribly wanted to tell my professor that it was indeed my last performance I’ll ever want to go through and that I would never see him again afterwards. If anything, I would never want to end up like Kangta.

I stood up with my back towards my professor. “Yunho?”

“Hmm?”

I clenched my fists, digging my fingernails painfully into my skin. I wanted to tell him of my feelings, for it would be my last chance before the real competition. “Thank you,” I eventually said, heaving out a silent mournful sigh. “You have helped me through a lot.”

“It’s the least I can do,” he smiled kindly, wrapping his arms around my waist.

“Least?”

“Yah. You are a wonderful little boy, Jaejoongie. It wouldn’t do you justice if you didn’t receive the best. Remember Oscar Wilde.”

I blushed. “You make me sound like I’m perfect.”

Yunho chuckled, ruffling my hair and kissing the top of my head. “Nobody’s perfect,” he admitted, resting his chin on my head. “But you know what? You’re the closest perfect can get.”

Heat rushed into my cheeks. “As are you,” I whispered bravely.

I felt Yunho’s warm chapped lips on the side of my head. “You’re very sweet.”

I shivered pleasantly.

He heaved out a long sigh of content and placed his hand over my chest. “You must be very nervous, Jaejoongie. Your heartbeat is running at a hundred miles per hour.”

My face flushed red as I noticed that, indeed, my heart rate was very high, but it was not only due to nervousness. “I’m quite edgy, yes,” I replied shakily, glad that Yunho was unable to see my reddened face. “Like everybody else, I want to succeed.”

Yunho exhaled. “Jaejoongie, have I told you the story of the hermit crab?”

“No,” I answered, my ears perking up. “But please do!”

“Well, once upon a time there was this hermit crab, and he only knew the world in a straight line. There was no left or right for it; only straight ahead. When it ran into a tree, it would work hard to dig itself a route underneath. When it ran into a rock, it would painstakingly crawl over it until it made it to the other side.”

I laughed giddily. “I would like to see this hermit crab.”

“Anyways,” Yunho smirked. “There was this one day it came across a really large tree with large roots and large rocks everywhere. It would have taken the hermit crab three years to make it to the end.”

I laughed again, and Yunho cracked a smile.

“About one year in, he met a snail. Now, this snail was a lazier one, with much less perseverance and determination than the hermit crab, but with a slyer mind that could match up to a fox’s. It watched as the hermit crab busied itself with digging through the rubble and removing the debris blocking its way, and it laughed detestably. ‘You’re so dimwitted!’ the snail cried out like it was the most hilarious thing that he had ever encountered in his life. Understandably, the hermit crab was offended. ‘Why are you laughing? I am not as lazy as you!’ it retorted. ‘I am hardworking and always strive towards my goals no matter what!’ This response, however, only made the snail laugh harder. It gave the hermit crab a smug look. ‘You may be hardworking, my dear friend hermit crab, but even a lazy bug like me could reach the goal faster than you.’ And with that, the snail smiled and turned around, leaving the hermit crab to its business.”

I made a funny face which made my professor chuckle.

“The hermit crab scoffed and kept working, paying no heed to the despicable snail’s words,” Yunho continued. “But when it finally made it to the end of the tree after two more years of hard manual work, it saw the same snail there waiting for it, smiling haughtily. ‘I told you that I could reach the goal faster than you,’ it boasted. The hermit crab was shocked. ‘How did you do that?’ it asked desperately.”

My funny face disappeared when I realized what he was trying to say.

“This time, it was the snail’s turn to scoff, but there was sympathetic pity in its eyes. ‘Don’t look at life so straightforwardly,’ it advised, ‘Because sometimes you need to think around the curves. Free your mind.’ From then on, the hermit crab practiced freeing its mind to the point where it finally realized the importance of turning right and left.”

I giggled at the goofy ending. “That’s a wonderful story with a brilliant moral.”

Yunho looked at me intensely. “I just want you to understand the importance of freeing your mind.”

“Freeing my mind?” I repeated, tilting my head to the side in confusion. “Does that mean that I need to become more creative and more open-minded in order to succeed effectively?”

“You are correct, but that’s not what I was trying to say.” Yunho looked up in thought, “It means that, eventually, you won’t NEED to be more creative or more open-minded in order to succeed.”

“Huh?”

“Freeing your mind means that you’ll succeed just because you have succeeded.”

I became even more confused. “… Huh?”

Yunho laughed heartily. “You’ll understand someday.”

“Well, maybe I would understand if you would stop being so ambiguous!” I snapped.

“Ambiguity is sometimes the only way one could possibly explain things, Jaejoongie. I can’t exactly describe the feeling of ‘happiness’ or ‘sadness’ in one word, right?”

I pouted. He was right. Yunho was always right. “Yah.”

“Same idea. I can’t explain the feeling I am trying to convey to you in a clear-cut sense. So all I can do is to wait until you grow older. You will understand when the time comes.”

“Promise?” I held out my pinky childishly.

My piano teacher smiled. “Promise,” he linked pinkies with me. “Remember, life goes on, okay?”

I grinned from ear to ear while Yunho seemed to scrutinize my eyes.

“Yesterday, you asked me why I was so nice to you,” he stated slowly.

I nodded. “Yah. What about it?”

“Do you still want to know the main reason why I want to protect you?”

My eyes lit up, and Yunho took it as a sign to tell me.

“It’s because you act just like my son. He’s around your age, you know, and both of you have the same beautiful smile. You two would be good friends. In fact, I’ll introduce you to him once we get back to Korea. He’ll definitely like you.”

I don’t think anybody could ever imagine how much pain I felt after Yunho said those cacophonous words.

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Credits to my little sister who made the story of the hermit crab on the spot. She is just amazing at these kinds of things.

Sorry for not updating last week. My grandparents came and surprised us with a vacation to the USA to visit some sand dunes. It was fun.

Okay, I feel super bad for Jaejoong right now, but this is what happened. *sad face*. I'll make this story have a bittersweet ending.