After a particularly daunting school day, Hyun Ae came home with a small glimpse of hope in her eyes. Her hands were lightly grasping her perfect biology exam as she opened the door and looked around the house.

“Dad?”

“In the living room,” a deep and tired voice called.

She walked slowly to where he was, but with a little spring in her steps.

“I..got my biology test scores today.”

The aged man looked away from the sports game playing on the television and faced her, eyes expecting stellar news.

“Oh? How were they?”

“I got a 100,” Hyun Ae said, her voice raising in excitement with each word.

“Good. As you should,” her dad flatly said with a small nod.

Hyun Ae deflated a little bit and started thinking to herself.

“That’s it? I studied so long for this test, and-“

“Who got second place? Was it that Bobby kid again?”

“Yeah...”

“Oh, really? What was his score?”

She tensed. This never ended well.

“A 95…”

“95? Interesting. I guess that boy is still pretty smart then. It’s funny though, all the other students’ parents always talk about how he’s off socializing or dancing to that silly rap music of his.”

Hyun Ae winced and grunted a response before slowly heading off to her room in defeat. She placed her exam in her biology folder and looked at the clock. It was three. She quickly took a shower and changed into a more comfortable outfit while deciding on what to take to Bobby’s house.

She grabbed her composition book filled with scraps of melodies and songs with scribbled and crossed out lyrics here and there. She smiled as she turned each page, reminiscing in how each melody was made. Hyun Ae would never admit to her dad that she preferred composing music over becoming a doctor.

Music, in many ways, had saved her. Whenever she was nervous, she could listen to a calming ballad or an upbeat pop song that told her she could do it. Whenever she felt like she was on top of the world, she could turn up the dance tunes and let go in her own room. Whenever she was upset, she could listen to an emotional song to give herself a good cry. When she needed someone beside her, music was there to pat her on the back and fill in the empty spaces in her heart for short moments. When she needed to concentrate, music helped her get back on track. Music coursed through her veins, becoming even more essential than her own blood.

However, to her dad, music was an unneeded and wasteful class that was meant for the people who couldn’t do anything else in life. She could never tell him that music was her favorite subject. She would never be able to tell him how she’s secretly dreamed of becoming the next big composer or even an idol trainee. To her dad, Hyun Ae was the shy and obedient girl who would live out his dream of having a doctor in the family. As she continued to flip through her composition book, she reached a page that was tucked in messily. She slowly opened it and smoothed out the creases that were years old. It was entitled, “Miss You”. It was one of her later pieces, written to her mother.

Hyun Ae’s eyes glistened at her mom’s memory.

“Mommy, what does my name mean?”

Hyun Ae’s mom stopped humming to take a good look at her daughter before breaking into a grand smile.

“Yun means melody, while Hyun Ae means wise and loving. It’s a perfect name for you, don’t you think?”

“Yeah!!! Thank you mommy!!” Little Hyun Ae shouted before singing off-key to another nursery rhyme she had learned in kindergarten.

Back then, the house had always been full of music. Each day that Hyun Ae came home, a different genre or time period of music would be playing, exposing Hyun Ae to each different rhythm, melody, and beat. It was through her mother’s love for music that Hyun Ae learned to appreciate what life had to offer. Her mother represented happiness wherever she went – bringing joy and laughter to each person she met. Hyun Ae knew she could always rely on her mother, and depended on her greatly. However, that appreciation slowly got buried once her mothed had died from a heart attack when Hyun Ae was ten.

Her dad took her mother’s death harsher than anyone else had. His smile no longer had sincerity and he threw himself into his work – working late hours and leaving early in the morning, virtually leaving Hyun Ae to grow independent as he wanted. However, despite the wanted effect, Hyun Ae instead longed for something to fill the empty spot that used to be her mother. Like her father, she had thrown herself into her schoolwork, and it wasn’t until she brought home her first place trophy from a local math competition that her dad smiled genuinely.

From then on, Hyun Ae knew the formula to her father’s smile. Her father began to talk to her about his dreams of having a doctor in the family, and it was that day that Hyun Ae made making her dad happy the goal of her life.

But, by the time she hit her teenage years, something had changed. Her father no longer showered her with his smiles and appreciation. He had been introduced to the villain of the parenting world – rivalry. She had come home with a math test in hand, skipping down the sidewalk, ready to show her father. A glossy “95” was reflecting in the sunlight as Hyun Ae smiled to herself.

She reached her house only to be surprised with her father waiting outside on the porch with a vague expression on his face.

“Dad, I got a 95 on the math test!”

“Yes, I know…why did you miss those five points?”

“Oh, it was a stupid mistake. I calculated the last expression wrong because I was running out of time.”

“Stupid mistake? If it was stupid, it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. I was talking to one of your classmate’s parents earlier today at work, and she’s been saying how this Bobby kid is getting close to overcoming you in being the best student at your middle school. What’s wrong with you? Are you even concentrating on your studies? How can you make a simple mistake on a math test?”

Each word that had spewed out of her dad’s mouth just then pierced and sliced at her heart. Her eyes started to well up as she looked down at her feet. Bobby. The kid that had moved to Korea when she was eight. He had come into school like a tornado, ripping apart the normal student ranking. He had managed to become the second best student in the class that same year – and that trend had continued up to now, with the gap between the two students getting closer each year.

However, she never really paid much attention to him. She hadn’t ever thought of anybody as “competition”. She had only focused on improving herself on her own standards, and had never thought to measure herself to anyone else. It wasn’t until this very moment that her thoughts began to change.

From then on, every assignment, quiz, project, and test were looked at critically by her father. Anything scoring under the 100 mark was a failure in his eyes. Every blemish on her record was another chance for her father to rip apart her confidence and happiness until she was an empty shell of her former self. She started putting in more hours for studying, waking up at three in the morning and going to sleep at midnight each day so that she would keep her high rank at school. The hole that had been left with her mother’s death had only grown wider each day in her teenage years.

But, it was when she turned fourteen that she started to look back at some of her mom’s favorite songs. Memories flooded her brain as she spent every day listening to some old piece that her mom had stored in her music collection. It was here that her old appreciation for music began to come out of the thrown away debris and come back to life. And it was through music that her mother’s memory stayed fresh in her mind. Her mother’s soul had awakened in Hyun Ae’s body, inspiring her to make music of her own. It was at this age that Hyun Ae grew an interest in composing music after hearing the sweet and meaningful lyrics of her mother’s favorite artists.

For a full month, Hyun Ae secretly went down to the music room of her school during her lunch break to play around with the variety of instruments. She eventually learned how to piece together certain notes to make a melody and learned which instruments sounded best with each other to fit a specific genre. And it was on her mother’s fourth death anniversary that Hyun Ae had finished her “Miss You” composition. In the composition that present day Hyun Ae was staring at now was a page filled with low and mournful notes that ascended up to the very highest of keys to represent her mother’s flight to heaven as a guardian angel. But, hidden within the page were the dry blotches of tears that had been dropped whenever Hyun Ae was working on this song. There had never been any lyrics since there wasn’t enough paper in the entire world for Hyun Ae to describe every lasting memory she had of her mother. But, the melody was enough for Hyun Ae to be thrown back into a time when she had been happier, a time when she knew what life was really about.

Hyun Ae presently breathed in a big sigh. She put her composition book in her backpack along with various other things she thought would be useful for the project.

“Hey dad, I’m going to Bobby’s house for a music project.”

“Music project?”

“Yeah, we have to create a song together for class.”

“Don’t you have a math test tomorrow?”

“Yeah, but I should have enough time to work on both. The music project is due in two weeks, and I don’t know how long it’ll take for us to finish.”

“Pft. This music class is such a dumb class. I bet this class is just for those slackers who don’t want to do anything productive with their lives. But, remember to come back home soon. You don’t want to lose your rank in the school to a kid like Bobby. How embarrassing would that be? You know he’s getting really close to beating you. Don’t make the same mistakes that you made on the last test.”

Hyun Ae nodded silently, slowly zoning out of the conversation. This was not the first time she had heard this spiel, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

She quickly said her goodbyes and went off to find Bobby’s house.

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Thanks to those who read and subscribed so far! I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter just as much, if not more. I also hope you guys learned more of Hyun Ae's background and her connection with music. Bobby's past will be revealed more in the next chapter when I update again tomorrow. I'll try and reread this over tomorrow if I remember to - it's currently almost 2 am and I'm dead tired after finishing this chapter haha. As always, feel free to leave comments and criticisms! ~thucthuc