A jarring, awful melody trickled out from beneath Lucian's hands on the piano, note by painful note. Still at the stage where he could only manage simple pieces, his technique was hopelessly inadequate for the complex melody he envisioned. Each note stumbled out like a blacksmith's hammer striking metal, one blow after another pounding against the hearts of Lot, Phyllis, and Herodotus, filling them with an almost manic irritation — they wanted nothing more than to rush over and tear Lucian apart.
"Enough!" Herodotus and Lot roared in unison, all pretense of aristocratic composure forgotten.
Lucian turned to look at them with "innocent" eyes. "Lot, Phyllis, Herodotus — aren't you going to practice your instruments? Mr. Victor specifically told us to put in serious practice time."
"You—" Herodotus clenched his fists, his face flushing red with fury, but his body was frail, and having never won a fight in his life, he harbored a deep-seated dread of physical confrontation. A sliver of reason remained; he weighed their respective combat ability and concluded:【He's half a head taller than me, around 173 centimeters. Born a commoner, spent his life hauling goods for others — he's bound to be strong. And one of his close friends is a knight's squire, so he must have picked up some basic sword training too. I don't stand a chance.】
【Never mind. Striking a fellow student would get me expelled by Mr. Victor.】Herodotus glanced down at his own scrawny frame and found his excuse. "I don't want to look at you, and I won't let a commoner like you soil my hands. I'm going to another practice room."
With that, he turned and headed for the door.
"Did I upset Herodotus somehow?" Lucian asked with a look of puzzlement. Driving them off one by one was exactly what he needed — the fewer witnesses, the easier to conceal the unreasonable, inexplicable leaps in his ability to compose melody.
Herodotus was just reaching for the practice room door when he heard Lucian's words. His hand slipped and he nearly fell, whirling around to glare at the bastard. That was deliberate, wasn't it?
After one more comparison of their builds, Herodotus clenched his teeth and stormed out of the room.
Seeing them gone, Lucian picked up his Feather Pen and began writing out the melody he had just played on a sheet of white paper. It contained a minuscule fragment of the Fate Symphony woven in — barely a handful of notes — while the rest was a haphazard jumble of notes scrawled on pure instinct. Anyone with even a shred of musical training would take one look at the piece and shake their head; it was only marginally better than garbage.
Watching Lucian earnestly scribble on the sheet music, Lot glanced up at the practice room ceiling, rubbed his forehead, and made one last attempt at confirmation. "You're really going to compose a piece?"
"Of course. I'm working on it right now." Lucian didn't even look up. "Hmm, I just got a bit more inspiration."
And so Lucian set down the Feather Pen, and that atrocious noise once again filled the practice room.
Phyllis rose to her feet, muttering weakly. "Lot, I think I need to go sit quietly in the back garden. I'm going to lose my mind."
Lot sighed. "I'm heading to another practice room too."
Once they had left, Lucian quietly exhaled in relief. He locked the practice room door from the inside, made a few edits to the two melody segments he had written, weaving in more of the Fate Symphony's themes. Then he composed freely, filling page after page of white paper with his so-called melodies — nothing but garbage, line after line.
This was the approach Lucian had devised: a gradual, step-by-step process. First, he would get them accustomed to the fact that he was composing music. Then he would mask the real content behind layers of mediocre filler, improving a little each day. That progression would be documented in his draft scores — evidence he could produce whenever anyone questioned him. Once they had unconsciously accepted that his compositions contained genuinely beautiful passages, he could invite Victor to listen to his piano arrangement of the Fate Symphony, still riddled with flaws, and ask him to help refine it, fix its shortcomings, and orchestrate it into a true symphonic work.
A genius whose hidden musical talent was being revealed bit by bit, in full view of everyone, whose progress was plainly visible — such a person was far easier to accept than someone who suddenly produced a soul-stirring symphony destined to endure for centuries and claimed authorship out of nowhere.
Of course, during this period Lucian would also need to devote every moment of instrument practice to rehearsing the piano arrangement of the Fate Symphony. He couldn't afford to have his poor technique cause this piece — known as the "Crown of Symphonic Music" — to be dismissed or looked down upon by Victor, Lot, Phyllis, and the others.
There was precedent for such a thing. The premiere of Beethoven's own Fate Symphony had gone poorly — the orchestra had rehearsed together only once beforehand, the weather was bitter cold, and the performance was lackluster, earning a lukewarm reception from the audience. It wasn't until a year and a half later, at a subsequent concert, that the symphony met with an unprecedentedly rapturous response.
Having settled on today's progress and revised the score accordingly, Lucian began the arduous task of practice, attempting to play the Fate Symphony. Slow, halting, disjointed — he turned a sublime piece that reached straight into the soul into something that sounded like noise. In truth, even if he hadn't locked the practice room door, anyone who overheard wouldn't have given it a second thought.
That entire afternoon, none of them — not Victor, not Rhein, not Lot or the others — came looking for Lucian. This allowed him to play through the symphony, which ran over thirty minutes in length, three full times at a painfully slow pace.
…………
Noticing that the sky was beginning to darken, Lucian gathered his sheet music, tucked the thick stack of papers under his arm, and made his way to the performance hall on the fifth floor.
Inside the hall, the symphony orchestra was still rehearsing. Victor was conducting with fierce concentration, and it appeared that after a brief respite he had managed to shake off his gloom, pouring his entire being into the music.
Below the stage, Lot, Phyllis, and Herodotus were already seated, listening attentively to the piece and studying Victor's conducting technique. They spared Lucian only a cold glance when he walked in, having no desire whatsoever to engage with that insufferable, incomprehensible lunatic.
Lucian paid no heed to their behavior. Instead, he offered each of them a smile in turn, which drew an exasperated expression from Phyllis.
Settling into one of the cushioned audience chairs, Lucian closed his eyes and listened to the music being performed while mulling over how far he should advance the melody the following day.
Half an hour passed swiftly amid the beautiful music. Victor and Rhein descended from the stage together, and Victor asked his students with a faint smile, "How did instrument practice go this afternoon? Any issues with fingering or technique?"