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The church was decidedly too small for Kang Pi-o to hide in.
Not that he was trying. Pi-o was not a man who hid from people, least of all a group of children somewhere between seven and perhaps thirteen years old who had spent the past twenty minutes watching him with all the subtlety of a spotlight shining directly into his face. They were not even deterred by the fact that every time he turned his head toward them, they suddenly all began looking elsewhere—at the walls, the pews, the sheet music spread across their stands, or the ceiling—as though they had just discovered something extraordinarily fascinating in the plain stone vaulting. One of them had even started whistling once. Very badly. Pi-o suspected that if Jeong-yo continued working with this choir for another few years, he ought to start by teaching his pupils that people intending to observe someone secretly should not all turn their heads in the same direction whenever they were caught.
Jeong-yo had, of course, noticed it too.
He stood a few metres away, bent over a young girl's music stand, correcting something in her score with a pencil, his expression perfectly calm, almost professional, but Pi-o had known him long enough to catch the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth. In fact, he had known him long enough to recognise all those tiny signs of amusement that Jeong-yo had learned to conceal from the world over the years: the slight lift of his left eyebrow, the fleeting tension in his cheek, the way he bit the inside of his lip when he was genuinely trying not to laugh. Pi-o knew them all. Perhaps even better than he ought to. Once, he would have said it was only natural, that a good pianist had to watch his partner when playing four hands, that he had to anticipate the other person's movement before it happened, recognise a shift in tempo from the tension in a wrist, know when someone was about to speed up before the first note actually grew faster.
Now he no longer had to invent excuses like that.
Not after nine years spent searching for Jeong-yo.
Not after another three years during which he once again had no idea exactly where Jeong-yo was, although this time he at least had the certainty that Jeong-yo was alive, breathing, making music, and finding enough peace somewhere in the world to send him a postcard every now and then.
Not after finally finding him here.
Pi-o still wasn't entirely sure what he was supposed to do now.
It was an astonishing feeling. For most of his life, he had always known what came next. If a piece didn't sound good enough, he had to practise. If his fingers were too slow, he had to practise more. If someone was better, he had to analyse their technique, identify his own weaknesses, and eliminate them. If there was a competition ahead of him, he had to win. If Jeong-yo disappeared, he had to find him.
That last one had taken a little longer than the others.
But he had found him.
Now he stood in a small church somewhere in the Czech Republic, wearing a coat still damp from the fine rain outside, watching Choi Jeong-yo talk to the children in a language Pi-o understood only in fragments, and for the first time in a very long while there was no obvious next step.
Should he tell him to come back?
Should he ask whether he could stay?
Should he be angry about three years of silence?
Should he tell him he had listened to Nemesis so many times that he could now find things in it Jeong-yo probably hadn't even consciously intended to put there?
Should he tell him that a postcard was an exceptionally irritating way to reveal one's whereabouts to a man who had spent a considerable part of his adult life searching for him across several continents?
Pi-o was still considering it when one of the youngest girls broke away from the group and walked straight toward him.
She stopped in front of him.
Looked up.
Pi-o looked down.
For several seconds, they stared at each other in absolute silence.
The girl was perhaps eight years old, with two dark braids and the expression of someone who had just made a very serious decision about the life of a complete stranger.
She held out her hand.
A piece of red string lay in her open palm.
Pi-o frowned.
The girl said something in Czech.
Pi-o blinked.
She repeated it, louder this time, as if the problem were not that Pi-o didn't know the language well enough, but merely that he apparently hadn't heard her the first time.
“I don't understand.”
The girl wrinkled her nose.
She turned her head.
“Luca!”
Pi-o stiffened slightly at the sound of a name he still hadn't grown used to. Luca. The name belonging to the man Jeong-yo had become without him, to the years Pi-o hadn't witnessed and would never be able to reclaim. Only a few hours ago, that name had hurt in a way he couldn't explain. Now, however, he watched Jeong-yo lift his head, sigh with the air of a man who knew perfectly well that trouble was approaching, put down his pencil, and walk toward them, and something in Pi-o's chest loosened without his permission.
Because Luca might be the name the world called him.
But the man walking toward him was Jeong-yo.
Pi-o knew that as surely as he knew where middle C was, even if someone placed a piano in front of him in complete darkness.
“What did you do?” Jeong-yo asked in Korean.
Pi-o gave him a distinctly displeased look.
“Nothing.”
“That's what people who've done something usually say.”
“I'm standing here.”
“In an exceptionally suspicious manner.”
Pi-o narrowed his eyes.
“I didn't know standing could be suspicious.”
“You manage it.”
The girl shook the red string again, evidently unhappy that the adults had completely forgotten her existence. She said several quick sentences to Jeong-yo, pointing first at Pi-o, then at him, and finally at the string.
Jeong-yo froze.
Pi-o noticed immediately.
A slight tightening of the shoulders. A brief widening of the eyes. Then an extraordinarily swift return to a neutral expression.
Suspicious.
Very suspicious.
“What did she say?”
“Nothing important.”
“Jeong-yo.”
“Pi-o.”
The girl looked back and forth between them, apparently growing more delighted by the second.
Jeong-yo exhaled through his nose.
“The children were making decorations recently. One of the volunteers told them about Asian legends concerning the red thread of fate.”
Pi-o looked at the string.
Then at the girl.
Then back at Jeong-yo.
“And?”
“And nothing.”
“Jeong-yo.”
“Why are you saying my name in that tone?”
“What tone?”
“Like you're trying to force me to confess to a crime.”
Pi-o raised an eyebrow.
Jeong-yo regarded him for a moment, then sighed as heavily as though he had just realised that all the years he'd spent living away from Pi-o had not been nearly enough to forget just how irritating the man could be.
“She said you should have the string.”
“Why?”
Jeong-yo said nothing.
The girl evidently decided that her interpreter wasn't doing a sufficiently good job, because she pointed energetically at Pi-o, then at Jeong-yo, pressed her two index fingers together, and finally tucked her hands beneath her cheek in the universal gesture for sleeping.
Pi-o watched.
Jeong-yo covered his face with one hand.
A muffled laugh came from the far end of the room.
The entire choir was watching them.
“I'm not asking what the last part meant.”
“Good.”
“I'm asking about the string.”
“Even better.”
“Jeong-yo.”
“Apparently the red thread connects people who are destined for each other,” Jeong-yo finally replied quickly, clearly eager to end the conversation. “It can tangle, stretch, travel halfway around the world, but it can't be broken. And apparently she decided that since you came all the way here from Korea just to find me, you're a very good example.”
Silence fell.
Pi-o looked at the string once more.
He thought of Prague.
Of old corridors.
Of hotels where he'd slept for only a few hours at a time.
Of the man he'd hired to search.
Of the name Choi Jeong-yo appearing in his mind whenever he saw an unfamiliar pianist, conductor, or composer of the right age.
Of how many times he'd sat at the piano with Jeong-yo's score beside him.
Of a single handwritten message left years before.
Come back, Jeong-yo.
Then he thought of the postcard.
One.
Small.
Not enough.
And yet it had been enough.
Pi-o reached out and took the string from the girl's hand.
Jeong-yo eyed him suspiciously.
“What are you doing?”
Pi-o ignored the question. Instead, he found one end of the string, wound it around the little finger of his left hand, then held the rest out toward Jeong-yo.
Jeong-yo stared at him.
Pi-o waited.
The children waited too.
Apparently the entire world had suddenly decided to wait for Choi Jeong-yo's decision.
“No.”
Pi-o didn't so much as twitch.
“Why?”
“Because we're not eight years old.”
The girl beside them made an indignant noise.
Jeong-yo quickly said something to her, presumably explaining that he hadn't meant to insult eight-year-olds as a social group.
Pi-o was still holding the string.
“Are you scared?”
Jeong-yo slowly turned his head.
“Of what?”
“The string.”
“Kang Pi-o.”
“Choi Jeong-yo.”
“Don't try to use my own name against me.”
“You do it all the time.”
“That's different.”
“Why?”
Jeong-yo opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Pi-o felt a small, extraordinarily satisfying warmth spread through his chest.
He had won.
He wasn't quite sure what the competition had been, but he had won.
After a moment, Jeong-yo held out his hand.
“Give it here.”
Pi-o lifted the string.
“Finger.”
Jeong-yo looked at him as though he were seriously considering using his position as conductor to hit him over the head with his baton.
Nevertheless, he extended his little finger.
Pi-o wound the other end of the red thread around it.
The children burst into applause.
Jeong-yo closed his eyes.
“I hate you.”
“No, you don't.”
“I've come very close in the last five minutes.”
“No, you haven't.”
“You've become terribly sure of yourself.”
Pi-o looked at the few centimetres of red string hanging between their hands.
“I always was.”
“That much is true.”
Jeong-yo tried to move his hand away, but forgot about the thread. A slight resistance stopped his finger, and Pi-o instinctively moved his own hand with it, preventing the thin material from digging into his skin.
They both looked down.
The red string wasn't strong.
Pi-o knew he could snap it without the slightest effort. One sharp tug would be enough to make the fibres come apart under the strain. There was nothing magical about it. Nothing eternal. Nothing that couldn't be cut with an ordinary pair of scissors.
And yet, for a moment, neither of them moved his hand.
Jeong-yo spoke first.
“This is really stupid.”
“Mhm.”
“You don't believe in fate.”
“No.”
“Neither do I.”
“I know.”
Jeong-yo looked at him.
“Then why did you put it on?”
Pi-o considered his answer.
He could say that the children had been watching.
He could say it was funny.
He could say he'd simply wanted to annoy Jeong-yo.
Each of those answers would have been partly true.
None would have been the whole truth.
“Because I don't need fate.”
Jeong-yo blinked.
Pi-o raised their hands, joined by the string.
“I found you myself.”
For several seconds, Jeong-yo simply stared at him.
It was exactly the expression Pi-o had never known how to name properly. It wasn't pure surprise, it wasn't sadness, and it wasn't that warm amusement which appeared on his face when they played together. It was something between all of those things, something deeper, softer, and vulnerable in a way Jeong-yo very rarely allowed himself to be. In the past, Pi-o hadn't always known what to do with that look. He'd tried to analyse it like a passage of sheet music, break it down into components, find the source and meaning of every tiny tension in his face.
Now he knew a little more.
Not everything.
He would probably never know everything about Jeong-yo.
But for the first time, that didn't seem like a problem.
He could have time.
Jeong-yo lowered his gaze to their hands.
“Twice.”
Pi-o frowned.
“What?”
“You found me twice.”
Pi-o felt something tighten around his heart.
It didn't hurt.
Not this time.
Jeong-yo smiled faintly.
“The first time took you a while.”
“I didn't know you were alive.”
“Poor excuse.”
“Jeong-yo.”
“Pi-o.”
“You could have let me know.”
Jeong-yo's smile faded a little, but not entirely.
“I know.”
Pi-o wanted to say something more. He should have. There were so many words they had never spoken between them, so many conversations left unfinished, so many questions postponed because first they had to survive a competition, uncover the truth, protect their family, heal a hand, build a career, destroy a career, leave, find themselves, and then find each other all over again.
But this wasn't a day for settling accounts.
Not when Jeong-yo stood before him, alive and well.
Not when the children behind them were beginning to sing again, far too loudly this time, apparently trying to provide a romantic soundtrack to a conversation most of them couldn't even understand.
Not when an absurd red string hung between their fingers.
Pi-o moved his hand.
The thread drew taut.
Jeong-yo took a step too.
Pi-o looked at him.
Jeong-yo raised his eyebrows.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You're staring.”
“I'm looking at you.”
“I noticed.”
“Am I not allowed?”
Jeong-yo snorted softly.
“You flew several thousand kilometres just to do that?”
Pi-o considered it.
“Among other things.”
This time, Jeong-yo actually laughed.
It was a small sound, brief and quiet, but Pi-o felt it almost physically. Once, Jeong-yo's music had made him understand for the first time that a piano didn't have to be an instrument for winning. Later, his laughter had taught him something similar about life—that not every moment had to lead to a greater purpose, not every second had to be spent preparing for another victory, not every conversation had to resolve something.
Some things could exist simply because they were pleasant.
Like listening to Jeong-yo laugh.
Like sitting beside him at the piano.
Like a red string wrapped around their fingers.
A few minutes later, the children returned to rehearsal, and Pi-o stood behind Jeong-yo. Jeong-yo took his place before the choir and began to work, but stopped abruptly after the first movement of his hand.
The string tugged at Pi-o's finger.
Jeong-yo looked at him.
Pi-o looked at Jeong-yo.
They both looked at the rather small space between them.
“You have to take it off.”
“Why?”
“Because I have to conduct.”
“Then conduct.”
“I'm tied to your hand.”
“I noticed.”
“Pi-o.”
“Jeong-yo.”
One of the children giggled.
Jeong-yo gave the group a look presumably intended to restore discipline, but it had no effect whatsoever.
“Come here.”
Pi-o moved closer without protest.
Jeong-yo looked surprised.
“What?”
“Nothing... I just wasn't expecting you to listen to me.”
“Why?”
“History.”
The red string hung loosely between them again.
Jeong-yo turned toward the children.
He began the rehearsal.
Pi-o watched.
For the first few minutes, he tried to listen to the choir as a whole, but quickly discovered that most of his attention was focused on one person. There was nothing new about that. For much of his life, whenever they performed music, he had listened to Jeong-yo more than anyone else. Even when they played with an orchestra, even when dozens of instruments surrounded them, Pi-o could always pick out his part from the rest, just as someone could recognise the voice of a loved one among hundreds of others.
Jeong-yo conducted mostly with his left hand.
He was sparing his right.
Pi-o noticed.
Of course he noticed.
But this time he didn't let guilt close around his throat. He didn't allow every slight irregularity of movement to become another accusation against his past, his family, his mother, or himself. Jeong-yo had made his own choices. Jeong-yo was alive. Jeong-yo was making music. Jeong-yo was standing in front of a group of children, getting irritated when the sopranos came in too early, smiling when the youngest boy finally managed to hit a difficult note correctly.
And every now and then, the red string shifted gently against Pi-o's finger.
A small reminder.
He's here.
Jeong-yo is here.
You don't have to search for him.
When rehearsal ended, the children began gathering their things. Several hugged Jeong-yo goodbye, one gave Pi-o a sweet, apparently having decided he was part of the church furnishings, and the girl responsible for the red string was the last to stop in front of them.
She looked at their hands.
The thread was still in place.
She smiled broadly.
She said something to Jeong-yo.
Jeong-yo immediately grew suspiciously quiet.
Pi-o narrowed his eyes.
“What did she say?”
“Nothing.”
“Again?”
“Children say a lot of things.”
“Jeong-yo.”
“She only said she knew.”
“Knew what?”
Jeong-yo sighed.
The girl waved to them and ran out of the church.
The door closed behind her.
They were alone.
Jeong-yo began gathering the abandoned scores with one hand, because the other was still connected to Pi-o's.
Pi-o got up and silently began helping him.
For several minutes, they sorted the sheet music.
Funny.
For years, their lives had been full of dramatic events. Competitions. Grand concert halls. Escapes. Secrets. Lies. Hospitals. Airports. People making decisions that could destroy their entire lives.
And now the most natural thing in the world seemed to be standing in a little church somewhere far from home and arranging children's scores in numerical order.
Pi-o didn't mind.
In fact, he felt astonishingly good.
“She said that people connected by the red thread always find their way back to each other.”
Pi-o's hand stopped.
Jeong-yo wasn't looking at him.
“That's what she said?”
“More or less.”
Pi-o placed the last score on the pile.
“She was right.”
Jeong-yo gave him a sideways glance.
“Don't start.”
“You started.”
“I'm only translating.”
“We came back.”
Jeong-yo was silent.
Pi-o didn't look away.
After a moment, Jeong-yo slowly sat down at the piano.
The string tugged on Pi-o's hand.
He followed him.
Of course.
He sat beside him.
The bench was small, really intended for only one person, so their shoulders immediately touched. Jeong-yo looked at the keyboard.
Pi-o looked at his profile.
“I'm not going to play.”
“I didn't ask.”
“You're looking at my hands.”
“I'm looking everywhere.”
“That sounds even worse.”
Pi-o smiled faintly.
Jeong-yo noticed.
He always noticed.
“You really have changed.”
“So have you.”
“I had to.”
“So did I.”
Jeong-yo tilted his head.
For a moment he looked as though he wanted to ask what those words meant, but in the end he didn't.
Instead, he moved his left hand across the keyboard.
A single note.
Then another.
Pi-o recognised the melody almost immediately.
Nemesis.
Only a few notes.
Jeong-yo stopped.
Pi-o lifted his right hand and continued.
Jeong-yo looked at him.
Pi-o kept playing.
It wasn't the full composition. They had no sheet music. The piano was mediocre, several keys had slightly uneven resistance, and the instrument had probably needed tuning for months. Jeong-yo used only his left hand, Pi-o his right, and the red string between their little fingers forced them to sit closer than they normally would.
None of it mattered.
Pi-o stopped playing.
So did Jeong-yo.
Their shoulders were still touching.
“Jeong-yo.”
“Mhm?”
“Will you come back with me?”
The question left his mouth more simply than he'd expected.
He hadn't prepared it.
Hadn't practised.
Hadn't analysed the best possible phrasing.
He had simply asked.
Jeong-yo looked at the keyboard.
“Where to?”
Pi-o frowned.
“To Korea.”
“That's not an answer.”
Pi-o froze.
Jeong-yo turned toward him.
Their faces were close.
Very close.
“Where am I supposed to come back to, Pi-o?”
Pi-o understood.
It wasn't about the country.
Not Seoul.
Not the concert hall.
Not the Kang family home.
Jeong-yo no longer had a place he could simply return to.
For most of his life he had moved between other people's expectations, other people's decisions, and places he'd been forced to run away from.
Pi-o looked at the red string.
He moved his finger.
The thread tightened slightly.
“To me.”
Jeong-yo stopped breathing.
Pi-o could hear the silence that followed those two words.
And he knew he could amend them. Add something. Explain. Say he wasn't expecting an immediate decision, that Jeong-yo could keep working here, that they could come and go, that Pi-o didn't have to live in exactly the same place as before either, because his own life had long since stopped looking the way it used to.
But he didn't.
Jeong-yo had always complained that Pi-o didn't say enough.
So this time, he let those two words mean everything.
To me.
Not to a career.
Not to the piano.
Not to the past.
To me.
Jeong-yo raised their joined hands.
He looked at the string.
“I think that's cheating.”
“What?”
“First you tie me to yourself, and then you ask whether I'll go with you.”
Pi-o frowned.
“I can take it off.”
“I didn't say I wanted you to.”
Pi-o went still.
Jeong-yo smiled.
Just a little.
Softly.
Almost shyly, which was such a rare sight that Pi-o felt his heart give one unnecessarily powerful thump.
“I don't know yet whether I'll come back permanently.”
“Okay.”
“I have a job here.”
“I know.”
“The children.”
“I know.”
“And I have no intention of arranging my entire life around someone else's expectations again.”
“I didn't ask you to.”
Jeong-yo studied him carefully.
“But I can go with you.”
Pi-o didn't answer.
For one second.
Two.
Three.
“Say something.”
“Okay.”
Jeong-yo began to laugh.
“Nine years looking for me, three years waiting, and all you have to say is okay?”
“I said more earlier.”
“Two words.”
“They were important.”
“Incredible.”
Pi-o let him laugh.
He didn't even protest when Jeong-yo rested his forehead against his shoulder, still laughing softly, as though the whole situation truly were absurd.
Perhaps it was.
The red thread of fate.
Pi-o still didn't believe in it.
He didn't believe that some invisible force had decided years ago that Choi Jeong-yo would be the man he met again and again, no matter how many times the world separated them. He didn't believe everything that had happened was meant to happen. He didn't want to believe it. Some things were too cruel to call fate, as though their suffering had been a necessary part of some grander plan.
No.
Pi-o didn't need that kind of story.
He preferred the truth.
He met Jeong-yo.
He lost him.
He searched.
He found him.
He lost him again.
He went after him.
He found him again.
Not because some thread had pulled him across the world.
Because every time, he had chosen the same direction himself.
Jeong-yo.
Jeong-yo lifted his head.
“We should probably take this off.”
Pi-o looked at the string.
“Why?”
“We can't go back to the hotel like this.”
“We can.”
“Pi-o.”
“Jeong-yo.”
“I need to get dressed.”
“I'll help.”
Jeong-yo looked at him.
Pi-o realised the additional implication of his words perhaps a second too late.
The smile on Jeong-yo's face changed instantly.
“Oh?”
“Your coat.”
“Of course.”
“I meant your coat.”
“I didn't say anything.”
“I can see your face.”
“And here I thought I was the only one who could read yours.”
Pi-o tugged gently at the string.
Jeong-yo stumbled toward him.
Their shoulders touched again.
This time, neither pulled away.
“Let's leave it.”
Jeong-yo looked down.
“The string?”
“Mhm.”
“For how long?”
Pi-o considered it.
Then he shrugged.
“Until it breaks.”
Jeong-yo was silent for a while.
Then his finger shifted slightly, hooking around Pi-o's through the thin red thread.
“And if it doesn't break?”
Pi-o turned his hand.
Their little fingers intertwined.
The string lay between them, almost completely invisible.
“Then it stays.”
Jeong-yo looked at their hands.
And then, to Pi-o's complete surprise, he leaned over and rested his head against his shoulder.
Just like that.
Without warning.
Without a joke.
Pi-o went still because, despite all the concerts, all the meetings, all the years during which Jeong-yo had existed in his life as a rival, a friend, a partner, a loss, an enemy, a composer, a man he had to find and a man he once had to allow himself to lose to, such small gestures could still rob him of every capacity for logical thought.
After several seconds, he tilted his head.
His cheek came to rest against Jeong-yo's hair.
They sat side by side at an out-of-tune piano in an empty church.
Rain tapped softly against the tall windows.
Their hands lay beside each other on the bench, little fingers intertwined and joined by a red string.
Pi-o thought that perhaps the world had never needed an extra thread to bind them together.
They already had another.
The first melody they'd played together.
A score passed from hand to hand.
Nemesis.
Nine years of searching.
A single message written on paper.
A single postcard sent from the other end of Europe.
All those things followed one another like notes in the same composition, one neither of them could yet hear through to the end.
Perhaps they never would.
That was all right too.
Jeong-yo moved his head.
“Pi-o.”
“Mhm?”
“If you tell anyone about this string, I'll deny it.”
“Jae-in will want to see a photograph.”
Jeong-yo immediately lifted his head.
“Don't you dare.”
Pi-o took out his phone.
“Kang Pi-o.”
Pi-o opened the camera.
“Give it here.”
Jeong-yo lunged toward him.
The string immediately pulled taut, their hands became even more tangled, and Pi-o, rather than moving the phone out of his reach, did the only logical thing that occurred to him at that moment.
He took a picture.
Blurry.
Crooked.
One half of the photograph showed an indignant Jeong-yo trying to snatch the phone from him; the other showed Pi-o, who—to his own surprise—was laughing so broadly that he barely resembled the man in his official concert photographs.
Between them, right in the centre of the picture, were their intertwined hands.
And a thin red thread.
Jeong-yo snatched the phone from him.
He looked at the picture.
Fell silent.
Pi-o watched his face.
“Delete it?” he asked.
Jeong-yo said nothing for a long time.
Finally he handed the device back.
“No.”
Pi-o put his phone away.
Jeong-yo straightened his coat.
Stood up.
The string tugged at Pi-o's finger.
Pi-o stood too.
Together they headed toward the door.
Their first step was a little uneven.
So was the second.
On the third, Jeong-yo adjusted the length of his stride.
On the fourth, Pi-o did the same.
After that, they didn't have to think about it anymore.
The red thread hung loosely between their hands as they stepped out into the rain together.