The Harmony of Obsession

Chapter 8

"When luck was with me I became embarrassed and tried to lose; but when my luck changed I became annoyed."

—— Tchaikovsky's Diary. 7 May, 1884

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Brett loved seeing Eddy wearing black, in which his slender figure was elongated even more, and, in fact, the latter one dressed in black quite often. Advising Brett on his upcoming competition, Eddy had to meet with his students via Zoom since he was out-of-town attending a music conference.

The meeting was at 4:00 p.m. after Brett was done with his last class of the day. In front of the screen, the man in a slim-fit black polo shirt looked a bit fatigued but he still greeted everyone who entered the zoom with a dazzling smile as he always did. The top two buttons on his polo shirt were left unbuttoned. Brett was able to see the clear outline of his neck muscle and a hint of the contouring of his visual collarbone.

The young violinist sat silently in front of his laptop and was distracted in an instance from glimpsing the Adam's apple of the older man moving up and done. A few more students entered the zoom classroom and greet their professors. Eddy's window automatically narrow to the corner, which allowed Brett had a moment to adjust his headspace and prepared for their following meeting. But his plan didn't work cuz Eddy's window enlarged again and took over Brett's screen as he started to talk. Brett couldn't control his hands, so he quickly took a few screenshots of Eddy. He was not proud of it, but he did it anyway.

They were about to discuss some details of the upcoming competition. Eddy asked everyone to unmute their mics and turn on their webcams. Brett was not comfortable enough with showing his face because he felt super awkward and found himself looked rather stupid in the front of the camera. However, everyone revealed their faces so he had no choice but followed the flow. The zoom meeting went really well actually, each student shared their own struggles and Eddy gave really instructive and useful advice. They even reviewed some past competitions footages together, Brett eventually relaxed in the light atmosphere.

"You see, this passage, he could have phrased it more brightly." Eddy paused the vid and some students nodded along with him, "people sometimes couldn't even notice, but if you were a classical-trained musician and you listen to this—"

"Your ears will go—WA-DING!"

Everyone was silent for a moment, staring at the boy whose window located in the screen corner with his two fingers right next to his ears.

Brett had no idea what he was doing.

It all happened so fast that he couldn't even stop himself from doing it. It just felt really natural to do so. Maybe you could call it, what's the word, instinct.

A few seconds of silence passed, people bursted out laughing. Girls were uwuing and let out "Awwww"s loudly, and some of the others were copying his action while laughing nonstop. Brett felt his face was burning. Fuck. He cursed underneath his breath. Look what you did!

He awkwardly scratched his head, gathering all his courage to glance at Eddy, only found a rather cool face without any expression.

Somehow, besides his embarrassment, he felt something crawling up to his heart, something that made he feel uneasy, something that he didn't want to admit. He felt disappointed.

But actually, if Brett looked close enough, he could see the tiny little smile escaped from Eddy's lips.

-

Brett would LOVE to meet with Kachikawawa.

He wanted to sincerely thank him in person for being such a GREAT musician that people name him after such a stressful and intense violin competition. Brett was stressed. In fact, he was SO stressed that he couldn't sleep at all in the hotel room in Sydney. The competition would be tomorrow, and Brett just blankly stared at the ceiling at 5 a.m. Ray was in the room next to him. He looked super relaxed when he said good night to Brett before entering his room.