123. A Mozart Concert for the Children and Myself

Within the span of a single meal, the staff had already hung the theme poster for tonight’s concert at the main entrance.

Walking up to the second floor, a photo wall of the children performing that evening was displayed in front of the two concert hall entrances. Li An passed by one familiar little face after another. Regardless of whether he had taught them or not, looking at these photos, he couldn't help but wonder what these children would be like in ten or twenty years. Would they still be playing the piano in the future?

He stopped in front of the photos of Liu Fengrui and Wang Xiaohu. Viewed as still images, both little guys looked quite well-behaved. It was a pity that Xiaobei’s photo was missing. Xiaobei must have wanted to participate too. *Sigh.* Among all the children he had taught under different skies, Xiaobei was the one with the most genuine devotion to the piano he had ever seen. Li An always felt a sense of debt toward Xiaobei, though he couldn't quite explain why. Perhaps he could have fought for something more for the boy during his conversation with Xiaobei’s mother that night.

Just then, his phone rang.

"Teacher~"

At that moment, the way Ji Yang addressed him as "Teacher" left Li An feeling quite sentimental.

"What is it, Xiao Ji?" he asked, his voice softening subconsciously.

"Teacher~ I want to come and see you this afternoon." Ji Yang knew about the student piano concert at Yudong today.

"If you want to come, then come. It’s in the same concert hall as last time."

It was already past 2:00 PM. There was one hour left until the official rehearsal and six and a half hours until the performance. After hanging up, he entered the main hall, paced around the empty space twice, and then stepped onto the stage. He liked the feeling of standing on stage and looking down at the house. He couldn't remember where he had read it, but there was a saying: music cannot exist without the stage, just as a fish cannot exist without water.

Li An loved the feeling of being on stage. Under the spotlights, every second felt vibrant and full of life. Sometimes, he felt that the version of himself standing on stage was the most authentic one. Last night, Ji Yang had asked him if he still wanted to go abroad. He hadn't answered at the time. Standing on stage now, he still couldn't give an answer.

Going abroad was supposed to be his next objective, but through a twist of fate, he had ended up here. He had inexplicably ended up raising a kitten and taking on over eighty thousand in debt. He had met Chen Xuan, a group of interesting colleagues, and taken on three lovely students. There was also the teaching assistant system he had grown quite fond of. Then came the arrival of Song Sheng and his son, Ji Yang, and a series of vivid characters—juniors, seniors, mentors—whom he had never met but felt he knew deeply in his mind.

Unknowingly, he had already carved out his own circle and his own attachments in this new world. He could feel himself becoming more and more integrated into it. The world wasn't large; it was just under this small patch of sky over Rongcheng. If an opportunity to study abroad were placed before him now, he wasn't sure if he could let go of all this to leave for two or three years. What about Chen Xuan? What about these children who were learning piano from him?

He would never have considered such questions before. In this life, who doesn't live for their own brilliance? Perhaps it was truly the influence of the original owner’s sentimental personality, but he didn't know what he was pondering at this moment.

He shook his head, pulled himself together, and returned to the piano. He sat down and lightly ran his hands over a set of notes. It was the first movement of Mozart’s K545, so he continued to play. The bright melody, accompanied by lively, skipping figurations, instantly filled the stage with the warmth of an afternoon sun.

As the soul-stirring music flowed, the first child for the afternoon rehearsal arrived, accompanied by their parents. They saw and heard the performance on stage, then quietly found a place to sit down. After finishing the first movement of K545, Li An didn't stop, instead transitioning into another of Mozart’s piano sonatas: K311.

If one were to speak of works from the Classical period, Li An’s favorite was not Beethoven, but Mozart. It was likely a matter of temperament; he liked the rules within Mozart’s music, much like the orderly life he had once led. Sometimes he found it strange that someone like Mozart, who lived a life of utter chaos, could possess such divine order in his music. It was just like the frantic, fast-paced Allegro beneath his fingers, yet it was written with absolute precision.

This was the music of Mozart—full of the beauty of living, breathing life. Beneath every musical motif lay hidden, subtle turns. Li An seemed to find a spark of inspiration. After K311 ended, he paused for a moment, then began to play K283. Just like that, one piece of Mozart after another collided and merged within his fluid performance. At times it was intimate; at others, it was breathtaking.

Every child who entered the concert hall seemed to be infected by the performance on stage; they would quietly find a seat alongside their parents. Before he knew it, the seats below were filled with people. It felt as if the concert had already begun. Wang Xiaohu and his mother were sitting beside Liu Fengrui and his father; behind them sat little Che Lin and Ji Yang. Li Minghao, Xu Hongxin, and Ma Tao, who had come from the Songjiang campus to help, were sitting not far away. On their other side were Jia Mingyu and Zheng Haitao, the senior and junior who had agreed to come with Li An.

The audience grew larger. By the time Huang Juan, Lin Pengfei, and the other piano teachers entered the hall, the rehearsal time had actually arrived. But no one disturbed the performance on stage, and they, too, chose to join the audience.

As the magnificent K279, drifting through the air and soaring above the concert hall, cast off all formal constraints and traditional melodic constraints, Li An had an epiphany. He had been stuck in his performance "mood" for about a year, but finally, with the help of this afternoon’s atmosphere and the special therapeutic effect of Mozart’s music, he had broken through by a stroke of luck.

The beauty of the performance mood he had been searching for was not in some external poetic force, but in a profound experience of life itself. Wasn't the tension between musical themes and harmonies just like every step forward in life—the blindness, the setbacks, the dead ends, the overturning, and the starting over? Until the dark clouds dispersed, all of this had become the musical emotion itself.

Following a violent fluctuation of emotion, his hands at the piano began to play slower and slower, the flow of musical thought becoming more and more gentle. As the warm musical theme played through for the final time, Li An withdrew his hands. He could not describe his mood at that moment; he exhaled a breath of stale air, feeling as though his entire being had been elevated.

The quiet hall was silent for less than three seconds. A sharp whistle pierced through the audience. Zheng Haitao was the first to stand up, shouting, "Awesome!!!"

His cry sparked a wave of enthusiastic applause.

"Clap—"

Li An looked toward the sound in surprise, spotting a young man and woman who were vaguely familiar—his junior and senior. He stood up, met the applause, and scanned the concert hall. It seemed everyone had come.

"Teacher is so cool!"

Seeing Li An look their way from afar, Ji Yang couldn't control her emotions; she stood up and waved her hands vigorously! Wang Xiaohu turned his head, his brows furrowed deeply—how had this woman who competed for his teacher's attention come again? Not wanting to be outdone, Wang Xiaohu was about to shout even louder than Ji Yang, but he suddenly realized that Che Lin, sitting next to Ji Yang, seemed to have glanced at him just now. He decided to let Ji Yang win by half a point for the time being, and before turning back, he snuck a peek at Che Lin.

Walking back to the front of the stage, he looked at the familiar faces in the audience and listened to the children's laughter. He smiled, too. He would treat this extended performance as a gift for the children of Yudong on this special day. It was also his own first recital since arriving here.

He gave a standard, deep bow of gratitude to everyone in the audience. When he raised his head, he saw a familiar, slender figure standing in the shadows by the door in the very last row, leaning against the doorframe in her usual posture, smiling and applauding for him.

Across the distance, their eyes met.

This was the real, tangible, and expectant sense of life.