Episode 9 of Four Hands, Two Sonatas gives Choi Jeong-yo one of his most mysterious choices yet.
After nearly five years, Jeong-yo finally completes his piano concerto. Then he hands the score to Kang Bi-o and asks him to perform its premiere.
The title is “Nemesis.”
That name immediately changes the meaning of the scene.
Nemesis is associated with punishment for arrogance — and Bi-o himself understands the theme of the piece that way. Considering everything that happened between these two men nine years ago, it would be easy to see the concerto as Jeong-yo’s musical revenge.
But there is one problem with that interpretation.
Jeong-yo’s “revenge” is making Bi-o a better pianist.
Why Give the Song to Bi-o?
Bi-o initially believes he has no right to perform Jeong-yo’s music.
His guilt runs much deeper than a simple rivalry. He has spent years believing that the position he occupies should have belonged to Jeong-yo.
Jeong-yo, however, refuses to accept that explanation.
He tells Bi-o that interpretation is only interpretation. The person who actually performed the music was Bi-o, and that performance had a color of its own.
Then Jeong-yo does something even stranger.
Instead of taking something away from Bi-o, he gives him an opportunity.
If Bi-o has suffered because he feels sorry toward him, Jeong-yo suggests that he can use this performance as a chance to repay that guilt.
For a man supposedly driven by revenge, that is an unusual punishment.
Jeong-yo Could Destroy Bi-o — Instead, He Pushes Him
Their rehearsals are brutal.
Bi-o prepares carefully, but Jeong-yo keeps rejecting what he hears.
Why are all the phrases beautiful?
Why is Bi-o still hiding inside his armor?
Later, Bi-o follows the written tempo precisely, yet Jeong-yo complains that he is too slow — and then too fast.
Bi-o finally protests. If the score says 160 and he is playing at 160, what exactly does Jeong-yo want?
Jeong-yo’s answer reveals the real conflict.
Music is not something that can be prepared like a finished product and reheated whenever needed. Bi-o has to feel the rhythm rather than simply reproduce the correct number.
Jeong-yo is attacking Bi-o’s armor, not his talent.
The Cruelest Irony of “Nemesis”
There is another reason this relationship feels so painful.
Jeong-yo tells Bi-o that the gunshot he suffered nine years earlier damaged the nerves connected to his right hand. He can live an ordinary life, but he can no longer play the piano as he once did.
Bi-o can.
That creates a cruel reversal.
Jeong-yo has the desire and musical instinct, but his body took the piano away from him.
Bi-o still has the hands, technique and career — yet guilt and his slump have trapped him inside increasingly rigid music.
One man cannot return to the piano.
The other can, but emotionally cannot move forward.
And the man who lost the piano is now forcing the man who still has it to play again.
Is Nemesis Really About Revenge?
This is why the title “Nemesis” may be more complicated than it first appears.
If Jeong-yo simply wanted Bi-o to suffer, he has chosen a strange way to do it.
He could expose him.
He could humiliate him.
He could refuse to acknowledge his talent.
Instead, he entrusts Bi-o with the premiere of a concerto he spent years completing — and then pushes him relentlessly toward a more honest kind of music.
Perhaps the punishment is not failure.
Perhaps Bi-o’s punishment is being forced to stop hiding.
For years, guilt allowed him to believe that his success belonged to someone else. Perfection allowed him to hide behind technique. His slump allowed him to avoid confronting what happened.
Jeong-yo is stripping those excuses away one by one.
That makes “Nemesis” much more interesting than a simple revenge composition.
Jeong-yo may not be trying to destroy Bi-o.
He may be demanding that Bi-o finally become the musician Jeong-yo always knew he could be.
And if that is Jeong-yo’s revenge, it may be the strangest revenge of all:
making the person he should hate become better.