“It's not… it's not… no…”

Luyen, Thuyen, and Thac are staring at their phone and laptop screens, looking for pictures of trumpet musicians one by one after zoning in. If this "master's master" musician were not in the five most famous symphony orchestras in the world, Ngoc Lam would have an extremely solid reputation. However, even if they search in English or Vietnamese for the phrase "The best trumpeter", they still cannot find anyone who is female, 15 years old as described by Thac.

After a few hours of searching, Luyen and Thuyen continue a series of words

"I'm"

"Ready"

"To"

"Drop"

Thac scratches his ear for a few seconds, his mind is full of questions. Suddenly his eyes light up, and he calls his two friends

“I'll try typing people's names with 'trumpet'.”

Doing what he says, he grabs his laptop and types "Ngoc Lam Trumpet" into the search bar. Immediately, a series of images and videos appear. Thac clicks on a video that seems the clearest, showing a little girl playing the trumpet with another pianist.

The video was recorded about 8 years ago, at that time the girl called Ngoc Lam was only 7 years old, wearing a light red dress, her hair tied in a high bun, and her lipstick made her face look very pretty. At first glance, it is impossible to tell if the girl and her classmate Ngoc Lam are the same. Even though she was so young, she performed as skillfully as any veteran musician. Thac and his two friends seem hypnotized by the girl's music.

"The pianist who was accompanying this child in the video is..." Luyen whispers to her friend

“Top 9 pianist in the world. That year he was already in the top 14.” Thuyen replies in surprise.

After the group finishes talking for a while, the video shows Ngoc Lam beginning to demonstrate the technique she had performed before Van Thac's eyes.

"Here it is!" Thac exclaims.

Ngoc Lam was performing a piece called Moto Perpetuo, Op.11. The original was performed on the violin with extremely skilful fingers, but switching to the trumpet was even more challenging, yet the girl in the video still did not flinch. Faced with a series of continuously rising and falling notes, Van Thac almost holds his breath for 4 minutes. Only after she blew the last bass note does he feel like he is breathing again.

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“Not many people can do this.” Luyen comments, "The trumpet's sound is clear in every note but not harsh. I've heard many artists try their hand at this version, but..."

Luyen pauses for a moment then continues.

“Rarely have I seen someone perform as gently as this child. Everything was so natural that I thought she was acting instead of actually playing.”

Thuyen and Thac are silent. This is also the rare time Luyen speaks continuously for a long time without Thuyen continuing.

“Why do I not know such a talented person?” Thuyen clicks back on the search page and searches for some information surrounding the name Ngoc Lam.

Each time they scroll down, the three's expressions become more and more serious. It turns out that they cannot find Ngoc Lam in the list of Trumpet artists because she was not only good at this instrument. Ngoc Lam was good at every musical instrument she had ever tried! The two musical artists that brought her name to the art world are a pianist and a violinist, the two instruments Ngoc Lam first played. Later, she tried most of the instruments in the symphony, except those that were too big for her. Besides, guitar and Eastern music instruments were also not out of her reach. On the internet, there is still a series of newspapers praising Ngoc Lam as a genius of geniuses, a unique legend (Vietnamese One-of-a-kind Legend).

Thac still cannot believe that his classmate was such a once-in-a-lifetime genius. He brings his questions to Luyen and Thuyen.

“I think…” Luyen starts the sentence first

“Very high possibility…” Continues

“Your friend Ngoc Lam…”

“Retired!”

Thac is stunned by their speculation just now, he immediately types into the search bar "Ngoc Lam last performance", and a series of videos and a few discussion posts on Reddit appear, including a video of her last performance five years ago.

Ngoc Lam stood frozen in the middle of the stage, tears streaming down her face. The girl trembled as she played the violin, but after only a few minutes, a string broke. Tears fell, and Ngoc Lam quickly ran off the stage. The performance was interrupted.

In the comments section, many people expressed their regret to the girl in many different languages. Some people even maliciously scolded the child for not working properly, and others accused her parents of creating the image of a prodigy to make money. Still, in reality, she had no talent.

Thac quickly clicks back to find Reddit's top discussion about Ngoc Lam, in which a person who claimed to play in the orchestra where she performed that last performance recounted: After the violin string broke, Ngoc Lam Lam ran off the stage. Maybe because she was so panicked, she tripped somewhere as the hollow ceramic prop statue fell on her. The statue shattered and the family rushed to carry the bleeding child to the hospital. From then on, they no longer saw Ngoc Lam on stage.

Van Thac and his two friends continue to look for more information. They only obtain a few more pieces of information. The most valuable thing is Ngoc Lam, whose talent was discovered by someone at the Conservatory and, was given the special opportunity to play for the orchestra just half a year later.

"According to you two, does Mr Woods know Ngoc Lam?" Thac looked at his two friends

“Definitely yes!” Both say in unison.

“I think so too!” Thac agrees, "Maybe he even taught Ngoc Lam."

Seeing that it's almost 8 pm, Luyen and Thuyen decide to leave, not forgetting to send Van Thac's parents 3 tickets to the symphony next Friday night. Van Thac sits in his room doing homework, occasionally looking out at the grey sky signalling tomorrow's rain. In his mind, he constantly remembered the image of Ngoc Lam shedding tears next to a violin with a broken string.

"I must ask Mr Woods tomorrow," Van Thac thinks to himself.