Interlude : The Thread of Silence
(From the eyes of Long Qingye – "Emerald")
It was the fourth evening since his birthday.
The city lights shimmered below the mountaintop estate like restless waves of fireflies. Long Qingye stood by the windowsill of her private room, a single string of jade beads in her hand, each knotted with trembling fingers.
Haochen hadn't come home since the performance.
He said he was busy.
He always said he was busy.
But Qingye knew better. She always had. Her brother had a voice like rain and a mind sharper than winter, but when he said "I'm fine," his fingers would pull gently at the white strands in his hair. That was how she knew.
He wasn't fine.
Not now. Not ever.
She tiptoed into his room that night.
Not the penthouse in the city. Not the villa with the biometric locks.
But the old family home. The one nestled in the northern mountains, where the wind carried the scent of their mother's favorite plum blossoms and where the hallway still creaked with familiar ghosts.
His room was untouched—clean, precise, silent. The long wooden shelves held medals, trophies, glass-framed letters from heads of state and world-famous directors. But the corner beside the bookshelf…
There it was.
The bamboo chest.
Her hands hesitated. She knew what it held. She had watched their mother weave it under candlelight—each loop of the thread sewn with tears too quiet for anyone to hear. A protective hair strap, made from red spider lily thread, blessed under moonlight, hidden in her palm the night before they died.
She had tied it to Haochen's hair herself.
But she had never told him why.
Never told him who made it.
That night, as Qingye knelt by the chest, she didn't open it.
She only rested her head against it.
And she whispered—
"He still wears it, Mama… Even now.
I saw it today. Tucked under the white strand over his cheek.
I think… I think it's the only thing keeping him here."
The wind blew gently through the curtains.
She stayed there for a long time, not crying.
Just listening to the silence their family had left behind.
Before dawn, she opened the grand piano in the hall—the one he used to teach her on—and placed a single sheet of music on the stand. Not a song.
Just a note:
"Brother… If you ever feel alone, just play in G-minor.
I'll hear you.
Even from a world away."
—Love, Emerald
She didn't tell anyone about that night.
And Haochen never said a word when he found it the next day.
But from then on, in his lonely tower of glass…
He started playing in G-minor again.