In the aftermath of the song, the silence that filled Alex's room was different. It was no longer the oppressive, suffocating silence of a sealed tomb. It was a vast, empty quiet, the kind that comes after a storm has spent its fury, leaving the air clean and cold. The raw echo of the final, mournful chord still seemed to hang in the atmosphere, a ghost of the grief he had just given a voice.
He remained on the floor for a long time, his back against the bed, motionless. The violent, chaotic energy that had driven him to the guitar was gone, drained from him by the act of creation. In its place was a stark, quiet exhaustion that felt bone-deep. The pain was still there, an immense and sharp-edged presence, but it was no longer an overwhelming, drowning force. It was just a part of the landscape now, a dark mountain on the horizon of his new reality. He could see it, acknowledge it, and still breathe.
This new, fragile lucidity gave him a sliver of strength he hadn't possessed all week. It wasn't courage, not yet. It was something closer to weary resignation. A quiet, grim understanding that he couldn't stay on the floor of his dark bedroom forever. He couldn't live in the aftermath. He had to take a step.
His eyes, now fully accustomed to the dim light, drifted across the cluttered landscape of his room. They passed over the dusty guitars, the silent keyboard, the still-wrapped Gold Record plaque. And then they landed on his desk.
Specifically, on the single white envelope lying facedown.
The letter.
For days, the sight of it had been a source of active, visceral dread, a jolt of fear so powerful it forced him to look away instantly. It was a cursed object, a physical manifestation of his failure. But now, in the hollowed-out calm that followed the song, he just looked at it. The fear was still there, a cold knot in his stomach, but the song had carved out a small, quiet space for something else to exist alongside it: necessity.
Slowly, stiffly, he began to move. He pushed himself up from the floor, every muscle in his body protesting with a dull ache. He felt ancient, like an old man rising after a long, troubled sleep. He walked to the desk, his movements deliberate and heavy, as if he were moving through deep water, the air itself a form of resistance.
He stood over the letter for a long moment, his shadow falling across its blank surface. This was it. The last locked door. The last unopened piece of the tragedy. He knew, with a certainty that was both terrifying and absolute, that whatever was inside would change him again. There was a story here he didn't know, a final word he had yet to hear. He could leave it sealed, could live forever in the gray limbo of his own assumptions and guilt. Or he could open it. He could know.
His hand, which had been trembling just an hour ago as he clutched the neck of his guitar, was now surprisingly steady. He reached out. His fingers brushed against the cool, crisp paper. He picked it up.
He turned it over.
His name, written in Leo's familiar, slightly messy scrawl, looked back at him from the center of the envelope.
Alex.
It was just his name, but seeing it there, formed by his friend's hand, felt like a final, direct address. The ghost had no part in this. The producer had no strategy for this. This was just for him. The boy. The friend.
He held the letter, the weight of it seeming to increase with every passing second. This was the conversation he had failed to have in the cafeteria. This was the truth he had been too distracted to hear. This was the final echo.
His thumb moved, coming to rest on the sealed flap of the envelope. The paper was thin, the seal fragile. It would take no effort at all to break it. He stood there, poised on the edge of a precipice, the first faint, gray hint of pre-dawn light beginning to filter through the edges of his curtains.
There was no turning back now. The choice had been made in the moment he sang the first line of the song, in the moment he decided to face the pain instead of hiding from it. He was choosing to know.