The room was still dim when Alex returned home, but it no longer felt like a tomb. The heavy, suffocating weight had lifted, replaced by a quiet, contemplative stillness. The act of recording the song, of giving his grief a voice in a space shared with a friend, had changed the atmosphere. It was still a room haunted by sorrow, but it was no longer a prison.
He sat down at his desk. The final audio file was waiting in his email inbox. A simple, elegant attachment from Finneas. He'd named it 'For Leo - Final Mix.' Alex downloaded it and listened once through his good headphones, the ones he used for mixing. Finneas had done his job with a surgeon's care. He'd balanced the levels perfectly, bringing out the warmth of the acoustic guitar and the fragile, wounded texture of Alex's voice, but he hadn't cleaned it up. The raw edges, the cracked notes, the shaky breaths—they were all still there, preserved with a profound and loving respect. It was ready.
Alex logged into the Echo Chamber Records distribution portal, the interface that had once been a symbol of his ambition and control now feeling like a solemn, necessary tool. He navigated through the menus, his movements steady and deliberate. He filled out the metadata, his fingers typing the simple, heartbreaking facts.
Artist: Alex Vance.
Title: Before You Go.
He uploaded the audio file, watching the small blue progress bar fill from left to right. It felt different from uploading "Lost Boy." That had been an act of desperate hope, a flare shot into the dark. This was an act of remembrance, an epitaph carved in sound.
Next, he opened his social media accounts, the apps he hadn't touched in over a week. He didn't draft a press release. He didn't think about marketing hooks or engagement algorithms. The ghost's strategic mind was silent. This wasn't a product launch. It was a memorial.
He pasted the private streaming link into a new post. Beneath it, he typed a short, simple caption. He stared at the words on the screen, his thumb hovering over the "Post" button. This was the moment. The moment the song stopped being his private confession and became a public record. The moment his personal, agonizing grief would be released into the world for strangers to consume, interpret, and judge.
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a second, and posted it.
The caption was only four words: For my friend, Leo.
Immediately, without waiting to see the first like, the first comment, the first share, he closed his laptop. He had no interest in the public reaction. He didn't want to see the view counts climb or read the inevitable speculation in the comments. That wasn't what this was about. The act of recording and releasing the song was the final step of the eulogy. The public's reception was irrelevant. His work was done.
But not quite. There was one more thing to do.
He picked up his phone and opened his email. He composed a new message, the white screen bright in the dim room. In the recipient field, he typed Maria Martinez's email address from memory.
The subject line was simple: For Leo.
He attached the audio file, the song he had bled into existence. In the body of the email, where a thousand inadequate words could have gone, he wrote only one short, honest sentence.
I don't know if this helps, but I had to make it. I'm so sorry.
His finger hovered over the send button. This was the true release. This was the only audience that mattered. This single email held more weight, more fear, and more vulnerability than a million public posts. It was an apology he couldn't properly articulate, a memorial he didn't feel worthy of building, a shared piece of a pain so immense it could never be fully communicated. It was all he had to offer.
He hit send.
The email vanished into the digital ether, on its way to the one person who could truly understand the depth of the loss. Alex watched the screen for a moment, then locked his phone and set it down.
He leaned back in his chair, the tension finally draining from his shoulders. He had completed his promise to the ghost of his friend, had honored his memory in the only way he knew how. The song was out there. He had sent his eulogy, his confession, his quiet apology out into the world. Now he could only wait.
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I am losing my motivation to write this. Maybe I will fast pace it after arc 3 and end it.
The readers are also low compared to start with just 10 now.