I woke with graph paper printed into my cheek.
For a second nothing made sense—the gray of the window, the ache in my neck, the flat taste in my mouth. Then the desk returned: pencil shavings like gray snow, a glass of water with a thin skin on top, notes spread like leaves after a storm. Arrows. Dates. Tiny stars beside team names. A narrow column of tickers with short comments only I would understand. And in the corner, boxed hard in graphite like I was scared it might blow away:
uncle → lab rec? → assistant → equipment
liquidity first → cash buys time
watchlist (quiet climbers) → exit early
sports slate → small, spaced, disciplined
My distant uncle works in medicine. If I play this right, he could point me to a hospital lab and, maybe, whisper a small recommendation so I can slip in as a student helper—carry trays, clean benches, watch the machines. I don't need my name on anything. I need access. I need to stand close enough to nudge the work, to keep a wrong idea from eating months. If they move faster, the cure comes sooner. And then it isn't just her. It's everyone like her.
But I also need money. Not a dream-fund. Liquid money. Money that moves fast.
Last night I split the page into three columns to trap that thought. One for the market: quiet climbers about to wake up while no one believes it yet. Buy small, sell early, walk away clean before anyone notices. One for sports: a small slate spread out, only on outcomes I remember down to how they felt under my ribs; never greedy, never "all in." And one called "Other": anything I can flip, any tiny edge I can turn into cash today instead of next year. In the margin I printed rules like a child writes a promise:
— no hero plays
— exit on time
— protect the stack
— liquidity > theory
Worst case, if this turns into a one-person fight, I'll need cash for everything: private tests, extra panels, cold shipping, rides at stupid hours, a room near a hospital, second opinions, filing fees, time off for anyone who helps, a laptop that doesn't crash when a file matters. Money makes time behave. I underlined that twice until the paper almost tore.
I sat up. My body felt like a heavy coat I couldn't take off. If I counted all the sleep I got, I might have two hours. Maybe three. It didn't matter. The promise had a floor now: a money plan that doesn't rely on anyone else, and a path into a lab without anyone staring—my uncle's quiet nudge, a "he can help," and I'm in the room with a mop and my eyes open. No credit. No speeches. Just hands near the switch at the right moment.
The shower woke my skin, not my bones. The mirror showed a boy whose hair refused to listen and whose eyes were too dark for morning. I pressed the front curl down with water. It stood back up like it had rights. I ate what existed: the heel of a loaf, a banana that had turned too sweet, three gulps of milk that tasted exactly like the fridge. I folded the watchlist twice and slid it into the back of my notebook where a teacher wouldn't find it by accident.
When I opened my door, hers opened too. That's how our houses breathe—two lungs on the same porch.
"Morning," Tsubaki said, tossing the word at me like a ball.
"Morning." My voice came out rough. I caught the ball.
Her ponytail was looped tight, the way she ties it when she plans to outrun the day. She looked like morning should look—awake and sharp. "Captain's talk, then practice after school." She squinted. "You look like you were mugged by algebra."
"Who says I wasn't?"
"Your face." She locked her door, then tapped my bag. "Eat at lunch. Don't let Kaori turn crepes into your whole food pyramid."
"I ate."
"Eat again." The bossy note she saves for people she loves. It used to bounce off me. Today it landed. We stepped off the porch together. The wood creaked the same way it always had.
We fell into our usual pace without trying. The street held the last of the night's cool. Somewhere a rice cooker hissed upstairs. The cat in the third window tried to be a statue and failed because its tail kept flicking. Tsubaki talked the way she runs: steady, with sudden sprints.
"New first-years think they can hit anything. They can't. Coach says my swing drops on inside pitches. It doesn't." She glanced at me and then back at the road. "Yesterday," she added, softer. "When she asked. You said 'perhaps.'"
Those two notes I pressed last night moved warm in my chest. "I did."
Her mouth twitched into a smile she tried to hide. Pride tangled with worry. "Good. That was... good." She kicked a pebble into the gutter. "Just—don't let her wear you down too fast."
"I won't," I said.
We stopped at the crossing. The little bird chirped green. Our shadows stretched long and thin ahead of us. We cut past the park. Dew beaded on the swings. The softball field slept with chalk like a ghost line. Tsubaki's fingers twitched like they wanted a bat. She saw it and laughed at herself.
"Watari's got soccer after school," she said. "He'll say something mysterious about discipline and then post twenty photos of his cleats."
"Only twenty?"
"Progress," she said, bumping my shoulder.
At the school gate we joined the river. Flat glass. A flag that never moved. Steps with a memory of every shoe. The same, and not the same. Under the concrete, under the noise, something hummed. Maybe it was just me. Maybe it was the promise making a sound only I could hear. Yesterday's laughter lingered in the air—the crepe shop, her voice, the snap of a word that used to scare me and doesn't anymore. The day felt thin, like I could almost see through it to the other version of this morning where I walked here empty and didn't know it.
We changed shoes. At the corner where we split, Tsubaki tugged my sleeve. "Don't vanish after school," she said. "Text me or I'll drag you out of a broom closet."
"I don't hide in broom closets."
"You do," she said, and then, quieter, "I'm proud of you."
"For what?" I raised a brow.
"For... trying," she said, like the word embarrassed her. She waved it away and jogged down her hall.
Homeroom smelled like erasers and lemon cleaner and windows that didn't open all the way. I slid into my seat and put the notebook where it wouldn't slide off. The teacher started his slow march across the board. Chalk clicked. Paper rustled. The room murmured.
I didn't look for her. Looking turns into staring. I kept my head down and copied what was there. The graphite box in my notebook repeatedly tugged at me—uncle → lab rec? → assistant → equipment—and beside it my money rules: liquidity first, exit on time. I pictured my uncle's quiet nod opening a door: a white room, steady machines, screens that hummed; me in a coat I didn't earn yet, wiping benches, fetching trays, close enough to watch the numbers become a shape. Not my name in a paper. Not a line under "contributor." Just a body with a broom and a brain standing in the right place. And if that door stayed shut, the other plan waited like a spare key: the watchlist; the quiet climbers; the small, spaced bets; the stack protected like a candle you shield with your hand.
The lunch bell cut the room loose. Metal lids clinked. Voices rose and laughed. I moved with the others into the hall and then toward the courtyard because air lives out there.
Petals were already falling before I saw her. First the moving shadows on stone, then the pink-white drift, then Kaori herself under the biggest tree like the tree grew that way for her. Sun threaded her hair. Her case sat against her back like it belonged there. She lifted a hand when she saw me and knocked loose three petals. They fell without hurry.
I don't know what my face did. My chest hurt and then, strangely, it didn't. In the other life I watched seasons pass like scenery through a train window. Now I could taste the air. I crossed the courtyard. She didn't wait for me to reach her; she walked to meet me halfway, eyes bright with a joke she hadn't told yet.
"Friend A," she said.
The two words landed clean. Playful and sharp, but soft around the edges. Just once. Just here. She was careful with it; I could tell.
I must have made a face because she laughed—not loud, but enough. "Yesterday you said 'perhaps,'" she said, tilting her head. "In my dictionary, that means yes. So hello, Friend A."
I opened my mouth, then closed it. The nickname was teasing, but it also meant something: not background, not a blur behind Watari. Me. "Hello," I said finally.
"Good answer." Her eyes flicked past my shoulder, scanning the courtyard. "Watari ran off to pretend he's a professional and Tsubaki kidnapped three first-years to teach them how not to flinch. Which means," she said, catching my sleeve before I could pretend to be heavy, "you belong to me for an hour."
"I—where—"
"Come on." Her pull was gentle and sure, like there wasn't another version of this moment. "I want to show you something."
We slipped out the side gate while a teacher argued with a vending machine. We turned down a side street that smelled like bread.
"Is this legal?" I asked, because someone had to be that person.
"Absolutely," she said. "I checked the Dictionary of Things That Should Be Legal Because They're Good For Your Heart."
"Real book?"
"It is now," she said, and her grin made my lungs uneven.
The café was small enough that our arrival could change it. A bell above the door made a sound that tried to be a bell. Light fell in a warm stripe across two tables and stopped near the counter where glass domes kept cakes like secrets. Cups clicked. A barista with a sleepy face wiped a circle that was already clean. In the far corner, an upright piano took the space it needed and no more, its wood polished until it reflected shaky versions of the room. A handful of kids leaned on the bench and punched keys to see which ones shouted.
"This one," Kaori said, picking a table with a view of the piano and the window. She sat where the light could find her and waved me into the other chair.
"What do you drink?" she asked as soon as my jacket touched the chair.
"Water."
"Wrong. Tea. You need a reminder not to die during fifth period." When the waitress came, Kaori ordered iced tea for both of us and pointed at a sugar-dusted pastry we didn't deserve. The waitress smiled like this girl always got her way.
We sat. Even when no one touched it, the piano was a held breath. Condensation gathered on my glass and slid down in thin lines.
"You're very serious," Kaori said, watching me over her tea. "It's like your thoughts live ten floors down and you keep riding the elevator to visit."
"They're noisy," I said.
"I like noisy. Noisy means alive."
If I named what was alive, I'd say a promise and a plan and a fear I kept strapped under lined paper. The tea was sweet and a little sharp. It went down like a good idea.
The kids discovered a cluster of notes that sounded like a drawer of forks falling. They loved it. Kaori turned to watch them, chin on her fist, smiling like she'd found a secret normal people miss.
Then she stood.
Before I could ask what she was doing, she walked straight to the kids and crouched so her eyes were level with theirs. They stared like small planets look at a sun. I couldn't hear her words, but I saw the rhythm: her nod; their eager nods; a question; laughter; the smallest girl bouncing on the bench like she might lift off.
One boy pointed at the keys and asked something. Kaori shook her head, still smiling, and then—without saying a name—she turned and looked at me.
It wasn't a demand. It was a door.
I sighed. Not the kind that says no. The kind that lets go. My chair scraped softly as I stood. Every step to the piano felt like walking back into a memory and finding it alive.
The bench creaked the way benches creak right before a first note. I didn't test anything. I placed my hands where they belonged and let something simple happen.
A gentle melody. A handful of bars. The shape of a lullaby that never grew up. Left hand breathing quiet chords. Right hand tracing an easy line that didn't try to impress anyone. The room shifted around it the way rooms do when sound remembers how to be kind. The kids leaned in until shoulders touched. The smallest girl forgot to bounce. The boy who loved the fork-drawer chord held his breath like he might scare the notes away.
I let the melody turn once, then twice, then set it down where it wanted to rest. No flourish. No ending bigger than the beginning. Just enough.
Silence held for a beat like the air needed to finish its own thought. Then the kids clapped—small, honest claps that hit harder than a full hall ever did. Behind the counter the waitress smiled with her eyes and went back to polishing cups that were already clean.
"Again!" the smallest girl said, but another boy shushed her in a way that meant he didn't want me to stop either.
I stood and gave a half-bow that was more apology than performance. As I passed, Kaori brushed the underside of the keyboard with the backs of her fingers, the way you pet a calm animal.
Back at the table, she was glowing. Not loud—bright, like someone turned on a second sun inside her.
"See?" she said, voice low, words only for me. "It didn't kill you."
"It never did," I said, and heard how true it was.
"You didn't have to," she added, softer.
"I know."
We split the pastry. She pushed the larger half onto my napkin like it had always been mine. While I chewed, she told me about a girl who put love letters in every shoe locker except the boy's she actually liked. About Watari's ankle weights and how he introduced his shin to pain. About a first-year who asked Tsubaki if softball bats came in "left-handed." I nodded when it was required. When it wasn't, I watched her hands—how they moved when she talked, how they hovered like notes waiting to land—and tried to memorize the exact tilt of her smile.
Time is a river that doesn't care who falls in. Money can buy you a boat. Music teaches you how to swim. Sitting there, tasting sugar and tea and the last echo of soft chords clinging to the air, I decided to use both. If my uncle's quiet nudge opened a door, I'd slip through with a mop and my eyes open. If it didn't, the stack would grow in careful steps. Cash would keep us from wasting hours we couldn't afford to waste.
Kaori finished half her drink and stole the rest of mine like it had always been hers. "You really were dying," she said, pleased.
"Only a little."
"Don't," she said—part joke, part order.
A brave, terrible fanfare exploded from the piano as a new kid pounded the keys. Kaori giggled behind her hand. "Chaos," she said. "I love it."
"You like a lot of things," I said.
"I like people who pretend they're asleep and then surprise me," she said, giving me a look that sat warm and heavy in my chest.
She tapped her fingertip on the table—once, twice—like a metronome she refused to obey. "Okay," she said, as if calling rehearsal to order. "Time to not get detention. Finish that."
"I did."
"Finish mine," she said, sliding the last bite across the plate. When I didn't move, she nudged it until it nearly fell into my lap. I surrendered.
We paid. Kaori thanked the waitress like they were co-conspirators. I held the door and the bell made its small sound as we stepped out.
Afternoon air met us—flour-sweet from the bakery next door, touched by the tired edge of the day. Kaori shifted her case higher on her shoulder and hummed a few bars that might have been the same melody I'd just played—shifted, brighter, hers.
She didn't say where we were going. She didn't need to. We fell into step without a plan, the kind of quiet that feels earned settling between us. Behind us, the bell's echo faded. Ahead, the street opened like a page we hadn't read yet.
We turned the corner and the café slipped out of sight. The world outside felt like it was holding its breath—like the next thing had already started, and we were just about to notice.
The air felt different out here—flour-sweet fading into car exhaust and sun-warmed dust. Kaori walked a little ahead of me, swinging her case like a light bag and humming the shape of something I almost knew. We didn't say where we were going. We didn't need to. The quiet between us felt earned.
Half a block later, the world pressed pause.
A black cat stretched across a strip of shade by the curb, toes splayed, belly low, tail drawing a question mark in the air. It blinked slow at me like it recognized my footsteps. One ear had a nick in it. Its coat was the kind of black that eats light and gives nothing back. Yellow eyes. Calm breath.
My chest pulled tight. I knew this cat.
Not "a" cat. This cat.
The same stray from years ahead and also years behind—both at once, the timeline folding like paper. In my other life, I had left this café and reached out to this exact cat, and it had let me touch that soft space between its eyes. Back then, I told myself it meant nothing. Now it felt like a tiny gate I had already walked through once.
I crouched without thinking. "Hey," I said, which is the only word people say to cats no matter how many other words they know.
The cat held still. Its tail flicked. The small notch in its ear looked like a bite out of a moon.
I slid my hand close to the ground so it wouldn't spook, then tipped my fingers up and brushed the fur above its nose. Warm. Fine. A rumbling purr started like a machine waking up. For a second I wasn't on a sidewalk. For a second I was in two places at once: the past where I didn't know what was coming, and the present where I carried it like a backpack I couldn't set down.
Kaori stopped a step away and watched. "Friend of yours?" she asked.
"Acquaintance," I said softly. "We've met."
"You're very sure," she said, amused.
"I'm very sure," I said, because I was.
The cat pressed its forehead into my fingers, claimed me, and then—like a shadow changing its mind—slipped off into the narrow cut between buildings. One flick of tail and it was gone.
Something clicked into place.
My breath snagged halfway in. This stretch of street. That cat. The weight in my ribs. I knew what came next. I could see it before it happened, the same way you know where the next note will land after you've played a piece a hundred times.
Kaori leaned in, head tilted the way she does when she's curious and pretending not to be. "Can I ask you something?"
"You're going to," I said.
"Why don't you do competitions anymore?" she asked. Not unkind. Not pushing. Just clear. "You're amazing, aren't you?"
I stared at the space where the cat had vanished. The alley breathed cool air at my ankles. In my other life, I had spent a long time pretending I didn't know the answer to that question. I had let people talk about ghosts and fear and the way sound can turn to mud in your head. I had believed some of it. I had fought the rest.
Now I knew the shape of the truth.
"It's beautiful," I said, and that word felt right in my mouth. "But it's too painful to compete in."
The words surprised me with how steady they came out. Not a confession. Not a defense. Just the simple, heavy fact. The piano isn't the wound anymore. She took the glass out of that cut in the life I already lived. But the instrument still carries weight. My mother's hands; my mother's lessons; long rooms full of judging eyes; and Kaori—bright and blazing, turning the stage into fire. The piano is all of them at once. I can play. I can play until my fingers remember who I was. But there's a cost to putting achievement next to it like a ruler. There's a cost to turning what saved me into points on a board.
Kaori didn't jump into the silence. She let it sit. The wind pushed blossom petals down the gutter in a lazy line. A car hissed past. Somewhere behind us a café bell made its small sound again for somebody else.
"Painful," she said finally, rolling the word like she wanted to make sure it had no sharp edges left. "But not impossible."
"Not impossible," I agreed.
She looked satisfied with the answer and also like she'd already planned her next move. I could see the moment arriving now—the past catching up to the present like it had been jogging and decided to sprint. It came to a stop in front of me with a smile I remembered from another spring.
Kaori planted one hand on her hip, turned, and pointed at me with her bow hand. The case strap creaked against her shoulder. Her eyes were bright with mischief, but there was iron under the shine.
"You're gonna be my accompanist," she said.
It hit like thunder. The exact words, the same lift on "gonna," the same little spark at the corner of her mouth—as if saying it was the easiest thing in the world. In the old timeline, the line drew blood. I was stubborn. She begged. There were tears. We lost days we couldn't spare wrestling the same shadow.
Not this time.
"Yes," I said.
My voice didn't crack. It wasn't a whisper. It was a note placed exactly where it belonged.
Kaori blinked. You could see the surprise flick across her face like a quick cloud. For a heartbeat she looked younger—caught, almost shy. "R-really?..."
"Really," I said, and held her gaze the way you hold a chord until it's true.
Her mouth tipped into a stunned smile. The shock dissolved into joy so fast it made me laugh under my breath. She did a small spin she probably didn't know she was doing, the case swinging and catching light, and then pointed at me again, but now the finger was more like a conductor's baton counting in a band no one else could hear.
"Okay! Good! Then it's settled." She bounced on her toes. "We'll use the music room. The one you love so much."
The music room. My cave. My church. My escape hatch. The place that held me when the world didn't know what to do with me. I felt the door in my head swing open just hearing her say it.
"Fine by me," I said, and it was too small for what I meant, so I added, "I want that."
She put her free hand to her mouth like she was trying not to cheer in a library, then failed and cheered anyway. "I knew it," she said. "I knew you were only pretending to be made of dust."
"I'm not dust," I said. "I'm... rusty."
"We'll fix that," she said, with that ruthless kindness she carries like a tool. "We'll fix it in the music room."
I nodded. The plan shifted in my head to make space for it. Practice means time. Time means hours I can't spend lining up tests or digging for openings or nudging my uncle to nudge someone else. There's always a cost. But I also knew this: without music, I'm a stranger to her. Without music, the bridge between us is a line drawn in air. If I want her to trust me, if I want to stand beside her in the difficult parts and not just the bright ones, it starts with a bench and two hands and a room that smells like lemon and old wood.
"You know," Kaori said, eyes dancing, "you already said perhaps. That was a yes. This is just your second yes."
I laughed, the sound short and shocked out of me. "You remember everything," I said.
"Only the important things," she said. "And that was important."
A group of students passed us on their way back to school. Someone shouted Watari's name even though he wasn't there. A bike bell chimed twice and a delivery scooter scooted past as if it didn't understand physics.
Kaori leaned closer, voice dropping. "You won't run, right?"
"No," I said.
"You promise?"
"Yes."
She gave me a look like she could see every place I might try to hide and had already locked the doors. "Good," she said, satisfied. "Because if you run, I'll find you."
"You always do," I said, and realized too late that I'd talked like we had a lifetime of proof. She didn't seem to notice. Or maybe she did and chose to let me have it.
We started walking again without deciding to. The sidewalk was a scale and our feet found the notes. I watched her from the side, careful not to trip over my own thoughts. Sunlight slid along the edge of her case. Stray petals clung to her sleeve, then let go one by one.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked.
"Music rooms," I said. "And... schedules."
"Schedules?" She wrinkled her nose as if schedules were bitter medicine. "We'll make one that lies."
"Lies?"
"A schedule that says something official so adults nod," she said, pleased with her own idea, "but really it means 'we do what we want.'"
I smiled. "I think that's called life."
"Good," she said. "Then we are doing life."
We stopped at a crosswalk. The little bird went green and chirped at us. We crossed with everyone else and somehow still felt alone. Kaori walked backwards for a few steps so she could look at me while she talked. "When you played in the café," she said, "the kids stopped hitting the piano like it was a doorbell."
"That's an achievement," I said.
"It is," she said. "You made the room soft. I like when rooms are soft."
"Me too."
"Play like that for me," she said, then corrected herself, more serious than before: "Play like that with me."
"I will," I said, and meant it.
We reached a small park—two benches, a vending machine, a patch of grass that tried hard. She sat without asking if I wanted to. I sat because she had. Water rattled in a pipe somewhere under the pavement. A pigeon cooed like it had found the answer to a question no one asked.
"I used to think music was a race," I said, watching the breeze pick up a strip of old flyer and set it back down again. "You run, you win, you keep running."
"And now?" she asked.
"Now it's a place," I said slowly. "Like a house you keep living in even if you repaint the rooms."
Kaori thought about that for a moment, actually thought about it, not just the polite pretend-think people do. "I like your house," she said. "It has windows."
"Your house has fireworks," I said.
"Yes," she said, satisfied. "We can visit each other's houses."
A woman in a business suit jogged past us in low heels, hair coming undone. The vending machine hummed itself awake and then went back to sleep. The sun moved a finger-width lower.
"Can I ask you something else?" Kaori said.
"You're going to," I said again.
"What scared you more?" she asked. "The stage or the quiet after?"
"The quiet," I said. The answer surprised even me with how quickly it arrived. "On stage, you can talk back. After, you can't say anything to anyone. It's just... done."
She nodded like she understood exactly. "Then we'll make afters that aren't quiet," she said. "We'll eat something loud. We'll laugh louder. We'll play again."
"That's a lot of loud," I said.
Her eyes flashed. "I'm a lot of loud."
"Yes," I said. "You are."
She bumped her shoulder into mine like a punctuation mark. "So," she said, bright again, "music room."
"Music room," I echoed.
"We'll figure out when," she said quickly, as if the words mattered to some invisible rule-set. "We'll figure out how. We'll just... go." She shaped the air with her hands as if it could turn into a door if she drew it right. "The old upright waits. I know it does."
"It does," I said, thinking of the smell in that hallway, the cool keytops, the way the lid bumpers squeak if you lift them too fast. "It always does."
She smiled, satisfied that we had both named the same thing. "Good," she said. "Then it's decided."
We sat a while longer, talking about nothing that was actually about everything. She told me a story about a street musician who used a suitcase as a drum and how people ignored him until one child clapped at the right time and then everyone else remembered how to be brave. I told her about a neighbor who watered his flowers with a tea kettle and said it made them taste better to bees. She threw her head back when she laughed. I stored the sound the way you store a password.
A small part of my brain—the part that never sleeps—sorted numbers behind the scenes. I saw the tickers in the corner of my vision, the watchlist arrows, exit points drawn in pencil. I saw a page with game times, the small slate with outcomes I could nudge into money without getting greedy. I saw my uncle's name, a door I needed to knock on soon, a lab that smelled like plastic and bleach and hope. None of that left. It just moved into the background and held there, steady, while the foreground filled with her.
When at last we stood, the afternoon had turned the color of old honey. Kaori dusted the back of her skirt like she had been rolling in grass even though she hadn't. "I should," she said, tilting her head toward the road that would take her home.
"Me too," I said, pointing down the parallel line that would take me to my door.
We didn't make promises about tomorrow. We didn't need to. The promise already lived in the words we had said.
She took three steps, then spun on her heel and pointed at me again, softer this time, the gesture more playful than command. "Accompanist," she said, like a name.
I saluted with two fingers because suddenly that felt right. "Violinist," I said back.
She laughed and walked backward for a few steps, then turned and went. I watched until the curve of the street took her away and left me with the ordinary parts of the day—the traffic, the pigeons, a boy on a bike too small for him. I stood there until a cloud let go of the sun and a square of shadow crawled up my shoes.
On the way home I passed the school and slowed near the music wing. I didn't go in. I didn't even touch the doorframe this time. I just listened for a note that wasn't there yet and felt the weight in my chest shift from heavy to full.
At my gate I took out my notebook—creased now, pencil lines smudged—and added two words under the neat boxes and rules:
music room.
Under that, smaller, an arrow to the margin where I left myself simple orders:
— keep the stack safe
— ask uncle. listen more than you talk
— no hero plays
— say yes again when it's hard
I closed the cover and slid it into my bag. The cat from before appeared on the wall like a drawn shadow, eyed me once, and leapt away.
Inside, the house was quiet. I set my bag down carefully, like something might break if I dropped it too fast. The day had started with a plan to buy time. It ended with a new promise that would spend it. Both felt right. Both felt necessary.
I washed my hands and watched sugar dust from the café pastry spiral away in the drain. For a second I saw a hospital sink instead—steel, harsh light—and the memory hit clean and left. I breathed out. I let the two lives sit side by side without fusing. I could carry both. I would.
When I went to my room, the desk waited with its heavy map of pencil marks. The box in the corner—uncle → lab rec? → assistant → equipment—looked smaller than it had this morning, not because it mattered less, but because another, older shape had stepped up next to it.
A door. A bench. A room that smells like lemon and wood. A violinist pointing at me with a grin and a dare.
"You're gonna be my accompanist," she had said.
"Yes," I had answered.
I pulled a clean sheet from the stack and drew a single line across the top, then wrote set list? even though we hadn't picked a piece, even though we hadn't touched a page. The words looked ridiculous and perfect. I smiled despite myself.
Out the window, the sky went from honey to orange to the color you only get for five minutes a day. Somewhere, a bell made a soft sound for someone else. Somewhere, under a different tree, petals were still falling without asking permission.
I sharpened a pencil I didn't need to sharpen and let the sound scrape the last of the day away. When the tip caught the light, I wrote one more word, centered, and circled it once like I wanted to remind myself of my own words.
Yes.