The train station in Vienna buzzed with its usual chaos—tourists dragging suitcases, the metallic echo of footsteps, the distant announcement of arrivals.
Amelia Laurent tightened her grip on her violin case, weaving through the crowd. Music had been her entire world since she was a child, yet in recent months, her world felt fractured. An injury to her wrist had cost her a scholarship, and the dream she carried like oxygen now seemed to be slipping further away.
She stopped near the timetable board, checking the next departure, when disaster struck.
Her violin case slipped open. Sheets of music fluttered into the air like startled birds, scattering across the station floor.
"Damn it—" she whispered, crouching quickly to gather them before they were trampled.
A pair of polished shoes stopped in front of her. She looked up, and for a moment, the noise of the station faded.
The man was tall, sharply dressed in a charcoal coat, with striking grey eyes that seemed to observe her with clinical intensity rather than simple curiosity. Without a word, he bent down, picked up one of her pages, and studied it.
His lips curved, not in a smile, but in something that looked dangerously close to fascination.
"Bach's Partita in D minor," he said. His accent was faint, but his voice carried a deep, steady calm. "But the progression here… it's mathematically flawed."
Amelia blinked. "Excuse me?"
He pointed at the sheet. "Here—your notation. It skips a logical sequence. You've broken the symmetry."
She snatched the page back, glaring. "It's music, not mathematics."
To her shock, the stranger chuckled. "Music is mathematics. Just… disguised in sound."
Before she could respond, he pulled out a small notebook from his pocket, scribbled something rapidly, and tore the page out, handing it to her.
Amelia glanced at it. Equations. Perfect, clean, and terrifyingly beautiful.
"What is this?" she asked.
"The correction," he said simply. "Numbers don't lie. If you play it this way, it will sound complete."
And with that, he turned to leave, slipping into the crowd as if their meeting had been nothing more than a passing accident.
But Amelia's heart was racing.
Not because of his arrogance.
Not even because of his eyes.
But because, against her will, she knew he was right.
The symmetry she had overlooked was staring back at her in black ink and numbers.
She whispered to herself, reading the name he had scrawled at the top of the note.
"Elias Volkner."