The sheet of paper lay in Amelia's lap, strange and beautiful at the same time. Unlike the clean equations he had given her before, this page was scattered with lines, loops, and symbols that almost resembled sheet music—but weren't.
She turned it over, half expecting to find an explanation. There was none.
"Elias, this isn't music," she said finally.
"It is," he replied calmly, standing with his hands clasped behind his back. "You just don't know how to read it yet."
Amelia gave a short laugh, shaking her head. "You expect me to take numbers and play them on a violin?"
"Yes." He leaned slightly closer, his eyes never leaving hers. "Because I can't."
His words hung between them like a confession. She felt a strange pull in her chest—half irritation, half intrigue. Against her better judgment, she lifted her violin and positioned the bow.
"Fine. Show me," she said.
Elias walked to the piano at the corner of the stage. Sitting down, he pressed a few keys, testing their sound, then gestured at the page. "Start here. Follow the sequence. Think of each number as a distance, not a note."
It made no sense. And yet, as Amelia tried, her bow trembled across the strings, producing raw, unshaped tones. She frowned—until something extraordinary happened.
The scattered sounds began to form a fragile, haunting melody. It was awkward at first, jagged in places, but then… it connected.
Her breath caught.
The melody wasn't polished, but it had weight—like a secret whispered into the dark. A melody that spoke of solitude, of unspoken words trapped inside walls too high to climb.
She stopped playing, lowering her bow slowly.
Her voice was barely a whisper. "Elias… this feels like…"
"Me," he finished simply. His hands rested on the piano keys, unmoving. "I don't speak like others. But if you listen, maybe you'll understand."
Amelia's heart beat faster. For the first time, she realized this wasn't some cold experiment of his. This was vulnerability, laid bare in numbers.
She stood, clutching the violin. "You don't need mathematics to… to explain yourself. People just—"
"They don't understand me." His voice was sharp now, defensive. "You don't understand me."
Silence fell again. Amelia wanted to argue, but instead she looked at the paper in her hands. The melody was broken, incomplete.
And yet, it pulled her closer to him than words ever could.
She set her violin down gently and walked toward the piano. "Then let me help finish it," she said. "Not as equations. As music."
Elias looked at her, his expression unreadable. But in his eyes, for the briefest second, something flickered—something fragile, something human.
"…If you can," he whispered.
Amelia smiled faintly. "Watch me."