The song begins in silence.
Yaz sits alone in the Practice Room on the first night of May. The door is closed. The lights are dim. The red light blinks in the corner, recording nothing that matters, seeing nothing that is real. The orphanage sleeps above him, forty-seven tiles and eighty-three steps away, the routine continuing without him because the routine always continues, because that is what routines do.
But tonight is different.
Tonight, he is not practicing. He is not following lessons or meeting expectations or becoming what someone else has decided he should become. Tonight, he is creating. And creating, he has learned, requires a different kind of silence. The silence of someone who is about to speak after a long time of saying nothing.
He looks at the instruments arrayed around him. Nine of them now. Guitar, piano, violin, drums, cello, trumpet, flute, harp. And his voice, which is the tenth, which was the first, which remembers everything the others have taught him.
Two years. That is how long he has been here, in this room, in this orphanage, in this contract that was supposed to protect him and instead became a cage. Two years of learning. Two years of losing. Two years of watching the world spin around him while he stayed still, hidden, waiting for a reveal that kept receding like water when you try to hold it.
He is done waiting.
Begin, the Maestro says. The voice is clear now. Present. Warm in a way it has not been since before the numbness, before the routine, before the nothing that almost swallowed him whole. This is what you were building toward. This is why you survived.
Yaz reaches for the recorder. His recorder, not Thorne's. The small device he took from a shelf and made his own. He presses the button. The red light changes to green. Recording.
He begins.
The piano comes first.
He sits at the keys, the black and white stretching before him like a road he has traveled many times. But this time he is not playing Chopin. He is not playing the Nocturne with its carefully crafted hope. He is playing something else. Something that starts with hope but goes somewhere darker.
The left hand finds a pattern. Simple. Repeating. The kind of pattern that could go on forever, that could loop back on itself until you forget where it started. The right hand adds a melody. Spare. Aching. The sound of someone waiting for something that keeps not arriving.
He plays it through once. Then again. Then a third time, letting the recording capture every note, every hesitation, every space where the silence is as important as the sound.
This is the foundation. This is where it all began. The contract signed with a thumbprint. The Practice Room transformed. The belief that someone was helping him, protecting him, building something extraordinary.
The hope that became a cage.
The cello comes next.
He positions the instrument between his knees. The wood is warm against his chest, the way Elena taught him, the body vibrating like a second heartbeat. But tonight his heartbeat is not empty. Tonight it is full of everything he has been holding.
He draws the bow across the strings.
The sound is deep. Solitary. The Bach Prelude, but different. Slower. More broken. He lets the notes bend and waver, lets the phrases trail off into silence before picking up again, lets the loneliness speak through the spaces between sounds.
Suki. Her name moves through him as he plays. Her dark eyes. Her counting. Her note hidden behind the smooth stone. Keep counting. Keep making. I'll listen.
She is listening now. Somewhere out there, in the life she went to when she left him behind, she is listening. And this is what he has to tell her. This is what happened after she was gone.
The empty bed. The new child who cried at night. The way the orphanage erased her as if she had never existed, the way it erases everyone who leaves, the way it will erase him too when he finally goes.
The cello weeps. He lets it weep. The recording captures everything.
The flute is the hardest.
He raises it to his lips. The metal is cold. The embouchure is precise, demanding, requiring him to be present in a way the other instruments do not.
But presence is not what the flute asks of him tonight. Tonight, the flute asks for absence. For the months when he was empty. For the routine that swallowed him, the gray film that covered everything, the going through motions that passed for living.
He plays Syrinx. But not the way Sofia taught him. Not with perfect breath and pure tone and feeling let go. He plays it with the feeling included. With the nothing that was something, the emptiness that was its own kind of fullness, the survival that felt like dying one day at a time.
The melody floats through the Practice Room. Hollow. Haunting. The sound of air given temporary shape and then released, the way he was released from himself during those months, the way he stopped being Yaz and became just a body that practiced and ate and slept and practiced again.
The flute captures that. The recording holds it.
The violin, the drums, the trumpet come together.
He layers them one after another, each instrument adding its voice to the growing tapestry. The violin with its questions, every stroke of the bow an inquiry into something no one would answer. The drums with their restlessness, the energy that had nowhere to go, the pounding that released nothing and everything at once. The trumpet with its brief, defiant blast, the anger that flared and was contained, the fire that Thorne extinguished with his calm voice and his reasonable words.
Each layer builds on the last. The recording grows more complex, more layered, more true.
He is not just playing music. He is telling a story. His story. The story of a boy who was seen and hidden, valued and trapped, trained and contained. The story of two years in a basement, learning to make beautiful sounds while the world forgot he existed.
The harp comes last before the voice.
He sits at the instrument Isabelle taught him to play. The golden strings stretch from the curved neck to the soundboard, waiting for him to pluck them, waiting to paint the portraits he has learned to see.
He plays Mrs. Okonkwo. The tired smile. The guilt. The way she brought him to this and cannot bring herself to save him from it.
He plays Director Henriksen. The empty efficiency. The machine that runs the orphanage without seeing the children it holds.
He plays Thorne. The warm voice. The cold eyes. The gold watch ticking away the years of Yaz's captivity.
He plays the fence. The diamond pattern pressed into his skin. The families walking past without seeing. The old woman feeding pigeons. The businessman on his phone. The mother with the stroller, singing to a crying baby.
Worn faces. Everywhere. People going through motions. People performing their lives instead of living them. A world that spins and spins without anyone asking why, without anyone stopping to notice that the spinning is the problem, that the routines are the cages, that everyone is trapped in their own version of the orphanage basement.
A mad world. That is what he sees. That is what he has learned to name.
The harp strings hum under his fingers. Each note is a face. Each chord is a truth.
And finally, his voice.
He opens his mouth. The sound that comes out is not the Vocalise. It is not any piece he has been taught. It is something new. Something that has been forming without his knowing, in the spaces between lessons, in the silence of his own head, in the place where the Maestro lives and speaks and waits.
He sings about the world around him. The faces he sees. The routines they follow. The dreams they carry and the dreams that die. He sings about children waiting. About people running in circles. About the strangeness of being known by everyone and seen by no one.
The words come from somewhere deep. From the two years of watching. From the worn faces and the empty smiles and the going through motions that everyone mistakes for living. From the mad world that keeps spinning while he sits in his basement cage, creating beauty that no one will hear until someone decides it is time.
He sings about how hard it is to explain. How hard it is to be here, inside this experience, unable to make anyone understand. He sings about dreams that frighten him, about futures that recede, about the best days being the ones when he can imagine something other than this.
He sings about the mad world. The words repeat, layering over themselves, building into something that is both beautiful and terrible, both a lament and an accusation.
The voice weaves through the piano and the cello and the flute. It finds the spaces between the violin and the drums and the trumpet. It rises above the harp and falls back into the foundation, tying everything together, making the nine instruments into one voice, one story, one truth.
When he finishes, his throat is raw. His eyes are wet. His hands are shaking.
But the recording is complete.
He listens to the playback.
The sound fills the Practice Room. Layer upon layer, instrument upon instrument, two years compressed into four minutes of music that sounds like nothing else he has ever heard. It sounds like the orphanage. It sounds like the fence. It sounds like the gray walls and the skinned porridge and the red light blinking in the corner.
It sounds like truth.
Now they'll hear what you see, the Maestro says. This is what you were building toward. This is why you survived.
Yaz sits in the dim light, listening to his own creation, feeling something he has not felt in a long time. Not hope, exactly. Hope is what came before, and hope was not enough. This is something else. This is clarity. This is the knowledge that he has made something real, something that captures what he has lived, something that cannot be taken away or hidden or controlled.
The song exists. And songs, once they exist, want to be heard.
Dayo comes for the recording three days later.
He appears in the doorway of the Practice Room, his tablet in his hand, his face wearing the careful blankness it always wears when he is doing Thorne's work. But something is different. His eyes keep sliding away from Yaz's face. His hands are not steady.
"Mr. Thorne wants to hear what you've been working on," he says. "The synthesis piece. The one for the investors."
Yaz hands him the recorder. The small device that holds four minutes of truth, four minutes of two years, four minutes of everything he has seen and felt and survived.
"Be careful with it," he says.
Dayo nods. He takes the recorder. Turns to go.
Then he stops.
His back is to Yaz. His shoulders are tense, hunched, carrying something heavy.
"I read your file," Dayo says quietly. "When you first came here. When Thorne signed you. I read about the families that wanted you. The ones that were turned away."
Yaz does not respond. There is nothing to say.
"Twelve families," Dayo continues. "In two years. Twelve families who saw your picture, heard your story, wanted to give you a home. And Thorne..." He stops. Swallows. "He told them you weren't available. That you were in training. That stability was crucial."
Twelve families. The number lands in Yaz's chest like something heavy dropped from a height. Twelve chances at a life outside these walls. Twelve doors closed before he even knew they were open.
"Why are you telling me this?"
Dayo turns. His face is no longer blank. It is twisted with something. Guilt. Shame. The face of someone who has been complicit in something wrong and has finally looked at it clearly.
"Because I'm sorry," he says. "For all of it. For watching and documenting and saying nothing. For being part of..." He gestures at the Practice Room, at the instruments, at the recording equipment. "Part of this."
He holds up the recorder. The small device that holds Yaz's song.
"I'm going to give this to Thorne. That's my job. That's what I was hired to do." He pauses. His voice drops. "But I'm going to make a copy first. And when I make that copy, I'm going to put it somewhere. Somewhere Thorne can't control. Somewhere the world can hear it."
Yaz stares at him. The meaning takes a moment to settle in.
"You're going to leak it."
"I'm going to let it escape." Dayo's mouth twists. Something between a smile and a grimace. "Songs want to be heard. You said that once, in one of your sessions. I was recording it. I wrote it down." He shakes his head. "Songs want to be heard. And this one... this one needs to be heard. By everyone."
He leaves. The door closes. The Practice Room is quiet.
And Yaz sits alone with the knowledge that his song is about to go into the world again. Not on Thorne's terms. Not as part of a reveal or a showcase or an investor presentation. But as itself. As truth. As the thing he made when no one was watching, when the cage became a studio, when the prison became a place of creation.
This is what freedom looks like, the Maestro says. Not escaping the cage. Making something inside it that is bigger than the walls.
The leak happens on the last day of May.
Yaz does not see it happen. He does not know exactly when Dayo uploads the file, or where, or how. He only knows because Mrs. Okonkwo comes to find him in the Practice Room, her orange headwrap askew, her face a complicated mixture of fear and wonder and something that might be pride.
"It's out there," she says. "Your song. It's everywhere."
He follows her to the common room, where the radio is playing. The radio that has always played the same songs, the same news, the same approved content from the bloc's official channels. But today it is playing something different. Today it is playing him.
The melody fills the room. The piano, the cello, the flute. The violin and the drums and the trumpet. The harp painting its portraits. And above it all, his voice, singing about the mad world, about the worn faces, about the going through motions that everyone mistakes for living.
The other children are staring. The staff are whispering. Director Henriksen stands in the corner with his clipboard clutched to his chest, his face the color of old porridge.
And on the radio, a voice is speaking between songs.
"...calling it 'Mad World,' uploaded anonymously with only the tag 'From the Hidden Voice.' Music critics are already drawing connections to the '7 Years' phenomenon from two years ago. Is this the same child? What has happened to him in the intervening time? And why does his music sound like it contains so much pain?"
Yaz listens. The questions wash over him without really landing. What has happened to him. Why does his music sound like pain. The answers are too big for a radio segment. The answers are the whole two years, every lesson and loss and moment of standing at the fence.
But the world is hearing. That is what matters. The world is hearing what he has seen.
Thorne arrives that evening.
He does not knock. He bursts through the door of the Practice Room, his silver hair disheveled, his gold watch catching the light at a frantic angle. His face is a storm. Anger and fear and calculation all fighting for control.
"What did you do?" he demands.
"I made a song."
"You leaked it. Or someone did. Someone in this operation." His eyes are wild, scanning the room as if the culprit might be hiding behind an instrument case. "This was supposed to be MY moment. MY reveal. The culmination of everything we've built."
"I didn't leak it," Yaz says. His voice is steady. Calm. The voice of someone who has stopped being afraid because fear is just another cage, and he has already escaped the most important one. "I just made the song. What happened after that... I don't know."
Thorne stares at him. The calculation wins, takes over his face, smooths it into something almost reasonable.
"This doesn't have to be a disaster," he says, more to himself than to Yaz. "We can spin this. The Hidden Voice, emerging again after two years of preparation. The mystery deepening. The anticipation building." He nods, convincing himself. "Yes. This can work. This can actually work better than what we planned."
He looks at Yaz. The warmth returns to his eyes, but Yaz can see now what lies beneath it. The warmth is a tool. The warmth is a mechanism. The warmth is something Thorne puts on like a jacket when it serves his purposes.
"We'll need to tighten security," Thorne continues. "Find the leak. Make sure it doesn't happen again." He pauses. "And we'll need to extend the training. The world has had a taste. Now they'll want more. We need to make sure you're ready. Really ready."
"Extend by how long?"
"As long as it takes." Thorne's smile is fixed. Immovable. "This is a good thing, Yassine. The song is beautiful. The world is listening. We just need to... manage the timing. Control the narrative."
He leaves. The door closes. The Practice Room is quiet.
And Yaz understands. Nothing has changed. The song is out there, doing what songs do. But he is still here. Still in the Practice Room. Still hidden. Still trapped.
The cage is gilded brighter than ever.
That night, he stands at the window.
The Practice Room has a small window, near the ceiling, that looks out at the ground level of the orphanage yard. Through it, he can see the fence. The chain-link with its diamond pattern. The street beyond, where the worn faces walk past without knowing he is watching.
The mad world keeps spinning. The people keep performing. The routines keep grinding forward, day after day, the same motions repeated until they stop meaning anything.
But now it has a soundtrack.
Somewhere out there, someone is listening to his song. Someone is hearing what he has seen. Someone is feeling what he has felt, the loneliness and the anger and the numbness and the clarity that came at the end.
Twenty-five million plays, the radio said. By the end of the month.
Twenty-five million people, hearing his truth.
It is not freedom. He knows that. Freedom would be walking out the door, crossing the fence, living a life that belongs to him instead of to Thorne's plans. Freedom would be finding Suki and telling her that he kept counting, kept making, that she was right to believe in him.
But it is something. It is proof that the cage is not absolute. That he can make something inside it that escapes even when he cannot. That his voice can travel to places his body is not allowed to go.
Five more years, the Maestro says. Five more songs. Five more chances.
I know, Yaz thinks. But this time, I know what I'm doing. This time, I know the cage is a cage. And that knowledge changes everything.
He looks at the fence through the window. The diamonds in the chain-link. The worn faces beyond.
The song is out there now. In the world. Doing what songs do.
But Yaz is still here. Still in the Practice Room. Still hidden. Still trapped.
Five more years. Five more songs. Five more chances to make something that matters, to speak truths that cannot be contained, to turn the very cage that holds him into a studio that produces things the world needs to hear.
The mad world keeps spinning.
But now it has a soundtrack.
And somewhere out there, someone is listening.
🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶
All around me are familiar faces.
Worn-out places, worn-out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
And their tears are filling up their glasses.
No expression, no expression
Hide my head; I want to drown my sorrow.
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶
And I find it kind of funny.
I find it kind of sad.
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you because I find it hard to take.
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad world
Mad world
Mad world
Mad world
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Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy birthday, happy birthday.
Made to feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen.
I went to school, and I was very nervous.
No one knew me; no one knew me.
Hello, teacher, tell me what my lesson is.
Look right through me, look right through me.
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And I find it kind of funny.
I find it kind of sad.
The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had.
I find it hard to tell you because I find it hard to take.
When people run in circles, it's a very, very
Mad world
Mad world
Mad world
Mad world
🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶
And I find it kind of funny; I find it kind of sad.
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you.
'Cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad world
Mad world
Halargian world
Mad world
🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶