Archive of Our Own ^beta

You already had a clear definition of what being perfect meant to you.

To some, perfection is symmetry. To most, it’s a God, be it a God that gives when pleased or a God who punishes when disappointed. Everyone defines it as what flatters their better judgment. It’s a kind of small human selfishness to believe that what serves us best must also be the ideal. 

And when it is applied to talent, say to music, it becomes quantifiable. Control, speed, discipline, a knack of creation or an innate sense of rhythm. To you, perfection in instrumental playing meant possessing all of these qualities all at once despite of some resentment. Especially then. To be good out of defiance and to be precise out of refusal, you thought, was a more realistic interpretation of being perfect, because then again you knew that was never real. 

That is also why you’d suspected this was why having that quality had always felt so convincing: because of its fakeness. It exists only in tension and a condition sustained by opposition, and this system would collapse the moment it was treated with tenderness. 

As you slowly place your bow down, the violin suspended between your chin and shoulder, no one is there to stand and applaud, nor does it rain roses when the light casts your eyes into a shadow. Still, you know that your performance was perfect. 

A judge leans back on his chair and nods thrice, deliberate as a verdict, and picks up his pen to write on your sheet. You wait quietly, not an inch of movement to be made. In the darkest corner of the room, your instructor, that stingy hag, looms with her arms folded, eyes trained and shot right at you. 

“That was magnificent! Truly a one of a kind talent you are.” 

The judge offers you a curt smile and informs you that you’ve passed the first stage of the application, and that you may proceed to the interview next. It’s good news, objectively speaking. Though you’d known it would be. The institution would look foolish to think of any other way to end this. Unfortunately for you, your attention drifts elsewhere. Your instructor's gaze haunts from across the room. This might as well be hell on earth from how tensely demonic she looked right now. 

“Martin? What do you think?”

There’s a boy seated beside this judge, your age you suspect, constructed mostly of height and angles as though he were still deciding what to do with his limbs. That is your first impression of the boy named Martin, and it seems he is already looking at you, unblinking. 

“Yeah, she’s hella clean.” 

You nod in acknowledgement. There is very little left to surprise you in rooms like this. 

“But,” he adds, tilting his head slightly. “You’d think she'd put more emotion to it, no?” 

Oh?

“She’s not much of a bleeder.” 

What more emotion does he think is missing? What right does he have to speak above you anyway? Or is this how it begins, someone deciding you are incomplete and carrying that belief forward for you? Who is this guy? 

“Don’t mind him. He’s very straightforward.” The judge says, waving Martin off.

“I have to commend you again, Ms. L/n. Welcome to St. Saens Academy.”

You bow once more and walk down the steps of the stage, the sound as crisp as the room is quiet. The stingy hag followed close at your heel, already speaking of the ‘boy named Martin’. About how prodigious he is, how the word has been attached to him so often it has ceased to mean anything to her at all. About his awards, his strengths, the particular violence that is his talent. About how many people have already said these things to him, and how many times fewer they have thought to say the same to you. 

And as the Conservatory doors open to a car waiting at the curb, your violin case strapped across your body like a shield, you had decided on something new today. 

Your new defining ‘perfect’ quality from then on would be to become everything Martin Edwards is not. It is reasonable and almost administrative. And according to your instructor, as well as the invisible architecture that governs talent and survival alike, competition is merely competition. It’s a sorting process, nothing personal. If this definition feels narrow, you don’t examine that thought for long.

You will not become Martin Edwards because you will be better, and there is no way to choose because there is no way to lose. 

─•──── 𖦤

“And please, please Y/n, sleep after all this is over.”

Sleep is somewhat of a theoretical concept to you these days. Iroha says this like she has slept at all herself. Has anyone slept, really? 

Today marks audition day. Not the first of the year, but the first of something entirely out of normalcy. In other years, auditions were a kind of regulatory ritual for school theaters or background strings in operas for a musical. This one is much different.

The name circulates like a coded message passed hand to hand, mouth to ear. The Musikverein, and with it, Vienna becoming less a city and more a destination written into a dream. From this moment forward, you will split yourself cleanly: the possibility where you are chosen, and the one where you are not. 

“You first ‘Roha.” you sideline, already adjusting your strings, attention nearly split in half. The key card slips into the lock of the practice room with a click.

“Last minute cram?” Iroha asks. 

“Always.” You glance back, briefly. “Good luck out there.” 

You rest your sheets on the stand and bring the violin to your neck, the wood settling into its familiar hollow as the notes wait in their small black language. The piece is a Scherzo, Op. 36. You hadn't picked this one in particular, but it’s clean enough to do so you don’t complain. 

From another room is where you hear it. The incessant blasting of a grand piano. The sound cuts through the corridor outside, as though it has learned the building through shortcuts, and into you like an unwanted thing. You already know who sits behind it, and it’s irritating how little hesitation there is.

If Martin can afford ignorance of everyone else trying to practice, then you decide ignorance is not a monopoly. You may as well be worse. 

You draw your bow and the violin answers without much mercy. The sound fills the room, floods it, erases its walls, and only then can you disappear. The notes make something out of themselves through your fingers, arranging and rearranging until what is left in the room is a tide of sound. 

After several minutes, the bell breaks through whatever world you had folded yourself into, so you check the time. Only a few minutes before the Recital Hall fills. You return the violin to its case and lock the room behind you as you head out. Iroha is already waiting in the corridor outside. 

“You disappear in there.” she says. “Every time. I knocked like thrice. One of these days I’m gonna open the door and you'll just be gone.” 

“Didn’t feel like that long.” You mutter, adjusting the strap of your case, your fingers still vibrating. 

You both turn a corner and the corridor widens, voices leaking in from every direction.

“Do you think you'll get the part?” she asks. The question has honestly been gnawing at everyone since sunrise.

There isn’t a hint of superstition in your voice when you say yes. 

“Geez, and then you call me a show off.”

“Y’know if you think it enough to believe it it might as well be true.”

“That’s not how reality works though Y/n.”

“That’s how mine does.” 

Iroha shakes her head, laughing, but there's something tight behind it. 

“You’re not real.” she says.

“Say it again” you tease as a small grin tugs at your mouth. “Maybe it'll come true, and then maybe you'll finally have a chance at winning.”

You both laugh to each other right as the doors to the hall give way. The sound echoes and thins out inside, swallowed by space and the plush quiet. There is no doubt, not to Iroha nor to anyone with senses, that you move along a secondary axis and it is competitive by design. Even now as you both step in, the anxious only look left. Whispers start their slow migration and your name turns charged in the mouth.

You don’t mind it. You think you might even like it. You take your seat as people sit on the edge of theirs, and when the instrument rests on your lap you look out and think of the possibility of someone equally watched, equally measured, equally capable. But are they ruthless enough? 

And from a distance across the hall, Martin is also ruthlessly trying to fight the urge to laugh at something Juhoon had said, because with him discipline must extend ever so easily to even the joy he feels. 

“Do you think if I pass out onstage they'll still clap? Like out of respect?” Juhoon asks, eyes fixed on the stage. 

“I’ll clap for you bro.” Martin exhales, patting Juhoon on the back in reflex. His gaze slips past him and into the room as it fills, students arranging themselves into their own ambition as they take their seats. He inventories them into all the competition he intends to erase one by one. Everyone, and especially you. 

“If she passes out though,” he adds lightly. “Thank the gods. Whichever ones are on duty.”

Juhoon follows his line of sight. “Who? Y/n?”

Martin hums under his breath as she settles into her seat. Something flares behind his eyes, an old instinct maybe, and a thin smile reaches out of him as his gaze burns the back of her head. It is as if thinking of a fault line that is never watched before it moves but for the certainty that it will. It is never a question of if. 

“If you keep staring like that people are gonna think you’re weird.”

“M’not staring,” Martin mutters. “I’m very attentive.”

“That’s a lame excuse if I heard one.” 

Juhoon tilts his head. “Did she do something to you? You really don’t like her, huh?”

“I don’t need to,” Martin doesn’t look away. “She shouldn’t come here to be liked.”

Juhoon snorts. “Yeah, that mindset explains why you’re a girlfriend-less loser. 

Martin exhales through his nose and raises an eyebrow at him. 

“Keep thinking like that and you'll end up a Beethoven.” Juhoon adds. 

“40, brilliant, sure, but lonely. Yells at ghosts.”  

Martin looks at him appalled. “My boy? Beethoven pulled dude.”

“Beethoven was miserable.”

Martin shrugs, chin tipping in your direction where you’re half-lit in conversation.

“So is she.” 

Juhoon does not look convinced. “Clearly.”

“Well I don't know what to tell you Ju. I’m plenty liked.”

“Man of the people.” Juhoon snorts out. 

As the adjudicators take their seats as well, the room collapses into a near-death silence interrupted only by the occasional cough. Numbers are assigned as impersonal tokens to fix you into the order of auditions. And so begins the long arithmetic of hope and ruin. 

The first to be called is a boy with a harp. His posture is all grace, but his fingers betray him with their trembling, and his gaze touches all the things in the room that aren't his instrument. You think he’s unfocused, Martin decides he’s nervous. Either way, it made no difference. When the final string stopped ringing, the panel offered nothing in return. The boy leaves quickly and swallows himself whole. 

The second to walk is a girl with a violin. You recognize her from shared classes, and that one recital where you were paired together and you’d given her far too many notes. She had treated you like a stick up her ass then, which you still think was generous of her. She should have taken it more seriously though. She’s good, that you can admit, but one wrong look at the crowd turns to one wrong note, and then another, and then a single crooked finish. 

Time stretches thickly and punitively after that. When Martin’s number is finally called, Juhoon looks at him like this has become some cult sacrifice and he’s been chosen to die. He meets his look and nods once, grins on instinct, and stands. The walk to the stage feels ceremonial, and when he gets there, the lights collapse onto him from above. The crowd turns into something barely distinct. One of the panelists nods in approval. 

“Begin when you’re ready.”

He settles into the bench, hands finding the keys, foot claiming a pedal, gaze fixed on the instrument before him. If there is some cruel judgement waiting for him in the end, it'll have to wait its turn. Right now, there is only a piano, beautiful and waiting, and the certainty old as a muscle memory that it will answer him the way it always has. 

He doesn’t tremble, and his throat doesn’t cave in. He searches for fear out of habit and finds none. How could he? Martin Edwards has never been scared of music a day in his life. 

─•──── 𖦤

Three days later, you’re in your dorm when the news comes to you, courtesy of a little bird.

After that performance, you’d been playing your ass off in self-defense, because Martin had actually impressed you this time. You still absolutely fucking despise him with the full commitment a competitor ought to have, but viewed from the lesser cruelty of being only a spectator did his performance leave you a bit in awe. ‘A bit’ is important because you allow yourself no more than that. Music is, to some great extent, an emotion after all, and you reserve very little of it for him. 

Separate the music from the artist, they say. That much is possible. But to separate the music from the performer is an entirely different step. 

You’d been the last to play. Some people said you were lucky it spared you the weight of a full audience. You told them you weren’t, but that an audience had never frightened you anyway. What did was the absence of a witness. No faces left to mirror excellence or disappointment back at you, bruise or bless. So you have to deal with the fact that what had been and whatever you had given would now be decided elsewhere without you. Luckily, results come out today. 

“Y/n y/n y/n–come here!” 

Footsteps barrel down toward your room too fast and too loud to be anything else but Wonhee in a state. 

“Yeah whatever you’re gonna say is gonna have to wait,” you groan, half-bent over your instrument trying to make out the sheet music. “‘Cause I really need to fo–”

“The results!” she cuts in. “They’re out.”

You try not to let out a shake in your breath. “What about it?”

Wonhee steps a little closer to where you’re sitting, pulling up her phone. 

“Took a picture for you.”

You squint at it. 

You blink.

Once.

Twice.

Thrice.

A beat and a shift.

Your name is on there, that's for sure. 

But that should be the only name on the list. This performance was supposed to be a solo opportunity. One center of gravity. 

Martin Edwards.

That is the name just beneath yours, and nothing follows. 

Can the adjudicators actually read?  The rules, you mean.

Your jaw tightens. You hand the phone back without a word, already standing and reaching for your shoes. The laces bite into your fingers as you yank them on. 

“Y/n?” Wonhee calls out, uncertain now. “Hey–where are you going?”

You don’t answer.

You’re out the door in seconds, rage and confusion knitting around your chest chamber as it pulls on its nerves. 

When you reach Mr. Fischer’s office at the very end of one of the school’s halls, the door is already wide open. He sits behind is desk with one hand pressed to his temple and the other signing off on papers with a displeasure he’s not bothering to disguise. To the side is the institution's janitor with a vacuum dragging across the carpet.  

For some context, this was the same professor who judged you on your first day of application. The one who had accepted you into St. Saens with something close to gratitude. He is also, in some but very crucial ways, Martin’s mentor. His name is threaded through Martin’s musical education like a watermark. But even then, you hadn't come to him specifically to suspect him of rigging the decision in favor of his protege. You don’t think he’s that kind of guy. He’s simply the easiest professor to get answers from.

“Hello Ms. L/n! What brings you here?!” He screams through the sound of the machine’s raving.

“Professor Fischer why is Martin on this list?!” You scream back as the words ricochet uselessly off the walls. 

“What?!”

“Edwards!” You raise your voice a little more. “He’s on the list! For Vienna!”

Something in Fischer slackens. He exhales, long and tired, and turns to the janitor who is still vacuuming with serene ignorance. Fischer gestures vaguely to come back again another time. As the janitor takes a glance at you and back at him, he nods in understanding and clicks the machine off, then wheels it out without a word. 

“What is it you were saying again Ms. L/n?”

“Mine and Martin’s names are on this list. If I remember correctly, the specifications mention it to be a solo performance.”

“Well that would be the case, but…” He clicks at his computer and clears his throat. 

“We have resolved to name numbers 8 and 29. As we cannot emphasize this strongly enough, no decision could be made to distinguish between both talents.”

He exhales.

“We cannot, and will not, choose between the two.”

The pen taps once against the desk.

“Please relay to the administration of the formal decision that both candidates have been selected to perform at the Musikverein together, as a double concerto.”

You suspect Mr. Fischer clicks out of whatever email he’s read, and ten he looks back at you.

“–Is what their committee told us.” 

You can’t really say anything after that except,

“I’m sorry?” 

He sighs. “I apologize that this is so sudden Ms. L/n I really do. I know you and Martin have kind of a… complicated dynamic,” he says this and laughs as if the irony is amusing. 

“But they chose both of you. You’ve been competing against each other long enough now. Perhaps it’s time that rivalry was recalibrated into a partnership.” 

You stare at him, unblinking.

“A partnership,” you repeat, because thinking about it felt crazy enough. 

“Yes,” he encouragingly nods. “This is no small honor Y/n. The Musikverein doesn’t make these decisions lightly.”

“With respect,” you say, and you mean with violence. “The call was for a soloist.” 

He smiles at you, with pity or with unamusement, you don’t know. 

“And you’re right. Originally, that was the intention. But the panelists felt…” he glanced down at his notes, “that your strengths, when placed in dialogue with Edwards’, would produce something exceptional.”

“Dialogue,” you echo. “Seriously.”

Mr. Fischer lets out a small laugh again, missing your point entirely again. 

“You and Martin have always pushed each other like this. Why is that?”

“I don’t push him,” you say evenly. “Mr. Fischer, I outrun him.”

He laughs full and unguarded this time.

“Ah, you young people are so entertaining to watch.”

There’s a pause as he clears his throat and straightens himself in his chair. 

“Be that as it may Ms. L/n, this decision is final. You'll be expected to–”

“–Manage that ego of his?” you interrupt. 

“More than that,” he lets out an amused huff. “You’ll be working on arrangements and a rendition together. And play with him, at the very least.” 

You look away, jaw tight, already trying to imagine it. It’s so irritating just thinking about sharing a tempo or a practice room or even ideas with that guy. And even worse is the impossible demand of listening. Listening would imply allowance, allowance would imply a concession in turn. And all you have ever learned to do is win. 

“Thanks Mr. Fischer.”

You nod at him once as you turn for the door.

“Congratulations Y/n.” he adds, as if this is still good news. “Vienna awaits.”

─•──── 𖦤

Martin hadn't taken it any better than you. 

“I don’t even think that girl likes music.” he scoffs. “She just likes trying to outdo me.”

“Perhaps,” Mr. Fischer says mildly.  “That is what she likes about music. That she gets to outdo you.” Mr. Fischer had convinced him. 

Martin frowns. “Are you saying she likes me?”

“No.” Mr. Fischer doesn’t hesitate “I spoke with her recently. She doesn’t like you at all.” 

Martin believes he hadn't lied about that one bit, because now, in a practice room tucked away on a secluded floor, where the light of the afternoon hangs soft and forgiving, the air between him and you is anything but. 

“You’re rushing Edwards.”

“No,” Martin says without looking up. “M’just setting the momentum.”

“No, you’re dragging this second movement.” 

Martin looks up from his score and at you, brow visibly creased. “You realize the marking says ‘con fuoco’ right? Not ‘with a funeral procession’.” 

“It also says non troppo, right here.” You counter, tapping the page at him. “Which you seem to be interpreting very wrongly.” 

He exhales through his nose. “Okay, if you can’t keep up Y/n, just say that. No one else is here to shame you anyway.” 

You laugh once, short and sharp. “You’re real funny, ‘cause that’s exactly what I was gonna say.” 

Silence stretches. Martin’s metronome keeps ticking as he thinks to a beat, ‘I. Am. Never. Getting. Anything. Done. With. Her.’

He flips a page too hard. “The handoff at this bar doesn’t work like that.”

“It does if you listen,” you say. “You come in early and smother the phrasing Edwards.”

“I’m not smothering it. It’s only a few milliseconds ahead.” he snaps. 

“Music isn’t some drywall.” You say flatly. “Why are you so determined to plaster over my parts?” 

“That’s rich,” he laughs humorlessly. “You’ve been trying to outrun me since freshman year.”

“And you’ve been trying to catch up,” you shoot back. “See? Same problem.” 

“Could say the same for you.”

That kind of lands on you.

“...You think I’m behind you?”

Martin shrugs, eyes dropping back to the score. “I think you’re farther than you realize.”

If you keep talking like this, he’ll just keep talking back the same way, so you decide this will be one of those situations where you will have to choose to be the mature one. Because while Martin can tower over trees, he clearly has never once been the bigger person. 

“You know what?” you say, exhaling through your nose. “Let’s agree to disagree. You first. What ideas do you have for the rendition?”

“... I kinda wanna change the piece.” Huh? 

You raise an eyebrow. “You don’t like Pas de Deux? It’s already mostly piano anyway.”

“That’s not the point.” he says flatly, hand reaching to tug on his hair. “You’re doing too little. And trust me, though I would love to outshine you any day, the violin trying to chase a harmony like some footnote just sounds like absolute garbage.” 

“Okay, what the fuck?” 

“And It’s not your fault.” he adds quickly. “That’s just the piece. Now I’m wondering why you don’t want to change it.”

You sigh, already tired. “What about Piazzolla?”

“Which one? Grand Tango?” he asks, already leaning forward. 

“Sure.”

“Ok bet.” 

Well you weren’t expecting him to cave so easily. 

“Ok, so we agree?” Your eyes narrow to search for any hint of hesitation. 

Mock-solemn, he says, “For once, yeah.” 

“Great,” you comment, reaching for a water bottle. “Find the sheet music.”

He pauses. “You don’t wanna–”

“No,” you cut in. “You wanted the song. You do the scavenger hunt.” 

Working with him for the remainder of the day was easier once you found a middle ground, even with his persistent need to tweak things here and there. It’s fine. It’s fine, you tell yourself. You’ll find a way to work this out where both ideas are being equally communicated and considered. 

This delusion of yours doesn’t last though. 

“I think we should just change the piece again.”

You look at him, lips turning paper thin.

“Martin, how indecisive can you be exactly?” you stand up from your stool, the legs scraping harshly against the floor. “Can you commit to one thing for longer than a rehearsal block?” 

He barely looks up from the score. Doesn’t even bother pretending to be startled. His fingers rest on the keys, loose and careless. 

“I just think the piece comes off a little too weak in the middle.” he sounds calm to the point of arrogance. 

You let out a breath through your nose. “You think?”

This time he does look at you when he says, “I also think you can’t sustain a proper note at–”

“Martin,” 

His name cuts clean and loud through the room. Your hand tightens around the neck of your violin, knuckle gone pale, bow angled just slightly at him. 

“If I hear the word ‘I’ from you one more time I’m seriously going to strangle your neck with my bow and see how well that sustains.”

“Are you resorting to threats now?” He lets out something that might’ve been a laugh if it wasn’t edged with irritation.

“What else can I do?” you shoot back. 

He lets out an annoyed exhale and shifts in his bench. “It’ll be better this way Y/n. Can you try and be more creative every once in a while instead of clinging to that sheet you treat like a scripture?”

Your laugh is brittle. “I am being creative, Martin. I keep giving you my ideas and you know what you do with them?” 

He opens his mouth–

“You turn them down every time.” you cut in. 

“Because I know it can be better!” 

“Edwards–just shut up!” 

You scream.

The sound bounces through the walls, too sharp and too broken. Louder than anything either of you has played all day. The last note hangs ugly in the air, and as your bow trembles in your hand, his fingers freeze over the keys.

For the first time ever, Martin doesn’t speak.

“I already knew you were a selfish musician,” you start once more, voice cracking down the middle. “But finding out you’re just as selfish as a person is worse.”

Martin goes rigid on the bench, spine locked, hands still hovering. He stares straight ahead, at the wall, at the lacquered lid of the piano, anywhere but you. 

You exhale, and it doesn’t get any less shakier. 

“Guess what, Martin. I’m your partner. Whether you like it or not.” His jaw tightens at that, a muscle jumping once and getting stuck. 

“The panel had decided we’d be performing together because they couldn’t tell us apart. And for me, that might as well be the biggest insult I’ve ever been handed but it doesn’t change anything.”

You grab your bag from under your stool and zip it shut, the sound sharp in the quiet. Your case follows, flipped open to lay your instrument inside hurriedly.

“So if you can’t work with me, and you won't let me work with you, then back out.”

That is when Martin finally turns to look at you again as something tight and unrecognizable pulls at his face. 

“I can’t ju–”

You shoulder past the bench. “Save it for the next piece you ruin.”

The door slams harder than you intend, but not hard enough to be satisfying. Nothing about this is. You’ve spent the entire afternoon being talked over, talked down to, dissected and thrown away. And frankly you’re certain that whatever this thing with Martin is, it’s going to be unbearable before it ever gets better. 

Your fingers touch the creases of our eyes. When you pull back, they're wet.

Tears.

You scoff under your breath as your anger turns inward. You can’t believe you’re crying over some greedy self-centered loser. You swipe at your face, offended that your body would betray you like this.

As you trudge down the corridor toward the dorms, the familiar clicking of dress shoes breaks your rhythm. Mr. Fischer steps out from a side hallway, a thin stack of papers tucked under his arm. He looks ready to breeze past you until he doesn’t. He looks at you and, you suspect, looks at the red dotting your eyes.

“Y/n.” he says carefully. “Practice with Martin went… well?”

You pause and look down at your feet. “Maybe teach your apprentice a thing or two about treating people like they aren’t dirt under his feet.” 

Fischer winces. He seems not surprised. He exhales through his nose, adjusting the papers in his hands.

“You know how he gets when he’s invested.” he says mildly. “He can get a bit intense.”

You finally look up at him and sigh. “Then him being ‘invested’ always seems to look like steamrolling everyone else.”

The hall hums quietly around you as distant practice rooms bleed sound through the walls in scales and arpeggios. 

“This partnership is new.” Fischer says after a moment. “It’ll take some adjustment.”

“Yeah well adjustment needs compromise Mr. Fischer.” You reply flatly. “I don’t think Martin knows what that word means.”

Fischer studies you then, and gives you a slow nod.

“I’ll speak to him,” he says at last, and that should've eased you a bit. 

But it doesn’t, and before you know it you’re already leaving the scene. Whether It’s to cry or to mope or to quit entirely, you don’t stop to decide. I’m human, aren't I? Maybe I can cry just this once. Just for a couple of minutes. 

Your phone vibrates in your hand insistent enough that you actually look. Almost everyone is muted by default, save for a few special people, which means this is probably not nothing.

A text sits on your lock screen.

You’ve been rusty. I know you know. Come to the music room no later than 6.

As if the universe isn’t out to get you. 

─•──── 𖦤

“Y/n, someone's here to see you.” 

Your blanket is tugged away and the cold bites you instantly as it drags you back into consciousness enough for you to make out Iroha’s words. 

“Mmh… tell them to go away.” you mumble into the mattress. 

“I tried. You know how he is.”

You sit up, rubbing at your eyes as pale morning light seeps through the blinds in thin accusing lines. Your head is throbbing, and who's he?

“Give me a sec.”

The girls are already wide awake. The dorm carries little evidences of it. There’s the smell of something warming in a pan, and somewhere down the hall Wonhee is already practicing in her room. Meanwhile, your day’s just started. Some roommate you are. Then again, you’d stumbled back to the dorm close to nine last night with raw and flushed fingers, courtesy of that darn hag. Some ‘mentor’ she’d been. 

You slide your feet into your slippers and shuggle toward the door, breaking out into another fit of yawns as your hand finds the knob. As you twist it open without thinking, you really wished you had. 

“Good morning.” Martin talks after a while of awkward silence.

You tilt your head. “Good morning?” 

“Yes. It’s a good morning for a run. Wanna come?”

Now you’re even more confused.

You don’t know what bothers you more. That he’s pretending nothing happened, or that some part of you suspects this is how he deals with things. A very forward motion. 

“You’re not really someone I want to see right now Martin.” you say, voice a little rough from sleep. “Much less share a morning run with.” 

He rocks back on his heels. Martin expected much worse to be honest. 

“C’mon dude. I’m trying here.”

“Trying what?” 

“Mr. Fish told me–”

“Mr. Fish?” you cut in. 

“Fischer. He said it’d be good social exercise. Inviting you to do things I usually do alone. Synergy building, or whatever… shit” he scoffs. “I don’t even know–”

“Find someone else to race you–”

“I’m not trying to race with you Y/n, you act so crazy someti–” he starts then immediately stops himself, dragging a hand down his face with a long exhale.

“I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t think it might help.”

“Help what?”

He shrugs. “We need to learn how to work this out somehow.”

“You should've figured that out yesterday.”

“I’m sorry, okay?” The words rip out of him too fast. “Is that what you want? A sorry? I said it.”

You slowly shake your head. “It lacks… sincerity.”

“Sinceri–who cares?”

You look unimpressed, and so he exhales, his shoulders dropping.

“I’m,” he gestures toward himself. “Sorry.” 

You nod approvingly. “I’ll get changed.”

“And make me wait out here?” he asks. “Can I at least come in I smell panc–”

“Get out Martin.” 

So in the interest of not being labeled a creep, Martin stays put outside the door, hands buried deep in the pockets of his windbreaker, head tipped slightly down in the hopes it might make him less visible. Unfortunately, this is the girls’ dorm hallway, and he’s technically a tree. Girls pass by, some in groups, glancing at him and then glancing again. He can’t tell if they're giving him looks of confusion or recognition. Either way, he wants to choke himself to death. 

You finally emerge from inside in appropriate running attire, making a beeline for the shortcut exit. Martin catches up with you. 

“Just so you’re aware I think this social exercise sucks.”

“I’ll be sure to forward the feedback to Fish.”

You two end up on one of the longer sidewalks skirting the school grounds. The sun sits at a tolerable distance, warm but not too warm, bright enough that you can see the road ahead of you. The air is clean, people pass by smiling and living their lives with an ease that feels vaguely mocking. You would feel pleasant, really. Almost. If not for the rat currently chasing at your tail.

“Keep up Edwards.”

“We’re supposed to be jogging,” he says, breathing unevenly. “Not running.” 

You snort. “This is jogging. You're speedwalking.” 

He clicks his tongue being you, clearly offended, and you pick up the pace anyway.

“I can’t do this when you’re always trying to beat me.”

You glance over your shoulder. “Do what exactly?”

Martin exhales, annoyed more at himself than you, and digs into the pockets of his shorts. He pulls out a folded sheet of paper to which he fumbles to unfold. 

“What is that?”

“Questions.”

You slow down your pace, confusion knitting tighter across your expression. Martin matches your pace in turn.

“Did Fischer put you up to this?”

“You think I would?”

You scoff. “This is dumb.”

“Please just cooperate with me.”

You gesture vaguely between the two of you. “What does he think will come out of this? That we’ll suddenly be the best of friends?”

“I don't fucking know dude he just told me this would help.” 

You allow him this despite yourself, so he clears his voice and proceeds with the seemingly extensive list.

“So, first question–wait hold on–why is his handwriting so ugly bro–”

“Just read it.”

“Alright,” He scans the first line. “What's your biggest pet peeve?”

You don’t even hesitate.

“You.”

“That’s not helpful.” He looks up mid-stride. 

“Next question.”

He exhales through his nose and keeps going. “Uh, what's your ideal day off?”

“Not this.”

“Wow.”

“And you?” you ask, glancing over. 

“Sleeping, then practicing, preferably when I’m not being yelled at.”

“You’re two-thirds there.”

He huffs out a groan. “Noted. Hostile environment.”

You groan in reply. “How many of those torture prompts are left?”

“Like, a lot.” He says, squinting at the paper once more. 

“Ah, screw this.” 

Martin crushes the sheet of paper into a sad little ball and stuffs it back into his pocket. They jog in silence for a few seconds.

“Ok, I have a question.”

You give him a side eye. “If this is another Fischer special—.”

“No. Mine.”

Martin hesitates for half a second.

“Why do you kinda really hate me?”

You look at him, one eyebrow raised.

“Why do you?”

“My only reason for disliking you is because you dislike me.” He says. “What’s your excuse?”

“You’re a narcissist, Edwards.”

“And you’re not?”

“I have more self awareness than you.” 

He looks at you mid-stride with a confused expression. “What does that even mean?”

You sigh, and you’re not entirely sure whether it comes from a place of irritation or from the way you don’t know how to explain it without sounding cruel. You do know why you hate Martin Edwards so much. He took his place the moment he decided to open his mouth during your application. And yes, he does have an insufferable ego, but so does everyone else in this school. Talent has a way of breeding it. His just seems to be more in your face, and it doesn’t belong there. 

Perfection.

You glance ahead at the stretching sidewalk, at the way the light of the morning fractures against the concrete and your shoes, and then back again at him. 

“Do you believe in a God Martin? Could be any.”

He blinks at you and lets out a short laugh .

“What kind of left-field ass question is that?”

“Do you?”

“I don’t know,” he says finally. “Depends on the day. Why?”

You hum. You’ve figured some things out.

“Figures.”

“What figures?”

You slow your pace even more.

“People who grow up with a gift usually do,” you say. “Believe in something higher. Either that, or they start believing they’re the higher thing.”

Martin squints at you. “Are you diagnosing me?”

You exhale. “Do you ever notice how everyone here treats talent so sacredly?”

“It’s just skill.” He shrugs. “You practice.”

“That’s usually how it’s been said.” You reply. 

“But that’s not how they act. They build whole altars out of it. Teachers. Judges. An audience. They speak to you a lot differently too.”

He doesn’t speak right away, so you continue as the words come easier now.

“A lot differently. So much more differently and so much more frequently that it’s all you ever hear and all you can really recognize. You’re a rewiring of every little opinion they had on you.”

Martin’s jaw tightens.

“You talking ‘bout me right now?”

You glance at him. “Who else would I be talking about?”

He runs a hand through his hair and breathes out slow.

“I don’t think I’m a God.”

“I know.” You say. “That’s not what I meant.”

“What do you mean?”

You hesitate. He looks away, lips pressed into a thin line.

“The day of my application.” You add quietly. “Remember that?”

He winces, just barely.

“You decided who I was in 30 seconds.” You say. 

“You didn’t even know me then.”

Martin really hadn’t. Back then, all he really knew about you was that you were brilliant, but that you were sad. Sad, maybe. Or tired. They both look the same when you’re young. Martin believed that a love for the game was something fundamental when it came to performing music. 

Music was supposed to be a living thing. He chased it because it chased him back. It was in his sweat and the late nights up in the music room and stupid risks and the moments where he remembered himself entirely. That was how he’d learned it. That was how music had always met him. Music was love and light and something holy. And well, from your look back then, and from your seemingly horrid looking mentor, he thought neither of you knew what that felt like. 

He’d been honest then. Was that such a crime to her? 

“This place just makes people unbeareable.”

“That’s just musicians,” he says. “Not the school.”

You huff softly. “Right. But they do kind of wire us like we're all unfinished projects. If we’re not exceptional, the least we are is expendable.”

“So what,” he tilts his head, considering it lightly. “Am I a victim of the system, oh wise one?”

“Don’t push it Edwards.”

A corner of his mouth lifts. “Worth a shot.” 

He mutters, almost carelessly. “Would've been refreshing to hear an opinion of me from you that isn’t made entirely out of spite.”

You finish the long jog back to the school gates. You tell him this was still a stupid idea, to which he calls you a hypocrite. In between all that, you both agreed to meet this afternoon and try, properly this time. He promises not to cause a ruckus. Part of it’s all diplomacy. Another part is because of the tiny guilt warming up like it was just yesterday. But she doesn’t get it, not yet, he thinks.

You don’t leave much room for mercy, he’s deduced. Not to yourself nor to anyone else. You don’t actually know how to be anything but strong. 

When he walks back to his dorm, his steps loose and the crumpled questions in his pocket bent beyond saving, he thinks, what a lonely thing it is to be like that. 

─•──── 𖦤

You were so little when you started playing.

There was a shelf, some dust, and then the weight of wood on your hands, heavier than it should have been for someone your size. You don’t remember choosing the violin so much as discovering it. It had been tucked into the bottom corner of a cabinet, and before you were able to form proper sentences, your parents had looked at you then with what you can only imagine as enlightenment. 

From what you know, the violin belonged to a distant family member. It was old and slightly warped, and that was what you had for a while. That was until your parents had looked into some tutoring lessons and met her. That damned lady. 

She was gentle at first. Or at least she performed gentleness well. Neutral and patient and whatnot. When you missed a note, she wouldn’t smile, but she wouldn’t frown either. She’d simply say, ‘you’re just a child anyway’. It made you want to prove yourself even more. 

And that patience of hers, it turned out, had a shelf life. 

You were really good for someone so young. But you were so young. That was the problem. 

More. 

Again. 

Have you gone deaf? 

I gave you this gift. Give it one more flaw and you’ll see. 

“I gave you this gift.”

If that was ever a lie, you believed in it for a while. You’d fold the edges neat, the surface flat, and tie it in little orderly bows with minimal mistakes. And then you learned to make none at all.

“That was really good.” Iroha says. “I swear you play like a robot.”

A robot huh?

“Thanks Iroha.”

Hyein drags over a stool and drops into it, spinning around.

“So, how's the Martin situation?”

You frown. “Situation?”

“Like, besides the mutual destruction. How's the rendition going? Did you finish?”

“Oh,” You hesitate. “We’re still working on it.”

“Still.” Hyein repeats. “So that's a no.”

“We’re almost done.”

Wonhee gives you a pitiful pat on the back. Everyone knows about you and Martin. It’s been a rough dynamic since freshman year, so it’s kind of become common knowledge by now that whenever you’d be in the same class or room people would have to make space for even just a little tension that might surface. And now that it’s also become common knowledge that you both would be sharing the spotlight in the most awaited Vienna performance, you, as do others, don’t know what to make of it. 

“It’s just so hard to work with him.” you say, rubbing at your temple. 

Wonhee snorts. “He’s probably saying the same thing about you right now.” 

“I bet.” Iroha agrees.

Hyein leans back against the desk, arms crossed. 

“You two have, like, the most aggressive chemistry ever.”

“What chemistry? I hate that man Hyein.” And you’re right. It’s not chemistry, it’s a literal friction.

Iroha hums and goes back to tuning. “Well. At least we know Vienna will be entertaining.” 

“Yeah. If we don’t kill each other first.” You scoff.

But it has gotten better. That invisible truce you’d both forged that morning he decided to show up at your door unannounced hadn’t fixed everything per se, but it did make it a little less irritating to get words out around him. It’s been a couple weeks since then and you still hate him, but it's been easier. 

Your phone buzzes the instant the bell rings. As students start flooding out the room you check your messages. 

Martin (dni)

wsg

bro 

come out

were being called for a run through 

11:18 A.M.

You

huh 

were not even done w the arrangement yet 

11:20 A.M.

Martin (dni)

ik man idk 

fish told me sm came up

m waiting outside ur classroom lol come out plz 

making me look desperate asf smh 🥱

11:20 A.M.

You

how do u even know my sched creep

whtv martin

wait

11:22 A.M.

“Hey, guys I gotta go.” you say, quickly shoving your violin into It’s case.

Hyein looks up from her desk. “Hmm? Something came up?”

“Yeah they want a run through. I’ll text yall though. See ya.”

You wave your friends off and slip out of the classroom. Martin is already there leaning against the wall, thumb distractedly scrolling through his phone. His eyes wander the hallway until they land on you. 

“By all means you could've taken more of your sweet ass time.” He says in a sarcastic tone as he pushes himself off the wall.

“I should’ve. Would've saved me from looking at your face.” You both start walking, a visible space created between the two of you. 

“Got a problem with my majestically sculpted face Y/n?”

“The only problem I have is you thinking that's even remotely true.” 

He scoffs, hands now shoved back in his pockets, walking a little faster than you. 

“That statement reeks of jealousy.”

“Me? jealous of you?” You snort. “The world might as well implode Martin and that would still never happen.” 

He glances at you sidelong with a grin threatening to form. “Tell yourself that.”

You follow him down the hall, violin case swinging at your side. “By the way, your timing is impeccable. Texting me to show up literally a second after class finishes and calling me slow? And how'd you even figure my schedule out?”

“I’m a master of surprise. You of all people should know that by now.” He shrugs, eyes forward.

You side eye him. “Or a master of being a bother.” 

He laughs at that. “Better a master of being bothersome than a master of nothing. Don’t think I haven't noticed how meticulously you bombed that piece earlier.” 

You snort. “Everyone thought I did great by the way. Iroha called me a robot.” 

“Yeah?” He turns his head to look at you.

“Mmh hm.” 

He hums. “That would be true. A robot can’t exactly mimic art after all.” 

You turn the corner into a narrower hallway, the light thinning out as you move deeper into the building. 

“Oh so now you’re an art philosopher?”

Martin gives you a flat look. “I contain multitudes.”

“Multitudes of audacity.” You groan. 

You both step into the theater hall and veer toward the small room in the corner where rehearsals are usually held. There, you are greeted by admittedly your personal worst-case scenario. 

Mr. Fischer is there, yes. But so is your mentor. Martin freezes beside you as well. 

“Dude,” he murmurs under his breath. “Did you invite her?”

You look at him in a panic and whisper back. “Fuck no.” 

Mr. Fischer notices you both first, and as if on cue, she turns just a second late.

“Y/n. You’re late.” 

“I had class–.”

“Spare me the boring details.” she turns fully toward you then. Martin watches her with a strange and guarded look.

“I hope you don’t mind me interrupting your rehearsals on such short notice, Mr. Edwards.” she continues. “But, as you can see, time is closing in. I was just informed that you both are nearly done with the arrangement.”

Nearly.

“Not finished.”

“Uh huh.” Is the only thing Martin manages.

“Right.” She gives him a tight and stern smile. “Well. I’d like to see what's been done so far.”

Martin shoots you a look that so clearly means help. But if anything, you’re the one who needs it.

“Okay.” You say. 

Mr. Fischer offers the closest thing he has to an apology; a small smile and an encouraging nod. You turn back to Martin and slide your violin from its case. He inhales, stiff and uncertain, then moves toward the piano waiting at the far end of the room. 

You don’t look at her when you move to Martin’s side. You never like to look at her before playing. It has a way of shrinking you back to ten years old, small-boned and scared. Martin steals a glance your way and notices there is a particular position your shoulders lock into when she is in the room. You looked the way you had back when he’d first seen you. Sad and tired. 

Martin recognizes her from the little facts Mr. Fischer has dropped over the years. Former concertmaster. A tenure chair at a celebrated European conservatory. Currently a competition juror. A pedagogue so renowned that for a split second Martin almost envies you. Then he catches your face, the expression you’ve been making, and that thought vanishes. 

He clears his throat and cracks his knuckles in the hopes of breaking the deathly silence in the room and summoning a little courage. He settles into his bench, adjusts it an inch too far back, then drags it forward again with a soft scrape against the floor.

“Comfortable?” you murmur mockingly, tucking the violin beneath your chin.

“I should be the one asking you that.” He whispers back, exhaling through his nose. You suppress the need to roll your eyes before tucking the violin beneath your chin and lifting your bow.

The scary lady adjusts her spectacles once and clicks her tongue. The sound lands on the both of you like a starting pistol. Martin flinches, but you don’t. 

He counts you in under his breath in a voice that’s barely audible. One, two–

Your first note comes in a calm vibrato echoing throughout the room, and Martin joins a beat later as the chords find their shape under his fingers. This is the first time you both played together where you weren't talking in between.

Somewhere in the middle of the second phrase, he glances at you again. Your jaw is set, your brows drawn just slightly inward. Every movement and note is deliberate. You play flawlessly, of course you do. He won't admit otherwise even with the rough history between you two. Recognizing talent is not a means of weakening him at all. In fact it makes him want to be better, even if that motivation would have to come from someone like you. 

You give him a look that could curdle milk and soften your vibrato instead, pulling the tempo back by a hair just to spite. Martin raises a brow and follows. It becomes a quiet tug-of-war after that. He exaggerates a crescendo and you drag out a passage in turn. To anyone else, it probably sounded seamless though. 

As you approach the final bars, you carry the melody forward and anchor the both of you. Martin falls into step, letting you lead as he traces the subtle tilt of your bow. The tightness in your shoulders loosens just a fraction that isn’t much but enough that the looming shadow watching you from across the room feels momentarily distant. 

You both let the last note fade unfinished. All this time you’d been resisting the urge to rush the ending. Thankfully, Martin sustains the final chord until it thins into nothing. 

The room is quiet then. That is until your mentor tilts her head and steps forward just slightly.

“Well,” she says. 

Martin swallows and straightens his posture, but you stay perfectly still. Her eyes move between the two of you in a calculating manner as heels click against the floor. And like a countdown to a bomb, you brace for impact. 

“Technically sound,” she begins. “Mostly.”

Mostly is never a good word. 

She shifts her weight. “Mr. Edwards, your accompaniment is… adequate. Though I’d prefer less dramatics. You’re not trying to one-up the other are you?”

Martin nods once. “Right. Got it.”

“And your timing was off in the second section.” 

He opens his mouth, thinks better of it, and closes it again. 

Then she turns to you. 

You try not to shift your weight, you really do. But your balance betrays you anyway. A minute shift in your stance and her eyes catch it immediately. 

“As for you.” 

Your spine goes rigid on reflex.

“Your pitch is weak.”

“Weak..?” You hear Martin mumble a barely sound breath.

“Which, for someone at your level, is disappointing.” 

You drop your gaze to her shoes instead. To the clean line of her heels against the floor. It’s safer than meeting her eyes. You swallow hard in an attempt to keep your emotions to yourself. 

“You’ve been under me for almost 10 years,” she says as she tilts her head. “And you still don’t get it do you?” 

At that moment the proportions in the room begin to change. To you, she becomes enormous, and you are reduced to something nearly invisible. The space between you stretches impossibly wide and yet she feels close enough to breathe down your spine. 

“You lack intention. Your dynamics are inconsistent. And that closing–” she clicks her tongue thrice. “Tentative. You are unsure.”

Your fingers tighten around the neck of the violin. Breathe in, breathe out.

Martin shifts beside you. “Well that's because it's not–”

She raises a hand and cuts Martin off.

“I wasn’t speaking to you.” 

Martin goes silent. She steps closer, just enough for the overhead lights to finally find her face, and suddenly you want to disappear into the floor. Become a spec of dirt in the polished wood, or a part of the acoustics. 

“You have good technique. I’ve always said that. But technique without much conviction is, frankly, meaningless.” 

Your jaw locks as your teeth press together until it feels like something in your mouth might give. The truth is impossible to deny even for you: she isn’t wrong. You think she rarely is, which makes it worse. You had already told yourself these things in the hopes that when you hear them spoken in her voice you’d be less inclined to waver. But it never gets better. 

“I expect more from you,” she says sternly. “Especially after all the time I’ve given, and all that money your parents have invested.” 

Your chest tightens once again. You nod because that's what you’ve been trained to do. Nod, absorb, correct, and repeat. But your fingers curl tighter around the strings without you realizing. 

Your chest constricts all over again. You nod because that's muscle memory now. Nod, take it in, correct, do it again. It’s always been the sequence. Somewhere between her words, your fingers curl harder around the strings.

Martin says something to you but you don’t hear him. You can barely hear anything at all. There’s only the thin, high ringing in your ears and the sound of her voice layering itself on top of everything. Criticism stacked upon criticism like she’s constructing something over your head, and each word becomes a beam to hold more weight over of you. 

“If this is the level you’re bringing into the performance then we’ll need to reconsider–”

A loud snap. 

The sound is loud and sharp. For half a second, nobody understands what just happened. Then you feel the sudden absence of tension beneath your fingers, the broken end of the string recoiling and brushing against your skin. 

You look down at your violin. One of the strings hangs loose as it is split cleanly into two.

“... Oh.”

Your heart stirs right at the edge of your throat. 

“I–” you don’t know what else to say. Your hands are shaking, and there's a tiny cut from the impact the string made on your index finger.

Martin stands up immediately as the piano bench scrapes loudly against the floor.

“That’s all we have for today.” He says, stepping closer. “Um–we’ll be going.” 

There’s a firm hand on your elbow as you hear Martin whisper a rushed c'mon and steers you toward the corner of the room, his steps long and impatient. He grabs his bag first, then yours, slings them over both his shoulders, and drapes your violin case over an arm. You glance back once and only Mr. Fischer is looking at you. Your instructor is still facing forward, gaze fixed on the piano and the now empty space where you’d been standing. 

Martin grips your elbow again and pulls you the rest of the way. When the door swings open, the air from the hall floods your lungs and suddenly you’d learn how to breathe again.  

Neither of you talk. When Martin turns around he looks like he wanted to say a lot of things. But he knows you better now, and doesn’t. Instead, he offers to help.

“My roommate has some spare strings. Do you know how to re-string a violin?” 

You look down. “Of course I do.” 

He exhales, adjusting both your bags on his shoulders, and you fall into step together toward the exit. The walk to his dorm is mostly silent. Martin doesn’t know what to say to make the tension ease so he says nothing, punctuating the quiet with the occasional low whistle.

When you reach his door, he fishes his key from his pocket, turning it over the lock until it clicks open. The room is void of a presence, probably because everyone else is buried in lessons at this hour.

Martin leads you toward his side of the room, and what meets you there is… unexpected. Posters of rock bands crowd the wall above his bed, edges curling slightly with age. On the shelf above his desk, a few vinyl records lean against each other, more of the same bands you assume, though you don’t know most of them.

As you step further in, a large framed portrait of a musician you know as Sergei Rachmaninoff catches your eye. Martin’s piano sits in the center, scattered sheet music spilling over a bedside table. Guitars rest against the walls as well. It’s a lot, and watching it all, you feel the faint edge of intrusion. 

Martin plops your bags down and gestures toward the room.

“Yeah–sit wherever you want. alright? I’ll go find the strings.”

Martin disappears into his roommate’s side of the room as you lower yourself onto the edge of his bed. You glance around again and try not to feel like a trespasser in his very curated life. When he returns holding a few packs of strings, he catches you skimming through the sheet music on his bedside table.

“As you can see,” a wry grin tugs at his lips. “I’m dabbling in composing. How's that for being a crap player?” He sets the strings down beside you on the bed.

You lift an eyebrow. “You’re composing this?”

“Yeah.” He shrugs. “It’s barely done though.” 

You tap a finger against the sheet music, eyes tracing the pencil marks, then set it back down. You pick up the strings and examine them.

Martin drags the bench closer to the piano and lowers himself onto it, fingers absently twisting the rubber hand that held the pack of strings together.

“Spit it out Martin.” you tell him, eyes still trained towards the strings.

He lets out a sigh, leaning forward so his elbows rest on his knees.

“I already thought your mentor was scary when I first saw her years ago,” he clicks his tongue. “And now I think she’s somehow even worse.”

You tighten one of the strings a quarter turn too far, then ease it back.

“Worse?” You echo. “She’s always been like that.”

“And you’re okay with it?”

“Of course not.” You don’t look at him when you say it, but on the narrow stretch of wood beneath your fingers. 

“But she told me she gave me a gift. If she wasn’t like that, if she coddled me…” You loosen one peg and tighten another, and your voice slowly thins as you pause at the bridge. 

“I’d just be ordinary.”

Martin watches the way your shoulders deflate. 

“You believe that?”

When you look at him, the expression Martin gives you is something new.

“Believe what?”

“That she gave you a gift.”

“I’m convinced.”

He exhales through his nose. “That’s bullshit.” 

You don’t react, because it kind of is bullshit. A gift is something you’re born with, not something you have to work for. And you talk big like it has simply showed up one day, as if there wasn’t a woman and years of bleeding behind it. 

“And I’m just saying” he adds. “What's so wrong with being ordinary?”

“I don’t know Martin.” Your voice is even and almost amused. “Why don’t you ask yourself that?”

Martin already knows the answer to that. There is something so terrifying about living a life without greatness. How could he leave this world the same way he’s entered it? He wants to be singular. He wants to be special and remembered and irreversible. He wants to press himself into the earth hard enough to leave dents. And for so many, ambition may be some kind of ruin. But if ambition is the only ache of a future he refuses to surrender he would die reaching. 

Martin watches you work in silence. There’s a painfully practiced way you work on the strings. You glance up at him for half a second, then back to the violin. He thinks about being ordinary, and he knows he could never bear that. He doesn’t want to wake up one day and realize he’s lived a life of complete bleakness. 

“You don’t flinch though.” He nods in your direction. “I mean… she’d eat me alive for sure.”

“I’ve been eaten alive before. You can get used to it.”

Martin hums in acknowledgement and sighs, looking around the room for no reason in particular. 

“Hey Martin.”

“Yeah?” 

You shift on the bed, glancing at him.

“Do you have like… lotion?”

“Huh?”

“So,” you fiddle with the wooden neck. “I need to lubricate the tuning peg. Kinda weird. But it makes threading the strings easier.”

“Oh–yeah, hold on.”

Martin disappears into the other side of the room for a moment, the floorboards creaking under him. He returns holding a bottle of vaseline. You take it from him, and your fingers brush. You think nothing of it. What a liar you can be. 

“Thanks,” you say lowly. 

“Yeah.” He replies, sitting back down on his stool. 

After a while of you working, you thread the string back through the narrow hole of the tuning peg, guiding the fine metal with your thumb and forefinger. You pull it taut, wind it in small, patient turns, making sure it settles neatly into the groove. The violin rests against your knee, familiar and warm. You test the tension once, listening for the pitch. Almost. Martin can do nothing but watch from where he’s perched, of the rhythm following your hands. 

Then there's a knock.

Both of you still. You glance up first, looking at Martin in confusion. A muffled voice is heard through the door.

“Dude? Are you in there? I think I forgot my keys. Listen I need to grab something–”

Martin stands up in a panic, looking back and forth at you and at the door.

“Ju–yeah man I’m–shit hold on!”

You stand up in panic as well, looking at him expectantly. 

“Hide.”

You look around. There’s not much room for hiding spots in here. 

“Where?”

“Just–”

Martin grabs a hold of your shoulders as you drop your piano on the bed. He pushes you towards his closet, opens the door, and gestures for you to go inside. 

“Fuck this Edwards–”

“Be quiet please.”

The closer door slides shut behind you, and you’re left in this tiny space with a few thin seams of light slipping through the slats, cutting pale lines across the dark. It reeks of some sort of perfume and detergent smell. .

Outside, Martin straightens, let's out a subtle throat-clear, and the door opens. Juhoon stands there and gives Martin a once-over.

“What’s up with you?”

Martin blinks. “Nothing.”

Juhoon hums, unconvinced. “Uh… can I come in?”

“Oh. Right.”

He slips past Martin and already crosses the room, opening drawers, digging through the mess that is his desk. 

“Looking for my strings.” He says absently. “Have you seen it?”

Those damned strings of all things. 

“The strings?”

“Yeah my spares.”

He glances toward his side of the room, your bag on the floor, violin resting on his bed, opened packs scattered. Suspicion would be immediate and unavoidable. 

“Nah man.”

From inside the closet, you hold your breath and count the seconds between sounds hoping the door doesn’t open. 

Juhoon gestures lazily toward Martin’s side of the room, and in that same second, Martin steps into his path.

“Bro.”

“I– you can’t come over here.”

Juhoon pauses. “...Why the hell not?”

“I’m like, like–working on something. Confidential.”

He squints at him. “So?”

“I promise Ju, your strings ain't here.”

Juhoon studies him through as if he’s trying to solve the smallest and stupidest puzzle. 

“Okay man, chill.”

He retreats and drops to his knees, disappearing halfway beneath the bed. The flashlight on his phone clicks on and casts long shadows across the dust and forgotten socks beneath the frame. 

“Oh yeah,” Juhoon adds. “How was run through?”

“Good.”

He raises a brow. “Good, good? Or ‘good’ like as in ‘good god that girl is annoying–’”

“I’m not that petty.”

Juhoon snorts. “Oh you so are.”

He finally gives up on the hopeless search, crawling out from under the bed with a tired sigh, dusting his hands off on his pants.  

“I swear I had some spares.”

“Must’ve been a dream.” Martin tries to sound convincing. 

“Maybe.”

Martin briefly looks back at his closet, then back at Juhoon, who is already making his way to the door. 

“I’ll see ya at the dining hall later man.”

“For sure.”

When Juhoon finally disappears down the hall, Martin waits a second longer just in case he decides to come back. When no footsteps return, he bolts for the closet. The door swings open, and you step out, stretching your arms like you've been cooped up for years.

“It’s so stuffy in there.”

“Well…it’s a closet.”

“That is the most cliche place you could've picked to hide me.”

Martin can’t help but smile and lean against the frame. “Have you always been so picky?”

You kneel quickly, picking up your bag and shoving your violin, albeit a little scarred from earlier, back into its case, along with the spare strings. 

“I’ll bring the rest back later,” you mutter. “Tell your roommate a ghost decided to be helpful.”

Marin snorts. “Right.”

Once you’ve gathered all your things, you head to the door, Martin trailing quietly behind. 

“Hey.” He calls out. 

“Hmm?”

“Practice. Tomorrow.”

You pause, hand on the knob. “It’s a Saturday tomorrow.”

“I know, but we just need to finish the arrangement.”

“Oh. Ok.” You twist on the metal. “Just text me.”

“You don’t even answer.”

“Give it a few business days.”

He hesitates and frowns slightly. If he wants to argue, he doesn’t.  

“Yeah. Bye.”

You carefully and quietly open the door, peering down the hallway first to the left then the right. It’s empty. You give yourself one final glance back at Martin, his hands shoved in his pockets, eyes a little off, then slip out. 

The door clicks shut.

Martin waits a second longer before letting himself fall onto the bed. It creaks under his weight. He drags a hand down his face and exhales something that sounds almost like a laugh. 

What the hell was that?

He stares at the ceiling, follows the lazy drift of dust motes, counts them until they turn blurry. He doesn’t even know what he’s referring to when he thinks that. But there sits a mass pressing sideways into his chest, and everything's all jumbled and lousy in  his skull. Maybe you felt weird too, but more from reeling at that terrifying mentor of yours, under all that scrutiny, to think of anything else. And how much of that weirdness lodged inside his chest was his alone, he wonders. 

Martin decides he’s going to skip last period and go straight to bed. He decides what an illicit feeling this is, all the concern over a girl who's spent most of the years they’ve known each other treating him like a wall. Something to work around or something in her way, he can’t tell which. 

Funny, he realizes, how easy it is to make someone out to be a character in a silly story, a misunderstood villain or some tragic antihero. But in this one, he isn’t sure if he’s even the protagonist. He watches, waits, tries to figure out if those lines are his imagination or the other. 

Disoriented, that he is, but he knows he’ll remember it, all of it, even if he doesn’t fully understand why. 

─•──── 𖦤

You know one thing’s for certain right now. The airport is so unbearably hot. 

Part of it’s definitely what you’re wearing: jeans, boots, and that jacket you somehow decided to wear with nothing underneath. But mostly, it’s the AC. Or lack thereof. Whatever disaster struck the ventilation system here, it’s making you question the intelligence of whoever designed this place. 

“Y/n, stay close.” 

Mr. Fischer is here too as a formal companion, courtesy of the school, and somehow seeing him in something other than a suit makes you forget the heat for half a second. A summer shirt with prints of beaches and coconuts, and he’s so clearly mocking you with how comfortably cool he looks. And yes, you’re a little jealous. 

“Mr. Fischer, how is it that this airport can afford to look so fancy and still not have properly functioning ACs?”

“Martin’s got a fan with him. Go see if you can borrow it.”

As if that guy’s really going to give up the one thing keeping him from melting in this mess of a terminal. And for you of all people.

You spot Martin slouched on one of the seats near the gate and flop down beside him. He’s in something thin, but somehow he’s even redder than you. 

“Are you trying to match the color of the fire alarms?” 

“Shut up.” 

His fan is blowing in full hurricane mode, and he’d ditched his jacket ages ago. You briefly consider the possibility of roasting marshmallows on his face.

“Where's your scary mom?”

“My instructor? She’s already there.”

“At least my instructor didn’t leave me.”

“That’s because Mr. Fischer is decent blooded.”

When the boarding announcement comes, the three of you bunch together and shuffle toward the gate like small overheated sardines. You catch Martin slipping on a pair of sunglasses and visibly cringe. There’s no sun out, idiot. 

Meanwhile, the only thing Martin can think of right now is the inclining seats and the glorious air conditioning he will soon be relishing in. Cold air and actual legroom felt like a dream given his current predicament. When he got the memo that the institution will be sponsoring the flights and upgraded it to business class, he’d jumped on his bed like a five year old on a sugar high that night. Juhoon had to throw a slipper at his head and threaten him for Martin to stop.

When you board the plane, an attendant guides you down the aisle. Bags get shoved into overhead compartments, bodies collapse into chairs, and everyone exhales at once. 

There are still two weeks left until the performance. They brought you here early for staging, but you’ve already packed a small itinerary for yourself: streets to wander, bridges to linger on. There will always be time to see things, you think, especially in such a historical city. 

Things start to blur after that. You don't remember the landing, or the long hushed walk through the hotel corridors. You were moving through some dream, both literally and figuratively. Jet lag throbs behind your eyes and pulls you half a step behind the world. You barely register where you are until you’re finally inside your room. A staff member trails behind, setting down your luggage and violin case on the space near the closet. They leave quietly with a soft click of the door. 

You cross the room immediately, drawn by the pale rectangle of light on the far wall. Your fingers tug the blinds open and the balcony doors slide apart.

Vienna slips inside. 

Sun-warmed terracotta rooftops stretch outward in crooked rows, and somewhere beneath them, water threads its way through narrow veins of canal. A gondola drifts by, the gondolier standing still and upright like he’s wandered out of another century.

The buildings lean close to one another, washed in tired shades of peach, cream, and yellow. Laundry sways from faraway windows, and Ivy climbs the edge of a nearby wall. Church bells echo from somewhere distant, mixing with footsteps on the bridge, the low hum of the tourists, and the slap of water against marble. 

You’ve been handed something beautiful.

You lean over the railing and let the city stretch out beneath you.  Oh Vienna you are a dream on earth–

“Hey!”

Your mood is immediately shattered.. 

You turn. Martin is standing on the balcony beside yours still wearing those godawful sunglasses, now wrapped in a hotel robe looking like a middle-aged divorced dad. 

“Don’t ruin this for me Martin.”

“I haven't even done anything yet.” he says. 

“You spoiled my view.”

He peers past you, squinting dramatically behind his lenses. 

“All those buildings are doing a very good job of hiding the ocean. What’s there to view?”

You let out a long and loud sigh and pivot away from him, because no. You are going to let yourself sink into this city, the sun, the salty air, and Martin, as well as his beef with the urban planning of this place, is not going to ruin that. He can go argue with an architect on his own, 

─•──── 𖦤

Two days into Vienna and somewhere between the relentless rehearsals and whatever sleep you’ve been surviving on, the committee finally hands you a free night off. Between playing the violin, eating, and sleeping, you haven’t touched a single thing on your to-do list. So you decide you will. Even if it means dragging Martin along with you.

You learn slowly that he’s easier outside of school walls. He still pokes at you. You still argue over nothing and everything. But it doesn’t get to you the same way it did. Though the fact still remains that he likes to complain. A lot. Some habits are sacred. 

“Jesus, do you even know where you’re going?” 

“Relax. Google Maps has never failed me.”

He squints at your phone. “It’s literally making us walk a whole 3 kilometers..”

“Then go back to the hotel, Christ." You look back at him. “I’m not holding you hostage Martin.”

“Yeah. Fish is.”

“Well, by all means, you’re welcome to run straight back to him and cry into his blazer about it.”  

You’d heard of this night market tucked somewhere along a corner in the city. The photos online were persuasive enough to make you commit to the tedious walk, even with the recurring thought that at some point you’d turn around and find Martin collapsed on the pavement.

And Martin would never admit it to you, but he came along because the city had started to bore him. He tells himself it’s just something to do. Still, he carries a quiet hope that you’ll pull him out of his own head for a few hours. Truth is, he’s been losing his grip on the reason he plays, and on the piece he can’t quite finish. There’s only so far talent can carry you, because being good isn’t enough on its own. He needs to pinpoint a feeling. 

“So,” Martin says after a while. “How much farther?”

“It says twelve minutes.” 

He groans. “You said that twelve minutes ago.”

“Time.” You look back at him. “A very social construct.”

“What even.” He huffs. 

You walk ahead of him, phone glowing in your hand as a small compass. Martin trails behind you with his hands shoved into his pockets, counting cobblestones for no reason at all. And Vienna opens itself up in pieces. Streetlamps pool light onto sidewalks, a cyclist cuts past him too fast. Someone laughs too loudly from an open window above. 

By the time the lights of the market start to bleed into view, he’s already forgotten what he was tired of. Warm bulbs hang overhead and smoke curls from food stalls as voices overlap theirs in half a dozen languages. 

You stop at an arch. Martin stops beside you. 

He clicks his tongue. “This is decent. Good job squirt.” 

Your head snaps toward him. “Call me that again Martin I’ll–”

“Maybe next time.” He cuts in, already stepping ahead and glancing back over his shoulder in that half-smile you hadn’t seen in him much.

You follow him through the crowd, ducking and weaving as your vision darts left and right like you’re hunting for treasure. They have everything from little trinkets to food here, and you can’t help yourself from reaching for everything that touches your vision.

Martin struggles to keep up with your wandering. His long legs clip over uneven sidewalks and every step brings a new kind of obstacle. A stroller, a group of local grandmas, someone’s bag swinging too close. He mutters under his breath, frustration threading through his words, but there’s a smile on his face still. 

“You’re like a child in a candy store.” He mutters behind you. 

“Better than being a sour old man.” You shoot back, whipping your head over your shoulder just to make sure he’s following. 

You stop at a stall that smells like fire and meat, and before long you find out it’s some Austrian dish called Bosna. It’s spicy and tangy and perfect in your mouth. You glance at Martin whose face has gone a shade too red again. 

“You’re…” You say with food still in your mouth, gesturing towards his face. “Doing it again.”

Martin forcefully swallows a bite of his food, shaking his head in disagreement. “Is a hotdog supposed to be spicy?”

“It’s Bosna.”

“Is that German for hotdog?”

“Whatever Martin.” You roll your eyes and shove another bite into your mouth. It’s almost laughable at the way he looks so defeated by a sandwich. 

Walking deeper into the market, you stumble across a strange kind of parallel. Next to a tiny home cafe, two street musicians have claimed a corner. They look well over the age of 13, you notice. The boy holds a violin and the girl sits across a piano, both absorbed in the same tune. It’s a weird sight for you. 

“What the hell.” Martin says behind you. 

“Do you think they hate each other too?”

“Not from the looks of it.”
 

They’re children, and they’re good, and worst of all they look happy. 

Your chest starts to ache. 

Beside you is a shift in Martin’s stance. His shoulder is brushing yours, and when you glance up at him, his jaw is set and his eyes fix forward. 

You wonder what he hears. Perhaps, though it's not something you let yourself dwell on often, it’s because he has always belonged to his piano in a way you never quite belonged to your violin. Maybe he hears a record of former lives, or years spent in devotion and wanting pressed thin enough to become his beliefs. Maybe he hears himself.

But you and Martin have never listened from the same altitude. You’ve always been two faces impressed upon one coin, gathering the same small scratches of living and all. But even in the same hands there will always be one turned towards the sun, and the other towards nothing. And though flipping it again might promise a new view, a coin can never stand upright. You may inhabit this same tired world but there has always been more than one way to see it. You know that now more than ever. 

For a moment, you consider teasing him, asking if he’s about to cry over strangers doing street music. 

Instead, you ask. “You good?”

“Yeah.” His reply comes too quickly. He clears his throat. “They're so in sync dude. Us when.” 

You scoff at him. “Excuse you. We are in sync.”

He lets out a quiet laugh and shakes his head. 

“On a good day yeah. Maybe with some divine intervention.” That earns him a smack on the shoulder. 

They drift farther in, and the market is too big really, that they just keep getting sucked. It unfolds in endless rows of stalls and flowering arches, each turn leading only to another. Eventually, they stumble upon a small restaurant tucked into the corner of a flower shop, its warm light and sweet aromas spilling through the windows and coaxing you both inside. 

Martin pushes the door open, and it's a homey little place. Picture frames line one corner, faces you assume to belong to the owners, and the tables are mismatched with an eccentric but gentle kind of care. 

An elderly woman is there when the bell chimes. 

“Oh mein! Spatz, wir haben Kunden!” She calls toward the back, then turns to face you both.

“Come, come–sit! You look cold.” She gestures toward a nearby table while reaching into a cabinet for plates. You and Martin settle into the seats closest to the counter, and she follows, setting down your plates and utensils. You and Martin thank her in turn.

“You visitors in Vienna?” she asks.

You nod. “We are. And honestly we’re not quite sure what to order” You pick up the menu and smile at both of your helplessness. 

The woman offers to help you both decide, and soon you fall into an easy winding conversation about local specialties. Everything feels gentle; the room, the food, and the people. She tells you she runs the restaurant with her husband, and with her son whenever he’s off work. Tonight though, her husband isn’t around, but a little while later her son appears from the kitchen carrying your food. 

Another conversation starts from there. He asks what brought you both to Vienna, and you and Martin mention your performance at the Musikverein. He and his mother exchange a look of surprise.. 

“How ‘bout a drink, ja? I doubt we’ll have the chance to witness it.” He tells you apologetically. 

You and Martin shake heads. “Oh it’s no trouble really.” Martin offers.

“We insist!” he smiles. “It’s on the house.” 

A little while later, the woman’s son slips out from the back with two glasses of something bright and orange. You and Martin each take one and sip. It’s tasty, you think. Slightly bitter, but softened by a careful balance of sour and sweet. Martin scrunches his face when he takes a sip, but he drains it all down his stomach after a while.

You really should have wondered why it tasted a little bitter in the first place. Martin, that idiot, should’ve too. 

The walk back to the entrance is dizzying. Everything feels a little brighter to Martin, a little more inviting. Everywhere he looks makes his head throb, yet he can’t help wanting to join whatever joy seems to be happening around him. The old lady’s son insisted on walking you both back with a face pinched in quiet concern. What was he so worried about? Martin wonders, skipping along behind you and the man. 

“Here we are.” The man says, stepping to the side of the entrance. “Remember, when the cable train passes, hop on. It should take you straight to your stop. Keep an eye out for the landmark, ja?”

He hands Martin a plastic bag. That old lady had been a dear and insisted they take some food with them. Martin will surely miss her, whatever her name was. He doesn’t really remember it now. 

“Be careful you two. Come back soon!” He calls as he turns back into the market, leaving you and Martin to the streets and the evening air.

“Martin.” you say in a slur, cupping your forehead with a sigh.

He doesn’t seem to hear the first time, so you lightly smack his arm.

“Martin.” You say louder this time, tugging him out of his daze.

“Yeah?” He turns to you, stance a bit too wonky.

“I think there was alcohol in those drinks.”

“Mmh.” Martin giggles under his breath. “No shit man.”

“Keep an eye out for the train. I told Mr. Fischer we’d be okay on our own so you better not look like a drunk uncle when we get back.” You tell him 

“Yes… yes ma’am.” He closes his eyes, reopens them, blinks, rubs at them, and sways just lightly, trying to regain balance. 

Martin's feeling too warm despite the night having been cold enough to sting, but heat crawls up his neck anyway, settling in his cheeks until his face burns. He’s sweating a little, which makes no sense at all. And when he looks at you, hair falling apart in all the right places, eyes heavy-lidded and your nose rosed up from the chill, he can’t quite understand how you’ve ended up looking so unbearably pretty.

Golly gosh holy barnacles did I really just think that? 

“It’s here.” You tap at his arm a little too hard and motion for the cable that had stopped on the other lane. “Let’s go.” 

Martin follows suit. His steps wobble, but not enough to send him crumpling, at least not yet. You both board and end up standing by the rail at the far end of the car. It’s cramped, closer than either of you might have chosen, and Martin becomes painfully aware that from the outside it probably looked like he was trying to pull you into a back hug. But you don’t seem to notice, so he pretends he doesn’t either.

Maybe it's the alcohol that's gotten into his system unprovoked, but from this light and angle he thinks that yeah, you are kinda nice to look at. That doesn’t change anything though (right?). 

I mean, she isn’t… bad looking. Never was. 

That much he can admit.

A shame. If she weren’t screaming my head off most of the time I’d probably–

Ok. No. That’s too far. He’s definitely gone too far with that one. 

While Martin wages the fight of his life against his own head, you’re doing your best not to topple over every time the cart takes a turn. It’s difficult, but you manage. Barely. 

If only I’d asked what was in those drinks. 

“Hey I think that's the landmark.” Martin says from behind you.

Since when were we standing this close? You wonder. 

You turn to the side and nod, and the two of you shuffle toward the cable doors before the car comes to a full stop. You pay the fare and step down together, and as the cable pulls away, you’re left with the cold, and once again, Martin, who is now the color of Elmo. 

“Gotta walk again.” You snap him out of it. “Try not to trip.” 

And what a hypocrite you were considering you can barely see straight yourself.

The walk back to the hotel is entirely unceremonious. Martin points out every useless detail along the way, stumbles more than twice, and his voice becomes a steady ringing in your ear. By the time you reach the lobby, the doorman greets you and asks if you both had a good night out, to which you can only nod. 

And wasn’t there something about you again? Something about how you look really pretty under Vienna lighting–right, right. That’s the only conclusion Martin is able to form as you both take the stairs to the second floor. 

He looks at you all the way up and all the way to your door, eyes anchored to the back of your head, dizzy, wondering, pretty, pretty, pretty.

When you reach your door, you finally turn back to look at him, and he wonders the same thing tenfold. 

“I’m not even gonna bother showering,” you say in a slur. “You should head back. See you tomorrow.” 

“Hold on a sec.” 

Martin reaches for your shoulder, then lets go just as quickly. When you turn back, your expression is puzzled and a little unfocused.

“What is it?” you ask quietly.

He steps closer. Close enough that he narrows to details; the faint texture of his skin, the way his hair falls apart in every direction from too much touching and thinking.

“Listen,” His hands are unsteady when they find your arms.. “I just gotta talk to you about the performance ‘cause… because…”

And like a thought slipping free of its gravity, he leans in and kisses you. 

If you’re feeling anything beyond the slush the alcohol has left in your head, it’s shock. Martin, the person who is perpetually one wrong word away from getting on your nerves, and you on his, has his knees bent awkwardly with you pressed on a wall and is kissing you. There is nothing smaller or stranger than the feeling. 

But your head is clouded. You’ve been missing home, missing something like presence in your life lately. You’ve discovered that alcohol has a way of persuading you that you start kissing him back purely for the reason of lack.

And when Martin’s hands slide up the small of your back to hold you a little closer, your breaths meeting and parting in the narrow space between your noses, you feel it then. The prolonged heaviness in your head.

Then you pass out. 

This time, the shock has now transferred to Martin, who is still holding you when your body slackens, tipping backwards heavy and unresponsive. He catches you just in time, arms fumbling as you sag between them. 

Martin asks himself then if he kisses so horribly that you can’t be bothered to stay awake longer, but the realization of what he’s done catches up, and so has the dull insistent pounding in his head he’s been ignoring for far too long. 

He adjusts his grip and manages to carry you into your room. There, he sets you down on the bed, clumsy yet careful. He doesn’t bother with your shoes because he’s already done too much tonight. Matter of fact, he leaves immediately. 

The run back to his room is horrid because he’s sobered up faster than you have, and every thought he managed to outrun comes crashing down the moment he slams the door shut. 

What was he thinking? How is tomorrow going to play out if she remembered even a fraction of it? He tries to bargain with himself. It was barely anything, what, ten seconds at most? Thank god she passed out before he made it worse. 

He collapses onto his bed, and despite himself, his mind drifts back to you just moments ago. Warm and close enough that even now as he sobers and aches, he could admit that. He drags a hand through his hair and lets out an uneven breath.

Tomorrow will come. Explanations will be owed. Words will either be said or avoided.

As Martin drifts into sleep, his head still pounding a storm, the last thought his traitorous mind lets through is the truth: that he simply just couldn’t help himself. 

─•──── 𖦤

The next morning, you remember absolutely everything.

You wish you hadn’t, mostly because you’re fairly sure Martin wishes the same with how painfully awkward breakfast has become. The two of you sit across from each other at the breakfast buffet while Mr. Fischer glances between you two, quietly puzzled.

“So,” he starts. “Did the two of you have any fun last night?”

“Yep.” You and martin answer at the exact same time, somehow managing to make the moment even worse.

“Really?” Mr. Fischer smiles at that. “What’d you get up to?”

You talk about the night market: the lights, the stalls, the strange little wonders, in the hopes that it might thaw the tension. You mention the cozy restaurant and the family you met there, but you carefully skip over what happened when you both returned to the hotel. You don’t even let yourself think about it. 

“Well,” Mr. Fischer says with a nod. “It sounds like you two had a good time. Why the long faces?”

Martin finally speaks. “Long night. Tired.”

“Ah. That makes sense.” Mr. Fischer says, leaning back in his chair as if he’s about to leave. You silently plead, please don’t leave me with him.

“I’d better get going.” He continues. “They’re making me help with the preparations. Be there by ten, okay? You don’t want your instructor catching you late for practice, Y/n.”

You nod, helpless. “Will do.” 

When he leaves, it goes quiet almost immediately. Martin sips his coffee, back slouched in the chair, and looking faintly ominous. Your left leg bounces up and down under the table, irritation making it impossible to stay still. Time to be the bigger person again. 

“Listen–” You both say in unison.

The both of you stop and look at each other.

“I’ll go first.” You say.

“Okay.” he replies. 

“So, practice starts in an hour, I haven’t bathed at all yet, and you clearly need to work on some things. So whatever happened last night? Let’s just forgive, forget, and blame it on the alcohol. Makes everything easier for us, yeah?”

Martin frowns, coffee cup hovering in his hands as he thinks. FInally he sees it down and meets your gaze. 

“I mean, the alcohol is entirely at fault anyway.”

“Right?”

“Duh.”

“Okay.” You stand up, quickly grabbing your things from the table. “I’ll meet you at the lobby later.” 

“Okay.” Martin says, and watches you go. 

That was easy. Now he can rest blissfully reassured that you’re reasonable enough to let all of this slide. Martin will file that night away as the first truly foolish thing he did, courtesy of having the brain of a teenager, tuck it into a mental box, and shove it into the deepest parts of his head. Because he’s mature and obviously a professional, and that’s exactly how things are supposed to be with you. 

─•──── 𖦤

What was that thing he said again about professionalism? 

He doesn’t quite remember, not when he’s got you against a wall again, his mouth on yours again. If he can’t stop now, how many more times is this going to happen? The thought flickers and dies quickly, because then your hand is in his hair, pulling him closer, and you’re just there. So impossibly close. His head spins and his thoughts curl and drift like smoke caught in a slant of sunlight.

You pull away, panting. “Hold up dude–”

Your breaths come in uneven bursts, and when your eyes meet his for a fraction of a second, startled, but not resisting, that tiny spark of something is all the encouragement he needs.

So he leans in again. This time slower, almost careful, though careful is the last thing he’s being. It’s reckless really, the sort of thing he never thought he’d do twice. It’s you, God, it’s you for fuck’s sake. 

The strings of the universe, he thinks, is such a stupid concept. 

You, on the other hand, are utterly confused that any of this is happening again less than a day later. All you can recall is the look he gave you after practice, the quiet hall where you keep your things, and that it was empty. Yet when he kissed you then, you hadn’t hesitated for a second to kiss him back. Now all that’s left is confusion… confusion at yourself. 

Maybe this is just a thing that happens for growing teens such as you. This is what goes down at those parties Wonhee and Iroha go to, right? People kiss and stuff then the next day they forget and move on and act like nothing happened. 

You realize you haven’t been breathing, so you pull away.

“Martin—let me breathe holy shit.” You shove lightly at his chest, trying to create some space.

He leans in just a bit closer. “Well sorry my respiratory system is just so much  better than yours.”

You roll your eyes and swat at his arm. “Are you serious? You’re the reason why we’re in this position right now–”

“I heard no complaints from you earlier though.” He grins and brushes a stray lock of your hair from your face. 

“Oh my God, what are we doing?” You bury your face in your hands for a second, then peek through your fingers at him. 

“This is just what people our age do–”

“You cannot say that. People our age that do this usually don’t despise each other.”

“We’re niche.”

“Don’t call us that ever.”

When your phone buzzes in your pocket, you step away from Martin, carving out a little space between you. A message from your instructor lights up the screen asking you to return to the theater hall. Something about news. 

“I’ve gotta go back.” You say, slipping your phone away. “She’s calling me over.”

“For what?”

You shrug. “Who knows.”

“I’ll come with you.” He swings his bag over his shoulder, already decided. “We were heading back to the hotel anyway.”

“...Sure.” You give him a sideways look, suspicion written all over. Martin notices and immediately raises both hands in mock surrender. 

“Not doing anything.” He says. “Relax.”

“You say that,” You say as you grab your bag as well. “And then you end up doing so much more.” 

Martin’s mouth twitches as the grin barely holds back. He steps aside to let you through, but the space he gives is only technical. You can still feel him there, near enough to trail you and be annoying about it. When you move toward the exit of the small room, he follows without comment, hands loose at his sides, wearing the air of harmlessness. But there are intentions tucked beneath that he won’t admit to. There’s no need.

Oh well. Can’t be helped. The first time had left him greedy, and now he’s trying to behave and fold this into something ordinary so it won’t turn into a bigger thing between them. Better finish what he started, right? Because yes, he likes the closeness. Just a little more, he tells himself. Just enough. But when will he get enough, exactly?

When you step into the theater hall, she is already there, standing beside Mr. Fischer and a man you don’t recognize, sharp in a tailored suit and too out of place to be mistaken for staff.

“Ah, you must be Ms. L/n.” He reaches for your hand, his grip firm and practiced.

You narrow your eyes slightly as you take it. “Yeah. That’s me.”

He slips a piece of paper into your palm. An address and a phone number is all that’s written on it.

“I sit on the committee for the Musikverein.” He says. “I watched your performance earlier. Your partner is clearly talented as well, but I’m searching for someone… particular.”

You glance down at the paper, then back at him. “You’re looking for someone?”

“A violinist for a solo performance.” He clarifies. “We’re looking to fill the middle act.”

The paper feels strangely light in your hands. Your gaze drifts over it, then lifts to the man, and inevitably to your instructor. She’s watching you with that familiar pride braided tightly with warning. The kind of look that says do not mess this up, child.

You look back at the man and smile, something steady settling in. “I’d love to take it up.”

“Wonderful!” his delight breaks through the stillness, and Mr. Fischer nods in quiet approval, hands folded as though this outcome had always been set in stone.

“It’s 5 days from now.” The man adds, then points to his right. “They’ve already been briefed on the address and the details.” 

The number ten rings faintly in your mind, it’s sweet but terrifying yet full of promise. 

When the man finally leaves, there’s no real reason for either of you to linger. So you and Martin head out together, which leaves Mr. Fischer faintly shell-shocked. It isn’t often the two of you leave at the same time, let alone together.

Outside the theater hall, the air is warm and lazy. Late afternoon sun drapes itself over the street in gold. You and Martin decide to walk about, mostly because neither of you have anywhere else to be. 

It’s strange. How okay you are with this right now. You’re not fine, not really, but for once there’s nothing you can think to argue over (other than, well, that). Practice has wrung you dry and left your thoughts soft. After rehearsals your brain never quite works the way it’s supposed to.

You stop by a stall selling something called Käsekrainer, pork sausage crust stuffed with pockets of melted cheese. Since neither of you has eaten anything since breakfast, you get two and sit on a bench in front of a shop, your violin case resting by your feet. 

“So,” Martin says after a moment of quiet. “About that offer.”

“You jealous?” You raise him a brow.

He huffs out a short laugh. There really is no escaping the competitiveness between you, no matter where you are. 

“No.” He takes another bite of his food. “I’m asking.”

“Asking what?”

“What piece you’re going to play.”  

You take another bite of your food, contemplating for a few seconds.

“I don’t know yet.” You reply as you shake your head.

You decide that for this side quest a violin sonata will do the trick. Which one, you have no idea, but you shove the thought aside for now because Martin is looking at you with something more than expectancy. You don’t know what to do with that, with him, with the fact that this keeps happening.

Why do I give in?

When the last of your food is gone, you both drift back into the streets, carried along by the city’s pulse until it spills you into Stephanspaltz, where the gothic spires of the St. Stephen’s Cathedral cuts into the sky and over the square. The afternoon light catches the cream tiled roof, and each pattern and diamond gleams like metal in the sun. 

Martin nudges your shoulder. “Bet you’ve never seen anything like this at home, huh?”

You glance up, squinting at the gargoyles and ornate stone arches. “Home isn’t exactly a spectacle when you’re used to it Martin.”

He scoffs and looks ahead. “Then how many locals do you think are taking advantage of a sight like this?” 

From the cathedral, you both drift down to Kärntner Straße. It’s very lively, lined with everything from cafes to boutiques and little patisseries. The smell of fresh coffee and baked strudel mingles with the faint leather scent from shop windows. 

Martin stops at a display glass as he eyes the old Vinyls in a music store window. 

“Yo come look at this.” He crouches in front of the window, tapping the glass with a knuckle. “Liszt, Schumann, Vivaldi, woah they got everything.”

You glance down at the display. “Why not get it? Broke?”

“You say that like our parents didn’t dump us into a very prestigious and outrageously expensive arts school.” 

“Touche.” 

You move on, passing a street musician outside a restaurant with his accordion pouring out a bright and shameless polka. Without meaning to, you and Martin fall into its rhythm, steps light and almost playful, as if the city has tugged on your invisible strings. The noise thins as the street opens into the Stadtpark, and paths curl, leaves turned gold drifting to the ground. Statues of Strauss and other composers watch over the gardens, marble and bronze forever in the middle of a song. Vienna really does breathe music.

You find a bench beneath a tree and the last of the afternoon sun spilling through the branches, sitting between a stretch of grass and the Kursalon Hübner. Martin takes a seat beside you, and you think again, yeah, this is weird.

“What time should we head back?” You ask as you look at your watch. 

“Did Fish text you?” Martin asks as he leans back against the bench, eyes half on the trees, half on you.

“No. And stop calling him Fish.” You mutter. “That’s your mentor.”

He hums. “We’ve got a casual understanding. He’s a bro.” He glances at you fully. “I don’t know what kind of mommy issues you have with yours, though.”

“I told you that’s just how–”

“–how she is, yeah yeah,” He cuts in with a lazy flick of his hand. “You tell me the same thing.” 

“Okay? And?” A little defensive.

He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he gazes back at the park, the statues, and the passing people.

“So nothing.” He says, finally. Then, quieter. “Just that you never really look too happy when you’re playing. Is it because of her?”

Your head snaps toward him. “What does that even mean?”

“Y/n, I’m just curious, but do you even like what you’re doing?” He looks at you with one brow raised, and like those few other times, there is no comeback waiting at the tip of your tongue.

Do I? 

“I–why are you asking me that?”

He looks away, jaw working. “Call it a hunch.” 

You look down at your hands, to the pale lines and callouses that never quite fade, no matter how much time you give them.

“I–of course I do.” Your voice dips. 

“It’s the only thing I’m good at.”

Martin exhales through his nose, not unkind. “Ok, so tell me why you always look miserable.”

You stare out at the grass ahead and the thinning light. 

“I don’t know Martin,” you reply. “Maybe something’s wrong.”

They stay on that bench longer than intended, drifting into conversations that mean nothing at all. Stray thoughts, half-baked jokes, some insults here and there. Somewhere between one story and the next, the moon and stars prick through the quiet and into place. 

By then, drowsiness has settled in you, and Martin looks worn too. So you walk back toward the hotel side by side, your violin resting against your shoulder, his bag slung low in his, and neither of you rush for anything. 

At your door, you offer him nothing more than a soft see you tomorrow before slipping inside and closing it firmly in his face, cutting off whatever else might have followed that you wouldn’t be able to say no to. 

Martin stands there staring at the wood a moment longer, thinking of how the two of you grew up locked in an endless feud, when all you ever were was uncertain, and how he, hopelessly, was made of nothing but dreams. 

The days that follow settle into a rhythm of the usual: practice, sightseeing, quick texts, calls to your friends and parents. And sometimes, just sometimes, sometimes a lot of the times, Martin will pull you into a quiet little corner or an empty hall and kiss you completely stupid. Careless and persistent, until whatever little complaint you carry is drawn out of your mind and back into you through his breaths. 

Martin isn’t sure of a couple things: how he can’t seem to stop, when this started to be an ordinary thing, and how you never really pushed him away. And so he wonders what that makes them now. Still rivals maybe? Rivals that kiss a lot? The thought is so inconveniently complicated that he lets it dissolve before it can affect him. 

What you didn’t know is that after that night in the park, Martin had done something impulsive. Changing the arrangement felt like a small shift, but one that carried enough weight to keep practice interesting, not impossible. You’d said something was wrong, and he’d started to think maybe you just needed something fresh, or something you’d like. He wasn’t entirely sure, but when he brought the idea to the committee a few days later, they were impressed. Enthusiastic even, that just like that, it was formalized. So if there’s something Martin should be feeling right now, it shouldn’t be doubt. 

─•──── 𖦤

“Martin, you–what?” 

Martin really thought he’d been helping. He watches as you stare down at the pages of sheet music, eyes wide in disbelief. 

“I tweaked it a little–”

“A little?” You look at him and jab a finger at the pages in your hand. “Martin the entire rendition might as well be something new!”

He groans, running  a hand through his hair and tugging hard. “I thought you were growing sick of it.”

You scoff and spin on your heel to face him fully. “How? How? We made that together, I wouldn’t be sick of something that partly belonged to me too.”

He throws his hands up and his voice cracks in exasperation. “You said something was wrong!”

The both of you were screaming now. A staff member poked their head in before quickly retreating once they realize the two of you are at full war with each other.

“Yeah! Something is wrong. I didn’t mean it was this!” The sheet music is flung back onto the bench, and the papers scatter onto the floor. 

Martin strides toward you, long hazty steps cutting through the room. “Y/n, please, jsut let me–”

You stumble back a step, hand raised and pointing at him as you shake your head. “You’ve done enough Edwards. You’ve–oh my god–you’ve ruined everything.”

He stops in his tracks and stares at you. “What do you mean?”

You let out a shuddering breath, and for the first time, Martin notices the tiny tears clining at the corners of your eyes. 

“How can you not see yet? You’re so selfish. You’re so–so fucking inconsiderate it’s insane. You’re insane.” 

“Oh please we learned the last arrangement in 2 days this is no different Y/n, calm down–”

“Martin.” You say it sharply, his name cutting through the room. Your gaze pins him and he feels it like a punch. Something in you he wants to hide from desperately. 

“We arranged it together. It may not have been a big deal for you but it was to me. Me. I wanted to play it on that stage and now….”

You shake your head and drag a hand over your hair, a few sniffles coming out of you.

“Please just leave. I can’t–” 

You turn away and head for the corner of the hall where your things are scattered. Your movements are hurried and clumsy as you shove everything into your bag, tucking your violin in with more force than anything else. Then you’re gone, striding through the wide doors and pushing them shut behind you with a final slam. 

Martin wonders why he hadn’t considered the possibility of this reaction in the first place. He has never wanted to be useful to someone so desperately. To be necessary. To become something sharper in your hands. That he now wants to say to you. But in the aftermath that is this, he realizes that perhaps all they are is two collectors of each other’s smallness.

─•──── 𖦤

That night, Martin really hadn’t planned on feeling as much as he did. 

That argument had been the worst of them, and brought out the absolute worst in you too. He tells himself he was finally doing something right for once, or that he was being honest like you told him to. But honesty doesn’t usually leave someone crying before a big performance and he knows that. 

He thinks about it as he walks along the sidewalks of the city with no destination in mind. About how easily he’d broken you, and how convinced he’d been that he was helping. 

Then it rains, sudden and hard, and of course he doesn’t have an umbrella.

Somewhere between sprinting for cover and the rain soaking through the cuffs of his jacket, it occurs to him that he might be genuinely terrible at talking to girls. Juhoon had been right all along. Martin Edwards, the modern-day Beethoven, emotionally constipated and destined to remain painfully girlfriend-less. 

He ends up ducking onto a sidewalk for shelter. It’s a busy street, umbrellas colliding and cars hissing past, so he steps aside beneath the narrowing overhead and pats himself down, shaking water from his sleeves and ruffling the damp hair out of his eyes.

When he looks up, he realizes he stands in front of am opera house.

The marquee glows soft and gold against the very gray evening, and your name is on it, along with a few others. But he sees yours nonetheless.

This must be the venue. Polished glass doors, velvet banners, staff pressed in black. A fancy setup, he’ll give you that. He supposes that means a lot of important people will be watching.

He glances back at the street and it's still raining, still loud. Then he looks at the ticket booth. He thinks, distantly, that he doesn’t really have anywhere else to be tonight.

The booth window is still open, and there's a lady inside tapping her pen against the counter and bargaining with the clock. 

“Do you have any tickets left?”

She glances at the monitor.

“One.”

He almost laughs. One, of course.

He fumbles for his wallet with fingers that don’t quite feel like they’re his anymore and shoves a wad of bills across the counter before he can reconsider everything at once, including the fact that he apparently lives in a world now where theater tickets cost a small fortune. 

Inside, the air is too warm. It smells of polished wood and something faintly sugary. He shakes the rain off his sleeves and lets them drip quietly down the aisle, a line of people looking at him in disdain. But they'd been the same kind of people who looked up at him in awe when he played a stage for them. 

When he finally finds his seat somewhere in the middle, the lights start to dim. He’s made it just in time. 

He doesn’t know what he expected. Doesn’t know how the light would bring you up to be on that stage. He had imagined a few versions of you on the walk in. A quiet one, maybe. A careful one. Someone composed and professional with your mouth set straight and your eyes dry. Or maybe your eyes would've been colored red. He hadn’t imagined you pathetic, no. He never thought you were at large. But you did cry, and if there was any damage left behind from that, he knows it would belong to him.

He lets himself think small and very unreasonable things. Ridiculous out-of-orbit things. That you'll be fine. That maybe you'll scan the audience, find him, and decide that curtain isn’t worth walking through anymore. He thought you were petty like that, but he thought he was stupid for all the same reasons. 

Again, he really doesn’t know what he expected.

Only that when you've shown yourself, he’s become briefly incapable of forming any thought at all. 

Martin keeps his chin propped on his hand, but his eyes grow narrow, stomach drifting out of steadiness. The lights cast down on the stage to reveal two twin stars settling in, blinking and warm, as you wear the blooms of a purple nebula across your body. The dress catches the stage lights and scatters them softly as you move towards the center. 

How many times had he seen you, he wondered, and not overwhelm himself into ruin? 

How many times had he made you cry a few too many tears without stretching himself an extra inch of regard? 

He’s not sure of it, or anything really, except that he’d tried starving a fire once, and tonight it has taught itself how to breathe again. 

You stand at the center of a circular elevation on stage, the instruments behind you arranged to wait for a starting note. You take a moment to look around, and in that very unbearable pause he wants to fold himself into the upholstery of his chair. To become negligible and swallowed by dark red and the shadows

The conductor to the side gives a small nod, and the orchestra behind you is given a head start. Then your first note comes gently, the air being tested, and it vibrates. Martin feels it weigh down on a rib. 

The piece you play is beautiful. It’s Sibelius. He can’t immediately place the key It’s in, which unsettles him more because Martin’s mind has been thoroughly indexed by musical notes. And he agrees with himself a little briefly, though calling it brief would be a lie, that you look beautiful. 

I mean the piece is beautiful too like I said, he thinks to himself. 

Holy balls, what is he even trying to insinuate? 

In one corner of his mind, the question is asked despite himself, how could I not think that? You’re made of an insistence, some bright endurance, of an immortal kind of courage. And tonight, you’ve made something more out of yourself. Something draws out of wood and wire, and he has to sit in the dark for the rest of the show learning how to be worthy of the only talent he has.

In the other corner of that same mind, Martin wonders if you love that violin, or is it simply that you’ve become very good at using it. There’s mastery in your posture. There’s control in your movement. He can’t tell if there is freedom.  

You have a gift too. That part he can’t really dispute, no matter what you tell him. But he finds that you don’t smile much when you play, not often. Maybe talent really can survive unhappiness. He believes you’re proof. 

But above all of this, he’s concluded that in many hypothetical futures, in some abandoned timelines, or in any possibility at all, he’d still believe you were a really good player. 

Being unhappy has never disqualified you from being extraordinary. Martin wonders if anyone has ever told you that. 

When the ending note fades, and you bow willingly, the audience believes they’ve witnessed joy. 

He stands when everyone else stands. Applauds when everyone else applauds. The crowd leans forward like a field of sunflowers tilting eastwards to sunrise, and he considers crossing the aisle to get a better look at you now caught in a rain of roses. He calculates the distance to twelve seats, one usher, several months of emotional incompetence. But there will be a better moment. There always is, and it's not tonight. 

Before you can stand upright again and scan the crowd, Martin takes the opportunity to flee. 

When he steps out of the theater that night, his head feels lighter but his heart does not rest easy. He carries back with him a small sun-drop, the memory of a violin, and many magical notes. There surges a blessing beside cruelty lodging itself behind his eyes, beside something pale and persistent, as though it were a dandelion growing in a closed room. 

When he blinks, the idea of elsewhere becomes a direction.

So he returns to the hotel much later after the hallways go lifeless. He passes his room without much acknowledgement and follows the quiet until it opens into an empty hall where a piano sits. There, beneath lights that perform a poor impression of the stars, he sits and finishes what had been waiting for him.

It becomes Martin’s first symphony. 

—

The few days leading up to their performance had been awkward to put it mildly. If you used to avoid him at school, this was worse. Back then, at least you acknowledged him, even if it was coming from some bad perceptions. Now it’s as if he doesn’t exist at all. You don’t even ask him for help with the arrangement he had altered so thoroughly it barely resembled anything of what it once was. You don’t look at him, not even by accident, and there’s nothing he can really do about it.

So this is it, then. After this, things will go back to how they were, or worse, to nothing at all. Maybe it’ll become something more final, where you disappear from his life altogether. They’re graduating this year anyway. It would be a lot easier for you to do that. 

Today is the day before that performance, and final preparations drag late into the night. When rehearsal is called done, you slip away again without a word. And Martin lets you. He can’t deny that he’s impressed despite everything that you’re actually in sync. Still moving together like nothing’s wrong. Maybe it’s because none of you want this thing to interfere with what’s important.

“Martin.”

He turns back and sees Mr. Fischer standing behind him, hands folded behind his back.

“Come see me outside.”

There’s something unfamiliar in his expression. It’s too calm to be anger, too heavy to be nothing, though. Martin nods, gets up to gather his things, and follows him past the hall doors, where the noise of the preparations dulls into silence. 

“What is it?” Martin says, forcing a lightness he doesn’t feel. “You here to talk me down before tomorrow? You know I don’t really get stage fright–”

“Get your shit together boy.” Mr. Fischer says abruptly.

Martin blinks. “Uh–excuse me?”

Mr. Fischer sighs. “I’m talking about the mess you’ve made.”

“What mess?” Martin asks defensively before he can stop himself.

Mr. Fischer studies him for a moment. “You really think I haven’t noticed how Y/n has gone no contact with you?” 

Martin opens his mouth and can only close it again. It’s the truth he can’t lie about.

“Isn’t that how she usually was with me?”

“There was a day, you know.” Mr. Fischer says, slower now, a hand on his hip. “Early on. I passed her in the hallway after one of your first rehearsals together. She was crying.”

Martin’s stomach drops. “She–what?”

“She told me you didn’t know what compromise was.” He says. “And from the looks of it now, I don’t think much has changed. So tell me, boy, if this has all been worth it.”

Of course it wasn’t, because somewhere along the way, helping had turned into deciding, and deciding had ended in a loss. All his life, Martin had taken inevitability for intention and his ambition for care. And he thought that for the record, he hadn’t really made the arrangement better. He’d only made it his. Knowing that now didn’t undo a single thing, because he’d chosen to do it the same way he always did with everything else. Too fast, too sure, and alone. 

There was a time when your disappointment would have sent him reeling. It’s cruel to admit, sure, but it’s honest. Only times have changed, and so has he. Now, his body has learned to form a new feeling. 

Martin looks down at his feet. He doesn’t answer. He can’t.

“I’ve known you since you were a boy.” Mr. Fischer continues. “You’ve always been an ambitious one. Driven. I’ve pushed you because I knew you could take it, and because you had someone steady enough to push back when you needed it.”

He pauses.

“Y/n doesn’t have that. Her mentor is difficult and so very distant. Every rehearsal is like a fight for her to be heard.” His gaze sharpens, not unkindly, but firm. 

“So of all the people I expected to make things lighter for her, for tomorrow, it should have been you.” 

The words settle uncomfortably in the air.

“Brilliance means nothing in the face of tactlessness, Martin. I hope you let yourself know that.”

This would never have happened had only one of them been chosen for this. Martin runs through the endless what-ifs in his head. If you had been picked, you’d be gone for enough weeks that he wouldn’t have to think of you at all. If it had been him alone, he would’ve been too swallowed by the thrill and vanity of it all that he wouldn’t even remember who you were. That would have been the end of the two of you, wouldn’t it?

He’s not quite sure if he wants that anymore. 

─•──── 𖦤

At last, you look at him. 

Behind the curtain, the air is hushed and thick with anticipation. Martin stands with his copy of the sheet music held a little too tightly, eyes tracing notes he already knows by heart. When he looks up, you’re looking at him as if you’d been for a while now. He didn’t know what you wanted from him then. Does she want me to speak? Stay quiet? To apologize, maybe, or will I choose wrong again–

You walk straight past him, and the air shifts in your wake. Something sweet trails after you, a familiar scent. The same one that used to find him in narrow corners or the empty halls he’d pull you into. His breath gets caught in it, and he keeps his eyes trained on that space where you had finally given him the littlest time of day. 

The look you don tonight looks like something drawn out from the deepest parts of his wanting. It’s a new feeling for him, to put someone into comparison with all the things he found beautiful. 

And now, with you a few feet away from the opening and him trailing just behind, he realizes this might be the last time he’ll be allowed a place beside you. Unless he says something, anything, your silence says you’ve had enough. But he has a choice.

How do you crave, after all, without the pulse of hunger?

What is desire if not tested by the courage to reach? 

When the cue comes, the lights tilt and bend, carving a path for you both under the shrinking spotlight. This is the largest stage you’ve ever stepped onto, and for the first time, you want to smile. Your violin is still something you wield, far from being something you are, but that doesn’t matter. You’re here for one thing: to give them music. To make them feel what you cannot. 

You move to stand beside the piano, splitting the center of the stage between the two of you. When Martin glances at you from the corner of his eye, you meet his gaze for a fleeting second, then pull away. You hope it sets something in him free tonight. Your violin rises to your shoulder as your focus tethers to its wood. Not at him, nor at the audience. You both wait.

The first note cuts into the hall like a ribbon of light. It curls and twists through the shadowed balconies, looping into the quiet corners where people sit. The sound braids against your ribs, coils through your fingers, and under the skin of your neck. Martin leans into every changing key with you, and every subtle hesitation for you. He pushes and pulls, the way he’s always done, and swings you into a silvery sky spun from sound. 

The audience becomes nothing but shapes on the edges of a dream, faces blurring into the dark. A crescendo swells like a tide, and the hall exhales with it in suspension. Your bow trembles at its peak, all fragile as a breath caught on the cusp of morning, while Martin moves like water, fluid and uncatchable, weaving thoughts into the air until what is on stage is but a single current of motion of both of you, threading a shared pulse through breath and bone. 

Against memory, against fear, and against everything he was holding onto, the rise and fall presses against Martin’s mind, and the world becomes entirely malleable. In the proximity of the ending, he thinks that everything beyond the music, the color, and the living, will cease to be as important as they are now for as long as they play.

When the last notes of the piece spill over, Martin sees it now. The faint smile you wear when he looks, and again when he can’t help but do it twice. You are bright then, daring, unmistakably so. Strangely so aligned and yet entirely on your own. 

For a second, the hall is silent, Then it breaks open, and applause pours down from the balconies and rises from the seats before you, a wave you can feel in both of your chests. When Martin steals a glance backstage, they’re clapping there too, faces bright and unguarded. 

And you? You’re still smiling.

So he stands from his stool, and just as you practiced, you both turn and bow to the audience. Only this time, you do it with a smile. 

As you both walk off together and into the dim hush behind the curtain, Martin knows, decisively, what he’s about to do. Whatever comes next will come to some end, and if it changes anything at all, he can only hope it doesn’t make things worse.

Backstage blooms with claps and congratulations spilled freely from staff and past performers who’d been waiting in the wings. The air is bright with it, full and generous. You accept it all with soft thanks, still glowing from the stage. 

And then someone is taking your arm. There’s barely time to register it before you’re pulled away and end up inside an empty supply closet. The door shuts, and one light is hardly flickering overhead. 

Martin stands in front of you, a little too close. He hasn’t been this close in a while, not since you’ve been deliberately avoiding him. You think of asking what he’s been up to these past few days, but above all else is something more urgent. You think he needs to hear it too. 

“I have something to tell you.” He says. His voice is steadier than his hands, which hover uselessly at his sides. He doesn’t trust them not to ruin this. 

You’re caught off guard at first, then inhale. “I have something I need to tell you too.” 

“What–really?” His brows knit as surprise cuts through the resolve he’d walked in with. 

“Yeah.” You look past him for a second, at the humming bulb, at the stacked boxes with faded labels. Anything but at him. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Yeah? What is it?” His heart is beating straight out of his chest. 

“I’m quitting.”

When you look back up after you’d said it, your expression is already set. You mean this. Yet, he frowns. 

“Quit–huh? Quitting what?”

“This.” You say, gesturing vaguely between the walls, the hall, the whole city outside of it. “Music. Performing.”

Silence stretches far enough that you feel you have to elaborate further. Either you say more or let the quiet swallow the both of you whole. 

“I just–” You stop, inhale, then try again, “I’m not happy, Martin.” 

He hasn’t heard you say his name in that voice for days that he becomes briefly distracted by the other elephant that’s been unleashed into the room. 

“You were right.” You look at him now, really look. “I love my violin, and maybe not as much as you’re dedicated to that piano of yours, but I can’t keep this up.”

A small, tired smile ghosts your lips. “The instinct to be perfect is something I can’t scratch off when it comes to this.” Your fingers curl unconsciously, as if remembering the strings that aren’t there. How hard is this going to be, really? 

You shake your head. “I don’t want to feel the way I do when I’m playing and that’s the only thing I’m trying to be.”

“So I thought it would be a nice end. To have my last performance…here. In Vienna. It feels like a dream, no?” With the greatest adversary of my life, no less. That, you keep to yourself. 

“And who knows?” You add, softer now. You glance at the door. “We’re graduating this year, right? I’ll try something new in college, and I have a feeling it’ll work out. I already have something in mind.”

You trail off. The words feel spent, emptied of whatever weight they were carrying inside you.

“Martin?” 

You say his name again, gently this time, because he hasn’t moved nor blinked once. 

He doesn’t answer. Not for a long while. He can’t. What do you mean you’re quitting?

“You can’t quit Y/n.” 

The worlds leave him too fast. You blink once and stutter, sharp and disbelieving.

“Excuse me?”

“You–” He runs a hand through his hair and considers pacing. “You shouldn’t.”

You straighten at that and your shoulders pull back. “That’s not something you can decide on Martin. Like the other decisions you’ve made without me, this isn’t one of them.”

“You know, you are just–” He exhales, frustrated, his words colliding on their way out. “You’re impossible. And exhausting.”

“What the–”

“You’re competitive to a fault. And bossy and intense and stingy with your time and you never let anyone help you.”

You try to open your mouth, but he doesn’t let you speak. His voice cracks on its edges now.

“You always have to be right. You always have to be better. You’re trying to race yourself, Christ, Y/n when will you slow down?”

As the light flickers, he says more quietly. “You never rest. You don’t forgive yourself. You don’t forgive me.”

“You are the most forward person I have ever met.” He adds almost helplessly. 

“And it’s pissing me off because–” his voice breaks loose, “–because you are a talent. God, you’re good.” 

He laughs once, the sound sharp and humorless. “And maybe yeah, I loathed you for it, but like hell you aren’t good at it. Even I can admit that much.”

You shake your head, and your fingers curl into the fabric of your dress tightly. “I’ve made my decision, Martin, please–”

“But if you’re going to quit for good then I’d have to tell you—”

“–Tell me what this time?” You snap, head tilting toward him fully. Your eyes are glassy, impatient,

He’s thrown every word, every stupid name, and every hasty act he could think of at you. What else does he want to say? 

“That I just—I think I'm in love with you.” 

I am, through every feeling of a timeline I’ve been. In the air that connects you and me both and stretches us apart just the same. In the breaths that have cut through me since Vienna. And I’ve allowed myself to dream of you. I draw you into the ceiling at night. When my curtains are open, I carve those points into the dark and watch them sparkle. I trace them together and collect every planet I can reach into orbit. I’ve made a sun out of you, Y/n. 

What burns of me inside you? 

There it is.

A glint that's sparked or a fire that's been put out, he can’t tell what’s in her eyes. 

“Martin, what the hell are you saying?”

He swallows hard.

“What do you think?”

She breathes, ragged, her chest rising and falling faster than normal. She shakes her head and jerks it toward him. 

“This is so unfair–you don’t get to do that!”

He watches her, the way her lips part and her eyes blink with something he wants desperately to understand. What else can I do?

“We’ve been at each other for years.” she says. She laughs once, sharp and hollow, and shakes her head like she can’t believe him. She really couldn’t.

“You’ve called me so many names. You tell me I’ve shoved myself up someone’s ass–” She gestures vaguely between them, frustrated, pacing a step to the side. “–and then you kiss me one night out of nowhere.”

“Then you kiss me again, and again, and again. Everywhere. Anywhere you can reach me. And–” She continues as her breath starts to quicken. “And I let you.”

“And then you change our entire rendition we've worked on together in a single night. Forced me to play it in front of everyone. You hadn’t even said sorry.”

Martin takes a step toward her. “I thought–”

“Then you shove me into a supply closet to tell me you’re in love with me.”

She looks at him as if searching for something. Proof, maybe. Or an exit.

“Do you…” Her voice drops. “Do you even?” 

He understands why that would be so hard to believe. Just months ago, he wouldn’t have imagined it for himself. But the answer is a straight, unflinching yes. He doesn’t know what it could mean for him or you. He’s spent his whole life looking straight toward the sound of music, the keys beneath his fingers, the pulse of a composition, if the collection of broken earphones in his drawer was enough to go by. 

But maybe being in love is like that too: a current that lifts you, laces through you like a hymn, electrifying and sinister in equal measure. It could be liberating and alive as it is impossible to leave. 

“I really can’t breath.” She says suddenly, pressing a hand to her ribs, eyes darting toward the door. “I need air.” 

The supply closet door swings open with a sharp crack, and the world outside rushes in. You step out first, breath uneven and heart racing like it’s running a marathon. Martin follows a second later, stopping short so there’s space between you. It’s enough to prove he’s learned something. 

There are a dozen things he wants to say. That if this is really your last run, he hopes you had a good one, and that Vienna was still what you dreamed it would be. That he’s sorry for the ways he ruined it. 

“Y/n.” 

You both turn, and your mentor stands at the end of the curtain, posture sharp as a blade, eyes already assessing the damage. Martin thinks, not for the first time, that she looks like someone who has never learned kindness. He wonders if she has ever smiled at you, if she has ever told you she was proud. If she will tonight, or if you’ll tell her what you just told him. 

“We'd best get going,” she says. Her gaze flicks over at Martin suspiciously, then back at you, precise and unforgiving. “You look like a mess.”

Martin watches you wipe at the corners of your eyes, as if your tears are anything to be ashamed of. You nod, it’s small and automatic. When she offers her hand, you take it without hesitation.

From where he stands, you look younger somehow. Smaller. Like you’re being led away from the edge of a cliff. 

You glance back once. Just once. Martin feels it like a question pressed into his chest. He almost reaches for it.

But you look away. And then you’re gone. 

─•──── 𖦤

“Juilliard, huh?”

Juhoon stares at the acceptance email glowing on Martin’s phone screen. It’s a big feat, really, for Martin’s path in music and his map of life overall. 

They’ve escaped their dorms for the afternoon and claimed a bench beneath a broad tree in the field. The wide patch of grass looks like it’s worn thin from years of people dropping down between classes. Somewhere nearby, a group of boys are shouting over a soccer ball. A few friend groups sprawl in the sun, half-asleep, half-alive. Martin’s going to miss this place. Four years has really served him good. 

“Yeah.” He grabs his phone back and leans against the bench’s arm. Then he glances back at him, mouth twitching. 

“What? You gonna miss me Ju?”

Juhoon snorts. “MSM’s like just in upper Manhattan. I think I’m good.” 

Martin shifts to sit down beside him. The bench creaks under their combined weight, and for a moment, they just sit there watching over. Normal life, undisturbed. 

“So listen,” Juhoon turns to him. “I know it. The guys know it too. What the hell happened in Vienna dude?” 

It’s straightforward. A very Juhoon approach. 

It’s been a couple of weeks since the performance. Probably at most a month if he traces back to it. You’d left that same night after the show, he found out. Mr. Fischer told him it was something he couldn’t stop your instructor from deciding on. And then a day later Martin left too. After that, radio silence from you. 

He’s almost impressed by how thoroughly you’ve managed to keep out of his line of sight. He hasn’t seen you at all since that night in the Musikverein. Classes were thinning out anyway by the time you both had gone back, and their last semester is coming to an end. Graduation is close enough to taste now with summer and college acceptances rolling in. 

“Like, a whole lot.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, man.” Martin rubs at the back of his neck.  “It’s kinda stupid.”

Juhoon laughs and tilts his head. “What, like one of those movies? School trip turned vacation fling or something?” 

And Juhoon is obviously joking, but Martin doesn’t answer. He keeps his eyes locked on the concrete below him, and Juhoon’s been one to catch on much quicker than most.

“Oh.”

Martin exhales. “Yeah.”

“Is what went down the reason she isn’t talking to you anymore?”

“Pretty much.” Martin nods. 

Juhoon hums in understatement. “Huh, explains why I haven’t gotten my extra spares back.”

Martin whips his head around a little too fast. “How did you–”

“It’s fine, really.” Juhoon shrugs. 

A beat passes. Then Juhoon, because he always knows when to push and because he’s probably right about this too, adds lightly,

“I told you girls don’t like a big ego.”

Martin scoffs dryly. “Yeah, because you’re such a womanizer Ju.” 

“You wanna tell me what happened?” He angles his body toward Martin and lets his forearms rest on his knees. 

And so Martin does. He starts with the first day of rehearsals. Then that day he had you in his room and stole some of Juhoon’s strings. About your instructor, Vienna, and that restaurant with the sweet grandma. About what happened after that, when he walked you to your room, and how he couldn’t summon so much as a pinch of restraint. Then he tells him what he did, and how that decision lead into the fallout. 

“What a fucking idiot you are.” That’s the diagnosis Juhoon gives him.

Martin breathes out through his nose hard. “So I’ve been told.” 

Juhoon clicks his tongue and leans back, stretching his legs out. 

“Can’t believe your dumbass got into Juilliard.”

“Hey,” Martin mutters as he rubs a hand over his face. “If you’re just gonna bully me, then at least do it when we get back to the dorm.”

A corner of Juhoon’s mouth twitches. He looks at Martin again, really looks at him this time. That’s when you know he’s gonna give the advice of his lifetime. 

“But hey, seriously.” He nudges Martin’s knee lightly with his own. “Try and talk to her.” 

“There’s no harm in making up.” Juhoon continues. “Especially now that we’re graduating. A good apology would be a nice start.” 

He’s had a rough relationship with that word for a while. Apology. It feels overdue. But now that someone’s said it, for the first time since Vienna, the thought doesn’t feel completely hopeless. 

“You’re right. I’ll… I’ll try reaching out.” 

Mr. Fischer had said it once, and now Juhoon has said it too Maybe there’s nothing wrong in admitting that, on this at least, they’re right.

Martin’s always knew he wanted to become one of the greats. It’s something he’s chased since forever ago. To imitate the gnawing benevolence in Schubert, the relentless guts of Prokofiev, the fleeting ghostly agony in Satie’s works, and the electric energy that is Ravel. He wants it all: the technique, the terror, the power to create and destroy and create again. 

But more than ever, he wants you to tell him that you see it in him. He wants you to be a measure, but he also knows he must fix things first for that to even be possible.

And like the universe decided to be kind today, by the time he and Juhoon make it back to the dorm, his phone buzzes. Martin nearly chokes on spit when he sees your name light up the screen. There sits a single voicemail. 

“Is this working… oh–heyyy. It’s me. I know you’re kind of wondering why I sent this–sorry about that. Yeah I’m out right now. But I heard there’s this thing happening down the city. Just, like, an outdoor bazaar or something, Iroha told me about it. 

To be honest, not sure if I’m past everything. But I’m okay now. I think it’s best if I just try to lay it off. We still gave a pretty great show right? Uh–ok wait I’m getting off track.

Do you want to come later? If you want. I just feel like, you know, we’re graduating soon, and I think it’s time that we try to be… like, friends. Or at least clear up a few things. I don’t like leaving people in the dark. Before we go our separate ways I just want to stitch a few loose ends, you know?

So, yeah. Text me if you’re down. Bye.”

Status: Delivered

Juhoon’s head pops around the edge of the doorframe. “Everything okay?”

Martin looks up, heart still hammering. He gives him a quick nod.. “Yeah… yeah everything’s fine.” 

He glances at the clock. An hour and a half, which is just enough time. He taps out a quick reply with trembling fingers, I’ll be there by 6, and sets his phone down. Then he runs towards his closet, because if there’s any chance at making a good impression, it starts with not looking like a complete mess.

─•──── 𖦤

The bazaar hums with life when he arrives. Tiny lanterns and ornaments hang from the streetlights as stalls burst with color. You told him you’d be beneath a tree wrapped in lights, but every tree is kind of strung like that here.

The crowd sways him forward and back, a tide of people shoving and shifting. He twists through it, eyes scanning, heart pinging at every flicker of motion.

You’re standing beneath the largest tree on the block, the lights threaded around you like a halo. In a little dress, a scarf around your neck, and hair catching every wandering glint of light, he feels all the gentler parts of him being called forward. 

The tug in the recesses of his chest is almost instant as his vision narrows into the single point that is you. His feet betray him, carrying him closer while his eyes transfix to you alone: the gentle pull of fabric in the breeze, the faraway set of your expression, you multiplied together with the thinning of the world around him. You look dreamlike. 

When you finally register the figure in front of you, you look up from your phone. Up close, Martin looks almost unchanged from the way you left him, and yet looking unmistakably softer than he was. His hair is a darker blonde now, longer too. Still, at his core, you know that’s the same irritating tree-sized boy you’ve come to know.

“Um, hi.” You say.

Martin gives a tight smile.

“Hey.”

“Have you eaten?” you ask. “There’s a Thai place down the street.”

“We can eat.” he replies, then hesitates. “Do you wanna maybe look around first?”

“Yeah,” You nod then spin on your heel. “Sounds good.”

Things start out awkwardly, but that’s to be expected. What do former foes turned make out buddies turned near strangers even talk about? Not to mention that pathetic excuse for a confession that was left suspended. Martin turns it over in his mind as they walk quietly along the bazaar’s glowing walkways, its lights bleeding pigment into the night. 

“So, kind of intrusive,” You start, and it snaps him out of whatever spiral he’s wandered into. “Have you decided on any universities yet?” 

Martin thinks about the acceptance letter he’d received today, and how every other acceptance he’s received has failed to impress him in comparison.

“Oh, I got into Juilliard.” He replies, then lets a grin creep in, teasing. “Jealous?”

“Still won’t ever happen.” You say flatly and tilt your head with a glint in your eye. “Because I got in too.”

Martin’s mouth opens in a shocked ‘o’ shape. “Shit, really?”

“Yeah, of course I did.” You shrug, then let out a sigh. “But you already know I’m not going.”

“Oh, right yeah.” He exhales and nods, trying not to show the tiny shattered hope. “What field did you decide on?”

You glance ahead, at the lights strung between stalls and the slow movement of people passing by.

“It’s still adjacent to the arts. I haven’t pinned it down yet though.” A pause.

“But there are two acceptances I was actually really happy about. Trying to decide which offer to take.” 

Martin hums. “You can always flip a coin.” 

You shoot him a look. “I’m not flipping a coin on college Martin.”

Martin. 

His name on your mouth is something he wants to coax out of you a hundred times over. 

He scoffs lightly, but the uncontrollable smile is evident. “Still no sense of adventure. Lame.”

“Wowww, you haven’t changed a bit.” 

“It’s only been, what, a month and 4 days? Can’t expect a miracle in such a short span of time Y/n.” 

You slow just a little and look at him properly now. “You kept track?”

He looks back. “‘course I did.”

They seem to have slowed down now, eyes still caught on each other, and Martin takes the chance to search for something, anything, some loosened thread or a familiar crack, any sign that you’ll answer what he’s left hanging over–

“Churros! Get your Churros people!” 

The call slices cleanly through the moment, and you both turn at once. A small food truck glows at the corner, cluttered with signs and steam but most importantly, Churros. You glance at each other and the decision is made. 

“Two, please.” Martin tells the vendor, already fumbling for his wallet. The man beams at the two of you looking far too pleased. 

“Lovely night for a little date, no?” He says enthusiastically.

“Oh–no that’s not–”

Martin swerves toward you, mortified, ears burning. You can only laugh and lift your shoulders in a helpless shrug. If that’s the verdict, you won’t be the one to argue. He gives up and says nothing more. 

When your food is handed to you, warm and dusted with sugar, you drift back into the crowd together as the night folds around you. 

The conversation smooths out as you walk, passing beneath strings of light and borrowed warmth. You talk about what you’ve missed in each other’s lives since then, and then smaller things, inconsequential ones, the grounds being tested. The feeling is strange, Martin thinks. He doesn’t know where you want to go with this, and the not-knowing of it all sits weirdly in his chest. Still, if this is all he gets, he won’t refuse it. Not if it holds any possibility of forgiveness or some kind of closure. 

There were plenty of times when Martin had almost done it right, almost said the better thing, almost would have been less of an idiot. He wonders how many almosts a person can even survive. 

But Martin doesn’t know that you’re standing at the edge of a thousand different things to begin with, and you don’t know which is the right way forward. Should you just get straight to the point? But if you do, this night would end much more abruptly than you wanted it to.

“Ooh! And I’ve been really into playing the trumpet recently.”

Martin blinks, then scoffs jokingly. “You? The trumpet?”

“Yeah,” You lift a shoulder. “Wonhee’s been teaching me a few things.”

“What, have you been sharing each other’s gross saliva on her one trumpet?” 

You walk slowly enough to jab at his arm. “Hey! She’s got a lot of trumpets, thank you very much.”

He grins, so cruel and familiar. “How many of them are you betting she’s actually wiped the mouthpiece of?”

“Man, at least she knows how to share. Unlike one of us.”

Martin stops short near one of the trees lining the field. He lifts his hands in a small surrendering gesture. 

“Okay, about that–”

“I think I should start.” You cut in, already turning to face him. 

“Fair.” He lets out a breath and nods. “So?”

You hesitate just for a second, then square your shoulders and step a little closer.

“So… I think we can both agree that me being mad about what you did was justified, right?”

Martin doesn’t joke this time. His arms fall back to his sides. 

“It was.” He says quietly. “Got no excuse for that.”

“Okay,” You say slowly. “Well, you hadn’t actually apologized for that yet. Or the one before that.”

His shoulders sink for just a fraction. 

“I’m really sorry.” He finally says. “For that, and everything else.”

“Is there some sincerity in that?”

He lets out a strained laugh, rubbing a hand down his face. “Yes–duh. This is killing me dude.” 

“Okay.” You say and nod once. “Apology accepted.”

You both drift into the motions of the evening, circling the tree in opposite directions like two little planets in orbit. The lights tangled in its branches flicker, and for a moment, it feels almost childish.

“Are you really quitting?” Martin asks and keeps his tone careful.

“Yeah.” You shrug, crunching your boots against the ground. “Can’t be helped. I’ll still play though. The violin doesn’t disappear just because I’ve stopped chasing a few stages. But the career, the performances–” you tilt your head, thinking.

“I think I’ll let that part rest. It’s been a good run.” 

He stops on his side of the bark, watching you come around to face him again.

“What’d you tell the old hag?”

You snort.“Oh, her?” A grin slips out.

“That I’m quitting, obviously. and that it’s too bad her ‘biggest investment’ had gone to waste.”

Martin winces. “Jesus.”

“She knew she couldn’t stop me, so, shockingly, she let me go. That was it. I’m sure it’s fine. Let’s see what other sorts of talents she manages to breed.”

Martin exhales, something between a laugh and a sigh. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a traitorous part of him agrees that it is a little bit of a waste.

“So,” he says instead, carefully again. “You’re really sure about this?”

“I am.” You tilt your head, eyes bright with challenge. “Why? Devastated you won’t have an opponent as great as me anymore?”

“Well,” His mouth twitches. “Yes.”

“Ah, you’ll be fine. I may have been conditioned to music, but you were made for it.” You glance at him sideways. “Didn’t you just perform at the farewell showcase?”

His movements falter. “You were there?”

“I was. Me and some friends.”

“I didn’t see you.”

You tilt your head. “Were you looking?”

“You know I was.” He hadn’t hesitated to say it. 

You laugh and it lands like a sonnet in his ears.

“But yeah. It was nice.” You glance at him again, thoughtful. “I didn’t know what piece you were playing though. Was it Moszkowski? Sounded like him.”

He hums. “Mmh, no.”

“Liszt?”

“Try again.”

You shake your head in confusion. “It was Tchaikovsky.”

“It was me.” He says, and looked at you then with a flicker of starlight, something tentative and bright like a kind of hope. 

“I composed it.” 

A wider smile tugs at your mouth, half in shock and half in pride. “Wow. Really? You finished it?”

“Finished several, actually.”

“When?”

“The first piece.” His voice is soft and almost shy. “I finished on the night of your show… you know, the one you went solo on.” 

It’s her turn to say:

“You were there?”

He gives hes a sheepish grin. “Ticket wasn’t cheap by the way.”

Martin leans his head against the rough bark of the tree, but his gaze stays on you as he traces you out like oblivion, the way he’s wanted you to pull him under. You feel a flutter of shyness at how intently he’s watching, but Martin has never felt sated ever since the fact so he looks and looks until he can almost get enough.  Even when you were screaming his head off, he thought you were a luminous thing. Especially then. 

“Several, huh?” Your eyes furrow in acknowledgement. “How’d you manage to get all that inspiration?”

Martin smirks, eyes glinting with something mischievous. “Let’s just say I was thinking about a certain someone. A very angsty girl.” 

You, he thinks, he means. I thought about you. 

He sees the tail ends of your lips tipping upward. 

“How many of them?”

“Were about her?”

You nod. Your eyes stay unflinching in anticipation.

He clicks his tongue. “Just like 5 of them.”

It isn’t true.

He shakes his head. “Maybe 10.”

He watches the lights reflecting in your eyes looking a little more like stardust, magic, he thinks, and the little lies he’s carried dissolve into mist. 

“Maybe all of ‘em.” 

You were love on his brain and Eden’s whole garden. So much he sought for and so much he wanted to give to feel it. And when you spill into laughter, he wanted just a little more than what he had. To reach for the sun and have it pull him back. To strike a note into the night and hear the vibrations in your own chest. 

“Hey.” He says, quieter, softer, so senselessly close. 

You look up, cheeks dusted a shy ruby. “Hmm?”

“Let’s just say… hypothetically.” His hand comes up to brush a stray lock of hair from your face. It’s warm against your skin and damning to your heart. 

 “If I asked really nicely this time. Would you let me kiss you again?” 

He doesn’t know where to look. At your eyes, your cheeks, or your lips. They’re wandering and filled with resolutions. 

“Are you really in love with me?” You ask suddenly.

Martin swallows and wants to laugh, partly nervous and partly in awe of your frankness. 

“If pigs start growing wings and wolves turn vegan then I won’t be in love with you.”

You shrug. “You don’t know man, pigs can go on airplanes so technically–”

“Y/n.” 

You falter, caught between a laugh and a blush.

“What?” Your voice is barely above the night air.

His other hand rises so that both of them cup your face, thumb brushing lightly over your cheek, and because he could never really help himself whenever it came down to this, he connects you both in a kiss.

He never imagined he could do this outside of the corners or empty rooms he would pull you in. To hold you, to feel a response, to be pushed and drawn back in again. And on the rough surface of a tree, of all places. But you are soft and warm in the night that bites at him, and there is no other better choice but to pull you closer. 

What a strange and wonderful thing it is to go from complete foes to helplessly in love in what feels like no time at all, yet the longest it has ever been. So much so that by the time you reach the dorms, the hallways dead empty, an attempt at a goodnight and goodbye turns into another round of Martin pressing you against the wall beside your door to kiss you silly. Only the sharp cough Iroha manages as she peaks out from the front door is enough to finally yank you guys apart. 

Martin can’t say what will come of them, what with this change in dynamic and the parting of the trajectory of their lives overall. But some things he already knows for certain: the piano in his room, the music in his blood, and you. Ever persistent you, standing somewhere in the margins of his much better intentions, made of rage and steel and all the things that can be set alight. 

Truthfully, there was no other way he would have wanted to leave St. Saens than with the girl and her violin he met those many years ago. 

─•──── 𖦤

Martin’s legs won’t stop bouncing. He’s nervous. 

The sun hangs bright over the field, washing the rows of lined white chairs where the class sits shoulder to shoulder, all dressed in the same shade of blue. Behind them, on decorated bleachers, are the familiar faces of family, friends, everyone who has come to watch. 

Martin sits in the frontmost row, first chair from the left, a place reserved for students claiming the highest honors. A gold-threaded slik sash is draped around his neck, Valedictorian embroidered in bold letters beside the school seal. There are cords too, a few hanging at his collarbone all thin and polished. But when he looks over, just three seats away, you’re weighed with more of them than he is. He bites back a smile. The scales have never been even. 

You notice it the moment you meet his gaze, his leg racing like a sonar. When you look back up at him, you offer a small and steady smile. It’s all he needs. The bouncing stops. 

“To deliver the Valedictory Address, may we now call on the Class Valedictorian. Ladies and gentlemen, Martin Edwards.” 

His heart kicks into a hypersonic rush, a wave of pride flooding in from behind it. Beside him, James gives his back a firm pat and nods toward the podium in wordless encouragement. 

So Martin rises and steps forward, carrying his honor with him along with all the years at his back, all the seconds he’s ever stitched together drawn into a single inhale. 

He shakes the hands of teachers and administrators before taking his place on the podium, nerves threading quietly through him. He looks out at the crows, who look back in return, perhaps searching for greatness in the name valedictorian. But Martin thinks this is the day none of them stand higher than the other. 

When he looks at you, and you look back, grinning, golden, and flushed, he staggers on the rush of being alive once more. 

The breath of his countless of dreams, the heft of what he’s done and achieved, and the bright shimmer of sunlight above, is what he takes in before clearing his throat.

Hello, and good day to you all. To the faculty and staff, my fellow graduates, and everyone joining us today. 

Our school bears the name Saint-Saens, right? If you’ve been living under a rock, Camille Saent Saens, though best known as a composer of the Romantic era, was also defined by contradictions. Rigid and romantic. Traditional and so restlessly curious. And in hindsight, that seems fitting. Most of us learned here by clashing. Whether it be against expectations, against each other, against ourselves. Some of the most important lessons I’ve learned came from that. Frictions. 

Because of this, we think talent might save us. That it is all we might really need. To simply do, as precisely and steadily as we could. And I’ve since learned that while ambition does make you better, it can also make you hollow. Most of us didn’t grow here in straight lines. Some grow sideways, backwards, in circles. But music, I’ve always believed, is a connecting force. And when I think about what this school has given me, I would say it gave me love. 

Love for music, love for excellence, love for time. Time to fail without fear, to begin again, and to learn how to listen. 

So, this french guy Saint Saens really valued clarity over excess. And yet, despite its namesake, this school has never extinguished passion. We arrived here convinced of who we were, and we leave with a better understanding of who we are not, as well as a clearer sense of who we can become. 

And with that, I’d like to thank those who have made that possible in my life. To my family, mom, dad, sis, for giving me the space and support to grow and keep growing. To my mentor, Mr. Fischer, for years well lived under your guidance, and for more to come. To my friends who have stood with me through every rise and fall from the beginning, and I to theirs. And to my little drop of sun, I can see she’s got a scowl on her face. Probably from how long this speech is. Thank you for being a woman of force. The push and the pull. For challenging me throughout the years. You make me better. 

Whatever door each of you decides to walk into next, I hope you carry hope with you, and the courage to sit with the uncertainty of it all. I hope you learn how to stand alone, to stand with others, to be selfish and to share, to practice patience. I hope you open yourselves up and take sips of the world.  To live for yourselves, for others, and for something that’ll take you forward. That is what I wish for all of you. 

Go and make your mark. And for the four years well spent, thank you.