I started learning piano at eleven years old, and not for any remarkable reason like a sudden awakening to art or the late discovery of hidden talent.

I played piano for one reason alone: to stay by Sio Lieselotte’s side. He was a man of gentle nature who treated everyone equally, but in the moments he taught me piano, his eyes held only me.

I remember the moment I fell in love. Sunlight was pouring through a window. A melody ringing in my ears. Black hair scattering in the breeze. White fingers dancing across the keys. The moment I saw him playing piano with his eyes closed, I fell in love with him.

At the time, Sio Lieselotte was a young man of twenty. The pianist of the soul, the pride of the kingdom, the genius of the century. People called him things like that, but I called him Sio.

‘Call me Teacher. Or at least Mr. Lieselotte.’

Every time, he would say that and ruffle my hair. I loved the feel of his hand on my head, so I stubbornly kept calling him Sio.

Sio Lieselotte clearly knew how I felt. I was a child who had no idea how to hide her emotions, but the moment I started noticing the troubled smile on his face every time I said I was going to marry Sio when I grew up, I decided to become an adult. I would never let impatience show. That was how mature adults loved, or so they said. I believed it.

He had several lovers. I counted up to five, but stopped after that, so I never knew the exact number. What I did know was that many women passed through his life. Most lasted a month or two. Even the longest never made it past half a year.

The women who had been so helplessly taken with Sio Lieselotte eventually left him for reasons adults understood and I did not. The first time I heard he had a lover, the shock hit me hard enough to cry all day. But the more those separations repeated, the calmer and more confident I became. No matter how many women passed through his life, I was certain I would be the last.

I always wanted to grow up. I ran until my breath burned in my throat, trying to close the distance between us, but that distance never narrowed.

Eleven and twenty.

Thirteen and twenty-two.

Fifteen and twenty-four.

I ran, and he moved away. We were running parallel lines with no end.

Sio Lieselotte’s last lover, Charlotte Ilse, was a beauty with a bold presence and a lovely smile. She was the only daughter of a prominent businessman, and she and Sio had met as university classmates.

A diamond ring sparkled on the fourth finger of the hand she extended to me. A similar ring sparkled on his hand as well. I stared at her blankly, not understanding, then smiled and took her hand.

I don’t remember exactly what I said at that moment.

‘Congratulations on your engagement. You two really suit each other. Teacher, you’re so lucky. How did you manage to get engaged to someone this beautiful?’

I think I spilled out foolish words, something like that.

The day he introduced his fiancée to me was my nineteenth birthday. That day, for the first time, I called him Teacher instead of Sio. I watched his eyes widen in surprise and his fiancée’s face fill with confusion, and then I burst into tears right then and there.

When I was young, I once saw a bright, glossy red apple. I could have bitten into it right then, but I decided to wait. I’ll eat that apple when it’s at its most delicious, I thought. But when I finally bit into it, the apple had long since rotted. I spat it out and never ate an apple again.

Without my knowing, he had been moving through the world. I had walked all this time looking only at his back, and I had missed the countless things in the world he had been looking at.

My nineteenth birthday.

I had finally become the adult I had so desperately wanted to be.

And in the end, I made up my mind to forget him.