Her mother held out a red envelope just as she had come up to her room and was changing her clothes. She quickly fastened her buttons and took the envelope. The paper had a stiff, crisp feel to it. There was no postmark from the post office, and no address written on it either, which suggested it had not been delivered by mail.

She carefully broke the wax seal, and inside was a sheet of off-white paper just as thick as the envelope itself. A recommendation letter for the Jubilion main competition. She read the words on the paper and her eyes went wide.

The Jubilion ran in two stages, a preliminary round and a main competition. Only ten participants advanced to the main competition stage held at the royal palace, selected from the hundreds who entered the preliminaries. The venue for the preliminaries, the assigned judges, the designated required pieces. With so many variables at play, even accomplished musicians of considerable renown occasionally fell at the preliminary stage.

Elimination was a disappointment for the musicians themselves, but it was also a great loss for the many citizens of the kingdom who would be deprived of hearing fine music. For that reason, the seven-member Jubilion judging panel recommended the three most promising musicians of the period and exempted them from the preliminaries. The musicians selected for recommendation this year had already been confirmed as Sio Lieselotte, Astaire Werner, and Joel Winkler, which meant there was no reason whatsoever for her to be receiving this invitation.

“I understood that all the recommendations were finalized earlier this year.”

“That’s right. But the person who received a recommendation can transfer the right to someone else.”

Her mother answered calmly in response to her puzzled voice, but the answer did nothing to resolve her confusion.

“But who would give up such a valuable opportunity? If you forfeit the recommendation, you can’t participate in the Jubilion at all.”

The winner of the Jubilion could seek wisdom from the gods. Some had asked how to become wealthy, and others had inquired about knowledge beyond the reach of ordinary people. The gods who had created the world knew everything, and so the Jubilion winners who sought their wisdom had always become as rich or as wise as they desired. And someone was giving up their chance to participate in the Jubilion, where that precious opportunity awaited.

Above all else, the Jubilion was not a common music festival held every year. Missing this one meant waiting another ten years for the next chance to participate, with no guarantee of receiving a recommendation even then. For that reason, every musician who had ever received a recommendation from the judging panel had without exception gone on to compete in the main competition. Those who had been unable to participate due to unavoidable circumstances such as illness or death could be counted on one hand.

Who on earth was foolish enough to turn down a position that everyone coveted? 

Her mother looked at her bewildered face and smiled faintly.

“Astaire won’t be participating in this year’s Jubilion. He said he would transfer his place to you.”

Astaire had withdrawn from the Jubilion. The shocking statement made her jaw drop involuntarily. At the same moment, the note he had left came to mind.

When he first proposed the bet, he had said she would need to surpass him in order to win. But with Astaire not competing, she no longer needed to surpass him. Astaire believed that as long as he was not participating, she would win without fail, and so he had declared her victory.

Her head suddenly filled with noise. If the note Astaire left was sincere, then what did he mean that the prize was already in her hands, and why did he believe so strongly that she would win? 

No, more than that, why had Astaire chosen to withdraw in the first place?

But before any of that, there was a more immediate matter to address. The invitation letter now in her hands. She pressed a hand to her aching head and shook it.

“But regardless of Mr. Astaire’s wishes, I have no standing for this. I have never once performed in front of an audience, and I am not someone who deserves a recommendation by any measure.”

The fact that a recommended musician transferred their right to someone else did not mean just anyone could enter the main competition. The judging panel carefully evaluated the qualifications of the person receiving the transfer before approving it, and she fell short in several respects. She had never performed publicly and had never received an objective assessment of her abilities, and she had only just come of age, with neither the maturity nor the reputation to speak of. What aspect of her had the judging panel seen fit to approve?

“You are the longest-standing student of Sio Lieselotte, the foremost musician in the kingdom. That information was presented to the judging panel, and taking it into consideration, they ultimately approved Astaire’s wishes.”

“You were on the judging panel, weren’t you, Mother?”

Her mother’s next words prompted the sudden thought that she might be a member of the judging panel. Her mother’s influence in the kingdom’s arts world was considerable, and someone of that standing was more than qualified to serve as a Jubilion judge. 

She had never paid any attention to what her mother did outside the home, and so she had never even entertained the simple possibility that her mother might be a Jubilion judge. She looked at her mother with hollow eyes, and her mother smiled with her usual elegance and gave a light wave of her hand.

“Don’t look at me like that. I did want the open spot to go to you, and it’s true that my influence played a part in the approval. But I did it because I believed you were qualified. The Jubilion is a deeply sacred occasion, and personal interest has no place in it. I know that better than anyone. And above all, the decision to withdraw from the Jubilion was entirely Astaire’s own. My influence had no part in that whatsoever. Even if I had tried, the Werner family is not the sort to be pushed around so easily. If I had wanted to recommend you out of personal interest, I would have gone after young Winkler’s spot instead.”

Her mother’s composed explanation left her with nothing to say. Knowing her mother’s usual rational and fair-minded nature, she could accept that it had not been a decision driven heavily by personal interest. What she could not understand was Astaire’s decision. She knew there was little point in complaining to her mother, but she made a miserable face and ran a hand through her hair.

“Why did Mr. Astaire say he wouldn’t compete? He told me winning the Jubilion meant everything to him. So why, all of a sudden.”

“Well. I don’t know the full details myself, but he said he no longer had any need to seek wisdom from the gods. So he thought it was only right for those who needed it more to have the opportunity.”

What had Astaire intended to ask the gods? And why had that question become unnecessary? She bit down on her lip in confusion, and her mother smiled and spoke.

“He said he won’t be competing, but he will come to watch the main competition. So you’ll need to give it everything you have. You can’t disappoint Astaire, who gave up his place for you. And you can’t disappoint this mother of yours either, who pushed the judges insisting your abilities were beyond question.”

The Jubilion main competition. Astaire would be there. Then everything would be resolved that day. Why Astaire had withdrawn from the Jubilion, what the note he left her meant, and the secret about Sio that she did not yet know. All of it.

She played piano every day as she waited for that day to come. Even in the moments she was playing, countless questions wrapped around her, but the notes ringing out from her fingertips kept her heart at ease. In the moments she was making music, not a single worry could touch her. The emotions she had been unable to control burned away completely along the piano’s melody and scattered into the air.

One day, two days, three days. As time passed, she forgot how to count the days. Only the familiar cycle of the sun rising and setting moved past her in an unfamiliar way, and during that time, news arrived one after another that the participants for the Jubilion main competition had been decided.

At first she had been so anxious about the pressure of such a significant competition that she didn’t know what to do with herself, but strangely, the closer the Jubilion drew, the calmer she became. At some point, a certainty had taken root inside her that she would perform well at the Jubilion.

The starting point of that certainty was Astaire, who had believed in her victory with an almost unsettling conviction. Astaire had never lied to her, at the very least, and he had told her that if she found her sound, she would win the Jubilion. She decided to trust those words. And just like that, a sense of peace settled over her heart. Thanks to that, she was able to wait for the Jubilion with a calm that left the people around her puzzled.

The Jubilion began in the evening after sunset, but a maid who fussed that there was so much to prepare before taking the stage had her up and moving about since early morning. She grumbled that she was only going to play piano and couldn’t understand what there was to prepare from the crack of dawn, but her mother seemed to share the maid’s view and did little to rein her in. As a result, she spent the morning in a blur, rubbing sleep from her eyes as she climbed in and out of the bathtub and submitted to one massage after another.

The dress she would wear on stage was one she had chosen together with her mother. It was a deep navy tank-top dress. The maid who saw her in it was thoroughly pleased, remarking that it showed off the line of her neck and collarbone beautifully. She herself was quite fond of it as well.