Even as her frown deepened with every word he said, Astaire watched her face openly and stepped back from her with complete composure. She had been about to say something to him, but before her mouth could open, Astaire called out to her with a smile.

“Oh, and Miss Danyu! You look absolutely beautiful today. That was actually what I wanted to say first.”

The light filling the corridor made Astaire’s smile shine, and his pale hair gleamed. She stood and watched, forgetting entirely what she had been about to say. Astaire had already turned and disappeared into the distance, but his face and voice still lingered around her.

“Let’s go.”

Sio’s hand came to rest on her shoulder. The cool touch of it swept away the vision of Astaire that had been hovering around her. She nodded, ducking her head to hide the warmth that had risen to her face for some reason. The loosely pinned hair came undone a little because of it, but she couldn’t bring herself to look up.

She kept her eyes on the ground as she walked, and before long they reached the chapel entrance. Another attendant standing at the chapel door looked at Sio’s and her invitations and guided them to a different entrance. They rounded the side of the chapel to a small door, pushed it open, and stepped inside. The stares of people already gathered flew toward them. 

Some were faces she recognized from the salon, others she was seeing for the first time, but they were alike in one regard: every one of them looked at her with hostility.

“Are you nervous? Your shoulders are stiff.”

Sio must have noticed the strange looks people were giving them, because he deliberately pulled her shoulder close and whispered. The breath that grazed her ear was close enough to startle her, but she could guess what kind of impression he was trying to create for the people around them, so she didn’t pull away from his touch. He wanted to show the judges and the other participants that she was a student he had personally acknowledged. She eased herself slightly out of his hold, keeping a comfortable distance, and gave a small shake of her head.

“I’m not nervous. It’s just unfamiliar, being in a place like this for the first time. There are a lot of people I’ve never seen before.”

“That makes sense. Well, they’re all fairly well-known people.”

Sio nodded as though he understood and began explaining the people seated around them one by one. Their names, their performance styles, what the public thought of them. With each thing he told her, the unease of being in an unfamiliar environment eased a little.

As she stood there talking with Sio, keeping up a reasonably friendly smile, one of the participants who had been watching them cautiously made his way over. She recognized his face. Joel Winkler. The man who had put on a remarkable display of rapid playing at the salon.

“Hello, Mr. Lieselotte. And this must be that Miss Astrid?”

The intent behind Winkler’s use of “that Miss Astrid” was easy enough to read. The look that swept over her with something close to contempt, and the odd curl at the corner of his lips. He looked like a man who could barely contain his desire to mock her, a person who had come to this stage on the strength of her mother’s name, Sio’s name, and Astaire’s concession.

“We’re all very much looking forward to it. To what kind of performance Miss Astrid will deliver, that is. You are such a remarkably veiled figure that those of us humble musicians could never dare to imagine.”

Winkler spoke in a voice that still carried its sarcastic edge and glanced around the room, and the other participants who caught his eye let out quiet snickers. There were many ways to respond to hostility that made no effort to hide itself. Firing back with sharp words, or ignoring it entirely. But neither of those was the aristocratic way.

She had described herself as a child who couldn’t hide her emotions, but she was not so young as to fall for a provocation like this. The right response to something like this was simply to show that his words had no effect on her whatsoever.

“Thank you. I do hope I can live up to those expectations.”

She smiled brightly and said it, and Winkler’s self-satisfied expression crumpled in an instant. He couldn’t very well pick a fight by claiming she had taken his twisted words at face value, so he must have been seething inside. She kept a steadfast, guileless smile on her face as she watched his complexion darken to a deep reddish-purple.

Winkler didn’t give up there and took several more jabs at her, but each time she smiled and thanked him as though she hadn’t noticed a thing. Unable to find anything more to say against a reaction that gave him nothing to fight back against, Winkler sputtered out a few incoherent words and finally turned around and went back to his seat. He sat there fuming and fidgeting, clearly furious that things hadn’t gone the way he wanted.

“You don’t have to engage with every one of them.”

Sio had been watching the exchange from the side and let out a quiet sigh. She shrugged and picked up a drink from a tray set in the corner of the waiting area.

“Well, I have to engage a little. From their perspective, it’s a natural reaction. The fact is, I did get pushed in here through connections.”

In truth, the hostility the other participants directed at her was more or less inevitable. To those who had fought their way through a grueling preliminary round full of variables, or those whose accumulated reputation had earned them one of the rare recommendation spots, she was nothing but a stranger who had dropped out of the sky. She had effectively gotten a free ride without putting in the work, and she knew the criticism that came with that was hers to bear.

Of course, understanding it in her head and actually facing that hostility in person were entirely different things, and she couldn’t help feeling put out. But she knew her own position well. By any objective measure, she was not someone who deserved a recommendation to the Jubilion main competition. Someone like that had been treated as an equal overnight, so Winkler’s resentment was only natural.

That said, she had the confidence that even if she had gone through the proper preliminary route, she would have made it to the main competition. It was a confidence she couldn’t have imagined even a few months ago. But confidence like this couldn’t be proven with words. Everything could only be demonstrated through her music, on that stage.

“I just want to get up there and show them quickly.”

She looked past the other participants toward the door that led to the stage. A red curtain hung across it. Through the narrow gap where it parted slightly, she could see the audience filling the seats and the piano sitting alone on the stage. Her heart beat at the sound of the audience murmuring, and all those sounds blended together into music. That music alone made this place feel like the most familiar space in the world to her. The unfamiliar faces, the unavoidable tension, all of it faded and blurred into that music.

“You might actually win this.”

Sio said it with a smile, looking at her as she stared absently through the gap in the curtain. She turned her gaze to him and found that Sio had at some point leaned back in his chair and was looking down at his own hands. There was something precarious about the sight of him. She leaned forward to look at him more closely, struck by the odd feeling, and just then her mother came over to them.

“Are your preparations in order?”

It was a more formal tone than usual. That was her mother’s way of saying she would treat her not as a daughter but as one of the participants. She straightened up and said yes, and behind her mother, a distinguished-looking gentleman walked over.

“Miss Danyu. I have heard a great deal about you. I am Matthias Schuster, the head of the judging panel. I am very much looking forward to your performance.”

The words were similar to Winkler’s, but unlike his, they carried a genuine anticipation for her performance. Mr. Schuster went on to say he had heard much about her through her mother and Sio, and that he hoped she would be the dark horse of this year’s Jubilion. The pure curiosity and passion for music that showed on his face as he spoke drew a smile to her lips without her realizing it.

She was deep in conversation with him, finding him surprisingly easy to talk to, when the bells she had heard outside the chapel rang again. Two times. At the sound, a look of seriousness settled over Mr. Schuster’s face and the faces of the participants seated around the room.

“That is the signal for everyone to take their positions. We will head to the judges’ seats now.”

Not long after Mr. Schuster and her mother left, the bell rang again. Once. It was the signal that the Jubilion had begun. The murmuring audience fell silent, and so did the waiting area where participants had been whispering among themselves.

“So it begins.”

She murmured quietly and looked out at the now-silent audience. She was watching the faces of people seated with expressions just as tense as the participants’, when the voice of the emcee reached her ears.

“All participants, please remain in your waiting positions. In the order indicated on the Jubilion main competition invitations distributed in advance, Mr. Niklas Stein will take the stage first.”

The moment the emcee finished speaking, the participants began murmuring and checking their invitations. The number 9 was written on hers. It was customary for those closest to being favorites to be placed later in the order, so by convention she should have been first. However, since she had taken Astaire’s spot, she had been assigned his performance order. She glanced over at Sio’s invitation and saw, as expected, the number 10.