Losing the ability to move his hands. For a musician, those words meant death. The shock left her mind completely blank. A flood of information poured in all at once and drifted through her head without settling into any order. The disorientation turned her stomach, and she felt on the verge of being sick. Astaire watched her clutch her head in confusion and continued speaking.

“Sio intended to win the Jubilion and seek wisdom from the gods. About a way for him to continue making music. That is why he got engaged to Miss Ilse.”

The words offered no logical connection she could readily grasp, and her already overwhelmed mind threatened to give out entirely. She frowned and raised a hand to stop Astaire.

“What does the Jubilion have to do with an engagement?”

Astaire made a strange expression at her frown. It was the same expression he had worn when she told him she didn’t remember meeting him at the university practical exam.

“Miss Danyu. Think carefully about who was invited here today. The audience, the judges, the participants, they were all of noble birth, weren’t they? Every single one of them, except for Sio.”

Astaire opened his mouth with an expression that was neither quite crying nor smiling. The words came out of him very slowly, like someone forcing himself to say something he would rather not.

“The Jubilion is a sacred competition with roots going back to ancient times. To participate, qualifications beyond skill alone matter greatly. Social standing is one of them. Sio chose engagement as his way of clearing that barrier. Under an old law of the kingdom, the betrothed of a noble is to be treated as holding the same standing as that noble. It is a workaround that commoner-born musicians have sometimes used to enter the Jubilion. Miss Ilse also happened to need a fiancé for an inheritance matter, so their interests aligned well. Once the Jubilion ended and Miss Ilse’s inheritance matter was resolved, they planned to dissolve the engagement naturally.”

Her mind absorbed his words at the same slow pace they left his mouth. She blinked blankly and tried to make sense of what Astaire had said. Sio, engagement, workaround, dissolution. A handful of words passed through her mind, and the moment the scattered pieces of the puzzle clicked into place, her clouded eyes snapped open.

Astaire, who had been watching her eyes find their focus again, smiled with a gentle curve of his eyes. He reached out and carefully wiped the tears from her face, then guided her body to face the direction he had been looking before their eyes met.

“He went that way. Walk a little and you’ll find a small pond. He’s probably there. I need to go deal with the Jubilion, which Sio has turned upside down. Now go, go to Sio.”

The direction Astaire pointed was thick with tall trees. Beyond this small forest wrapped around the chapel, Sio was there. She knew it, and yet her feet would not move easily.

She had things she wanted to say to Sio. Words she had thought she could bring out once the emotions that had once pulled her into despair all disappeared along with the music, words she had wanted so badly to say with a smile this time that she had sat in front of a mirror and practiced them over and over. Those words had certainly existed. But her mind had gone dry and white, and not a single one of them remained. 

What was it she wanted to say to Sio right now?

It was Astaire who nudged her out of her hesitation. He gave her a light push on the back and sent her forward. At that touch, her frozen feet began to move. With each dazed step she took, the low-growing grass brushed against her feet. The strange sensation tickling her bare skin brought her back to herself.

She turned her head over her shoulder and looked at Astaire, standing there alone. He had been still, but when their eyes met he smiled slightly and waved his hand.

“Are you going to run away again?”

At those words, Astaire’s hand stopped its side-to-side wave. He gave no answer despite her persistent gaze. His hand, which had been suspended in the air, simply fell limply to his side. She turned and walked toward him. At the suddenly shortened distance between them, the uncertain smile Astaire had been holding completely fell away.

She looked quietly at his face and reached up to her own hair. She felt around and pulled out the pin holding her hair in place, and the hair she had pinned up came tumbling down in an instant. Astaire’s eyes widened as he watched her hair fall past her shoulders. The sight of those wide, uncomprehending eyes drew a laugh out of her without her meaning to.

“I’ll leave this with Mr. Astaire.”

She held the pin out to Astaire. The amber jewel in the shape of a flower attached to the pin caught the moonlight and glimmered. Astaire stared blankly at her hand and blinked. She placed the pin in his hand as he stood there motionless and added her request.

“I’ll come back for it later, so you can’t disappear like before. Not under any circumstances.”

It was a forced sort of request, but she felt that doing this was the only way she could be sure of finding Astaire when she returned. Astaire looked at the pin for a moment, then closed his fist tightly around it. His mouth never opened, but she took it as a yes and turned to go.

“Miss Danyu.”

Just as she stepped forward and began to walk away, Astaire’s voice came from behind her. It was close, right above her head, and she tried to turn around, but Astaire caught her arm and stopped her. She tilted her head in puzzlement, and in that moment Astaire’s hand touched her fallen hair. The feel of a hand moving through her hair was so unfamiliar that her body flinched before she could stop it.

“I will wait. Until you come to find me.”

She turned her head and looked at Astaire. His lips touched the red hair caught between his fingertips and then pulled away. It was a fleeting, light kiss, but her face flushed as though those lips had touched her own. Astaire smiled a teasing smile at her reddened face and gave her another push.

“Go on, Miss Danyu.”

Unable to bring herself to look at Astaire, she ducked her head and walked into the trees.

A cool breeze touched her face as she walked quickly through them. It gradually settled the heat in her face and the noise in her head. As the pond visible in the distance drew closer, she slowly recovered her composure, and by the time she finally spotted Sio standing at the edge of the pond, she had grown calm enough to speak to him the way she normally would.

“Sio. Is your hand all right?”

Her voice came out steady because of it. She was deeply grateful for that. She had no desire to show him a flustered face in front of Sio, who must be more shaken than anyone. Even if the composure she showed was nothing more than a performance, she was satisfied.

Sio held his visibly trembling right hand with his left. It seemed to have eased somewhat since he had pulled free of her and walked away, but the trembling in his hand was still severe. There must have been undisguised pity in the gaze she fixed on his hand, because Sio’s brow furrowed. She did her best to ignore his displeasure and wrapped her hands around his trembling one. Slowly, little by little, the trembling began to subside.

“Why didn’t you tell me that your hand had gotten like this?”

“What would be left of me if music were gone?”

Sio threw a question back instead of answering. She opened her mouth to respond, but Sio gave the answer himself before she could.

“Nothing. Without music, I’m nothing. So how could I have said it? That my hands are dying. That music will soon be gone from me.”

He pulled free of her grip on his hand and held up his violently trembling hand for her to see. A hand that moved against its owner’s will was, without question, a disturbing sight. And for that hand to belong to Sio. She couldn’t believe it even seeing it with her own eyes. She covered her face with both hands to block out the sight she could no longer bear to look at.

“Why would you say that? Sio is still Sio even without music. There are so many good people around you. People who care for you and love you deeply.”

“Love?”

Sio cut in before she could finish. It was not a question directed at her. It was closer to self-mockery aimed at himself. A hollow laugh reached her ears.

“Come to think of it, you always used that word. Love. I always wondered. What exactly it is you mean when you say love.”

His voice was colder and flatter than usual, and the hands covering her face were seized and held. Sio pinned both her hands and pressed his weight into her. She stumbled backward without understanding what was happening, and finally buckled under the weight and fell straight to the ground. The rough texture of grass met the more exposed skin of her back, and at the same moment a heavy weight came down on top of her. It was Sio.

She had a bad feeling about this. She struggled to get out of the situation somehow, but Sio pressed down on her arms and stopped her. The force pinning her body down sent a wave of fear through her. She looked up at Sio with trembling eyes, but the eyes that met hers were blank.

“Why, why are you doing this?”