Eight years spent at his side. All that time, I had freely assigned meaning to things about him that had nothing to do with me, and kept expecting things that could only ever end in disappointment. None of his changes had anything to do with me, so why hadn’t I seen that? It must have been my love for him that made everything look that way.

“I’m done with piano, anyway.”

Whenever I play piano, he comes to mind. That is because he was my first. The person who played piano with such beauty. The person who created such sorrowful melodies. The person who taught me piano. All of that was you, and because of that, I knew that as long as piano remained in my life, I would never be able to erase you.

Sio’s eyes went wide with surprise, clearly not having expected me to say I was quitting piano.

“What? But you’re enrolled at Bauer Arts University…”

“I’ll still attend the university. Gentlemen these days prefer educated women, so it will make for a fine credential. You know how it is. All the successful businessmen and politicians take that kind of woman for a wife. And Bauer Arts University, no less. The finest marriage prospect imaginable. The Prime Minister Schaefer’s wife is an alumna, after all. But I won’t be playing piano.”

There had been a time when I wanted to become a musician like him. I wanted to understand him from the closest possible vantage point. I knew that someone ordinary like me could never truly understand a genius like him, and yet I had wished for it all the same.

That was why I had resolved to enroll at Bauer Arts University, where he had graduated. But now that every wish had turned into hollow hope, I no longer had the courage to walk the same path as him.

The future of a woman without a particularly distinguished profession was predictable. Like any woman of noble birth, I would become engaged to someone whose face I barely knew, become his wife, and spend my life devoted to supporting him and raising his children.

“Why do you say it like that? You loved piano. You were different from the ladies who learn it as a simple pastime. I know that.”

“No. I had no interest in piano from the very beginning. It wasn’t the piano I loved. It was you. You already know that. Why are you pretending otherwise now, of all times?”

“So that really was the problem.”

Sio smiled with a troubled look. Whenever I confessed my love to him, he would always make that face and try to soothe me. Every time, the grief would make me burst into tears, but at some point I noticed a flicker of irritation crossing his face, and out of fear that he would pull away from me, I chose to keep my mouth shut instead.

“You were like this when I got my first girlfriend, too. My personal life and teaching you are separate matters.”

“How are they separate? The reason I decided to learn piano in the first place was because of you!”

“You were young then. That wasn’t love. That was admiration.”

“It was always like this. Not once did you try to see how I actually felt. You decided on your own that my feelings were a child’s whim, and you found it tiresome that I kept hovering around you. I knew all of that and still wanted to be near you. Even when it hurt, even when it was hard, I thought that being by your side was enough. If that isn’t love, then what is?”

He kept a measured distance from everything, knowing full well. Accepting just enough, refusing just enough, neither drawing closer nor pulling away, he simply looked at me with a blank, unhurried gaze.

He was an adult, accustomed to calibrating that kind of distance, but I had been a child, and I only knew two things: moving closer and moving away.

“Ha. What does any of it matter now?”

I felt tears threatening to come at any moment.

When I bit down on my lip, Sio reached out a hand, but it never reached me. Just as it always had, his hand lingered briefly in the air before returning to where it had been. Watching that hand draw near and then retreat, like something meant to taunt me, a hollow laugh escaped before I could stop it.

“Please go, teacher. No. You’re not my teacher anymore. I’m not sure what to call you, but I suppose it doesn’t matter. We won’t be seeing each other again.

Please refrain from coming here like this from now on. You and I are no longer teacher and student, and I have no desire to be caught up in rumors about a secret meeting with an engaged man. To you I may still be a runny-nosed little girl, but I am a proper adult woman now, and that kind of rumor would be devastating.”

Sio stared at me.

An adult woman?

He didn’t say it, but his eyes seemed to ask exactly that. His gaze moved over my face in a searching way, then traveled down to my neck, from my neck to my chest, and further still, all the way down to my feet. Heat rose wherever his eyes landed and my face flushed, but when his gaze returned to my face, his expression was blank.

“If I make you uncomfortable, I’ll introduce you to another teacher. Keep playing piano. You have a gift for it.”

I had known that Sio would never try to hold me back. Even so, I had hoped that at least once, my expectations would be wrong. But in the end, just as I had expected, he turned away without trying to stop me. To him, that was all I was. An annoying little girl who hovered around him at all hours.

He was a thoroughly cold-blooded adult, and loving him had made me want to become an adult too. But if being an adult meant staying composed while someone confessed their love to you, then I would rather remain a child forever.

* * *

A week later, the new piano teacher Sio had recommended came to the house. He was said to be a classmate of Sio’s from university and a musician of comparable renown.

To be close enough to Sio that he would ask this person to take over his lessons was a sign of real friendship, but the man’s light-pigmented, loosely curling blond hair was such a stark contrast to Sio’s black hair that I had trouble picturing the two of them standing side by side.

His name was Astaire Werner.

Knowing nothing about music beyond Sio Lieselotte, I found my eyes drawn less to his given name and more to the surname Werner. The Werners were the family that owned the central bank, which held the kingdom’s finances, and there had once been talk of a match between their second son and my older sister. The engagement had fallen through when my sister ran away from home to marry a foreign businessman, but regardless, the family was one I knew well enough.

“I feel terrible about what happened with young Astaire.”

“These things happen. Please don’t trouble yourself over it.”

Listening to my mother’s conversation with him, I learned that the second Werner son who had been considered for my sister was Astaire. My mother, who had felt deeply sorry that the match had been broken off so one-sidedly due to our family’s circumstances, treated him with great care. Thanks to that, my plan to send him away the moment I heard he had come on Sio’s recommendation fell apart entirely.

“Please finish your tea and go. I’ve decided to stop playing piano.”

A private teatime in the salon with a stranger, when the mere sight of a piano was enough to bring me to tears.

I found this arrangement, forced on me by my mother, deeply uncomfortable. That, of course, was a sentiment that applied only to me. Astaire, sitting across from me, seemed entirely unbothered by the unfamiliar woman radiating discomfort, and sat drinking his tea with composed, unhurried ease.

“May I ask why, Miss Astrid? I was asked to come as a favor, so I’m afraid I cannot leave without hearing something that makes sense.”

He set down his teacup with a calm smile. Unlike Sio, who had been a commoner and unpolished in his manners, Astaire’s posture was precise and exact. The teacup settled onto the table without a sound.

“I don’t particularly want to say. But everyone has their reasons, I suppose. I’m sure there have been times when you’ve thought about quitting piano yourself, Mr. Werner.”

“Of course. But I never did quit.”

“May I ask why?”

The question slipped out on reflex, and he gave a small laugh.

“Isn’t that the same question I just asked you?”

Only when Astaire pointed it out did I realize I had repeated his question back to him word for word. My face grew warm with embarrassment.

“Not that it matters much. Then shall we do this? We exchange one story for one story.”

I hesitated for a moment, but nodded. I found myself less curious about why a musician of considerable fame in the capital had decided to walk away from piano, and more curious about why, having made that decision, he had stayed anyway.

“The thought of quitting piano first came to me after I enrolled at Bauer Arts University.”

Astaire continued at an unhurried pace, as though he had already anticipated my answer.

“That was where I met Sio Lieselotte. I had thought I had a fair amount of talent for piano, but, well. There was simply no comparison.”

Sio had been a well-known musician even before enrolling at Bauer Arts University, but with no proper patron, he had rarely appeared before the public. Because of that, Astaire said, it was at the university that he heard Sio play for the first time.

He added that until then he had assumed the rumors about Sio circulating out of small private salons were the exaggerations of audiences, but after witnessing Sio’s performance firsthand, he came to understand that the rumors had actually fallen short of the reality.