I glanced away from my reflection on the piano and looked toward the table, where a golden box sat alone. I rose from my seat and picked it up. It was the box said to hold the key that only the winner of the Jubilion could obtain. With this key, a person could open the door to the birthing chamber where humans meet the divine.

My grip on the box tightened. I threw on the coat hanging by the entrance, shoved the box into my pocket, and rushed out of the salon. As I left the house, the maid who had witnessed something similar before called out my name in alarm. But this time, too, I did not stop.

My destination was already set. I walked briskly toward the person I had to see. I held the key, but the one I needed to face was not a god. My heart was something only I could resolve, beyond even divine wisdom.

My feet carried me along a familiar path until I stood before the blue gate I had once passed through like it was my own home. My hand did not hesitate as I knocked. At the light tap, the door drifted open. It had never been locked to begin with, and somehow that filled me with unease. I stepped inside in a hurry, but the scene beyond the door stopped me in my tracks.

Sunlight poured through the window. Sio lay slumped against the sofa with his eyes closed. The light settled on his face the way it had on the day I fell in love. I slowly approached and reached out a pale hand toward him.

“Sio.”

His tightly shut eyes opened, slowly. His forest-green eyes curved in a languid arc, without a trace of surprise.

“Was the door open?”

He lay sprawled across the sofa, too spent to have even locked it, and rough stubble had grown along his jaw. I could not be certain, but I had the feeling he had been rooted to that spot since the night of the Jubilion. I could not help the pity that crept into my eyes. At that look, Sio let out a small laugh.

“Sweet of you. Still worrying about me?”

There was no sarcasm in his voice. He lay there, smiling, and lifted my hand away from his face.

“I’m sorry about that day. I wasn’t in my right mind, but that’s no excuse. You don’t have to forgive me. I understand.”

Sio seemed to think I had come all this way to reproach him, but that was not why I stood before him. I had come for something a little more constructive.

“I’m not here to blame you. I just have something to give you. It feels like this should go to you, not me.”

I reached into my pocket and held the golden box out to him. I offered no explanation, but Sio knew what it was. Hostility flashed in his eyes in an instant.

“Is this pity? We played on that stage fair and square, and you won. I accepted the result. I may look pathetic right now, but don’t make a mockery of the part of me that recognized your music.”

“It doesn’t matter how you feel about it. I’m going to do what I want now.”

In the past, that look in his eyes would have made me shrink back, but not anymore. I curved my eyes gently and pressed the box into his hand.

Sio’s eyes went wide. Whether his surprise came from my smile or from the box now in his hand, I could not tell. But either would do. I had come here for an ending, or perhaps a beginning.

“You know, I only just realized it. I never once confessed my feelings to you with my whole heart. I always kept one foot out the door, let the words fall from my lips lightly, and then resented you for not believing me. So today I want to try. A real confession.”

At the word confession, Sio blinked. Looking at his dazed face, like someone who had just heard the last thing they expected, I reached out and quietly laid my hand over my quietly thudding chest. I felt my heartbeat beneath my fingertips.

When had it happened, I wondered. When had the red heart that once fluttered with the thrill of love turned to ash?

I had believed it was you who let my love wither, but the chance to turn that tragedy into something else had been mine to take as well. I stroked Sio’s dark hair as he sat frozen in surprise, and slowly closed my eyes.

“I think I was afraid. If a confession given in earnest got rejected, I would never be able to stay by your side. But that was what I should have done. Even if I got rejected and hurt, I should have spoken seriously. I was the one who started it, so I should be the one to end it.”

There was a time I thought adults were remarkable people. I believed that once I grew up, everything would become clear and easy, and I waited for my childhood years to pass. It is too late now for such words to serve as any excuse, but the girl I was then was both innocent and ignorant. 

I left everything to Sio, stood one step back, and watched his face with the detachment of a stranger, and still thought that was perfectly natural. I wrapped my own immaturity in the word innocence, trusting that Sio would somehow bring this love to its conclusion. That immature love was quick to feel its own anxiety and fear, but blind to the hesitation of the other person.

I had longing, that much was clear. But it was not a longing for a person. It was a longing for the vague, undefined maturity I called adulthood. I chalked everything I could not understand up to my own youth and let my imagination roam freely over a world I had not yet reached, but the tomorrow I finally stepped into was not so different from yesterday.

Now I know. In the vast universe that is life, the unknown has no end, and every person is simply a traveler who keeps pressing forward into it. And so even you, right now, find everything uncertain and difficult.

I opened my eyes and looked at the man before me. A man who was frightened and lost, perhaps even more fragile than I was.

“I loved the serious Sio at the piano. The focus that transformed you the moment your hands touched the keys, the sensitivity that pulled you instantly into some deep, uncharted place. All of it. I clearly loved your music, but not because the music was beautiful. It was because you were the one who made it.”

It had started with music, without question. I had admired him for possessing a sound found nowhere else in the world, and he had captivated me because he held an unknown I did not have. But that was not all there was to him.

“At first, you were just a wonderful teacher who played the piano beautifully. But soon I came to love the warmth in your voice when you said my name. The way your face softened in front of me more than it did with anyone else. The smile that listened seriously to everything I chattered on about without end. The clumsy hand that stroked my hair when you tried to comfort me while I cried, and the way you didn’t know what to do with yourself when you saw me hurt. The Sio Lieselotte who sometimes crumpled sheet music in frustration and sank endlessly into the depths of his own melancholy. That is the Sio I loved.”

I held him close, with all the sincerity I had. Even in his exhausted state, the scent of the man I had loved in my youth still clung to him, unchanged.

“You once said that the Sio Lieselotte I loved must be a fantastical man who plays the piano beautifully. You were right. The Sio who remains inside me is still a fantastical man. But not because I locked you inside a fantasy I built for myself. It is because the real Sio is a person as beautiful as a fantasy. You are not pathetic. The Sio I see right now shines just as brightly as the day we first met.”

I held the scent close for a moment longer, then took one step back from him.

Looking back, my years as a minor were a memory of someone. I still do not know what it was he had been trying to protect in those days, but even so, he still shone. That light, I knew, would never go out.

“Meeting you made my childhood beautiful. There were tears sometimes, but there were more days filled with laughter. They were happy, joyful days. Every emotion I know about this world is something I learned from you, and so my entire childhood is you. Thank you. For bringing me this far. Without you, I would never have found this beautiful world. So this time, I want to give something to you.”

May this feeling, which never once reached you across these past eight years, reach you now, whole and complete. May this story, which had been circling in place, finally move forward.

“I truly, deeply liked you, Sio.”

I opened my mouth with everything I had. It was my sincerity, brought to me by my music.

At last, a smile appeared on Sio’s face as he stared at me in a daze. A smile like the midsummer sun. And I finally understood that my true feelings had reached him.

Sio opened his mouth and said something, but whatever his answer was, it did not matter. This was a portrait of my past. My light, and what had once been my future. A farewell to the person who had shaped one entire axis of my life.

Farewell, farewell.

At the beginning of the end, everything flows toward the future.

I made up my mind to forget him.