Even with free courtship growing fashionable among noblewomen these days, it was hardly something that applied to a family of the Astrid’s standing. Women of distinguished families generally chose their partners the way one selects a fine pair of shoes, and they would not spare a glance at any man beneath their station. If word ever got out that one of them had become entangled with a man unworthy of her position, she would weep and wail day and night in shame and make a great scene of it.

And yet Danyu Astrid loved Sio Lieselotte. Was it even possible to love someone so thoroughly that the stares and gossip of those around you meant nothing? I followed Danyu with curiosity and questions, but her gaze never once landed on me.

Her eyes were always on Sio Lieselotte. That look, filled with absolute devotion. I still do not know why, but something about that gaze unsettled me in a way I could not explain. When those eyes, fixed entirely on Sio, swept past me and turned indifferent, my heart would drop. Why on earth? I put the question to myself, but never found an answer.

The questions grew larger every day. Every time I saw Danyu Astrid, I watched her and tried to find the answer, but it always ended in a question mark. I could have attached some convenient explanation and dismissed the whole thing, but I did not want to. Charlotte Ilse, a fellow alumna from university, scoffed when she saw me like that.

“You don’t know why you’re acting this way? What is this, some naive schoolboy talk all of a sudden? Are you really telling me you don’t know? You like that woman.”

She shook her head as though she were looking at something utterly ridiculous. Ilse had thrown herself into the business world from a young age and had sharper instincts about people than anyone, but this time, I found it hard to believe her.

“Me? That woman? That’s absurd.”

“Are you sure? Why is it absurd? What, is she some eighty-year-old grandmother?”

“That’s not it, but. Anyway. Absolutely not. There’s no way.”

At my firm words, Ilse clicked her tongue.

“You know, the more I watch you, the more I think you’re all cleverness and no sense. You’re missing something basic, you really are.”

Ilse grumbled like that, but I remained certain. The woman in question was someone deeply in love with someone else. There was no way I could love someone who never even looked my way, who did not even know I existed. That was simply a matter of common sense.

“Oh, Professor Werner. It’s my time to use the practice room.”

A light knock at the door snapped me back to my senses. Professor Pfeifer was standing at the practice room door.

“What? Has it already been that long……”

I glanced at the clock in a hurry, and sure enough, the lesson time had long since passed. I had been sitting blankly at the piano, lost in thought, and had not realized how much time had gone by.

My body moved before my head did. I grabbed the sheet music I had prepared for the lesson and was about to spring to my feet when something struck me as wrong. I had come to the practice room for a private lesson, and the student I was supposed to be teaching this hour was Danyu.

Danyu had not come. The conclusion I finally reached left my mind blank. I could not even tell which part of it had shaken me. In truth, it had always been like this. Anything involving Danyu Astrid was always complicated and full of questions, and it never failed to throw me into confusion.

“Professor Werner?”

The sheet music I had been loosely holding slipped from my frozen hands. Professor Pfeifer called my name, looking baffled, as the papers scattered across the floor.

“Ah, I’m sorry. I’ll clear out right away……”

I answered Professor Pfeifer on reflex and bent down toward the sheet music. He watched me with a puzzled look, then swept his eyes around the practice room and let out a sigh, apparently piecing things together. He helped me gather the scattered papers and shook his head.

“Come to think of it, it seems your student didn’t come to class either. You must be worried.”

“Pardon? What do you mean?”

It was not something I could readily make sense of. I tilted my head as I kept picking things up, and this time Professor Pfeifer’s eyes went wide with surprise.

“You haven’t heard yet? There was apparently an accident at the plaza. Something exploded. It seems some of our students got caught up in it. The ones in my class are all right, but I heard that five or six didn’t show up to Professor Arnold’s class.”

This time my mind went completely white. An explosion at the plaza. I forgot about the sheet music and straightened up where I stood. Professor Pfeifer kept moving his mouth in front of me, saying something, but none of it reached my ears. Only Danyu’s voice calling out Astaire echoed at the edge of my hearing.

Her voice became someone’s crying, and then just as quickly turned into a strange, unidentifiable burst of sound. The buzzing in my ears made it impossible to think straight. I pressed my hands over my ears and shook my head, but the sound would not leave.

“Professor Werner!”

Professor Pfeifer grabbed my shoulders and shook them, and the sound tormenting my ears vanished. I could breathe again. I stepped past him and walked out of the practice room. My stumbling steps turned into a quick walk, and at some point broke into a run. It was then that Ilse’s words from long ago surfaced in my mind.

‘You like that woman.’

With Ilse’s voice repeating like a round in the background, I turned a few of the things I loved over in my mouth. A short verse by Rainer found inside a book that smelled of ink, the melody of a Seydel sonata that reached the ear like a whisper, a single armchair by a sunlit window, and the starlight that had once embroidered a night sky I happened to look up at.

Those were the kinds of things I generally loved. Things that calmed my heart just by thinking of them, and brought a quiet smile to my lips. Things that carefully kept my peace intact. She could not be placed on the same line as those peaceful things, by any measure. To me, Danyu Astrid was chaos, and that was plainly the opposite of peace.

Every time I saw her, my heart lurched between cold and hot and ached with it. I would feel intensely irritated by the smallest thing she did, and then feel something close to joy at an even smaller word from her. Every moment spent facing her was like that. The strange feeling that swept through my chest followed no logic and no rules. All I could do was watch my own unruly heart like a runaway foal and let myself be swept along by the surging confusion.

I can barely remember their names now, but I certainly had a few lovers. Most were young women from distinguished families, introduced through family connections. As was typical of romance among young nobles, we wanted peace from each other. In that regard, they were very good partners. They generally carried themselves with the dignity befitting women of their standing, and they were well accustomed to keeping the appropriate distance between people.

I was not passionately in love, but I felt a genuine fondness for them. We went on a few dates, and when the mood struck, we kissed or spent the night together. Even so, through all of it, my heart remained as calm as a still lake. In my entire life, only one person had ever sent ripples across that still lake. Danyu Astrid.

From the moment I realized my peace of mind was crumbling, I resented Danyu Astrid. I resented those gray eyes that looked only at one person, and I resented the flush that rose in her cheeks every time his hand touched her. It grated on me that she was still a child yet swallowed the things she wanted to say to seem grown, and that she swallowed her tears and smiled as though nothing were wrong.

Most irritating of all was her music. Every note that rang from her fingertips carried a whisper of I love you, and so Danyu Astrid’s music was a passionate confession directed at Sio Lieselotte. I had no reason to feel heated about someone else’s love life, and yet I found it deeply disagreeable and struggled to keep my composure.

I had told myself it might be a sense of responsibility as her professor. To have such extraordinary talent and play only for one person. That was a clear waste of it.

I wanted to show that young woman a new world, somehow. I wanted her to step out from one person’s shadow and walk her own path. I rationalized it to myself in those gentlemanly terms and tried to keep a proper distance, but that could not have been the only reason. If it were, I would not have kissed her at the piano that day.