“Would you write me a piece? You have never once written a dedication piece. I want to receive the honor of being the first as my gift. Oh, of course, if there’s a particular reason you don’t write dedication pieces, then it can’t be helped.”

“No, there’s no particular reason.”

Caught off guard by the unexpected request, I scratched my head in a daze. Just as Danyu said, I had never once written a dedication piece since I began composing. It was quite a different path from ordinary composers, who would dash off dedication pieces for a lover or a friend at the drop of a hat.

Because of that, critics would make a fuss about how there must be some grand reason I didn’t write dedication pieces, but in truth I hadn’t avoided writing them out of any particularly special conviction. It was simply that my affection for people had never run deep enough to write music with someone in mind.

Of course, I had thought at some point that I would write a dedication piece for someone someday. I had a vague notion that when that time came, the person would probably be Danyu or Astaire. 

It wasn’t such a strange thought, given that the two of them were about the only people I could think of deeply enough to write a piece for, with no family and a constantly changing roster of lovers. But then why did Danyu’s request for a dedication piece stir up such a strange feeling in me?

For some reason, there had been quite a few moments today where I fumbled awkwardly in front of Danyu. I was frowning at myself for finding that odd when the sound of knocking rang out again. Since Danyu had already settled herself in the living room, there was only one person it could be, coming here at this hour.

“Oh, he’s a bit early today.”

Danyu seemed to have guessed who was at the door as well, because she pursed her lips and buried herself in the sofa. Her attitude made it clear she had no intention of getting up to answer it herself. Left with no choice, I got up and opened the front door, and sure enough, Astaire was standing there with a stiff expression.

“Sio, is she by any chance here?”

“She’s inside.”

Before he could finish his question, I swung the door wide open and gestured toward the living room with my chin. Astaire gave me an apologetic, awkward smile and slipped past me. His steps as he passed were quite hurried, and I couldn’t help but laugh. This was the same Astaire who had always maintained an air of perfect composure even when walking into practical exams that had every other student trembling back in school. The idea that even someone as unflappable as him had things that made him anxious. It was quite a new discovery.

“Miss Danyu. I was worried when you left like that.”

“I see.”

“It’s gotten very late. Staying here any longer would be an imposition on Sio.”

“I suppose so.”

Astaire had rushed straight to Danyu’s side, and now stood there deflated, like a dog with its tail between its legs. Whether she had no pity for the flustered Astaire who kept glancing at her anxiously, Danyu kept giving him nothing but short answers, stringing him along.

“Why are you so upset?”

A sigh finally escaped Astaire’s lips. His hand was stroking Danyu’s cheek, but her face remained cool.

“The wedding date, the new home, the furniture. I chose all of it on my own, didn’t I?”

“I’m truly sorry, Miss Danyu. I should have made time somehow and done it together with you. Next time, I promise we’ll do it together.”

“No. I fully understand that you’re busy, and I don’t mind doing it alone. That’s not the problem.”

Danyu took hold of the hand Astaire had been using to stroke her cheek and pulled it toward her. The two of them were now close enough that their breath nearly touched, and my head began to throb. Hey, there’s a person right here. I called out the words no one could hear in my mind and leaned against the wall, and Danyu stroked Astaire’s hand and let out a small sigh.

“It’s already been two years since I got engaged to you. And I still don’t know what you like or dislike. I’ve let it go in the past, but this time it’s a wedding. This isn’t a light matter like deciding what to eat or what to buy. Do you actually want to marry me? If you don’t really want to but you’re just going along with it because I do, then.”

“That’s a rather troubling thing to say. Have you already forgotten that I was the one who proposed to you while putting this ring on your finger?”

“That might have been out of a sense of obligation too, now that the engagement has gone on so long.”

“If that were the case, I wouldn’t have been trembling the way I was when I proposed.”

Astaire pressed a light kiss to the ring gleaming on Danyu’s hand. Watching the scene in silence, I went back and forth between thinking I really should excuse myself and feeling annoyed at having to witness this in my own home. It wasn’t as though this was the first or second time I had seen something like this, since Danyu always came here after a fight with Astaire, but the fact that it irritated me every single time said something about just how relentless those two were with their affection.

“The reason I didn’t voice much of an opinion on the wedding preparations was genuinely because I had no preference either way. I’m not a particular person when it comes to things like that to begin with, and I thought that since women tend to have their own dreams about weddings, it would be better to defer to Miss Danyu’s wishes. On top of that, you looked like you were enjoying the preparations, and I didn’t want to take that enjoyment away from you.”

“It’s true that I enjoy the preparations. But I’d still like you to tell me more about what you do and don’t want. Because a wedding is something the two of us are doing together.”

“You’re right. I hadn’t thought that far. That was my oversight. From now on I’ll try to be a little more insistent. In that spirit, I’d very much like to go look at dresses together. That’s three days from now, isn’t it? I’ll keep the time free.”

Astaire’s lips touched Danyu’s forehead and then lifted away. Their eyes as they looked at each other were full of warmth.

“All right, now that that’s settled, would you mind leaving? You’ve gone and ruined a perfectly good evening for me.”

It looked like the display of affection would go on without end if I left them to it, so I called out in a hurry, and Astaire, who had been gazing at Danyu in a daze, snapped back to his senses and gave an awkward laugh. He had clearly forgotten where he was and gotten completely lost in Danyu. 

Astaire had been like that since his school days. A kind of single-minded tenacity, where once he started focusing on something he would pursue it to the very end. He was quite a different sort from me, whose interest had always drifted from one thing to another, never managing to get truly attached to any one thing.

“Sorry about every time.”

“It’s not you who should be sorry, it’s Danyu. You. Next time you come after a fight, I’m not opening the door.”

I shook my head and told the apologetically smiling Astaire it was fine, then shot a look at Danyu, and she subtly averted her eyes and pursed her lips.

“You’ll open it again anyway. In any case, thank you for listening today.”

The same bold attitude as always. Rather than finding it irritating, it struck me as so very like Danyu that a dry laugh slipped out. Perhaps it was precisely because Astaire had fallen in love with a Danyu Astrid like this that he was all the more at her mercy.

“Go on, off with you.”

I hurried to swing the door wide open and waved them out, and just as always, Astaire wrapped his arm around Danyu’s shoulders and left. Astaire reaching out to Danyu, and Danyu accepting his touch, were both familiar sights. Seeing how natural they looked together, the fact that two years had already passed between them felt suddenly real. Like this, three years would pass, then four, and eventually.

“Oh, I’ll be looking forward to that gift.”

Danyu called out just as she was stepping through the door, cutting off the thought that had been forming. I stood there blankly watching her, my train of thought abruptly broken, and Astaire standing beside her tilted his head in puzzlement.

“A gift?”

“Yes. I asked for a wonderful wedding gift.”

Danyu laughed softly, took Astaire by the hand, and disappeared into the distance.

* * *

I sit by a sun-filled window and quietly trace through my memories. It wasn’t that a sudden nostalgia for old memories had welled up in me. Since all music lives within human experience, this kind of reflection was always necessary when I set out to write a piece.

Every time a piece was born, people would praise me as though I had done something extraordinary, but composing was in truth nothing more than the work of transcribing music that already existed onto a page of sheet music. In other words, I am not a creator but an interpreter, or a translator. If neither of those fits, then perhaps a traveler exploring memory would be more accurate.

Accompanied by the dozens, hundreds of sounds circling through my mind, I return to the past at any given moment. Some days I go to an open stretch of coastline, other days to an endless expanse of plains. There are times I observe wild horses galloping powerfully across the grasslands, or stare blankly at a pond rippling in the wind. All of my music was born from such small, unremarkable scenes of the past.

The world is wide and music is plentiful. With so many pieces of music scattered about that I want to render in my own words, I see no need to transcribe onto sheet music any scenes I have no wish to hold. My childhood, which had been like a gutter, is one such example. I had worked hard to keep myself from falling into those memories even by accident, and yet, strangely enough, my memories of Danyu Astrid had come to occupy that peculiar borderline.

—

T/N: not Sio becoming a third wheel in his own home 😂