At those firm words, Astaire’s gaze shifted past me to Sio, who was leaning against the wall. The moment their eyes met, the puzzlement on Astaire’s face began to harden.

“I’m sorry. I got held up by people for a moment. I didn’t think you would run into someone you knew in the meantime.”

Astaire’s eyes, which had been resting on Sio for a brief moment, moved to the woman who had been sitting at the piano clinging to his arm. Something cool settled into his manner, and the woman’s face went pale, but Astaire paid her no attention and turned his gaze back to me. The composed, easy smile he always wore had already returned to his face.

I tugged at Astaire’s sleeve to escape the uncomfortable air I had more or less brought on myself. Even with the weak pull, Astaire came willingly to my side and wrapped one arm around my shoulders. I heard sharp intakes of breath from the people around us, but my gaze stayed fixed on Sio.

Sio, still stiff, filled my eyes. The slightly off-kilter posture, the neatly kept black hair. He looked exactly as he always had, the Sio Lieselotte I had loved.

And yet he was far away. He hadn’t changed, but the distance between us had grown this wide because my heart had changed. Without my realizing it, I had become someone who could no longer be satisfied with simply staying near him.

“I’ll take you outside, Miss Danyu.”

Astaire guided me with a careful hand. With each step, Sio drew closer. He held my gaze with stubborn persistence, and I didn’t look away. It wasn’t that either of us had anything to say. We simply looked at each other. Eight years passed through that gaze. The air was taut, the tension so thick I couldn’t breathe.

I walked past Sio and out of the salon, and only after he disappeared completely from sight did I let out a long breath. The moment we stepped out of the salon, Astaire lowered the arm from my shoulders and gave my back a light pat. With his touch, the air around us began to move again.

I finally caught my breath and lifted my head. The surroundings were quiet. The small space, where sunlight poured in through a large window, was cluttered in the way of a storeroom where things no longer in use had been piled up. Astaire stepped inside, locked the door, and spread his coat over the dust-covered table.

“This was the only place without people. I’m sorry for bringing you somewhere so untidy. Please sit here for now.”

I hesitated, reluctant to sit on his coat, and Astaire took my arm and helped me up onto the table himself. My face flushed at the hands that lifted me for a moment, but Astaire had already moved past me and was opening the storeroom window.

When the window opened, a brisk wind came in along with a rush of fresh air. The dust stirred and scattered by the wind caught the sunlight and looked like white snowflakes. I reached out a hand to touch the drifting dust, but of course it slipped through my fingers and scattered far away.

‘It looks like snowflakes but it isn’t cold, and it can’t be caught.’

I felt somehow cheated, and a tired laugh escaped me. Astaire had drawn close before I noticed.

“You can cry now. There’s no one here.”

“I’m not going to cry. Do you think I cry every day?”

I said it with a smile, but Astaire simply stood before me with the same expressionless face. Those red eyes that had always read my heart rested on my face. Uneasy at the thought of being read again, I glanced away, and Astaire let out a quiet laugh.

“Miss Danyu has a bad habit. Swallowing tears like that will ruin you from the inside.”

“Wasn’t it a gentleman’s duty to pretend not to notice at times like this?”

Why did that laughing voice make the tears I had been holding back well up? 

I grumbled with displeasure, still avoiding his gaze, but Astaire brushed aside my protest and pulled me into his arms. At the warmth of another person pressing close, the tears that had gathered could no longer hold and began to fall.

“I’m afraid I’m not being a gentleman today.”

Astaire said this as he patted my back gently. At that inexplicable tenderness, the tears poured out in full. Since growing up enough to know better, I had never cried this openly in front of another person, but the embarrassment mattered less than the relief of having someone understand the grief in my heart.

I tried to swallow the sound of my crying and pulled Astaire’s clothes closer. At that moment, the hand patting my back paused briefly.

“I know. I know it’s just a matter of letting go. If I had, we could have stayed as a good teacher and student. There was nothing wrong except that I liked Sio and he didn’t return my feelings. But I can’t make myself do it.”

I buried my face in Astaire’s chest and began to pour out the words I had kept inside. From the story of the first time I met Sio, to the story of him introducing his fiancée on my birthday. As I put the memories into words, the grief welled up and eventually I was sobbing too hard to speak, and the hand that had gone still began to move again.

“Every year that passed, I’d think to myself: it’s not too late. I can still turn back. But even thinking like that, I couldn’t stop. If you weren’t going to return my feelings, you could have at least not been so kind. Looking back, all I have are beautiful memories, and I don’t know what to do with them. Starting was easy. Why is ending so hard? I was completely taken in.”

At some point, I had been playing a piece with no end in sight. At the end of a path my wandering feet had finally found, there was another fork. Which way to go. I wasn’t sure. Today’s me whispers to go left. Tomorrow’s me whispers to go right.

Pushed along by time that flows on regardless, not knowing where I’m headed, I simply walk forward, and forward again. No one knows what waits at the end of this road. But I knew that whatever lay ahead, it was not him.

That was where this piece of music placed its final note. That was the ending I had arrived at.

“Do you feel a little better now?”

As the tears subsided, the embarrassment I had forgotten came creeping back. A woman of nineteen, crying her eyes out in front of a man without a shred of shame, like a child. My mother would have been horrified.

I let go of Astaire’s sleeve, which I had been clutching, and dropped my head. When my hand fell away, Astaire stepped back as well and put some distance between us. The front of his shirt, where I had buried my face, was soaked with tears.

“I’m sorry. Your clothes……”

I didn’t need a mirror to know my face was a mess. I had been wearing makeup when I cried, so it was surely worse than usual. I couldn’t bring myself to lift my head and managed to speak only in a voice thick with crying, and Astaire laughed lightly and said it was fine.

“The clothes can be washed, so don’t worry about it. Though I suppose you could call it the price of ruining my clothes…… there’s something I’d like to ask. You mentioned Sio’s fiancée just now. When you say Sio’s fiancée, do you mean Miss Ilse?”

I wiped my face roughly with my sleeve and lifted my head. Sio’s fiancée, Charlotte Ilse. Astaire, being Sio’s friend, could not possibly be unaware of her. I studied his face to gauge why he would want her name confirmed through me, but I found no particular reason behind that easy smile.

“Yes. That’s right. Miss Charlotte Ilse.”

I nodded with a sour feeling, and Astaire’s face stiffened at once.

“But if that’s the case……”

Astaire swallowed what he had been about to say and furrowed his brow. For someone with a gift for conversation, he looked as though he had lost his words entirely.

After opening and closing his mouth several times, Astaire ran a hand through his hair and crouched down on the floor. He stayed like that for a long moment before finally lifting his head and looking up at me. There was something about that detached gaze that made my chest go cold.

“Miss Danyu. Do you truly want to be free of Sio?”

My eyes went wide at the unexpected question. More than the reason he had asked it, the sweetness of the words themselves made my head swim. I was exhausted, and I was ready to do anything if it meant putting an end to this.

Astaire caught the look on my face, eyes wide and silent, and let out a faint laugh. I couldn’t tell what meaning he took from my silence, but there was something hollow in his laugh.

His gaze had drifted from me to somewhere in the air. Astaire, who had reached out as though trying to catch the white dust that could never be held, slowly rose to his feet and stepped toward me. Before I knew it, he was close enough that his breath could reach me, and my body went rigid.

“Miss Danyu. Would you like to make a wager with me?”

“A wager?”

“Yes. If Miss Danyu wins, I’ll tell you a story you don’t know. It would be a story that leads to a fairytale ending. Young ladies as pure-hearted as Miss Danyu tend to like that kind of ending, don’t they?”

A playful smile crossed Astaire’s face as he said it, one I had never seen on him before.