Mio Diario (Epilogue)

November 15th

I never told him about Sairenji.

After he visited her in the hospital, I went the following day. Not during the class visit—that would have been too obvious. I went alone, after school, when no one would see.

She was surprised to see me. Who wouldn't be? The delinquent transfer student, the ice queen, standing awkwardly in her hospital room with a small box of those European cookies from Sunrise Mart.

"I didn't expect visitors," she said, gesturing to the chair beside her bed with a smile that held no judgment.

I remained standing. "I'm not here to visit. I'm here to ask you something."

Her eyes were too perceptive, too knowing. As if she could see right through my carefully constructed armor to the desperation beneath.

"It's about Shouma, isn't it?"

I still don't know how she knew. Was I that transparent? Have I become so weak, so readable?

"He needs you," I said instead of answering. "The club needs you."

She studied me for a long, uncomfortable moment. "And what about you, Minazuki-san? What do you need?"

The question caught me off guard. No one asks what I need. Not my parents, not my teachers, not my classmates. They assume I need discipline, or guidance, or punishment. Never has anyone simply... asked.

"That's irrelevant," I replied, my voice sharper than I intended.

"I don't think it is," she said gently. "I think Shouma needs you as much as you need him."

"You don't know anything about me."

"I know you're here, asking for my help to save something he cares about. I know that's not the action of someone who feels nothing."

I wanted to walk out then. To slam the door and never look back. To retreat behind my walls and my ice and my carefully constructed isolation.

Instead, I bowed my head. I, Minazuki Serena, who hasn't bowed to anyone since arriving in Japan, bent at the waist and asked—no, begged—for her help.

"Please! Don't let him fail!"

I'm still not sure why I did it. Why his happiness suddenly mattered more than my pride. Why the thought of his disappointed face became unbearable in a way that my own pain never was.

What is happening to me?

November 18th

Today, Shouma played piano for me.

Just for me. No audience, no requirements, no expectations—just the two of us in the Old Music Room as evening fell.

His technique was terrible, of course. Rusty and hesitant, full of missed notes and fumbled transitions. The piano itself was a disaster, out of tune from years of neglect. By all objective measures, it was a mediocre performance at best.

And yet.

When he played from his heart, without looking at the keys, without worrying about perfection... Dio mio, it was like hearing music for the first time. Raw and honest and so achingly pure it made my chest hurt.

I've spent my entire life surrounded by technical perfection. My mother, Lucie, the endless parade of "prodigies" who graced our home. I know what flawless execution sounds like.

It sounds like nothing. Like emptiness wrapped in crystal and gold.

Shouma's imperfect playing contained more truth than all my mother's perfect performances combined. There was life in every mistake, meaning in every hesitation.

I sang with him. Not because he asked, but because I couldn't help it. His music called to mine, and for once, I didn't silence it.

He didn't look at me. I didn't look at him. And somehow, in that absence of visual connection, we found something deeper.

I called him "la mia piccola ombra curiosa" afterward.

My little curious shadow.

Because that's what he's been all this time, isn't he? Following me, watching me, seeing me when I was desperately trying to remain invisible. And now I've let him glimpse what's beneath the ice, beneath the anger.

I'm terrified.

November 19th

Practice at the mansion begins in nine hours, and I'm still awake writing in this stupido diary.

I never told him that I was the one who sought him out that day in the Old Music Room.

When Shouma walked out of class, eyes hollow and movements stiff like a marionette with cut strings, I followed him. Not because Kanzaki suggested it—though that's what I told Shouma later, after I practically begged Kanzaki to be my alibi. I followed because I couldn't bear the emptiness in his eyes. It reminded me too much of what I see in the mirror.

I watched him break—watched the mask finally shatter and reveal the raw wound beneath—and almost walked away. His pain was too familiar, too close to my own. Too dangerous to witness.

But I couldn't. Because no one walked away when I was breaking. No one stayed to see my collapse. And in that moment, I hated the thought of him suffering alone more than I feared my own vulnerability.

Che ironia. Me, Minazuki Serena, the ice queen, the untouchable delinquent, hanging around school corridors to make sure a boy I claimed to despise wasn't falling apart.

Becoming the very thing I ridiculed—a savior complex wrapped in a uniform, thinking I could somehow "fix" another person when I can't even fix myself.

Patetico.

But there's something I've never told anyone, not even this diary.

The reason I was sent to Japan. The "scene" I mentioned to Shouma, sanitized into something vague and abstract.

The truth is, I nearly killed a girl.

Her name was Elisabetta Ricci. She was Lucie's friend, a fellow soprano in the conservatory choir. She had perfect pitch, perfect technique, perfect manners. Everything my mother wanted me to be.

After a recital where my mother had spent thirty minutes criticizing my phrasing while praising Lucie and Elisabetta's "control" and "discipline," I overheard them laughing in the corridor.

"Poor Serena," Elisabetta said, her voice dripping with false sympathy. "Always trying so hard, always falling short."

"Not everyone can be blessed with natural talent," Lucie replied. "Mama says she's too emotional, too undisciplined."

Elisabeth laughed. "Like a wild animal trying to sing opera. What a waste of the Minazuki name."

I saw red. Literally red, as if a crimson veil had dropped over my vision.

I don't remember consciously deciding to attack her. One moment I was listening, the next my hands were around her throat and she was on the ground, eyes bulging, face turning purple as I squeezed with every ounce of rage and humiliation I'd suppressed for years.

It took three people to pull me off her. She spent two days in the hospital. My parents spent three days in closed-door meetings with the conservatory board, the Ricci family's lawyers, and various officials whose job it was to make scandals disappear.

The result was my "exile" to Japan. A convenient solution that removed the problem (me) while allowing my mother's career and Lucie's promising future to continue undisturbed.

Somewhere in Italy, Elisabetta Ricci still sings with her perfect technique and dead eyes. Sometimes I wonder if she ever thinks about the moment her voice nearly stopped forever.

I wonder if Shouma would look at me the same way if he knew what I'm truly capable of. If he knew the darkness that lives inside me, alongside the music he finds so beautiful.

Would he still play for me then?

The Cultural Festival is in six days. Six days to prepare, to practice, to somehow transform four losers into a cohesive musical unit capable of winning over an audience of discerning cultural elites.

But that's not what keeps me awake tonight.

What keeps me awake is the realization that has been creeping up on me for weeks, the truth I've been trying desperately to deny:

Credo di essermi innamorata di Kagami Shouma.

I think I'm falling in love with him.

He’s not handsome, though he is, in that understated Japanese way that's so different from Italian boys with their loud voices and expansive gestures.

He didn’t save me or anything heroic like that, because he didn't—if anything, I saved him.

He doesn’t even see me as a special prize anymore, so I can’t string him along like I did with other boys back in Italia.

But when he plays, when he truly plays from his heart, the music speaks directly to the parts of me that have been silent for so long. When I sang with him, for the first time in my life, I wasn't trying to be better than anyone. I was simply being me, and it was enough.

Lo odio. I hate it. I resent it. I want to claw these feelings out and return to the comfortable emptiness I've cultivated so carefully.

But I can't.

Because I know the truth: I'm damaged. Broken. A girl who tried to strangle someone over wounded pride. A daughter so disappointing her parents sent her to another country rather than continue dealing with her. A sister so inferior she couldn't even compete with perfection, so she stopped trying.

Shouma deserves better than me. He deserves someone whole, someone who doesn't carry darkness like a second skin.

And yet, despite knowing this—despite believing it with absolute certainty—I can't seem to walk away from him. From the hope in his green eyes when he plays. From the quiet determination that's replacing his empty smiles.

He's growing stronger while I'm growing weaker. It should make me hate him. Instead, it makes me want to be worthy of the person he's becoming.

Culture divides us. Language divides us. Oceans and continents and worlds of experience divide us.

But music... music bridges those divides in ways I never thought possible.

When we sang "Echi Perduti" together, we weren't Japanese and Italian. We weren't the class representative and the delinquent transfer student. We weren't even broken boy and damaged girl.

We were just two voices finding each other across the void.

Perhaps that's enough for now. Perhaps that's all I can allow myself to hope for.

Because I know the truth that "Echi Perduti" speaks: sometimes feelings never reach their intended destination. Sometimes they remain suspended, echoes that fade into silence, never to be answered.

I will continue singing into that silence. For him. For myself. For the chance, however small, that something of my voice might reach him across all the barriers I've built.

Even though these feelings will never reach.