Chapter 16: Echoes of Keys

—Because some dreams don’t fit in daylight. They need the dark to feel real.

---

Breaking into a concert hall wasn’t on my bucket list, but apparently, tonight, I was living someone else’s dreams.

The hall loomed like a sleeping giant, its marble pillars catching the streetlight in jagged slices. The kind of place where people wear tuxedos and talk about “art” while sipping drinks that taste like regret. I didn’t belong here.

Then again, I never do.

“Are we… trespassing?” Yume whispered, her fingers brushing mine as I led her through the side door I’d jimmied open.

“Yes,” I said.

“That’s… exciting,” she murmured, and smiled like sin dressed in white.

---

Inside, the silence was alive. You could hear it breathe between the rows of velvet seats, taste the dust of old applause still clinging to the air.

And there it was — center stage.

A grand piano. Black as spilled ink, polished to a mirror sheen that reflected nothing but emptiness.

Yume stopped at the edge of the stage. Her blind eyes tilted toward the faint shimmer of light leaking through the curtains.

“Is it here?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I…?”

“Go.”

She walked slow, careful, her cane tapping like a metronome on the wooden floor. When her hands finally touched it, the way she sucked in her breath — sharp, soft — it was like the world tilted.

She ran her fingers over the lid, tracing its curves like Braille written by a god.

“It feels… huge,” she said.

“It is.”

Her hands slid down to the keys. She pressed one, and the sound bloomed into the silence like light pouring through a crack in the dark.

Then another note. And another.

And then — music.

---

I don’t know much about pianos. To me, it’s just black and white teeth biting the air.

But when Yume played, it didn’t sound like music. It sounded like honesty. Like something pure enough to hurt.

The melody started soft, hesitant, then grew like rain gathering into a storm. Each note felt like it was saying something words couldn’t. Something about wanting. About fighting the clock. About tasting happiness before it rots.

And me?

I stood there, phone in hand, recording like a thief stealing sunlight. Because I knew — deep down, where all the ugly truths live — that I’d need this sound when everything else went quiet.

---

Her voice slipped into the music, soft and fragile.

“You ever think happiness is just a sound?”

I swallowed hard.

“If it is,” I said, “then this is it.”

She smiled without stopping the song.

And for the first time in years, I hated myself less for existing.

---

The hall was empty, but it felt full — of echoes, of ghosts, of something bigger than the both of us.

And when the last note faded, it left a silence so heavy it almost broke me.

Yume lifted her hands from the keys like she was letting go of a lover.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“For what?”

“For making me feel like I’m still alive.”

I looked at her then, really looked — at the way her hair spilled over her shoulders, at the faint smile fighting against the tiredness in her face.

And I wanted to tell her she wasn’t just alive. She was the only thing keeping me that way too.

But I didn’t.

Because words like that are landmines, and I’ve already stepped on too many.

---

We left the same way we came — quiet, quick, hearts beating like guilty clocks.

On the street, the night wind wrapped around us like a cold question.

And for the first time, I didn’t have an answer.

---