The auditorium was crowded. Every seat was filled, and as the lights dimmed the dull roar of conversation ceased. In the front row, a panel of judges looked on expectantly as a spotlight flared to life and rested upon the piano at center stage. A teenage boy strutted out into the circle of light, cracking his knuckles in anticipation, straightening the crooked glasses upon his brow. The silent, anxious atmosphere was suddenly filled with music as the boy began to play, his eyes glued to the sheet music in front of him. The audience listened with rapt attention, the judges scrawled notes on blank sheets of paper in front of them.
Backstage, a young girl fervently paced back and forth, waiting for her turn to play. She pushed her dark brown hair out of her eyes, which she then closed as she attempted to force herself to relax. Abruptly, she spun around, and locked eyes with a red-haired teen that had snuck up behind her.
"Felix? What are you doing here?" She hissed. "You should be waiting back with the others-"
"Shut up, Mayu!" Felix growled, grabbing her roughly by the shoulder. "Look. You're always showing off at school, getting the highest grades, thinking you're better than everyone else!"
He paused, and released her shoulder, seemingly attempting to control himself. "I think that you should give the normal kids a chance tonight. They've worked so hard, and you'll just make them feel bad if you beat them."
Mayu took a step back, her icy blue eyes narrowing. "You know what? I think that you're just trying to get me to quit so that you'll win! That's pathetic, Felix! If you were any good at the piano, you wouldn't have to resort to trickery!"
Suddenly, the music onstage stopped, and a smattering of clapping followed the brief silence.
"You'll be sorry!" Felix growled as the girl stomped onstage. Mayu ignored him as she sat beside the piano, her hands stroking the familiar keys. She noticed that her hands were shaking, and took a deep breath. Just relax, she told herself. He was definitely bluffing. To calm herself, Mayu looked up and waved at her parents in the second row. A Japanese-American man and his pregnant wife waved back, killing all the butterflies in Mayu's stomach.
With a sigh, she turned to the piano, beginning her chosen piece, Bach's Prelude in C major. Fully relaxed, Mayu allowed her eyes to close, playing the piece from memory, but she wasn't merely reproducing the well-known song. She added a few notes of her own, tying the melody that everyone knew in with her own accompaniment, creating her very own version of the song.
Mayu allowed all of her emotions to flow into her music, not merely hitting each key, but stroking it delicately. If Mayu's eyes had been open, she would have seen all four judges staring at her with open mouths, enthralled at the beauty of her composition. And when the last note had faded into silence, the crowd erupted into cheers so loud that anyone walking outside the building would have thought that a bomb had gone off.
Later that night, everyone in Mayu's neighborhood was awakened from their sleep by a loud wailing siren. Mrs. Singleton, or, as Mayu thought of her, Old Mrs. Cat Lady Next Door, slipped on her shawl, and opened her door to complain about the ruckus. But what she saw was not a bunch of teenagers goofing off with a blow horn, as she thought, but rather an ambulance and a fire truck, with firefighters working to quench a house fire next door. As Mrs. Singleton watched in shock, a firefighter raced out of the burning building, cradling a young girl in his arms. Why, that's Mayu McHale, Mrs. Singleton thought as she recognized the child.
The firefighter set the girl down on the pavement, then turned to race back into the house. That was when the building collapsed, a mushroom-like cloud of smoke billowing up into the sky. Mayu screamed, clutching her charred stuffed horse to her chest, a nasty burn on the back of her left hand.
Probably calling for her mother, the poor dear, the old woman moaned.
"Mama!" Mayu sobbed, switching to Japanese in her grief.
"Papa!" She called. There was no answer. A firefighter nearby muttered, "I'm sorry, kid," as he wiped a tear from his eye. Mayu lowered her head in defeat, her sobs dwindling to silence. Suddenly, she caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of her eye. She looked up to see Felix leaning against a nearby tree, a cigarette in his hand.
"I told you you'd be sorry," he laughed as he pulled a lighter from his pocket, clicking it to life. The sight of the flame filled Mayu with rage as she realized what Felix had done.
"What have you done?" Mayu howled in Japanese. With an inhuman roar, she clawed her way to her feet, and began to sprint towards him. Mayu was so filled with anger that she didn't look where she was going, and tripped over a pile of rubble. The fury in her eyes turned to shock as she plummeted to the ground, her head hitting the pavement with a sickening crack. And everything went blank….