He wasn't perfect.
A light trill began.
No, he wasn't even close.
The trill rose in pitch by an octave.
Being able to hold more than twelve melodies in his head wasn't perfection. Being able to conceptualize those ideas which many genii couldn't wasn't perfection. To able to give an in-depth lecture at a whim, that wasn't perfection.
The trill swelled to a crescendo.
He could not feel the melody in his heart. He could not stand in awe of the vast and magnanimous heavens. He could not render pure passion in his voice. He was merely a fake. A hoax. His so –called passion, emotion, awe; it was all synthesized. Artificial. Simulated.
The trill reached its peak, and then died away immediately.
His slender hands drew away from the piano gracefully. Emotion and skill. That was perfection. And he was not at the peak.
His blue eyes flashed with a light. He set his jaw.
Yet.
The trill burst out of the silence, and melted into euphony. It swelled, and ebbed. The song held in its deep folds all that he had tucked away into the back of his mind. His repressed feelings burst out, like water breaking out a dam. It flowed through him, and into his fingertips, where they created a sound like the world had never heard before.
He did not think. No more melodies in his head. No equations, theories, or snappy retorts. Just raw emotion. Everything that he had been through; every single, living moment of his, was now flowing out from the instrument.
He slowly faded out into silence, and took a breath.
He had done it. For a miniscule moment, he had reached it. He had glimpsed the peak.
It was unlike anything he had experienced before. A warm feeling slowly coursed through his cold hands.
This was perfection.