2

Sayaka always asks me how I'm doing. Trying to cheer me up. She can see the pain on my face as I hear the beautiful instruments playing through my headphones, can't she? There's nothing left for me but she wants to make me feel like there is. I can't let her do it. Except that I am doing just that. My willpower is too weak to tell her to stop. To stop acting like everything's okay. To stop being so damn happy. To stop existing around me.

Rachmaninoff's "Vocalise" begins, and I'm suddenly swept away into the violin's gorgeous movements. I can remember the time I played this very piece in front of an audience for the first time. I was nine, and it was only my third-ever recital, but dozens showed up to listen.

Sayaka was there, on the front row, watching me.

I snap back into reality and realize my hands are fingering along to the song. Almost immediately, tears roll down my face. I will never be able to play that song again. My artistry is dead, and this song serves only as a reminder of the grief I feel. I try to hide my crying as best as I can, but my efforts are for naught, as my watery pain drips from my chin to my shirt in a series of resonant pops.

Eventually, Sayaka finishes her moment with me and decides to head home. I don't even think she noticed the fact I was crying. Surely she is doing this on purpose; maybe I upset her some time ago and didn't realize it, and now she is coming here to enact revenge when I am most vulnerable? That can be the only explanation for this horror.

I quickly drift off to sleep, and dream that I am up onstage again. It's all I want. And it's the only thing I can't have.