Late that night, drawn by a magnetic pull he couldn't quite resist, Qixian found himself standing in the middle of the music room once more. The moonlight silvered the instruments, but his gaze remained fixed on the violin, its wooden body gleaming like a polished bone in the shadows.
Suddenly, the stillness fractured. A familiar, sharp voice drifted from the hallway, growing louder and more frantic as it approached. Qixian turned his head toward the entrance, and the air grew heavy with the weight of a memory. Watching in a projection.
"You're going to stay in here until you finally learn to play some decent music!" his mother snapped, her face contorted with a cold, aristocratic fury. Qixian watched as a maid, her eyes downcast in silent apology, dragged a fifteen-year-old version of himself toward the room.
Upon reaching the threshold, the maid gave a reluctant shove, sending the young Qixian stumbling inside the music room. His mother and father stood in the corridor, their expressions as unyielding as stone, offering no comfort—only judgment.
"Mom! Dad! Please! It was just a mistake! I didn't mean to lose! Mom, please!" The fifteen-year-old boy cried out, his voice cracking and raw. He scrambled back toward the entrance, but the heavy oak door slammed shut with a finality that echoed like a gunshot. He began to beat his palms against the wood, the rhythmic thud-thud-thud a desperate, hopeless plea.
The air in the room was stale and suffocating, as if the dust hadn't been disturbed in decades. The only source of light was a single, dim bulb dangling from the ceiling, casting a sickly yellow glow that didn't so much illuminate the room as it did create harsh, jagged shadows. There were no windows, no warmth, and no escape. The four walls were lined with soundproofing foam that seemed to swallow his cries, and the shelves of sheet music stood tall and grim like rows of forgotten tombstones.
'That day, I was terrified of the darkness,' Adult Qixian thought, his chest tightening as he watched his younger self. "But looking at it now, I realize I've spent so much time in the dark that I've finally become used to it."
The younger Qixian stood frozen in the center of the room, his small hands trembling so violently he had to tuck them into his sleeves. He had screamed until his throat felt like it was bleeding.
"Mom! Dad! Please! I didn't mean to lose!" he repeated for the hundredth time, his palms slapping against the door. He hated the sound—the sound of disappointment. On the other side, he could almost see his mother adjusting the silk of her sleeve, her voice muffled but sharp. "You will stay there until you have finally learned your lesson!" Then, the sound of her receding footsteps left him to the dark.
Watching this, the adult Qixian felt a sharp pang of guilt, but it was quickly eclipsed by a bitter, cold realization. He was not Jin Rou. He was not the perfect son who excelled at everything he touched. He was the one who had failed, the one who had lost the prestigious group instrumental competition that every elite school in the country coveted.
"But why can't they accept that me and Jin Rou are completely different, he always get your attention, and I always crave for attention, so... why do they constantly compare both of us?" Younger Qixian said.
"Because they never loved you." The adult Qixian answered.
His parents' disappointment was a heavy shroud. They believed he simply hadn't practiced enough for the finals. But Qixian knew the truth that he had never dared to speak, even if he had practiced until my fingers literally bled, nothing would have changed. The group I had been forced to lead didn't just lack harmony—they actively hated me. They had sabotaged the performance out of spite, but he couldn't tell his parents that. He couldn't admit that he was so disliked that his own teammates would rather lose than see him succeed. He took the blame because, in the Zhou family, being hated was just as much of a failure as being incompetent.
"Why didn't I realize that? Why didn't I realize... that even if I told them the truth, they would never believe me, even though, they never came to watch me. Why didn't I realize, that telling the truth is nothing when no one will believe you? So wasn't it better to lie?" Younger Qixian said as he look at his small hands.
"I protected them. I didn't tell a single soul it was their fault, even when they turned on me, I lied. But I tried so hard to be kind, Sister Wenxian..." The fifteen-year-old Qixian whispered to the empty, stifling air of the music room. He stood trembling in the center of the dim space, his small frame swallowed by the shadows. "Why is it so difficult to be a good person when no one—not even one person—appreciates it? What is the point of being kind when no one ever tries to treat you with the same warmth you give to them? I don't understand you anymore, sis."
"Play." His father's voice boomed from the other side of the heavy door, muffled yet cuttingly sharp. "Do not stop until you have mastered every note, and do not dare come out until you have properly reflected on the shame you have caused this family."
"Everyone is so incredibly unfair... I can hear them so clearly, yet they refuse to hear a single word I say," the boy muttered to himself. With shaking hands, he lifted the violin and tucked it under his chin. "I love playing music, I love playing the violin, but why is it one of the reasons why I'm suffering?"
The polished wood felt cold and slick against his skin, devoid of any comfort. As he drew the bow across the strings, a harsh, screeching note pierced the silence, sounding more like a wounded animal than music.
His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird desperate for escape. As he played, a single word looped through his mind with every stroke of the bow, 'Failure. Failure. Failure.' He could still see the memory of the judges' disappointed faces, their heads shaking in unison as the last note of the competition faded into a disastrous silence.
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force his focus onto the music sheet etched into his brain, but his hands wouldn't stop trembling.
The moment the music took on a rough, discordant vibration that rattled through the hollow body of the instrument, his breath hitched. It was that note—the exact moment where his finger had slipped during the finals. The note that had cost him first place. The note that had solidified his parents' cold disappointment.
Suddenly, the room felt far too small. The soundproofed walls seemed to be inching inward, the foam absorbing not just the noise, but the very oxygen he needed to breathe. The friction of the strings began to bite into his skin until his fingers bled, the crimson smears making the bow slip clumsily. His lungs constricted, feeling as though an invisible, heavy hand were squeezing his throat shut.
The dim bulb overhead began to flicker, threatening to plunge him into total darkness.
With a final, desperate gasp, the fifteen-year-old Qixian dropped the bow. Sacred. The violin clattered onto the hardwood floor, the sound echoing through the windowless room. He collapsed, curling into a small ball on the floor and pressing his hands over his ears as if he could drown out the darkness itself with his own palms.
"Enough... Qixian... you're fifteen, so how can you be so weak?" The adult Qixian spoke, his voice steady and low as he stood over his younger self who was crying cowardly on the floor.
"That's enough," he repeated, his gaze softening with a mix of pity and disgust. As the words left his lips, the memory began to dissolve into fine grey dust, carried away by a sudden breeze that finally brought fresh air into the suffocating room.
Qixian stood in the center of the silent music room, watching the last remnants of his past fade away into air.
"..."
Qixian turned his back on the shadows of the room planning to play the violin. "A piano?..." he murmured, his fingers grazing the sleek, polished wood before he slowly lifted the fallboard. The ivory keys gleamed in the dim light, inviting yet intimidating. "So you were the one I once admired as a genius..." Qixian whispered to the empty air, a small, bittersweet smile tugging at his lips as he finally took a seat on the bench forgetting about the violin.
He sat in silence for a long time, his gaze lost in the reflection of the piano's finish.
Finally, almost tentatively, he reached out and pressed a single, random key. The lone note rang out, clear and resonant, vibrating through the quiet room.
Before the sound could even fade, a warm hand appeared over his, pressing down and leading his fingers into a sequence of chords that transformed the silence into a beautiful, haunting melody.
"Do you like that?" Yichen's voice whispered directly into Qixian's right ear. The heat of his presence was sudden and grounding. He didn't pull away, instead guiding Qixian's hand toward another key with a practiced, gentle strength.
Qixian's ears flushed a deep, betraying red, but he forced his voice to remain steady. "It's... pretty impressive," he admitted, consciously relaxing his hand so Yichen could more easily direct his movements.
"What are you doing here at this hour?" Yichen asked, his voice low and melodic, harmonizing with the soft notes they were creating together.
"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" Qixian countered, trying to regain a bit of his usual spark.
Yichen smirked, his breath warm against Qixian's neck. "You weren't in your room, so I came out to look for you. I certainly didn't expect to find you here," he said, continuing to guide Qixian's fingers through a complex series of notes. "So, tell me. Why are you here?"
"To play. I was originally planning to pick up the violin," Qixian answered, his gaze fixed on their overlapping hands. "But I remembered that playing the piano looks a lot more... fun."
"You know how to play the violin?" Yichen asked, his interest clearly piqued.
"Yeah. It was one of my skills," Qixian replied with a flicker of his characteristic pride.
"Now I really want to hear you play. I want to see how you handle the bow with those small hands of yours," Yichen deliberately teased.
Qixian huffed, rolling his eyes. "And now you've ensured that I'm never playing it for you."
"Maybe not tonight, but I'll hear you play it someday," Yichen countered with a confident, knowing smile.
"Sure. Whatever you say," Qixian murmured. He paused as the melody shifted into something unfamiliar. "But what is this song? It's beautiful..."
"It's my own composition," Yichen said, his tone turning serious as he slowed the tempo. "I want you to play the violin part for this song eventually. I want you to create a melody that matches this, and then... let's play it together. Would you like that?"
Qixian looked from the keys to Yichen's face, seeing the sincerity in his eyes. "Deal!" he said, a genuine smile finally breaking through.