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"You're not actually German, are you?"
Call it a conspiracy theory, but Ema knew.
There was no way Klavier Gavin was actually German.
She had come to this conclusion after officially meeting Kristoph Gavin and Marcia Gavin this morning. The Fop's brother and mother.
And the part that sparked this theory, neither of them had an accent—not even a trace of it.
"...Was?" Fucking actor.
Game on, fake German.
"I said, there's no way you are German." Ema crossed her arms over her chest and gave him The Look, the one that Lana had taught her to do to intimidate others into telling the truth.
"Stop looking at me like your sister does with criminals." Ugh. Well that didn't work.
"I know you're not German. You're acting."
Klavier sighed, mimicking her by crossing his arms like she did. "Yeah, Fraülein Detective? What helped you come up with this theory?"
Ema scowled at him, uncrossing her arms then immediately crossing them back. Stay dominant, Ema.
"Your brother and your mother." Ema smirked at the sudden confusion on Klavier's face. "Both of them don't have an accent and they don't talk like you do. They don't mix up English and German like you do."
Ema stepped closer to him, the smirk on her face growing. "And don't even try to say that your mother grew up outside of Germany. That wouldn't explain why your brother doesn't have a German accent."
Klavier stared at her, like she had just said the most fascinating thing he's ever heard.
Then he started laughing.
Laughing.
Right in her face.
"What's so funny?!" Ema was the confused one now, it was like they had swapped emotions.
Nearly thirty seconds had passed, and he was still laughing. "Answer my question!" Ema couldn't go back now, he had to be thinking of a quick explanation. Yeah, that was why he was laughing. It had to be. Victory was still imminent.
"Did it," Klavier finally said, still laughing. "Did it ever occur to you, that my brother learned English first, not German? So he didn't have time to develop an accent?"
Oh.
"And," He continued, "Did it ever occur to you, that my mother simply hated her accent and the fact that—in her words by the way, not mine—it showed that she was German to anyone who talked to her, and didn't let her blend in with her other friends who came to Germany from abroad? So she deleted any trace of it, took morning and night classes to better her pronunciation?"
Fuck. There was a gap in Ema's theory that she hadn't even thought of.
The problem was, the gap made sense.
A mother who spent her days trying to delete the remnants of an accent of course would work hard to make sure that her son didn't have to deal with the same problem.
Especially if that son was the mother's perfect golden child. Ema wasn't thinking that to be petty, but because everyone who met Mrs. Gavin could understand that, just by how could her stare got when Klavier entered the room.
She scoffed, deciding that she needed more proof than just hearsay. "That still doesn't explain why you have an accent."
"My first language is German. My mother's father had a rule that only German would be spoken in his house, and Mother kept that rule whenever he was around. Which was a lot because he believed that they had too much distance after Kristoph was born." Klavier kept softly giggling after each sentence, mostly to himself now.
He leaned forward, letting his bangs get messed up from the sudden motion. "Kristoph took me to America when he was seventeen. I was eight at the time."
"What, you didn't learn English like him?" Ema asked.
"Exactly. My mother didn't care if I learned English or if I had an accent or not. Maybe she wanted Kristoph to teach me or maybe she just didn't care enough. Maybe she wanted me to suffer later in life. Who knows?" Ema's shoulders dropped. So her theory was infact, wrong.
"So your accent was set, before you could learn English." She finished.
Klavier sighed, his expression falling for a second. "Hölle, Kristoph somewhat homeschooled me for the first two years, so I only knew simple words. Like food or hungry by the time I hit ten. It took me three years to learn English, idioms and weird structures and all. And even now I keep forgetting words." He smiled at her. In the uncontrolled kind of way, the one that showed his dimple and the crease under his eyes.
"Oh." Ema huffed.
Klavier started laughing again, like he couldn't help himself. Ema hadn't seen nor had heard him laugh like that before. It sounded genuine, unlike most things that he did.
Maybe that's why she had jumped to the conclusion he was lying about one of the most prominent parts of his existence.
"I want more information. I need to make sure you're not lying." She huffed, arms crossed tighter than before.
Ema wasn't exactly sure why she was doing this.
She believed him. The explanation made sense. She had heard the way Marcia Gavin talked about Klavier, the way the warmth in her eyes immediately disappeared. The stories she told with a slight dreamy voice about how happy she was before him.
To top it all off, Ema was merely an acquaintance to her, but she still had gone out of her way to explain how different they were, even when her golden son tried to stop her saying that she was exaggerating.
He uncrossed his arms, looking away. "Kristoph was born in Frankfurt, but we moved to Berlin right after my birth. My mother was born in Lübeck. Her parents had a cabin in Kiel, right next to a little lake that Kristoph used to teached me to swim in."
Klavier leaned back, stopping for a second to think and looked away even further, into the window. Ema wondered if he was thinking about what he was going to say next, or if he was thinking about the memories in that lake.
"Her grandparents came to Germany from Austria, somewhere between Hollenburg and Krems. They to Vienna when her father was born, then they moved to Germany when he was a teenager." He smiled up at Ema, likely trying to understand if she believed him now.
"What about your father?"
Klavier laughed again, as if it was funny that someone had asked about him. "My grandfather immigrated from Italy to Switzerland for work, then brought his family there. So, my father grew up in Switzerland. Zermatt, near Monte Rosa."
So that's why Ema heard him mumble to himself in Italian when he thought she wasn't listening.
"They moved to Germany when my aunt was born, to Flöha. Seven years later, their parents died. He took care of her after that. He never told me how it happened, but, he didn't tell me about a lot of things." Klavier looked at her again, still smiling.
Ema uncrossed her arms again, not sure on what she should say next. "Klavier, I-"
"Look," Klavier interrupted. "I'll even be nice and give you another piece of evidence. Yeah?" Klavier opened one of his desk drawers, pulling out an old phone.
It didn't look that old, but Ema could tell that it was atleast six years old from the model. "This used to be my phone. It was my 12th birthday gift. Two years ago, I changed it because most of its functions stopped." He scrolled around a bit, then set it on his desk.
"Guten Morgen, Klavierchen." A man's voice filled the room. Husky and gruff, but still velvety and warm, with a thick German accent. "Uhm, sorry—Kristen asked me to speak English so you could practice, but I keep forgetting."
Kristen. The name Kristoph was saved under in Klavier's phone. Ema had seen it once in his recently called list when Klavier had asked him to answer one of his calls.
"I guess what I wanted to say was, I'm sorry I wasn't there for your birthday, kumpelchen. I'll be there for the next one, I promise. Works been kicking my Arsch—don't know tell your mother I said that—but I got this for your birthday, and I hope you like it Häschen. Be good, ja? Ich liebe dich von ganzem Herzen, Nachtigällchen"
The recording ended, and Klavier put the phone back in his desk. "That was my father. He got me the phone from Germany and left that voice note before sending it here. He died a year later, 2 months before my 13th birthday. He liked nicknames, if you couldn't tell."
Ema started at him. What was she supposed to say to that?
Klavier clicked his tongue before continuing, "More importantly, you heard his accent. That's why I showed you that, to prove that I'm actually German. So, hopefully that answers your questions?"
"I always thought you changed your name to Klavier when you became a rockstar. Thought they named you, like, Klaus or something. Guess that was wrong too." Ema answered.
Klavier burst out laughing again, the same way he had during this whole conversation. Ema joined in too, laughing beside him.
She stopped after a few seconds, she guessed needed to apologise.
"I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"For doubting you."
Klavier grinned again, "Wouldn't expect anything less from you, Fraülein Detective."