Archive of Our Own

i. prelude

Pio sees what he will never have the first time he witnesses Choi Jeongyo play. Music leaves his fingertips in a dance, twirling and spinning up into the eaves of the concert hall, notes leaving the keys light as butterflies. Even though the overhead lights have been dimmed, it feels like sunlight is flooding out from the singular spotlight illuminating the piano and its player. And when Pio looks past that sunlight, he sees the awe and admiration on the judges’ faces, the rapture that has spread over the audience as they watch the god who has come to play in front of them. 

And the god himself? His eyes are lidded, barely concentrating on the keys as he plays, a blissful smile on his lips. 

Pio has never once smiled when he plays the piano, not since the very first time he sat on a bench. Not since his mother told him to play and his grandfather only walked away. He has never felt happy at the piano, has never made his music come alive. The audience claps when he finishes, but they do not stand and applaud wildly, tears glimmering in their eyes. 

He’s received first place many times. Second place is a hundred times heavier, and a thousand times more fragile, crashing across the floor into a scattering of glass that slices past his ankles, hands, and hair.

Choi Jeongyo smiles radiantly when he is awarded first place.

But he screams and sobs when his mother lays lifeless on the floor, his award forgotten as it falls from his hand, clanging emptily on the carpeted floor.

“You’ll have to practice more,” his mother says after she has destroyed Pio’s award, her smile fixed back in place, the floor swept clean. Her hand is a vise when it grips his shoulder, holding him in place. For other mothers, this is gentle. From his mother, it hurts. He disappointed her tonight. He’s not supposed to disappoint her. 

He practices until his hands shake that night, and goes to sleep dreaming of a dead woman and a boy at the piano, crying as he plays.

—

ii. exposition

It is seven years later that he hears the distant sound of a piano playing and realizes that he has been living in an eternal night, wrongly believing he occupied the foremost part in the sky, only for the true sun to come out of hiding and show the world that he was nothing but a false planet, weak and pathetic in the shadow of it.

Your cadenza was a bit dry. Was that on purpose?

Listening to Choi Jeongyo play in the early morning hours, Pio fists his hands so tightly his fingernails cut into his skin and remembers standing backstage, the velvet curtain pooling on the ground and his bowtie strangling him as he watched another boy take away everything he had thought he would someday have.

As the song drifts to a close, Pio turns on his heel and leaves. He sits blankly in the classroom, smoothing out the marks left on his palm, hoping his mother won’t notice later on and scold him for not taking good care of his hands, and thinks of nothing and everything until Choi Jeongyo sidles into the room and up into his space.

“Do you really not remember me?” 

What’s there to remember, Pio wants to say. Who would want to remember the only time they ever lost? Who could ever forget?

But he says none of it. Choi Jeongyo is nothing to him.

—

Choi Jeongyo is nothing to him, but somehow, when Pio sees him looking down, the angry set to his jaw, the flex of his fists in his lap, the tense set of his shoulders, like someone poised to take a hit, he feels—

The scattered sheet music is inscribed with a neat hand, filled with writing he can’t understand. Flying, like a bird. Gentle, like drifting on a sea. A dizzying spin that ends in collapse. Laughter that fades into the distance. Interpretations of something Pio has only ever been able to look at clinically, black notes on black bars on white pages. He can read the key signature, forte and piano, legato and allegro, slurs and staccatos, dissecting music like a scientist does to a frog. And under his hands, the piano is just as lifeless.

How can a song fly like a bird, drift like the sea, spin like a top, laugh like a child? 

He would believe it impossible if he hadn’t heard Choi Jeongyo play before.

He puts the sheet music back on the other boy’s desk and submits the CCTV footage anonymously. 

—

When he practices while waiting for Choi Jeongyo to show up for their four hands, the music comes out angry and loud, all wrong. He can’t concentrate, half of his mind listening to the clock tick past, each minute the annoyance crawling deeper into his shoulder blades.

Who does he think he is? Pio practices for ten hours a day. He barely sleeps, he skips meals, he locks himself in windowless, soundproofed rooms when the sun is high in the sky and only exits once it has deepened to pitch black night. He fought for his spot here, for his place at the table, even if that spot is never acknowledged, even if that spot is only there once everyone else at the table has left.

Choi Jeongyo has so much talent, but he doesn’t care. Pio needs one thing from him, his presence, and he’s not there.

His hands slam down on the keys, the jarring sound ringing out in the room. It’s almost eight. Choi Jeongyo isn’t coming. 

—

The glass doesn’t hurt, but something else twists in his heart, stabbing deeper and deeper, a splinter he can’t pull out. Choi Jeongyo’s hands are calloused and strong, covered with nicks, his fingernails bitten and short, the edges ragged. They aren’t the hands of a pianist, not like Pio’s, but his touch is gentle as he pulls the glass from Pio’s knee. 

Pio wonders what would have happened if he had crushed the glass in his palms, lacerated them, split the skin and let blood flood out. He wouldn’t have been able to play for days, or maybe weeks. If it had cut deep enough, there might have been nerve damage. 

But even if it had healed, it wouldn’t have mattered. Even skipping a day caused his skill to go rusty. Days and weeks when he wouldn’t be able to practice, wouldn’t be able to compete. The time to shine would have passed in a blink, and he would have been left behind.

If he couldn’t play, wasn’t that a good thing for Choi Jeongyo? Or was Pio that insignificant to him?

Maybe Choi Jeongyo is just that good of a person. The thought sours in Pio’s mouth. 

He watches the other boy’s hands as he talks, and his expression. The flitting of his eyes, the fidget of his fingers. To think that the boy that once shone radiantly on stage now cannot even bear to face the idea of it. 

It’s good for Pio if he can’t. 

But he knows he’ll never feel at ease until he’s proved he’s better than Jeongyo’s playing, and not just stronger than his fears.

—

His mother never lets him near open flame. She doesn’t let him touch the sharp knives in the kitchen, open cans, or boil water. Sometimes Pio thinks his hands are worth more to her than he himself is; her terror at anything disfiguring them is a cocoon, trapping him inside.

As he lights hundreds of candles, the wicks burning close to his fingertips, smoke floating in the air, he finds that the flame barely hurts. It’s a warm touch every now and then flickering up to his fingernails. He withdraws before it truly burns, leaving a soft blush on his skin. 

The Virgin Mary’s eyes are closed. It makes him feel safer, in a way. She’s there, but not truly watching.

When the lights are off and it’s just the two of them amidst the candlelight, Pio leads Jeongyo to the piano bench. It is the first time they’ve sat so close. Not the first time they’ve held hands, or grabbed one another, but the first time Pio has initiated it.

He’s never let himself reach out to another person like this before. His mother and Jaein cling and hover, but Pio has never reciprocated their stifling affection. He thought he didn’t know how, but Jeongyo’s palm is warm, a bit clammy, and easy to hold on.

Pio starts them, note by note. Empty notes, waiting for a response.

When Jeongyo touches the keys, they come alive, one by one, until Pio’s own song starts to act like it’s living too. 

It’s easy to get lost, playing side by side. He barely notices the tiredness or the cramps in his fingers. His heart and body feel light as a bird, not weighed down like they usually do after hours of practicing. He can’t say what he learned, what he practiced; all they’ve done is play, over and over again.

Jeongyo tells him to jump. Pio, who has spent his life doing what other people tell him to, hesitates, but finally lets himself fall.

The leaves are soft. He stares up at the sky, breathless, until Jeongyo steps into his view and holds out his hand as if it has always been that easy for him.

Pio takes his hand. For the first time since he first met Choi Jeongyo, seven years ago, he lets himself feel truly happy.

—

On the stage of the Noblesse, Pio plays the best that he ever has. He can never be Jeongyo, but playing beside him makes him feel like his music grows larger than himself. The piano is no longer as lifeless as it once was, Jeongyo’s music carrying them up until they’ve filled the hall with song. 

Usually, Pio feels nothing when he finishes a concert. There is never joy when he stands and bows, or receives his award. In most cases, there is dissatisfaction eating at his heart inside his rib cage, a vague annoyance at the stifling atmosphere, his mother guiding him from person to person, endless hands to shake, the same empty praises.

Jeongyo hugs him harder than he ever has, as if never wants to let Pio go, and Pio worries about nothing until his mother shatters his joy.

It was a false joy after all.

He should have known. 

—

Piano becomes meaningless once more. Pio practices harder than ever, until his fingers are numb and can no longer feel the keys beneath them, but the songs mean nothing. His mother is happy, but Do Hyeonsoo’s brow still furrows when he listens to him, though he never tells Pio that his music is soulless directly as he did that first time. 

He is a meaningless student too, probably. A piano player that can’t play anything truly worthwhile. A piano player that lacks the basic foundation needed to become a pianist.

He wants to play like Jeongyo can. He wants Jeongyo to leave him alone. He wants to play next to Jeongyo again, but if he does, he really will be destroyed. 

It’s easier to push the other boy as far away as possible. It’s not like he’s lying. 

Pio isn’t a good person.

It’s easy to rage at Jeongyo, easy to yell, easy to charge him, topple him to the ground, and then let the other boy punch him. No one’s dared to hit Pio before. They know they can’t risk it. Jeongyo doesn’t care about that. He’s never gentle with Pio. He’s never looked at Pio and seen the shadow of his grandfather, a maestro, his grandmother, the principal of the school, his mother, a tigress all the others are scared of. 

To Jeongyo, Pio is a boy. A boy who bleeds just as much as he does.

The bloom of pain on his face is welcome. A part of him wishes that they hadn’t pulled them apart. The strength of Jeongyo’s fist is still somehow gentler than anything else he has ever received.

—

Pio’s not a brave person. He thinks about walking away, about pretending he saw nothing, that Jeongyo is a stranger to him, like he did those first few days after hearing him play again. 

Against all odds, his feet lead him in the opposite direction. Jeongyo’s hand is warm. Pio doesn’t think before grabbing it, pulling with all his might, as if he can pull Jeongyo out of everything holding him down. As if Pio is strong enough to break him free from the snares at his ankles.

Someone like Jeongyo shouldn’t be here, in this alleyway. He shouldn’t be cowering, hands raised over his head. He should be striking out, the fire in his eyes burning instead of extinguished. He isn’t supposed to be scared. Geniuses like him have nothing to fear.

When they’re both bandaged and no longer bleeding, Jeongyo leads him through a maze of back alley shops and gates. At the center of the maze is an oasis, overturned benches and dusty pianos, only one which looks clean. It is old, covered in stickers, the wooden legs scuffed and the stuffing of the piano bench starting to come out. It can’t compare to the sleek baby grand pianos with their glossy black sheen and golden lettering.

Jeongyo shows him dozens of pages and books, all marked with the delicate handwriting Pio recognizes from the piece he had collected earlier. Scattered amidst the delicate script is a child’s scrawl, circling and emphasizing in a heavier hand, sometimes in ink.

Pio tries to imagine Jeongyo as he was when he was a child, sitting here with the woman he only ever remembers as dead, playing the piano together. 

Jeongyo was the first person to ever sit next to Pio at a piano. The only person.

“If you’re playing primo, you should wear my sweater,” Jeongyo says teasingly. They’ve stripped off their overcoats and book bags, leaving Jeongyo in his black sweater and Pio in his gray hoodie.

“You should wear mine then,” Pio replies. “If we’re really switching places.”

Jeongyo’s sweater fits perfectly. He’s slightly stockier than Pio, but he tends to layer, to appear less assuming. Pio catches a flash of his abs as they’re changing, backs to one another, and has to turn back around quickly, pulling his arms through the sleeves and wrapping his hands in the knit cuffs. 

“Remember this moment,” he tells Jeongyo at the piano, as if Pio has ever been worth remembering.

But Jeongyo remembered. Last time, he remembered, even when Pio forgot.

They play until the sun sets. Pio goes home wearing Jeongyo’s sweater and falls asleep in it.

—

For the first time since he started playing the piano, Pio makes a decision for himself. A decision to be happy, or to at least try. With Jeongyo.

His mother’s coldness is expected. Pio knows that her love has always been conditional.

But still, he had thought—

He had thought his happiness might matter to her, too.

Jeongyo’s dorm room is smaller than he thought it would be, nothing but a tiny entrance and a space for a bed, desk, and the adjacent bathroom. When he lays down the sleep, he is pressed between the chair and the edge of the bed, Jeongyo’s blankets hanging over the side. 

It’s cozy. If he looks up, he can see fragments of the night sky through the open window. In the corner of his eye, Jeongyo shifts, sometimes facing him, sometimes not. Pio forces himself to close his eyes so that they don’t keep drifting to the restless form. He remembers Jeongyo’s attention in the store, the joyful way he guided Pio through improvisation, the way he had watched reverently as Pio had played.

“You sleep like a mummy,” Jeongyo mumbles when he’s on the verge of falling asleep. 

“What?” Pio opens his eyes. 

When Jeongyo sees that he has his attention, he immediately flips onto his back and straightens out his legs, folding his arms solemnly across his chest.

“Like this.”

Pio looks down at his own clasped hands, sits up, and hits Jeongyo with his pillow.

“Ah!” Jeongyo startles out of the position, sitting up, and makes a grab for Pio’s pillow. He looks scandalized, his hair mussed up, his eyes luminescent in the semi-darkness.

Pio laughs, surprising himself. 

Jeongyo’s expression softens into a smile. He holds Pio’s pillow against his chest. 

“Do you really like being around me that much?” he asks, his voice quiet, a strange note in it.

Pio’s smile slips a little. He frowns.

“What’s there to like?”

Jeongyo scoffs, shaking his head, and then tries to hit him again. Pio shies back and bangs the back of his head against the corner of the desk. He hisses in pain, his hand coming up to feel the tender bruise that’s forming. There’s a rustle of blankets, and then Jeongyo is in his space, crowding into his makeshift bed as his hands join Pio’s.

“It’s fine,” Pio insists, but when he swats Jeongyo’s hands away, they end up tangled together instead. 

Jeongyo carefully brings their hands down to their laps. He’s kneeling, inches apart from Pio,  his face solemn.

“I told you before,” he said. “Don’t take yourself so lightly. It matters to me if you get hurt. Your happiness matters to me.”

Pio’s heart skips a beat. He pulls back, but gently, reluctant to disturb their positions even as his skin prickles at the touch.

“I—” his voice comes out faint. He looks away, coughs to clear it, and then forces himself to look back at Jeongyo.

“I know,” he says, because he can’t make himself say thank you or you’ve taught me how to be happy. 

Jeongyo smiles, radiant, and it hurts Pio like how staring into the sun burns your eyes. 

Some things shouldn’t be witnessed so directly.

—

Nocturne, for piano four hands.

The pages are filled with Jeongyo’s handwriting, the careful way he draws notes with a heavier press at the end, the lines gradually getting darker based on where he started with the pencil line. A lilting melody.

Pio stares at it and remembers the shadow of the concert hall at ten, the rectangular window pane at seventeen, the Noblesse. All those times they’ve shared a stage, all the times Pio has realized that he is standing in the shadow even when they are side by side.

Jeongyo is fast asleep. 

Pio closes the pages and wishes he could rip them out as much as he wishes he could stuff it into his backpack and take it for himself. 

Every composition he has made has been carefully planned, written and rewritten with mathematical precision. Nothing comes spontaneously; it is eked from his fingertips and his mind, run over with fine-toothed combs, picked apart and put back together over and over again. 

His cadenza always ends up dry, but Jeongyo can sit at the piano and make something out of nothing as if it was always supposed to be that simple.

Pio goes to practice early and doesn’t stop until his wrists ache and the notes blur off the sheet into mist.

—

The car ride is bleak. Pio stares out the window as his mother talks, lets it wash over him. 

He doesn’t want to care that he’s really going to lose everything she’s been pushing him to have. 

He doesn’t want to care, but he knows that Jeongyo no longer wants him in his dorm. 

Do I make you uncomfortable? Pio had asked.

No, Jeongyo had said, but his smile was tight, and his silence had been like a vice that night, making it hard for Pio to sleep.

Pio’s presence wears on everyone. The only person impervious to him is Jaein, but maybe that, too, had just been because she didn’t have a better option. 

Jeongyo is the better option. Playing wise, personality wise. His life might be pitiful, but he has the talent to escape all of it.

Pio will spend his life trapped in his own cage because he lacks the talent to pull himself out.

Even if he doesn’t want to enter the competition, even if he wants to go back to the piano shop and play jazz on the keys, there is a pit in his stomach yawning wider and wider. He picks at his fingernails until his mother slaps at his hands with a severe, chastising look in her eyes, as if he’s still five and she’s annoyed that she still has to remind him to sit straight whenever he plays, a ruler at his back, ready to hit the prod the small of his back when he slumps even the tiniest bit.

He used to have a permanent bruise there, between his vertebrae, a constant purpling over the yellow green wash of half-healed past bruises, the scattered sunspots of irritation where his starched shirts would rub against the bruised skin.

He feels nauseous. His mother hates when he looks unwell, so he swallows it back and stares at the sky, watches the birds fluttering away, and wishes he could roll down the window and feel the breeze through his hair.

—

Pio sees Jeongyo play at the piano he has never been allowed to sit at, his grandfather smiling as he listens, the other guests in quiet reverence, and feels like he’s going to pass out. It rushes over him, an overwhelming flood, and then he forces it down and feels nothing at all instead.

The stairs are a challenge. The ground rolls beneath his feet, a sea threatening to capsize him. Somehow he makes it to the landing, then to his room. 

Why?

It wouldn’t matter if it had been anyone else. His grandfather has always entertained the most talented pianists. To gain his approval is the dream of anyone who wants to be worth anything in Korea. His grandfather has even hosted concerts before. It’s hurt, of course, that he’s never asked Pio to play, but Pio has always known that he would have to earn it. Earning it—the spot at the table, the place at the piano, his right to exist in his grandfather’s eyes, his approval—has been all Pio has ever wanted.

But why did it have to be Jeongyo again?

Why did it always have to be Jeongyo?

The shadows stretch long, clawing at his coat, threatening to drag him down. It’s hard to stand. The walls are collapsing in on him.

Jeongyo comes in, but Pio doesn’t hear what he says. His grandfather comes in. As if from underwater, Pio hears the words he says, but doesn’t piece them together until he’s left.

The slamming of the door is final. Pio waits a second, paralyzed, and then flies into motion, tearing through the wooden boundaries separating them, and walks right into the blow of a sword.

A fatal hit.

He’s fundamentally different from you. You calculate everything, but he plays on instinct. You analyze the structure, but he pours music out of his heart like exploding lava. That’s why people find your music flawless yet boring, but when they listen to his music, they’re captivated even if it’s imperfect. 

Something like that simply can’t be taught.

Was that always the answer?

Jeongyo bursts in, a roaring fire leaping free, coming to stand at his side. His voice is passionate, angry, and no one has sounded like that for Pio. His mother protects him, yes, but she craves the same things he does. She can’t stand up to her father anymore than Pio can, most of the time. 

If it were someone else, Pio might be impressed. Instead he just feels angry. Can’t Jeongyo see that his grandfather is only allowing him to talk like that because Jeongyo is Kang Seongwoon’s equal? That he already has taken everything Pio thought he had a chance at holding? 

“I can feel it,” Jeongyo says, turning to Pio with the gaze that makes Pio feel like a butterfly, pinned to the wall. “Your raw talent is far more brilliant and extraordinary than mine.”

Pio just wants him to shut up. 

He used to sneer at Jeongyo’s naivety, before he grew to appreciate it. But now he sees it for what it is: blindness. Just as Pio was blind to think they could ever be equals, Jeongyo is blinded to the fact that Pio will never be worthy of his stage in the eyes of anyone who hears them play together.

“You know who’ll be left broken and destroyed in this relationship,” his grandfather says.

I know, Pio wants to respond, but he can only leave, the world a blur of color in front of his eyes. He feels like he’s drowning, water flooding into his lungs. He can’t hear anything his mother says, can’t hear anything Jeongyo says.

The door to his room closes. It is cold and silent inside. Pio presses his forehead against the doorframe and tries to breathe, but he’s choking. The floor spirals up to meet him, a cold kiss of death on his cheek. 

Who’ll be left broken and destroyed? 

Pio should have known from the start that it would be him. 

—

iii. crescendo 

He recovers from the pneumonia, but his right pinky won’t stop trembling. The doctor says he might have landed on it wrong when he fainted. It’s not broken, but he should give it plenty of rest so that it can regain normal function. 

Pio spends hours at the piano instead. When it hurts, he dunks it in cold water and downs pain medication for the constant ache in his limbs and head. If he flags, his mother is there, the small white pills in her hand, urging him to swallow them down and his pain with it. 

He plays in delirium, Jeongyo floating to his brain as he struggles through piece after piece. Jeongyo at ten, playing on the stage, light shining on him like a halo. Jeongyo in the piano room, eyes closed as early morning light catches on the piano keys. Jeongyo in Pio’s house, playing in the butter yellow light, the glittering diamond inset in a ring of gold. 

He knows Jeongyo has been practicing like crazy. In the early morning, he hears his songs floating through the air, filling the hallway outside the practice rooms. His feet want to drag to a stop as he nears the door, but Pio always forces himself to keep going. A second lingering is a second wasted, a second given to Jeongyo.

They haven’t talked since the hospital. Pio has seen him, has listened to his audition piece, and known that they would meet on the stage of the Prague Harmonie Competition, but they haven’t even looked each other in the eye since that day. 

He doesn’t know what to say to Jeongyo, about any of it. In the hospital, he had told him to sign up for the competition if he was truly Pio’s friend, and Jeongyo had.

But somehow his heart is still twisting in his chest, something heavy resting on his stomach and making everything taste like dust. 

He goes through the motions of living until the acceptance comes, his mother smiling as if he’s really making her happy.

“I passed,” Jeongyo tells him at the lockers, leaning his back against the one next to Pio and staring straight ahead as he breaks their spell of silence. It’s still too early for anyone else to be there. 

Pio grabs his books and closes his locker with a quiet click, leaving his hand there and staring at the lock.

“Me too.”

Jeongyo sighs, then turns his head suddenly. Pio’s eyes flit over to his, and stay there. Jeongyo doesn’t look mad, or happy. He’s watching Pio closely, as if he’s looking for something.

“Then I guess I’ll see you in Prague,” he says.

Pio stares at him for a moment longer, then abruptly breaks eye contact and walks back to his seat without replying. He places the books down and slips his headphones on, flipping them open even as he reads nothing on the pages.

In the corner of his vision, he sees Jeongyo slouch over to his seat and flop down, stretching his arm out and pillowing his head on it as he settles in to take his before class nap. 

Pio’s heart beats threateningly fast in his chest. In his calendar, he circles the date of the competition in red and counts the days down soundlessly. 

—

Of course Jeongyo makes it to the finals. Pio never doubted he would, but in the seconds after his name had been called, his throat had felt tight, until Jeongyo’s name had been next. In the audience, Jeongyo opens his eyes in surprise, looking dumbfounded, and Pio wishes he could hate him, for somehow not knowing just how talented he is.

Jeongyo comes to stand shyly on the stage next to him, looking at Pio before shaking the announcer’s hand. When he turns to face the audience, Pio swears the room gets a little brighter. 

Anxiety twists in his chest, sharp and stabbing.

—

He’s halfway across the world, but Pio feels like he’s never left the cloistered music room of Kang Manor. It’s dark outside, sweat dripping down his face, his arms aching and his hands trembling. Pain spikes up from his right pinky over and over again. Even the lightest pressure on his nail is agony, but Pio smashes it repeatedly against the keys, forcing himself to breathe through the nausea and iron in his mouth. 

Why were they playing the same piece? Why, of all the pieces, did it have to be that one? And why, of all the people, did his grandfather still choose Choi Jeongyo as worthy of his conducting?

This had been a trap all along, Pio realizes with clarity. 

They all want him to quit the piano, don’t they? They never wanted him to succeed. Pio is not someone who is worthy to play the instrument people like Kang Seongwoo and Do Hyeonsoo revere. 

It was supposed to be his choice. If he had lost, it would have been because Jeongyo is genuinely better than him. 

But it was a trap.

Eventually, he realizes the pounding is not inside his skull, but coming from his door. Pio rises in a daze, flings the door open, and lets the anger roll off of him in waves. He sees the other doors open, the yelling escalates, and then Jeongyo is pulling him away, wrapping Pio so tightly that he can’t break free.

Pio shoves him and it hurts when Jeongyo lets go, sending him staggering back into Jeongyo’s piano, the sharp edges digging into the ridges of his spine. The world spins behind his eyes; he grips for balance and tries not to hiss at the pain that rips through his hand, lightning quick, as his pinky catches on the edges of the wood.

Fuck off, he thinks as Jeongyo speaks. Why does it matter if I’m eating or sleeping or in pain, he wants to ask. Aren’t you happy that I’m suffering? Don’t you know that it’s all because of you?

And then his music is gone. The terror seizes Pio’s lungs and cuts off his air. Unmoored, he drifts through the chapel, ignoring the other contestants, until he sees the flash of a figure in the darkness.

It’s raining outside, hard and fast. He’s soaked after only a few steps, but keeps on running, losing his slippers somewhere along the way as he pelts through the trees. A lake looms in front of him, and he catches a glimpse of the sheet music floating in the depths. He doesn’t think before he flings himself in, the water sloshing up to his chest and sucking at his legs.

“Kang Pio!” Jeongyo screams, but he sounds far away, until he is grabbing Pio again, pulling him back with all his strength. They thrash in the water, slipping and sliding, until they’re on dry land and the sheet music, if it was even there, has been swept away.

Pio turns and hits Jeongyo as hard as he can, but it doesn’t seem to hurt him, only Pio, who sways with the force of it. He fumbles against the ground, grabbing for the first thing he can find—a rock—and swinging it towards Jeongyo, anything to keep him away.

“Are you insane?” Jeongyo yells, squinting at him through the rain.

This is all your fault, Pio thinks—no, yells—and then again, “It’s all your fault!”

Jeongyo tackles him to the ground, but even then, his hand is cupped behind Pio’s head to stop him from hitting it too hard. They roll, a tangle of limbs, until Pio is bracketed beneath him, Jeongyo’s hands on his shoulders and his hair dripping water onto Pio’s face. 

“It’s just the piano,” he says, as if he can speak sense back into Pio, as if that means anything at all. 

“Why tear yourself apart over music? You’re way more important than any of that. So why the hell are you doing this to yourself?”

He’s angry, Pio thinks, but all he wants to do is laugh. Just the piano? If it was ever just the piano, then why is Pio here? What meaning is there to life if not the piano, music? What is he worth if not what he can play?

It’s just music. Without music, he’s nothing.

He can’t say anything to Jeongyo, wordless grief seeping into the cracks of his heart and settling there. He lets his head fall back and closes his eyes against the crying sky, his breath rattling in his chest, Jeongyo’s fingers digging divots into his shoulders as he clings to him.

“Let’s go back, Pio-ah,” Jeongyo finally whispers, and Pio is too tired to argue.

— 

The darkness is silent. Pio lies on his side and drifts quietly in the midst of it, never quite sleeping. 

It’s peaceful, without the piano. 

The door opens, letting in a crack of light. He knows it’s Jeongyo intuitively, remembering how they used to step over each other in the morning, the quiet sounds of Jeongyo’s socked feet padding on the floor.

Much of Jeongyo is loud—his music, his yelling, his swagger—but more of him is quiet. Bowed head, drawn in shoulders, fingers fidgeting with the hem of his shirt, lip tucked between his teeth, eyes swimming with emotion.

“Get up and eat before you get sick,” Jeongyo says. There’s the clatter of a plate, the soft shifting of utensils. 

Pio closes his eyes and breathes in through his nose, dispelling the nausea that rises at the thought of eating. He can’t remember the last time he ate. He has no appetite.

“How long are you going to lie around? What about practice?”

“Get out,” Pio says, his voice hoarse and raspy. He can’t manage the strength to say anything else.

He hears Jeongyo walk over, senses his presence at his back.

“I told you I’d wipe the floor with you if you didn’t practice hard,” Jeongyo says. His voice is hard on the surface, but questioning underneath.

Pio opens his eyes and stares at the wall, curled away from Jeongyo. 

Biting the bullet, he says, “I’m going to withdraw.”

Jeongyo is quiet for so long that Pio almost thinks he left, just like that.

“What?” he finally asks. “Are you crazy? How can you withdraw over some sheet music? Have you really lost your mind?”

Pio bites back the giggle that wants to spill from his lips.

Yeah, he’s lost his mind. Everyone told him there was no thief, no person in a black raincoat, no sheet music swept away by the storm. He dreamed it all. He hallucinated it. He’s really…gone crazy.

“There’s no way you didn’t memorize it already,” Jeongyo is saying. “Losing it doesn’t mean—”

“Memorizing it isn’t the issue.” Pio cuts him off. “I couldn’t interpret it. And that scared me. Even if I compete, I’ll just get eliminated. I know it. This is for the best.”

He can’t see Jeongyo’s expression. Maybe that’s what makes him brave, brave enough to tell him what he has never trusted himself enough to say.

“I knew becoming a great pianist was too big of a dream for me. But I loved the piano too much to give it up. I loved music too much. That’s why I did whatever I could to play those beautiful songs with my own hands. I knew I was being too ambitious, but I couldn’t give up. So now I’m walking away from this unrequited love.”

What was it he had told his mother, only a few weeks ago?

I’d rather give up than become just another ordinary pianist.

He’s crying. The tears slide down his face, silently landing on his pillow. 

Jeongyo is the only person who knows. How Pio feels about the piano. How he felt the first time he touched one, why he could never stop. 

Maybe he could have been like Jeongyo, if things had been different. 

No. That’s too much of a pipe dream, even for him.

“I’m going to quit now,” Pio tells Jeongyo, still so afraid to turn around. “But I hope you’ll keep going.”

Jeongyo’s breathing is shaky in the air. Pio knows without looking that he’s crying. It has always been easier for Jeongyo to open his heart and feel. 

He leaves as quietly as he came, darkness washing through the room once more. Pio stares at the wall as his tears dry. He’s worn out. This is really it for them, isn’t it? Jeongyo will keep on going from here. Pio knows he’ll go so, so far. It’s what he deserves. He’s a true artist, after all. A miracle Pio is lucky to have been able to experience in his lifetime.

In a few years, he’ll be nothing but a distant memory, while Jeongyo will be flying far away. They will never play on the same stage again. 

He should feel happy, but there’s a lump in his throat he can’t swallow past.

The brushing of paper against the floor, something landing softly. Pio looks up, feeling dizzy as he rights himself and walks over to the blue sheet music book on the ground.

It is unmistakably Jeongyo’s, even without the note.

Like a bird, Pio reads, tracing the marks of Jeongyo’s interpretation reverently. It is once again a reading he could have never achieved.

Like a bird, Pio thinks, and remembers what it felt like to fall, Jeongyo stretching out a hand to pick him back up.

Like a bird, escaping his cage, he adds on, and lifts the cover off the piano keys, sitting down to play.

—

iv. climax

Blood stains the keys, but Pio is lost in the concerto, bleeding from his fingertips and dancing like an aurora in the concert hall. 

I don’t think of anything, Jeongyo had said once, when Pio had asked him what he thought of when playing. I just play.

What a luxury, Pio had thought at the time, to not have to think. 

The applause is uproarious, a standing ovation. Pio can’t make out anything clearly. All he can hear is his own breathing, his own thunderous heartbeat, and the quiet plink, plink, plink of blood dripping down and staining the wooden floorboards.

He’s never played like that before.

The whole time, he had been playing, but it was like Jeongyo was next to him, guiding his hands through the notes. Pio felt him, wrapped around him, his presence lifting the notes from the page, turning them to magic with Pio’s hands.

He waits, after. 

He waits, but Jeongyo never comes.

Pio sits in the chair, numb, his pinky bandaged tightly, stained pink at the edges as the blood starts to seep through from where he’s squeezing it repeatedly. Something is gnawing at him, tearing at his skin. He bites down on his tongue and tastes blood and waits.

The award is as heavy as the stone he tried to kill Jeongyo with. He is ice cold and burning hot all at once. The pictures taken of him show a startled deer, staring shell shocked into the headlights of an approaching truck, knowing death is imminent.

Where is Jeongyo? 

He remembers Jeongyo’s back in that tuxedo, the way he had shifted on his feet, hands shoved into his pockets. Even dressed to the nines, he couldn’t hide his discomfort, his tendency to slouch.

He remembers Jeongyo looking away as soon as they had made eye contact, silhouetted in the light from the floor to ceiling window, as if he couldn’t bear to look at Pio directly.

Take it if you need it. Pio traces the letters until the paper starts to crumple. Fearing he’ll destroy it, he slams the book cover closed, clenches it in his fist, and waits, waits, waits.

—

“Don’t worry too much,” his mother whispers as she hugs him, holding him more tightly than she has in a long time. “He’ll be okay. They’ll find him soon.”

But Jeongyo is never found. 

In the darkness of his room, his mother asleep in the next, Pio curls up as tightly as he can and lets himself sob into his fists, crumbling apart piece by piece. The piano book sits on the bed beside him, Jeongyo’s last words tucked into the cover, his last act of kindness to a selfish monster who stole his victory, his future, his life.

Come back, Pio says, but it’s worthless without Jeongyo there to hear it. I said I’m sorry. I promise that it’s yours, okay? 

He’d give everything up in a heartbeat if it meant Jeongyo could walk back onto the stage, smiling, and play.

—

v. recapitulation 

He sees Jeongyo again at his first concert in Korea. He’s signed to Jaein’s mother’s agency, contracts signed for years in advance, performances arranged month after month. He’s poised to travel the world as he studies. His mother has a plan, of course, the exact degrees he can obtain in as little time as possible, the professional recognition he needs to properly stand on the world stage.

Pio spends his mornings practicing, his afternoons studying, his evenings performing, and his nights unable to sleep. The sleep medicine he’s been prescribed is so strong that he only takes it when he feels his body on the brink of collapse. It knocks him into a dreamless sleep that not even the dead can wake him from.

Pio hates that sleep. He prefers the nightmares and the dreams that jerk him awake at odd hours, never letting him get more than a few hours a night. In those, at least, he sees Jeongyo again.

It happens when he’s halfway through the first movement. He glances out at the audience, a habit he still can’t shake, and in the third row, he sees Jeongyo.

Pio’s heart stops, but his hands don’t, moving along even as he feels glued to the seat, only his foot moving instinctively to match the pedal.

Jeongyo’s wearing the suit he vanished in, the satin lapels and the lined shirt, the bowtie black against the hollow of his throat. He’s unsmiling, staring at Pio with dead eyes, his fringe brushed neatly over his forehead, his skin holding a pale pallor to it.

Pio finishes the piece and stands to bow. When he raises his head, Jeongyo is gone, his seat filled with another man, who is politely applauding, unaware that Pio is staring fixedly at him. 

He shakes himself and exits the stage.

His pinky finger trembles against his leg, and even though Pio knows it’s fine, that it healed months ago, he looks down and sees blood dripping from the nailbed all the same.

— 

Jeongyo continues to follow him. At first, Pio only sees him in audiences and crowds, there one moment and gone the next, always in his suit and bowtie, silent and unmoving. In the velvet chairs, on the sidewalk, across the street as cars zoom past. Always out of reach. Always vanishing when Pio blinks, or steps forward, or even does something as stupid as reach out.

He plays until he’s dripping with sweat and wishes he knew what Jeongyo was trying to tell him. 

“You need to eat more,” Jaein chides whenever she sees him, bringing snacks and fried chicken. Pio watches her eat when he finishes practice and accepts what she gives him, but he can never make himself take more than a bite. 

Through the window pane, he sees Jeongyo on the opposite side of the street. 

“Jaein-ah,” he says, clearing his throat. 

“Yeah?” she looks up at him with wide unblinking eyes, this girl who’s known him for practically his whole life and still knows next to nothing about him.

“Jeongyo—” Pio starts, and can’t make himself finish. 

Jaein’s expression changes ever so slightly. Pio, who has spent his life attuning himself to other people’s body language, reads it easily. 

“Pio,” she says, putting down the chicken and reaching out to grab his hand. He still hates it, but he’s stopped shaking her off.

It reminds him of how Jeongyo used to touch him so easily, as if he’d never learned that Pio was covered in thorns.

“Jeongyo’s gone,” Jaein tells him, sadness in her eyes as she stares at him. 

“How can he be gone?” Pio mutters nonsensically. “He’s right—”

He stops himself. The Jeongyo outside is gone.

“They just haven’t found him yet,” he finishes pathetically.

“Oh, Pio,” Jaein says quietly, reaching forward to hug him, but Pio pulls back.

“Are you sleeping?” she asks.

“No,” Pio replies dully. He never sleeps anymore. Who cares if it drives him insane.

“Should we make an appointment with the psychiatrist?” Jaein asks worriedly.

Pio makes himself smile, tries to assuage her of the burden of caring about the shell of the boy who was once Kang Pio.

“I’ll make an appointment,” he lies.

—

The overdose is accidental. He doesn’t mean to. It’s just late, and he’s exhausted. His entire right hand is shaking, his pinky hot to the touch with pain, and his eyes are burning. It’s been days since he properly slept. Every time he’s drifted off, he’s dreamed of strangling Jeongyo that night in the forest.

He didn’t. 

He doesn’t think he did.

He’s desperate to make the world shut off for once, the piano still playing even when he’s no longer sitting at it. He’s not looking carefully when he opens the bottle of sleeping pills. He miscounts. He forgets about the pain medication he had taken earlier, to numb the pain in his hand so that he could practice a little longer.

Pio takes them, then sits for a long time on the bathroom floor before remembering he should sleep in his bed. 

He’s halfway there when he loses control of his body. One minute he’s standing, the next he’s on the ground and he can’t move. His body shakes, his fingers twitching, his ears ringing distantly. Something is failing. He can’t move his hand, even though it’s shaking. His phone is somewhere far away. His chest hurts, acid burning. He tries to breathe and feels himself start choking.

Jeongyo, he thinks, but can’t bring himself to form the thought that would come after that.

As he fades into unconsciousness, he sees a pair of dress shoes, standing just out of reach from his broken right hand.

—

Pio wakes up in the hospital and Jeongyo is there. It’s a pale, hazy morning, light filtering in from the translucent curtains, the sky outside still gray, the moon a pale imitation fading away. Jeongyo is sitting in the visitor’s chair at his bedside, staring at him solemnly.

Pio tries to speak and finds that he can barely make sound. He coughs, tries again, forcing the words past the scrape of sandpaper of his throat.

“Jeongyo,” he says, pathetic as always, the only thing he can ever manage to say, as if he even deserves to call Jeongyo’s name. 

Jeongyo was the one who used to say his name. Kang Pio! in anger and distress. Pio-ah with tenderness, as gentle as his hands when they had cradled Pio’s face. 

Choi Jeongyo, Pio had spat like a curse, again and again, until he really cursed Jeongyo. 

If he had said his name before, really said it, then maybe he could bring Jeongyo back to him.

Jeongyo reaches out to him, his hand mere millimeters from where Pio’s lays uselessly on top of the bed covers, an IV running up his arm. He leans forward, rising from the chair, until he’s standing at Pio’s bedside, staring down at him. Pio thinks he looks forlorn; he’s never seen Jeongyo this close before, not since Jeongyo disappeared.

It’s really you, Pio wants to say, but he can only stare at Jeongyo as hard as he can, which isn’t much, hoping he can convey what weighs heavy on his heart with his eyes.

Jeongyo leans in, reaching around Pio as if he’s going to touch his cheeks. He doesn’t speak. Pio is struck with the terrifying thought that perhaps it’s not that he won’t, but that he can’t. As if when he opens his mouth, blood will come out instead.

Deftly, gently, Jeongyo takes the extra pillow from the bed and slams it over Pio’s face, the cotton covering his mouth and nose, blocking out all light.

Pio struggles futilely, his body too weak to fight it. Jeongyo’s weight presses down with all his fury, all his anger, unrelenting as Pio’s legs and arms spasm. He grabs for Jeongyo’s hands, his shoulders, but there’s nowhere he can find purchase on.

Jeongyo, he thinks, and then, you’re angry with me, aren’t you?

He can’t breathe again. Pio jerks, his lungs fighting in his chest, his vision growing dark, and then he jolts upright, the room pitch black, pressure on his face, his chest heaving. He rips at his face, feeling plastic, pulling at tubes and wires until he’s freed himself.

The room shrieks at him, red lights flashing. 

Jeongyo is no longer beside him.

—

Jeongyo doesn’t leave him alone after that, and Pio spends a large sum to hire a private investigator, a Korean man based in Prague, the last place he knew Jeongyo was alive in. Pio is flying around the world by then, smiling at crowds of classical music enthusiasts, giving interview after interview. He hasn’t even begun to climb to the peak of his career yet, they tell him, and he’s already at the top of the classical world. 

Pio plays a hundred concerts and sees Jeongyo during every single one. He calls Martin Vogel daily, then weekly, then monthly, but it’s been almost five years. The trail has been cold for a long time—it was cold as soon as Jeongyo left the chapel and never made it to the Harmonie. 

But each time the words no new leads make Pio’s chest hurt. He lies awake at night, waiting for a call, waiting for anything, sleeplessness dragging him from one day to the next, from one country to another, from stage to stage, piano to piano, his life a string of collected moments and awards that he can’t remember.

In between his international flights, he goes to the music arcade and organizes all the music that Jeongyo left behind. He turns the pianos upright and smooths the wood, tunes them endlessly until they play perfectly clear, crisp notes. He smoothes the stickers that are starting to peel off and replaces the stuffing in the piano bench. Each time he leaves, he’s careful to return the key, so that if Jeongyo comes back, he can find it easily.

At his home, he locks the awards in his closet, and hides his memories of Jeongyo in a box. They’re so few; a watch, a polaroid, the sheet music Jeongyo gave him all those years ago. 

Pio looks at the picture when the insomnia is too much, when the Jeongyo that follows him stays too long. He looks at the Jeongyo in the polaroid, staring with wide eyes, backlit with his pale moon of a face shining through, and remembers practicing side by side with him for hours, until he felt like their bodies were moving in perfect tandem, their thoughts synced. 

He calls Jeongyo’s number long after it stops going through. The texts are undelivered, the letters unwritten. Pio clings to the hope he can find, but it is nothing but a fraying thread.

And then, a lead. 

And then, Jeongyo is dead.

—

In the fever, he dreams of Jeongyo. It is not a nightmare this time, but a good dream. They’re in the music arcade, at his mother’s piano, the sunlight streaming in through the windows, even though it was so far into the maze of shops that little natural light found its way in.

Jeongyo wears Pio’s gray cardigan, his shoulder pressed up against him, his fingers drifting across the keys, but it is a silent dream; Pio can’t hear anything he’s playing. Jeongyo looks at him, his lips moving, and Pio feels himself smiling, responding, a silent movie moving in slow motion.

Jeongyo laughs, a peal of laughter that brings the dream back to life, jostling Pio with the movement, so that they both nearly topple off the piano bench. Jeongyo’s hands leave the piano to steady him, guiding him gently back to security against Jeongyo’s side. Pio’s in his black sweater, the one he never returned, and he knows that his gray cardigan was donated when they cleaned out Jeongyo’s dorm room.

Isn’t this yours? Mrs. Yoon had asked, but when Pio had touched it, there had been no warmth left in it, no trace of Jeongyo on the sleeves, and he had shaken his head, let her pack it away with a quivering lip as she got rid of the boy they had all failed, as his mother pulled him away to practice.

“I’ll remember this,” Jeongyo tells him. He’s right next to Pio, but he sounds like he’s speaking from far away. He taps his temple, smiling up at Pio with that crooked lilt to his lips. “Kang Pio, you’ll be in my memory forever.”

Pio smiles, but can’t respond. 

Jeongyo being only a memory is an unbearable reality to face.

—

Do you have any idea how special he was?

—

It’s dark when he wakes up. Pio lets his eyes adjust, a cold sweat drying on his skin. For the first time in months, he feels clear headed, his eyes bright as the room fades into clarity.

There’s a presence next to him, icy cold, pinning him down to the bed. Pio turns his head ever so slightly and stares up at Jeongyo’s pallid face, taking in the mole under his eyes, the crease to his brow, the slight wave to his hair. 

He’s so close that it takes Pio’s breath away. 

Pio closes his eyes and remembers the Jeongyo of his dream, alive and breathing and beautiful.

He’s dead. 

He opens his eyes and Jeongyo is still there, silent as he has been for the past nine years, trapped in the body of a seventeen year old, in a suit that he couldn’t stop readjusting, in a bowtie that constricts him and shoes he hates. Trapped in the place Pio abandoned him at, standing in his shadow because Pio stole his identity when he took his place with Jeongyo’s music. He’s been impersonating a pianist for years, playing on stages and never coming close to how he played during the Prague Harmonie. The masses listen and clap politely, but his grandfather and Do Hyeonsoo have never come to another performance. 

We weren’t that close, he had said. They’re inches apart right now, but Pio was never Jeongyo’s friend. He never deserved Jeongyo’s warmth, his kindness, his gentle hands, his music. 

Pio poisoned him. It doesn’t matter if he wasn’t the man who shot the gun, it doesn’t matter if he didn’t know. It doesn’t even matter if it was his mother after all.

Pio is the one who killed Jeongyo, in the end. 

If he had let Jeongyo go then, if he had never reached out to begin with, never looked back when Jeongyo turned away, Jeongyo would still be here.

What had his apology been worth then? Nothing but empty words.

“You can take the bed,” he tells Jeongyo now, sitting up and grabbing a pillow and a blanket. He drags them to the floor, laying down on them beside the bed. 

The moonlight halos the sheen of Jeongyo’s hair as he stares down at Pio quietly. Pio closes his eyes and drifts into sleep.

—

vi. coda

Jeongyo is not a hallucination. Pio thought he was, thought that his guilt and dirty, dirty conscience and hands had conjured him up, but if Jeongyo is dead, then the Jeongyo that has been following him is not a hallucination, but a haunting. 

If he’s a haunting, then it is only fitting that he steal Pio’s ability to play the piano. That ability was always Jeongyo’s after all. This is his revenge. 

Pio drinks in foreign countries and wanders the streets. In bars, he looks at the pianos and imagines Jeongyo at the bench, dressed casually in a hoodie and jeans, his bag slung across his shoulders because he could never bear to put it down, eyes closed and head tipped back as he plays.

It can never distract from Pio’s silent drinking companion, who stares at him across bars and tabletops, unable to drink because he’s not old enough yet, watching Pio tip deeper and deeper into the abyss. 

He doesn’t know why he decides to watch the conducting competition. Maybe because a piano competition would be unbearable. Maybe because conducting reminds him of Kang Seungwoon and his refusal to conduct for Pio all those years ago. Maybe because he wants to sit in the audience in that room and imagine what it would have been like to watch Jeongyo perform on the stage, nine years ago or now.

He’s never truly been in an audience and watched Jeongyo before. He’s only watched from afar, from the edges of doorways and curtains, greedy and thieving even then, desiring to hold the music for himself and only himself.

Pio slips into the back rows, settling in at the end of a row. Jeongyo sits down next to him, silent and unmoving, and Pio forces himself to stare straight ahead.

You need time to grieve, his therapist had said. If you grieve for him properly, if you give yourself time, he should disappear. 

Pio watches the competition numbly, letting the symphonies wash over him until the announcer calls the name Luca Domenico and the hall falls silent, as if collectively holding their breath.

The opening notes of Danse Macabre cut through the air like a knife, sharp and tillating.

The hairs on Pio’s arm raise. His vision sharpens onto the conductor. His back faces the audience for now, a black suit tailored to his form. The light catches on his brown hair, the spotlight concentrated on him so bright that his silhouette glows. 

The Dance of Death.

The music increases in tempo and sound, crashing through the room. Pio’s breathing quickens in response, his chest tightening, the music slamming into him in waves, filling his lungs with water. His heartbeat thunders against his ribs, an old pain throbbing through his right pinky. His hands are shaking; he grips the armrests unconsciously, trying to ground himself to reality even as he feels himself floating away.

The music reaches a crescendo and the conductor turns ever so slightly, his profile coming into view, looking for all the world like a god on the stage, so bright he’s blinding.

The Jeongyo next to Pio dissolves into nothing.