echo I
The chandeliers flickered above, casting a dim glow over the grand exquisite hall, beams refracted through the chandelier’s crystals, cascading in soft, shimmering waves that gathered at his feet, draping him in an unspoken limelight as he faced the waiting stage. He placed his fingers on the grand piano and played.
The first note rang out- cold, hollow, yet unbearably heavy. It did not weep, not yet. It lingered in the air, stretching thin, yet the anguish amplified with every passing moment. The melody gradually spread out, slow and relentless, unravelling the truth of forgiven wrongs, unveiling the cruelty of life, unmasking the pain crusted to invisible scars.
The music was not loud, soft even, painstakingly soft. The quiet grief in each chord he played pressed down on the room, every note was a whisper of regret, the rhythm curling around the audience’ hearts like ivy in the cracks of forgotten tombstones, their touch leaving scalding blood streaked marks. He played like he always does, devoid of warmth, no tremor of feeling- only precision, only inevitability. Yet, the ache, the yawning gap that sinks deep into the unknown, was embedded in the melody, the underlying current of agony and pain lurking from beyond.
Was that from him?
He went on and on, his fingers making quick work of the complex chords as his melody continued to spin a story of sorrow. It carried the weight of things unsaid, of things lost before they could be held. It was a calling woven in between notes, a plea to be seen and heard, yet doomed to a lifetime of solidarity. It unearthed buried sorrows, it shattered hopes, it mourned losses. To the audience, it was sorrow made sound, pain made flesh.
To him, it was nothing at all. Nothing compared to what he went through.
His fingers never faltered, gliding to key after key with effortless grace, he was composed, stoic even, as if he was merely a messenger to deliver someone else’s grief. The melody seeped into hundreds of bodies, gnawing at the edges of the audience’ souls, settling deep in their bones, their eyes glistening as the past pulled them under, of time when joy had not yet turned to dust, to the haunting nights when everything changed. Yet, he looked unmoved, but in the spaces between notes -in the daunting silence that swallowed them whole- there was something dangerously close to truth.
Perhaps, if he listened closely, he would hear it.
But he never listened.
The final note rang out, crisp clear but long and empty, before dissolving into the waiting stillness. The silence was thick and unbearable, with the listeners still locked in their trance, fighting to catch their composure as their souls lay bare before them. The audience sat slumped in their seats, undone by something they could not name. He lifted his hands, the weight of the song slipping from his fingers like dust. Then, he stood and walked away.
As if none of it had ever touched him.
II
The bed was restless. Sheets tangled around his legs, twisted like restraints. His body was curled inwards, as if he was trying to protect himself from something nonexistent, his hands flailed around him helplessly, clutching the fabric so tightly that his knuckles turned white. His breath hitched- uneven, shallow, caught in his throat.
Something blinded him.
Headlights.
A sharp flinch, he mourned in anguish, his fingers twitching, gripping at nothing.
“Screech——-!” The sound of tires screeching, the split second rush of movement. His legs jerked violently, hitting the corner of the table hard, a horrid bruise blossoming on his feet. Oblivious to the pain, he continued swinging his legs aimlessly, a desperate and useless attempt to outrun something only in his dreams.
The sickening crack of bones. But not his.
His jaw tensed. A quiet, almost strangled sound left his throat.
The silence after impact.
Metal crunched like paper. A violent lurch. He heard it then.
“Argh—-!” His brother took the brunt of the wreckage. He hoisted himself up by a pole, stumbling across the road, he dropped down beside his brother.
His brother’s body was slumped unnaturally, crumpled against the twisted wreck of metal, his hands ruined. Flesh torn, bone exposed, fingers crushed. His wrists were a mangled knot, the skin split open in jagged lines, crimson stains were everywhere, blood smeared across shattered glass, pooling dark and thick beneath his trembling fingertips. He barely held in a sob as his hands fluttered in the air, at a loss of where to touch, where to place them, where he could stem the bleeding, where he could make his brother’s hands well again.
One of his brother’s fingers barely twitched. A spasm. A final, useless movement.
The golden hands. The hands that played the piano gracefully and confidently. The same pair of hands that played every musical instrument with a talent like a gift that gods bestowed on him.
Utterly destroyed. Completely ruined. All because of him.
His stomach twisted, bile rising in his throat. His brother’s ruined hands burnt into his vision, searing through every thought, drowning out every sound.
He gasped awake. A sharp inhale as his body wrenched itself awake.
The ceiling blurred above him, his body locked in place, limbs tangled in sweat-damped sheets. His breathing came hard and ragged, a weight pressed down on his chest.
He flexed his numbed fingers, allowing the bloodstream to flow properly again. They were fine though, unscathed, unscratched, scarless.
Why did it have to be his brother’s hands?
He slid off his bed gingerly, the cold marble tile grounding him for a second. Then, the same scent hit him.
Blood.
A sudden flash of red.
His stomach lurched. Pulse surging, the nausea building in his throat. He slid into the bathroom.
It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. This is all a hallucination. Just a hallucination.
But to no avail. It was there. It’s the accident site again.
Lingering. Coppery. The thick, metallic stench of that night. It seized his body, and he threw up there and then, but still the memory dragged him back under, the claws relentless, merciless.
Blood. Pooling under shattered wrists, splattered across a dashboard. Thick between the cracks of a piano that would never be played again.
The tang of it flooded his mouth, a phantom taste, sharp and iron-strong. His hands clenched, his nails biting into his palms, leaving a trail of pale half-moon circles. Scrunching his forehead, he closed his eyes, turned on the shower, allowing the water to scald his skin.
Not that it helped. It never helped.
By the time the water ran cold, he was left drained once more, hollowed out. It wasn’t his first episode since that day, but every time it hit, it emptied him of everything but the dull ache sitting in his ribs. He was simply exhausted.
He could remember how he screamed, cried, lashed out, hurt himself the first few days after the accident. He remembered how he eventually tired himself of it, how he changed his coping mechanism to just stay empty, numb and unfeeling. He figured it suited him better to just function but not actually living a life.
In simpler terms, alive, yet unfeeling. Breathing, yet suffocating.
No rage, no grief, no breaking down. At least, not anymore.
Just the same heavy silence. And the facade of numbness.
And a pair of ruined hands he could never stop seeing.
III
“You’re okay, Alexander. Don’t cry.” He remembered how his brother smiled at him weakly even in the face of his shattered hands.
“You’ll play the piano, won’t you, Alexander? You know you’re just as good.” His brother had asked him expectantly.
“For me?” Gazing into the bright blue eyes of his older brother, he couldn’t say no. His eyes found the thick bandage wrapping his brother’s bloodied hands, tracing the weirdly angled bandages with a fresh wave of guilt every time he saw it. He couldn’t help it, the memory is inescapable, unstoppable as it all bled through his mind.
The past bled into the present. His fingers hovered over the piano keys, hands steady, posture flawless. To the audience, he was simply a pianist, poised in the golden glow of the grand hall. But today, his melody ached more, as the notes spilled from his fingers, the short gaps in between amplified in grief, slow, deliberate, bleeding sorrow seeping into the hall as he mourned his brother’s loss to fulfil his dreams. His hands moved with ease, yet they felt heavier than stone. Each note pressed into the keys carried the weight of the past- of a promise he never made, but could never break.
He squeezed his eyes close, reopening it to see the dancer showing herself onto the stage. She had a small smile on her lips, her golden silky hair combed and braided into an elegant high bun on her head, her posture perfect and poised. Then, she danced.
She moved like a whisper- light, fleeting, untouchable. She wasn’t the first dancer assigned to dance to his melody, but she was the first one that he was drawn to. She was like fire, given form, unleashing her talents as she poured herself into every motion. Where his music mourned, she burned. Where he was stone, she was air. Where his music ached, she breathed.
She was everything he wasn’t. Vivid, raw, passionate.
Every step she took, every turn, every leap carried a force that shook something deep within him, something he had buried since long ago. She danced as if the world was hers to hold, while he played as if he had already lost it.
Yet somehow, inexplicably, they were in sync.
Two opposites moving as one, his sorrow, her fire, melding into a perfectly balanced mixture of emotional complexity.
For once in a long time, he wondered what it would be like to play for himself, and not out of guilt. To pour yourself into something, not out of obligations, but out of true passion. Briefly, he remembered how he used to play beside his brother, a strong fiery passion for the instrument within the both of them. How he lost all of the fire within a night when he ruined his brother’s chance to continue playing. He gently shook his head as if to clear his mind as his fingers ran through the last few lines of the music score. Like always, effortlessly, but the weight of the song that sunk into him, it intensified.
He had always thought of the limelight as a golden halo but inside, just another shadow, a reminder of his past. However, through her, he saw how she could light up the entire circle of limelight. She glided across the stage gracefully, the limelight chasing her shadow instead. She didn’t dance in sorrow, rather, she danced with it. She moved while he played, and for the first time ever, maybe his concert wasn’t so much like a funeral.
He pressed the last note and she gradually came to a stop, her movements graceful as she ended with a small curtsy. He stood up, blinked and excused himself from the piano seat.
He left once again, as if he didn’t just play a whole piece to mourn, as if he didn’t just play a song that was a funeral hymn by his own definition.
But maybe today, the weight of the song wasn’t as suffocating.
IV
Usually, he would decline to appoint a permanent dancer at his concerts, but for her, he broke this rule. For she never trespassed his boundaries, never pried for more information, never disturbing his solemnity. And this was how he liked it best. At least until he is ready to make a change. He couldn’t deny that he liked to see how she danced, and that a small part of him yearned to play like how she danced. Untamed and emotional. Passionate and fiery. At ease.
But he wasn’t ready to bare himself for the world to see. And he wasn’t sure if he would ever be.
Till one evening after their rehearsal, she spoke.
“Do you hear the way you play?”
He frowned. He didn’t make a mistake, not even a small slip, not even the beat counts. He blinked at her.
“It sounded like you were actually mourning a loss. Every song. Maybe it’s time to let go.”
Her voice was quiet, gentle as if she was coaxing a child. Her expression soft and cautious, her eyes searching his face but not in an invasive way, but to show concern and give assurance.
He felt his heart skip a beat, her words cutting deeper than it should have. He had no answer to that, not that she needed one.
Because she was right.
His entire existence had become a lingering chord, hanging in the air long after the song had ended, just like his guilt, like a demon lurking over him, blocking all the sunshine and rainbows till his life was a permanent shade of darkness.
He was still living in a world of solace and darkness. With no means of escaping his own guilt and fears.
He looked up to see her still staring at him, and suddenly it was too hard for him to bear. He left the rehearsal room without a word. He just wasn’t ready. But he too knows that letting go is his deepest desire.
V
The realisation didn’t come all at once. It came in fragments- like the fading echoes of a melody.
It came when he played his saddest pieces with just a slight underlying tone of energy, when he ended the last note of the song with a bit of liveliness in it, when he didn’t immediately leave the stage after he played the last chord.
It came when he watched her dance with a mixture of admiration and envy, when he caught himself wishing he could be that free in front of everyone, when he didn’t shrink back as she made her way towards him after the melody ended.
She reached out for his hand. A small, fleeting touch at first, but when he didn’t flinch, she gently tugged his hand and pulled him to the centre of the stage together with her. She intertwined their hands together, letting her warmth seeped into his cold body. Her touch was steady and real. He glanced at their linked hands and blinked at her. She murmured in his ear.
“You can let go, you know. It’s your choice. Explore new opportunities even. Be yourself.”
With hands still locked, they bowed, he was in awe of himself that he was taking his first bow after so many years of performing. He had never bowed because he had never felt that he was deserving of the admiration from the audience.
She turned around, grinning at him, tiny sparkling specks dancing merrily in her warm honey brown eyes.
“So try letting go?” She asked, her voice hopeful. “You’ll do so well.”
For the first time in forever, he fully entertained the thought that he should be open to new opportunities, perhaps playing the piano without obligations and only passion. Or maybe not play at all if he didn’t think he could get past his own traumas.
“Yes. I’ll try.” His voice broke around the edges, he felt his eyes glistening, his body suddenly lighter as all the weight pressing down on him dissipated. He looked directly into her eyes, instinctively squirming under the intensity of her eyes, but for once, he didn’t look away.
Yes, I’ll try.
Written By: Di En
