One

Aimee

The school was quieter in the morning.

Not the kind of quiet that felt empty, but the kind that hadn’t decided what it was yet. Like the building was still half asleep, waiting for voices to give it shape.

Aimee stepped through the entrance slowly, her shoes making a soft sound against the polished floor.

No one looked up.

There was no one to look up.

She adjusted the strap of her bag slightly and kept walking.

New schools always had a certain structure to them, even if she didn’t know it yet. Corridors led somewhere. Doors meant something. Spaces had purpose. She just hadn’t figured out which ones she was supposed to avoid yet.

That was usually the hardest part.

Not fitting in.

Just not standing out while learning how to disappear properly.

She turned a corner.

The hallway stretched longer than she expected, lined with closed classrooms and noticeboards filled with paper she didn’t read. The air smelled faintly of cleaning products, sharp and too clean, like everything had been reset but not yet used.

Her footsteps slowed without her meaning to.

She was early—too early for anything to matter yet.

That was the point.

Before students arrived, before teachers began speaking too loudly, before people started looking at her like they already knew who she was.

She didn’t want that here.

Not again.

Aimee walked further down the corridor, not because she had somewhere to go, but because standing still felt worse.

The silence shifted slightly as she moved deeper into the building. It wasn’t uncomfortable, just unfamiliar. At home, silence meant distance. Here, it felt like waiting.

She wasn’t sure which she preferred.

A faint sound broke through it.

Aimee stopped.

It wasn’t loud. Not enough to immediately identify. Just something soft threading through the quiet, like it didn’t fully belong to the building.

She listened.

It came again.

Piano.

Her fingers tightened slightly on her bag strap without her noticing.

The sound wasn’t polished. It wasn’t like the performances she had grown up hearing in large rooms where everything echoed too perfectly. This was different. Uneven in places. Slower. Like someone wasn’t trying to be heard by anyone at all.

That thought made her pause longer than she intended.

She turned toward it.

Not quickly. Not decisively.

Just… drawn.

The corridor changed as she followed the sound. Less light in some places, softer corners, a quietness that felt more contained. The school was becoming unfamiliar in a different way now—not because she didn’t know it, but because it was revealing something she wasn’t meant to find yet.

The music grew clearer.

Aimee slowed again as she reached a door slightly ajar.

The sound was inside.

She didn’t go in immediately.

Instead, she stayed just outside the frame of the doorway, careful not to let her presence be obvious. It felt wrong to interrupt something she hadn’t been invited into, even though no one had told her she couldn’t be there.

Inside, there was a piano.

And someone playing it.

Aimee saw him before she fully understood what she was looking at.

A boy sat at the piano, alone in a room that looked too large for him. Morning light filtered through the windows in pale streaks, catching on the edges of the instrument and the floor beneath him.

He wasn’t performing.

That was the first thing she noticed.

There was no awareness of being watched, no adjustment in posture, no performance in the way he held himself. Just hands moving across the keys like the sound already existed somewhere, and he was simply finding it.

Aimee didn’t move.

She wasn’t sure why.

Her gaze stayed fixed on him.

There was something unpolished about the moment. Not careless, but unguarded—like the room was witnessing something it wasn’t meant to interpret.

The music shifted slightly.

A pause slipped between the notes.

Then he continued.

His head moved faintly with the rhythm, dark hair falling forward in loose strands before settling again as he played. He didn’t seem aware of anything outside the music.

Aimee hesitated.

Not because she meant to.

But because something about the sound stayed with her even after it softened in the air.

It wasn’t unfamiliar.

Not entirely.

Her fingers tightened slightly around her bag strap as she tried to place it, resisting the urge to name it too quickly, like saying it out loud might break it.

Then it clicked.

She recognized it.

The melody.

Starry, Starry Night.

Something like that.

Her gaze lowered slightly, almost unconsciously, as the memory attached itself to the sound. Not from here. Not from now. Somewhere older, softer—something she had heard before without truly listening.

Now it felt different.

Stripped down.

Less like a song being performed.

More like something being remembered.

She didn’t step forward. But she stayed a moment longer than she intended to. Just enough to let it settle.

Then she turned away. And walked back down the corridor as if nothing had changed.

The school felt the same again as she moved through it.

But not entirely.

Something lingered behind her thoughts, quiet and uninvited, refusing to dissolve the way the sound had.

And she didn’t have a name for it yet.