All Chapters of The Man Who Forgot How to Feel: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Every man in the world is the same.Ever since the day Celeste was born, that had been the lesson her mother drilled into her, over and over.Raised on that belief for years on end, Celeste, as the Ford family's precious daughter, had grown up with a deep-seated distrust of men baked into her personality. Even toward her own twin brother, Jake, she rarely showed much warmth.That is, until Anthony came along.Celeste rose from the piano bench, and her eyes found the figure she'd been longing to see, picking him out of the crowd in an instant.It had only been a little over a year, but he'd changed so much.Taller. Thinner.And the hollow, vacant look in his eyes—that had only deepened, too.Not only that, he was dressed in worn, cheap clothes, some of it faded almost gray from washing, the kind of sight that tugged at something protective in anyone who looked at him.And she'd given him plenty of money before, hadn't she?A dull ache bloomed in Celeste's chest at the thought—

How exactly had things ended up like this?Looking around at the lavishly decorated piano club room, and the specially laid mahogany flooring beneath his feet, Anthony let out a quiet sigh.Just minutes earlier, in the middle of Founders' Square, Celeste had personally extended an invitation for him to join the club. Ever since then, things had spiraled completely out of his control.He hadn't wanted his quiet, uneventful life disrupted, and he'd meant to turn her down quietly. But she hadn't given him the chance.Not only that, right there in front of the whole crowd, she'd taken his hand with a kind of intimate ease, cleared everyone else out, and led him all the way here, to what turned out to be some kind of private space within the piano club.The room had clearly been sectioned off on purpose, and it looked like Celeste had personally redecorated it.Not that Anthony found any of this particularly strange. After all, given how much standing a Ford heiress carried, it made p

The music drifted through the air, clear and flowing like a gentle stream, filling the space with a soothing, effortless calm.Anthony blinked, then turned his head to look.In a classroom off in the distance, he could just make out the delicate profile of a girl, her black hair falling over her shoulders, her whole body swaying gently to the rhythm, completely absorbed in the music.Anthony didn't know much about musical instruments. After his mother and sister had left, and with his father hauled off to prison for murder not long after, simply staying alive had already taken everything he had—there'd been no room left over for hobbies.Still, drawing on what little life experience he did have, he could tell the crisp, ringing sound belonged to a piano. As for the piece itself, he vaguely recalled hearing it played over the school's lunchtime broadcast before—something called "Pathétique," a Beethoven composition, if he remembered right.With nothing better to do at the moment, A

The room itself was fairly tidy, though several rows of old, discarded desks and chairs had been stacked along the walls, and a battered metal bookcase sat in one corner.Aside from that, the center of the room was mostly bare, except for two pianos set up one behind the other.One of them was clearly expensive—the kind of grand piano you'd expect to see at some lavish gala—its lid stamped with the name "Bösendorfer" in gold lettering, looking almost comically out of place against the shabby classroom around it.The other was an ordinary upright, the ubiquitous kind you'd find in any music room, clearly not used much, its bench dusted with a light layer of grime.Celeste always played the expensive grand piano. As for the upright, it was probably something left behind from whatever music program the school used to run.Ashwood High had never had a proper music curriculum to begin with—even the school's one music teacher had long since been reassigned to work part-time as a librari

That particular day at lunch, Celeste had sent a message ahead of time to let him know she'd be running a little late.Anthony hadn't thought much of it. As usual, he made his way to the old, weathered upright piano and settled in to practice the new piece Celeste had assigned him.According to Celeste, someone with a bit of natural aptitude could reach an amateur advanced level with two or three years of steady practice.Anthony, meanwhile, had reached a professional-level standard in just two months.He didn't really feel much about that fact one way or another. With no other point of reference to compare himself to, he could only measure his own progress against Celeste's playing, and the gap between the two of them still felt impossibly vast.Even so, compared to how he'd played back when he'd first started, the progress he'd made since then was nothing short of enormous.At the very least, he could now tell the difference in tuning between different pianos.Take the one he