Encore

Sida returned to the Conservatory on the coldest morning of the year, carrying a violin she had not opened in three years. The building rose above the frozen square like a cathedral built for a colder god — beautiful, exacting, and utterly without mercy. Everyone here knew her story, or thought they did: the girl who had walked off the world's greatest stage in the middle of a concerto and never explained why. For three years she had been a rumour, a cautionary tale whispered to first-year students: talent is not enough; nerve is everything. Now she had come back not to perform but to teach, because teaching was the only door the world had left unlocked for her. Maestro Vahl met her in the marble hall, and his embrace was as warm and as final as a door closing. He had been her teacher once, and he spoke to her now the way a man speaks to a debt he has decided to forgive: gently, and never letting her forget it. "Welcome home," he said, as though she had merely wandered off and not fled for her life. She walked the familiar corridors where she had bled for her art as a student, and every closed door seemed to hold a younger, braver version of herself. Then, from behind the door of Practice Room Seven, she heard a violin begin to play — and her blood turned to ice. It was the opening of the concerto she had abandoned that night, the piece she had sworn never to hear again, played with a tenderness that felt almost like an accusation. The music stopped mid-phrase, as if the player had sensed her standing there. The door opened, and Sida found herself looking into the eyes of Veronika — the rival she had spent three years trying to forget, and had never, for a single day, succeeded.