On a midsummer day when they were seventeen, the piano in the practice room was always accompanied by cicadas singing outside the window.
As her fingers touched the keys, the violin melody would gently join in. They were the best-matched pair at the affiliated high school: one wanted to study orchestral music at a conservatory, the other was determined to become a composer. They promised to turn their youth into a song together.
But a letter from home shattered all their hopes. When she learned her mother had fallen ill, she filled in the Chinese language and literature program at a teachers' university with tears in her eyes. He waited in vain for an answer, then changed his university choices in a fit of pique, becoming a quiet architecture student who spent his days drawing blueprints.
The Steinway he never got the chance to give her, the sheet music filled with ideas they had created together, and the confession neither of them had spoken were all locked away in their graduation luggage.
Music became a taboo they didn't dare touch, and they parted in the crowd, not to meet again for ten years.
Then came the New Year's symphony concert. In the snowbound concert hall, she sat in the audience as a Chinese teacher and heard a familiar melody. It was the piece they'd composed together all those years ago, now arranged as a grand symphony.
When she turned around, she met a pair of smiling eyes.
