The Restored Song

Kexi was awakened by the faintest sound of strings.

Cioccolata was sitting on the windowsill, cradling the lute in her arms.

At some point, she had gotten up and changed into clean clothes. Her hair was tucked loosely behind her ears, and the morning light streaming through the window traced a thin golden outline along her profile.

Her head was bowed as her fingertips slowly plucked the few intact strings that remained. Every few notes, she stopped to scribble something in the notebook on her knee before starting again.

Sometimes she repeated the same note seven or eight times, frowning and shaking her head. She would make a few corrections on the page, then try again.

Sometimes she stopped suddenly and stared out the window for a long while, her lips moving silently as if she were speaking to someone invisible.

Kexi made no sound. He even softened his breathing.

He lay on the floor, wrapped in the blanket that still held a faint scent of grass, and watched quietly.

Cioccolata at work was a different person from her usual self.

Ordinarily, she was always a little careless and languid, speaking at an unhurried pace, with a hint of irreverent amusement always lurking in her eyes, as though nothing was worth taking seriously.

But now, sitting on the windowsill, she was focused to the point of reverence.

Her brow was slightly furrowed, her lips unconsciously pressed together. Each time her fingertips plucked a string, it was as if she were touching something fragile.

No, not as if. She really was touching something fragile. A song passed down for fifty years, through the ravages of war, displacement, and countless distortions as it traveled from mouth to mouth, had reached her in pieces.

And now, in her own way, she was putting those pieces back together, one by one.

At last, she set down her pen, carefully laid the lute on her knees, and let out a long breath.

That breath carried the weariness of a sleepless night, but even more, it held a certain satisfaction at having accomplished something.

Only then did Kexi dare to speak. "You didn't sleep all night?"

Cioccolata turned her head. There were faint dark circles beneath her eyes, but her eyes were bright, like someone who had just finished a piece she was happy with and was still basking in the afterglow of a creative high.

"I couldn't sleep. That melody was all I could think about." She looked down at the notebook on her knees and tapped it with her fingertip. "I think I know how Rosinante handled that key change back then.

"The version my master passed down had a very unnatural break just before the chorus. I always thought something had been lost when it was copied.

"But when I saw that manuscript yesterday, I understood. Nothing was missing. Something had been added.

"Over the generations, the people who sang it added a transitional passage between two measures, thinking it made the song flow better. But Rosinante's original version didn't have a transition at all."

She spoke about music without stumbling over a word, hardly the same person as the lazy bard she usually was.

Kexi didn't really understand the talk of key changes and transitional notes, but he liked seeing her this way, like a traveler who had found water in the desert, or a child who had finally put the last piece of a puzzle in place.

"That's not what you said last night," Kexi said, sitting up on the floor. The blanket on his knees slipped down to his waist, and his hair was a mess like a bird's nest.

He yawned and rubbed his eyes, his voice still husky with sleep. "You said the song was incomplete by the time it reached you. How did you piece it back together in one night?"

"Because I'd been looking at it the way my master would, thinking a break had to mean something was missing, and that whatever was missing had to be filled in.

"But Rosinante's style was completely different from my master's. My master liked things smooth and flowing, liked making listeners comfortable. Rosinante was different."

Cioccolata looked down at the score in her notebook, a very faint smile appearing at the corner of her mouth. "He liked making his listeners uncomfortable. 'Pain is more easily remembered than warmth.' Those were his exact words. He'd written them in small letters in the corner of the manuscript I saw in the stone house."

She fell silent for a while, her fingertip brushing a string unconsciously and drawing out a single low, lingering note.

Then she added softly, "I'm beginning to understand why Yaoyue's mother remembered him all her life because of one song."

The morning light grew brighter, drawing out the shadow of the pot of little white flowers on the windowsill.

In the distance came the calls of fishermen hauling in their nets, mingling with the rhythm of waves breaking on the shore, like a song utterly different from the harp, yet just as ancient.

Cioccolata jumped down from the windowsill, leaned the harp back against the wall, and brushed nonexistent dust from her skirt.

"Oh, right." She suddenly turned to look at Kexi, who was still sitting on the floor wrapped in the blanket, the usual mischief returning to her eyes. "You snore in your sleep. You were so loud I couldn't think at all, so I had to get up and work."

"I snore?" Kexi looked deeply wronged. "How come I didn't know?"

"Of course you didn't. You were sleeping like a dead pig." Cioccolata walked up to him, looked down at him, and held out her hand. "My blanket. Give it back."

Kexi looked down at the blanket wrapped around him, then up at Cioccolata's outstretched hand. Suddenly, he grinned and pulled the blanket close to his chest. "Didn't you give it to me?"

"When did I give it to you? I lent it to you. Lending and giving are two different things. You've been writing love letters for twelve years, and you still can't tell those two words apart?" Cioccolata raised an eyebrow.

"Then why didn't you say so last night?"

"I was sleepy last night."

Kexi didn't continue the argument.

He loosened his grip on the blanket and pulled it off himself.

But just as Cioccolata reached out to take it, he found courage from who knew where, grabbed the blanket, pressed it to his face, and took a deep breath.

Then he shoved the blanket into Cioccolata's arms, got up, and bolted for the door, moving as fast as he did at his peak when Carlotta was chasing him through training.

"I gave it back. We're even." His voice came from the hallway, carrying a laugh that made him sound like he deserved a beating.

Cioccolata stood there holding the blanket, her expression swinging between disbelief and "I knew it."

She looked down at the blanket in her arms, then up at the huge figure that had already disappeared at the end of the hallway. The tips of her ears turned slightly red, though she didn't notice it herself.

"...That pervert," she muttered, but there was no real anger in her voice.

She stood holding the blanket for a while, then folded it neatly and placed it at the foot of the bed.

Whether deliberately or not, she didn't throw it into the laundry basket.