You first learned who Helion was when he came to your music school at the age of 12 and was assigned to your class. He was a polite boy, a year older than you, his grey eyes looking straight into yours. A smile adorned his neat, plump lips, and he smelled of lilac and fog.

He had some peculiarities that the girls who were in love with him didn't even notice, but not you. His pupils were narrower than a normal person's. Not as narrow as a snake's, but narrower. And also the fingers. Absolutely perfect fingers for a pianist.

He loved wearing silk cream gloves on his long, thin fingers. Sometimes he even wanted to go up to them and hold a ruler to them, they were so long. But this was precisely what became his advantage on the path to the world of music and fame. But that wasn't the most important thing.

What was important was how he treated you. He often helped you correct some notes in the pieces, put your fingers on the keys correctly, but he generally did this with everyone in the class. But his look at you was different.

It seemed that when he leaned towards you to explain something, his pupils narrowed even more and the gray color of his irises darkened slightly. You realized that it was not your imagination, but you could not explain such a phenomenon, because nothing changed in his polite communication.

Once, in honor of the New Year holidays, Helion came to the class after the concert and gave each girl a pendant in the form of a different animal or object. He put a pendant in the form of a beautiful white snake.

The snake's eyes were in the form of small stones that reflected your reflection, creating the feeling that it was the snake itself that was looking at you. The reverse side of the pendant had an inscription engraved on it:

"Once you stop being afraid to look a snake in the eye, it will perceive you as its equal."

Also encrypted at the bottom was the address of the person who made this pendant. It was a tiny workshop and the master there was Helion's younger brother - Kad.