I am halfway down the backstage corridor when the silence shifts.

Footsteps. Measured, inevitable. Hers.

I know the rhythm the way I know the opening of the Fifth—intimate, obsessive, memorized in the dark. I stop beneath the low light and wait, hands clasped behind my back so tightly the knuckles blanch.

She appears at the far end.

Recognition flares between us like a struck match: instant, wordless, absolute. She knows exactly who I am. I know exactly who she is. The distance collapses without either of us moving.

Twenty metres. Ten. Five.

She is beautiful. Not in the way photographs lie; beautiful the way a high C is beautiful when it should be impossible. Beautiful the way the Adagietto hurts.

Three meters. Two.

"I have waited for you."