The practice room was suffocatingly still, the air thick with a silence that seemed to echo louder than any music ever could. Graham sat at the piano, hands poised above the keys but never descending. The once-vibrant melodies that had once come so effortlessly from his fingertips now felt like a betrayal to everything they had become. His gaze was fixed on the untouched sheet music—notes and rests that no longer held the meaning they once did. It was as if the music had been stripped of its life, leaving only the hollow framework of what used to be.

He couldn’t make himself move. It wasn’t just the music; it was everything. The empty space beside him, the cold air that had once been warm with shared laughter, the way their conversations had become too strained to continue. The joy they’d once found together in every note had slowly been replaced by the heaviness of uncertainty, and it had been creeping in for months now. But today, in this room, it felt unbearable. It felt like he was trying to resurrect something already dead.

"I keep playing, keep pretending this is still the same, but it’s not. You’re here, but you’re not. And I don’t know what to do with that.” He had tried to ignore it, to tell himself it would pass, but every note that went unplayed only made it worse. They had promised each other they would finish the piece, no matter what. But now, the promise felt hollow.

There was only a quiet devastation in his voice, as if he were confessing to a sin he couldn’t undo. “We said we’d finish this piece together. That no matter what, we’d see it through. But if we do—if we get up there and perform it half-alive, half-honest—are we honoring what we had, or just embalming it?” He turned back to the keys, not to play, but to rest his fingers there—like laying a hand on a casket. “Just tell me,” he murmured. “Tell me if this is still about the music. Or if we’re both just trying to hold on to each other in the only language we still understand.”