Ichika Matsumoto Pov Page

I am seventeen, and I have never held a boy’s hand. Last week, a boy from the literature club, Tanaka, tried to talk to me in the library. He had kind eyes and a paperback copy of Soseki. He asked if I ever got lonely, practicing alone in the soundproof room until midnight.

My mother, Reiko, is the sun. I am merely the planet trying not to fall into her corona and burn up. She sits in the back of every lesson, arms crossed, head tilted. She doesn’t smile when I play a passage perfectly. She only uncrosses her arms. That is her applause. Yesterday, I played Paganini’s Caprice No. 24. It took me three years to get the left-hand pizzicato clean. When I finished, the sensei nodded. My mother looked at her watch. ichika matsumoto pov

When I finish, my arm is shaking. Sweat drips down my temple. I look at the panel. They are leaning forward, their faces strange. Not displeased. Confused. Alarmed, even. I am seventeen, and I have never held a boy’s hand

I looked at my hands. I looked at the rough, scarred skin. I thought about how his soft, lotioned fingers might feel against mine. Like sandpaper on silk. Wrong. He asked if I ever got lonely, practicing

I lower my violin.

In the silence, I hear a sharp breath from the back of the hall. It is my mother. She is crying. I have never heard my mother cry before. It sounds like a cracked cello string. Ugly. Real.

I play the sound of the train tracks at 5:47 AM. The hollow rhythm of waiting. I play the sound of my mother’s silence after a perfect run. I play the whisper of my classmates, the soft rustle of Tanaka’s paperback pages, the imagined warmth of a hand I have never held.