Ichika Matsumoto Pov Guide

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.

And then, for the first time in my life, I do not play the notes she taught me. I do not play Paganini or Bach or Tchaikovsky. ichika matsumoto pov

Tonight is the audition for the National Youth Orchestra. The soloist chair. The one my mother missed when she was seventeen. I am not playing for glory. I am playing to close a loop in my mother’s timeline. She lives in the past, in the measure she failed. I am her repeat sign, her second attempt at the cadenza. I looked at my hands

“The violin is my partner,” I told him. It sounded poetic. It sounded romantic. But what I meant was: I am too afraid of silence to let anyone else in. Like sandpaper on silk