Ichika Matsumoto Pov -

Every morning, I wake up at 5:47 AM. Not 5:45, not 5:50. The precision keeps the anxiety at bay. I brush my teeth, tie my hair back with a black elastic that leaves a dent in my ponytail, and walk to the conservatory while the city of Tokyo is still soft and gray. I do not listen to music on my headphones. I listen to the rhythm of the train tracks. Clack-clack, pause. Clack-clack, pause. I count the rests.

I lower my violin.

The calluses on my fingertips are the only map I need. They are rough, permanent, and ugly, sitting just below the first knuckle. My classmates spend their allowance on cherry-scented hand cream to impress boys. I spend mine on rosin and gut strings. They don’t know that pain is not the enemy of beauty. It is the prerequisite. ichika matsumoto pov

The Gravity of Silence

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. Every morning, I wake up at 5:47 AM

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. I brush my teeth, tie my hair back

My name is Ichika Matsumoto, and I am a ghost in my own body.