Faye sat at the piano in her father's house, running scales she had learned when she was nine. The same piano. The same room with the tall windows that looked out on the garden her mother had planted before she died. The same house she had sworn never to return to after the argument — the one about music, about wasting her life, about the ultimatum he gave her to quit or leave.
But she had come back. Not because she missed it. Because her EP dropped in six hours, and something in her needed to be here when it happened. Not to prove him wrong. Just to remind herself that this house was real, that the argument was real, and that the song she wrote about it was the truest thing she had ever made.
Her phone sat on the piano bench beside her. Frosh: 31 million. KZ: 19 million. The bar kept rising, each number heavier than the last. She wasn't competing with them. She knew that. But her body didn't. Her hands were sweating on the keys.
