Dissonant Notes in Minor Keys (KimMacau, KimChayMacau) 18+

Chapter Eight: Tonal Triad

He's sitting in his comfort place, the little nook by the window in their room, as he greets Kim with a concerned face.

"P'Kim, is everything alright? I was waiting for you to text me, I was starting to get worried..."

Kim glances at the clock, and sees that it's just past two in the morning, and Chay hasn't heard from him for almost three hours.

Shit.

"We're fine, I brought him to a safe place. He's sleeping now."

Chay breathes a sigh of relief, then places his phone on the music stand.

"Thank god. He doesn't really drink... It's weird that he was at some bar like that. Especially somewhere dangerous," Chay says thoughtfully, his voice barely hiding a tremble, and Kim's senses sharpen. Chay leans out of frame, and comes back holding the acoustic guitar Kim gave him years and years ago. "It's not really like him."

Kim's eyebrows raise. Chay's hands settle in to play.

"I didn't know you were friends with Macau."

Chay accidentally strikes one string hard, not looking at Kim. He fidgets, makes it look like he's just adjusting his hold, and picks at a few strings on the guitar.

Kim watches him swallow, then inhale and exhale once.

"Well, I didn't really know him for a long time," he starts. "We only became friends a little while ago. He was playing piano in one of the practice rooms on campus... he was playing a really familiar song, so I stopped and looked in to see who it was." Chay takes another deep breath, then looks directly into the camera. His hands have calmed, moving over the strings in the beautiful way they do when he plays, the haunting, comforting notes of an old lullaby ring through the supple wood of the guitar. "I knew him when Hia and I had to sort of live with the minor family, but he wasn't really... I mean, he didn't really come out of his room except for school."

Kim hears Chay, but he listens to the song, and feels each gap in his memory fill with these notes, chords in a melody that has tormented him for almost seven years.

"You heard him play this song."

And you knew.

Chay smiles softly, and looks away, toward his fingers moving smoothly over the strings.

"Yeah, but I heard you play it first, P'Kim, just a little differently. It was a nice song when you played it, but always felt like it was missing something. That's not really like you though, playing something that isn't really finished over and over for so long, so I always sort of wondered. But when Macau was playing it, somehow it felt so much more... complete?" Chay continues softly caressing the strings with calloused fingertips, and Kim sinks into the calm of the music, attention still on Chay. "Anyway, we sort of knew each other, so I felt like I could ask him what it was." Now he looks at Kim. "He said it was a lullaby, and then laughed a little. It was actually really sad though? He seemed so lonely... but yeah, he said that sometimes he plays it when he misses his cousin, and, I mean... It wasn't hard to figure out that he meant you.

"He talks about you a lot, about how you taught him things, about how you helped him learn music and self defense, and how kind you are. He talked about how you never let him feel lonely, and that you were always there when he was sad, when he was hurting. And one day he told me that he loves you. That he loves you deeply, maybe too deeply, maybe not how he should love his cousin, and that maybe that was the reason you left."

That was only a small part of why Kim left, but Kim thinks Chay might already know that.

"How long have you known?"