glitch || l.y.h ✔

02 | the story

The first day he saw her was the day he finally managed to go through the entire song of Saint-Saëns without missing a single note. He was walking out of the orchestra room, locking the faded blue doors, when she walked past, holding a violin. The way she held it told him immediately that she had only just picked it up, but what really caught his eye was her hair. It flowed behind her in soft waves, and though the breeze was light the strands floated easily. In the afternoon sunlight her hair looked like black swan feathers, shiny and smooth, with an airiness to it that made him suddenly wonder what it felt like. Would it be like the horsehair of his bow that he applied rosin on, daily, the same quality of softness?

He went back to his dorm with the smell of her shampoo lingering in the air. He knew attraction when he felt it, and seeing this girl had stirred up the long-congealed pool of feelings, but he also knew the attraction wasn't strong enough to be termed a crush - yet. Perhaps with enough time . . . he didn't know if he wanted that prospect. The only serious relationship he had ever been in was with his cello, and with all the time he devoted to it he wasn't sure if he had time for anything else.

Go out, y.h. That was always what they said. Go out. Leave the orchestra room. Eat outside. Go to parties. Live. But he was living. From waking up to the cello and sleeping after the cello, that was his life. That was how he had chose to live. A glitch had no right to ask for more, and he had learned to be satisfied with what he had. His friends might not speak their minds but he knew their hearts - when he spoke their eyes would get distracted by the twitch in his cheek muscles or the sudden upward dance of his eyebrow; they didn't say it but he knew. He knew they knew he was a glitch, and though they never expressed that they minded, one had to have a certain degree of self-awareness on where they stood.

Glitches weren't meant to stand very high.