Dusk flowed on the gilded carved window lattices. When Ye Qingliu finished playing the third movement of "Moonlight" for the eighth time, the crystal chandelier cast tiny spots of light on the lid of the Steinway piano.
The last note was still vibrating in the air when Yi An's fingers painted with red nail polish had already pressed down on the piano keys.
"That's not how you play C-sharp minor." Yi An snatched the sheet music from the boy's hand. His cousin Hua Yueyao's handwriting was smudged on the yellowed paper.
"When your mother plays this movement, she should raise her left hand two centimeters higher." The diamond-studded nails scratched across the back of Ye Qingliu's hand, leaving a light red mark on the skin.
Chen Chunhua waited outside the Hall of Mirrors with her ironed dress in her arms, and saw that three hundred Venetian silver mirrors reflected the boy's pale face into countless fragments.
Yi An suddenly took out a gold-plated pocket watch from her crocodile leather handbag. The watch chain was engraved with 1905 - this was a souvenir from when Hua Yueyao won the Chopin Competition.
"Again." The pocket watch was pressed heavily on the music stand. "I want to hear perfect triplets." Ye Qingliu just raised his wrist when Yi An suddenly pinched his little knuckle: "How can you play with a grainy feel with your knuckles bent like this?"
The middle C key groaned beneath Ye Qingliu's fingertips. When he reached measure 17 on the ninth rendition, Yi An suddenly poured an entire bottle of Evian water onto the keys: "The crescendo is too abrupt! Your mother, at her age, is already..."
Her distorted face was reflected on the water surface, and the second half of the sentence was stuck in her throat and turned into a sneer.
"Why aren't you being good, Qingliu?" She suddenly lowered her voice, and her rose-gray fingertips stroked Ye Qingliu's trembling eyelashes.
This action reminded Chen Chunhua of a bird's nest that was overturned during a rainstorm, and the female bird pecked at the dying chicks in the same gentle way.
When Ye Qingliu touched the keys for the tenth time, Yi An wrapped a pearl bracelet around his wrist. The baroque pearls dug into his pulse, each bead corresponding to a wrong note: "Your great-grandmother used this bracelet to correct your cousin's fingering."
In fact, the chain link had been replaced three times, the most recent time being the day after Hua Yueyao's funeral.
As the stormy movement of "Moonlight" exploded again, Yi An suddenly pressed the boy's shoulders. The diamond ring pressed into his collarbone: "Hold your waist straight! Even when your mother was seven months pregnant..."
The reflections in the mirror suddenly overlapped, and the scene of Hua Yueyao's last performance before giving birth more than ten years ago reappeared like a ghost in the twilight.
Ye Qingliu's nails split the piano keys, and blood seeped into the cracks in the ebony. Yi An took out a handkerchief embroidered with French initials, but stopped just before touching the wound: "Do you know why I chose this song?"
Yi An stuffed the blood-stained handkerchief into the Steinway resonance box. "That was the melody she was humming before she died."
By the time Chen Chunhua counted to twenty-third, dusk had completely sank into the stained glass. Ye Qingliu suddenly and precisely reproduced every vibrato from his cousin's recording, while Yi An scratched the sheet music with a platinum pen: "Too much emotion!"
Ink smudged over the "espressivo" label. "What you should learn is restraint."
The cuckoo clock in the corner of the Hall of Mirrors startled a nightingale. Yi An ripped the pearl chain from the boy's wrist, and three perfectly round South Sea pearls rolled into the ventilation duct, disappearing into the darkness along with her cousin's girlish laughter.
"Five extra hours of practice tomorrow." When Yi An turned around, the hem of her silk skirt swept across the piano bench, leaving a crescent-shaped mark made by Ye Qingliu's fingernails.
As the final silver mirror was shrouded in darkness, Chen Chunhua discovered Ye Qingliu secretly folding the blood-stained music sheet into a paper boat. Moonlight filtered through the dome's skylight, illuminating the crooked handwriting on the boat: "They all say Mom doesn't want me and my sister, but why...?"
"Young Master..." Chen Chunhua began, then fell silent. This address was Yi Anding's custom, but she still felt awkward.
Ye Qingliu's eyelashes drooped, casting tiny shadows under his eyes, like butterfly wings wet by the rain. When Chen Chunhua's arms wrapped around Ye Qingliu, her rough palms gently supported his trembling fingertips.
"Does it hurt?" she whispered, her thumb rubbing over the cracked edge of his nail like a piece of precious porcelain.
Ye Qingliu did not answer, but his eyelashes trembled slightly, like the strings of a guitar blown by the wind.
Chen Chunhua sighed and took out a wrinkled mint candy from her apron pocket - she had secretly brought it back from the market yesterday, and the candy wrapper had faded a little.
"Hold it in your mouth," Chen Chunhua put the candy into his palm. "It's sweet."
Her comfort was as clumsy as her ironed dress, always with a few wrinkles that could not be smoothed out. But Ye Qingliu slowly curled up her fingers and held the candy in her palm.
"Auntie Chen..."
His voice was very soft, like the unplayed notes on a piano.
Chen Chunhua wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with the corner of her apron. Her movements were a little rough, but with an irresistible tenderness.
"Don't listen to her," she lowered her voice, "You play very well... the best I've ever seen..."
These words were like a drop of water falling into a boiling frying pan. Ye Qingliu looked up suddenly, and his pupils reflected Chen Chunhua's ordinary face - no delicate makeup, no sharp edges, only a few deep wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, like the marks carved by the years with a blunt knife.
"real……?"
"Really," Chen Chunhua nodded, her fingers gently brushing the bruises on his wrist. "If your mother heard this, she would definitely laugh."
Chen Chunhua simply patted Ye Qingliu's shoulders gently with her hands, which had been soaked in laundry detergent for years, as if patting a wrinkle-prone dress.
Her movements were completely unskillful, even clumsy, but Ye Qingliu's back relaxed slightly, like a taut string finally being allowed to vibrate.
"Tomorrow... I'll steam osmanthus cake for you." Chen Chunhua finally squeezed out this sentence, her voice very low, as if she was afraid of disturbing something.
My dear, there is more to this chapter. Please click on the next page to continue reading. It will be even more exciting later!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
