All Tamiko could do at the time was think about Kiana, being like her, playing like her. She practiced. She dreamed. She sparkled, floated, radiated. She won a competition. And the one after that.

Play without mercy. Play as if touched. Play with obsession. Eventually, Asian mothers would see her at the violin shop, stop their children, and point. When she finally did perform Paganini, judges whispered excitedly to her teacher. She was told that Paganini himself must be smiling.

From there, Tamiko Grohl assumed she would become more and more famous, more and more beautiful. She would outgrow her current teacher, then study with Shizuka Satomi, Kiana Choi’s mentor. From there, larger stages, airplanes, brighter and brighter lights.

But she had been wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.

She had sensed it even before tonight. Middle-school students were uploading videos of themselves playing Paganini on YouTube. Recently, someone posted one of a girl in Japan. She was eight.

The girl’s violin still had four fine tuners. Her violin wasn’t even full-sized.

Tamiko’s eyes were now adjusted to the lights. Somewhere out there, one of those kids would do everything she had done. Only she’d be prettier, faster, younger.

And it still would not be enough.

And yet tonight, Katrina Nguyen, someone who could not perform a proper ricochet—who could not even keep her gown from bunching up beneath her shoulder rest—had played some sort of video game music.

And she created worlds.

As far as Paganini’s Caprice no. 5? Paganini was indeed smiling at her, but not because he approved.

He was smiling because he was safe.

It was said that Paganini would make his performances memorable by breaking strings as he played. And though Tamiko Giselle Grohl’s four strings survived the night, many in the audience swore they heard something breaking all the same.

That night, Katrina looked at her videos. She walked from her laptop. She went to the bathroom. She went back to her laptop and refreshed her page.

In that space, her Axxiom video had 108 more views.

And the comments?

“You are amazing!”

“I couldn’t stop crying.”

“H-how did you even? It was like someone finally heard me.”

Katrina laughed. She spun. She felt happy. She felt proud.

Then she felt her father kicking in the door.

She shuddered. She folded in on herself and rocked back and forth. She didn’t deserve happiness like this, laughter like this.

Freak! Abomination!

Why are you even alive?

Faggot, just die.

Katrina hugged her violin. And against what played in her head, she gave her music again, and again, and again.

Shizuka sat in her backyard. One afternoon, Katrina had left a chair outside, and it was so nice that Shizuka decided to keep it there.