Ah. So that’s what it was. Yes, Katrina’s music was not precisely the music she had heard before. She had told Astrid she had made peace with this, that in Katrina she had found someone who would take her music places where she could never go.

But though she had told Astrid not to worry, though she tried to focus on Katrina, what she had told her student was true for herself, as well. No matter where she had been, where she would go, her life, her music, was her own.

This is half an Alaska Donut and a cup of coffee. This is two-day-old donuts and Olive Garden bread sticks and Hokkaido cream. This is pho ga, roast duck, and dark meat Hainan chicken. This is shopping for shoes and Cinnabon at Santa Anita Mall.

This is waking to hear Katrina playing Kreisler from a memory like yours. This is listening to her play Bartók, with a music that sprang from and rescued yours.

Now it is time to say thank you. It is time to check your posture and play.

Was this her teacher? This was Shizuka Satomi? Katrina had imagined her music to be a whirlwind, a maelstrom. Or perhaps calm and gentle, like a nurturing moon.

But this was the music of a child. She realized that she’d heard this child before, when Miss Satomi had played the theme from Axxiom. But that child had raged from being cheated and betrayed. This child was full of strength and promise and hope in all that was new.

Katrina was holding her own first violin, a gift from her cousin. It was already old, and the case smelled like mildew. Her aunt cautioned that it was only a beginner instrument. But to her, that violin was Christmas and birthdays and Halloween and July Fourth all rolled up into one.

She had slept with it. She woke up with it. She had danced with it. There was no need to apologize. There was no need to mourn, for it was here.

Her father might have smashed it, but he could not erase the music. Nothing could.

And if she had never given it a name?

As she listened to Miss Satomi, Katrina realized she could give it one now.

Shizuka, you had believed your past had tarnished you. You had believed your soul too corrupted to be saved.

Yet on that day at the park, by the ducks, you sensed the sound you had been searching for. And even before that, on an airplane from Tokyo.

The music you were hearing, surely you recognize it now.

To win a game without killing. To create a world.

Yes. It’s real.

Shizuka, Katrina is listening.