We had money.

With fast money came fast fame. My father was invited to various television shows to talk about how hard work paid off, and how he faced his struggles as a single father of two. He went reluctantly. He talked very little about his family, and even less about his work with his firm. My brother and I didn’t like to watch him on television. The cameras brought out his wrinkles and showed how badly he slouched.

On television, our father didn’t seem like our father.

I suppose the people behind the cameras and the people watching did not like my father very much either. After a few months, the invitations to appear on shows stopped coming. The money and the fame, however, continued to flow around us. A benevolent of luck. For a while, my brother and I reveled in the money.

Money for a house. Money for a car. Money for my brother to go to a good university. Money for me to take piano lessons after being without a teacher for years.

Money made me very happy. Money seemed to make my father empty, even though he no longer had to work – he had managers and accountants to take care of his business – and he finally had enough money to woo women. He shut himself in his office and did not eat with us anymore. I think he hardly ate at all.

But at the time, my father was not the focus of my attention. I was infatuated with my piano teacher. He was my brother’s friend. An aspiring musician who went to a lower-tier university and who struggled to make ends meet by giving lessons to people with money and no passion. He had an easy smile and a calm demeanor. He did not treat me like the awkward teenager I now know I was. I called him by his preferred name, Lay. I never found out his real name.

Now, I wish that I had asked.

We had lessons each Tuesday and Friday. I marked those dates with hearts in my calendar, and smiled at the thought of seeing him. I practiced for so many hours each day that my schoolwork began to suffer. Just to get see that gentle smile, that crinkle of his eyes expressing his approval. He never touched me. I remember his thin, white fingers. Long and slender. His only love was for music, or at least, that’s what I forced myself to believe at the time.

Now, I can see the ring on his finger that glinted in the sunlight as he played Debussy. 

I don’t remember talking much during our lessons. I blushed a lot and stuttered even more. He only spoke to correct my . And even then, he would often drift off halfway in his sentence and write the on the sheet music. He never tried to explain proper expression of the music through words. Clumsy adjectives couldn’t capture the essence of his music. He played for me.

No. He didn’t play for me. He played for himself, and allowed me to listen and learn.

At the time, I was satisfied. I fell for a man who would never see me as a woman. It didn’t hurt because I did not understand enough for that to sink in.

I just enjoyed music. Listening to his music. Making my own music. Debussy. Beethoven. Prokofiev. Bach. Improvised compositions. The music wove itself seamlessly into my life, as if it had been there all along.

And then, one day, the music stopped.    

A/N: I'm so sorry for this very late update. I'm currently in the middle of exams and so it's been very busy for me. Still, I will hopefully be able to update a lot more after two more weeks. There will be one more Past Life chapter, and then the story will revert back to the current storyline.

Thank you for bearing with these sporadic updates!