Henry's PoV

When I woke up, my eyes immediately landed on the gold ring upon the ring finger of my left hand. Once sparkling new, it has dulled along with my senses, barely recognizable as the thing it once was, much like myself. I turned to face where she used to lay, still being able to picture her lazy smile as her almond-shaped chocolate brown orbs whispered a loving good morning to me from behind half-opened lids. Something was tugging at my heart, pulling me towards another painful memory in this room. I let my heart guide my eyes, and tried keep a stoic demeanor when my gaze settled on its destination.

I stared at the instrument sitting forgotten on the top shelf of my mahogany bookcase. It was a gift from her, the bookcase was, as was that instrument.

How long had it been since I last played it? I could barely remember how it felt to hold the elegant instrument, how it felt to brush my fingers across the taught strings, how it felt to just be free.

I sighed, something I have caught myself doing quite often these days, and reluctantly pushed myself off my bed— our bed— and trudged over to the bookcase. My family and friends have been nagging me to just move on with my life, to forget her. It's been two years, they say. It's time to forget, two years is too long for grieving, they tell me.

At first, I was angry with them. How could they ever expect me to forget her? She was my everything; You can't just forget the entire reason for why you're alive. Not only was I angry at my friends and family, but I was angry at the world. What right does any entity have to take away the very beating of her heart? I needed to hear the steady, musical beating of her heart next to me when I woke up every morning. I wasn't the only one that needed to hear her heartbeat. There was someone else, someone younger, more fragile, more innocent than I that desperately needed that heartbeat to exist.

After anger, I was depressed. She was gone, my reason for living was gone, so why am I still here? I used to lay awake at night mulling over the various thoughts swimming in my brain, the thoughts that were at war with each other. Forget her, move on, you don't deserve to be like this, you deserve to be happy; It's all your fault, she's gone because of you, just kill yourself, the world would be better off without a monster like you—Which to believe? Did I really deserve to be happy, or did I deserve to die? I didn't know which. Though for my heart, it was all too easy to believe that this entire situation was my fault, that I had no right to feel sorry for myself. After a while, I convinced myself that I needed to stay alive. Not for me, but someone else. Someone that should be as important to me as she was.

Eventually, I settled for feeling nothing. Absolutely nothing. My entire being was void of any emotion at all. I would drag myself to work, drag myself back, ignore the tiny arms that would try and welcome me home, drag myself to our room, and lose myself in the false security of a bottle of soju. I would try to ignore the innocent notes floating from the living room's piano; Try to ignore the excited calls of my name spilling from baby-soft, sugar-sweet lips; And most of all, try to ignore the chilling, heart-wrenching sobs spilling from those same lips at the realization that I wasn't going to leave my room of misery.

Now, I needed to do something. I couldn't let the rest of my life pass by like this. This wasn't for me, it was too late for me. I didn't have much going for me, I wasn't young anymore, and the agony of these past two years have aged me past my own thirty-two.

I carefully reached up, took hold of the sleek instrument, and quickly pulled it down into my arms. I inhaled the still-sweet scent of the polished wood, and brought it into to playing position. Even after all these years of neglect, it was still perfectly tuned. I held the bow gently in my hand, took a deep breath, and lost myself as I let the bow glide over the strings, the instrument emitting a glorious noise.

This was what I craved for. When I played, I was free form everything. When I played, I felt at peace. But still, there were a couple of things missing.

I need a reason to play.

And I need help to play.

I took a deep breath, knowing that I couldn't just walk back into someone's life after ignoring them for two years. It's not like I had abandoned them physically, I still lived with them, but I wasn't there when they needed it. I was never there. I was too focused on my own self-pity.

Finally, after all this time, I opened the door—Not only to the hallway outside my bedroom, but to my heart as well. I silently slipped past the other doors with instrument in hand until I paused at the end of the hallway, where it stopped to join with the living room. I held my breath, not out of nervousness, but out of amazement.

The melody that fluttered out of the piano like a butterfly was one that I haven't heard since before she died. It was clumsy, unpracticed, yet beautiful all at the same. I had a desperate urge to view the owner of the novice-skilled fingers from which this melody came.

I peered around the corner, much like a timid toddler, and stared in awe at the beauty who sat at the piano. Her long, dark brown yet almost black hair fell in bouncy waves just past her shoulders; Her almond eyes shining brightly with youth; Her creamy complexion a perfect mix of snow-white pale and caramel-brown tan. She was the spitting image of her, everything save for the stretchy cheeks that puffed out in frustration when she hit a wrong key.

I breathed out her name, and her head turned so quickly to meet my gaze. I stared guiltily into those eyes twinkling with happiness; How could I have abandoned such a creature as this?

She called me over excitedly, and I hesitantly shuffled over to where she sat at her piano. She pointed excitedly at all the different keys, then to the sheet music, before grabbing a fistful of my shirt in her small hands, going on and on about how she missed me.

I suddenly realized that I had missed this. This young girl— Was she already seven-years-old by now?— became my entire reason for existence the day she was born. How could I have forgotten the person who became my new reason to play music? She would always smile her best when she saw how the two of us interacted, full of love, excitement, and undivided attention.

She urged me to play something for her on my instrument, and what else could I do but comply?

I played the favorite melody of ours on my stringed apparatus, the one she had been playing on the piano only minutes before. After a few seconds, she began to accompany me on the piano.

We played together, and I felt the familiar rush of living course through my veins. This is my new ambition; My new reason for living, for being a musician. After the song had ended, I smiled at her lovingly and ruffled her hair, to which she giggled and hugged my waist tightly.

“See, Papa? See?” She exclaimed, “Didn't Mother used to tell you that violin sounded better when accompanied by piano?”

I couldn't help but chuckle at my new found heartbeat to propel me through life.

“Yes, princess, Mother was right,” I murmured before pulling her, my daughter, my one and only, into my arms for a hug, the agony of the past two years disappearing when those tiny, fragile arms hugged me back.

This was the start of my new life; A life accompanied by piano.