She knew what happened before anyone even had the heart to tell her.

Heart.
She hated that word. 

On the day where Xiumin had played his last song before he died, she was busy reading a book at home. Her hands skimmed the pages as she flipped them faster and faster, almost matching the speed of the song Xiumin was playing back at the teachers house. 

With a thud, she dropped the book only seconds before Xiumin had died miles away in front of the piano.
She fell to the ground, searching for what she lost. 

After tracing her hands over and over along the ground, she found what she dropped.
But not what she lost.

Days passed while she locked herself in her room, not wanting to come in contact with anyone.
Finally, her father knocked on the door, complaining how she hadn’t felt the warmth of the bright sun outside for days, that it wasn’t healthy for her.
She responded with silence, though her heart ached at the thought. 
All she wanted was to feel his warmth again.
For him to have gotten better.
But her dear Xiumin was gone.
She heard a click as her father managed to unlock her bedroom door. He walked over to her and pulled her up.
"You're going to piano today. You haven't left this trashy room in days." He snapped, leading her towards the chauffeur.

The piano teacher went easy on her that day. Not one single smack with the ruler was received as her hands fumbled across the keys.

“Are you sure you would like to continue with lessons, Kim Yoo-Jung?” He asked softly, trying not to upset her.
She was so close just to standing up and walking out of the room.
Might as well give up now, there was really nothing left to fight for.

She raised herself from the piano bench, but the melody that Xiumin first played her flowed into her mind.
Her heart ached to hear someone play it again.
That’s when she determined that she wanted to learn how to play it.

Taking a deep breath, she said the first words she had said in weeks.
“I wouldn’t quit for the world.”
Smiling at her answer, she sat back down on the hard bench, placing her hands back on the piano.
If only she could see the teachers priceless reaction to that, her lips curling into a grin.

She spent days going to the piano teacher’s house to practice.
Using her memory, she began roughly memorizing the piece that Xiumin played for her.
 

10 measures down, only a couple thousand more to go.

Another day, another handful of measures.

When finally, without even realizing it, she could play the whole entire song.
This was without any music sheets, only her rusty memory to rely on.
But she did it.
And she did it with a bang.
 

The piano teacher hummed along to the song flowing from the piano as he stood in the nearby room. He was about to walk in and congratulate the boy, his star student, for another splendid performance when his happy skip came to a halt.
This wasn’t the boy.
The boy was dead.
 

He froze outside of the doorway, peeking in. The teacher smiled in awe at seeing the girl at the piano.

Thank god she hadn’t given up on the piano,
Because this girl was a prodigy.
This song had taken Xiumin almost half a year to learn, but she managed to wing it in a week. The teacher walked into the room, gently beginning to clap.
“Now this is what I call skill and talent. He would be proud. So very, very proud.” He murmured.
She smiled to herself, removing her hands from the piano and placed them in her lap.

Those were just the words she wanted to hear as she placed her hands back on the keys, every strike of the keys turning into a song.

 
Their song.