The Silent Score
I joined the music club simply because I loved sound.
The way notes danced upon the staves looked almost alive to me.
When I played beside my friends, aligning our melodies,
it felt as though the world itself was in harmony.
But harmony is fragile—
it collapses with the slightest distortion.
Our advisor was a man of fierce temperament.
His baton cut the air sharply;
his voice crashed like thunder.
If anyone struck a wrong note, the room froze—
and after the silence, came the storm of his rage.
Gradually, we ceased to be musicians.
We became accompanists to his emotions,
reading his expressions more carefully than the score.
One day, he asked me to massage his shoulders.
It was not a command, but a request draped in a smile—
a smile that allowed no refusal.
I no longer remember why I accepted.
Perhaps I understood, even then,
that my compliance could shield others from his wrath.
In the music room, the piano's low notes always lingered,
like heavy breaths,
like the record of our silence.
The vibrations of the strings began to hum
at the same frequency as fear itself.
Eventually, a parent reported his tyranny.
The following year, he was transferred,
and a new breeze drifted into the music room.
Yet the habit of silence
engraved upon our bodies did not vanish.
I learned to swallow my feelings instead of releasing them.
Smiling was safer than sadness or anger.
Beneath that smile, the music quietly died.
Even when my fingers touched the keys,
I could no longer hear what the notes were trying to say.
Music was no longer freedom—
it had become a cage
that sealed the memory of domination.
⸻
Third Year — The Third Move
On the morning of our move, the wagon wheels creaked beneath a gray sky.
Dust caught between the furniture rose and scattered in the wind,
sparkling like fragments of memory.
In the new town, no one knew who I was.
It felt like salvation—
and like terror.
In my new classroom, a dozen eyes turned toward me at once.
And in that instant, a familiar thought surfaced:
Ah… I'm being watched again.
I lowered my gaze just slightly, softened my tone when I spoke.
That way, others would relax, draw closer, open their hearts.
It became the only way I knew to protect myself.
But in time, that smile hardened into a mask.
Beneath it, I no longer knew what expression my true face wore.
Beneath every act of kindness,
I began to sense a hidden will to possess.
Behind every gesture of protection,
the shadow of desire.
By then, I was starting to understand:
within every form of affection,
there lurked the shape of control.
The smile in the mirror was no longer mine.
To correct its distortion, I smiled again—
out of habit, out of necessity,
as a gesture,
a ritual,
and a wall to survive behind.