The world had gone quiet.
Not the kind of quiet that soothed or steadied.
This silence was thick—heavy—like a blanket soaked in grief thrown over Luca Moreno's life. It clung to him, pressed against his skin, seeped into the walls of his studio until it felt like even the air refused to vibrate.
His dark-brown fingers hovered over the piano keys, the deep mahogany of the instrument reflecting the warm undertones of his skin. Once, these hands were famous. Revered. Touched by something divine, according to critics who used to write about him. Hands that carried soul, rhythm, elegance—hands that could make strangers cry from a single chord.
Now they trembled with the weight of a silence he could not escape.
Two years ago, the crash had taken everything. He remembered flashes of it—bright, violent, senseless. Screeching tires. The metallic scream of twisting steel. His head striking something hard. The taste of blood in his mouth. The suffocating terror of knowing he was alive, yet something inside him had died.
When he woke in the hospital, the world was already gone.
The silence wasn't peaceful. It was a void. A wound.
The city outside his studio window throbbed with life—traffic, vendors, laughter, noise—but it never reached him. He saw the lights, saw people moving on the sidewalks, saw buses and cars and restless humanity. But he felt none of it. He lived inside a muted bubble, suffocating in memories of a world filled with sound.
Sheet music lay scattered across the piano, pages curled at the edges. He stared at the notes, black ink marking melodies he once played effortlessly. Now, they felt like a language he had forgotten. He touched a single note on the key. The vibration was faint—barely a whisper against his fingertips.
It wasn't enough.
A tremor moved through the wooden floorboards beneath him.
Someone was at the door.
He didn't hear the knock, but Luca had learned to read the world differently now—through movements, vibrations, shades of light. He waited, not lifting his head.
The door opened.
Naomi stepped in, her presence filling the room with a warmth he almost ignored. She was slender, brown-skinned, her curly hair tied up in a loose bun that bounced with each step. Her eyes—soft, expressive, exhausted—held a story of her own, one Luca rarely let her share.
"Luca," she said, her lips forming the word he knew too well.
He didn't respond. He didn't have the strength today.
Naomi approached slowly, as if he were a skittish animal she didn't want to scare off. She placed a container of food on the table, then walked around to face him, making sure he could see her clearly.
Hours, her lips said.
You've been here for hours.
He blinked.
Eat something. Please.
He looked away, tapping a single key with his thumb. No response. No echo. Just pressure.
Naomi exhaled—long, frustrated. Her chest rose and fell in defeat. "You can't starve yourself into hearing again."
He clenched his jaw. Even without sound, her words cut him. He didn't need to hear them to feel the disappointment.
She sat beside him, close but not touching. "Luca… you survived the crash. But you're letting yourself die afterward."
He shut his eyes.
The truth hurts whether spoken aloud or not.
Naomi rested a hand on his back—warm, steady, familiar. He felt the pressure, the grounding weight of her touch, but not the comfort he used to find in it.
"You're still here," she whispered.
But Luca didn't feel like he was. Not really. The man he used to be—the man who lived for music—was gone.
Music without sound was torture.
Life without sound was emptiness.
He opened his eyes and stared at the piano until the notes blurred.
Naomi stayed a few more minutes, saying things he couldn't bring himself to read from her lips—gentle things, concerned things, maybe even angry things. When she finally stood to leave, she squeezed his shoulder one last time.
"I'm coming back tomorrow," she mouthed. "Don't make me break down the door."
A small, hollow laugh escaped him—not a sound, but a feeling. He lifted two fingers in a half-wave. She left with a sad smile.
When the door closed, the silence swallowed him whole again.
He pressed his palm flat on the piano lid.
No vibration.
No life.
Just absence.
---
Across the city, morning sunlight spilled into a small apartment where Lyra Marlowe stirred beneath a thin blanket. Pale skin glowing under the soft light, chestnut hair messy around her face, she blinked slowly as if waking from a dream she couldn't quite remember.
Her green-gray eyes darted around the room, searching for something that wasn't there.
A feeling.
A memory.
An echo.
Something inside her felt hollow—like a melody she once knew but had lost somewhere along the way.
She rubbed her arms, shivering though the room was warm.
Today felt different.
She didn't know why.
She didn't know how.
But the same silence that haunted Luca was reaching for her too—different, distant, but just as heavy.
Two lives drifting in opposite worlds.
Two souls carrying different kinds of quiet.
Neither knowing their paths were already bending toward each other…
toward a sound only they could find.