The morning at St. Jude's Academy began as usual, strictly bound by rules. For Winter, every moment—from breakfast to study hours—felt like a carefully locked cage. But today, she carried a secret in her pocket: the small note Sonata had given her.
"9:00 AM. Meet me at the old music hall."
Winter managed to slip away, evading her father's driver, and headed toward the East Wing's abandoned recital hall. As she pushed open the heavy doors, she was greeted by the scent of dust and aging wood.
Sonata was sitting on the stage with an old vinyl record. He wasn't at the piano; instead, he was simply staring off into the distance.
"You're late, Ice Queen," Sonata said with a teasing tone, though a hint of a smile lingered in his eyes.
"I had to hide from my father's people," Winter replied, sitting down beside him. "What are you doing here? Aren't you going to play the piano?"
"I don't want to play the kind of music people want to hear anymore," Sonata said, starting the old record player. "People use music just to get high grades and applause. They've forgotten how to hear the sound within the 'silence' itself."
Winter sat in stillness, listening to the faint, ghostly sound of a cello rising through the crackle of the vintage record. It wasn't a perfect melody, but it felt incredibly beautiful.
"Put these on," Sonata said, handing her a pair of headphones. "From this moment on, you aren't anyone's daughter. You aren't a star student. You are just the writer you want to be."
As Winter put the headphones on, the world around her seemed to vanish. With trembling hands, she flipped over her Calculus homework and began to write her novel on the back of the page.
"The wind at the top of the North Wing didn't feel like normal air. It felt like a warning..."
Sonata watched her in silence. Seeing her hand move swiftly across the paper, he couldn't help but smile. They were both breaking the rules. They were wasting precious time.
But for Winter, this was the first time in her life she felt truly free to breathe.