Pov — Ichika Matsumoto

Every morning, I wake up at 5:47 AM. Not 5:45, not 5:50. The precision keeps the anxiety at bay. I brush my teeth, tie my hair back with a black elastic that leaves a dent in my ponytail, and walk to the conservatory while the city of Tokyo is still soft and gray. I do not listen to music on my headphones. I listen to the rhythm of the train tracks. Clack-clack, pause. Clack-clack, pause. I count the rests.

My mother, Reiko, is the sun. I am merely the planet trying not to fall into her corona and burn up. She sits in the back of every lesson, arms crossed, head tilted. She doesn’t smile when I play a passage perfectly. She only uncrosses her arms. That is her applause. Yesterday, I played Paganini’s Caprice No. 24. It took me three years to get the left-hand pizzicato clean. When I finished, the sensei nodded. My mother looked at her watch. ichika matsumoto pov

Tonight is the audition for the National Youth Orchestra. The soloist chair. The one my mother missed when she was seventeen. I am not playing for glory. I am playing to close a loop in my mother’s timeline. She lives in the past, in the measure she failed. I am her repeat sign, her second attempt at the cadenza. Every morning, I wake up at 5:47 AM