When even music feels helpless.)
---
Basement 3. Red Lantern Alley.
The place that boy had told them about.
Noen walked in with Sera.
Lio was silent — as if every drum in his pocket had hidden in fear.
The door was iron.
On it, a tiny handwritten note read:
> "If you knock loud, you're not one of us."
Noen tapped it gently. Three soft knocks.
Tap-tap-tap.
The door creaked open. A voice inside said:
> "Come in. But bring your music… not your pride."
---
Inside was another world.
The Echo Circle.
A place where people played in whispers.
Harps, violins, flutes — all playing like they were scared to be heard.
Notes wept in secret.
As if someone had tied a rope around their throats.
The silence here was so thick…
even music seemed to breathe cautiously.
An old woman — her name was Mora — looked at Noen.
> "You're the one, aren't you?
The one who softens pain with sound?"
Noen only nodded.
> "I understand pain," he said.
"And the sound it tries to make."
Mora pointed to a boy sitting alone in a corner.
> "That's Sam. He lost his mother two years ago.
He hasn't spoken a word since.
Every night, he screams in his sleep…"
> "If you can reach him — truly reach him —
you're one of us.
If not… you're just another dream seller."
---
Sam sat still.
Eyes open — but seeing nothing.
Noen walked over quietly.
Sat down beside him.
Lifted a sitar.
One note.
Gentle.
From beneath the heart.
A sound like a mother's lap.
He closed his eyes…
…and began to play.
> "I can't bring your mother back,"
"But I can turn her memory into a song."
"A memory that couldn't cry…
might learn to sing."
The song was short.
Soft.
Pure.
But…
Sam didn't move.
No tears.
No breath hitch.
Just a cold, hollow face.
Sera gently placed her hand on Noen's shoulder.
Noen stopped playing.
Lowered his head.
---
Mora said:
> "See? Not every soul can be touched."
"Sometimes… silence wins."
Noen didn't reply.
He was watching Sam's hands.
Still.
But then… he noticed something.
A slight tremble beneath Sam's foot.
In the dirt.
> "He felt something," Noen whispered.
"But the pain… it's buried too deep."
Mora sighed.
> "This city…
devours hearts."
---
That night, Noen stayed silent.
For the first time after a song…
he felt nothing.
> "Something slipped away from me, Sera," he whispered.
"Like the song was whole…
but there was no one left to hear it."
Sera simply replied:
> "Maybe sometimes…
you have to survive the pain first,
to even understand the music."
---
Next morning, another Echo Circle member slipped a note into Noen's hand.
> "Don't go upstairs.
Harmonia doesn't just arrest songs.
It arrests dreams too."
---
Chapter End.