The days after the festival felt different—not because everything was perfect, but because Lívia no longer searched for perfection. The applause still echoed in her memory, but it was the silence that followed—the calm, the peace—that stayed with her.
At school, people looked at her differently. Not with pity, but with a quiet admiration. She had fallen, but stood up again. Not untouched, but stronger.
Miguel kept his distance, and Lívia no longer counted the spaces between their encounters. Sometimes, they passed each other in the hallway and exchanged a glance—half memory, half possibility. It no longer hurt the way it once did. Time had not erased the pain, but had softened its edges.
One rainy afternoon, as she waited for Duda and Leo in the music room, Miguel appeared at the door. He didn't enter. Just stood there, holding something in his hand: the sheet music they had once started together.
"I finished it," he said softly. "But it's not complete without your voice."
Lívia looked at the pages, then at him. The wound was still there, but so was the music. So was the bond. What had been broken didn't need to be discarded—it could be transformed.
She walked to the piano, sat down, and opened the sheet.
"I'll play," she said, "but this time, only if we're honest. No more secrets. No more unfinished songs."
Miguel nodded. "No more missing pieces."
Their fingers found the harmony again—not as lovers, not yet, maybe never—but as two people who once meant everything to each other, and still meant something. The melody they created that day wasn't perfect. But it was true.
And for Lívia, that was enough.