The city hums like a living machine tonight.Not loud—never loud—but constant, like a low chord pressed beneath the skin of the world. I've been trying to record it for hours, capturing the hidden harmonics between passing cars, elevator motors, the slow sigh of rain on glass. Every sound feels familiar, as if I've heard it before, somewhere in the background of you.
Adrian used to say that every person had a frequency—something too quiet to measure, too precise to imitate. "If you listen long enough," he whispered once, lips grazing my ear, "you'll find mine hiding inside yours."
That was before he vanished. Before the silence between us became an entire world.
I sit in my apartment-studio, surrounded by cables and half-dead synthesizers, the air thick with the ghost of electricity. The walls are pale, uneven, covered in pinned sheets of composition paper filled with half-legible scrawls: A3 → D minor → bleed into static. I haven't eaten since morning. The coffee has gone cold. My pulse is steady but wrong, like a metronome missing every third beat.
My computer monitor glows anemic blue. On the screen, the waveform of my latest piece trembles—a jagged ocean of digital noise. I press play.
For a moment, there's only the sound of rain. Then a low hum. Then, impossibly, your voice.
"Lyra."
Just that—my name. Drawn out like a sigh through water.
I freeze. The sound isn't on any track. I replay it. It's still there: soft, buried deep under layers of interference, but there.
"Lyra."
It's him. I know that tone better than I know my own.
I lean closer to the speakers. "Adrian?"
Nothing. Only the hiss of the city, the breathing of the rain.
For three years I've told myself that grief can play tricks on the ear. I've read about auditory hallucinations, phantom sounds, trauma feedback loops. I even saw a therapist who told me that the brain rewires itself after loss—that it looks for patterns to make sense of pain. But she never heard his voice the way I did. She never felt how it vibrated through the bones, not the skin.
I hit record again. This time I speak into the mic, slow, deliberate.
"If you're there, say something."
Static answers, deep and shifting, like a tide dragging through sand. Then—faintly—three notes rise, spaced like a heartbeat. E, F, G.
That was our motif. The one I used to hum against his shoulder when words felt too small.
I laugh, quietly, because it's too much. Because it's insane. Because maybe insanity is the only way left to keep you.
I play it again. The same three notes.
Maybe I should call someone—Marla, my agent, who's been begging for updates on the exhibition. Or Theo, the technician who sometimes checks my equipment. But the thought of explaining this—him—makes my throat close. No one would believe me.
Instead, I open my journal.
March 12 — 11:43 p.m.Subject: Frequency Test #01Result: Adrian's voice detected in composite track.Possible explanations:
Auditory overlap (recording error).
Sleep deprivation hallucination.
Actual contact.(3) feels true.
I stare at the words until the ink bleeds a little.
Outside, the rain thickens, turning the windows into warped mirrors. My reflection looks nothing like me—too thin, eyes too bright, lips pale as porcelain. I almost expect her to move on her own.
In the corner, the red light of the recording interface pulses steadily, like a heart monitor.
"Adrian," I whisper again. "If you're listening, I'm still here."
The speakers crackle. Then: a low, rhythmic tapping—almost like someone knocking, very softly, on the other side of the wall.
Tap.Tap.Tap.
Three beats. Always three.
I cross the room, press my palm against the wall. It's cold. Vibrating faintly, as if there's music trapped inside the plaster.
Maybe it's the neighbors. Maybe it's just the pipes.But maybe, maybe—
I laugh again, quietly this time, and let myself sink to the floor. My body feels like glass—hollow, fragile, waiting for a wrong note to shatter.
When I close my eyes, I see him. Not fully—never fully—but in flashes: the slope of his shoulder, the way his fingers trembled when he played, the soft scar beneath his lip. He's sitting at the piano, half-smiling, looking at me as if I'm something he's about to lose.
"Play it again," he says in the memory. "The one that sounds like drowning."
And I do.
When I wake, it's morning. The city is a dull bruise of color outside my window. My computer is still on, speakers humming faintly. On the screen, a new file blinks at me: A_KEENE_RECORD_001.wav
I didn't name that.
I click it open. The waveform is small, irregular, but it's there. I press play.
Static. Then—my voice, from hours ago: "If you're there, say something."
And then his.
"I never left."
I stare at the screen until my eyes blur. The time stamp reads 3:33 a.m. — the one hour I don't remember.
The rational part of me knows what to do: check the logs, search for tampering, call someone, breathe. But another part, the part that's been half-dead since he disappeared, wants to believe it's real. Wants to believe that somewhere, between frequencies, between heartbeats, you can find someone again.
I open a new project file. Title it: "The Frequency of You."
This will be my next piece—the one the gallery expects, the one that might finally make people remember my name. But it's not for them. It's for him.
The cursor blinks, patient. Waiting.
I whisper, "If you can hear me, Adrian, help me finish it."
And for the first time in three years, the silence answers back.
To be continued…