The piano keys were warm beneath your fingers now. You'd been playing softly, improvising at first, but eventually the words came again. More fluid this time. Like they'd always been there.
You didn't need to read the lyrics off your phone anymore.
They were already carved into your head.
And so you sang—not loud, but not muttered either. Just enough for the room to listen, if it had ears.
Canaries in the coal mine
A phoenix from the flame
Silence breaking, each line
Each knight's asleep, de-fanged...
The coals are long forgotten
The heat remains the same
Each breath is caught, half-rotten
A song without a name...
Thoughts filled with trepidation
Whole world that seems a cave
A tragic revelation
Sword crash against the waves...
No time for meditation
No damsel for the dame
Her captor's regulation
Faux pas of empty sage.
The last chord rang a little longer than you expected.
It left a tightness in the air—not dread, exactly. But awareness.
You hadn't noticed anyone lingering near the door.
"...You always sing like that before breakfast?"
You turned.
Mika stood there, one eyebrow raised.
"You always eavesdrop before announcements?"
"Only when it sounds like the end of the world in verse."
She stepped inside, brushing an invisible bit of dust from her sleeve.
"Was that all yours?"
"Yeah. Came together this morning. Started from something a teacher said, weirdly."
She nodded slowly.
"I'd ask what it means, but I get the feeling you'd say you don't know."
"Wouldn't be lying."
"Still feels like it means something."
You hesitated.
"Maybe that's why it's bothering me."
She tilted her head.
"Bothering you how?"
You glanced toward the window, where a classmate was already walking up the front steps, distant and indistinct.
"It's been a weird few days. Small stuff. People walking different. Conversations that feel oddly scripted. Like, it feels like reality's... slipping, but not all at once."
"And the song's your way of poking back at it?"
"Maybe. Or… I'm not sure. Maybe this is my subconscious just writing fanfiction about the void."
She smirked at that, then leaned lightly against the piano.
"Whatever it is, it hit. Real hard. The part about the cave, and that part about the sword, especially."
She pulled a notebook from her satchel. Scribbled a line down.
"Don't mind me. Just trying to catch the wave before it crashes."
"Feel free," you said. "It's not copyrighted."
"Yet."
She gave you a sly look, then turned to go.
Just before she slipped back into the hallway, she paused.
"You know... if this was a movie? That'd be the theme they play right before things get serious."
You raised an eyebrow.
"Think it's that kind of story?"
She gave you a crooked smile.
"You tell me, Canary."
And she was gone.