"I believe so, yes," Dark replied as he paid the bill before leading them to the car. "I am glad we had the time to do this. It may not have been all of our favourite activities, but I enjoyed being able to share something like this with you both."
During the drive home, he chatted easily with them, feeling a bit warm inside over what, to him, felt like an extremely successful bonding afternoon. As they stepped inside the house, he paused. The sound of the piano was drifting from upstairs. Daizi was playing again. But it also sounded like she was playing with more force than was typical for her, although the notes they could hear from downstairs all certainly sounded correct. Just a little different.
In truth, Daizi made it home from being with her aunts a full hour before the rest of her family had, and Ivy was fast asleep less than fifteen minutes after coming inside, exhausted from an afternoon of being passed around by people who were still largely strangers. So, like Dark had recently, she found herself completely alone in her home. Like him, she couldn't remember the last time she had the house essentially to herself. At first, she had no idea what to do with herself, so she drifted upstairs to... try to play? She guessed? That's what she vaguely remembered doing. Her harp still didn't feel quite right, so she sat at the piano, which wasn't that strange for her. Plenty of songs didn't sound right on the harp.
And she was alone. There was nobody there to listen in. Nobody there to ask questions, or to intrude, or to judge or to anything. It was just her---and a sleeping baby in the other room, but Ivy had grown up around so much music it seldomly woke her. And she just let herself play angry, angsty, frustrated music because (as far as she still believed) nobody was there, she was free, and felt no obligation to play pretty music.
I'm waking up late
Just offended my idol
They ask me how I feel, they hand me title after title
Josephine, every success I get I think about your reaction
And I make myself more and more into a tourist attraction
Cause in the end, I still feel the cut off thread
The little kid who doesn't know what she did wrong or said
I wonder if you know how much it fucked with me
Is that what you wanted, Josephine? Josephine? Josephine?
