Closed Fragility of PV Evpraksiya Vinogradova

─────────────────────────────────────────────────── 2024. 10. 18.| @Ari Morozov

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xxxxx𝕰vpraksiya had been seated at her piano in the far corner of the rehearsal room, her fingers resting on the keys, lingering over the first chord of a nocturne she had been contemplating playing. She had slipped into the room with the same ease that one melted into a shadow—unseen, unnoticed, and entirely content to remain that way. The soft hum of silence was like a fine silk, draped over everything, inviting her to dissolve into its embrace and let the world outside disappear. The quiet, however, didn't last for long. She caught the sound of a door opening and, with a slight turn of her head, saw him— the boy with the ukulele, standing there as though he too was uncertain of his own presence. She recognized him from fleeting glances in the corridors, an unfamiliar figure certainly. Evpraksiya didn’t move, didn’t make her presence known as she watched him settle into a chair, flipping through a worn journal with a certain reverence. And then, with a few hesitant, deliberate plucks, he began to play. Chopin’s Waltz in C Sharp Minor, transformed on the strings of a ukulele. A strange choice, yet somehow—it worked. The notes were softer, more delicate, each one hanging in the air like a fleeting whisper, drifting through the room and weaving into the silent tapestry she had wrapped herself in. She felt the resonance of each note pulse within her chest, a stirring that was both familiar and strange. Her fingers, still poised above the keys, trembled with an impulse she could not quite resist. It was as if the music itself had extended a hand, inviting her to join in its strange, improvised duet. Without a word, without even a second thought, Evpraksiya let her fingers press down on the keys, her piano voice joining his in a soft, harmonic whisper. She began with a low, grounding chord, one that cradled his melody, lifting it in an embrace that was both tender and haunting. Each note of her accompaniment moved with care, as though she were tracing the delicate lines of a shared memory, careful not to disturb the notes of his ukulele but rather work around it. She didn’t look at him, no. Instead, Evpraksiya's eyes remained focused on the ivory keys beneath her fingers, lost in the way their sounds blended together—a seamless, unspoken conversation. His notes, bright and warm, her own, steady and lingering like the shadowed memory of a dream. It was a language beyond words, one that only music could speak, and in that language, she spoke to him of places neither of them had seen, of emotions neither had named. Time slipped away, the room now filled with their shared song. It was not quite Chopin, and yet it was something of its own—a piece held somewhere between a waltz and a reverie. She could almost see it then, a hazy vision of a grand hall filled with dancers lost in some timeless step, shadows mingling with candlelight, as the music rose and fell like the heartbeat of something unspoken. When the final notes lingered into silence, Evpraksiya’s hands stilled on the keys, her breathing soft and measured. She allowed the quiet to reclaim the room, though it was no longer the same silence that had been there before. After a moment, she glanced up at him, a faint, almost ethereal smile touching her lips. ❝Chopin certainly wouldn't be my first choice,❞ she murmured, her voice as soft as the lingering notes. ❝But it's beautiful, all the same.❞

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Date	Oct 18th
Outfit	XXXXX
EN/FR/RU	#oeac77/#008080/#6495ed

As Ari continued the song, he became aware of a piano accompanying his ukulele. Originally, he thought that he was merely imagining it. Whether the piano existed or not, its melody almost felt otherworldly; as if the notes were a byproduct of a nearby breeze, or perhaps performed by a ghost. Alongside the ambiguity, however, was a feeling that a waltz such as the one he played was better fit with the aspect of mystery. Furthermore, complimenting each note he played, the piano seemed to respond to each note individually; like it was, or desperately wanted to become, his accomplice.

It was for a reason such as this that he didn't look over at the piano until he finished the last note of the waltz.

Finally, as he finished the song, he looked toward the direction of the piano and found a girl who was unnaturally beautiful. Whether it was a spell cast upon her, or perhaps one that had victimized him, the moment appeared positively, yet grotesquely abstract. The girl had blonde hair that almost glittered as it refracted sunlight from a nearby window. Yet, the feature that he found the most notable were her green eyes, as they seemed to betray her original aesthetic of pure, snowy white.

"Where are they coming from?" he quietly sighed to himself. "Hopefully I didn't play that too horribly."

To further his dismay, he noticed that he'd been staring at her for a few moments too long, and she had noticed him first. Consequently, he shifted his vision elsewhere, until she spoke. Her voice was soft, yet confident, searching for definite answers, yet without forceful tones.

Nothing about her seemed to betray her otherworldly aspects; perhaps there was, in fact, a possibility that she was some type of phantom or hallucination.

"I don't know many other classical pieces; it's my weakest genre of music." He responded in a rather flat and utterly neutral tone, picking up the journal from where he left it. "Anyways, I'm Ari."

@Evpraksiya Vinogradova