There are some sounds you never forget.
The sound of a door slamming.
The beat of a heart you would recognize anywhere.
And the sound of a piano on a rainy night.
Catarina remembered it all too well.
On those evenings, the whole apartment seemed to breathe to the rhythm of the music.
The rain slid down the windows like a whisper,
and every note, every pause, seemed to be addressed to her alone.
She lay on the sofa, her legs tucked under her, a blanket around her shoulders.
Sylus sat at the piano, his head slightly tilted, his fingers hesitating between gentleness and violence.
The white and black keys reflected the candlelight, like a battlefield between two worlds.
"What do you want me to play tonight?" he would sometimes ask, his voice barely a whisper.
"Something that hurts," she would always reply.
And he would play.
Not well-known pieces.
Not tunes that could be named.
Things he invented on the spot, born of the tension, the longing, the fire contained between them.
The first notes were often slow, hesitant,
as if he were trying to translate a feeling he did not yet understand.
Then the melody swelled, faster, more breathless.
It became him.
Then her.
Then them.
Catarina closed her eyes, listened,
and felt her heart beat in unison with this music that seemed to exist only for the two of them.
Once, she had said to him:
"You know it's dangerous to play like that, don't you?"
He had laughed softly.
"Why?"
"Because it makes you want to believe."
He hadn't answered.
Just a look.
The kind of look that burns more than a kiss.
That night, the rain had fallen harder.
And in the flickering light of the flames, he had gotten up from the piano and come to sit next to her.
The silence between them had become a language they knew how to speak.
"If I could freeze a moment in time, it would be this one," she whispered.
"Don't freeze it. Things we hold on to too tightly always end up breaking."
But it was already too late.
She remembered it now, lying on her bed a month and a half later, her eyes open in the dark.
She could still hear the notes, like a ghost behind her eyelids.
Every time it rained, she thought she could hear him playing again.
Every time the wind blew against the window, she thought she could recognize the rhythm of his breathing.
She got up and opened the window.
The rain was falling, fine, slow, almost tender.
And she whispered, to herself:
"I would have preferred you to keep playing. Even if it hurt."
The wind carried her words away.
But in the distance, in the memory of the world, a piano began to play again.
As if the past, too, refused to be silenced.