The sensory assault of Harvard was different than Lagos, but no less overwhelming. Lagos was a blunt instrument—heat, noise, exhaust, a million people moving in synchronized chaos. Cambridge was a surgical strike—cold air that bit at Femi's lungs, an eerie quiet in the Yard that felt judgmental, and the constant, exhausting effort of processing a culture that operated on an entirely different operating system.
It had been three days since Josh had welcomed him to the "jungle" of Matthews Hall. Josh was a good roommate—perhaps too good. He was a golden retriever in human form, constantly vibrating with energy, blasting indie rock, and trying to drag Femi to dining hall mixers.
Femi needed an escape. His brain felt like a CPU running at 100% utilization with inadequate cooling. He needed a safe zone to reset his head.
He found himself wandering toward the north edge of the Yard, drawn away from the red brick dorms by a different kind of architecture. The Paine Concert Hall was an imposing stone building that looked like it held secrets. More importantly, it looked quiet.
He slipped inside. The air in the lobby smelled of old wood, velvet, and the faint, metallic tang of brass instruments. It was a smell that suggested order and discipline. He navigated the empty hallways, checking doorknobs. Most were locked, reserved for music majors.
On the second floor, tucked away at the end of a long corridor, a door clicked open.
Room 209 was not too big nor small, barely large enough to contain the upright Yamaha piano pushed against the far wall. A single high window looked out onto a brick alleyway. It was perfect. A vacuum-sealed environment.
Femi closed the door, savoring the heavy thud that shut out the world. He dropped his backpack—still carrying the weight of his gaming laptop,in the corner.
He sat at the piano bench. He hadn't played in months, not since the pressure of the scholarship search had consumed his life. Before gaming had taken over, the piano had been his first love. Not for the emotion of it, but for the math.
He placed his hands on the keys, the ivory cool under his fingertips. He didn't need sheet music. The patterns were burned into his memory.
He began to play Bach's Goldberg Variations.
Specifically, Variation 1.
It was a piece of pure, unadulterated logic. A mathematical equation translated into sound. His fingers moved with mechanical precision, executing the rapid sequences of notes. He wasn't feeling the music; he was solving it. To him, sometimes that's how music felt to him. The relationship between the left hand and right hand was a complex tactical dance, a perfect equilibrium of counterpoint.
For the first time since landing at Logan Airport, Femi felt his shoulders lower. His breathing synchronized with the tempo. The chaotic variables of his new life—the cold, the imposter syndrome, the confusing social cues—faded away. There was only the absolute truth of the notes. C followed B. A major chord resolved a minor tension. It was a world with rules that couldn't be broken.a world he built for himself
He closed his eyes, losing himself in the intricate architecture of the sound. He was building a cathedral of logic, brick by sonic brick.
Then suddenly,The door slammed open with the violence of a breach charge.
Femi's hands jerked on the keys, mashing down a hideous, dissonant cluster of notes that echoed terribly in the small room. The perfectly constructed cathedral collapsed in an instant.
"Oh, for fuck's sake!"
The voice was loud, raspy, and painfully American. Femi spun on the bench, his heart hammering against his ribs.
Standing in the doorway was a hurricane in human form.
She was perhaps an inch shorter than him, but her physical presence seemed to displace all the oxygen in the small room. Even beneath an oversized denim jacket covered in patches, her silhouette was impossible to ignore—a stark, deeply curved hourglass shape that felt aggressively chaotic against the neat, linear angles of the practice room. She had a mass of curly, dark hair that looked like it was actively fighting the beanie trying to contain it. Her jeans were ripped at the knees, not as a fashion statement, but from evident wear.
She didn't even look at him. She strode into the tiny room, dropping a canvas messenger bag onto the floor with a heavy thump.
"Where is it? I swear to god, if Dave stole it again, I'm going to adjust his truss rod with a hammer." She was tearing through the small space, looking under the piano bench, kicking at the legs of the music stand.
Femi sat frozen, his hands hovering over the ruined keys. His analytical mind tried to process this new variable and came up with an error message. She was pure inefficiency. The definition of wahala.
She dropped to her knees, peering under the piano pedals. "Aha! Gotcha, you little bastard."
She shuffled backward and stood up triumphantly, holding up a small, tangled mess of black cables and what looked like a guitar effects pedal. She blew a puff of dust off it.
Only then did she seem to realize there was another human being in the room.
She turned to Femi. Her eyes were a striking, intense shade of amber, and currently, they were narrowed in suspicion. She looked him up and down, taking in his stiff posture, his plain grey hoodie, the terrified look on his face.
"You stopped," she said. It was an accusation.
Femi blinked. "You kicked the door open."
"So….? You were in the middle of a phrase. You never stop in the middle of a phrase. It leaves tension in the air. It's bad luck."
Femi straightened his spine, his defensive walls slamming back into place. "I stopped because the environment was compromised by sudden noise."
She snorted. It was an unladylike, derisive sound. "noise? Dude, it's a door. It opens and closes. That's its logic." She stuffed the pedal and cables into her overflowing bag.
Femi turned back to the piano, intending to ignore her until she left. He placed his hands back in the starting position for the variation.
"Bach, huh?" she said, leaning against the doorframe. She wasn't leaving.
"Yes. The Goldberg Variations."
"I recognized it. Hard stuff. Technical."
"It requires precision," Femi said, not looking at her. "It is musical mathematics."
"Yeah, I could hear that. You were playing the shit out of the notes."
Femi felt a flicker of pride. "Thank you."
"That wasn't a compliment, Robo-Cop."
Femi turned back to her, frowning "what? Robo cop? What do you mean by that…"
She pushed herself off the doorframe and took two steps into his personal space. She smelled like old coffee, vanilla, and something metallic, like guitar strings.
"You were hitting all the right keys at the right time. Congratulations, you're a very efficient MIDI controller." She gestured vaguely at the piano. "But where was the blood? Where was the guts? Bach had twenty kids, man!. The guy felt things. You were playing it like you were filing your taxes or some shit. I don't even know"
Femi felt a hot flush of irritation rise up his neck. He was the IGL of the "Gbagada Titans". He had out-thought pros. He was a scholarship student at Harvard. He was not going to be lectured on performance by someone wearing jeans with structural integrity issues and a train thought that ran on coffee for fuel
"Music is structure," Femi argued, his voice clipped. "Emotion is a variable that introduces... error. The beauty of Bach is in the perfection of the composition, not the... messy interpretation of the player."
Her jaw dropped slightly. She looked genuinely offended. "Wow.... That is the saddest thing I've heard since I got to this frozen wasteland of a state. Emotion isn't an 'error.' It's the whole point. If you aren't bleeding on the keys, why are you even bothering?"
"Because the pattern is satisfying," Femi retorted. "Because when the equation resolves correctly, it creates order. Something this world sorely lacks."
She stared at him for a long beat, those amber eyes analyzing him with an intensity that rivaled his own. He felt like a bug under a microscope.
"You're not from around here, are you?" she asked, her tone shifting from aggressive to mildly curious.
"I am from Lagos, Nigeria."
"Lagos," she tested the word. "Chaos capital, right? No wonder you're obsessed with order. You're traumatized by traffic."
"It is not trauma. It is a preference for efficiency. I don't know what you're on girl. Who likes noise."
She laughed again, but this time it wasn't derisive. It was just... loud. "Efficiency. Right. Well, Mr. Efficiency, I hate to break it to you, but you're doing it wrong. You're typing, not playing."
She grabbed her bag, slinging it over her shoulder. "I'm Hailey, by the way. If you ever want to learn how to actually play that thing instead of just programming it, come find me in the basement. That's where the real noise happens."
She turned to leave, but paused at the door.
"Hey," she said. Femi looked up. "Try missing a note on purpose next time. See if the world ends. You might like it."
Then she was gone, the door clicking shut behind her with finality.
Femi sat in the silence. It didn't feel peaceful anymore. It felt sterile. Empty.
He looked at his hands resting on the keys. A MIDI controller. Soulless typing. Her insults were inefficient, based on a flawed premise of what music should be, yet they stung like tiny virtual bullets.
He tried to restart the Bach variation. He played the first four bars. They were technically flawless. The timing was exact to the millisecond.
But now, all he could hear was the silence between the notes, and he wondered, against his own will, if she was right. He wondered if he was just typing.
He slammed the piano lid shut, the noise startlingly loud in the small room. The sanctuary was breached. The cathedral of logic had been defiled by a hurricane named Hailey, and Femi had a sinking feeling that
his calculated, ordered world was about to get a lot messier.