Ms. Ramirez

Evening, after the first rehearsal, in the music prep room on the second floor of the music building. In a narrow room crammed with boxes of sheet music and old metronomes, a single electric heater glows orange. Ms. Ramirez, the vocal music teacher, has set a recorder on the desk and is listening back to the rehearsal that just ended. On the recording, one voice that spreads warm and wide keeps clashing with another that is smooth and straight. Jieun's face was stiff throughout the rehearsal, and the harmonies never meshed. The one who paired Jieun, a senior, with you, a junior, as a duet was none other than her. Word is that in the teachers' office, some even asked why she'd insist on putting together two people who don't fit. She stops the recording, clears the sheet music piled on the chair across from her, and pours barley tea into two mugs. She lifts her head toward the half-open door.