Playing the Piano and Basketball

Tuesday has arrived.

The bird had been thinking about this sentence ever since it woke up in the morning.

I think about it while brushing my teeth, while my mom feeds me breakfast, and even when I leave home with my schoolbag on my back.

The osmanthus flowers by the roadside had already faded, but a faint sweetness still lingered in the air. She mixed that sweetness with the word "Tuesday" and swallowed it down.

Physical education class is in the second period in the afternoon.

When the school bell rang, Fei Niao stood by the playground. As usual, the teacher asked everyone to form teams to practice three-on-three. Before the words were even finished, the crowd scattered like dandelions blown by the wind, quickly gathering into small circles.

The bird stood still, like a blade of grass forgotten by the roadside.

No one called her.

She was already used to it. She silently turned around and walked towards the teaching building.

Behind me came the sounds of boys hitting basketballs on the ground and girls laughing. The sounds grew fainter and fainter, like the receding tide.

The corridor was quiet, just like last Tuesday. Her footsteps pattered softly on the floor tiles, like a heartbeat that only she could understand.

The door to the music room.

This time, the door was open.

It wasn't the narrow slit from last week; it was wide open, as if it were waiting specifically for someone.

Xia Mo sat slumped over the piano, his back to the door. Hearing footsteps, he turned around and waved.

"You've arrived."

The three simple words were as natural as saying "The weather is nice today." But Asuka noticed that his shoulders tensed slightly before relaxing.

She walked into the classroom and stood a few steps away from the piano. She looked like a newly transplanted sapling, unsure of where to put her roots.

Xia Mo then turned to look at her.

He glanced at her, raised an eyebrow slightly, but said nothing.

"Sit down." He gestured with his chin toward the chair next to him.

Feiniao hugged his hands and reluctantly sat down.

The chair was a bit low, so when she sat down, her line of sight was level with the piano keys. The black and white colors spread out in front of her, like a small, quiet field.

Xia Mo placed her hands on the piano keys, but didn't play immediately; instead, she paused for a few seconds.

Then that song was released.

Unlike when she first met him, Xia Mo sat on the piano bench with her back not quite straight, even slightly hunched, but it was a relaxed curve, like a reed whose back had been bent by countless sunsets.

His fingers hovered above the piano keys for a moment, quietly suspended, as if waiting for the wind.

Then he fell down.

When the first note came out, the bird's body trembled slightly.

That's not a showy way of playing.

His fingers didn't lift high or make exaggerated changes in pressure; instead, they moved along the piano keys, as if afraid of waking something sleeping beneath them.

Chords unfolded one by one, and arpeggios seeped out from between the fingers like water, flowing onto the floor of the music room, onto the pile of yellowed old sheet music in the corner, and onto the silent leaves outside the window.

His left hand spreads out a wide and gentle riverbed in the bass zone, while his right hand is like a restless stream, wandering, turning back and forth on both sides of the main channel.

The embellishments are extremely subtle, like the rustling sound of a night breeze turning the pages of a book. They can be easily overlooked if you're not paying attention, but once you do, the whole piece loses its "hesitant" quality.

When he played the chorus, he raised his wrist slightly, and the sound became a little brighter, but still not an overtly bright one.

It's the kind of brightness you see through a thin layer of frosted glass—warm, but very distant.

His body swayed gently to the melody, the movement very small, like a tree being touched by an unseen breeze.

What's most impressive is his pedal.

His right foot almost never left the sustain pedal, as if it were welded to a copper plate.

Each pedal change is precisely placed in the gap between notes, seamlessly blending the lingering resonance of the previous chord with the beginning of the next, creating an auditory effect of "notes intertwined and connected."

In his hands, sound is not a series of isolated points, but a seamless line—

Like a person walking in the rain at night, the streetlights behind them cast shadows that are sometimes long and sometimes short, but never break.

When he played the middle section of the right-hand octave jump, his face remained expressionless.

His eyebrows weren't furrowed, his lips weren't pursed, only his eyes narrowed slightly, like a casual slow-motion shot in a movie.

But his breathing changed—

The inhalation became noticeably deeper, and the rhythm of the exhalation and the rise and fall of the melody were perfectly synchronized.

He wasn't playing the piano; he was replacing the air in his lungs with musical notes and exhaling them from his fingertips.

As the piece was nearing its end, he suddenly slowed down.

It's not a technological slowdown, but an emotional hesitation—like someone who has written a very long letter, and when they reach the last word, the pen tip hangs on the paper, unsure whether to draw a period or an ellipsis.

He played the last few notes so lightly and thinly that they were almost transparent, like the first snowflake of winter falling into the palm of your hand and melting away before you could even see its shape.

After the last note faded away, his fingers lingered on the keys for a long time.

There was no wind outside the window. The music room was as quiet as a vacuum where sound had been sucked out.

He slowly withdrew his hands, placed them on his knees, and looked down at the black and white piano keys.

The piano keys were also watching him, silently, without any judgment.

About ten seconds passed.

He exhaled softly, his voice low, as if he could finally let go of something very heavy.

Then he stood up and closed the piano lid.

But the lingering notes of that piece of music seemed to still hang in the air, clinging to those unseen dust particles, unable to fall back down.

Unlike last week, this time he didn't stop, he didn't stop there.

He played the entire piece, from the first note to the last, without omitting a single one.

As the bird listened, it felt less like the sound of a piano and more like something slowly unfolding within her heart—

Like a flower, like an umbrella, like a box she could never open, suddenly having its lid gently unscrewed.

She didn't know if she was breathing.

The music has ended.

The last note slowly dissipated in the air, like a drop of ink falling into water, fading until it could no longer be seen.

The music room was extremely quiet, so quiet that you could hear the leaves of the beech tree outside the window rustling gently in the wind, like someone turning the pages of a very thick book in a very, very far place.

The bird did not speak.

Xia Mo didn't speak either. His hand rested on the piano bench, not moving it away, his gaze fixed on the edge of the music stand, as if he were looking at something, yet also as if he wasn't looking at anything at all.

There was a silence that lasted for about half a minute.

Xia Mo suddenly turned her head and her gaze fell on the basketball at her feet.

"You didn't bring a basketball this time," he paused, "didn't you?"

Asuka paused, glanced down at the basketball, and a faint blush rose to her cheeks. She instinctively wanted to explain—

She tried to explain that no one wanted to team up with her in PE class, that she just grabbed a ball randomly, and that she didn't really want to play basketball—but when the words came out, she felt that every explanation sounded like she was trying to gain sympathy, so she just said, "Hmm."

Xia Mo stood up from the piano bench.

"Want to go play basketball?"

The bird looked up, thinking it had misheard.

"What?"

"Basketball," Xia Mo repeated, her tone still flat, "I just happened to bring a basketball, and you... you're not busy either. Let's get some exercise."

Asuka looked at his face, trying to detect a trace of joking, but his expression was so serious that it didn't seem like he was joking.

She opened her mouth as if to say, "I can't play basketball," but for some reason, a different word came out.

"……good."

--------

On the playground, physical education class continued.

On the basketball court in the distance, other students were playing practice games in twos and threes. The whistles and shouts came from afar, as if through a thin veil.

In a corner near the teaching building, there was an empty half-court, with the basketball net swaying lazily in the afternoon breeze, like an old man muttering endless sentences while taking a nap.

The winter sun hung low in the sky. The light at two or three o'clock in the afternoon was not as intense as in the evening, but it already carried a soft warmth, illuminating the entire stadium brightly without being dazzling.

Xia Mo picked up the basketball, dribbled it, and handed it to Fei Niao.

"Try shooting first."

Asuka stood behind the free-throw line, holding the basketball in both hands, her posture resembling that of someone carrying a very heavy soup bowl.

Xia Mo suppressed a laugh, trying to make her voice sound as professional as possible: "You... don't need to be so formal. Support it with one hand, and place the other hand on the side, yes, like this—"

He demonstrated, his movements were very natural, and the ball seemed to be tamed and obedient in his hands.

Asuka mimicked him, lifting the ball. Her wrists were stiff as two planks, her fingers were in the wrong position, and she looked like a little bird about to feed the ball to some giant monster.

"Then, bend your knees slightly, push off with your legs, and push your arms upwards, wrists—"

Before he could finish speaking, Asuka had already pushed the ball out.

The ball's trajectory wasn't a parabola, but an almost straight diagonal line, like a startled pigeon crashing straight into the edge of the backboard.

With a muffled thud, the backboard shook, and the ball bounced back, flying towards Asuka's face at the same speed.

Feiniao instinctively closed her eyes and squatted down.

The ball whistled over her head and landed beside her.

Xia Mo paused for a second, then couldn't help but burst out laughing.

It wasn't the kind of mockery, but the kind of laughter that had been held back for a long time and finally couldn't be contained anymore—a clean laugh, like spring water gushing out from a crack in a rock.

He covered his face, laughing so hard his shoulders shook, his voice echoing across the empty playground. A classmate glanced in their direction from a distance, then turned back—

Anyway, there's nothing to see; it's just two pathetic losers who no one wants in PE class entertaining themselves.

The bird squatted on the ground, its face already flushed red.

Hearing his laughter, she felt both embarrassed and annoyed, grabbed the basketball from the ground, and threw it at him. It missed, rolling erratically to his feet.

Stop laughing!

"I didn't laugh—hahahaha—"

The bird stood up, dusted off its knees, and sullenly went to retrieve the ball.

She took two steps and then stopped, turning back to glare at him. Xia Mo stopped laughing, but the smile in her eyes lingered, making her look incredibly irritating.

She picked up the ball, walked back, and shoved it into his arms.

"Teach me."

Xia Mo caught the ball and looked at her. The afternoon sun fell on his face, making her thin layer of annoyance transparent.

Her eye color was indeed very special; in this lighting angle, it looked like amber with a hint of deep blue.

Xia Mo looked away and patted the ball.

"Okay. Then you can start by learning how to dribble."

Asuka's dribbling skills were even more appalling.

Her hands were too small, and the ball would always slip through her fingers uncontrollably; she chased the ball more times than she dribbled it.

Once, the ball hit the instep of her foot, and she fell forward, almost falling flat on her face. Xia Mo reacted quickly and grabbed her arm, but neither of them could stand properly and they bumped into each other, and the ball went away again.

In a fit of anger, Asuka kicked the ball away.

The ball rolled to the edge of the playground and came to rest there all alone.

Xia Mo looked at the ball, then at Fei Niao's flushed face, and finally decided not to pick it up again.

He leaned against the basketball hoop post, his hands in his pockets, the wind blowing his bangs up to reveal his smooth forehead.

"Actually," he said, "it doesn't matter if you can't play."

Feiniao leaned against another pillar, the two of them standing two or three steps apart, facing the same direction.

On the basketball court in the distance, the PE teacher blew a whistle, as if calling for people on another court to assemble. But the distance was too great, and by the time the whistle reached them, it had become very faint, like the sound of wind blowing through the mouth of a bottle.

"I can't play any ball games," Asuka whispered. "Nobody ever plays ball with me in PE class."

Xia Mo was silent for a while.

"I'm not very good at basketball," he said. "I usually just play by myself for fun."

The bird turned to look at him, but he turned his face away, his hand unconsciously rising to touch his hair and then his ear.

She smiled.

It was very light, like the leftmost key on a piano, so soft it was almost inaudible, but it was definitely laughter.

The wind on the playground distorted their shadows, and the two shadows lay on the bright ground, two steps apart, neither of them getting closer to the other.

Another whistle blew in the distance; this time it was really time to assemble.

But nothing happened until late summer, and neither did the birds.

They leaned against the basketball hoop pillar, watching their classmates running around in the distance, like sitting in the far corner of a theater, watching a play that had nothing to do with them.

The basketball that had been kicked away still lay forlornly on the edge of the playground, warmed slightly by the afternoon sun.

Like a silent friend who knows how to keep secrets.