The attic stank of rust and melted candy, like someone smeared hard caramel on vinyl grooves. As Ayla wiped cobwebs off the music box, its brass key sprang open—Eric's watch chain had coiled around the mainspring, its cracked glass spelling Odile's initials.
"This relic's older than my grandfather's dentures." Lucas wound the key with his prosthetic finger, joint crevices snagging ceramic angel wing shards from last Christmas. "Sure you want to humor Eric's games?"
The first note leapt forth as rain slanted violently. Steel-gray curtains of water sliced through skylights, casting piano key patterns on oak floors. The melody limped like rat-gnawed sheet music, missing its E-flat. Ayla's fingers instinctively stroked the absent note—silk whispers answered from the attic's heart, where nineteen-year-old Odile waltzed with her human lover, her hem reviving dead roses.
(On the seventh wind, Lucas' mechanical heart skipped, gears snaring her hair)
"Stop." He slammed the lid, palm sweat blooming on tarnished brass. "This tune drags us into her memory folds."
Too late. Odile's ghost fragmented mid-spin, reforming younger—twelve-year-old her carving staves into piano keys with a scalpel. Blood beaded down ebony keys, pooling into Eric's watch gear patterns. Ayla retrieved fallen sheet music, silver text bleeding through margins: "When twin blossoms bloom inverted, the curse shatters."
Lucas coughed violently, cerulean steam hissing from spinal vents. When Ayla touched his neck, something squirmed beneath the skin—a black rose thorn pulsing to the mangled melody. Stained glass rained down, each shard reflecting alternate Odiles: twenty-year-old shredding vows, thirty-year-old blending perfumes, fifty-year-old branding Lucas...
"Your pulse..." His mist-damp finger tapped her wrist. "...syncs with the mainspring."
Eric's laugh slithered from music piles: "The Young Master calls music dangerous entropy, but he omitted—" His watch chain yanked the music box floorward, "—this was your mother's bridal gift to Odile."
As the box shattered, notes crystallized into suspended glass shards. Ayla raised her arms, but Lucas pulled her close—his mechanical heart's thrum against her ear shifting from cold electronics to living rhythm. Glass shards rearranged into her mother's youth: handing baby Ayla to fifteen-year-old Odile, whose ring finger bore the rusted sakura pendant.
Odile's ghost turned spiderweb eyes: "Gifts demand reciprocation, dear sister."