La Marquise stood empty.
No velvet laughter. No music swelling up the stairs. The lights hadn't been lit in weeks. Dust claimed the stage like it had been waiting for this moment—this silence.
The troupe was no more.
Costumes still hung in the dressing rooms. Rouge's chair remained pulled out just so. A lipstick print on a forgotten champagne glass. Echoes of old rehearsals still lived in the walls, but the people had gone.
Splintered.Scattered.Fractured beyond repair.
---
Lyselle sat by a window, the morning light washing over blank parchment.
She hadn't told anyone where she was staying. Somewhere between safe and in-between. The city moved on without her. And for now, that was fine.
She held the pen loosely between two fingers. Wrote slowly. Paused often.
"Dear Rémi,
I don't know what to say. I don't even know why I'm writing this. Maybe because there are too many things I didn't say when I had the chance. Maybe because I need to say them now, even if you never read them.
You were kind once. Gentle. I remember that man. I think he's still in there. I hope he finds a way back to the surface.
I'm trying to find my way, too.
– L."
She folded the page but never sealed it.
Left it on the windowsill.
Unsent. Unspoken. Unfinished.
---
Lune played alone now.
He found a tiny café in a quieter district. Smoky corners. Cheap tea. Mismatched chairs. No spotlights.
It wasn't glamorous.But it was real.
His music had changed—less perfect, more raw. Less about impressing, more about remembering.
Some nights, Chéri would visit, sit in the back, and listen. Rouge did too, once—but never stayed until the end.
Lune never mentioned his brother.Not anymore.
But once, after a rainstorm, a girl in the audience asked him why he always played that same, aching melody at the end of his set.
He paused, fingers hovering above the final chord.
And quietly, he replied—
"He said he just wanted to see her smile again.And in the end…he didn't know what that meant."