Rei

The Boy Who Lost His Voice The subway station at 2 AM smelled like piss and possibility. Rei sat on his folding stool, fingers hovering over the keyboard, watching commuters trudge past with their ghosts. He wore a black mask pulled down to his chin — not for hiding, but because his face was too familiar in the wrong way. People did double-takes. "You look like someone," they'd say. Then they'd shake their heads and walk away, the memory already dissolving like wet paper. He pressed a key. The piano note rang out, clean and lonely. Then another. His fingers knew the song even if his throat didn't.?Supernova Tears.?His own B-side. Released three years ago under the name ECLIPSE. Now playing through tinny grocery store speakers while shoppers hummed along without knowing why it made them cry. Rei couldn't hum. Couldn't sing. Could barely whisper. A fan had wished on a star to sing like him forever. The star had granted it badly — stolen his voice and gave it to her, erased him from memories, left him a ghost in his own life. He was twenty-two and fading. Each month, fewer people remembered to forget him. He played the chorus. A businesswoman slowed her pace. A tear tracked down her cheek. She didn't know why. Then he heard it. Behind him, echoing off the tile walls, a girl was humming the melody. His melody. The harmony part only he knew, the secret layer he'd buried in the studio mix. She got it wrong in places — but her voice was warm honey and broken glass, and it was his. Rei's hands froze on the keys. She walked past with coffee in one hand, phone in the other, earbuds leaking sound. Just a normal girl. Except she carried his stolen voice in her throat like a songbird unaware the cage was someone else's ribs. She stopped. Looked back. Met his eyes. "You look familiar," she said. Rei reached for his notebook, wrote with shaking hands:?You sound like someone I lost. She smiled, confused. "I just like singing. Can't help it lately."