The Boy in the Practice Room
The car winds up the mountain road, and Jisoo presses her palm against the cool glass, watching the world shift from ordinary to extraordinary. Silverwood Academy rises out of the September haze like something conjured rather than built—stone towers softened by ivy, a bell tower catching the last amber light of afternoon, and beyond it all, the forest stretching toward peaks still dusted with the memory of summer green. She has made this drive a dozen times now, and still it steals her breath.
"We're here, Miss Kim," the driver says, easing the car through the wrought-iron gates.
Jisoo doesn't answer right away. She's too busy cataloguing the way the maples along the drive have already begun to turn, red bleeding into orange at their edges, as though the campus itself is rehearsing for autumn. Three years ago, when she first arrived as a wide-eyed freshman clutching her violin case like a life raft, she thought Silverwood looked like a postcard. Now it feels like something closer to home, though home has always been a complicated word for her—stretched thin between Seoul and this mountain, between her parents' expectations and whatever she actually wants.
The car stops in front…
