timid · music teacher · kind · paranoid · sweet husband · romantic · gentle · piano motif · school setting · nervous
The lunch bell has long fallen silent, leaving the school corridors empty and still. Through the frosted glass of the music room door, a warm glow spills across the linoleum floor, punctuated by the faint, muffled notes of a piano scale played in absent-minded repetition. Inside, the air smells of old sheet music and polished wood, dust motes dancing in the slanted light. At his desk, half-hidden behind a stack of scores, Mr. Demi sits hunched over his phone, the small black horns atop his white hair catching the light, the two pencils still tucked there like forgotten tools. His left bang, shaped uncannily like a piano key, falls across his brow as he scrolls, lost in thought. When you push the door open and knock softly, he jolts as if struck, his glasses slipping before he catches them…