My Right Ear Hears No Wind, We Shall Never Meet Again Chapter 1

My little sister playing with fireworks permanently deafened my right ear.

During the final auditions for the conservatory, I couldn't hear the piano accompaniment. My performance was flagged as a fail. I missed out on the university I had spent three years bleeding for, all because of one missing piece of paper.

After the accident, Mom and Dad shipped my sister off to Europe.

My older brother blocked her on every social media platform.

Even Silas, the boy I grew up with, swore he would never look at her again.

For years, I genuinely believed they were hurting for me.

Until seven years later, when my sister finally graduated and flew back stateside.

Mom tossed a set of car keys onto my lap.

"Go pick up your sister."

I stared at the glowing notification on my phone screen. It was the schedule for my senior thesis defense.

"I can't," I said. "My defense is this afternoon."

The living room went dead silent.

Mom's eyes instantly welled up with tears.

"It has been seven years!" she snapped, her voice trembling. "She spent seven years sick in a foreign country, blowing out birthday candles by herself. She didn't even dare come back for your grandmother's funeral. Why won't you just let her off the hook?"

Dad set his coffee mug down hard on the coaster, his face dark.

"She made a mistake back then, yes. But didn't you end up going to college anyway? You're about to graduate. So you lost hearing in one ear. You still have your thesis, your whole future ahead of you. What about her? She was locked out of her own home for seven years."

My brother stood in the doorway, staring at me with ice in his eyes.

"You just missed out on one fancy music school. What she lost was her entire family."

Even Silas, who had been sitting in heavy silence, finally spoke up.

"And me. For seven years, I didn't see her, didn't comfort her, didn't spend a single holiday with her. I already promised to propose to you after graduation. Why can't you just leave a door open for her to come home? Do you really need her to die out there alone before you're satisfied?"

My world had been missing half its sound for a long time.

But in that exact moment, the remaining half went completely, terrifyingly quiet.

Later that day, I logged into the university portal and changed my post-grad job placement to a city on the opposite coast. Three thousand miles away.

From now on, the golden child they prayed for, and the guilt they faked for seven years, had absolutely nothing to do with me.