It wasn't until 2 months later, after his conversation with his friends, that Judd could see Rei again. Yet not in the way he wanted, but in his dreams.
It had been almost 3 months since he last knew of her, and the information he asked of his friends was not at all useful. Instead, they got even more curious about her whereabouts as all they could actually gather was the same.
A supposed car accident, in which she was not present, ended the lives of her parents. After that, nothing was heard of Rei Lee until Judd came across her that night in the park.
It really was as if she had disappeared all those years, only to appear again with some uncle they never heard of, not even Wetzel whose parents knew hers a bit had heard of this uncle. So after two months, they were back at the starting point, with nothing about a person they secretly thought didn't exist anymore.
Her appearances and disappearances, along with her frightening talent for music was all they were aware of her, along with the facts from the past, and adding to that, the mysterious uncle that presented himself the day of the match.
If the said emergency the uncle said was true, then it really was an important one for her not to show up for months. Beyond that, they were a bit concerned about Jaden's judgment about the two. After a month of investigating her matters and getting nothing, he decided to voice what he thought about them.
Something along the lines of her going through some sort of trauma that likely surged from her parent's death, which implied that it was no simple accident as everybody thought. There was also the fact that her uncle gave some sort of weird vibe. Despite being her relative, he didn't seem to care too much about her.
That made the group ponder her situation. Nothing came to their minds as to the relationship between uncle and niece, and that had them even more curious about all the mystery that was Rei Lee; if the person that presented herself as Rei Lee was the real Rei Lee.
They knew so little about her that even her identity was questioned. At least by Judd's friends since he couldn't care less about who she was, as long as he could see her again. Sometimes his friends wondered if Judd's state of mind was crossing the line of insanity. But, seeing him behave normally around others, made them regret question his mental health.
They were aware that Judd had some sort of fixation with her that could very well be called obsession, but they didn't want to upset their friend with their thoughts, so they let him be.
To Judd, it proved to be a really difficult deed, not to think about her. As his friends once told him, joking in their case, he was beyond being captivated by her music that they believed he was bewitched. And putting aside the childish words, he came to the conclusion that he truly was a captive of her music.
That's why the night he saw her in his dreams, he dreamed about her playing.
He was in the room he always used when practicing, the farthest one in the hall so nobody would bother him. A room with the perfect illumination for him, not too bright and not too dim, just perfect.
He was playing like he used to do back when he was a child: for fun, not caring about anything, just because he liked the sound the strings made whenever he pressed a key.
He was playing with his eyes closed. He didn't need to see the keys at all as he knew the chords like the palm of his hands. He just couldn't remember where he heard it before. He just knew it, and he played it until he got lost in the melody and everything around him disappeared. It was him and the piano.
After a while, something made him wake up from his reverie. It was the sound of a cello. At first, he heard it very far away. With time, it became clearer and clearer. He liked it. He loved it. That sound. That cello. He loved the sound of the piano together with the cello.
The ethereal sound of the piano mixed with the raw sound of the cello. It was becoming addictive. The more he heard it, the more he felt it. It was like a battle of melodies that complemented each other at the same time. It was strange, but he couldn't stop it. He would never stop it.
The more he heard, the more he got lost in the rhapsody of sounds that made his body tingle until he felt he was floating.
It was a slow ascension to the sweet unknown world of true music, true feelings, true sensations, true self… it was abruptly stopped when something snapped. He fell. His eyes opened so suddenly that he felt dizzy. Everything was so blurry he had to blink several times to focus.
He turned to look at his piano, checking if it was a string in it that made that sound. He didn't see anything amiss. That was when he noticed he wasn't alone in the room. In the back, by the darkest corner of the room, there was someone.
The dim light made it unable to discern the face of the person, but his gaze locked on the instrument. It was a white cello. At first he just stared at it, his mind telling him that it was familiar, that he had seen it before and that he knew who the owner was. He couldn't move nor speak.
It was a string in the cello that had snapped, and he remained there, staring at the broken string; then, all sensations came back to him when he heard the sound of a drop touching the floor. It was so loud that it even echoed in the desolated room.
The hands on the cello hadn't moved. That's how he realized that one hand was bleeding. That first, lonely drop of blood fell on the floor, then more and more began to fall until it became a thread that soon tinted the white cello in red. He stood up abruptly, almost sending the stool flying, and ran to the corner.
His heart was thumping like crazy in his chest that it hurt, and then he froze.
In front of him was her. Rei Lee. That black hair, those white clothes, that face like a doll, and those blue eyes. It was her. But at the same time she wasn't.
The Rei Lee in front of him was full of bruises and cuts that bled constantly. Her gaze locked with his, and he shuddered when he saw the emptiness in her eyes. They were still that same summer blue, but it was such a dim blue, with no luster in them. They were lifeless.
A chill ran down his spine when she suddenly smiled. It was a crooked smile that bordered to insanity. Her lips moved. He couldn't hear her words, he could hear nothing but his hammering heart.
When she stopped, the cello fell.
A sickening thud that made him take a step back. Rei Lee was gone. On the floor, there was just the instrument that once was white but had turned red.
Everything around him shattered with a guttural, devastated scream.