REMUS BENNET
He was discharged some two weeks later.
He had to rely on crutches for walking around, but according to the doctors, there was no need to keep him in the Hospital any longer.
Leslie came and picked him up in the new car.
She had chosen to buy a Toyota Prius with the money, and she was able to get a good one for around twenty-five thousand.
The rest of the money she had put into his account, even though it would have served her better to use it all.
But he was thankful for her consideration, and with that, his youngest sister Gia helped him up the stairs, as he held onto the railing.
“You can take my room for a few days, until you are off the crutches,” his mother shouted from the kitchen, and he shook his head.
“I will be fine,” and the doctors had given him ten days, and then the crutches would be gone as well.
He would manage it until then.
The stairs ended, and Gia slowly led him to his room, and on the door, his name hung on a plate written in the font of the famous Harry Potter books.
“Thanks,” he smiled at Gia.
“Call me up if you need anything,” she said, and Gia was a sweet girl.
Too kind and gentle, but she had a strong will.
Rue’s OD and the accident would have brought down a weaker person, but despite facing it all, she refused to back down and was as headstrong as ever.
He walked into the room and found it both familiar and strange.
It was not overly large, and most of the space in the room was occupied by the table placed by the door.
He spotted a tool set there, along with a sauntering iron and various other knick knacks there.
There was another table on the other side, but this one was older and dustier, and it was one of the only gifts that had been given to him by his father.
It was a small piano, nothing too fancy, but he could remember sitting down with his father and playing a few simple tunes over it.
He closed the door behind him and slowly walked up to his bed, and after placing the crutches to the side, fell down on it hard.
The room was more function than form.
There were few to no ornamental decorations or posters.
His textbooks were arranged in a pile beside the work table.
Remus had inherited two talents from his father.
One was his perfect pitch, and the second was his handiness with electronics.
Tech was his only other interest apart from computers.
He was rather handy with tech and could repair phones, laptops, and other such things.
He had even helped a few of his friends build a few PCs for gaming over the years.
It was not much, but it helped him earn a fair amount of pocket money.
It was the very reason he had gotten into a big fight with Elliot, who had always pushed him to try his hand at music.
Elliot was a free soul, one who lived each day as if it were his last.
The two of them had been friends since middle school.
They had bonded over their shared love for music, and though Elliot had talent with making melodies and beats, he was shit as a vocalist.
That was where he came in.
Elliot was of the opinion that Remus was wasting his talents in school and needed to pursue a career in music, and for a few years, he had lived in that fantasy himself.
But as the burdens of life began to creep up, Remus began to fear the uncertainty of it.
The fight happened when he told Elliot of his plans to give up on their shared dream, and mentioned to him how he intended to pursue a Master’s in Computer Science, in the hope of a more secure future for himself and his family.
The two of them had fought each other over this, as Elliot called him a coward and a liar.
They had even thrown a few punches at each other, but in the end, it was just a fight between friends.
Elliot Shithead: ‘U hom yet?’ his phone buzzed as he received a text from the bastard.
‘Yeah.
Just came in,’ he typed.
Elliot Shithead: ‘Cool.
I will try to drop in later to hang out for a bit’
He replied with a thumbs up and began to rest until he heard a knock on the door.
“Come in,” he began, and saw his other walk in with a plate.
“I have brought you dinner,” she said with a smile as she came in with a bowl of pasta.
“You didn’t have to. I could have come down,” he offered, but she put the tray on the bed as he pushed himself up.
“Gia wasn’t hungry, and I know that you haven’t eaten anything since breakfast,” she added sharply as she sat down opposite him.
“I cleaned up the place,” Leslie added with a smile.
“I can see that,” he answered as he dug into the food.
“I spoke to your teachers today, and they are concerned that you are being left behind…”
“I will take care of that,” and Remus Bennet was not the best student, but he was amongst the best.
His rank in class mostly shuffled itself between the number two and number three spot.
Still, with the combined knowledge in his head, high school was not going to be a problem.
“Lexie has offered to bring up the assignments. I will complete them,” and she smiled with relief.
“Lexie?” she added with a raised brow.
“Cassie’s sister,” and the two of them had some history that he did not wish to explore.
“She offered,” he defended himself.
Moreover, he had a history with her sister.
Not her.
Lexie was like an annoying little sister to him, and the two of them had a rather unique appreciation for cinema and cinematography.
“Alright,” and he could not exactly blame her for being cautious.
The truth was that for a very brief period of time, he and Cassie had been a thing.
It had been a good thing until she had chosen to dump him for Christopher McKay.
The whole thing had left him devastated, and he had locked himself in his room for a few weeks until Elliot had taken him out kicking and screaming.
“Elliot might pop up later as well,” and her mother’s face brightened slightly at the mention of his best friend.
“I thought you two were fighting?” and he shrugged.
“So, what,” he answered with a shrug.
His mother liked Elliot, or at least appreciated him.
“Well, it is good that you two have made up, but can you please have him use the door?” Elliot had a habit of skipping the door to use a more scenic route into his House.
He would often climb up the tree by his window and push himself in through the window.
“You know that I can’t promise that. Elliot will do what Elliot wants,” and Leslie rolled her eyes.
“Well, if he is insistent on using the window, then do say hi to him for me. There will be some leftover pasta in the fridge. You two can eat that if you want,” and with that, she stood up and left him alone.
“You don’t need to worry about the tray. I will have Gia bring it down tomorrow morning,” and so he nodded as he wolfed down the pasta.
He began scrolling through his phone, and afterward, while he ate the food.
A part of him still could not believe that he was in a fictional world, but as he saw the realness of it, he began to wonder if it was fiction at all.
The people in this world were real.
There were a few things that were different, he could tell on instinct, but he had not been able to chalk down the differences.
Facebook was still a thing, and so were Twitter and YouTube, and TikTok for that matter.
Most of his feed was filled with songs, musicians, and actors.
He had a profile himself, but there were hardly any pictures of him online.
From his memories, he could tell that Remus had always been a bit shy, even though he had no reason to be.
It may sound like self-praise, but he was rather handsome.
He looked like a young Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and he searched for the man, and he was real.
Then an idea came to his mind, and he suddenly typed in a name.
Zendeya, and he saw the loading line fill up as he found himself bombarded with a dozen links leading to social profiles of all the Zendeyas around the world.
He typed another name, and the result was the same.
So, this was how it was.
It made sense, and now he began to wonder about all the other things that were different, but boredom came for him a few minutes later as he failed to notice other changes.
He put down his phone and began to look around at something to occupy his mind.
He had a few phones to repair, but he did not want to work.
His gaze landed on the piano at the side, and old memories from his other life began to surface.
He had loved to play the thing once.
He was rather good at it as well, but then the cancer had come, and all his dreams had died with him.
But he would not let them die again, not after he had been blessed with this second chance for some reason.
He reached for the crutch and began to walk towards the stool in front of the old relic.
It was covered in dust, and it had been some time since he had touched the thing.
He slowly removed the lid from the keys and looked at the rustic keys.
He felt nervous touching it, but he simply played a key, and even without glancing down, he could tell that it was B sharp.
This was the talent Remus had been born with.
Perfect Pitch.
It was not truly as rare as people often made it out to be, and it was not as magical an ability as they mentioned, but it was a great talent nonetheless.
He slowly eased into the instrument as he began to play around.
It was out of tune, and a few keys simply weren’t working, but for the first time in years, he found himself smiling as his hands danced over it.
He could still remember the pain of losing his voice.
It was a pain few could imagine, and one often treated speech as such a forgiven thing, but he knew its true value.
A tear slid down his eyes as he was reminded of those painful years and broken dreams.
But now he had a chance to change it all.
He had a chance to bear it all, and so his fingers shifted as the random melodies began to take the shape of one of his favorite songs.
I fell by the wayside, like everyone else.
And in his past life, he had been a fan of quite a few singers, but his obsession was just one.
One indie singer whose music and story resonated with him.
a young man from the Scottish Isles whose music was filled with a soul full of grief and pain.
I hate you, I hate you, I hate you
But I was just kidding myself.
His name was Lewis Capaldi, and he was the only singer ever whose music he had paid for.
He had spent a summer saving up his allowance to go to his concert.
Our every moment, I start to replace.
And while before he could never even hope to replicate his singing, he was not the same person now.
Just as the perfect pitch was a gift, the loss of his voice also made him more aware of his own voice box.
It was a talent, and for the first time he felt himself singing with the same power, vigor, and emotion as the man he had once idealized.
‘Cause now that they’re gone
All I hear are the words that I needed to say
And so, he sang as he poured himself into the song like a man driven.
When you hurt under the surface
Like troubled water running cold
Well, time can heal, but this won’t
And now it was time for the chorus, and he drew in a deep breath.
The tunes were not right, and he was replacing the melodies, but in that moment, he felt freer than ever.
So, before you go
Was there something I could’ve said
To make your heart beat better?
If only I’d have known you had a storm to weather
So, before you go
Was there something I could’ve said
To make it all stop hurting?
It kills me how your mind can make you feel so worthless
So, before you go
And he was out of breath as he sang that chorus with all his heart, and before he could continue, a gasp from behind broke his trance.
“HOLY SHIT!”
And his head whipped around, and he saw a boy standing there in his window, and for some reason, he screamed on instinct.
“AGHHHH!” and the boy in the window screamed with him.
“AGHHHH!” and he fell out of the window with a thud.
.
.
.
Leslie Bennet was in her room, preparing to lie down, when suddenly she heard the sound of a piano from above.
It had been years since she had heard such a sound in their home, and it brought up old memories of Robert trying to teach their eldest to play.
Remus had been rather decent as a player, but he had given up on the art after Robert’s passing.
It pained her still to see how he was robbed of his childhood because of her failures.
Remus had been young when Robert had died, but he had matured much more quickly after that.
he had never given her much trouble in the first place, but after that he began helping her out in the House.
He learned to cook, and would often cook for them all when she was busy.
He began to help her out as much as he could, and even now he had given her his cheque so that he could lighten her burdens.
He was a good son, and she was thankful to have him.
Suddenly she noticed the chaotic tunes shift as they adopted a rhythm, and his son’s voice cut through the walls.
He was singing, and Remus had been blessed with a melodic voice.
It was raw, and though it was all muffled because of the walls in between them, she could tell that it was something rather magical.
She closed her eyes and let herself soak in that melody when suddenly the music came to a halt as she heard a loud thud from the garden.
Leslie did not need to look to tell who it was, and so she walked out of her room and into the garden.
And just as she had predicted, Elliot, Remus’s best friend, lay there on the ground smiling awkwardly at her.
“Hi, Mrs. Bennet?” he greeted her, and she gave the boy a pensive look.
“You could have knocked, Elliot,” she added, but the boy simply shrugged as he pushed himself up.
“And where is the fun in that?”
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Have a fantastic day!