Chapter 7: Lia and the Underground Circuit

Ellie did not understand, until much later, that the Monday Lia disappeared from the family group chat was the same Monday Ellie had spent seven uninterrupted hours in the Wicked Star practice suite, workshopping the bridge section of her second original piece with a session producer who had the useful quality of being entirely uninterested in the academy's lease situation or Cha Joon-ho's face. She had silenced her phone at noon. She had turned it screen-down on the piano lid and told herself this was discipline.

This was the first gap in the timeline she would reconstruct. She catalogued it honestly, later, which cost her more than the cataloguing usually did.

The second gap was a Saturday in the third week after she signed.