The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 441

They walked onto the stage.

Piper stood at the mic stand. The overhead lights spilled down, making her cream dress shimmer. Sloane sat slightly behind her to the side, the cello resting casually against her knee, her bow hovering just above the strings. She kept her head down, waiting for the cue. The crowd quieted down as the spotlights swept slowly across the stage.

Piper closed her eyes and sang the opening line.

Her voice was like a stream purified by morning dew—clean, piercing, and brutally honest. Every syllable cracked through the air with a fragile, ringing truth.

Sloane brought the bow down at the exact perfect millisecond. The deep, rich, velvety hum of the cello rolled across the stage like a subterranean river, catching the high notes, wrapping around them, and carrying them further into the room.

When the backing track finally kicked in halfway through, the atmosphere in the room exploded. Piper pushed into a massive, soaring high note, and Sloane's cello surged up to meet it, anchoring her through the final, explosive chorus. As the final note rang out, Sloane let the bow tremble slightly against the strings, providing a haunting sense of closure for all the unsaid emotions.

The room stayed dead silent for a full second.

Then, the applause hit like a tidal wave. It started with their friends in the front, surged through the middle rows, and finally, even the judges in the back put down their pens to clap.

Whispers broke out through the crowd. "Whoa, a live cello? I thought it was a track." "The girl in the white dress has insane vocals." "What was their name again? The Echoing Fawn. That's adorable."

Meanwhile, the official livestream chat was moving at light speed.

It started with a few scattered "wow"s, evolved into a wall of "I'm officially a stan," and then, suddenly, the screen erupted into a chaotic explosion of premium digital fireworks—a massive thousand-dollar super chat donation. The sender's name was a single word: Jace.

The chat went absolutely feral.

"Who is the sugar daddy?!"

"Wait, that donation is literally four figures!"

"Jace? Isn't that Professor Jace from the Geology Department? The singer is a geology major... wait, is there tea here?!"

"IT IS PROFESSOR JACE! OH MY GOD THAT LOOK!"

"I'm dead. I'm shipping this so hard."

"The chemistry is screaming!"

In his dark office, Garrison stared at his phone screen. Slowly, his thumb reached up and tapped the exit button on the livestream.

The broadcast froze on the final frame—the stage lights blazing, Sloane's smile glowing, her music lingering in the air. But she was already completely out of his reach.

He set the phone face-down on the desk. His fingers hovered over the dark glass for a second before he hit the lock button.

The office plunged back into silence, save for the low, hollow hum of the computer tower beneath the desk.