The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 447

"For a single song, the silence bleeds red..."

The entire auditorium instantly went dead silent.

It wasn't polite, respectful silence. It was the suffocating silence of thousands of people having an invisible hand clamped tightly around their throats. Her voice wasn't the sweet, crystalline pop tone people were used to. It was textured, slightly raspy—like amber ground down by years of wind and sand. It sounded warm on the surface, but contained a terrifyingly devastating history inside.

Every word she sang carried an immovable, crushing weight. It wasn't flashy. There were no vocal gymnastics. But every single note dropped like a bomb right into the most vulnerable part of the chest.

Combined with her naturally aloof, untouchable aura—her straight spine, her tragically calm face, and the devastatingly quiet heartbreak in her obsidian eyes—she looked like a survivor standing in the wreckage, calmly recounting her own destruction. And absolutely no one listening was spared.

Sitting in the third row, Josh's eyes hadn't blinked since the exact second she opened her mouth.

He had known her for twenty years. He knew she could play the cello. He knew she could fight. He knew she could place third nationally in a swimming relay. He knew her eyes crinkled into perfect little crescents when she laughed.

But he had never known she could sing.

He never knew her voice sounded like this. It wasn't just beautiful. It was... the kind of beautiful that made you want to break down and cry.

Piper played the piano with total mastery. She pulled back into the shadows during the massive vocal surges and pushed forward to catch the delicate whispers, practically cradling Sloane's voice in the palm of her hands.

As she struck the final chord, she looked up at Sloane standing in the spotlight, her own eyes brimming with tears.

The final note echoed away, and Sloane opened her eyes.

The spotlight held on her for three agonizing seconds before slowly fading to black.

The crowd stayed frozen for a heartbeat.

And then, the applause detonated like a collapsed dam. The judges in the front row leaped to their feet, followed by the middle rows, and finally the students flooding the back.

A brutally familiar figure appeared directly in her line of sight without any warning.

Garrison.

He was sitting in the very last row of the auditorium, shoved into the absolute darkest corner.

He wasn't wearing his white coat. He wore a charcoal turtleneck beneath a heavy black overcoat, the collar turned up slightly as if he had just dragged himself out of a freezing storm.

He had deliberately chosen the most invisible seat in the house—the back row, right next to the emergency exit. The faintest edge of the stage lights barely grazed him, burying his body in a suffocating wall of shadows.

All around him, students were screaming, crying, and waving glow sticks. But he sat completely paralyzed, his hands folded neatly in his lap, his spine painfully straight.

He was as silent as a stone at the bottom of the sea.