His plush gray couch, draped with the pink blanket Sebastian had made him. The art he’d collected on the walls. His guitars. His violin and music stand with the last piece he’d been learning still open. His oversized TV and his fluffy white rug under the coffee table. Out of the windows, the neighborhood sprawled below; the sun was setting, painting everything a sweet, dusky orange through the sheer curtains.
He filled his favorite mug, one Kandi had gifted him years ago—a yellow one that matched nothing else in his baby blue kitchen—and brought it with him into the bedroom.
He flipped the lamp on and set his mug on the table, then threw himself into his soft king-sized bed. He inhaled, enjoying returning to his own scent instead of hotel room blandness, then stretched until his back popped in several places.
His room was littered with posters from the first few years of tours he did, before he stopped hanging them up and started keeping them in a storage container in the closet. Between them were polaroids of Reno and his friends over the years and allaround the world. He had several of Angel and Christoph from the last few weeks to hang up once he had rested.
On his desk, there was a stack of novels, the last one he’d been reading still lying out between several loose papers—lyrics, poetry, and other writings scrawled in multi-colored ink. A dried rose was tucked into a vase on the desk. Someone had handed it to him from the audience at their first show as Voltage here in London. He had tucked it into his shirt and kept it safe, then hung it up to dry once he’d come home. He remembered his fingers buzzing from the endorphins so much that it took several tries to loop the knot securely around the stem.
He took in a long, deep breath and fumbled for the remote to the fan in the corner, turning it on for ambient noise before rolling back out of bed, draining half his mug of coffee, and getting into the shower.
After, he shot a quick text to his mom and another to Luka, saying he was home and falling asleep. Then, he did exactly that, and didn’t move once through the whole night, the rest of his coffee forgotten on the table.
In the morning, Reno dragged himself away from his comfortable bed with a groan, wishing he could just lie around the entire day. He checked his phone while brushing his teeth and only found a few messages. One from Kandi, reminding him when to arrive at the studio; one from Jaewon, a photo of Maxine’s cat, which Reno had to shake his head at even if her cat was adorable; and one from Luka wishing him goodnight.
He looked it up on his phone and rubbed sleep out of his eyes—Central American time was six hours behind him. It was only ten here, so Luka would definitely not be awake if it was four amthere. Reno put his phone face down on the bedside table and eyed the coffee he’d left out before deciding to make a fresh cup instead of being disgusting first thing in the morning. He didn’t know how he was going to work around the time difference between them, and not even a fresh cup of coffee answered his question of how he’d manage.
He prayed Luka’s phone was on silent when he texted back saying good morning, then took the time to stretch, eat, and tune his violin.
He flipped the sheet music back to the first page, and soon the rusty feeling from not playing the last few months of the tour fell away.
The violin was his first love. He’d been playing, at his mother’s prompting, since he was little. As a baby, Reno had always liked watching videos of symphonies; his mother still insisted it had been the only way to stop his crying on difficult days. He started asking how to play at five years old, and the conversation his parents shared had been brief before his father had left the house in search of a music store that carried a violin small enough for Reno to hold. It was one of his first real memories, his father bringing it home to him and showing him how to string it, how to tune it, and how to hold the bow.
He’d been obsessed with it ever since.
It was his classmate, Sato Daisuke’s, fault for getting him hooked on the guitar. They were in orchestra together in grade school, Daisuke in percussion and Reno first chair violin, when Daisuke had asked him if he’d ever thought about playing anything else. He showed Reno all the music he’d been missing—Black Sabbath, Prince, Metallica, Plastic Tree, The Sex Pistols, and so many more from all over the world—then asked him to make a band with him.
They were attached at the hip and by the wired earbuds for years, roping whoever they could into playing music with them.By the time graduation was approaching, they were playing a breakneck amount of local shows and were gaining a cult-like following both in Japan and online. But, within the same week, Daisuke was accepted into the university he wanted for music in China, and Arnaud found Reno’s email.
When Reno accepted Arnaud’s invitation to join him under Sterling, he promised his mom that even if he made the guitar his career, he would practice the violin too. He had to swear to her that he would match, hour by hour, how much he played violin to how much he played guitar.
He set up his phone on the tripod stand and pressed record.
“Hi, Mom.” He waved at the camera. “I am home for the day, we leave again tonight for Leeds, then the rest of Europe tomorrow. I talked to Arnaud, and he said I could bring my violin with me on this part of the tour. He says ‘hi,’ too, and he loves you. I will try to get him on camera for you sometime. He's been learning guitar and can sing some of those old rock songs you secretly listen to.” Reno gave the camera a cheeky smile, knowing it would make his mother laugh. “Things are going well for me. I will tell you all about it next time we talk.”
He backed away from the camera and picked up his violin, turning his sheet music to the front and playing Tchaikovsky’sViolin Concerto in D Major: op35as promised. He managed to only fumble once, and even though it was unlikely, he still hoped that his mother wouldn’t catch it. When he finished, he tucked the violin under his arm and bowed before laughing and rushing back to the camera.
“I’ll talk to you soon,” he said before turning the phone around and ending the recording. He sent the video to his mom right away, then duplicated it and trimmed away the greeting he’d recorded for her. The second video he sent off to Luka.
After putting the violin into its travel case safely, he checked the time, found it was almost noon already, and hurried to getready to head to the studio. A text from Sebastian asking if he was on the way rolled in right when he was turning off his lights and locking the door, his duffle bag, guitar, violin, and suitcase in tow. It took him two trips to get it all downstairs, but by the time he got the second round of luggage down, the driver from the label was pulling up and barreling out of the car to help Reno pack his things into the trunk. He was grateful to have someone else lift the suitcases into the car after carrying them downstairs.
The label’s London headquarters was a short drive away, setting Reno as the closest to the recording studios. Sterling had put him up in the flat as a bonus in his fifth year of being signed with them, saying it was convenient for everyone to have Reno so close by. He should have read between the lines a little harder, since it really meant that Reno suddenly became the go-to whenever something needed to be done at the studio, which could be a huge pain for him if he was absorbed in writing or playing music.
He’d considered moving to New Malden with Jaewon, but when he’d looked up the cost of his flat in Bishopsgate, the price tag made Reno shake. The flat, when he’d looked it up five years ago, was worth over two million euros, and Reno knew it was rising in price every year. Sterling hadgivenit to him. When he’d freaked out about it to Kandi, she had only told him that, as their most popular signed artist, Reno had more than earned it, and Reno felt his focus snap back into place. He started working even harder, writing more, booking more photo shoots and meet-and-greets; throwing himself into social media, too. The YouTube vlog he’d started during that time had over one hundred and ninety thousand subscribers now. The label congratulated him on his success, and Reno never forgot the price of his life.
Reno had grown up wanting for nothing, but this was another level of wealth he never really got used to, at least notin the comfortable way Arnaud had about it.But Arnaud was Industry family and grew up with his mom on a record label and his dad a wildly successful painter, so he was no help to Reno’s anxiety when the money started rolling in. In the end, he let Kandi help him find financial advisors and charities to sink his money into, and then sent a large chunk back home to his mother and tried to act like he was anyone else.
They rolled through the private access gates for the Sterling building and into the parking deck. The driver said he’d make sure Reno’s things ended up with the rest of the equipment, and Reno thanked him, took his guitar and violin, then walked inside.
He paused at the receptionist's desk and placed his cases on the ground to ring the bell. The front secretary, Jasmine, popped her head out from a door behind the desk and squealed his name, launching herself at Reno to barrel him into a hug.
“I’m so glad you’re back!” Her volume always made Reno smile; it reminded him of Arnaud.
“Only for today, Jas.” Reno squeezed her tiny frame, feeling like he could break her in half if he weren’t careful.
She swept her straight bangs away from her face and blinked at him with her pretty brown eyes. “You gotta stop doing this to me. It’s so dull here without my boys.” She plopped into the chairbehind the desk and crossed her legs, her skirt pulling tight around her thighs. “When do you get back, maybe we can all get hotpot again?”
“In a month, but please let me have a non-spicy half this time. I’m not strong like you.”
