#having a normal one in the crowsx3 server.

[raining-anonymously]

Another day, another trip to their Boss’s Office to be chastised for all they’ve purportedly done wrong. The threat of being fired doesn’t bother Employee #432. At this point, they’d welcome it! Still, these meetings are always a chore…

Tuning the yelling out, they let their eyes drift over the room’s decor. Perhaps they’ll “borrow” a book sometime. Might be nice to vary the painful monotony of endless workplace life. What they wouldn’t give to listen to some music!

Now 432’s gaze falls on the piano, tucked in the corner of the room. It’s a lovely piano, with a smooth black paint job and glossy keys. A beautiful instrument like that must make wonderful music, but… Gosh, they don’t think they’ve seen anyone touch that thing, in, well, ever! Does the Boss even know how to play? They doubt it. To have such a lovely object and never let it fulfill its purpose—what nonsense! How sad for the piano to be capable of so much, yet denied completion of the very task it’s made for! Unbearable.

Me too, piano, thinks 432. Me too.

The only way, they think, to resolve this tragedy, was if the piano could achieve greatness in some other way. If only there were people out there who saw the piano and met its unrealized potential with recognition—who admired it in spite of forced shortcomings. Yes, 432 is sure of it! That would give the piano meaning. But how to do it? Hmm. Maybe, 432 decides, if there was to be some sort of competition: a chance for all the best minor locations of this office prison to prove their worth. Surely, the piano would reign supreme. Surely, it would have its time to shine.

432 pulls their eyes away from the piano, looking back at their Boss’s reddened face, and then at his desk.

(There’s a pencil on it. They imagine what it would feel like in the palm of their hand.)

Surely, surely one day, a melody will echo down these looping halls, intertwined with a sharpener’s whir and a tick-tick-tick. They can almost hear it, if they try…