I stood at the front of the lecture hall and talked about phrasing, intention, about how music wasn’t just played, it was shaped. They listened. They always listened, and I corrected them when they needed it, encouraged them when they faltered, and pushed them when they held back.
From the outside, nothing had changed.
I was still good at this. That hadn’t gone anywhere.
But somewhere in the middle of a student performance—halfway through a piece I knew intimately, one I could have taken apart bar by bar without thinking—I realised I hadn’t actually been listening, not properly.
I was watching his hands, waiting for something. And for a second, I didn’t even know what.
“Again,” I said, before he’d finished.
He blinked. “Sorry?”
“The phrasing in the second section,” I added quickly. “You’re rushing it.”
He nodded and started over, and this time I forced myself to focus, count, listen, engage… But the awareness lingered of that split second where I’d drifted.
Where I hadn’t been there.
It happened again later that week, and then again. Small moments, and it wasn’t just me who noticed.
And then there was the part I noticed next. Not all at once, but in fragments.
A conversation that stopped a fraction too quickly when I entered the room.
A student who avoided eye contact where they normally wouldn’t have.
A hesitation—brief, almost imperceptible—before someone asked a question, as if they were recalibrating something they hadn’t needed to before.
I told myself I was imagining it. Projecting. Looking for something that wasn’t there—until it happened again, and again, and again.
It was never overt. No one said anything. No one challenged me. No one treated me with anything less than surface-level respect.
Butsomethinghad shifted, even it was subtle.
Then came the day when all was made clear, and it broke my heart.
“Can I ask you something?”
The student lingered after class, her tone careful in a way that immediately set me on edge.
“Of course.”
She hesitated before continuing. “Is everything… sorted now?”
I frowned. “Sorted?”
She flushed. “I mean—the investigation. There were… rumours.”
Of course there were. How did the saying go?No smoke without fire?
“It’s resolved,” I said, my tone even.
She nodded. “Right. Of course. I just—people were saying things, and I didn’t think—” She stopped herself.
Too late.
“It’s resolved,” I repeated, a little more firmly this time, my throat tight.