FATIGUE.
I had heard that singing was a form of exercise. I hadn't taken it seriously enough.
After You Are My Sunshine we went through three lullabies, the national anthem a second time, two classics, and a chart-topper from my previous life. By the end we were on the sofa with glasses of water, heaving, damp at the temples, genuinely winded.
Sweating, yes. Both of us.
I wasn't sure whether to attribute it to my poor technique, Lumi's still-fragile physique, or the particular strangeness of how we had been practicing, but the session had been unlike anything I'd experienced before. Each time either of us focused, the connection between us sharpened into something almost physical.
I would close my eyes and reach for a falsetto, and feel, as though it were my own body, the exact state of Lumi's muscles in that moment. Not through observation, but a kind of interior knowledge. Her jaw too tight. Her vocal folds underengaged. A hologram of her formed in my awareness.
That muscle, a little too tight.
When a correction surfaced in my mind, I adjusted my own body first. She followed immediately, feeling the change and mirroring it, refining it. It was a feedback loop unlike anything a conventional lesson could replicate.
I knew karaoke bars better than I knew most things from my previous life, which gave me at least a working understanding of technique. The core and back controlled airflow. Steady, regulated breath prevented breathiness, helped the voice carry, gave it body. These were Lumi's weakest areas: not from any lack of natural quality, but from years of speaking in whispers, keeping herself small and imperceptible. The honey had restored her tone. What remained was teaching her voice to take up space.
So I pushed her on the core work. Which meant I pushed myself too.
We drank four glasses of water each before the room stopped tilting.
"How was that, dumpling?" I asked, refilling her glass. "Tired?"
She took a sip. Then, unexpectedly, she giggled.
It was brief and quiet and entirely unguarded, the kind of laugh a child produces before she remembers she is being observed. I burned it into memory immediately.
"It was fun, Dad," she said, eyes still bright. "It's like whack-a-mole, finding which muscle to use."
"Feeling more confident?"
She lowered her head. "Mhm."
I tucked a hand under her chin and raised it gently. "You already sound beautiful, dumpling. You only need to let the world hear it. A voice like yours, it could make the moon shine, the flowers bloom, the fish dance."
"D-Dad..."
The pink in her cheeks was immediate and thorough. She began shuffling sideways, eyes darting like she was calculating escape routes.
"Have I mentioned you're the most adorable dumpling in existence?"
"You can think about other things too, Dad!"
"Doesn't my dumpling know my mind only works for her?"
She harrumphed and pulled away. The absence of her warmth beside me was unreasonable and immediate. I wrapped my arms around her before she'd gotten half a foot too far.
"Okay, okay. Dad will stop. He should respect his cute dumpling more."
Lumi nodded, then caught herself mid-nod and froze, realizing she'd agreed to being called cute again. I tightened my arms and pretended not to notice.
"Alright. No more. Not another word about your cuteness." I pressed a kiss to her left cheek. "Instead, let's go out and get something to eat."
The warmth and ease I'd felt from her vanished in the space between one breath and the next.
She went rigid. Not the shy stiffness of the bath, or the flustered stiffness of being teased, but something deeper. The particular stillness of a child who has learned that the world outside is not safe.
I tucked my disappointment away carefully. This was already considerable progress. She was speaking. She had sung. Pushing her through the front door on the same day was perhaps one step too many.
"You can treat everyone like moles you can whack," I offered.
She smiled, but behind it was the fear, and behind that, the pain. She felt me sensing both and shrank a little smaller.
I loosened the embrace and sat her on the sofa, kneeling in front of her so she could meet my eyes without looking up.
"Don't be hard on yourself, dumpling." I patted her head. "It's the same as with the singing. We'll take it one step at a time, okay?"