"Can I play them for you?" Oda asked. "Back to back?"
She didn't wait for an answer. She sat at the bench and played the first one — a short piece, maybe two minutes. Clear melody, a descending figure that resolved into something warmer than it started. When she finished she lifted her hands and placed them in her lap. Ten seconds of silence. Then the second.
Same melody. Same descending figure. Same resolution. But this time something was off — not wrong exactly, but tilted, like the room had shifted a few degrees while the notes were the same.
"Which one?" she said.
"Which one what?"
"Which one is mine?"
I listened to the silence after the question the way you'd listen to the last chord still ringing. Both had been played with the same hands on the same piano. One she'd composed. The other she'd transcribed from a recording — perfectly, note for note, with every dynamic marking faithfully reproduced.
"The first one," I said.
"Why?"
I didn't have a reason. I just knew the first one didn't know it was being heard. The second one was for me the whole time.
Oda nodded. She wasn't satisfied — she was confirmed. There's a difference.
"The thing is," she said, closing the lid, "if I play the transcription enough times, eventually it stops being a copy. It becomes mine by accumulation. And then no one can tell — not even me." She paused. "That's not the problem. The problem is: neither of them knows it happened."