"No," Emi says. "No, no, no, no!"

She bursts into tears, then full on sobs, pressing her forehead to the steering wheel. We sit in a supermarket parking lot, about half an hour away from the downtown area.

"I can't believe this." I shake my head.

"You can't?" Emi looks up, fury lighting up her face. "You can't? You're the one who got us into this mess! You and your senseless, frivolous spending habits! If you had listened to me and just practiced instead of spending so much time shopping, we wouldn't have landed in this mess. Even if we stayed broke forever, we would still have our instruments!"

"Now wait a minute," I say. "Don't pretend that you didn't participate in the treasure hunt, too."

"You dragged me into it! I had no choice."

"You always had a choice," I snap back. "No one made you do anything."

"That's what your problem is, Cerise," Emi shouts. "You want freedom and choice in everything. You never want to put in the hard work. Life isn't fun. Adulting isn't fun, and there's a reason for it. It's because in order to not end up in... messes like this, you need some predictability. You need some stability. Instability leads people into debt. But I'm sure you know plenty about that."

Anger flares inside me. "And look at you, little miss stability! Look where your daily grind has gotten you. Sure, you get a few more gigs than I do with all your practicing. But five years from now, what are you going to do when your hands get so messed up that you can't even lift your bow?"

A fresh wave of sobs overwhelms Emi. Her forehead collides with the steering wheel, and she weeps and weeps and weeps. Tears flow onto her linen pants, speckling her thighs with tiny water droplets.

"If that's... the way you... feel," she heaves out between sobs. "Then... get out."

It takes a moment for her words to sink in. Anger hardens inside me, and I glance around, my eyes landing on a boutique next to the supermarket.

"Fine." I pull the cardoor's handle. "I'm out."

I stalk across the parking lot, looking all around for cars. Not just any car that might run me over because the driver isn't paying attention — I'm watching for a silvery-white vehicle, or a shiny black sedan, or a white truck, or anything that could be remotely suspicious.

The latest fashion hangs inside the boutique. I tell the worker inside that I'm just browsing and will let her know if I need any help. Really, I just want to browse for a bit to clear my head.

Expensive fabrics drape across mannequins, decorate every neatly-lined rack along the walls. I reach out to the black-and-white swirled sleeve nearest me, rubbing the silky fabric between my fingertips. It's a brand new style I've never seen before, featuring a high-collared neckline on the left that swoops into a strapless design on the right. The left sleeve is long enough to cover my palm and a hole for my thumb. The fabric shimmers when the light hits the white swirls, while the darker parts help to balance the metallic brightness.

The blouse is a work of art, something totally unique that I'd wear in a concert to make a statement. Yet I can't appreciate it like I normally would. Guilt has crept in and gnaws at my insides.

It's not only the fact that I made Emi cry. It's that she's right: all I've been caring about is myself, my own experiences. I've been searching for this imaginary life, full of excitement and never lacking a dull moment, always making a statement, never wanting a mundane life to consume me until I'm a shell of the person I once was.

But where has stability gotten her? She's anything but stable, living paycheck to paycheck, just like me. And for a little extra financial security, she's traded reliability in her health. Her fingers are breaking down, the continual strain on her muscles racking up years and years of debt. One of these years, it's going to catch up to her.

One of these days, she'll have to pay the price. And she won't be able to afford the medical bills.

Emi's way is no better than mine. We're two struggling musicians, stuck in the same predicament for vastly different reasons. Her repetitiveness is driven by a desire for stability, yet she's worse off if her hands, which she needs for work, fail her.

My desire for instability, for searching for something new, has led me to be reckless. Life will get real mundane real quick if I have to declare bankruptcy.

It's funny, one of the things that drew me to music was the excitement, the fact that every performance is its own moment in time, never like anything that has or will exist. Every moment in life is different than the former. It all depends on how I approach it, with excitement and awe, or with grumbling.

Suddenly, I miss my instrument. I miss those lazy afternoons where I messed around, sight reading a forty minute concerto. I miss the challenge of finding the best fingering for a passage, of streamlining my craft until it evokes an emotion so strong, it makes the audience cry, or frown, or scream, or laugh, or simply... be. That joy that I had in college, what happened to it? How could life have stamped out so much of my former self?

Music has never been the problem. Music isn't boring or mundane. The problem has always been my approach to it, my attitude toward it. It could bring me just as much joy as it used to if I reframe my thinking around it. And if I find my music exciting, surely others will find it exciting, too.

I remember a lecturer in college saying that in order to make it in the music industry, you have to do something no one has ever seen before. If something doesn't work, keep trying until you hit on your special formula. Being a musician is a challenging career path, but with some creativity and trial and error, you can make it work if it's what you're good at.

That's what I want to get back to. How can I get back to that?

I pause, realizing I'm now in the back of the store. I barely processed the garments I passed. They seem futile, pointless. I have more important things on my mind, namely, how do I get back all that I have lost?

Even though I want to get back to the way things were, we can't. Our instruments are gone, and I'm too broke to afford a new one. If only I could've recognized what I had before it was all gone. Now there's no way to get it back. The police haven't proven to be on our side thus far, and even if we do try to trade the map we found for our instruments, we're in too deep for them to simply release us back into the real world.

A shiver runs down my spine, and it occurs to me that I'm pretty much alone in this boutique. Emi is alone, too. We need to stick together; there's at least a little more safety in numbers.

Worry courses through me as I push outside the shop's door, a blast of warm air enveloping my face. Emi might've left. She might've stranded me in this shopping plaza. I can't blame her for it, but it does produce quite the problem for me. My feet pick up in a run, and I jog past rows and rows and more rows of cars. Panic lodges in my chest, and my heart rate speeds up, not only from the running. Her car is nowhere in sight.

No. She couldn't have left me here. Emi has been at my side through thick and thin, all throughout those days in college where we thought there was no hope of passing our exams. We've gone through so much together as roommates, as quartet and trio members, as fellow musicians, as human beings. Would she leave? Did my reckless actions finally drive her away for good?

I jog down two rows of cars, searching for her small, beat-up Honda. Every vehicle I pass sends another flurry of tears to my eyes. When I blink, they trickle down my cheeks. But I keep running, keep searching.

She has to be here. She has to.

Finally, in the very last row of the parking lot, I spot her car. Relief sends a burst of energy through me, and I race to the passenger seat. Emi glances up, eyes wide and startled at first. Then she relaxes and unlocks the car door. I open the door, and she says,

"Thank goodness it's you! I've been terrified that the mobsters might catch up to us."

"Me too." My eyes fall on the clock. To my surprise, only about twenty minutes have passed since we stopped, since I left the car. "We should probably keep moving, talk out a new strategy on the road."

"Good idea." Emi puts the car into gear, and we leave the parking lot, turning onto the main road.

I swallow, emotion sneaking into my throat again. "Emi, I just want to say I'm sorry for everything I said just now, and for being so... unruly the past few years. I've had a bad attitude toward my music and our trio, and it hasn't been right or fair to you or Martin. I'm also sorry you've had to bail me out so many times. I... I want to change that, all of this."

Emi lets out a slow, heavy breath. She glances at me, then presses her lips together. "I'm sorry for what I said, too. And for the record, you were right. I have probably been going overboard with the practicing. It's just... I don't know what else to do. I feel like I can't move on and do something else until I start making a living." A humorless laugh escapes her. "I can't start living until I make a living. And so I practice and practice and practice and..."

She breaks down. Tears overflow from her eyes.

"I get it," I say. "We're musicians, so we have to play in order to make money. And if we aren't making money, that would indicate that we should either practice more or give up altogether."

Emi nods.

"I just..." I drag my hand over my shoulder-length brown hair. "Gosh, Emi. I just wish I had realized all that I had before it was gone, you know?"

"I know," Emi sniffles. "My hands... they used to work. I used to be able to open a granola bar wrapper for goodness sake. And now, they just don't." She turns her head toward me, though her eyes remain on the road. "Cerise, I'm really scared. What if I have tendonitis or another overuse injury?"

My teeth sink into my tongue, biting back a reply. You probably do.

"We need to get you in to see a doctor," I say instead.

"With what money? We're broke. And I hate to say it, Cerise, because of your little treasure hunt, we don't have a way of earning that money. Unless we get jobs as sales clerks."

My eyebrows press together, and I look down at my lap.

"What?" Emi asks.

"I mean... if there's treasure..."

Emi's head drops backward, and she groans. "Ugh, Cerise! You're not still considering the treasure hunt after all it's taken from us."

"But maybe it's the way to get it back." The idea in my head blooms, fleshing out the many avenues that ensure we return to our previous life. "Think about it, the police don't believe us right now because we don't have proof of anything we're saying. But if we could get proof, namely, the treasure, maybe they'd be more inclined to believe us. Worse case scenario, we end up millionaires and buy ourselves mansions and one-hundred thousand dollar instruments."

"Or the police may confiscate the money," Emi says. "And that still doesn't solve the problem of the mafia hunting us down the rest of our lives in order to get the treasure for themselves."

"True..."

We stop at a traffic light. I stare straight ahead at the cars crossing the street, thinking.

"Wait a minute," I say. "What if we create a trap? Lure the mafia to the treasure's location, then call the police and tell them that some crime is taking place. Then, they'll catch the mafia in the act."

"That's way too risky," Emi says.

"But it may work. That'd be tangible proof to the police that we aren't making up our story."

Emi considers this for a long, long time. I watch five minutes tick by on the dashboard clock before she responds. "I guess we don't have many other choices. Fine, I'm in."

Yes! With Emi on board, now we just have to ensure our plan is foolproof. Except... there really is no such thing as a foolproof plan. Something is bound to go wrong.

I shove that thought aside for now. Our focus needs to be on unraveling the next clue.