My sister is a genius singer and me, a worthless person without talent

I need to wake up.

It was complicated.

To arrange the curtains, push them aside, face the light, learn of the world again. I would trade anything from the little I had for more hours in the night, because I found the noise of people repulsive, their voices scraping through my brain..

I was barely 18 (17, in reality) years old, and my resentment toward life was lukewarm at best.

I began sleeping less, then even less. The world snored, and dawn etched itself into my memory as something almost beautiful. I lived among streetlamps, doing a thousand things. I worked through afternoons and felt, in those days, four times older than I was.

I never finished high school, though I suspect complaining about it might have given me some grim satisfaction. It was no mystery that I had to stay steadfast for the only family I had left.

I never want to work again…

I walked to my younger sister's room. When I opened the door, the trapped air inside—stale and motionless—revealed itself like a clumsy brushstroke on a forgotten painting.

In the background, barely visible, a bluish light sketched its faint presence.

It was a painting.

It was something I still don't understand, yet it has stayed with me ever since.

"Hey, María."

Her hair was like a nest undone by the wind, long and unruly, with bangs that veiled the face I'd spent so many hours of my life contemplating. Or rather, her entire being embodied, with majestic indolence, the art of idleness.

She exuded drowsiness, and every time I looked at her, I remembered how much of myself I burned away just caring for her.

My sister, María Vilcanoba—her skin translucent and fragile as rice paper—was, among the countless ways I liked to define her, most accurately described in her role as a genius.

She looked at me again with that expression of hers—inexhaustible in its mystery—one I'd spent years trying to decipher.

In the map of her face, in the fleeting creases of her forehead, I traced the labyrinth of her thoughts. 

She had turned sixteen and was, with cruel irony, our sole means of support while I searched for another job.

"Time for breakfast. It's already noon."

"Shhh, I'm thinking."

"Come on, you can think at the table."

"Shhh—if I stop now, I'll never recapture this thought. It'll change. So just… never mind, I've already lost it. I was in a meadow, and a dragon was singing me an Irish song mixed with opera, and then…"

I nodded and approached the bed where her body lay, arranged in an artificial pose. Her head tilted toward the floor as if in some deliberate attempt to seem interesting.

She was a marionette with its strings cut, sprawled across a velvet bedspread (a relic of better days) that dwarfed her fragile frame.

The furniture felt insubstantial, almost mocking her essence, so at odds with the coded language of her room: that "I-don't-know-what-to-say" made tangible, a stubborn chaos fused into a space that couldn't even be called disorder—for that would imply some system, and here everything seemed governed by a perfection too random.

I didn't want to dwell on that. Better to focus on more mundane—and less tedious—things. 

"You're not fooling anyone, let's go"

"Clothes," she said, raising her arms like a child as I helped her dress—pulling on another shirt, adjusting her stockings, and other garments I won't name out of dignity for my own bloodline.

She began to hum.

"Did you stay up late recording?"

"I didn't like how my voice sounded," she replied.

"I really liked your last song. My internet friends did too, but I think this new one might be their favorite."

"Glad to hear it—" she said flatly.

To anyone else, she might have sounded curt, but as her brother, I'd learned to distinguish the subtle shifts in her repertoire of expressions and tones. It was the only way to communicate with her properly.

Here, despite the distance in her voice, she was genuinely happy.

Once dressed, we moved to the dining area—though calling it that was an act of vanity.

It was nothing more than two plastic monobloc chairs and a repurposed mahogany nightstand, now serving as an altar for our daily meals.

She sat with her usual aura, humming the melody she'd been composing in her head for months. With a glance, she let me know it had finally taken its definitive form.

Meanwhile, she waited patiently as I finished preparing a sorry excuse for breakfast: a murky broth of offal. Unpleasant, and no one was going to argue otherwise.

The reason for this, of course, was that we were now truly broke after buying María's microphone and attempting to soundproof her room.

"I like what I did with that piece. It's about loneliness, I think. I'm not sure how I felt when I wrote it, but at the time, it was like I was someone else—like everyone was just like me, and I could only understand myself because everyone was me. But I wasn't me. So it felt nice, imagining someone caring about you."

"That's needlessly convoluted. No wonder you don't have friends."

"Look who's talking, you filthy hypocrite."

"I have internet friends."

"Those don't count. They're just close acquaintances who've never seen your face and play video games together because none of you have real friends."

"At least I have someone to talk to about my day."

"So do I. I have you, Lucille, and Fido the dog."

My sister had done her part. Now it was my turn to fulfill the other half—refining her voice, synthesizing that metaphysical realm where she peacefully told stories. I'd translate it into ones and zeros, upload it to her network-connected account, and we'd pray it earned us enough to stifle the appetites neither of us wanted to confront.

"What's for breakfast?"

"Same as last Tuesday. We're out of stew."

"You ate it all, you selfish bastard. You know I love stew more than you do."

Hers was one of those internet music accounts. From our long surname, we carved out her alias: VILCA.

Every few months, my sister composed and produced new art. She'd record it, and I'd scrub the audio in some barely-understood software: noise reduction, reverb removal, pitch correction.

I wanted fidelity—for the world to hear what she was capable of. So we bought a new microphone and tried to soundproof María's room. Bit by bit, our makeshift enterprise took shape.

I thought we could live like this. Even if I got tossed into the street like some stray dog from whatever job I scraped together, I trusted the genius I shared blood with.

That said, María was utterly useless at life: she struggled to talk to people, cared about nothing but music, couldn't cook, and had no desire to leave the house. Not that I was some paragon of motivation, but at least I was more normal than her.

"But… Brother, if your friends liked that song, it's because they feel weird. When I wrote it, I felt like everyone was me."

She rambled with unusual empathy, contained only in her speech, in her linguistic precision.

There wasn't a hint of emotion in her tone. Again, like her brother, after spending so much time with such a natural phenomenon, I could decipher her contradictory way of speaking.

"Well, yeah, they're like us. That's why I get along with them. Eat your food, it's going to get cold."

"Okay." And she returned to her plate.

"But those thoughts are temporary. Honestly, I don't feel as lonely when you're here," she began to say.

I was actually a little moved by that comment, so I buried my face in my soup so she wouldn't notice—though it was useless. I understood Maria, but she understood me better.

When Lucille Borja knocked on our door with the dog's leash in hand, I greeted her with a smile.

She, a sharp observer of other people's habits, had already deduced that the Vilcanoba siblings didn't know the discipline of sleep. I had tried to tidy myself up for her visit, but my face bore the marks of too many sleepless nights. In any case, it was hard for me to look presentable. She didn't care much. She was one of those rare people who practiced kindness without fanfare, often bringing us leftovers from what she cooked in class or at home, like the Thursday stew that Maria and I loved so much. She did it as a transaction—I walked her dog from time to time.

She was probably worried about how little we left the house. I appreciated it. Conscientiously, on days like this, I would go out with María to get some fresh air, if only for the little animal that played with me, the one that motivated Maria to stretch her legs.

"Mr. Lucas, how's life treating you?"

"Same as always, you know. Taking care of this good-for-nothing here."

"Oh, María is our dear fluffball. You should cut your hair to show the world how pretty you really are."

María heard from afar and averted her gaze toward her room as if trying to escape.

"NO! NO! LET ME GOOO!"

"You little devil, you treat your brother so badly."

"He deserves it for not giving me more of your food!"

Lucille began laughing at María's antics. When provoked like this, her facial expressions became more human.

"Ugh, whatever. Have a nice holiday - I need to cook for my brothers and mother. Take care, Mr. Lucas. I'm leaving this little one in your hands."

She said goodbye by suddenly grabbing my hand and forcing a handshake. It probably meant something like "hang in there" or "you can do this." It was comforting to know I wasn't the only one with demanding siblings.

"Bye Lucy," María bid farewell with a peace sign, completely forgetting that mere seconds ago she'd been trying to escape her grasp.

As I said goodbye to Lucille Borja, María continued humming. I often thought that if she weren't my sister, I might never have encountered such tremendous talent.

Many people might underestimate her because she doesn't show her face, because she only has a small fanbase online—but that doesn't do justice to her true ability. It's not some brotherly bias clouding my judgment. Genuinely, if I were a stranger or anyone else, I'd be enchanted a thousand times over by that angelic voice, her ingenious compositions, her revealing lyrics.

I'm Lucas Vilcanoba, a poor guy from the district farthest from downtown, with a genius sister and me—a completely talentless nobody. Still, I call myself María's manager, but it would be more accurate to call me the observer, the narrator of her story, of everything that would unfold in the coming years.

I didn't know it then, but my sister was about to collide with the most prominent artistic talents in the industry. She would form rivalries, build alliances, make friends, carve her path in the entertainment world and eventually reign over it.

Meanwhile, from afar, behind the scenes, I'd handle the dirty work. Who knows what my own story might be -not that it matters.

Maybe I'd gain some reputation or sympathy from certain figures.

But this is the story of María Vilcanoba, the greatest singer and composer in history. The undisputed genius of music, and her brother, a nobody.