Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

. Chapter 1 — The Hollow Years

He saved so many....But he couldn't save her...
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The sky was gray on the day they buried Kaori.

Rain threatened but never fell, like the weather had manners. Umbrellas bloomed anyway, black and neat, ribs shaking in a thin wind. The priest's words came in a careful rhythm; shovels scraped; shoes sank a little into the soft ground. Kousei stood between Tsubaki and Watari and felt alone in a way that made the air seem thinner.

He didn't look at the coffin long. The arrangement on top—white flowers shaped to suggest a violin—caught the corner of his eye and turned it to glass. He looked away, to the trees at the edge of the cemetery, to a crow that didn't care about humans and their ceremonies, to anything that was not the last box Kaori would occupy.

In his head, she played anyway.

Not the rigid, perfect lines he used to force on pieces. The other kind—the kind only she could pull out of wood and air, wild and alive, like she had borrowed sunlight and decided to spend all of it in three minutes. Over the memory of her sound came fragments of her last letter, the bits he couldn't stop hearing even when the room was loud: Live freely. Keep playing. Thank you for everything. They were simple words, gentle ones, and they stuck like thorns. He stood still and tried not to cry because crying felt like admitting the world had won.

Kaori's parents moved through the mourners like people trying to remember their bodies. Her mother's eyes were red and bright, a breaking shoreline. Her father held her by the elbow, face set the way men's faces get set when they're guarding the last intact part of the day. When they reached Kousei, he bowed too low. He couldn't trust his mouth.

"Thank you for coming," her father said.

Kousei nodded. He wanted to say I'm sorry and I loved her and I will carry her through days she never got to see, but his chest felt bricked over. Tsubaki's hand brushed his sleeve—here and gone—like a small anchor thrown against a fast current.

Watari made it to the end of the service with his jaw locked and his mouth a thin line. When the crowd broke, he stepped away, leaned into a cypress, and let the first sob hit him like a tackle. Tsubaki turned to follow. Kousei stayed where he was and stared at the line of dirt that cut the grass.

***

He thought of his mother because grief is a collector, not an archivist. It stacks your losses on one shelf, then pushes them tight together when you're not looking. First his mother. Now Kaori. The two women who taught him how to live, and then left him to keep proof. Both stolen by failures of the body. A superstition started writing itself in the corner of his mind: Everyone I love will be taken by illness. It was stupid and unfair and it began anyway.

In the hall afterward, plates clicked against the long table. Adults spoke in soft voices they didn't use for anything else. There was tea. There were the kinds of cookies that pretend to be comfort. Kousei heard the same sentences on a loop: She was so bright. So unfair. So young. He nodded because nodding was the only verb he could handle.

Tsubaki stayed close. She poured tea he didn't drink and said his name in a way that asked permission to be his friend. Watari slipped outside and made a joke that died in the doorway. When Kousei finally followed him out, Watari kicked at the thin line of gravel along the path and said, "She was... Kaori," like that was a complete sentence. Maybe it was.

"She wanted you to—" Watari started, then swallowed the end. He couldn't say live freely aloud. It would have sounded like a command, and commands don't belong at a grave.

They walked Kousei home. He didn't argue. The streets looked normal. That almost made him angry. The bakery window still fogged from ovens. A kid hopped a puddle with both feet and landed like a drummer. A dog shook and flung rain off its ears in a glittering arc. Life moved. It kept moving even when people stopped. He had known that before. It felt like a betrayal now.

***

At his apartment, Tsubaki paused in the doorway and made her face brave. "Text me," she said.

"Yeah," he whispered. He didn't.

Inside, the piano waited like an old friend who didn't know the bad news yet. He stood across from it. The lid reflected him back to himself in a blurry strip. He lifted the fallboard. Keys stared: patient, pale. His hands hovered. The habit of a decade reached for him like a rope.

He let his fingers fall. A single C filled the room, pure and ordinary and unbearable. He took a breath and heard, behind that note, how she used to laugh at him for counting too hard; how she'd nudge him with her shoulder backstage; how she played as if she had convinced the air it would live longer if it danced. The second note didn't make it out. He shut the lid fast, wood on wood, a clap that didn't echo.

He took the letter from his pocket, the one he had read and read until the paper softened like cloth. He didn't unfold it. He could see the slope of her handwriting without looking. Live freely. Keep playing. Thank you for everything. The lines were carved into him now. He pressed the folded paper to his chest until it hurt, then loosened his hand and slid the letter into the narrow space beneath the fallboard, pushing it back until it disappeared. He let the lid down gently, like putting a blanket over someone sleeping.

He left the room. The piano stayed behind, quiet as a closed door.

***

Grief made a map out of town. There were streets he couldn't walk because her shadow lived there. There were corners where his chest tightened for reasons his body knew before his mind did. He slept in bursts. When he did, he dreamed in black-and-white. He did not touch the bench again.

Tsubaki showed up with soups and stubbornness. She opened the curtains and let light in like a dare. "It's still the world," she'd say. Some days he could stand in it with her. Most days he nodded, said he'd come outside later, and later stayed where it was.

Watari messaged him with memes and half-true stories and asked him to watch matches. Sometimes Kousei went and sat on the far end of the bleachers and kept his hood up and let the noise wash him clean for an hour. Most times he stayed where water didn't reach.

***

When the apartment started feeling like a jar with the lid too tight, he walked to the library. It was warm there and quiet in a way that didn't feel like punishment. He wandered between shelves the way you wander a familiar neighborhood when you don't want anyone to see you. He started with music texts because their titles made easy promises. The words didn't hurt. They didn't help either.

He drifted outward. Psychology, anatomy, the brain. He read a chapter about how two cells talk in the dark through slivers of chemistry and thought about duet partners. He read about a disease that stole balance and breath from the inside and thought thief out loud, quiet. He read until the library closed, then read PDFs on his phone by the blue light of insomnia until morning.

He didn't decide to study medicine. The decision happened in small, accumulative ways, like dust. One month he was watching lectures because they were interesting. The next he was taking notes and pausing to copy diagrams. He enrolled in courses because the registrar would let him and he didn't have a good reason to say no. He took the exams because showing up felt better than staying still. He passed because he had done nothing else for months, because his mind remembered what it was to sit with a hard thing until it softened.

He told himself he wasn't trying to fix anything. He repeated that lie until it lost its seams.

***

Years unspooled. Seventeen turned into nineteen, then twenty-one, then twenty-three. He collected textbooks the way his younger self collected recordings—one more finally that might change everything if he listened in the right way. He learned to love lab smells: ethanol and plastic and something cold and clean. He learned to hold a pipette without wasting a drop, to label like a person who believes tomorrow will come, to watch a plate the way you watch a stage when someone you love is about to walk onto it.

Professors remembered him. Not because he showed off. Because he didn't quit. He asked questions that crawled under the obvious and bit. He did the repeats no one wanted to do. He stayed late, not because staying late made you a hero, but because the experiment didn't care that your roommate was hungry. He wore the same gray hoodie till the cuffs thinned and then he wore another gray hoodie, indistinguishable from the first.

Tsubaki visited the university once, stood in a hallway that smelled like paper and old coffee, and put her hands on her hips the way she did when she was thirteen. "You're bones," she said, trying to make it a joke so it wouldn't be a complaint. She handed him a lunch box with her name on the lid in block letters. "Eat. Or I'm going to write my name on your forehead too so people remember you belong to someone."

He smiled, real for a second. "I don't belong to anyone," he said, not as an argument, but as a weather report. She winced like she'd walked into a low table she knew was there. She still hugged him, hard, as if proof could move back into muscle.

***

Watari kept appearing in pictures with teammates and sunlight. He almost always had his arm slung around someone else's neck, like life was better when it leaned. He invited Kousei to games, then stopped inviting and just sent times and locations. "No pressure," he'd say in voice notes. "Also I love you, bro, and no, don't make it weird." Kousei listened to the voice notes at 2 a.m. on benches under vending machines, then went back inside.

The world widened outside his small travels between apartment, lecture halls, labs. Breakthroughs were being made by other hands. He didn't envy them. He studied them until the corners of the articles frayed. He wanted to understand the exact shape of the wall so he could find the door.

***

Twenty-six found him with a desk he could call his and a team that listened when he cleared his throat at the whiteboard. He wasn't the youngest in the room anymore and he wasn't the most decorated, but when there was a puzzle that didn't like being solved, people glanced at him because he had a way of looking that made problems give up their last secret.

He started to write his own papers. The first time his name arrived in print on a journal masthead, he stared for a long minute, like reading it could chart a route back to a boy who once believed only music could make a life worth keeping. It didn't. It still felt like alphabet.

He presented at conferences in rooms that reminded him, painfully, of recital halls. He watched the audience do the same things audiences always do—lean in, check phones, scribble, cough at the same unlucky moments. Once, someone wept during Q&A, clutching the microphone like a rope. "My sister," she said, and couldn't finish. Kousei stood with his hands open, wanting to offer a cure he didn't have yet. "We are trying," he said. It was flat and honest and not enough.

***

The first time a headline used the word prodigy with his photograph under it, he took the paper off the lab table and folded it neatly and put it in the recycling. The word felt like a sweater he'd outgrown but kept wearing because people liked it. He preferred stubborn. He would have accepted obsessed. He would have smiled at tired.

He learned to manage budgets and timelines and people who needed him to be the kind of steady he wasn't sure he could be. He learned that mentorship is mostly remembering to ask Did you eat? before Where are we on that draft? He watched younger scientists fall in love with ideas and wanted to warn them about what happened when love met a clock. He didn't. Everyone has to make their own bargains.

He didn't stop visiting the piano. He never played it. Once a year—twice, some years—he lifted the lid and took out Kaori's letter. He unfolded it carefully, palm flat to keep the paper from curling back on itself. He didn't read all of it. He couldn't. He traced the fragments with his thumb, like reading Braille written on his own skin. Live freely. Keep playing. Thank you for everything. He put the letter back and lowered the lid like closing a book in a quiet library.

***

Twenty-nine brought awards he didn't attend except when attending would protect his team from losing their funding. He learned to stand under lights and say we and mean it. He got used to hands on his shoulder that belonged to people who practiced smiling. He got used to emails that began hope this finds you well and thought, it doesn't.

He moved apartments and brought the piano even though moving it was a hassle and the movers looked at him like he was a cruel person. He set it against a wall that faced east. He never lifted the lid. He put a plant on top because that's what magazines did with pianos in rooms that pretended to hold happiness. The plant died. He bought a cactus. It lived.

***

On certain mornings he ran along the river while the city was still deciding what it wanted to be. He breathed until his lungs hurt and then breathed more because that felt like practice. He didn't listen to music. He listened to the slap of rubber on path and the hiss of his breath and the small, shy sounds of a place waking.

Tsubaki called less and then not at all for a while. When she did, it was because someone else had told her to. "You make yourself hard to reach," she said when he picked up. "I'm here," he said. It sounded like a lie. They both let the silence sit. Then they asked each other questions with obvious answers. Then they said soon. Time kept its hands in its pockets and smirked.

Watari sent a picture of himself at an away game, cheeks windburned, grin big, a goofy thumbs-up in front of a stadium sign that spelled the town wrong. Still alive, he captioned. Kousei typed a reply, erased it, typed another, erased that too, ended up sending a sticker of a panda rolling down a hill. Watari sent back a voice message laughing so hard he hiccuped.

He told himself he would go home more. He told himself he would buy flowers for the grave and stand there long enough to name what he missed and what he was afraid of missing. He bought the flowers once and left them in the sink and came home to a mess and a smell. He threw them away and felt like a criminal.

***

He was good at solving problems. He was less good at being a person in a room where no one needed a cure.

Years stacked. Thirty arrived without ceremony. He woke on his birthday at his desk with a cold neck and a list of things to do. He drank water and checked the centrifuge and replied to three emails. At lunch someone from admin surprised him with a small cake and five candles. His team sang. He blew out the candles and wished for something he didn't say out loud.

The work on Friedreich's ataxia—the thing that had been a thread through his twenties, then a rope, then the whole road—moved in slow, stubborn steps. Results were encouraging, then discouraging, then ambiguous. He learned to measure hope in millimeters. He learned to say not yet like a promise instead of a punishment. He refused to declare victory for a curve in a graph that looked friendly when it might just be polite.

Some nights, very late, he put his forehead down on folded arms and watched the blur of his own sleeve in and out with his breath. He let the thought in that he kept at the door the rest of the day: Even if I can never bring her back, no other man will have to live what I lived. It didn't cure anything. It let him sit up again.

Sometimes he passed a music store and paused outside. Violins hung in velvet as if sleeping. Pianos waited with their teeth covered. A metronome clicked somewhere deep in the shop, waiting for the next hand to lift and set it free. He stood in the reflection and pretended he was a stranger. He kept walking.

He didn't know which day would be the day before everything changed. It looked like any other: a lab with the lights too bright; a calendar busy in the wrong places; the hum of machines; security guards who knew his coffee order because they'd watched him carry the same cup through seasons. The project board had three sticky notes in the corner under a heading he did not read because reading it would make it real: FA: final assays → compile → lock.

He stayed late. Then later. Everyone else left with tired waves and promises to text if the numbers did something ridiculous. He nodded and lied about going home soon. He made a note on a Post-it and stuck it to the edge of the monitor: eat. He didn't.

Night deepened outside the windows. The city softened, its edges less sharp. Somewhere in the building a vacuum cleaner made a friendly animal sound, then stopped. He turned the page of his notebook and drew a small box around tomorrow's date. He didn't draw a box around the date after that.

He took his phone out, typed Tsubaki's name, watched the blinking cursor, locked the screen. He opened a blank email to Watari, wrote Game soon?, deleted soon?, deleted game, closed the window. He looked at the old plant on the piano at home in his mind and thought about water and decided he'd fix it tomorrow, then laughed a little because water doesn't wait.

Live freely, her letter said. He leaned back, staring at the ceiling tiles, and let the words land. He had lived, in a manner. Freely? He didn't know.

Keep playing, the letter said, and he saw the lid of his piano and the narrow slot where he'd tucked the paper, and for a second his hands ached the way they used to before recitals, a bright ache, an alive ache. He flexed his fingers and the feeling went.

Thank you for everything, the letter said, and he shook his head once, slow. He hadn't given everything. He had given what he had left after he'd put everything he loved behind glass.

He stood, walked the length of the lab, checked a readout he already knew by heart. Outside, a siren wailed and moved on. He washed his hands out of habit. He told himself he'd close his eyes for five minutes on the bad couch in the office, then get up and recheck the incubations at two, then three, then call it. He told himself many things.

He switched off the monitor and the room threw his reflection back at him: older, leaner, the soft curves of boyhood filed away by years of work and nights without enough sleep. He could see Kaori's outline beside him in the glass, not as a ghost, but as a shape his life had been cut against. He blinked and the shape was gone. The hum remained.

He reached for the office door.

The Lab

The lab had two kinds of light at night. The hard white of the fixtures above me, and the smaller, warmer circle from the desk lamp I kept too close to the edge. Outside the windows, the city blurred into a low-slung constellation. Inside, the hum of machines stitched the hours together until they were one long seam.

On the bench sat the vial.

I'd handled tens of thousands like it. Clear glass, accurate label, a meniscus thin as a whisper. Ordinary, unless you knew what went into that clear. Years. Fights with data that didn't want to be friends. Trials that knocked us backward before they moved us forward. And behind all of it, a girl with golden hair who never made it to the part of the story where cure and timing finally held hands.

I stood there longer than I should have, gloved hands lifted, the laminar hood a quiet, perfect weather system. I lifted the vial as if it were breakable hope—which it was. Light ran through it and cut a pale stripe across my palm. The air in my chest tightened and then gave way.

I set it back in its rack and peeled the gloves off slowly, pinching each fingertip so the latex snapped free in one soft sound. They went into the biohazard bin with all the other skins I'd shed to get here.

I didn't call anyone. Part of me wanted to. Part of me wanted to hear Watari's laugh and Tsubaki's I told you you'd do it, even if she hadn't told me anything of the sort. But the rest of me wanted to do this alone. The first time you admit the word finished out loud, it changes the room. Tonight, I wanted the room to stay exactly as it was.

I drifted to the small office and back, unable to leave the bench for more than a minute. The clock near the door faked authority. It always did. I shut my eyes and the hum sounded like a low A, the note you tune everything to before you play. It wasn't funny, but it made my mouth move like it might be.

I put both hands flat on the bench.

"Okay," I said to no one. "Okay."

I turned off the hood, capped what needed capping, logged what needed logging. The protocols were a lullaby I trusted. When the last box was checked, when the bench looked like a photograph of a bench, I sat on the stool and let my shoulders fall.

The window glass held the city like a secret. Somewhere below, a truck downshifted. A streetlight found a moth and forgave it. In the reflection, I caught a face that used to be mine and still was—a little sharper now; a little older, the kind of older that doesn't show up in skin so much as in how still you can sit.

I breathed.

And then—because the room had become too quiet even for me, because tonight was not a night for distance—I let the voice in my head stop pretending it wasn't me.

I did it.

Not I—we. But in the end, it's my hands that are shaking.

Look at it, Kaori. It's here. Not a theory. Not a slide deck. Not a band on a gel that makes us high-five and then apologize to the universe for getting ahead of ourselves. It's here. I can point to it. I can hold it up to the light and see the future pass through.

Too late. Always too late.

The thought arrives the way water arrives—measured, patient, impossible to argue with. I try anyway. I think of the charts and the patients whose names I shouldn't know and do. The boy who walked farther this month than last. The older sister who stopped forgetting words. The nurse who wrote, He rang the bell. I think of everyone whose spring will last longer because of this.

And then I think of you.

Second woman I loved, swallowed by disease. First my mother. Then you. The two pillars that made my small world stand up. Knocked out by the same storm with different names. What exact sin did I commit, to be asked to practice this twice? What vow did I forget?

I touch the pocket where your letter isn't. It's at home, inside the piano, sealed under wood I have not lifted in years. I don't need the paper to read it. The lines live under my skin now.

Live freely.

I tried. Or I told myself I did, which is another way of saying no, you didn't. I bound myself to work and called it devotion. I rationed sleep and called it principle. I avoided music and called it self-respect. Freedom didn't look like this, Kaori. It never looked like this.

Keep playing.

I didn't. Not the way you meant. Not the way that made the windows open and the dust dance. I played other games. I learned other scores. I rewrote the ending of a tragedy for strangers. I didn't touch the one instrument that could have saved the part of me that watched you until I forgot to breathe.

Thank you for everything.

No. Don't say everything. Say something. Say enough. I could live with enough.

A sound like a laugh escapes me and dies before it can choose a direction.

What would you say if you were here? You'd sit on the bench backwards, legs swinging off where the keys are supposed to be, and you'd talk with your hands like the air owed you attention. You'd make fun of my lab coat. You'd call me a nerd and then kiss my cheek and then steal my pen. You'd tell me to come outside, where the weather does what it wants and nobody grades it.

I would follow you.

I didn't follow you when it mattered.

I stand. I can't stay in the stool anymore. The office couch is close. I can sleep there for a minute. Ten minutes. I'll set an alarm. I'll get up and run the last checks and write the first line of the email that changes our next year and maybe someone else's entire life.

My body says, down. The way a conductor's hand says downbeat, and everyone obeys.

I make it to the couch. It's the bad kind—foam that remembers everyone who has sunk into it in surrender—but right now it feels like gentleness. I lie on my back and fold an arm over my eyes. The hum of the building covers me like a blanket. I listen to the small sounds we've all taught ourselves to ignore: a vent clicking; a light threatening to flicker and then deciding not to; a far elevator dinging politely for an empty hall.

I think of Tsubaki and Watari, and it stings. I tell myself I'll call them tomorrow. I tell myself I'll send a picture of the plant that refuses to die and let Tsubaki roast me for it until the shame stops being sharp. I tell myself I'll sit at Watari's game and shout the wrong words at the right time and pretend that's how you do sports. I tell myself I'll buy flowers that don't wilt in the sink.

I tell myself many good things.

My eyes burn. Not just from the light. Not just from a decade of staring. Nostalgia is a kind of poison when you feed it wrong. I breathe in, out, count four, count four again. The ceiling tile above me has a faint crack running through it that looks like a staff. I put notes on it with my mind until the melody hurts.

I'll rest after, I used to say. After the next experiment. After this conference. After the mock. After the submission. After, after, after. I built a temple to after and then never worshipped at it.

I am so tired.....

Just a nap. Ten minutes.

If the universe has a conscience, let me borrow one more spring. I'll pay it back with interest. I'll plant every hour like a seed. I'll—

The cold should have been the last thing I felt.

Instead, there is warmth.

It spreads the way morning spreads across a floor—slow, certain, kind. The hard seam under my back loosens into something like grass. The hum of machines is gone. In its place: wind in leaves, a bicycle bell, the bright laughter of children.

For a second I think I'm dreaming. Or worse—I think the building burned down and this is whatever a brain gives you when it's done fighting.

Then a sound threads through the air—a reedy, cheerful line that bounces as it climbs. Not a violin. A small keyboard with breath in it.

A melodica.

I open my eyes.

Sky. Blue and higher than it needs to be. I'm on a lawn trimmed into neat stripes, the kind that sticks to your sleeves when you sit up too fast. I prop myself on my elbows. The world focuses.

Kids in yellow caps gather in a half-circle around the low wall of a sandbox. Backpacks piled like bright pillows. A chaperone on a bench, shoes pointed in, watching the way people watch when everything is safe. Cherry petals stipple the path like soft confetti someone forgot to sweep.

She stands on the stone lip, balanced without thinking about balance.

Kaori.

Golden hair, ribbon trying and failing to tame it. A light dress made for easy weather and running. Knees marked with tiny constellations only a playground can draw. The instrument rests against her chest, a slim plastic mouthpiece at her lips, the small keys under her fingers like a toy that never learned it wasn't allowed to be art. She presses a phrase into the afternoon and the whole park brightens half a shade.

The sound is imperfect and alive. She leans into it, fearless. She looks at the kids as if they're her orchestra and today is their debut. A little boy claps on the wrong beat with heroic commitment; she grins around the mouthpiece and adjusts the melody to meet him where he is. Another kid toots a recorder badly and proudly; she nods as if he's essential to the arrangement. Breath, keys, laughter—she makes it all belong.

I glance down at my hands because I need an anchor. They're smaller. The old lab-scar on my thumb is gone. My wrist bone looks like a fourteen-year-old's. My chest tightens. Dreams don't bother with details like this. Dreams don't smell like cut grass and sun-warmed metal. Dreams don't make the mouthpiece squeak when she laughs between notes.

She spins a little flourish and a few petals rise, as if the air wanted in on the trick. The ribbon flashes. Sunlight finds her and stays.

I want to stand. I don't. If I move, I'll wake up. If I breathe too loudly, I'll wake up. I stay very still and let the sight of her fill everything it can reach.

For a heartbeat, she sweeps the crowd with her eyes—counting, loving, taking attendance of small faces—and then her gaze catches mine.

It's not recognition the way adults use the word. It's the way a melody recognizes its own first note. Curious. Unafraid. As if to say, you—there you are.

The mouthpiece lifts. Her fingers hover over the tiny keys. Petals drift. Somewhere, a swing creaks once like a door.

I don't speak. She doesn't either.

I hold her with my eyes the way I held a vial an hour ago—careful, reverent, certain it could save a life.

The breath returns to the melodica. The next note blooms.

And I am here—at the exact beginning.
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Let me know what you think folks I'm aiming for a longer story with a good ending for poor old Kaori. Not sure how many chapters maybe 35-50.

This is my first fanfic so let me know of any plot errors I made or spelling errors.

Chapter Text

I wake up standing.

Not in the lab. Not under fluorescent lights that turn skin to paper. Wind lifts my hair. My palm stings with the rough of bark because I grabbed a tree without asking. There's playground gravel under my shoes and a square of shade stretching like a quiet apology across my toes.

For a second my knees think about folding. Then the world steadies itself by pretending it was never moving.

Air smells like cut grass, dust, and the sugar a vendor breathes into his waffles. A dog yips. A bicycle chain murmurs. And threading through all of it is a sound with more grin than dignity: the wheezy cheer of a melodica.

The lab peels off me in layers—the open binders, the diagrams bristling with arrows, the chair that carves a trench between your shoulders, the notes about timelines that keep sprinting for the cliff. I remember blinking too long at a page, the kind of blink that tries to be sleep. Maybe I drifted. Maybe I fell. Maybe the night used me up and set me down here like a lost umbrella.

The melodica jumps a note, laughs at itself, tries again.

I turn.

She's on the low hill by the sandbox, shoes powdered beige, hair tied back with a ribbon that has never once done what it was told. Kaori Miyazono. She holds the melodica at a tilt, the plastic tube looped to her mouth. Small fingers clap around her ankles—kids orbiting sunlight. She plays a phrase that is wrong by the book and right by the lungs. When a little boy gets brave and toots the tube, she claps like he's just translated a secret.

I try to keep my face calm. The way you keep your hands hovering above the keys before the first note—quiet, ready, pretending not to shake.

This is where rational minds say: She's here. My brain, drunk on habit, tries to argue categories. Dream, it suggests. Afterlife, it offers. But dreams don't have splinters, and the afterlife probably isn't sticky from melted popsicles. This is earth. Cruel in detail, generous in the same breath.

Gravel crunches behind me—two rhythms. One quick and even: Tsubaki. One loose with swagger: Watari. They stop at my shoulder. Tsubaki doesn't talk right away. She never asks questions before she's counted how many there are.

Kaori looks up and, without the awkwardness strangers carry, lifts a hand. "Sawabe-chan!" she calls, already smiling like the greeting was scheduled. She bows to the kid as she retrieves the melodica—too formal for the instrument, perfect for the child—then jogs downhill. She takes little bouncing steps, as if the ground has rhythm and she's decided to respect it.

She reaches us and shoulder-bumps Tsubaki in hello. The ease between them is the kind that comes from shared moments—short, bright, already stitched into a small history. "You actually came," she teases.

"I said I would," Tsubaki says. Her eyes flick to me for half a second—assessing, reading, storing—then she returns to Kaori. When she looks back to me again, it's after my face has already failed to behave.

Watari's grin arrives a moment before his voice. "Yo," he says to Kaori, the syllable somehow wearing cologne. "Ryouta Watari. Athlete. Occasional scholar. Community service provider to children who demand piggyback rides."

Kaori adopts a serious nod. "A pillar of society," she says. "We should put you on a stamp."

"Please do," he says solemnly. "Preferably a large denomination."

She laughs, clean and immediate, then turns to me—no fumbling, no pretend introduction. Tsubaki moves the moment forward, casual as a toss. "This is the neighbor I told you about," she says to Kaori, chin tipping my way. "Kousei Arima."

Kaori brightens—not bigger, just deeper, like a backstage light switched on. "Arima-kun," she says, testing the name. "I've heard things."

The words land carefully. Not I heard you play. Not You're amazing. She couldn't have heard it; I haven't let the world hear me in years. Just rumors, the kind that travel in hallways and cling to doorframes.

I try for a joke and almost drop it. "All lies," I say, too fast.

Tsubaki's elbow finds my ribs—gentle, a reminder not to hide in shallow water.

Kaori tilts her head, amused. "Lies can be very flattering," she says. "They don't ask you to prove anything."

Up the hill, a small girl tries the melodica and produces a sound like a bicycle bell learning to be a trumpet. Kaori glances back and gives her a thumbs-up like a high five from across a street. The girl straightens by two centimeters.

Watari, who cannot allow attention to sit still longer than three seconds without getting bored, gestures at the kid crowd. "So... do you do pop-up concerts often? It's good for your brand."

Kaori gasps. "I have a brand?"

"You do now," he says. "It's chaos in a ribbon."

"Accurate," Tsubaki mutters.

Kaori rocks on her heels, the ribbon slipping like it's planning an escape. "We were practicing the art of not being perfect," she says to us, as if we were invited to the lesson. "It's important to do it where people can see you. Shame hates sunlight."

Tsubaki snorts. "You're dangerous."

"Only to statues," Kaori says. She taps the melodica's side with a fingernail. "This one is very anti-statue."

For a few seconds I forget how to be a person and just watch. She doesn't sparkle because she wants to be seen; she sparkles because she keeps finding things to hand the light to. In the gap between the jokes and the smile, there's something steady, practical: she notes the lost shoelace, the kid about to trip, the mother who needs a breath. Bright does not mean shallow. Not here.

Tsubaki is still monitoring me out of the edge of her eye. She lets a beat pass, another, and only then asks, offhand but weighted, "You okay?"

I blink. Remember the tree. "Yeah," I say. It wobbles but doesn't fall. "Just... bright."

"Good," she says. Her voice softens at the edges in that way she pretends not to notice. "Keep breathing anyway."

Kaori pretends to be studying the sky. She isn't. She's watching me without making it a performance. "You looked like you were somewhere else a second ago," she says, conversationally. "And the movie changed reels without asking."

I open my mouth and a dozen truths jostle for the door: lab, notes, if-only, too-late, what-if. None of them leave. "Kind of," I manage.

"Kind of is an excellent answer," Kaori says. "It leaves the future plenty of room."

Watari claps once, as if calling the scene to order. "Speaking of futures," he says, "what's next in the Kaori Miyazono Experience? Are there tour dates? Commemorative T-shirts?"

Kaori's eyes spark. The ribbon finally surrenders; she catches it mid-fall, bites one end, knots the other, doesn't bother to check if it's straight. "Actually," she says, voice turning mischievous and oddly shy at the same time, "there's a thing."

Little alarm bells ring in my bones. In some other version of my life, I know this beat. It's a door disguised as a sentence.

"I have a competition," she says, and then—before any of us can assume it's later—"today."

Tsubaki blinks. "Today-today?"

Kaori nods. "As in... later today. Shortly. The kind of 'later' that makes running politely necessary."

Watari brightens like a stage lamp. "A violin competition?"

"A chaos competition," Kaori corrects gently, then grins. "With violins."

She turns the melodica to hang by her side like a toy that has done its job. "You should come," she says, quick, as if rushing the invitation past my defenses. She points at Tsubaki first. "You." Then me. "You." Then to Watari, where her smile tilts a degree brighter. "And especially you, Watari-kun."

Watari beams, because of course he does.

Tsubaki tilts her head at me. The look means: We're going. It also means: If you faint I will invent a new kind of support.

My mouth is dry. The word competition used to be a cliff I stood on every day until I forgot there was ground. I stare at Kaori and all the old ghosts stir, not to haunt, but to watch. "We'll come," I hear myself say.

Kaori lights like she's been handed a small, important victory. "Good." She jerks her thumb toward the kids. "I have to return my adoring fans to their natural habitat and then sprint. The hall's a few stops away. I'll text you the location."

Tsubaki holds out her phone. Numbers are exchanged—clean, quick, practiced like scales. Kaori glances at me and hesitates for a heartbeat before adding mine. Not because she doubts. Because she understands the weight of asking and puts it down gently.

"I've only heard things about you, Arima-kun," she says, like a confession that wants to be a promise. "I want to hear the truth someday."

Someday lands neatly on the shelf inside my chest. Not now. Not a demand. Just a map pinned where I can see it.

Watari can't help performing. "We should probably... you know... escort you," he says. "For morale. And to carry imaginary flowers."

Kaori bows to him with mock gravity. "I accept your imaginary bouquet," she says. Then, lightly to Tsubaki, "Will you make sure he doesn't climb on the seats?"

"No promises," Tsubaki says. "He's basically a golden retriever."

"I am very loyal," Watari says proudly.

Kaori laughs one more time, turns, and jogs back up the hill. The kids swarm her like she magnetized them. She kneels to return the melodica, praises the bravery of a wobbling note, and shoo-herds everyone toward their parents with a series of small bows and thank-yous. She moves quickly but not frantically—like someone who knows exactly how much late the world will forgive if you smile at it correctly.

We wait by the path because it feels like the right verb. The sun shifts a fraction; leaves above us exchange quiet gossip. I rub the spot on my palm where the bark pressed. Texture. Proof.

"Okay," Tsubaki says at last, businesslike to cover the softness. "Here's the plan. We stay together. We clap like people with manners. We pretend Watari is a human."

"I am extremely human," Watari says. "Top three most human in our class."

"Debatable," she says. She tucks the phone away. "Location's in. It's not far."

Kaori trots back down, now with a small bag slung over her shoulder. The ribbon is tied badly and perfectly. She stops just short of us, bouncing once on her toes as if calibrating the next sprint. "Ready?" she asks, already turning.

"Lead the way," Tsubaki says.

Kaori lifts a hand to the kids, who wave like flags, then pivots and takes off at a careful run. We follow. Gravel tries to be a metronome beneath us. The park gate frames the street like a proscenium. Beyond it: buses shouldering the road, a line of vending machines humming, a sky that has learned how to be ordinary again.

We flow with Kaori through it. She doesn't barrel; she threads—reading crosswalks, timing lights, glancing back to make sure we didn't get shaken loose. Watari matches stride like he's chasing a ball. Tsubaki keeps pace without making a fuss, a fielding glove for emergencies. I run in that steady way that keeps surprise from spilling out of your pockets.

At the corner, Kaori pauses just long enough to let us collect. She points down the block. "Station's there," she says, and we dive into the cool echo of the stairs.

The station smells like brake dust and old announcements. A poster of a smiling mascot promises something it can't possibly deliver. A violin case passes in the opposite crowd on someone else's shoulder; my lungs forget their rhythm for two beats and then find it again. Kaori buys a ticket with the speed of someone who has practiced living late. We slide through the gates in her wake.

On the platform, wind arrives with the train before the train arrives. Kaori stands just at the safe line, toes touching paint, every part of her angled forward. Watari leans back on his heels, pretending not to be impressed by motion. Tsubaki positions herself between me and the part of the world that takes, which is a very Tsubaki thing to do.

Kaori glances sideways at me. The sideways glance is accurate; looking straight on would be too much like asking. "Thank you," she says suddenly, softly. "For coming."

"We didn't do anything yet," I say.

"You said yes," she answers. "Saying yes is always something."

The train pulls in. Doors yawn. We step into a car that smells like metal and gum and a hundred private stories. Kaori grabs the overhead strap with one hand, the bag strap with the other. Watari plants his feet like a surfer. Tsubaki finds the pole and hooks her fingers lightly. I stand near the doors where the glass steals our faces and edits them into commuters.

The train jerks. We sway. City blurs into a sequence: concrete, sky, sign, reflection, me.

Kaori's phone buzzes; she checks the time without panic. "We're good," she declares. "We'll even have a few minutes to breathe and pretend we don't care."

"Do you pretend often?" Tsubaki asks.

"All the time," Kaori says. "Pretending not to care leaves space for caring to sneak up and surprise you later."

Watari considers that like a philosophical snack. "I pretend to be humble," he says.

"Try pretending to be on time," Tsubaki says.

Stations tick by. Kaori doesn't fidget. She breathes in counts I can read without hearing: four in, four out. Not calm—the kind of steady you make with your hands so the music can be wild and not fall apart.

She catches me noticing and grins. "Warm-ups," she says, as if breathing were scales. "I don't want to injure myself doing something dramatic."

"You? Dramatic?" Tsubaki says dryly.

"Occasionally," Kaori admits.

The train slows. The doors open with a chime that never wants to be different. We spill out and follow the arrows that lie about how short the walk will be. The hall is tucked behind a row of polite trees, its brick trying to look older than it is. Posters crowd the bulletin boards—names, dates, the polite forms of ambition.

Kaori stops just outside the entrance and faces us like a captain who has remembered where the ship is going. The noise of a lobby leaks through the glass: shoes on tile, program paper whispering, a laugh that believes itself.

"This is me," she says, and suddenly the brightness thins at the edges to let something naked come through. She looks at me, not away. "I'll see you after?"

"After," Tsubaki says for us when my mouth decides to be slow.

Watari salutes, halfway ironic. "We'll be thunder," he says, then adds quickly at Tsubaki's glare, "respectful thunder."

Kaori presses her lips together, joy trying and failing to keep a straight face. "Thank you," she says again, softer than the lobby noise but louder than the part of me that wants to run. She steps backward, pushes the door with her shoulder, and slips inside. For a heartbeat the glass holds her reflection and mine on the same plane. Then she's gone—swallowed by programs and ushers and the smell of polish.

We stand there. The hallway breathes. I feel the outline of the tree bark again in my palm, even though it's long behind us.

Tsubaki nudges me forward. "Come on," she says. "Seats don't save themselves."

Watari flicks his collar like it matters. "I'm going to clap so politely they'll write me a thank-you note."

"Clap at the right times," Tsubaki says. "Don't start a wave."

We step into the lobby. It's all small echoes and quiet nerves. People speak in recital voices—low, excited, pretending not to be. An usher hands us programs with a smile that has seen everything twice. I scan the names even though I don't need to. There she is: Kaori Miyazono. The title of her piece sits beside her name, obedient, unaware of the trouble it's about to cause in the air.

Tsubaki tucks the program under her arm and hooks her other arm through mine like we're already escaping something together. "Ready?" she asks, not teasing.

I think of the lab, the notes, the way exhaustion tries to convince you that forward is a myth. I think of dust on shoes and a ribbon fighting gravity and a melodica teaching courage in public. I think of the word today like a door.

"Yeah," I say. It's almost steady. "Let's go listen."

We walk toward the auditorium doors, into the hush that knows how loud it's about to get.

Chapter Text

We walk into the hall together.

The doors hush around us, and the city noise collapses into carpet and polish and the papery rustle of programs. There's a lobby table with a stack of flyers perfectly squared, a poster listing the order of performers, and a volunteer with a safety pin in her sleeve handing out numbers to late arrivals. The air is a mixture of rosin and floor wax and nerves.

Kaori checks in with a quick bow and a flash of her number. For a moment she's framed in glass and afternoon light, then she's absorbed by a corridor marked "Performers Only." She glances back once—just to make sure we're real—and then disappears down the hallway her golden hair swaying, ribbon bobbing like a small flag that refuses to hang still.

"Seats," Tsubaki says, practical as a map.

Watari swings his arm toward the ushers like he's leading a tour. "Lead the way to thunder," he murmurs, and earns Tsubaki's eye-roll.

Inside the auditorium the air cools, and sound changes shape. It goes from voices to hush, from footsteps to breath. People speak with recital mouths: low, precise, pretending not to be excited. Rows of red seats slope toward a wood stage that reflects the lights like a shallow lake. The piano's lid is propped open. The judges' table sits near the front, three name placards in a neat row, three faces that look like metronomes were their first lullabies.

We find space mid-house—close enough to see the strings of a bow, far enough to hide in company. As I sit, a familiar vertigo unspools. The edges of everything blur, not from fear, but from shock. It's like waking up mid-bridge with no memory of how you got halfway across. The seat holds my weight easily. The armrest is cool against my wrist. I run my thumb over the seam in the fabric to confirm it exists.

"Program?" Tsubaki offers.

I shake my head. The paper in her hand looks like a future I'm not ready to arrange into lines.

Near the front, two older men talk with their heads inclined, the way people do when they want to share an opinion without owning it. One of the judges—a woman with a fountain pen and a posture that could hold a building up—glances into the audience. Her eyes snag on me, move away, snag again. The other judge, the one with thin spectacles, follows her gaze.

It's like watching birds notice a shiny thing.

A whisper slides down our row from somewhere behind us.

"...is that—"

"—Arima Kousei?"

"—I thought he—"

"—the prodigy, right? The one who—"

Their mouths finish the sentence with air. I stare at the weave of the seatback in front of me until the threads stop moving. Somewhere to the left, a program flutters closed. Somewhere to the right, a pen clicks twice.

Tsubaki hears the ripple and leans closer, her shoulder almost touching mine. She doesn't say anything like "ignore them." She just anchors herself to the floor in case I forget how. Watari looks over his shoulder with a look that says he will personally challenge any whisper to a sprint, then decides the loudest thing he can do for me is to stay quiet.

The house lights soften. The announcer—a soft voice with a hard script—steps to the side curtain and tells us the rules. Set pieces. Time limits. Evaluations. It's the same speech halls have given since halls learned how to speak.

The first performer appears, and the room changes shape again into attention. She is precise. Her accompanist turns pages with military timing. Her dress does not move when she bows. She plays exactly the way the sheet music would prefer, outlining every phrase like a careful colored pencil. The judges' pens keep time on paper.

I watch because my eyes are open, but it's like looking at a picture of food when you haven't eaten in days. Form without warmth. Beautiful, maybe, but not an invitation.

Another performer follows. Then another. A boy whose shoulders are trying to become wings. A girl whose bow arm never breathes. Applause swells in respectful arcs and collapses politely.

In the pause between numbers, I notice the tiny acoustical imperfections of the room—how the balcony swallows certain frequencies, how the far-left wall throws back a faint echo a fraction late. The part of me that measures doesn't turn off just because the rest of me is stunned. I count the lights along the proscenium. I watch dust drift through a beam and decide it is proof of gravity. I let the seat hold me. I let the whisper of my name in other people's mouths pass like weather.

A stagehand walks out and adjusts the piano bench a notch to the left. He tries to be invisible. The audience watches him anyway. That's the cruel magic of stages: even errands are theater.

"Next," the announcer says, and the room inhales without instruction.

She steps out, and the stage remembers what it's for.

Kaori doesn't walk like she's entering a test. She walks like she's stepping into a river she's already swum a thousand times. Not careless—she avoids the spike of a cable, veers around a knot in the floorboards—but completely unafraid of eyes. Her violin hangs at her side for three steps, then rises as if the air lifted it.

There's a tiny mischief at the corner of her mouth. Her ribbon is tied badly and perfectly. The accompanist, already seated, looks up and re-settles his hands on the keys like he's remembering how to be awake.

She takes her place and turns, not to the judges, but slightly to us all, as if the room were one person. For a heartbeat she opens her mouth to speak—then doesn't. Instead, she nods once to herself, like a runner checking the ground.

I see the details nobody else seems to catch.

The bow hand: a near-invisible tremor that hides by calling itself anticipation. It's not afraid; it's tired in a way that doesn't admit stage time. The left shoulder: rolled forward a fraction, then corrected, then forward again. A tiny swallow before she lifts the violin to her jaw. The skin at her throat under the lights is paler than the cheeks the park gave her. When she inhales, it's just a hair longer than the breath before it, as if she's already budgeting oxygen for the phrase to come.

My chest tightens in sympathy that feels like memory and science at once. No one else would name the things her body is telling me. They're too busy seeing a girl with a violin. I see the notes the flesh is writing.

She bows—not the stiff angle everyone else used, but a quick, grateful nod that smuggles in a smile—and brings the instrument up.

It begins.

Not like the earlier performances. They began inside the frame, safe from weather. This starts like weather itself. The first note isn't the one I expect. It's softer, like a secret, and it pulls the rest of the piece into itself by invitation instead of command. The accompanist blinks, then grins—actual grin—and catches her tempo a half step later than the page would have allowed. He will chase her the entire time. He looks thrilled to be doing it.

Kaori leans into the line like a conspirator leaning over a table. Her bow skims a hair closer to the bridge than the handbook recommends, stealing brightness from the string without turning it into glass. Her wrist is loose in the way that requires discipline to maintain. She lets a note ring a fraction long just to see if the room will forgive her. It does. It applauds in silence by staying very, very still.

Technically, it's not perfect. She rushes a swell because her heart gets there first. She leans out of the strict grid of the beat to rescue a phrase that wants to fall. A double-stop arrives with more grit than polish and somehow makes the melody truer by admitting the scrape. On paper, a dozen small offenses. In air, a kind of honesty that perfect players never risk.

Two rows ahead, a judge's pen hesitates over a box. Another judge writes something and underlines it twice. The woman with the posture smiles without meaning to, then erases the smile with a press of her lips.

Kaori keeps playing the way weather keeps happening.

Every time she breathes, I hear it. Not because she's loud—she's not—but because I'm listening for it like a pulse. She times her inhales to phrases, but there's a spot in the second section where the line climbs a staircase it didn't warn her about. She takes a shorter breath than she wants, and the next bar arrives slightly hungrier. The hunger helps. She turns it into heat. Nobody else would know she made a trade.

Her bow hand trembles once when she stretches a long, singing note past the safe center of the bow. It looks like emotion if you aren't looking carefully. It is emotion. But it is also muscle asking politely for a break. She refuses. The note does not crack. It flares and then resolves, a star deciding not to explode.

There's a moment—during the soft return of the theme—when she holds her weight just a little wrong and corrects without drawing attention. The correction costs her a blink. It costs me a lifetime. I feel the urge to stand up, to walk onto the stage, to lend her the energy my body isn't using, to take the violin, to take the disease, to take something, anything.

I don't move. The seat's fabric leaves a pattern in my palms. I count three heartbeats, then forget how to count.

The hall is hers now. People who came to judge are listening like children. The cough two rows back decides to hold its breath with the rest of us. A phone that thought about buzzing changes its mind. Even the lights seem to dim their hum.

A passage arrives that wants delicacy. She gives it defiance instead. Then, because she's generous, she returns and lets it be delicate after all. The accompanist is in on the joke by now. He's playing with his shoulders for the first time tonight. The judges exchange a look that isn't approval or disapproval. It's recognition that something is happening they cannot measure with boxes.

I feel color come back into parts of me I thought I'd loaned to the lab forever. Not as a metaphor. As actual sensation—like waking from anesthesia and realizing your hand is attached to you again. I shouldn't think in metaphors, not today. Today is either a dream the brain made because it was starving, or a city the afterlife built because it missed us, or ordinary time deciding to be generous. Whatever it is, the sound she's making believes in it enough for me.

It's almost funny: the world loved a boy who could count every atom in a phrase and make the arithmetic sing. It applauded because the sums were flawless. That boy is sitting in the dark watching a girl commit beautiful crimes against straight lines, and he has never felt more counted.

Near the end she does the thing I've been waiting without knowing I was waiting: she steals a fraction of a second from the bar line and spends it entirely on a single note that didn't deserve such wealth. The note grows under the investment, round as a throat full of laughter, warm as a held hand, and then it leaves without apologizing.

I can't see my face, but I feel what it's doing. I'm sure my mouth is open. I'm sure my eyes are doing a thing I'd be embarrassed to watch on a camera later. It takes everything in me not to cry. Not because crying would be shameful. Because tears would blur her, and I have already lost too much time to blurs.

Somewhere during a soft diminuendo, I realize I haven't checked the exits once. In other halls, at other times, tension taught me the geometry of escape routes. Here, the only way out is through the end of her bow, and I don't want to leave.

She finishes not with a slam, but with a decision. The last note doesn't bang the door closed; it turns the latch and looks back through the crack to make sure we're all inside. Then the door clicks, soft as a satisfied breath.

For a fraction of a heartbeat there is nothing. Not even the creak of someone's shoe. The hall recognizes itself as a place where music just happened and has the manners to shut up about it.

Then the applause arrives like a weather front rolling over a field. It starts scattered, as if people are politely remembering what hands are for, but it rises fast. The woman in front of us stands before she has to. The boy who tried not to look up from his phone is suddenly slapping his palms like he's trying to write a sentence with them. Even people who pretend they don't like being surprised admit they like being surprised.

Watari whistles once, then turns it into a clap when Tsubaki's hand finds his sleeve. Tsubaki is clapping in that way she does when she wants the sound to carry kindness first and volume second.

At the judges' table, pens are still for the first time all night. The woman with the posture folds her hands and looks at Kaori like someone trying to remember a word that doesn't exist yet.

Kaori bows. It isn't deep. It is grateful. Her ribbon slides a little, but stays. For a second she looks toward our section—not a spotlight, just a glance a navigator gives a lighthouse—and the glance catches. It might be an accident. It might be fate showing off. It feels like a line thrown across water and tied to a cleat in the center of me.

I try to breathe and the breath goes strange, like the first inhale after a long swim.

She straightens, thanks the accompanist in a way that makes him bow to her instead of the room, and walks off as if the stage is a path that keeps going somewhere we can't see.

The applause follows her into the wings and keeps clapping for empty air until it realizes it has clapped enough. It falls in uneven steps back into silence. A cough dares to exist. A shoe finds the aisle. People look at each other with raised eyebrows that mean Did you feel that too?

I stay seated.

My hands are a mess of heat and tremor where they grip the armrests. I ease my fingers open one by one and then close them again because the world feels like it might tip if I let go. The seam in the fabric is still there. I find it with my thumb like a lifeline. The hall smells faintly of varnish and old applause. Air moves in my throat like a new language I'm learning in real time.

"She was..." Watari tries, then gives up on adjectives and shakes his head, grinning like an idiot who just saw proof that magic is allowed to be silly.

Tsubaki exhales a breath she must have been holding from the first step Kaori took. She doesn't look at me at first. She looks at the empty stage and nods to herself like a plan has just agreed to be possible. Then she turns.

"You okay?" she asks, soft as polished wood.

I open my mouth and an answer doesn't come. In the same second, six answers fight to arrive.

Dream. Afterlife. Alive. Here.

"I don't know," I say, and I mean it as a kind of awe. The words feel clean, like water poured into a glass after a long walk. I keep my eyes on the stage because if I look anywhere else the world might admit it's a trick and I'm not ready to hear the punchline.

People begin to move in the shallow way they move when they know a moment happened and they must figure out how to be normal afterward. Programs fold along creases. A bag zips. The judges lean together with their heads in a small weather system. The announcer returns to the curtain with his script freshly heavy.

"Next," he says, because time has never cared what we feel.

Some part of me registers that another young violinist is walking out, that an accompanist is nodding, that notes are about to become air again. The rest of me is still under a set of lights that just decided not to burn me.

Tsubaki's hand brushes my sleeve and then leaves it alone, which is the exact right amount of help. Watari sits back and crosses his ankles, then uncrosses them because he doesn't know what to do with feeling impressed in a chair.

I don't move.

I listen to the applause we already gave echo once, faintly, from the back wall. I think of the park and dust and a melodica pretending to be a trumpet. I think of the corridor Kaori just vanished into and the way sound leaves a trace you can't see but can swear you feel on your skin.

If this is a dream, the details are bullying me with their accuracy. If this is the afterlife, it has the patience to make me earn belief. If this is real, then the world has chosen to be generous on a weekday and I have to learn how to accept it without asking what I owe.

On stage, the next performer tightens a bow and nods to the pianist. The first note lands politely in the middle of the hall. It's fine. It's correct. It doesn't change the temperature of the air.

I sit very still, hands cooling around the armrests, and let the fact of her linger like light after you look at the sun and close your eyes. The edges of the seat are firm under my legs. My heart has finally decided to beat in a way a body can survive. The urge to stand up, to run backstage, to make sure she didn't leave with all the air, pulls at me like a tide. I don't move. Not yet.

There will be time for thresholds and hallways and words that fail in front of faces.

For now, I am a person-shaped quiet in a chair, holding together because she just pulled the room apart and arranged it better.

The stage glows the same as it did before, but that is a lie only light tells. It is not the same. Nothing is. I keep my eyes forward and choose to let the moment keep me.

I don't blink until the next applause starts

Chapter Text

The applause is still living in the walls when the crowd begins to break apart. Programs fold. Shoes scrape. A cough tries itself on, decides against it, and waits for the doors. I'm still in my seat, hands cooling where they gripped the armrests, eyes on a stage that looks the same and isn't.

"Come on," Tsubaki says, gentle as a handrail. Her voice has a floor in it for me to stand on.

Watari leans in with a grin that doesn't know how to be small. "Backstage," he whispers, like a password. "Let's go congratulate the star before she signs a major label."

I stand because my body remembers how, not because anything in me feels steady. The aisle swallows us into the current. Someone brushes my shoulder. Someone else murmurs, "Was that Arima Kousei?" and lets the question fall between seats like a coin. I watch the narrow band of carpet in front of my shoes and follow it out of the row, out of the hush, into the lobby's brighter air.

The lobby smells like paper and perfume and the last breath of a piano that thinks it's done for the night. Volunteers collect program scraps like leaves. A girl in a black dress holds her violin case like a sleeping cat and stares at the poster of performers as if a new name might appear if she is polite enough.

We slip along the side wall toward a corridor marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL, because Watari believes rules are stories with alternate endings. Tsubaki moves with purpose. Her hand hovers near my sleeve, not touching, just close enough that the option exists. She keeps looking at my face when she thinks I'm not looking. It's the kind of worry that doesn't want to embarrass you by being obvious.

The backstage corridor is all fluorescent honesty. The lights hum. The floor is clean in a way that makes you walk softer. Smells stack on each other: wood polish, rosin, sweat, a quick gust of outside air from a loading door that doesn't quite seal. Two cellists slide past, cases bumping like cautious dinosaurs. A boy with hair still sprayed into performance shape stares at his phone and frowns as if pixels owe him something.

We stop near a gray bench that remembers every coat it's ever held. I sit without thinking about it and immediately feel the wrongness of the angle, the way the cushion gives too easily. It's not a seat that expects you to rest; it's a seat that expects you to wait.

Watari turns a circle and plants himself facing the exit to the wings like a dog at a window. Tsubaki stands next to me, hands in her jacket pockets, shoulders squared. She looks like she wants to catch a falling object and is making her arms into a net ahead of time. Her eyes flick from the door to me, back to the door, back to me. Every third glance she softens her mouth as if remembering to smile so I will remember to breathe.

"You good?" she asks, low.

I nod. It's not a lie exactly. It's not the whole weather report either. My chest is a map with too many cities circled and all the roads erased. "I'm okay," I say, and hear the trance in my own voice.

She tilts her head. "Okay like 'hungry' or okay like 'if you blink wrong you'll start floating off the floor'?"

"The second one," I admit.

"Cool," she says, like it's a perfectly normal thing to be. "We'll keep you attached."

Watari straightens suddenly, chin up. "Incoming."

She arrives like the rest of the night has been holding its breath for this exact door to open.

Kaori pushes through the wing curtain with her violin still in one hand, the bow in the other, ribbon halfway surrendered, cheeks flushed in a way that makes the bad hallway lighting look kind. Her hairline is damp at the temples. There's a smudge of rosin dust on the black of her sleeve. She's smiling with all her teeth and most of her soul.

For an instant, everything she did on stage is still radiating off her—like she carried the echo out here over her shoulder. Then she sees us, and the echo turns into light.

"There you are!" she says, as if we were the ones who disappeared and accidentally made her worry.

Watari launches first because he can't not. "You were incredible," he says, hands already drawing shapes in the air to measure what words can't. "Like—like you hijacked the room and drove it somewhere prettier."

Kaori laughs the kind of laugh that doesn't need an audience and gets one anyway. "Kidnap is such a strong word," she says. "I prefer 'borrowed with intent to return'."

"It was great," Tsubaki says, and her voice has the kind of warmth that's really a blanket. She adds, "You scared the metronomes," and Kaori loves that enough to do a small bow just for her.

I'm still sitting, somehow. My knees don't believe in standing yet. My hands feel the seam of the bench through my skin, one stitch at a time. Kaori looks me over like she's checking the weather on my face. Something thoughtful passes through her smile, then settles.

"Hey," she says to me.

"Hey," I manage.

She shifts the violin to her other hand. The bow trembles a little in her fingers and then behaves. She hides the micro-shake with motion, flipping the bow once between her knuckles as if fiddling with a pen. If I didn't spend years staring at hands until the bones told me their secrets, I might not have seen it. But I see it. I put a name to it and then take the name back because names stick to things you aren't ready to own.

"You... um," Watari tries again, because silence is an unnatural habitat for him. "You—"

Kaori saves him. "So," she says, light and theatrical, presenting the moment like a magician's scarf. "Did you like it?"

She turns her head toward Watari when she asks, even gives him an extra flourish of eyebrows like she's courting the soccer star. But her eyes don't leave mine. They hold steady, the way you hold a note that matters. There's a question inside the question, and it's not about tempo or phrasing. It's about whether this is real, and if it's real, whether I'm in it with her.

Watari thumps a palm over his heart. "I liked it so much I forgot how to blink. Ten out of ten. Would attend again."

Tsubaki's mouth curves. "It was great," she says, simple, stubborn praise. She glances at me when she says it, as if she wants my answer to have something firm to stand on.

Kaori waits.

The last time a version of this question existed, I didn't answer it well. I remember the boy I was then—half-shadow, half-quiet, all wrong timing. How he swallowed words because they felt dangerous in his mouth. How he let air do the talking and then pretended that was safer for everyone. Memory presses a hand to my shoulder and doesn't push, just reminds.

I don't want to fail the same test twice.

"It was..." My voice almost trips on the word, finds it, carries it carefully. "Breathtaking."

It isn't eloquent. It isn't analysis. It's the truth with the shortest possible sentence wrapped around it. Regret and relief are both in there, folded small so they don't scare the moment away.

Kaori's smile changes. It doesn't get brighter. It gets honest. She exhales a breath I didn't know she was holding, and for a heartbeat the hallway stops being fluorescent and becomes something like afternoon again.

"Okay," she says softly, and there's more in the word than it can hold. Then the mischief returns like it was waiting around the corner and jumps back on her face. "Good. I hate when friends lie to me about being boring."

"You were a menace to the page," Watari says reverently.

"Pages are suggestions," Kaori replies. She lifts her violin and tucks it under her arm the way you tuck a book under a coat when it starts to rain. "Besides, if I don't give the judges something to argue about, what will they do with their pens?"

"Probably knit with them," Tsubaki says. "You gave them enough yarn."

Kaori grins, then remembers to breathe. The breath hitches, not from nerves now but from reality—like her body is catching up to the sprint her spirit ran while the rest of us were seated. She smooths the breath into something even. If I weren't watching, I might have missed the correction. I'm watching.

"So," Watari says, pivoting to his natural habitat: plans. "There's a crepe place around the corner that owes me a reward for being supportive. Flavors with ridiculous names. We could—"

"Crepes," Kaori says, eyes wide in mock reverence. "The noblest of thin food."

Tsubaki gives me that quick, quiet check again. I'm standing before I realize I decided to. The bench exhales a small apology as I leave it. I'm steadier than five minutes ago, still not something a staircase would trust.

Kaori watches me stand like it matters. "You good?" she asks, and the question is the same shape as the one she asked about the music except it's about me.

"I'm... here," I say. It feels like the correct unit of measurement.

"Here is a great place to start," she says, and tucks her bow under her arm to free a hand. She reaches up and reties her ribbon without a mirror, a knot done by memory. It's crooked but loyal.

People flow past us to and from doors with EXIT signs that glow like opinions. A mezzo-soprano cruises by humming scales under her breath. Someone laughs in a dressing room and instantly hushes, as if joy needs to whisper where nerves live.

Watari is still lobbying for crepes, promising toppings like oaths. "Banana caramel gravity defier," he says. "You've never seen physics humiliated so deliciously."

Kaori points the bow at him. "You had me at 'defier'." She pivots the point toward us. "Sawabe-chan? Arima-kun?"

Tsubaki glances between the two of us like a referee checking for injuries. "I'm in," she says. "As long as we sit. Somewhere not fluorescent."

"Deal," Kaori says, then pretends to frown sternly. "But only if you all promise to make fun of me if I start talking about music like it's a math test."

"Impossible," Watari says. "Math doesn't make people cry."

"Speak for yourself," I murmur, and all three of them laugh.

Kaori shifts her case and the motion costs her a tiny wince that she erases by smiling through it. It's nothing. It's everything. The scientist in me files it the way you file a lab result you don't like: accurately, reluctantly, against hope. I don't put it down between us. Not here. Not with the crepe plan floating, not with her eyes bright like this, not with Tsubaki watching me the way you watch the sky for sudden weather.

We move toward the door at a human speed, not the magical one performers develop for slipping between stage and life. Kaori waves to the accompanist as he passes; he salutes with a sheet of music like a flag. A judge weaves through the hallway toward the exit, sees her, opens her mouth, shuts it, nods once, leaves with her pen held like a truce. The corridor smell shifts as someone opens the loading door and the outside sneaks in—night air, street dust, the faintest suggestion of rain that changed its mind.

"Wait," Kaori says, and stops us near a bulletin board crowded with posters. She leans close to a flyer advertising a community concert with cartoon notes smiling like they know something.

"I like when paper is optimistic," she declares. "It has the worst chances and still tries."

"We can tape your name to every lamp post in the city if you want," Watari offers.

"I'd prefer every bakery," she says.

Tsubaki smiles. "Focus, star."

Kaori straightens, and for a heartbeat her eyes flick to mine again. Not a stare. A check. The kind you do when you're on a bike and your friend is just learning and you pretend you're not ready to grab the seat if they wobble.

"I'm really glad you came," she says. It isn't the breezy banter voice. It's close to the one she used on stage when she talked to the silence between notes. "All of you. But—" Her mouth tips. "Especially you, Arima-kun."

Words do what they want in my throat. "I—" I don't try for clever. "Me too."

She beams, satisfied with the math of that.

Watari can't contain motion and starts walking backwards, ushering us with his hands like a very enthusiastic crossing guard. "Come on, before we lose the table to a family of twelve."

We head for the exit that spills into the side alley. The door pushes in easy and breathes out cool air. Outside, the city is busy remembering how to be ordinary. Neon smears itself into shallow puddles. A scooter hums. Somewhere down the block a convenience store chime sings three notes that almost mean something.

Tsubaki falls in beside me as we cross into the night. "Still floating?" she asks, not joking.

"A little," I say.

She nudges my shoulder with hers. "Keep the altitude. We'll handle gravity."

Up ahead, Kaori is half turned, walking sideways even though sidewalks prefer you to pick a direction. She's talking to Watari about crepes with the seriousness of a treaty and the playfulness of a dare. Every few steps she touches the violin case, not like she's checking it's there, but like you touch a friend: casual, grateful.

We reach the corner and pause at the light. The red hand holds us politely. A bus exhales. Kaori slides her bow into the case with that same subtle tremor hiding in the swing, and when it's settled, she lets out a breath that's more than breath. It's a moment washing off the edges of her so the next one can stick.

"Today was—" she starts, but then stops and shakes her head as if words are too linear for what she means. "Thanks," she says instead, to the air between all of us.

I could tell her I noticed the ways the piece misbehaved and how she made it right with nerve instead of exactness. I could say the balcony swallowed the overtones on the repeat and she found a way to fill them back in with her hands. I could say the room will remember how it felt when she bent the end of the phrase and everyone's attention leaned forward like a plant finding light.

What I want to say is simpler and harder: You're here. I'm here. You asked. I answered. This time I did not fail you.

The light changes. The crosswalk gives us permission. We go.

Kaori steps off first, because of course she does. Watari follows with the gravity of a man protecting pastries. Tsubaki matches my step without showing her math. I'm moving through a city that looks the same and isn't. The air tastes like the kind of night that lets you make a small promise without being punished for ambition.

At the far curb, Kaori turns and walks backward for three steps, facing us, ribbon a little wild, cheeks still pinked from the lights and the sprint. "I'm buying the first one," she announces. "No arguments."

"I will absolutely argue," Watari says, which means he won't.

"Then argue with your second crepe," she says, and laughs.

We laugh too, because the sound makes a shape big enough for our different versions of this moment to fit inside it.

And even as the city pulls us along toward warmth and sugar and a table where hands will learn where to be again, I feel it—the quiet shadow that never announces itself, the one that lives in small corrections and stolen breaths. It doesn't win this scene. It doesn't get to. But it sits on the curb and watches us pass, patient.

Kaori looks forward again and leads us around the corner into a street that smells like butter and late-night. The violin case bumps her knee and doesn't mind. Tsubaki leans closer for a second, reading me without making me read her back. Watari lists toppings like a prayer.

"Breathtaking," I think again, more certain. Not just the playing. The fact of her. The fact of this.

We disappear into the softer light of the cafe strip, and the hall behind us keeps our applause safe in its rafters for later, in case we need to borrow some.

For now, she is smiling at the menu like it's full of secrets, and I'm here to hear them, and Tsubaki is near enough that the ground won't vanish, and that is enough…..

Chapter Text

The crepe place was warm and loud, all butter and sugar and clatter. Kaori had a stripe of whipped cream on her lip that she pretended not to notice until Watari pointed and made a big show of fainting. She laughed, wiped it with the back of her hand, and leaned back like she'd just finished a marathon rather than a performance.

"I can still feel it," she said, tapping her violin case with two fingers. "Like the room is still ringing."

Watari fanned himself with a napkin. "That's because the room is still in love with you."

"Obviously," Kaori said, deadpan, but her cheeks were pink.

Tsubaki sat with her elbows on the table, chin in her hands, eyes moving between them and then settling on me. "You looked like you forgot how to blink," she told me. "She was that good?"

I tried to keep my voice steady. "She was."

Kaori tilted her head at me. "He says that like it hurts," she teased. "Good. Art should hurt at least a little."

Watari stood, stretching his arms like a cat. "I have to sprint to club. Try not to fall in love with each other while I'm gone." He winked at Kaori, then grinned at Tsubaki and me. "And don't get kidnapped."

"Bye, star athlete," Kaori said as if she were saying bye to a mail carrier. She flicked her fingers at him in a tiny, sarcastic wave.

The bell over the door rang when he left. The crepe place felt smaller without his voice. Street light slanted through the window and laid squares of gold on the floor. A server called out a number. Somewhere outside, a bus hissed and sighed.

Kaori leaned forward, bracing her arms on the table. Even when she was still, she looked like she might start running. "You were listening," she told me. Not a question. "Really listening."

I swallowed. "Yeah."

"What did the last note look like?" she asked.

Tsubaki blinked. "Notes don't look like anything."

"They do if you try," Kaori said, eyes bright. Then she looked at me again like she was handing me a test I didn't know I needed to pass.

"Yellow," I said before I could stop myself. "Like... sunflower yellow."

Kaori lit up, delighted. She slapped the table softly. "Yes! See, Tsubaki? He gets it."

Tsubaki rolled her eyes, smiling. "You two and your colors."

Kaori stood in one smooth motion and slung her case over her shoulder. "Let's walk before I start vibrating through the floor."

We stepped out into late afternoon. The air was cool and tasted faintly like rain, even though the sky was clear. Cherry petals clung to the edges of the curb and to the shoes of people passing by. A cyclist rang a bell and drifted past us like a paper kite.

Kaori set a quick pace, almost bouncing. She talked with her hands and her whole body, her violin case bumping her hip at every step.

"The E string almost ran away," she said. "But I grabbed it by the tail in time. Naughty."

Tsubaki laughed. "You're so weird."

"True," Kaori said cheerfully. She looked at me. "But he likes that."

I could feel Tsubaki's eyes land on me for a second. I tried to look like a normal person walking down a normal street with friends. I tried not to think about old streets that looked like this one and about how this day had already happened to some other version of me. The corner store with the crooked sign. The vending machine with the stuck coin slot. A tabby cat spread out like old toast on a windowsill. It all pressed into me as if I had been away a long time and everything was trying to reattach.

Kaori stopped at a crosswalk and turned her whole body to face us. Cars hummed past. The little bird on the pole chirped, telling us it was safe to go. She didn't move yet.

"Alright," she said, and her voice went quieter, even if it still glowed. "I've decided something."

Tsubaki arched an eyebrow. "That's scary."

"It's great," Kaori said. She looked at me. Really looked. "Next time, we'll do it together. Your piano, my violin. Not just once. Practice. A real duet."

She said it like a dare, but under the smile there was a serious weight. The words were simple, but they landed deep.

My throat went tight. For a heartbeat I felt the old cold rise up—my mother's tuned voice counting, the metronome blinking like a red eye, my hands stinging, the way sound became a blade if you touched it wrong. Then a sharper memory pressed in: Kaori's hand waving from a hospital bed, the color drained out of the world, the silence that came after. In the last life, there were not enough duets. Not nearly enough.

Tsubaki, next to me, went still. I knew she was thinking only of my mother, of the way piano used to trap me like a box. In her mind that was the whole story of my "trauma." She didn't know about the other part. She couldn't.

The old habit wanted me to say nothing. To let the moment slip by so I could survive the next hour without changing anything.

I didn't let it.

"...Perhaps," I said, and even to my own ears I sounded like I might turn to steam. I made myself say the next bit too, because I owed the moment that much. "We could try."

Kaori smiled so hard it looked like it might crack her face open and let light pour out. She bounced on her toes. "That's a yes in my book."

Tsubaki actually stopped walking altogether for a step. Her eyes widened before she caught herself. She looked at me the way you look at a bridge you once saw collapse and now someone is walking out onto it like it's brand new. There was no jealousy in that look, just surprise and something protective that grabbed my heart and squeezed.

"You'll... you'll actually try?" she asked softly, as if I might take it back.

I nodded, even though my stomach wobbled. "I'll try."

Kaori clapped once. "Great. It's settled. Don't run away. I have plans."

"Bossy," Tsubaki muttered.

"Skilled," Kaori corrected, grinning. Then she linked her hands behind her back and gave a quick hop like she was too full of whatever she was feeling to stay on the ground.

We crossed with the bird's chirp. The sun had moved lower and was sliding along the buildings like a hand. Kaori talked about bow pressure and sticky rosin and the way sound sits in your ribs. Tsubaki added little comments, checking on me without making it obvious. Every so often, Kaori's eyes would snag on mine for a second, and I could feel the future trying to write itself in that look.

"I'm serious about practice," she said. "School has rooms. We can steal them. Or borrow. Borrow sounds better."

"Borrow," Tsubaki repeated, dry, but she was smiling again.

"Your piano, my violin," Kaori said. "You can hide behind the lid if you get shy. I'll do the talking."

"I don't get shy," I lied.

"He gets quiet," Tsubaki said, and there was a small warning in her voice, a reminder to Kaori that quiet meant something in me. To Tsubaki, that quiet had a shape built by my mother—chiseled edges, strict lines, no air.

Kaori glanced between us and then, very briefly, toned down the spark. "Then we'll go slow," she said. "Because I'm nice. Sometimes."

"Sometimes," Tsubaki echoed.

We passed the old bookshop with sun-faded covers and the ceramic cat that had never moved. The window glass held a dull reflection of the three of us. I looked at that colorless version of me and hoped I did not look as hollow as I used to. In the last life, I had turned myself into a machine that knew how to fix bodies while letting its own heart rust. Labs. Late nights. Fluorescent ceilings. Names on charts. Months where Tsubaki's messages went unopened until it was too late to answer without shame. She remembered my birthday every year anyway. A silly picture. Too many exclamation points. A "hey!" with my name attached like a string tied around a finger. The image of those messages nudged me now, clear and clean and a little painful.

We turned onto our street—the one that keeps both our houses like two books pushed together on the same shelf. The low sun poured itself across the fences and porches, and the windows collected the last light like quiet trophies.

Tsubaki's steps slowed as we neared our side-by-side gates. She rolled a pebble under the toe of her shoe. "So," she said, aiming for lightness and landing close. "You and Kaori. She's... a lot."

"She's a lot," I echoed.

"And you like that?" Her eyes cut to me and away, like she didn't want to corner me with the question.

I thought of Kaori's petal-caught hair, the way her voice made air feel like water, the way she stood on tiptoe at the crosswalk as if impatience might lift her. I thought of the future I was carrying in my hands, invisible and heavy. I thought of promises that start as a small word.

"I like that," I said softly.

"Okay." Tsubaki looked down, then back up with a small, truer smile. "Good. She's... good for you."

"So are you," I said before I could stop myself.

She blew air through her nose, amused and a little disbelieving. "I'm just the neighbor who drags you out of your cave."

"You've always done that," I said. "Even when I didn't deserve it."

"Don't be dramatic," she said automatically, then her face gentled. "Hey. You always deserve someone to drag you into the light."

I could feel her wanting to ask the question she wouldn't say: Why for Kaori? Why now? To her, the piano was only the thing that carried my mother's shadow. She didn't know it also carried Kaori's light and the part of me that had tried to go to sleep forever after. Maybe she never would. Maybe she didn't have to. It was enough that she cared about the cost.

We stopped where our fences lean toward each other like they're sharing a secret. Our porches were an arm's length apart.

"I'll text you when I'm inside," she said.

"You don't have to," I started, then fixed it because old habits die slow. "I'd like it if you did."

Her smile widened a fraction. "Okay."

"Thanks for walking with me," I said.

"Always." She reached up, flicked an invisible bit of lint from my jacket, then nodded toward my door. "Eat. Sleep. If you're going to say yes to practice, you don't get to be a zombie."

"Yes, coach."

"Finally, respect." She gave a tiny salute and slipped through her door. The porch light blinked on, catching the swing of her ponytail as it vanished inside.

I turned the two steps to my gate, the evening settling soft around our little strip of street. The gate groaned its old complaint as I pushed it open. The step up to the porch creaked in its usual rhythm. My key turned. The door stuck and then gave.

The air inside smelled like wood and a little like soap. It also smelled like time. My shoes knew where to go and found that spot without thinking. The hallway light seemed softer than I remembered, but maybe that was me.

I stood for a second and listened to the house make its small noises. The fridge hummed. A pipe ticked. The walls sighed like they were settling back into shape around me. In another life, I had not stood here much at all. My nights were spent with charts and beeps and machines. I had pretended that saved me. It didn't. It kept me moving so I didn't have to look at what I'd left behind.

I walked down the hall.

The music room waited like a memory you set on a shelf and keep pretending you don't see. The curtains let in a stripe of last light. Dust floated there like slow snow, each speck catching a little gold.

The piano sat where it always did. Not grand. Not expensive. But for me it had been everything and the only thing. My mother's hand had set a cloth here. Her voice had filled this air with numbers and commands. My fingers had learned to obey and to fear. After she died, the fear stayed and wore her face.

I stood in front of the instrument and let the room settle around me. I didn't lift the lid. I didn't press a key. I looked at the faint shape of my face in the lacquer and at the places where my nail had nicked the wood when I was small.

Kaori's voice came back, bright and serious at the same time: Your piano. My violin. Not just once. Practice. A real duet.

Her words fit this room in a way that surprised me. Like someone had measured them to the size of this space long before we ever said them.

Tsubaki's face flickered up too. The moment her eyes went wide, the way she almost reached for me. In her eyes, the piano was the thing my mother used to press me flat. She didn't know the other story, the future one, the one with hospital light and a violin case that never came home. She only knew the old wound. And still, even from her door next to mine, she kept stepping toward me when I swayed.

I let all of that sit in me without pushing it away. Regret for the version of myself I had handed Tsubaki for years—during my mother's end, during Kaori's end, during the long stretch of white coats and late nights when I was more machine than boy. Gratitude for the way she kept choosing me anyway, sending birthdays into a dark inbox and waiting for a late, dull reply. Fear of the keys. Hope that felt thin and new, like a rope thrown across a gap.

I raised my hand and hovered it above the keybed. Close enough to feel the cool air, not close enough to touch. My palm buzzed like it was a speaker for a song that hadn't started yet.

Not yet, I told myself. Not as the boy who runs. Not as the machine who forgets to answer messages and misses cake. Not as the ghost who hides in labs and calls it mercy. If I touch this, I want to touch it as the person who walked home with friends and said perhaps out loud and meant it. As the neighbor who will open his door when Tsubaki knocks. As the boy who will show up in a practice room because a girl with a violin asked him to build a bridge with her.

I lowered my hand. I let the silence be full instead of empty.

A car went by. The light on the floor slid and thinned. The piano did not move. It waited. Maybe it always had.

"Perhaps," I said, barely louder than a breath. I wasn't sure if I said it to the room, the piano, Kaori, or myself. It didn't matter. The word felt like it clicked into something, like a key finding a lock it had been shaped for in secret.

I stared down at the keys. They looked less like teeth now and more like a road. Maybe if I kept saying it, perhaps would turn into yes on its own. Maybe a boy could become whole the same slow way a song becomes real—one note after the other, a little braver each time.

Outside, I heard our twin porch steps creak—hers, then mine—as if our houses were breathing together. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I didn't check it yet, but I knew who it would be. A simple message. My name with an exclamation point. Always.

I stayed there in the half-light for a while, not playing, not running, holding the word like a small flame cupped in both hands.

Was this..... Another chance?
__________________

-I'll try to get another chapter out today. Maybe another 2-3 this week as well, depends on how I'm feeling. Let me know what you think of the fanfic. Apologies this fanfic will take a bit to finish I want this detailed and rich. I will also need to follow the canon closely to give you guys the best most immersive fanfic and may warrant a rewatch.

Chapter Text

I didn't turn on the light.

The music room held the last scraps of evening like a cupped hand. Dust moved in the thin strip of gold from the curtain. The piano sat there the way it always had. Not a monster. Not a shrine. Just a thing that knew too much about me.

I stood in front of it and tried to breathe in a way that felt real.

Kaori's voice looped in my head—bright and sure even when she joked. Your piano. My violin. Not just once. Practice. A real duet. The words were simple, but they pressed into the quiet like a sign nailed to a door. "Perhaps," I had said. I had meant it. I still did.

But the moment the room went still, the rest of my life crowded in.

My mother's metronome ticked from a place that wasn't here anymore. The memory was sharp and small, the way a thorn is small. Her voice counted in perfect time. Numbers stacked up until they built a cage. I had broken that cage long ago. That part of my story was over. Still, the shape of it lived in my hands and in how I stood. I could feel it and not be ruled by it. That was what "over" meant now.

Another sound rose on top of that one: the faint, steady beep of a hospital monitor. It cut through the metronome like a thin knife. That sound didn't belong to my mother. It belonged to Kaori. There was a picture that came with it even when I didn't want it to. Pale light on her skin. A laugh that ended in a cough. The way she pretended not to be catching her breath because she hated being seen as fragile. Her hand waving like the motion itself could hold me together.

I closed my eyes. The sounds stacked and fought. Tick. Beep. Tick. Beep. I pressed my fingers into the edge of the keybed and counted my own breathing until both faded back into walls and dust and evening.

"She asked you to play," I said to the quiet, because saying it out loud made the room feel less like it could swallow me whole. "And you said perhaps."

The word hung there. The room accepted it.

I could feel the old mistake trying to climb back into my chest—the one where I shut every door and called it strength. After she died, I had done that. I had taken my hands, made them tools, and aimed them at everything but music. School and labs and a thousand papers that added up to a map of a disease we kept missing by inches. I told myself that was how I honored her. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't. The truth was simpler: I couldn't stand to play without her. Not then. I was a kid. I was drowning. You can't ask a drowning boy to hold a song in his mouth.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was soft and small and real.

Home. Tsubaki's text. No extra punctuation. No pressure. Just a line thrown from the house next door to say, I'm here. It didn't pull me out of my thoughts. It gave me a floor to stand on inside them.

"Thanks," I typed back. Then I put the phone face down on the closed lid, like I was setting down a glass of water.

I stood with my palms on the cool wood and let myself remember the part I never let in when people were watching.

In my first life, I was helpless when it mattered. I didn't know what Friedreich's really was. I didn't know what to look for, who to call, how to fight something you couldn't see. I watched. I held her hand. I cried in bathrooms. I said it will be okay without a map to that place. I was just a kid. I'm not angry at that boy. He did the only thing he could do. He loved her. He broke. He tried to live with the break.

Later, after she was gone, I learned the language of the disease. I learned the shape of proteins and the way a gene can fold wrong and keep folding wrong. I learned how to read charts and talk to people who sat on money like it was a dam. I learned to ask for trials and write proposals and stay awake until the sun came up and the numbers stopped looking like ants. It took years to turn grief into that kind of work. By then it was too late for her. I told myself the work still mattered because it would help someone. That was true. It just wasn't enough to heal the one wound that had made me do it in the first place.

Now I was back here. The house was the same. The room was the same. My hands were older than they looked. They remembered more than their skin did. The weight wasn't fear. It was history.

I tried to picture the practice room at school like Kaori wanted. A small upright. Fluorescent lights that hummed. Her violin case open like a mouth. Her hair stuck to her cheek if she laughed too hard. Me on the bench. My hands where they belonged. The picture made something ache and something else breathe.

Then another picture pushed in beside it. A whiteboard with timing lines and arrows. A list of names—doctors, professors, a lab tech who always ate too many red candies and shook with sugar when she pipetted. Emails with subject lines that meant hope or meant not yet. A budget that looked like a cliff.

I swallowed. My heart picked up. I didn't try to slow it this time. I let it run. I let the chaos do what it wanted for a minute.

Memories crashed into each other. Kaori waving at the street corner. Kaori in a bed with wires sticking to her skin. The smell of rosin. The smell of alcohol wipes. Tsubaki's birthday messages piling up in an inbox I was too numb to open. A stock graph I had stared at for a whole day in the old life while waiting for a call from a board that never came. The sound a crowd makes when the thing nobody thought would happen happens and you were the one person who did think it would. A headline from a future week. A score from a future night. Names of companies that would rise like rockets and then burn. Names of games where the ball took a strange bounce and made a new history.

I hadn't asked for that part to come back with me. It came anyway. Foresight sits in your head like a live wire until you either grab it or move away.

I took my hands off the piano and pressed my thumbs into my eyelids until patterns bloomed. I could feel a decision trying to form and I was scared of it, not because I thought it was wrong, but because I knew once I said it, I would have to live it all the way down.

"What if this isn't punishment?" I asked the room. I wasn't talking to the room. I was talking to the part of me that still wanted to curl up and stay small. "What if this is a second chance?"

Silence answered. Not empty silence. The kind that's waiting.

I opened my eyes and looked at the keys. They were a long straight line. A road. I imagined laying another line on top of them: a timeline. This note for now. That note for the week I need to make the first call. Another for the month I need to have money in place. Another for the day we run the first test and dare to breathe.

Back then, I didn't have any of that. I had no maps. No money. No plan. I was a boy looking at a storm and hoping it would not notice the person he loved. It noticed anyway.

Now I had different tools. I had what years had carved into me and what this second start had placed in my pocket like a folded paper with answers scribbled on it. Knowledge lived in me in a way it hadn't before. So did the shape of the near future—numbers, scores, headlines that hadn't been printed yet but would be if I stopped pretending otherwise. I could turn those things into fuel. Not because I liked the idea of gambling with the world, but because this was the world I had been given: one where I knew some of the turns in the road.

A thought came that tasted like iron and made my teeth hurt. If you use it, you can't lie about who you are. You can't say you're just a kid. You can't say you don't know what to do. You can't pretend the choice isn't yours.

I rested my forehead against the cool black of the lid and let that sink in.

I remembered a day from the old life when I had stood in a hallway outside a meeting, hands shaking, waiting to be told no. I remembered promising nothing to no one because promises were heavy and I was already tired. I remembered the moment the no came, soft and polite, and how the floor didn't open and the sky didn't fall. Only a line inside me did.

I straightened. I didn't want that line to break this time. I would rather carry something heavy than carry nothing and call it safe.

I let the plan arrive in pieces instead of grabbing at it all at once.

First piece: accept the role. Not musician only. Not scientist only. Not neighbor or friend only. All of it at once. The boy I was and the man I became had to stop trying to be two different people. I had to be one person who could sit at a bench, pull data apart, answer a text, and say I will not run all in the same day.

Second piece: money. It felt ugly to think about while standing in front of an instrument, but ugly didn't mean wrong. Labs run on money. Trials run on money. People who say otherwise are lying or rich. I knew some of the near future. Not everything, not enough to play god, but enough to pull out what was solid. A market swing here. A company that would rise on a product that hadn't even teased yet. A game where the ending would shock everyone but me. I hated the taste of it and loved the fact that it could build time. I would do it, but not like a gambler trying to fill a hole. I would do it like a builder who knows exactly how many bricks he needs.

Third piece: work. Knowledge wasn't magic. It was a map with incomplete lines. I would still have to fill the gaps the right way and in the right order. I would need to start earlier than anyone else would even think to start. I would need to find people I could trust to move fast and keep quiet. I would need to turn what I remembered into protocols that worked in a different timeline with different variables. I would need to accept failure without letting it dig the old hole.

Fourth piece: Kaori. Not as a symbol. Not as a cause. As a person with a laugh like sunlight and a habit of saying the thing no one else would say. I would have to hold her the way you hold a song—steady, careful, honest. I could not turn her into a project. I could not turn her into a promise I made to myself and forgot to check with her about. She was a girl who wanted to play music with me. If I did this right, she would stay a girl who wanted to play music with me, and not a name written on the top of a folder.

My heart slowed while I put these pieces in a row. The chaos didn't vanish. It just clicked into shape. Like notes in a bar when you finally find the count.

I pulled out the bench and sat. The wood creaked a little and the sound made something old in me flinch and then relax. I lifted the fallboard. The keys took the last of the light on their surface and turned it into a thin white line.

I laid my hands on them without pressing down. I could play. I knew I could. The weight that kept me away wasn't fear anymore. It was respect for what these keys had carried for me and what I was asking them to carry again. They had been a door, then a wall, then a tombstone. Maybe now they could be a table where I set my tools in a neat row and said, This is the work. Let's begin.

A laugh bubbled up out of nowhere and it wasn't a happy sound, but it wasn't a cruel one either. It was the sound you make when you finally tell the truth to yourself in a room where no one can hear you argue back.

"I was just a kid," I said to the empty house. "I didn't know anything."

The next words came softer, and the room leaned in.

"I know things now."

I pressed one key. Middle C. The note struck the wood and hung there like a thread. I pressed another, a clean third above it, and then let them die. I didn't need more than that. I wasn't trying to play a piece. I was marking a place on a map. Here is where the road turns.

"I'm going to save her," I said. My voice didn't shake. It surprised me a little that it didn't. I said it again because the second time made it feel like a vow and not a wish. "I'm going to save Kaori."

I let all the reasons crash into that sentence and dissolve there. The child who couldn't. The man who learned too late. The neighbor next door who always texts at the right time. The girl who asked for a duet and meant a bridge.

A picture showed up then that I didn't try to push away: Kaori in a practice room, head tipped, bow hovering, listening to the way I breathe before I touch the keys. In this picture there were no wires. No beep. Just her, here, alive, impatient in the way she gets when she loves something too much to wait any longer.

"Soon," I told the picture. "But not too soon. Right."

The plan inside me didn't look like a list. It looked like a staff with notes spaced just far enough apart to make sense if I kept the tempo steady. There would be days I would hate. Days where I would think I made the wrong bet. Days where a graph would make my stomach fall. Days where a phone wouldn't ring and I would pace a line in the hall with my hand in my hair until I remembered to drink water. There would be nights I would choose work over sleep and then have to choose sleep over pride so I didn't turn into the machine again. There would be moments when Kaori would catch me watching her and ask why I looked like I was trying to memorize her, and I would need a sentence that told the truth and didn't scare her.

All of that lived in the vow too. A vow that doesn't include the ugly parts isn't a vow. It's a hope with makeup on.

I lifted my hands and lowered the fallboard. The soft thud felt like a period at the end of a long, ragged paragraph.

The house had gone dark while I stood there deciding who I was going to be. I turned on the hallway light and it cut a warm path to the kitchen. I didn't go. I stayed in the doorway of the room and looked back at the piano as if I could see the future sitting on it like sheet music. I couldn't. That was fine. I had enough.

On the other side of the wall, a faint sound came through—our twin porches settling, maybe, or Tsubaki moving around her room, or just the old bones of the house telling the night it was here. The noise made me feel less like a single point in a vast dark and more like a person in a place.

My phone buzzed again. I picked it up.

Sleep, Tsubaki wrote. Tomorrow you can overthink again.

I smiled into the screen. Trying, I sent back. Then, after a second, I added, Thank you.

No heart emoji. No extra marks. She didn't need them to understand. She sent a single dot. It looked like nothing. It looked like enough.

I locked the screen and held the phone in my hand like a small stone. The chaos had not left me. It would not leave. That was okay. It would live beside the work. Some days it would be louder. Some days it would be a hum barely bigger than the lamp. The point wasn't to win against it. The point was to keep moving with it singing and not let it choose my steps.

I went to my room, but I didn't lie down right away. I stood by the window and watched the thin slice of sky between roofs. A star showed up—a timid thing at first, then a pin I could hang my eyes on. I thought about luck for a breath and then put the thought away. I wasn't going to lean on luck. I had other supports now. Knowledge. Time. Foresight. A plan built like a long song, steady and honest. A promise said out loud to a silent room.

I lay down and didn't close my eyes for a while. I wasn't afraid of sleep. I just wanted to feel the shape of the vow sit in me until it fit. You can tell yourself you'll do something and mean it in the moment and still lose it when morning comes. I wanted this one to survive morning.

When I finally let my eyes fall, I saw a practice room, small and ugly, with a girl in it who refused to be small or ugly no matter where you put her. I saw a bench and my hands. I saw a lab years earlier than it should exist. I saw numbers that matched because I made them match. I saw Tsubaki in a doorway with a cupcake because she couldn't help herself. I saw a stage in the far distance with two people on it and a hall full of breath waiting to be taken away.

"Second chance," I whispered to the dark. "Redemption."

The words didn't float away. They sank and held.

"This time I save her," I said. "This time I do."

The house settled again, tired and kind. Somewhere a car passed. Somewhere a dog barked and stopped. In the next room, the piano kept being what it had always been: wood and string and memory. It was heavy. It was honest. It would be here in the morning.

So would I.

——— KAORI ——

I didn't go straight to my room. I tiptoed through the entryway, set my shoes side by side like they were listening, and leaned my violin case against the wall. The house smelled like dinner that had already happened and a little like laundry soap. The quiet felt kind. It pressed on my shoulders in a way that made me notice how light I still was from the stage and how tired I'd become since.

I touched the latch of my case and smiled before I could stop it. Finally. I met him.

I've watched Kousei Arima from far away for years—video clips, whispers, the story of the boy who made the piano speak when he was small and then stopped. In my head, he was a color no one else could see yet. Today he was a person at a table with crepes and a too-careful voice, and eyes that looked like they had already lived two lives and were trying to decide which one to use on me.

I carried the case to my room and let it fall gently to the rug. The bow hair caught the light when I opened the lid; it looked like a strand of moon. Rosin dust rose up—home, every time. I checked the bridge with one finger, as if the violin might tell me more about the afternoon than memory could.

"Your piano," I whispered to the empty room, testing the words like a note before I play it. "My violin."

He said perhaps. I heard it. He tried to make it small, like a leaf, but it was a stone dropped into water—circles moving out, and out, and out. Perhaps means yes when you're me. Perhaps means I'll meet you halfway and don't run and if you ask again, I'll say it louder.

I flopped onto my bed and stared at the ceiling until it blurred. The day ran back over me in little loops: the hall's hush before the first sound; the way the high A looked yellow in my mind (sunflower—always sunflower); the crepe place laughter; Watari's dramatic fainting; Tsubaki's careful eyes; Kousei's mouth shaping praise like it might break if he didn't hold it right. I laughed into my pillow, muffled and stupid-happy, and then the laugh hopped into a cough that stole a breath before I could catch it.

I sat up too fast. The room tipped a little. My hands shook for a moment—just a tremor, like a startled bird. It passed. I put my palm flat over my chest and waited. Not tonight, I told whatever in me always wants to interrupt the best parts. Tonight is mine.

If I look for it, the shadow is always there. I don't look unless I have to.

A thump from the hallway—Mom moving a chair, probably. "Kaori?" she called softly, like she didn't want to bother me if I had fallen asleep.

"I'm home," I called back. "Everything was good."

She made the soft approving sound she makes when she wants me to know she heard. The house settled into itself again.

I lay back down and let Kousei back in. Up close, he wasn't what I'd drawn. He wasn't some perfect story. He was pale around the edges and warm in the center like someone who forgot the sun until it surprised him. When I said duet, the air changed around his shoulders. Fear? No. Not fear. Weight. He can play. Anyone who's watched him knows he can play. The weight was about... history, maybe. A door he closed and left closed so long he forgot where he put the key, and then I walked up and tried the handle like a thief and—click.

"Perhaps," he said.

I grinned so hard at the ceiling my face started to hurt. "That's a yes, Arima," I told the light fixture. "That is such a yes."

My phone lay on the nightstand like a polite dog. Watari had sent a selfie with a caption full of nonsense and flexing emojis. I sent back three violin bows and one rude cat. Tsubaki had texted home. I liked the simplicity of it and sent a single note emoji in return. Then I opened a blank message to no one and typed Practice. School room. Borrow, not steal. Yellow high A. Arima breath before first chord. I didn't send it, obviously. I just needed to see the words sit in a line.

I rolled onto my side and studied my violin in the open case. If instruments could smirk, mine would be smirking. "Yes, yes," I told it. "I know. I'm obvious." The case, being a case, kept all my secrets like it always has.

I thought about the way Tsubaki looked at him after he said perhaps—surprised, protective. She knows some old version of him I haven't met yet. That's fine. I have time. I can learn him like I learn a piece: first the melody, then the shape under it, then the part that looks easy but is actually where the heart lives. People are not music, but I like to pretend they are. It makes me kinder.

Under everything, the old truth hummed: in canon, in all the little futures I imagined for myself, I wanted to meet him. It was a wish I kept like a pebble in my pocket. Let me meet Kousei Arima. Let me make him look up. Let me make him hear color again. Today the wish happened like a door I didn't even have to knock on. Someone opened it and said, Finally. Come in.

I sat up again and let my feet find the rug. The tremble was gone. My chest felt normal, not tight. I moved slow on purpose, a truce with a body that likes to surprise me when I'm happiest. I wiped a dot of rosin from the belly of the violin and made a face at the dust it left on my fingertip.

"Tomorrow," I told the room. "Or the next day. I'll ask again, and he'll still say yes."

I could see it—the ugly little practice room with its buzzing light and scuffed bench. Me standing too close because I can't help it. Him fighting a smile because he thinks he hides better than he does. The first time we miss each other on a count and both pretend we meant to. The second time we don't miss and laughter falls out of me like something breaking in a beautiful way. His hands on the keys, careful at first and then not. The look that comes over his face when he forgets to be careful.

I don't know why his eyes felt older than the rest of him. I don't know why it felt like he was seeing something through me instead of at me for a second. I should be scared of that. I'm not. It just makes me more sure I picked the right boy to open a window with.

I closed the case and latched it. My hands didn't shake. I stood and stretched my arms over my head until my shoulders popped. The window showed a thin slice of night and one bold star. I stuck my tongue out at it for daring to try and be romantic without my permission.

"Finally," I said to the glass, because the word still tasted good. "I met you, Arima."

I pressed my fingertip to the pane like I could draw a line from here to wherever he was—two streets over, one street, I didn't know. In my head the line found him at a piano in a room without a light on. I imagined him breathing like he'd been running. I imagined him saying something to the quiet and the quiet not telling me what it was. That's alright. He can keep one secret for now. I'll take the rest later.

"Don't run away from me," I said softly, and then I smiled because he didn't look like he would. He looked like someone who had already decided something and was just figuring out how to carry it without dropping anything else.

I turned off my lamp and let the dark be gentle. My body reminded me I'd been standing and leaping and holding up a violin for longer than a clock wants you to. I reminded my body that living is the whole point. We made peace the way we always do—me promising to listen, it promising to give me one more dance before it complains.

Under the blanket, I tucked my hands under my cheek and let the day play itself again, smaller now, softer. The note that used to run away stayed this time. The boy who used to be a story was just a boy, and that made him better. The future sat at the edge of the bed like a cat, pretending not to care.

"Your piano," I said into the pillow, not sleepy at all and somehow already dreaming. "My violin."

Tomorrow I'll call it practice. Tonight I'll call it finally.

Chapter Text

I woke with graph paper printed into my cheek.

For a second nothing made sense—the gray of the window, the ache in my neck, the flat taste in my mouth. Then the desk returned: pencil shavings like gray snow, a glass of water with a thin skin on top, notes spread like leaves after a storm. Arrows. Dates. Tiny stars beside team names. A narrow column of tickers with short comments only I would understand. And in the corner, boxed hard in graphite like I was scared it might blow away:

uncle → lab rec? → assistant → equipment
liquidity first → cash buys time
watchlist (quiet climbers) → exit early
sports slate → small, spaced, disciplined

My distant uncle works in medicine. If I play this right, he could point me to a hospital lab and, maybe, whisper a small recommendation so I can slip in as a student helper—carry trays, clean benches, watch the machines. I don't need my name on anything. I need access. I need to stand close enough to nudge the work, to keep a wrong idea from eating months. If they move faster, the cure comes sooner. And then it isn't just her. It's everyone like her.

But I also need money. Not a dream-fund. Liquid money. Money that moves fast.

Last night I split the page into three columns to trap that thought. One for the market: quiet climbers about to wake up while no one believes it yet. Buy small, sell early, walk away clean before anyone notices. One for sports: a small slate spread out, only on outcomes I remember down to how they felt under my ribs; never greedy, never "all in." And one called "Other": anything I can flip, any tiny edge I can turn into cash today instead of next year. In the margin I printed rules like a child writes a promise:

— no hero plays
— exit on time
— protect the stack
— liquidity > theory

Worst case, if this turns into a one-person fight, I'll need cash for everything: private tests, extra panels, cold shipping, rides at stupid hours, a room near a hospital, second opinions, filing fees, time off for anyone who helps, a laptop that doesn't crash when a file matters. Money makes time behave. I underlined that twice until the paper almost tore.

I sat up. My body felt like a heavy coat I couldn't take off. If I counted all the sleep I got, I might have two hours. Maybe three. It didn't matter. The promise had a floor now: a money plan that doesn't rely on anyone else, and a path into a lab without anyone staring—my uncle's quiet nudge, a "he can help," and I'm in the room with a mop and my eyes open. No credit. No speeches. Just hands near the switch at the right moment.

The shower woke my skin, not my bones. The mirror showed a boy whose hair refused to listen and whose eyes were too dark for morning. I pressed the front curl down with water. It stood back up like it had rights. I ate what existed: the heel of a loaf, a banana that had turned too sweet, three gulps of milk that tasted exactly like the fridge. I folded the watchlist twice and slid it into the back of my notebook where a teacher wouldn't find it by accident.

When I opened my door, hers opened too. That's how our houses breathe—two lungs on the same porch.

"Morning," Tsubaki said, tossing the word at me like a ball.

"Morning." My voice came out rough. I caught the ball.

Her ponytail was looped tight, the way she ties it when she plans to outrun the day. She looked like morning should look—awake and sharp. "Captain's talk, then practice after school." She squinted. "You look like you were mugged by algebra."

"Who says I wasn't?"

"Your face." She locked her door, then tapped my bag. "Eat at lunch. Don't let Kaori turn crepes into your whole food pyramid."

"I ate."

"Eat again." The bossy note she saves for people she loves. It used to bounce off me. Today it landed. We stepped off the porch together. The wood creaked the same way it always had.

We fell into our usual pace without trying. The street held the last of the night's cool. Somewhere a rice cooker hissed upstairs. The cat in the third window tried to be a statue and failed because its tail kept flicking. Tsubaki talked the way she runs: steady, with sudden sprints.

"New first-years think they can hit anything. They can't. Coach says my swing drops on inside pitches. It doesn't." She glanced at me and then back at the road. "Yesterday," she added, softer. "When she asked. You said 'perhaps.'"

Those two notes I pressed last night moved warm in my chest. "I did."

Her mouth twitched into a smile she tried to hide. Pride tangled with worry. "Good. That was... good." She kicked a pebble into the gutter. "Just—don't let her wear you down too fast."

"I won't," I said.

We stopped at the crossing. The little bird chirped green. Our shadows stretched long and thin ahead of us. We cut past the park. Dew beaded on the swings. The softball field slept with chalk like a ghost line. Tsubaki's fingers twitched like they wanted a bat. She saw it and laughed at herself.

"Watari's got soccer after school," she said. "He'll say something mysterious about discipline and then post twenty photos of his cleats."

"Only twenty?"

"Progress," she said, bumping my shoulder.

At the school gate we joined the river. Flat glass. A flag that never moved. Steps with a memory of every shoe. The same, and not the same. Under the concrete, under the noise, something hummed. Maybe it was just me. Maybe it was the promise making a sound only I could hear. Yesterday's laughter lingered in the air—the crepe shop, her voice, the snap of a word that used to scare me and doesn't anymore. The day felt thin, like I could almost see through it to the other version of this morning where I walked here empty and didn't know it.

We changed shoes. At the corner where we split, Tsubaki tugged my sleeve. "Don't vanish after school," she said. "Text me or I'll drag you out of a broom closet."

"I don't hide in broom closets."

"You do," she said, and then, quieter, "I'm proud of you."

"For what?" I raised a brow.

"For... trying," she said, like the word embarrassed her. She waved it away and jogged down her hall.

Homeroom smelled like erasers and lemon cleaner and windows that didn't open all the way. I slid into my seat and put the notebook where it wouldn't slide off. The teacher started his slow march across the board. Chalk clicked. Paper rustled. The room murmured.

I didn't look for her. Looking turns into staring. I kept my head down and copied what was there. The graphite box in my notebook repeatedly tugged at me—uncle → lab rec? → assistant → equipment—and beside it my money rules: liquidity first, exit on time. I pictured my uncle's quiet nod opening a door: a white room, steady machines, screens that hummed; me in a coat I didn't earn yet, wiping benches, fetching trays, close enough to watch the numbers become a shape. Not my name in a paper. Not a line under "contributor." Just a body with a broom and a brain standing in the right place. And if that door stayed shut, the other plan waited like a spare key: the watchlist; the quiet climbers; the small, spaced bets; the stack protected like a candle you shield with your hand.

The lunch bell cut the room loose. Metal lids clinked. Voices rose and laughed. I moved with the others into the hall and then toward the courtyard because air lives out there.

Petals were already falling before I saw her. First the moving shadows on stone, then the pink-white drift, then Kaori herself under the biggest tree like the tree grew that way for her. Sun threaded her hair. Her case sat against her back like it belonged there. She lifted a hand when she saw me and knocked loose three petals. They fell without hurry.

I don't know what my face did. My chest hurt and then, strangely, it didn't. In the other life I watched seasons pass like scenery through a train window. Now I could taste the air. I crossed the courtyard. She didn't wait for me to reach her; she walked to meet me halfway, eyes bright with a joke she hadn't told yet.

"Friend A," she said.

The two words landed clean. Playful and sharp, but soft around the edges. Just once. Just here. She was careful with it; I could tell.

I must have made a face because she laughed—not loud, but enough. "Yesterday you said 'perhaps,'" she said, tilting her head. "In my dictionary, that means yes. So hello, Friend A."

I opened my mouth, then closed it. The nickname was teasing, but it also meant something: not background, not a blur behind Watari. Me. "Hello," I said finally.

"Good answer." Her eyes flicked past my shoulder, scanning the courtyard. "Watari ran off to pretend he's a professional and Tsubaki kidnapped three first-years to teach them how not to flinch. Which means," she said, catching my sleeve before I could pretend to be heavy, "you belong to me for an hour."

"I—where—"

"Come on." Her pull was gentle and sure, like there wasn't another version of this moment. "I want to show you something."

We slipped out the side gate while a teacher argued with a vending machine. We turned down a side street that smelled like bread.

"Is this legal?" I asked, because someone had to be that person.

"Absolutely," she said. "I checked the Dictionary of Things That Should Be Legal Because They're Good For Your Heart."

"Real book?"

"It is now," she said, and her grin made my lungs uneven.

The café was small enough that our arrival could change it. A bell above the door made a sound that tried to be a bell. Light fell in a warm stripe across two tables and stopped near the counter where glass domes kept cakes like secrets. Cups clicked. A barista with a sleepy face wiped a circle that was already clean. In the far corner, an upright piano took the space it needed and no more, its wood polished until it reflected shaky versions of the room. A handful of kids leaned on the bench and punched keys to see which ones shouted.

"This one," Kaori said, picking a table with a view of the piano and the window. She sat where the light could find her and waved me into the other chair.

"What do you drink?" she asked as soon as my jacket touched the chair.

"Water."

"Wrong. Tea. You need a reminder not to die during fifth period." When the waitress came, Kaori ordered iced tea for both of us and pointed at a sugar-dusted pastry we didn't deserve. The waitress smiled like this girl always got her way.

We sat. Even when no one touched it, the piano was a held breath. Condensation gathered on my glass and slid down in thin lines.

"You're very serious," Kaori said, watching me over her tea. "It's like your thoughts live ten floors down and you keep riding the elevator to visit."

"They're noisy," I said.

"I like noisy. Noisy means alive."

If I named what was alive, I'd say a promise and a plan and a fear I kept strapped under lined paper. The tea was sweet and a little sharp. It went down like a good idea.

The kids discovered a cluster of notes that sounded like a drawer of forks falling. They loved it. Kaori turned to watch them, chin on her fist, smiling like she'd found a secret normal people miss.

Then she stood.

Before I could ask what she was doing, she walked straight to the kids and crouched so her eyes were level with theirs. They stared like small planets look at a sun. I couldn't hear her words, but I saw the rhythm: her nod; their eager nods; a question; laughter; the smallest girl bouncing on the bench like she might lift off.

One boy pointed at the keys and asked something. Kaori shook her head, still smiling, and then—without saying a name—she turned and looked at me.

It wasn't a demand. It was a door.

I sighed. Not the kind that says no. The kind that lets go. My chair scraped softly as I stood. Every step to the piano felt like walking back into a memory and finding it alive.

The bench creaked the way benches creak right before a first note. I didn't test anything. I placed my hands where they belonged and let something simple happen.

A gentle melody. A handful of bars. The shape of a lullaby that never grew up. Left hand breathing quiet chords. Right hand tracing an easy line that didn't try to impress anyone. The room shifted around it the way rooms do when sound remembers how to be kind. The kids leaned in until shoulders touched. The smallest girl forgot to bounce. The boy who loved the fork-drawer chord held his breath like he might scare the notes away.

I let the melody turn once, then twice, then set it down where it wanted to rest. No flourish. No ending bigger than the beginning. Just enough.

Silence held for a beat like the air needed to finish its own thought. Then the kids clapped—small, honest claps that hit harder than a full hall ever did. Behind the counter the waitress smiled with her eyes and went back to polishing cups that were already clean.

"Again!" the smallest girl said, but another boy shushed her in a way that meant he didn't want me to stop either.

I stood and gave a half-bow that was more apology than performance. As I passed, Kaori brushed the underside of the keyboard with the backs of her fingers, the way you pet a calm animal.

Back at the table, she was glowing. Not loud—bright, like someone turned on a second sun inside her.

"See?" she said, voice low, words only for me. "It didn't kill you."

"It never did," I said, and heard how true it was.

"You didn't have to," she added, softer.

"I know."

We split the pastry. She pushed the larger half onto my napkin like it had always been mine. While I chewed, she told me about a girl who put love letters in every shoe locker except the boy's she actually liked. About Watari's ankle weights and how he introduced his shin to pain. About a first-year who asked Tsubaki if softball bats came in "left-handed." I nodded when it was required. When it wasn't, I watched her hands—how they moved when she talked, how they hovered like notes waiting to land—and tried to memorize the exact tilt of her smile.

Time is a river that doesn't care who falls in. Money can buy you a boat. Music teaches you how to swim. Sitting there, tasting sugar and tea and the last echo of soft chords clinging to the air, I decided to use both. If my uncle's quiet nudge opened a door, I'd slip through with a mop and my eyes open. If it didn't, the stack would grow in careful steps. Cash would keep us from wasting hours we couldn't afford to waste.

Kaori finished half her drink and stole the rest of mine like it had always been hers. "You really were dying," she said, pleased.

"Only a little."

"Don't," she said—part joke, part order.

A brave, terrible fanfare exploded from the piano as a new kid pounded the keys. Kaori giggled behind her hand. "Chaos," she said. "I love it."

"You like a lot of things," I said.

"I like people who pretend they're asleep and then surprise me," she said, giving me a look that sat warm and heavy in my chest.

She tapped her fingertip on the table—once, twice—like a metronome she refused to obey. "Okay," she said, as if calling rehearsal to order. "Time to not get detention. Finish that."

"I did."

"Finish mine," she said, sliding the last bite across the plate. When I didn't move, she nudged it until it nearly fell into my lap. I surrendered.

We paid. Kaori thanked the waitress like they were co-conspirators. I held the door and the bell made its small sound as we stepped out.

Afternoon air met us—flour-sweet from the bakery next door, touched by the tired edge of the day. Kaori shifted her case higher on her shoulder and hummed a few bars that might have been the same melody I'd just played—shifted, brighter, hers.

She didn't say where we were going. She didn't need to. We fell into step without a plan, the kind of quiet that feels earned settling between us. Behind us, the bell's echo faded. Ahead, the street opened like a page we hadn't read yet.

We turned the corner and the café slipped out of sight. The world outside felt like it was holding its breath—like the next thing had already started, and we were just about to notice.

The air felt different out here—flour-sweet fading into car exhaust and sun-warmed dust. Kaori walked a little ahead of me, swinging her case like a light bag and humming the shape of something I almost knew. We didn't say where we were going. We didn't need to. The quiet between us felt earned.

Half a block later, the world pressed pause.

A black cat stretched across a strip of shade by the curb, toes splayed, belly low, tail drawing a question mark in the air. It blinked slow at me like it recognized my footsteps. One ear had a nick in it. Its coat was the kind of black that eats light and gives nothing back. Yellow eyes. Calm breath.

My chest pulled tight. I knew this cat.

Not "a" cat. This cat.

The same stray from years ahead and also years behind—both at once, the timeline folding like paper. In my other life, I had left this café and reached out to this exact cat, and it had let me touch that soft space between its eyes. Back then, I told myself it meant nothing. Now it felt like a tiny gate I had already walked through once.

I crouched without thinking. "Hey," I said, which is the only word people say to cats no matter how many other words they know.

The cat held still. Its tail flicked. The small notch in its ear looked like a bite out of a moon.

I slid my hand close to the ground so it wouldn't spook, then tipped my fingers up and brushed the fur above its nose. Warm. Fine. A rumbling purr started like a machine waking up. For a second I wasn't on a sidewalk. For a second I was in two places at once: the past where I didn't know what was coming, and the present where I carried it like a backpack I couldn't set down.

Kaori stopped a step away and watched. "Friend of yours?" she asked.

"Acquaintance," I said softly. "We've met."

"You're very sure," she said, amused.

"I'm very sure," I said, because I was.

The cat pressed its forehead into my fingers, claimed me, and then—like a shadow changing its mind—slipped off into the narrow cut between buildings. One flick of tail and it was gone.

Something clicked into place.

My breath snagged halfway in. This stretch of street. That cat. The weight in my ribs. I knew what came next. I could see it before it happened, the same way you know where the next note will land after you've played a piece a hundred times.

Kaori leaned in, head tilted the way she does when she's curious and pretending not to be. "Can I ask you something?"

"You're going to," I said.

"Why don't you do competitions anymore?" she asked. Not unkind. Not pushing. Just clear. "You're amazing, aren't you?"

I stared at the space where the cat had vanished. The alley breathed cool air at my ankles. In my other life, I had spent a long time pretending I didn't know the answer to that question. I had let people talk about ghosts and fear and the way sound can turn to mud in your head. I had believed some of it. I had fought the rest.

Now I knew the shape of the truth.

"It's beautiful," I said, and that word felt right in my mouth. "But it's too painful to compete in."

The words surprised me with how steady they came out. Not a confession. Not a defense. Just the simple, heavy fact. The piano isn't the wound anymore. She took the glass out of that cut in the life I already lived. But the instrument still carries weight. My mother's hands; my mother's lessons; long rooms full of judging eyes; and Kaori—bright and blazing, turning the stage into fire. The piano is all of them at once. I can play. I can play until my fingers remember who I was. But there's a cost to putting achievement next to it like a ruler. There's a cost to turning what saved me into points on a board.

Kaori didn't jump into the silence. She let it sit. The wind pushed blossom petals down the gutter in a lazy line. A car hissed past. Somewhere behind us a café bell made its small sound again for somebody else.

"Painful," she said finally, rolling the word like she wanted to make sure it had no sharp edges left. "But not impossible."

"Not impossible," I agreed.

She looked satisfied with the answer and also like she'd already planned her next move. I could see the moment arriving now—the past catching up to the present like it had been jogging and decided to sprint. It came to a stop in front of me with a smile I remembered from another spring.

Kaori planted one hand on her hip, turned, and pointed at me with her bow hand. The case strap creaked against her shoulder. Her eyes were bright with mischief, but there was iron under the shine.

"You're gonna be my accompanist," she said.

It hit like thunder. The exact words, the same lift on "gonna," the same little spark at the corner of her mouth—as if saying it was the easiest thing in the world. In the old timeline, the line drew blood. I was stubborn. She begged. There were tears. We lost days we couldn't spare wrestling the same shadow.

Not this time.

"Yes," I said.

My voice didn't crack. It wasn't a whisper. It was a note placed exactly where it belonged.

Kaori blinked. You could see the surprise flick across her face like a quick cloud. For a heartbeat she looked younger—caught, almost shy. "R-really?..."

"Really," I said, and held her gaze the way you hold a chord until it's true.

Her mouth tipped into a stunned smile. The shock dissolved into joy so fast it made me laugh under my breath. She did a small spin she probably didn't know she was doing, the case swinging and catching light, and then pointed at me again, but now the finger was more like a conductor's baton counting in a band no one else could hear.

"Okay! Good! Then it's settled." She bounced on her toes. "We'll use the music room. The one you love so much."

The music room. My cave. My church. My escape hatch. The place that held me when the world didn't know what to do with me. I felt the door in my head swing open just hearing her say it.

"Fine by me," I said, and it was too small for what I meant, so I added, "I want that."

She put her free hand to her mouth like she was trying not to cheer in a library, then failed and cheered anyway. "I knew it," she said. "I knew you were only pretending to be made of dust."

"I'm not dust," I said. "I'm... rusty."

"We'll fix that," she said, with that ruthless kindness she carries like a tool. "We'll fix it in the music room."

I nodded. The plan shifted in my head to make space for it. Practice means time. Time means hours I can't spend lining up tests or digging for openings or nudging my uncle to nudge someone else. There's always a cost. But I also knew this: without music, I'm a stranger to her. Without music, the bridge between us is a line drawn in air. If I want her to trust me, if I want to stand beside her in the difficult parts and not just the bright ones, it starts with a bench and two hands and a room that smells like lemon and old wood.

"You know," Kaori said, eyes dancing, "you already said perhaps. That was a yes. This is just your second yes."

I laughed, the sound short and shocked out of me. "You remember everything," I said.

"Only the important things," she said. "And that was important."

A group of students passed us on their way back to school. Someone shouted Watari's name even though he wasn't there. A bike bell chimed twice and a delivery scooter scooted past as if it didn't understand physics.

Kaori leaned closer, voice dropping. "You won't run, right?"

"No," I said.

"You promise?"

"Yes."

She gave me a look like she could see every place I might try to hide and had already locked the doors. "Good," she said, satisfied. "Because if you run, I'll find you."

"You always do," I said, and realized too late that I'd talked like we had a lifetime of proof. She didn't seem to notice. Or maybe she did and chose to let me have it.

We started walking again without deciding to. The sidewalk was a scale and our feet found the notes. I watched her from the side, careful not to trip over my own thoughts. Sunlight slid along the edge of her case. Stray petals clung to her sleeve, then let go one by one.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked.

"Music rooms," I said. "And... schedules."

"Schedules?" She wrinkled her nose as if schedules were bitter medicine. "We'll make one that lies."

"Lies?"

"A schedule that says something official so adults nod," she said, pleased with her own idea, "but really it means 'we do what we want.'"

I smiled. "I think that's called life."

"Good," she said. "Then we are doing life."

We stopped at a crosswalk. The little bird went green and chirped at us. We crossed with everyone else and somehow still felt alone. Kaori walked backwards for a few steps so she could look at me while she talked. "When you played in the café," she said, "the kids stopped hitting the piano like it was a doorbell."

"That's an achievement," I said.

"It is," she said. "You made the room soft. I like when rooms are soft."

"Me too."

"Play like that for me," she said, then corrected herself, more serious than before: "Play like that with me."

"I will," I said, and meant it.

We reached a small park—two benches, a vending machine, a patch of grass that tried hard. She sat without asking if I wanted to. I sat because she had. Water rattled in a pipe somewhere under the pavement. A pigeon cooed like it had found the answer to a question no one asked.

"I used to think music was a race," I said, watching the breeze pick up a strip of old flyer and set it back down again. "You run, you win, you keep running."

"And now?" she asked.

"Now it's a place," I said slowly. "Like a house you keep living in even if you repaint the rooms."

Kaori thought about that for a moment, actually thought about it, not just the polite pretend-think people do. "I like your house," she said. "It has windows."

"Your house has fireworks," I said.

"Yes," she said, satisfied. "We can visit each other's houses."

A woman in a business suit jogged past us in low heels, hair coming undone. The vending machine hummed itself awake and then went back to sleep. The sun moved a finger-width lower.

"Can I ask you something else?" Kaori said.

"You're going to," I said again.

"What scared you more?" she asked. "The stage or the quiet after?"

"The quiet," I said. The answer surprised even me with how quickly it arrived. "On stage, you can talk back. After, you can't say anything to anyone. It's just... done."

She nodded like she understood exactly. "Then we'll make afters that aren't quiet," she said. "We'll eat something loud. We'll laugh louder. We'll play again."

"That's a lot of loud," I said.

Her eyes flashed. "I'm a lot of loud."

"Yes," I said. "You are."

She bumped her shoulder into mine like a punctuation mark. "So," she said, bright again, "music room."

"Music room," I echoed.

"We'll figure out when," she said quickly, as if the words mattered to some invisible rule-set. "We'll figure out how. We'll just... go." She shaped the air with her hands as if it could turn into a door if she drew it right. "The old upright waits. I know it does."

"It does," I said, thinking of the smell in that hallway, the cool keytops, the way the lid bumpers squeak if you lift them too fast. "It always does."

She smiled, satisfied that we had both named the same thing. "Good," she said. "Then it's decided."

We sat a while longer, talking about nothing that was actually about everything. She told me a story about a street musician who used a suitcase as a drum and how people ignored him until one child clapped at the right time and then everyone else remembered how to be brave. I told her about a neighbor who watered his flowers with a tea kettle and said it made them taste better to bees. She threw her head back when she laughed. I stored the sound the way you store a password.

A small part of my brain—the part that never sleeps—sorted numbers behind the scenes. I saw the tickers in the corner of my vision, the watchlist arrows, exit points drawn in pencil. I saw a page with game times, the small slate with outcomes I could nudge into money without getting greedy. I saw my uncle's name, a door I needed to knock on soon, a lab that smelled like plastic and bleach and hope. None of that left. It just moved into the background and held there, steady, while the foreground filled with her.

When at last we stood, the afternoon had turned the color of old honey. Kaori dusted the back of her skirt like she had been rolling in grass even though she hadn't. "I should," she said, tilting her head toward the road that would take her home.

"Me too," I said, pointing down the parallel line that would take me to my door.

We didn't make promises about tomorrow. We didn't need to. The promise already lived in the words we had said.

She took three steps, then spun on her heel and pointed at me again, softer this time, the gesture more playful than command. "Accompanist," she said, like a name.

I saluted with two fingers because suddenly that felt right. "Violinist," I said back.

She laughed and walked backward for a few steps, then turned and went. I watched until the curve of the street took her away and left me with the ordinary parts of the day—the traffic, the pigeons, a boy on a bike too small for him. I stood there until a cloud let go of the sun and a square of shadow crawled up my shoes.

On the way home I passed the school and slowed near the music wing. I didn't go in. I didn't even touch the doorframe this time. I just listened for a note that wasn't there yet and felt the weight in my chest shift from heavy to full.

At my gate I took out my notebook—creased now, pencil lines smudged—and added two words under the neat boxes and rules:

music room.

Under that, smaller, an arrow to the margin where I left myself simple orders:

— keep the stack safe
— ask uncle. listen more than you talk
— no hero plays
— say yes again when it's hard

I closed the cover and slid it into my bag. The cat from before appeared on the wall like a drawn shadow, eyed me once, and leapt away.

Inside, the house was quiet. I set my bag down carefully, like something might break if I dropped it too fast. The day had started with a plan to buy time. It ended with a new promise that would spend it. Both felt right. Both felt necessary.

I washed my hands and watched sugar dust from the café pastry spiral away in the drain. For a second I saw a hospital sink instead—steel, harsh light—and the memory hit clean and left. I breathed out. I let the two lives sit side by side without fusing. I could carry both. I would.

When I went to my room, the desk waited with its heavy map of pencil marks. The box in the corner—uncle → lab rec? → assistant → equipment—looked smaller than it had this morning, not because it mattered less, but because another, older shape had stepped up next to it.

A door. A bench. A room that smells like lemon and wood. A violinist pointing at me with a grin and a dare.

"You're gonna be my accompanist," she had said.

"Yes," I had answered.

I pulled a clean sheet from the stack and drew a single line across the top, then wrote set list? even though we hadn't picked a piece, even though we hadn't touched a page. The words looked ridiculous and perfect. I smiled despite myself.

Out the window, the sky went from honey to orange to the color you only get for five minutes a day. Somewhere, a bell made a soft sound for someone else. Somewhere, under a different tree, petals were still falling without asking permission.

I sharpened a pencil I didn't need to sharpen and let the sound scrape the last of the day away. When the tip caught the light, I wrote one more word, centered, and circled it once:

Yes.

Chapter Text

I close my laptop when the sky is thin and pale, the kind of color that makes everything look a little washed. Lines from articles keep floating when I blink—dosages, side effects, survival curves that curve the wrong way. The words don't leave when the screen goes dark. They just hang there behind my eyes.

There's a small prick in the back of my head. It's always there now. Not loud. Just a tap that says: keep moving.

Not now. Rest later.

I stand and my back pops. The room smells like paper and soap. I rinse my face until my skin feels awake enough to fake it. My tea is cold; I drink it anyway. I comb my hair with my fingers. Shirt, tie, blazer. I check my bag twice—pen, notebooks, lunch. I don't know why the second check calms me, but it does. Maybe it's proof that I can still hold small things together.

Outside, the morning is soft. A bike clicks past. Somewhere a dog gives one bark and decides that's enough. The air has that early taste that makes the day seem like a good idea. My eyes still burn a little, but breathing helps.

Tsubaki is already at the corner, standing like the sidewalk belongs to her. Hands in her skirt pockets. Ponytail a little crooked. She spots me and her mouth dips in the middle.

"You look tired again," she says. She tries to make it light. The worry still sticks.

I smile. It's small, but it's not fake. "Thank you for caring, Tsubaki. There's no one like you."

She squints at me, like she's measuring how much of that is deflection. "Don't you sweet-talk me," she says, and bumps my shoulder with hers. "I mean it. Your eyes look like you fought a copier."

"I survived."

"Barely." She tips her head. "How many hours?"

I pretend to think. "Enough."

"Kousei."

I look at the crosswalk light even though it's green. "I was reading."

"You're not a doctor."

"I'm reading, not operating."

"That's not the flex you think it is," she mutters, but it's soft. We start walking. Our steps find the same rhythm they always do.

She talks because that's her way of checking if I'm still in there. A teacher mixed up two students and then pretended he meant it. Their neighbor's cat has declared their porch state property. Watari almost crashed his bike waving to three people at once because he is physically allergic to choosing. I answer where I can. "That tracks." "He actually did that?" "You should charge the cat rent." The joke lines are easy. The quiet between isn't heavy. Tsubaki lets me have it. She's known me long enough to know my silence isn't a door slamming, it's a room I need to pass through.

Halfway to school she nudges me with her elbow. "Be honest. You're not sleeping, are you?"

"I sleep. Sometimes."

"How sometimes?"

"Sometimes sometimes."

She clicks her tongue. "You're going to break."

"I won't." The prick taps once, like backing me up. Keep going.

Her voice drops. "I know you won't," she says, and then she kicks a pebble because looking at me while she says it is too much. "I also know 'won't' and 'shouldn't' are different."

"I'll nap on the train," I offer.

"You don't take the train."

"Right." I breathe out a laugh. "Then I'll nap mentally."

"That's not a thing."

"It should be."

She gives me a sideways look. "Promise me you'll eat actual dinner later."

"I will."

"And text me if you... I don't know. If you do anything dumb."

"What counts as dumb?"

"You'll know," she says, and we both smile because we both know that's not true.

The school gate is loud in that familiar way that makes your chest feel like it can open a little. Backpacks, shoes, white shirts, voices. The building runs on the same slightly broken clock it always has. Watari's voice carries above the rest like a flag somebody won't take down. He finds us in seconds, as if he's got some internal GPS set to "Kousei."

"There you are," he says, and drops an arm over my shoulders like I weigh nothing. He smells like shampoo that pretends to be ocean air. "Our piano man returns to the world of the living."

"Barely," Tsubaki says, loyal to her bit.

Watari studies my face with a comic squint. "He needs sunlight, protein, and two legally questionable smoothies."

"I'm taking donations," I say.

"I'm offering enthusiasm only," he says, cheerful, and steers us through the doors like he owns them.

The hallway has its own weather. Today it's warm and a little chaotic, a wind that pushes but doesn't topple. Teachers throw reminders into the current. Someone laughs so hard they hiccup. Someone else runs, gets told not to run, and then compromises at a fast walk. I let the tide carry me. It keeps my spine straight.

The prick taps. Keep going. I nod at the floor and do.

Classes roll by. Numbers, poems, dates, a diagram that I copy carefully even though I'm sure I'll never need it. My handwriting starts neat, ends tilted. Twice my pen tries to write a term from last night's reading in the wrong place. I cross each one out hard and write the right word over it, as if I can overwrite my brain the same way. My head feels like a desk with too many stacks of paper and not enough drawers. When I push one pile straight, another slides. I pick it up. I try again. It's not graceful, but it moves forward.

By lunch, the relief feels like a floor under my shoes. We claim a table by the windows where the sun paints the plastic in soft rectangles. Watari's tray looks like a dare. Tsubaki has a home lunch that could double as a weapon. Kaori comes in with her case, sets it neatly against the wall, and sits across from me as if that seat has had her name on it all morning.

It's our first lunch together—the four corners of this strange little square. It clicks together like it was always supposed to. Kaori hooks one ankle around the chair leg; the motion is economic and exact. She pushes her hair behind her ear, scans the table with bright interest, and smiles like she's tuned the room up a half-step. Heads turn toward her without meaning to.

I look at her without staring. You learn how to do that if you need to.

Watari says the soccer captain invented a warm-up that is just "vibes and jogging" and three people pulled a hamstring. Tsubaki says the gym floor squeaks no matter where she stands and maybe the squeak is actually haunting her. Kaori laughs, and the table loosens. The laugh comes from the center of her chest; it's not polite. It's alive.

Right before it, there's a breath—one beat deeper than it needs to be. It's quick. You'd miss it if you blinked.

I don't blink.

She opens her chopsticks and there's a half-second pause before the first bite, like she's giving an invisible downbeat to her own body. The smile doesn't slip, but at the edges of her eyes there's a thin tiredness you'd never see unless you were staring for the wrong reasons. I'm not staring. I'm collecting. Fold the detail. Put it away. Don't make it the whole moment.

The prick presses, gentle but there. Keep going. I slide the thought to the back so it doesn't eat the light in front of me.

"Alright," Watari says, holding up a roll like a judge's gavel, "controversial opinion time. The cafeteria bread? Elite."

Tsubaki doesn't look up. "Bread shouldn't squeak."

"It's the tray," he says, wounded.

"It's the bread," she says, final.

Kaori taps her chopsticks on the edge of her box, two, three, four, like a metronome checking if the room is on tempo. "Melon pan tastes better on the roof," she says.

Watari narrows his eyes. "Altitude improves flavor?"

"Science," she says, straight-faced.

I can't help it. "Strong citation," I say.

She flashes me a look that's half challenge, half invitation. "See? He gets it."

The sunlight slides a square across my hand. It makes her hair hold a brighter edge for a moment and then let it go. Something in my chest tugs—familiar and not. I've been near this before. Not this exact set of words, not this exact lunch, but an angle of light like this, a joke like this, the feeling of the table balanced on her laugh. Back then, I didn't know what to watch. Now I do. Now I can't stop.

"Piano man," Watari says, "soccer after school. Come watch me embarrass three first-years and a goal post."

"You can do that without witnesses," Tsubaki tells him.

"Where's the art in that?" he says, wounded again. It's impressive how durable his feelings are.

I open my mouth to offer a maybe and close it. I already know where I need to be after school. It's not the field.

We trade bites like a ritual. Watari barters a dumpling from Tsubaki with two cucumbers and a speech about team spirit. Tsubaki guards her omelet with a fork the way a knight guards a bridge. Kaori tries to split a piece of chicken into thirds, gets annoyed, makes fourths, and ends up giving me the neatest quarter as if it matters. I say thank you. It feels like a ceremony so ordinary you could miss it, which is a nice kind of ceremony.

Talk drifts. A teacher with a rubric that reads like a riddle. A rumor about a vending machine that ate a coin and then spit out three. Watari claims teachers fear his charisma. Tsubaki says teachers fear his homework. Kaori says both can be true. I let their voices hold me up like a railing. When Kaori speaks, something in my attention narrows, like a lens sliding into focus without my permission. I note the steadiness of her hands, the way excitement makes them draw shapes in the air, the small stillness when she touches the case—right hand steadying the left for a half-beat, then releasing. If you're not looking, it's nothing. If you are, it's a note you copy down and don't read out loud.

"Do you ever smile with teeth," Kaori asks me, tipping her head, "or is that a finals-only special?"

"I can schedule one," I say.

"When?"

"Next Tuesday."

She drums an invisible planner on the table. "Lunch or dinner?"

"Dealer's choice."

"Dangerous," she says, pleased.

Watari waggles his eyebrows like he's playing a silent instrument. Tsubaki gives him the "don't start" look. He starts anyway. It somehow makes her laugh. The sound files away part of the ache behind my eyes.

The prick taps. Watch. Learn. Hurry, but don't rush. I nod to the tap and let it fade back where it belongs.

The bell rings. It always sounds like a line drawn across the room. Chairs scrape. Trays stack. See you, see you, see you. Watari stands and stretches until his spine pops.

"I will now demonstrate athletic greatness," he announces to a small, captive audience of no one.

"Try not to sprain your ego," Tsubaki says, already slinging her bag up.

"I make no promises," he says, and someone calls his name and he moves like the hallway belongs to him.

Tsubaki pauses by me. "Eat dinner," she says. Then, softer, because she can't help it, "And sleep."

"I will," I tell her.

"When?"

"Soon."

She makes the face that means define soon and then sighs, because she knows the dance as well as I do. "Text me later," she says, and points two fingers at her eyes and then at me in the most dramatic way possible, because if she doesn't turn it into a bit, she'll turn it into an argument. She jogs after Watari. She doesn't look back. She doesn't need to. I know she'll circle back with a message anyway.

Kaori has already lifted her case. She checks the balance, adjusts the angle. Her movements are precise without being fussy. She looks at me the way you look at a path you're already planning to take. "Come on," she says. Not loud. Just sure.

I stand. The table is almost empty. Sunlight lies in long strips on the floor. There's a ring of water on the plastic where someone's cup sat; I wipe it away with my sleeve without thinking. I push my chair in. I check my bag again—pen, notebooks, phone. It's silly and it steadies me.

We walk the hallway together. The building hums: a scale from a practice room, a shoe squeak that sounds like a small bird, the low murmur of teachers finishing sentences. The air smells like floor cleaner and the faint sweet dust of rosin. Kaori walks half a step ahead, unhurried, like she knows the corridors better than anyone and the corridors know her back. I keep pace. My body feels heavy in the way that means I'm still carrying the same weight, not sinking under it.

We turn into the music wing. The bulletin board is its usual mess—crooked flyers, a rehearsal notice with a rip in the corner, a drawing of a cello with a smiley face someone added after the fact. My eyes slide past all of it and catch on the little window in the door ahead. Wired glass. The edge of a piano bench visible if you look at the right angle. My chest does that tighten-loosen thing I can't stop.

Kaori stops in front of the door and turns to me. Her eyes run over my face once, not prying, just seeing.

Her beautiful blue eyes catch with mine.

"You're tired again, piano man," she says. It's gentle. Not scolding. A note, not a verdict.

A laugh tries to jump out and I keep it behind my teeth. "I'm working on it."

She tips her chin toward the door. "Work on this too."

The prick taps once, patient as a metronome only I can hear. Not now. Rest later. I nod because the tap and the girl and the door are all pointing the same way.

Her hand finds my sleeve for a second—light, just a tap to mark the beat. "Ready?" she asks.

I swallow. I let the answer come up from somewhere older than the tired. "Yeah," I say, and this time it's easy to mean it.

Kaori smiles—Bright and honest—and reaches for the handle. The metal catches the light. I breathe in. The hallway narrows to this small patch of floor, this door, this breath.

I inhale.

Kaori pushes the handle and the door gives with a click. The room smells the way it always did—dust that isn't dirty, paper, a thin line of polish, a memory of old rosin. Light falls in wide bands across the floor. The stands wait like bare trees. Someone left a pencil on the ledge. There's a soft hum from the ceiling that I never noticed until I stopped coming here, and now I just can't miss it....

My feet stop on their own. This was my place. My shelter. I lived whole seasons inside this room. Then I didn't. Then I stayed away so long it felt like the room might forget my name.

Kaori steps in ahead of me, easy, sure. She doesn't tiptoe. She belongs in spaces like this because she walks like she belongs. She sets her case down, checks the balance, and looks at me over her shoulder.

"Well?" she says. Not a dare. A cue.

I breathe in. My chest tightens, then lets go. I nod and follow her inside.

The piano waits. The bench is the same. The edge of the wood is smooth where too many hands have slid past it. I run my fingers along the rim as if I'm checking for splinters, but I'm not. I'm just making sure it's real. The keys are closed. The lacquer holds a dull reflection of the window bars. The lid creaks when I lift it. The sound goes straight into my ribs.

Kaori is already unfastening the latches on her case. The tiny metal snaps are bright in the quiet. She lifts the violin out with that clean economy she has—no wasted motion. The instrument looks like it likes her. Her left hand settles on the neck, her right holds the bow near the balance point. There's a half-second where she stills and checks herself, and then it passes. If you're not looking, you won't see it. I'm looking.

I sit. The bench gives a little and then holds. I put my hands on my knees first, because I need a beat. The prick at the back of my head is there. A small tap. Keep going. I set both feet on the floor until I can feel the weight of them. I open my hands over the keys but don't touch yet.

It has been so long.....

The thought is plain and heavy. It doesn't twist. It just sits in my chest and fills it. So long since I sat like this. So long since I let the keys press back. So long since I let my hands be the thing that speaks.

Kaori turns a peg a hair, listens, turns it back, listens again. "Saint-Saëns?" she asks, voice casual, eyes bright. "Introduction and Rondo?"

Saint-Saëns.... I remembered it all too well..."I meet her eyes and nod. "Yeah."

"Good," she says, and sets her bow. "Don't fall behind or I'll drag you."

"Understood."

She smiles.....it's hard to look directly into....So bright but so fragile. It makes my heart tighten again.

I set my fingers where they need to go. My palms are hot and dry. I can hear my pulse in the small skin at the base of my thumb. I exhale and touch the keys like I would touch the surface of a lake—flat, steady, no splash.

The first notes are stiff. They wobble in my hands for a bar. Then a second bar. Then the shape returns like it was waiting in the room all along. My wrists find their line. My shoulders drop a half inch. My body remembers faster than my mind can name the remembering.

Kaori comes in, quick and alive. Her sound is a bright line that pulls the room into focus. I feel her on my right side as if light could push. She leans into a phrase and the tone opens, and I follow her, not because I decide to, but because there is only one way to be in this with her and it is to go.

It is strange. It is home. It is both at once.

On the outside, I'm quiet. I'm the same boy who sits very still at a piano and makes it look easy. Inside, everything is loud and soft at the same time. It has been so long. The thought keeps repeating. It becomes rhythm. It becomes a pulse under the pulse. Playing with her feels like a dream I have walked into by accident—a weary, gentle dream that would run away if I moved wrong or said the wrong word. I hold myself very steady so I don't wake it.

The prick is still there, but small. Not gone. Just far. It taps like a metronome in another room. Hurry without rushing. Watch. Learn. I can do both. I can play and count and watch her.

She takes one of those slightly deeper breaths before a tricky entrance. Not a gasp—just a breath a touch too big for the space. Her bow arm stays smooth, but her left hand sets a little more carefully than it should, as if she is writing the note into the string instead of dropping it there. No one would catch it unless they were staring for the wrong reason. I'm not staring. I'm keeping time with my eyes.

She pushes the tempo by a hair and grins, and I grin back before I can stop it. She wants motion. She wants air under the notes. Fine. I give her air. I play into her weight and then away from it. When she leans forward on the line, I lay the floor a beat early so she can land. When she pulls, I don't drag. I let the space stretch and then click back in. It's a conversation without words. It's the kind of talk we're built for.

Halfway through, a memory tries to claw up—another room, another year, another her—and I press it down, not cruel, just firm. Not now. Rest later. This isn't that. This is this. A new line. The same composer. A different page.

We hit the first big run and she flies. Her sound is clean enough to cut paper and messy enough to feel like a person. She doesn't hide. She doesn't shrink. She takes the corner hard and dares me to keep the road under her. I do. It's easy, and it is not easy at all.

My hands stop feeling like hands. They feel like the part of me that remembers who I am when I'm not trying to carry sixteen other things. The weight in my chest loosens. The room fits again. The old hum in the ceiling becomes the backing track. The light across the lid becomes a line on a staff. Her sound draws a path on the air and I put the ground under it as fast as it needs, as slow as it asks.

We land together at the cadence and the silence after is full. Not empty—full. I can hear my own breath, and hers, and the small click of her bow hair settling. Sweat beads at my temples. My fingers hover. I don't want to lift them in case the dream decides that's the signal to leave.

Kaori's bow point dips a little. She's smiling the kind of smile that is more in the eyes than the mouth. Her shoulders drop. There's a tiny tremor in the after-muscle that holds the violin where it sits, and then it's gone. If you blink, you miss it.

"You didn't fall behind," She said

"You didn't need to drag me," I say.

"Yet," she says, and her grin tilts.

I let my hands rest in my lap. My pulse is loud in my wrists. The prick reaches forward from the back of my head and taps once, polite. Remember. I nod to it. I'm not forgetting. I'm not losing the thread. I just needed this.

Kaori lowers the violin and looks at me like she is checking a temperature only she can read. Not close. Not far. Just a good look. "We're joining the Towa competition," she says. It isn't a question. It isn't even an ask. It is the weather report.

"Yes," I say.

It comes out easy. No stumble. No caveats. No "maybe" to buy time I don't want. It's the easiest answer I've given all week.

She blinks, surprised for a beat, then not as surprised as the first time I accepted her. A slow smile creeps in. "You know," she says, playful, "it was easier to convince you than I thought. I didn't expect it to be so easy."

"I'm very reasonable," I say.

"That seems fake." She shot back

"Sometimes I'm reasonable."

She tilts her head. "We'll test that."

"Soon?" I say.

"Soon," she says, and the word feels like a promise to the air more than to me. She sets the violin on the open case and checks the bridge out of habit. Her hands move with that small, neat care again. It calms me just to watch them.

I close the fallboard halfway, then stop and leave it open. I don't want to hear the click it makes when it shuts. Not yet. I want to keep the rim of this moment in the room a little longer. I wipe my palm on my pants. My fingers buzz. My chest feels light in a way that makes me nervous and warm at the same time.

Kaori looks at the wall clock. "We have time to run the opening again," she says, "but if we do it now, I'll speed it up later, and if you yell at me, I'll pretend I can't hear."

"I don't yell."

"Then I'll pretend you did."

I snort before I can stop it. "Fair."

She lifts the violin again and the bow hair catches a sliver of light and goes bright for a second. She finds her stance without thinking—feet under her, knees not locked, shoulders loose. The small stillness touches her left hand for half a beat and passes. I see it. I store it. I don't name it. I won't give it any more space than it takes.

We run the opening. I smooth the floor under her sound. She tests corners. I widen them by a hair so she can take them fast without skidding. When she tries a different color on a phrase, I bring the harmony up to meet it. When she lets a note hang, I hold my breath with it so the silence doesn't feel alone.

There's a point where the two of us line up so cleanly that the air around us feels thinner, like we used some of it to make the sound. I could live in that point. I won't, but I could.

We stop again, not because we fail, but because we don't need to prove a point to each other. The room hums. Kaori lowers the violin and presses her chin where the rest left a small red stripe. It fades while I watch. She exhales and laughs once, quiet, almost to herself.

"Okay," she says. "This is going to be fun."

I nod. The word fun lands in a strange place in me—new and familiar. I had fun here, once, before everything got heavy. Then I stopped using that word. Maybe I can borrow it again.

"I'll fill out the Towa form," she says. "You show up."

"I can do that."

"And don't be late."

"I can try."

"No," she says. "Do."

I raise my hands. "Do."

She seems satisfied with that. She tucks the violin in its bed and clips the bow in place. The latches click shut in two neat beats. She stands, stretches one shoulder, then rolls her wrist like she's flicking water off her fingers. She does it casually, but the move holds my eyes for a second. I add it to the drawer in my head and close the drawer.

"Hey," she says, softer. "You okay?"

"I'm good," I say, and for once I don't need to add anything. It's true. It's fragile, like a soap bubble, but true.

She nods like she believes me. "Good."

We don't rush to leave. There's no need. The room is not going anywhere and neither are we for the next minute. She glances at the piano and then at me. "You play like you know where I'm going before I do," she says.

I shrug. "You drive like you know I'll follow."

She laughs. "Good answer."

We drift toward the door together. I close the lid gently and slide the bench in with my knee. The pencil is still on the ledge; I put it where it belongs, even though no one asked me to. Old habits.

We step into the hall. The world is louder out here—footsteps, voices, a whistle from the field, another scale from a practice room. The light is different too, boxier. Kaori looks both ways though there's nothing to check for. She has her case in her hand and a small piece of hair stuck to her cheek that she doesn't notice. I don't reach to fix it. That's not our distance yet...

She glances at me. "Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow," I say.

"Good," she says. "Don't make me chase you."

"You already did," I say.

She smiles. "True."

We stand there for a second longer, not because we need to, but because the day feels like it's balancing on this small pause and I don't want to knock it off. The prick taps once, a soft metronome at the back of my head. Keep going. Watch. Learn. I nod to it. I hear it. I won't forget.

Kaori shifts the case to her other hand. "Text Tsubaki," she says, as if she can read the message waiting in my pocket. "Tell her you're not doing anything dumb."

"I'll tell her I'm doing something smart," I say.

"That'll scare her more," she says, amused.

"True," I admit.

She starts to walk and I match her step. We don't talk about anything else important. We don't need to. We pass the crooked flyer with the smiling cello. We pass the window where the light falls in squares. When we reach the corner, she taps my sleeve—just once—like she did before the door.

"See you, piano man," she says with a tired but radiant smile

I nod "See you," I say.

She hums and goes one way. I stand for a breath and watch the spot she leaves behind, as if it will hold her outline for a second longer. Then I breathe out and turn. The music room is behind me. The day is still in front. The dream is still here if I move carefully.

Not now. Rest later.

I start walking.

Chapter Text

When she turns the corner and the hallway swallows her, the day feels wider and thinner at the same time. Noise spills back in—the slap of shoes, a shout from the field, a bell that isn't ours—but the center of it has moved. I stand there one more second, then I pick up my bag and head for the doors.

Outside, the air tastes like dust and sunlight. The gate squeaks. A scooter buzzes past and then fades. I cut left at the vending machines and take the street behind the music wing, the one with the crooked fence and the camellia bush that always looks confused about what season it is. It's a short walk if I don't think. It's a long walk if I do.

I think.

Money. Time. Those are the two pieces I can move. Everything else is a wall.

I already started, in small ways. I know which games end how. I know which stocks jump on which dates and which ones pretend to jump and then fall. I am not a genius; I am cheating with the answer key stuck under the desk. It still feels like work, because getting the answer on the paper without getting caught is its own test.

I can't throw big money at it. I don't have big money to throw. And moving big sums makes people ask questions. So I split things up. A little here, a little there. A small bet on a "surprise" winner that isn't a surprise to me. A short trade timed to an earnings call that I can say I guessed right on. I set limits even though setting limits feels like putting a leash on a fire hose. Greed is loud and sloppy. I don't have space for loud and sloppy.

It isn't about the win. It's about the runway. Money buys time, and time lets me turn what I know into something real.

A delivery truck huffs by my shoulder and drags a hot wind in its wake. I take the next crosswalk when it's empty and keep going. The convenience store on the corner has a handwritten sign about a limited candy drop that's already gone. Inside, a chime rings; outside, the sun picks out the scratches on the window like old sheet music.

Uncle might help. The thought steps out of line and then refuses to go back.

While he was a distant family member he was still family and I did get to know him in my previous life well.

I can see his face from the last time I saw him, half lit by a slideshow in a conference room that smelled like coffee and carpet glue. He speaks in the calm way that makes people write down his words even when they don't need to. He works in medicine—real medicine, not the kind you just memorize for a test. He knows people who live in labs. He could put me in a room with a person I can ask for a favor that isn't easy to grant.

Would they let me in? I'm a kid with a school bag and piano hands. If I say the right things—glassware, labeling, cleaning, inventory, data entry—the work that nobody wants but every lab needs—maybe. If I say the wrong thing—even once—they will show me the door so softly that I won't be sure it ever opened.

It's not even about one lab. It's about a door. Any door.

I pass a chain-link fence and the little park behind it. A boy is trying to do a pull-up on the low bar and keeps kicking his legs like swimming might help. His sister counts for him and lies about the numbers in his favor. He drops down and grins anyway. The sound of it reaches me and then slides off, like light on glass.

Kaori doesn't have a year. I push the words into the middle of the road and watch them sit there. They don't move. They don't get less true if I don't look at them. Months. That's what I have. That's what she has. I can hear the shape of the calendar even when nobody is writing on it.

The plan in my head is a map with missing bridges. I know the cure because I saw it—years from now, cleaner tools, faster systems, smarter machines that chew through problems in hours that take us weeks. Right now we have slow sequencers and slower approval. We have models that guess. We have programs that will break if I ask them two extra questions. I'm trying to pour a river into a straw. I can do it, but not fast enough.

So I need shortcuts. Borrowed machines. Quiet help. A room with a centrifuge I can use when nobody needs it. A freezer where I can keep something without twenty forms. A terminal with the right software, or a person who will run the code and let me look over their shoulder. Even the chance to watch other hands do it, to mark the steps, would save me weeks.

Uncle knows the kinds of people who keep keys on lanyards. He also knows which rules bend and which ones break and cost you your job. I'll have to ask like I understand that. I do understand that. I will not say the word "cure." I will say "learn." I will say "observe." I will say "assist." And I will mean all of it.

I rehearse the ask as I walk. Not a speech. Pieces.

"I'm curious about lab work."

"I'm reliable with routine tasks."

"I can take notes. I can sort samples. I can follow a protocol."

"I won't touch anything I shouldn't."

"I'm good at standing still for a long time and doing something precise without getting bored." (That one is true in my bones. Years of scales taught me that. Years of playing for hours under my mother's eye taught me that twice.)

My phone buzzes once in my pocket and makes me jump even though I'm expecting nothing. I don't look. If it's a joke from Watari I'll answer later. If it's Tsubaki, she will come find me with her feet if I ignore her too long. If it's empty, it doesn't matter anyway.

I pass the bus stop and the poster with the cartoon train that always looks too happy to be a train. A sparrow hops along the curb with a noodle in its beak like it stole a violin bow and doesn't know what to do with it. I turn onto my street. The paint on the guardrail is new in two places and old in three. The building across from ours has hanging plants on every balcony like it's trying to be a garden but can't remember how.

My door sticks like always. Inside, the air holds last night's tea and the faint clean sting of dish soap. I drop my bag on the chair that isn't a chair anymore because it only holds bags. The clock on the microwave flashes a wrong time and dares me to fix it. I don't. A note on the table says a delivery will come tomorrow. That could be strings. That could be nothing.

The piano sits in the corner like a promise and a dare. The light from the window lays a stripe across the lid. Dust collects in that stripe if I leave it alone for more than a day. Today I don't wipe it. I sit on the bench and let the wood creak a little and then settle. I put my hands flat on my thighs so I don't play without meaning to.

Playing with her pulled me back into myself. That's the truth. Music makes space in my head where I can stand up straight. But the space fills fast. The other truth is heavier and it knocks.

I open the fallboard and look at the keys. They look back. There is comfort here and there is danger. The comfort is simple. The danger is simpler: it will be easy to hide in this and call it the work I need to do. It will be easy to spend the hours on arpeggios and runs and the kind of polish that loves to eat whole days. That time must live somewhere else now. Music is how I stay close to her. Money and study are how I keep her here.

I close the fallboard again, this time gently, so it doesn't click. I pull my notebook out of my bag and flip past staff paper and half-started lists until I find a clean page. I write in a block print so I can't pretend I didn't see what I wrote. No flourishes. No excuses.

What I can move:
– Money.
– Access.
– Time (if I'm smart with the first two).

Money:
– Keep bets small. (No patterns. No streaks that look like a signal.)
– Rotate sites and accounts. (Don't be lazy.)
– Stocks only on things I can explain if someone asks. (Product launches, earnings. No "gut feelings.")
– Keep cash on hand for fast buys. Prepaid cards. (Write down where they are; stop losing receipts.)
– Don't get greedy. Greed makes noise. Noise draws a crowd.

Access:
– Uncle. Ask for shadow work. (Glassware, labels, anything.)
– Don't say "cure." Don't say "personal." Say "learn." Say "help."
– If Uncle says no, ask for a name. (One step sideways is still forward.)
– University open seminars? (Public talks. Good place to listen without questions.)
– Foundations. Rare disease groups. (They know who will call back.)
– Quiet clinics. (Pay for a consult if I have to. Money buys an hour. An hour matters.)

Tools gap (now vs later):
– Slow sequencing times. (Plan around weeks, not hours.)
– Modeling weak. (Find a person, not a program.)
– Reagents, vectors, assays—cost. (Money goes here.)
– Validation takes time. (Pilot, then expand. Don't promise more than I can prove.)

I sit back and look at the list and feel nothing dramatic. No swell of certainty. No dread. Just a clear sense of the ground under my feet. It's not stable, but it's real.

I pull out my phone and open a blank message to Uncle, then close it. I open it again. If I call, I'll talk too much. If I email, I'll sound like a child who copied words from a brochure. A message is the middle. Short. Plain. Respectful. I can send it, then shut the lid and walk away before I ask the phone to change the answer while I'm watching.

"Hi. Can I ask your advice about science-related part-time work? I want to learn how real labs run. I can handle routine tasks. I'm reliable. If that's not possible, a name to email would help. Thank you."

I stare at it. I take out "part-time." I add "after school." I delete "after school." I add "observe, label, clean." I delete "clean," because it looks like I'm begging to mop floors and I am, but I don't want to sound like I think that's nothing. I put "label" back. I put "assist" in, then take it out, then put it back. I read the whole thing aloud in a voice that doesn't sound like me and decide it's good enough.

I don't send it.

Not yet. I need to line up money so I can say yes to anything that has a price tag I didn't see coming. I need to check the next set of "surprises" on the schedule and make sure I'm not mixing the dates. Small mistakes cost too much now. I don't have spare days to pay for them.

I flip to the back of the notebook and draw a calendar grid by hand. The boxes lean. I write in them anyway. Release dates. Matches. Calls. The points where the world I remember intersects the world I'm standing in. It looks like a dot-to-dot. If I connect them right, a picture will appear. If I connect them wrong, it will just be a mess of lines.

I get up to pour water and stare at the sink while it runs. The water hisses against the steel and echoes in the bowl. The glass fogs a little in my hand. I swallow and feel it go all the way down. My body reminds me that it has needs even when my head would like to turn them off. Eat. Sleep. Breathe. The basic verbs.

Tsubaki would scold me and then bring a bento big enough to injure someone. Watari would say something about protein and then challenge me to a race I didn't agree to. Kaori... Kaori would tilt her head and read the truth off my face and choose to play anyway. She already did.

I go back to the table and write "Call Uncle" at the top of tomorrow. Then I add "send message tonight" in small letters below it, because I know myself. If I wait, I might find a reason to wait more.

The thought of equipment walks in again and sits down. I picture a room with white floors and a hum I can't hear from the hall. I picture racks and tubes and labels that must match if the day is going to make sense. I picture gloves that make your hands clumsy for the first ten minutes and then feel like skin. I can almost feel the stiffness of the lab coat and the way the sleeves always want to dip too close to the bench. I picture someone older than me handing me a protocol sheet and saying, "Don't think. Just do it the way it says." I am good at that. I am also good at knowing when to think anyway. Both skills matter here.

The cure sits behind my eyes like sheet music I memorized long ago. I could play it. I can't prove to anyone else that I can play it. Not yet. In the future I remember, proof is cheap because the machines do the convincing. Now, proof eats time. Proof eats reagents. Proof eats favors. It eats money and sleep and then asks for seconds. I will feed it. I don't have to like the appetite to understand it.

My phone buzzes again, a single, patient vibration. I ignore it again. If it's important, it will ring. If it's not, it will still be there when I'm done writing down the one thought I don't want to lose:

Don't confuse motion with progress.
Practice is motion. Planning is motion. Buying a book is motion. Progress is different. Progress is a result on paper, a contact who replies, a slot on a lab schedule, a model that runs and doesn't crash. Count the right things.

I put a dot next to it like I'm grading myself. Then I finally check the phone.

It's a weather alert about wind tomorrow. It's also a coupon for noodles. It's also a blank screen once I swipe both away. I exhale and laugh once at myself, which feels like opening a window and then closing it again.

I text Tsubaki a photo of the crooked fence by the school with no caption, because I know she will reply with "you finally looked up" and then ask if I ate. I don't send it. I don't want to pull her into this lane of my head tonight. She will come in with her whole heart and then I'll have to slow down for both of us. I love her for that. I can't afford it. Not today.

The light shifts on the floor in a long, slow slide. Somewhere down the hall, a neighbor's TV climbs into laughter and then steps back down. I check the time because I don't trust the sun to tell me the truth anymore. I have hours. Not many. Enough to get three things done if I don't pretend they are six.

I open my bag again and pull out the stack of printouts I shouldn't have wasted paper on but did because reading on paper sticks better in my head. The titles are dry in the way that hides how important they are: case series, trial results, mechanism notes. I underline with a cheap pen that bleeds if I push too hard. I write questions in the margins that look like a stranger wrote them because I'm trying to trick my brain into answering as if we're two people and not one tired boy.

I read until the lines stop making words and start making a fence I can't climb. Then I stop. Not because I want to. Because stopping now means I can start again later without hating the page. I tap the stack square on the table like that might make the ideas line up inside it.

Dinner is an apple and a packet of crackers and the thought that I should do better. I eat the apple and leave the crackers on the counter as if I'm saving them for someone who isn't me.

I think about calling Uncle again. I think about how he will hear my voice and ask me how school is and I will tell him the truth and not the truth. I think about him saying yes and me panicking because yes means I have to walk into a room where I don't speak the language yet. I think about him saying no and me finding a way around the no with patience and names and money. I think about him saying "maybe" and me having to hold still while the word stretches time out like taffy.

I sit on the bench again and this time I let my fingers sit on the keys without pressing. The room holds its breath with me. I can feel the weight of each key under the pads of my fingers. That weight has been the one sure measure of my days. I know exactly how much pressure it takes to make this instrument tell the truth. I know exactly how little it takes to turn truth into shouting. That line is thin. I learned it the hard way. I can walk it.

I press down one note. Soft. Then I lift my hand and stand up.

"Not yet," I tell the piano, which is another way of telling myself.

I take the phone back out, open the message to Uncle, change "Can I ask your advice" to "Could I ask your advice," because the second one reads like a door I'm knocking on, not a door I assume he'll open. I add "I can come by the hospital lobby after school any day," then delete "any day" and put "this week," then take "this week" out because it sounds like I'm not thinking past Friday. I leave it as "after school." I add "Thank you for reading," because he is busy and reading is already a gift.

I hit send.

I put the phone face-down and push it a little away from me like it might bite.

In the silence that follows, the house clicks in small ways—wood, pipes, a neighbor's footsteps that I've learned to translate into which neighbor it is. I write one more list before the feeling fades:

Tomorrow:
– Check dates. (No mistakes.)
– Place small, safe bets. (Don't get cute.)
– Call the foundation whose number I circled. (Ask for public info first. Listen twice, talk once.)
– Start draft email to Professor K. (Uncle mentioned him once. Ask for a seminar schedule.)
– Buy a better notebook. (This one is falling apart.)
– Eat real dinner. (Write it down so you don't pretend you forgot.)

I close the notebook and lay my hand on the cover for a second, like I'm calming a jumpy animal. It's a superstition, but it's my superstition now. It keeps me honest.

The room has gone blue around the edges. I stand, wash the apple core down the sink, and look at my reflection in the window. I look like a student who is very tired. I look like someone a teacher would tell to go to bed. I look like someone who could sit down at the piano and make a bright sound that would make a girl smile even on a day when she is counting breaths.

I turn away from the window and look at the clock again. Numbers are numbers. They don't care how I feel about them. I have the rest of tonight and all of tomorrow and then the next day and the next day, until I run out of days. I don't know when that is. I know it's closer than anyone else thinks.

I pick up the notebook and put it in my bag, then take it back out and put it on the table where I'll see it first thing in the morning. I put the pen on top of it. I turn off the light over the sink. The room shrinks to the circle of the ceiling lamp.

I go back to the piano and touch the lid one more time with my palm. The lacquer is cool. I leave my hand there until the cool goes away.

"I need time," I say into the empty room, because saying it makes it real and real things are easier to measure. "Money can buy some."

I let my hand fall to my side.

"I don't have enough of either."

I stand there a moment longer, not moving, and then I start getting ready for the night I already know I won't spend sleeping.

I don't turn on music. I need the room quiet enough to hear my thoughts hit the table.

Laptop on. Notebook open. Pen uncapped. I stack the printouts in three piles: trials, mechanisms, case reports. I slide the calendar I drew earlier beside the keyboard and write "tonight" across the top of it so I can't pretend it's a plan for some other version of me.

First: money. I check the dates again. I check them twice. The game that flips in the last minute—tomorrow. The call that drops guidance and sends people into a panic—Friday afternoon. The stock that spikes on a product leak—two weeks from now, like clockwork. I break each move into a small, boring action. Boring looks safe. Boring doesn't trend.

I keep amounts low enough to look like luck and attention. I spread things around. I set the orders and then close the tabs so I don't stare at the numbers and teach myself a new kind of superstition. I write the confirmations in the notebook because paper doesn't ping.

Next: names. I pull up the foundation site and skim the page that explains their mission in polite phrases. I copy down the contact line for "general inquiries" and the one for "research liaison." I draft something short and plain.

"Hello. I'm a student interested in rare-disease research. Would you point me to public seminars, published resources, or people who give educational talks? Thanks for any guidance."

I save it. I don't mention Kaori. I don't mention timelines. I don't mention anything they can't hold up in a meeting without raising eyebrows. I'm asking for a map, not a miracle.

I search the hospital site Uncle's team uses and find the monthly lecture series. Most of them will be over my head. I will go anyway. Listening is a skill. I know how to sit still while someone else does the hard part. I know how to catch one useful sentence in an hour of language that isn't mine.

I type a draft to Professor K—the name I half-remember from a boring family dinner where Uncle talked shop and I pretended not to listen.

"Dear Professor K, my name is Arima Kousei. I'm a high school student hoping to observe or volunteer in a research setting so I can learn how labs operate. I can help with routine tasks and I'm careful with instructions. If there are public seminars or open sessions I could attend, I'd be grateful for the schedule. Thank you for your time."

I leave it in drafts. I'll reread it in the morning when my eyes aren't sandpaper.

My phone buzzes against the table. I glance down.

Tsubaki: Make sure to get sleep, dummy. And make sure to eat.

I smile before I can stop it. My thumbs move.

Me: I ate an apple. Upgrading to "actual food" soon.

The dots appear. Disappear. Appear.

Tsubaki: Apple is a snack. Dinner is dinner.

Me: Your very Bossy.

Tsubaki: No I'm Effective. Did you play today?

Me: Yeah...

Tsubaki: With her?

Me: Yes with her.

A beat.

Tsubaki: Good. I'm glad. Don't make me come over there and throw a blanket on your head.

Me: I believe you would.

Tsubaki: Correct. Eat. Then sleep. Promise.

I look at the word Promise and feel it tug. I want to write I can't. I want to write not tonight. I also want her to worry less. I split the difference.

Me: I'll eat. I'll sleep some. I promise.

She sends a sticker of a small bear shaking a spoon at a bowl. Then, a moment later:

Tsubaki: Night, piano hands.

Me: Night Tsubaki.

The screen goes dark. The room settles back around me. I lean back in the chair and let the little warmth from her message sit where it landed. Then I push the chair closer and get on with it.

Sigh.... Sorry Tsubaki... It was gonna have to be another long night. I hope I can perhaps get a few hours or she will grill me in the morning....

Now...

What can I do in one night that matters? I make another short list.

– Organize references.
– Sketch steps from memory.
– Identify the parts I cannot do alone.
– Decide which parts money can rent.

I build a folder structure in the simplest way possible so I won't lose things when I'm tired. "Theory." "Protocols." "Contacts." "Costs." In "Theory," I write out the cure in a plain outline, like I'm explaining it to a version of me who doesn't trust big words. Step by step. No leaps. No "etc." If I can't explain the step, I mark it with a box I can't tick yet.

In "Protocols," I collect the little tasks that eat time: how to spin, how long to chill, which buffers hate light, which steps need ice like a threat, which ones only pretend to. I paste public guides, lab handouts I find, an old PDF that looks like it was scanned in a hurry. I highlight warnings. I add "ask before touching" in red at the top, as if I'll forget.

In "Contacts," I put Uncle at the top, then leave space for the names I want. I add the foundation email. I add Professor K. I leave lines blank on purpose. Empty lines remind me the file isn't finished.

In "Costs," I list the things I can't fake with patience: kits, fees, consults. I add generous padding to each number so the totals scare me into being careful. Money is a lever; it is also a hole if I swing too hard.

I pause when the outline of the cure reaches the part I can name but not build with what I have. The future made that section fast with tools built for it. Here, it's a set of steps I can only represent with arrows and words the software won't understand. I write "person, not program" in the margin and circle it. That means I need a mind already trained to do what I can't. That means I need to be in a room where that mind works.

I breathe in, slow. Out, slower. I think through the steps again, not to memorize them—my memory already holds them—but to feel where the delays live. Shipping. Approvals. Booking time. Waiting for a person who is busy to answer. All the soft, human gaps that add days to a calendar nobody else knows is counting down.

"Months," I say out loud. The word doesn't echo. It just sits on the desk between my hands and asks what I'm going to do about it.

She only had mere months.... The time spent together felt like a fleeting eternity, but there time spent together on this earth wasn't even a year...

I shook my head. I cant think about this right now.

I open the trial reports and read with a pen in hand. I don't trust myself to read passively anymore. I underline doses. I mark side effects, especially the weird ones that hide in the discussion section because they don't fit the neat table. I note outliers. I write questions in the margin where a patient responded too well and the authors shrugged and moved on. "Why this one?" I circle it twice.

An hour slips. Then another. I stand up to stretch, because if I don't I will forget I have a back and I need it. I drink water I don't want. I eat the rest of the crackers and salt makes the inside of my mouth feel like paper. I set a timer for fifteen minutes and close my eyes. Not to sleep. To reset whatever part of my brain starts turning letters into static.

The timer goes off, and I don't hit snooze. I get up, wash my face, and sit back down. The house is quiet in the particular way it gets after midnight, when even the street decides to stop explaining itself.

I open a new page and write the sentence I've been trying not to write.

She doesn't have a year.
I draw a line under it. A real line. Then I add:

She has months.

I tap the period with the pen like that will set the ink faster. I look at the words until they stop being heavy and start being simple. Clarity is better than comfort. Comfort doesn't move anything.

I make a practical schedule that will probably break on the first day. Still, I need a starting point. Wake up. School. Practice with her or on my own. Two to three hours for money work. Three to four hours for reading and outlining. One hour for calls and emails earlier in the day when people answer. Food somewhere in there. Sleep where it fits. Power naps if it doesn't.

I list the traps: chasing every new paper, falling into forums full of confident strangers, wasting time on tools I can't access, letting fear pick my tasks instead of logic. I write Don't in front of each one until the page looks like a warning poster.

My phone lights up with Uncle's reply.

"Kousei, good to hear from you. Come by the lobby Tuesday after school. We can talk fifteen minutes. I don't promise anything, but I'll listen. If you're serious, be on time."

My chest loosens. Not because it's a yes. Because it isn't a no.

Me: Thank you. Tuesday after school. I'll be there on time.

I put the phone down again and sit with the quiet. Tuesday is close. Tuesday is far. I can get a lot done between now and Tuesday if I don't pretend the clock is a friend.

I go back to the outline and add small things I can do without permission. Anatomy refreshers. Terminology drills. Safety basics. If someone gives me a protocol, I don't want to ask what every third word means. I don't need to impress anyone. I need to not slow the room.

When my eyes blur again, I stand. My legs feel like they forgot how to hold me for a second, then remember. I wash the cup, set it upside down on the rack, and wipe the counter because it's a task I can complete. I put my notebook back on the table in its exact place and lay the pen across it. I check the orders one last time, not to second-guess, but to make sure I didn't leave a door half-open.

I look at the piano and let myself think about her for a full minute with no numbers attached. The way she set her feet. The way her laugh made the air feel light enough to carry. The way she looked at me when she said We're joining and it sounded like weather, not a question. The way she didn't flinch when the line got hard; she leaned and I met her and the whole room lined up for a breath.

I pick up my phone. I don't overthink it.

Me to Kaori: Today was great. Thank you for pulling me along.

I don't expect an answer right now. I don't need one. I plug the phone in and leave it on the table so I won't scroll myself into a hole.

I check the time. Morning is close enough to touch. I can try for two hours of sleep or I can ride this line to sunrise and pay for it tomorrow. I choose the two hours. Not because Tsubaki told me to—though she did—but because the math says a brain that got some rest makes fewer mistakes, and mistakes cost days I don't have.

I lie down. The ceiling is the same ceiling it has always been. I breathe in slow, out slower, and count backwards by fours until the numbers stop sticking to me.

I don't dream.

***

Kaori

I almost float down the steps outside the music wing. My case bumps against my knee in a friendly way, like it's reminding me I remembered to bring it. The light in the hall had been flat and kind; outside it turns bright and sharp. I blink and it doesn't bother me. I don't think anything could bother me for at least ten minutes.

He said yes. Not grudging. Not hiding. Not with excuses. He just said yes like it was the obvious thing to say.

I told myself I wasn't scared to ask him. I was, a little. Not the big kind of scared that stops you from stepping on stage. The small kind that makes you worry your words will come out bent. I thought I might have to talk him into it. I had lines ready in case he said no. I didn't need any of them. For a second I felt silly for practicing speeches in my head. Then I felt free for not needing them.

I hum the opening bar of Saint-Saëns as I walk, and then I stop humming because it turns into a laugh and people look at me if I do both. I check my phone out of habit. No messages, which means I didn't miss anything. I put it away. I carry the feeling instead.

On the train, I find a spot by the door and pretend the floor has a beat. It always does if you listen right. A boy in a baseball cap nods along to music I can't hear. A woman rests her head against the window and closes her eyes for two stops like she came here just to borrow a nap. The station names roll past in their steady voice. I read them the way you read a score you already know. They calm me.

At home, I call out, "I'm back," and the house answers.

Mama: In the kitchen!
Papa: Welcome back, Kaori!

I set the case down on the low table and undo the latches. The sound of them always makes me feel like I'm opening a storybook. I check the bridge, check the strings, check the chin rest. Habit, habit, habit. The little red mark on my jaw fades as I stand there. It always fades. I don't rub it. Rubbing just makes it mad.

Mama pops her head around the doorway. "Shoes," she says, but she's smiling, so it isn't really a scold.

"I know," I say, kick them off, line them up, and skip the last step into the kitchen. It smells like ginger and something with broth. Her hair is up in a clip that always looks like it's working too hard.

"How was your day?" she asks. The normal way. The way that gives me space to say "fine" if that's all I have.

"Good," I say, and then I can't help myself. "Better than good. We played. He played like he was already there before I was."

Her eyebrows go up. "He?"

"Kousei," I say, trying not to sound like a trumpet. "Piano man."

"Ah," she says, drawn out, the way you say I see without adding anything else. "You look happy." She hands me a spoon and a bowl without looking, because she knows where my hands will be.

"We're entering Towa," I say, and my voice stays steady like it belongs to me. "He said yes."

Papa appears like he was summoned by the word competition. "Towa?" he repeats, half proud, half concerned. "That's soon."

"I know," I say, and I do. Soon is good. Soon means I don't have to hold my breath as long.

He leans against the doorframe with his arms crossed the way he does when he's measuring how serious I am. "And you're ready to carry that much playing?"

"I'm always ready," I say. Then I soften it. "I'll pace myself." I lay the spoon down like it might break if I don't treat it well. "It will be fun."

Mama looks at me like she can see the edge of my excitement and the edge of my energy at the same time. "Eat first," she says. "Then tell us everything."

We sit. I try not to talk with my hands while I talk, but my hands keep forgetting. I tell them about the moment we lined up so cleanly it felt like the air got thinner. I tell them how he didn't make me drag him; he kept the floor under me even when I took the corner fast on purpose. I tell them how he said yes to Towa and it sounded like he was relieved to say it. I don't tell them about the tiny stillness in my left hand before the tricky entrances. I don't lie. I just don't invite that part into the room right now.

Papa listens like he's watching a match and I'm winning by a point. He asks practical questions. "What's the date? Who else is entering? Do you need new strings?" Mama asks if I remembered to drink water. I hold up my glass like proof.

When I help clear, Mama touches my arm. "Don't overdo it," she says softly, the way you say be careful when you know careful isn't the point.

"I know," I say, equally soft. "I'll be smart."

She kisses the top of my head like I'm still shorter than her. "Smart and brave," she says. "Both."

In my room, I set the case on the chair and ease the violin out like it could bruise. I wipe the strings, check the bow hair where it thins, and make a note on a sticky tab: re-hair soon. The chin rest left a stripe, faint now. My fingers tingle in a way that means I played well and with weight. I flex them slowly. Left hand, then right. The tremor that visits me sometimes after long phrases flickers and fades. Better than last week. Worse than last month. I don't count it out loud.

I sit on the edge of the bed and let the day replay, but only the bright parts. The moment we landed the cadence. The way he smiled without meaning to. The way I told him not to be late and he didn't roll his eyes; he just said do like he meant it.

I pick up my phone. A message from him is waiting.

Today was great. Thank you for pulling me along.

My mouth does a little curl that I can't stop. I tap a reply.

You didn't need pulling. See you tomorrow.

I think about adding a face. I don't. I add Don't be late and then delete it because I already said it once and I like not repeating myself when I don't have to.

I put the phone down and breathe in. The breath catches halfway and then keeps going. It's nothing. It's just the way air feels in the evening when a day has been big. I stretch the way my teacher showed me: shoulders down, neck long, arms loose. I count to eight and let the stretch melt. The little ache that lives under my left shoulder blade sighs and quiets.

Mama knocks and opens the door without waiting for my come in, because she is Mama. "Medicine," she says, and hands me the small cup and the bottle. She doesn't look at my face. She looks at my hands. She always has.

"Thanks," I say. I swallow. The taste is chalky and sweet in a way that makes my tongue want to argue. I drink water after and it helps.

"Tomorrow after school?" she asks, and it isn't really a question.

"Practice," I say.

"With him?"

"Probably," I say, and the word feels new and right. "We need to set the tempo together, and it's easier in person."

She smiles in that small, proud way that says she remembers the first time I made a real sound and the first time I stood on a stage and the first time I told her I wanted to choose one path and not another. "Don't run too far ahead," she says. "Let him find you."

"I know where he is," I say. It comes out sure. It feels sure.

When she leaves, I pull the comforter up around my legs and the room gets quiet in a gentler way than the train did. I count the tiny victories: my bow didn't skate when I asked for weight; my entrance landed; my joke at lunch made him look up. Little wins. Good wins.

The other counts live in another drawer. I open it a crack. The deeper breaths before hard lines. The way my left fingers sometimes set like they're listening for a click that isn't there. The small tremor after, quick, private, gone if you blink. The tired that follows me like a shadow on bright days and gets bolder on the dull ones.

I close the drawer. Not locked. Just closed.

I think about how I called him piano man to his face and he didn't flinch. I think about how he looked at me in the hallway and didn't hide that he was tired. I think about how he stood a little straighter when we started playing, like his body remembered what it was for.

"Good," I tell the ceiling. "Good."

I'm very pleased

I turn off the light and the room goes blue and then darker. My eyes adjust. The shape of the case on the chair looks like a sleeping animal. The street outside moves in ribbons. I listen to the house settle. I listen to my breath. It evens out.

I don't count the months. I don't need to. My body already knows the math. It isn't a year. It's sooner than that. It's soon. I press my hand flat against my chest until I feel the thrum slow. I take another breath, steady, steady, steady, and it holds.

"Tomorrow," I whisper, because the word tastes nice and I want to keep it. "Tomorrow."

I close my eyes and keep the picture of him at the piano in my head. Not the famous one with spotlights. The real one from today. Hands steady. Shoulders loose. Mouth almost smiling. Waiting for me to come in. I walk into that picture and the room in my mind is bright and clean and easy.

I fall asleep like that—giddy, a little tired, and ready to do it again—holding both truths at once: the joy that feels like sunlight, and the small, quiet fragility that asks me to be careful with it.

Chapter Text

I fall asleep on the roof without meaning to.

Warm sun. A square of shade from the stairwell cube. Wind moving the wire on the safety fence so it clicks like a soft metronome. I tell myself I'll close my eyes for one minute. The minute opens and becomes a room.

Twinkle-Twinkle Little Star~….

In the room there's a tiny upright with a smiley sticker on middle C. A child sits beside me with legs that don't reach the floor and claps on the wrong beats with perfect confidence. Kaori is there with her violin tucked under her chin, but she isn't playing yet. She's singing the simple tune about the star, voice light and close, like breath on glass. The words turn the air kind. The melody is so easy it feels like it was in my bones before I had bones.

Oh I wonder where you are~..

Hiroko stands in the doorway with crossed arms and a mouth that pretends to be stern. She pushed us into this—"go help, you two, music is a language, teach it out loud"—and now she watches like she's grading us for warmth instead of skill. Kaori winks at the child and counts them in again. I put my hand over the child's clapping hands, guide them soft-slow-soft-slow, and let the left hand mark a small bed of chords under Kaori's voice. Notes like round stones in shallow water. Clear. Shining a little.

Kaori's laugh breaks between phrases when the child tosses a flourish at the end of a line that doesn't need one. She accepts it anyway. "Good choice," she says, like the music wrote itself just to please them. She sings again, not loud, but whole, and I play small so her voice stays the center. It's the kind of moment that makes time sit down and behave.

Then something shifts.

The sticker face on middle C goes flat. The air in the room thins. The window light goes from gold to bleach. Kaori keeps singing, but the sound starts to come through water. The child claps a beat late; their hands echo; the echo runs past me. I try to bring the chords closer, to pin the rhythm in place. A tick cuts through the space, too clean to be a noise in the room. It's the roof fence. It's the day. It's that steady tap inside my head that says move.

Kaori's voice walks backward away from me. I reach. My fingers brush only air. The upright becomes a rectangle of light. Hiroko's shadow folds smaller and smaller until it is a coin on the floor. The child smiles and claps proudly for the wrong reason.

The tick is loud now.

I open my eyes.

Sky. Blue so white at the middle I have to squint. The concrete is warm through my shirt. My eyes are wet; the wind licks the tears sideways and cool. I blink hard and a face fills the space above me so fast my heart stutters.

Kaori.

She's close enough that I can see the tiny fleck of gold in her left iris that only shows when the sun gets it right. Her mouth is pressed tight. Her brows are up in the middle and down at the edges. Anger and worry elbowing each other.

"Where were you?" she says, all at once. "I looked for you all through lunch. The Towa is tomorrow, piano man. We needed to practice."

I push up on my elbows. The blood rush leaves my head in a quick wave. The fence clicks. The roof hums. My throat feels thick with the dream I lost on the way out.

"I'm—" The word scratches. I clear it. "I'm sorry. I closed my eyes for a minute."

"Your 'minute' has been half an hour." She points at my face without touching it. "You were crying."

The air stings the tracks under my eyes. I wipe them with the heel of my hand like I can erase the proof. "Dream," I say. "It doesn't matter."

"It matters when you vanish," she says. "I checked the practice rooms. I checked the halls. I checked the cafeteria twice. I ran around like an idiot while you were up here becoming a ghost."

I drag myself up to sitting. My bag is a lumpy pillow under my head. I set it upright. My body wants to lie back down. I make it sit up straighter instead.

"You look like a zombie," she goes on. "Did you stay up again?"

A small, guilty silence. I try to pretend it's not silence by adjusting the strap on my bag.

"Notes," I say finally. "I had to finish some—"

She doesn't let me finish. "Notes don't win a competition. People do. People with blood in their faces."

"I'll be fine by tomorrow."

"That is not how 'fine' works." She breathes in like she's counting to four and deciding whether to continue on five. She chooses six. "Do you know how hard it was to get us into Towa? We were a late entry, Kousei. The list was closing. I asked the clerk to give us five minutes and she gave me one. I promised we were ready. I promised my partner would show up, on time, awake." Her jaw shifts. "Don't make me look like a liar."

The word late clicks in my chest like the fence wire clicks in the wind. She has already moved so many pieces I didn't see. She already fought for the door so all I'd have to do is walk through it. I look at her and behind the anger I see the edge of the push it took. Not tantrum. Not charm. Will. She chose this and dragged the world an inch to make room.

"I'm sorry," I say again, better. "I should have told you where I was going."

"You should have been where you said you'd be." The words land sharp. Then she exhales, and the edge dulls a fraction. "I was worried that you..." She doesn't finish that sentence. She folds it and puts it somewhere behind her eyes. "Next time, text."

"Right." I pat my pocket like the phone might answer for me. It stays a lump. "I will."

She studies my face, less anger now, more measuring. "Did you eat?" she says.

I think of the apple at my sink and the crackers on the counter from yesterday and the way Tsubaki bumped my shoulder on the way to school this morning and told me, low, that I was going to crack if I didn't start sleeping like a person again. I think of how I nodded and said, "I will," and then didn't.

"Not yet," I admit.

"Of course not." The line twitching in her cheek smooths out. "You'll eat after school. And you'll drink water that isn't coffee pretending. And you will meet me in the music room when the final bell rings. The very second it rings."

I nod. The nod feels like a small bow and a small promise at once. My chest is tight and lighter at the same time—a strange combination I'm starting to know too well.

She glances at the stairwell. "Lunch is over," she says. "I needed you then. I'm still mad about that. But we'll use after school. We'll run the opening. We'll set the corners. I'll try not to speed up unless you deserve it." Her mouth tips like she might smile and then decides not to give me that yet. "Tomorrow we walk out together."

"Tomorrow," I say. The word lands inside like a stake I can tie a line to.

For a beat we say nothing. Sky. Fence. The distant megaphone at the field saying something nobody ever listens to. In the quiet, another memory shoulders through, old and too bright. Another hallway. Another year. Her hand at her mouth, eyes bright with tears she tried to swallow, asking me to play with her. Begging, then laughing at herself for begging, then begging again like she couldn't help it. I thought it was all about getting me back on stage, about music being the cure for my particular broken. I didn't understand what else she had under her skin, what she was keeping steady by sheer force of joy. I gave her a boy made of dense fog and apology when she was holding herself together with smiling and bravery and pain.

The guilt settles where the tightness already is. It fits too well.

Kaori watches me as if she can see that shift happen, though I don't let any sound out with it. "Where did you just go?" she says, softer.

"Back," I say. "Forward. I don't know." I pull the strap of my bag over my shoulder because it's something to do with my hands that looks like moving. "I'm here now."

"You better be," she says, but it lands different, less scold, more anchor. "I signed us up because I know what happens when you're really here." She rubs her thumb against the violin callus at the base of her first finger, a small, thoughtless move. "Don't make me drag you."

"You did drag me," I say, and can't help the half-smile that comes. "All over the building."

She gives me a flat look. "Do not get cute. You're still in trouble."

"Understood."

Her eyes soften, finally. "Good." She tips her head, the way she does when she's about to mark the downbeat. "Stand up."

I stand. My legs argue for one second; then they decide to agree. The sun has moved far enough that the edge of shade reaches our shoes and makes a thin black strip that looks like a tightrope. She stands inside it without looking down.

"Drink," she says, and shoves a small bottle into my hand from her bag. "All of it."

I drink. It tastes like cheap plastic and the inside of a cloud. It helps anyway.

"Eat something after class," she says. "Not crackers."

"Tsubaki said the same thing this morning," I say. "She told me I was going to break if I kept this up."

"She's right." Kaori slants a look toward the field where a whistle blows and that same wind carries the cheer. "I need you intact."

"I will be," I say. The metronome in my head clicks once, faint. Not now. Later. Work, then rest. But also: show up.

She steps closer, close enough to flick my forehead with her finger, gentle. "No vanishing. If you need to sleep, sleep where I can find you."

"That's a strange rule," I say.

"It's my rule," she says. "We keep each other in sight now. Tomorrow isn't big enough to waste any of it."

"Agreed."

She looks like she wants to say more and can't decide which more to choose. Her jaw works once. She lets it go. "Bell in two," she says instead. "Come down. Class now, practice after. And—" Her eyes narrow again, but there's humor underneath it. "—wash your face unless you plan to go to math looking like you watched a tragic drama at lunch."

"I did," I say. "In my head."

She fails at not smiling. It is small, bright at the center. "Idiot," she says, but it's soft. She turns toward the door.

I follow. The stairwell is cool and smells like concrete that remembers rain. Our footsteps knock a tidy rhythm on the steps. My body feels like it's trying to balance two weights on one shoulder and discovering it can, if it pays attention to where the weight sits.

Half a flight down she stops and turns back, looking up at me. I stop two steps above. We are level.

"Listen," she says. "I know I yelled. I'll probably yell again. I'm not sorry about that. I need you awake. I need you with me." She holds my eyes steady. "I fought for the late entry because I want this with you, not later with a stranger. So don't make me fight you too."

The apology I gave her a minute ago wasn't enough for this. I find another one, heavier but cleaner.

"I'm sorry," I say. "I know this means a lot to you... I'll put my full heart into it too Kaori"

She blinks, slow. The steps are a little too narrow for what I want to say to sit on them without falling, but I try anyway. "I see you," I add. "Now."

A breath catches in her throat so quietly I would miss it if I was not looking for small catches. She puts her hand on the rail and gives it a short, decisive pat, like she's sealing something in place.

"Good," she says. The word is almost a whisper, then firmer. "Good."

The bell goes. The sound cuts the stairwell into pieces and then tapes them back together badly. She steps down one; I step down two; we fall into the same pace though our legs choose different lengths.

On the first-floor landing, before the door, she reaches out and takes my sleeve like she did at the music room yesterday. A touch, not a hold. "After school," she says. "Don't be late."

"I won't," I say.

Her mouth quirks. "You say that like you know you mean it."

"I do."

"Okay." She lets go. "Then I'll see you first."

"First," I repeat.

She pushes the door with her shoulder. Noise rushes in and folds around us: running feet, locker doors, the brief, sharp cheer of someone winning something that doesn't matter. Kaori steps out into it like it's air she owns. I step into it like it's a wave I can manage if I keep my balance.

She looks over once as we split toward our different classrooms, only enough to make sure I'm moving. I lift the bottle she gave me in a small salute. She shakes her head at me and turns away.

My face is clean now. My eyes still feel raw. The metronome in my head sets a slow, patient beat. I let it stay. I will move to it, not be moved by it.

I slide into my seat as the teacher clears his throat. Lines on the board organize themselves into a kind of order I can copy. My pen obeys. My mind wants to run loops around the roof, the late entry, tomorrow's door. I keep it on a short leash.

At the edge of my vision, the window squares glare. Sky. Light. The memory of a child clapping the wrong beats with full faith. Kaori's voice riding the simple line and making it feel like the first song anyone ever sang. The way she stood over me, angry because she'd run through every room looking for me and time was small, and the way that anger carried a second edge that was not anger at all.

I breathe in. Out. The day steadies. The promise sits where I left it.

After school. First.

I can do that. Tomorrow we walk on stage together. Tonight I will try to choose the kind of work that makes tomorrow real, not just busy. No more vanishing. No more giving her the foggy version of me while she pretends the sun is easy.

The teacher calls a name that is not mine. Someone answers. My hand keeps moving. The beat holds. The bell will come again. I will move when it tells me to. And when I do, it will be toward her.

After the last bell, the music room smells like polish and warm dust. We take the Saint-Saëns from the top, one clean run to settle the edges. Kaori's sound is bright and lean; she leans into the corners like she trusts me to lay the floor early. I do. When she throws a little spark over the run, I keep the harmony flat and steady so the spark shows. We finish together, the cadence full. Silence after. Good silence.

"That's the last one," she says, fiddling the fine tuner a hair and then leaving it alone. "Save the rest for tomorrow."

"Agreed," I say, and I mean it. The metronome inside clicks slow and patient. For once, it isn't scolding.

We pack up. She snaps the latches in two quick beats; I close the fallboard without letting it click. By the door, she touches my sleeve, just once—habit now, like we're checking each other in. Then we step out.

Watari and Tsubaki are waiting by the shoe lockers like they were pretending not to wait. Watari swings his bag in wide arcs that make teachers nervous; Tsubaki has her hands in her pockets and a look that could scold a train into braking.

"There you are," Watari says, as if we were the late ones to his own party. "How's the thunder duo? Did the saints approve?"

"Saint-Saëns approved," Kaori says, deadpan. "Committees are still deliberating."

Tsubaki looks me up and down, unimpressed. "You still look like a zombie."

"Zombies don't play Saint-Saëns," I say.

"They try," Watari says. "But they drag the tempo."

Kaori points between them. "You two: audience, tomorrow. Front row. Loud clapping on the right beats."

Watari salutes with two fingers. "I was born to clap on the right beats."

"That's a lie," Tsubaki says.

He gasps. "Slander! I am rhythm itself."

"Rhythm itself tripped over the stairs this morning," she says, then tips her chin at me, quieter. "Eat dinner. Don't argue."

We fall into step, four across until the hallway squeezes us into twos. Outside the air is soft again, evening smoothing the light. The field whistle cuts short; the soccer team has drained into the locker room and brag. Students pour out in eddies. Shoes thump. Bike bells chirp like small birds.

Kaori walks just ahead, excited enough that her words come one notch faster than usual. "The program starts at two," she tells them. "We're not first but we're early. So be early." She points at Watari. "Don't get distracted by handing out your autograph."

"I only sign jerseys," he says, then adds, "unless it's a violin case," and ducks the playful swat she sends at his shoulder.

Tsubaki glances at Kaori. "You already signed them up?" She knows the answer, but she wants me to hear it again.

"We're on the list," Kaori says, with a flash of teeth that means victory, not humor. "Tomorrow's a good day to hear us."

Watari whistles low. "Our girl hustled."

"Obviously," Kaori says, a little proud, a little daring anyone to say she shouldn't have. "Tomorrow's a good day."

"Then we'll hear you," Tsubaki says. She bumps my arm with her elbow, not hard. "If he manages to show up upright."

"I'll be upright," I say.

"Hmm." She doesn't argue. She doesn't agree. She keeps walking, chin tipped like she's measuring the distance to tomorrow in meters and mouthfuls.

We cut past the vending machines. A can trapped halfway in a coil watches us like a sad eye. Watari shakes the unit; it refuses to be bribed by muscle. He promises revenge and jogs back to catch up. The four of us spill onto the main street together.

"Do we get a preview?" Watari asks. "Like, hum a bar so I can brag properly."

"Buy a ticket," Kaori says.

"It's free."

"Then buy me bread," she says. "Melon pan improves with altitude. Everyone knows this."

"Science," I add.

Tsubaki points at my face without looking. "Scientist, eat something green."

"Bread is green," Watari says. "If you leave it long enough."

Tsubaki gives him a flat look. "I will end you."

He throws his hands up in surrender and then grins at Kaori. "I'll be loud. Promise."

Kaori nods, pleased in the way of someone building a very particular kind of scaffolding around a day. "Good. I want the hall to feel like it's breathing with us."

We pass the gate. Watari's bike is chained near the end of the rack. He hops the last two steps, lands messy, recovers like it was style. "My chariot awaits," he declares. "I go to prepare my voice for applause."

"Don't strain anything," Tsubaki says.

"Jealousy is an ugly cologne," he says, and then points two fingers at me like they're a camera focus. "Don't make her drag you, Kousei."

"Don't encourage him," Tsubaki mutters.

Watari beams and launches himself into traffic with the kind of luck that looks like skill. He peels off, a bright line moving away.

The three of us keep on. Kaori kicks a leaf into a small spiral. She's buzzing, but it's a tight, neat buzz, like a string tuned to pitch. If she's tired, she puts it where I can't see it. I swing my bag strap higher on my shoulder and make sure I'm still at her pace.

At the corner where she cuts toward her street, she stops and turns to face us. The sun puts a pale edge on her hair. The case pulls at her hand; she switches hands without looking, a practiced move. She takes me in, then Tsubaki, then back to me again, like we're a checklist.

"Tomorrow," she says, and it folds all the light around the word. "You better not make me drag you there, Kousei. I want everyone to hear our symphony."

I nod. The promise I made on the stairs this afternoon clicks into place again, stronger. "You won't have to drag me."

She holds my eyes one second longer, testing the words for weight. Whatever she sees is enough. She softens. "Text me when you get home," she says, like she's not going to sleep until the bubble on her screen pops up with my name.

"I will."

She flicks a look at Tsubaki, a quick thanks without saying it. Tsubaki tips her chin back, the closest she comes to a salute. Kaori's mouth curves. Then she steps backward, two small steps, and turns toward her street.

"Don't be late," she calls over her shoulder, because a bit can't die if she's still enjoying it.

"I won't," I call back.

She lifts one hand like she's catching a note and slides into the side street, light on her heels, humming something I can't make out. The sound thins and disappears into the late day.

The street is quieter immediately, like the mix turned her channel down. Tsubaki and I stand there a breath too long, then start walking again. We don't have to talk about which way. We've been splitting the same block since we were small enough to watch our feet while we did it.

She lets the jokes sit for half a minute, then she nudges me with her shoulder. "You didn't look like a zombie just now," she says. "That's new."

"I drank water," I say. "Kaori ordered me to."

"Good." She's quiet for three steps. "Are you sure about this?" The words aren't sharp. They feel like she checked them for splinters before handing them to me. "The competition. Tomorrow. It's a lot."

"I'm sure."

She nods once. Another three steps. "Don't push yourself too hard." The way she says it shifts the air around us, the same air that used to get too thin for me when I thought about stepping on stage. She doesn't say anything else. She doesn't have to. I hear the old name the warning carries without her saying it.

"I know," I say. I keep my eyes on the line of shadow drawn by the guardrail, where the black starts and the light stops. "It's different now."

She looks up at me like she's calibrating a meter. "Different how?"

"I'm not alone," I say. "And I'm not running from the thing. I'm running to it."

Her mouth does a small movement that isn't quite a smile. "Poetic," she says. "Gross."

We both laugh, soft. The kind that loosens something in the chest without shaking anything important. She kicks a pebble into the gutter. It makes the same small rattle coins make when you're not careful.

"Text me when you get inside your house," she says, copying Kaori without admitting it. "And eat food somebody would call dinner, not 'snack I upgraded by lying.'"

"Yes, coach."

"And sleep," she adds. "At least some."

"At least some," I echo.

She doesn't roll her eyes. She looks ahead at our block like she could move the buildings apart with her shoulders if she needed to. "If you feel weird," she says, and stops there, like the rest of that sentence is a trap we both know too well. "Just... don't be alone with it."

"I won't," I say. I want to say I'm not leaving anyone alone with anything either. I leave it inside. She would hear too much in it and chase it, and I don't have the right words ready.

We pass the park where the low bar lives. The boy from earlier is gone. The bar is only a bar again. The sun makes a stained-glass window out of the chain-link. Our building shows up like it always has, three scuffed steps and the scent of somebody else's dinner drifting down the stairwell.

We stop where we always stop, at the little seam between our doors. The paint is peeling in different patterns; hers looks like a map, mine like notes falling off a staff. She tilts her head toward mine.

"Don't make me come bang on your door at midnight," she says.

"You would."

"I would," she says, and that's the end of that debate. She takes a half-step back. "Good luck, piano hands."

"Thanks," I say. "Good cheering."

She gives me a look that says she didn't need the assignment. Then she keys her lock and slips inside, and her door clicks in that way I've heard a thousand times, always the same tiny squeak at the end.

My door sticks like it always does. I lean my shoulder into it, then I'm in. The apartment holds the day I left pressed inside it—air and light stalled in place, the faint smell of soap and tea. I drop my bag onto the chair that stopped being a chair a long time ago. The room sighs. I match it without meaning to.

I sit. The wood of the seat is warm from the late sun. The metronome in my head taps once, not loud, just there.

I should sleep. Tomorrow matters.

There's more work to do.

I look at the notebook on the table. The pen is exactly where I left it, waiting like a small, patient animal. The calendar grid I drew last night stares back with boxes I meant to fill before today got in the way. The laptop lid is shut, glare sliding along it like water.

I rub my eyes with the heels of my hands until stars crowd the dark behind them. Then I lower my hands and reach for the notes.

Chapter Text

I wake before my alarm, the kind of early that feels like a mistake. The room is dim and blue. The metronome in my head is already ticking, patient as ever. Not now. Later. Move.

I wash my face until the water wakes my skin. Tea, quick. Shirt, tie, blazer. I check my bag twice—scores, pencil, cloth, water, lunch I will probably forget to eat. The second check steadies me anyway. Proof I can still hold small things together.

Outside, the air is clear and thin. Tsubaki is at the corner like always, hands in her skirt pockets, ponytail slightly crooked. She gives me the up-and-down that always makes me feel like I've been measured and found slightly underweight.

"You look like you're going to fall asleep on stage," she says, not bothering with hello.

"I won't," I say.

"You say that," she says. "You also said you'd sleep last night."

"I slept some." I countered

"How some?"

"Some some."

She clicks her tongue and bumps my shoulder. "Eat. And don't push yourself." She doesn't say the word that sits behind that warning. She doesn't have to. I hear it anyway.

"Got it," I say, and I do. Or I'm trying to.

We walk in step. We've split this block since we were small enough to watch our shoes. She fills the air with small stories because that's her way of checking my pulse: Watari nearly ran into a sign trying to wave at two people at once. The cat on her porch tried to tax her for sitting on her own steps. I give her the right answers. The quiet between us isn't heavy. It holds.

At the gate, the school opens its regular noise: shoes, laughter, teachers throwing reminders into the current. Watari spots us with his unstoppable internal radar and drapes himself over my shoulders like I'm a coat rack.

"Our artist looks pale but heroic," he declares. "Protein. Sunlight. Legally questionable smoothies."

"I'm accepting donations," I say.

"I'm offering charisma only ," he says, then drops his voice and tries at sincerity. "You good, Kousei?"

"I'm here," I say. It's the truest answer I have.

He squeezes my neck and lets go. "Front row today. I'll clap so hard they'll have to replace the carpet."

We're barely past homeroom when Kaori breezes by with her case—chin high, steps light. For a blink her eyes meet mine. "Wake up for our performance," she says, not scolding so much as calibrating. The corner of her mouth lifts as she goes. The message lands: be ready.

The day moves through its usual machinery—roll call, notes on the board, the scrape of chairs—but every clock hand points in the same direction. Between periods Tsubaki shoves a juice box into my hand without looking at me. "Drink," she says. I do.

By lunch my legs feel like hollow wood. We claim a table. Tsubaki glares at my untouched food. "Eat," she orders. "Drink."

I obey halfway, which only buys me a sigh. Kaori drops into the seat across from me, case set neatly at her feet. She's buzzing under the skin. It looks like light trying to leak through.

"Don't look so grim," Watari tells her. "Smile like a winner."

"I'll smile after we've played," she says, but her mouth tips up anyway.

"You signed us up," I say, "and nearly broke the office doing it."

She tilts her chin, satisfied. "Late entry," she says. "The clerk said the list was closing. I said we'd take thirty seconds. She gave me ten. I used nine. We're on the program."

"How'd you talk her into it?" Watari asks, impressed.

"Charm and truth," she says, then points her chopsticks at me. "And a promise that my partner would show up on time and awake."

Tsubaki leans in just enough to make sure I hear it twice. "On time and awake," she echoes. "Try it."

"I will," I say. The words feel like a stake driven into the day.

After school, the four of us filter out together. The light has that flat, pre-evening calm that makes the city look like a set waiting for actors. Watari peels off for his bike with a two-finger salute. "Save me a seat you can hear from," Kaori calls. "Front."

"Loudest clapper alive," he promises.

Tsubaki and I flank Kaori to the station. The trains breathe in and out. On the platform Kaori rocks once on her heels, more energy than space. She points with her chin like a conductor choosing sections. "We'll warm up at the venue. Don't overdo it."

"You don't overdo it," I grumble out.

She acts offended. "I never overdo it. I do exactly enough."

"Uh-huh," Tsubaki says, deadpan.

The ride to Towa Hall slides by in steel and glass. Kaori studies the program on her phone; I study her hands instead—the easy economy, the way she touches the case without looking, the concentration that reads like joy with the volume turned down.

Towa Hall rises out of the street like a clean sound. Inside, everything is pale wood and soft carpet and the hopeful hush of people who came to listen. We find the registration desk. A clerk with neat hair and a stricter schedule looks up.

"Miyazono/Arima, duo," Kaori says, bright and firm. "Late entry."

The clerk's eyebrows consider saying no on principle. Kaori meets the look with her polite blade. "I cleared it yesterday," she adds. "Nine minutes before close." A second clerk checks a list, nods, slides two badges and a number across. Kaori's smile has victory in it. "Thank you," she says. "We'll make it worth the trouble."

Backstage smells like polish and dust that learned manners. Warm-up rooms breathe scales into the hallways; fragments of other people's pieces drift past like dream scraps. We claim an empty corner. I open the score and the pencil lands in my fingers out of habit. Kaori opens the case and the violin looks like it recognizes the room.

She tunes, I listen. The A rings, clean. She draws a quiet scale, not performance tone—just weight-checking, temperature-reading. I play the opening under my breath, hands on my thighs first, then on the keys when a monitor points me to a practice piano.

When the room gives us two minutes alone, I step closer. "Don't go too crazy," I say, light on the surface, serious under it. "Lean if you need to. I mean it."

She blinks, surprised by the angle, then waves it off. "I'll be fine."

"You're always exhausted after recitals." I keep my voice level. "Let me carry when the line is long. That's the point of a duo."

Her mouth tips like she might argue for sport. My face must say I'm not playing. She exhales through her nose and nods once, grudging and sincere. "Okay. I'll lean. But I'm tip-top today."

"Good," I say. "Stay that way."

Tsubaki slips in like a shadow with a bag of snacks and the authority of a small general. "Eat." She shoves me a rice ball and stares until I bite. "And don't fall asleep on the bench."

"I won't."

She looks at me longer than necessary. "Are you sure?" Not sharp. Careful. Behind it, the word she didn't say this morning hums like a low note.

"I'm sure," I say. "It's different now."

"Different how?"

"I'm not running from it," I say. "I'm running to it."

She makes a face that is not quite a smile. "Gross," she mutters, but her eyes soften.

Watari appears in a gust of good intentions. "Tickets secured. Front row. I will clap so precisely the judges will write me in as a metronome." He leans on the doorframe, gives us a once-over that ends in a grin. "You got this."

"Be loud," Kaori says.

"Loud is my brand," he says, and vanishes back into the river of people.

A runner appears with a headset and the power of a small god. "Miyazono/Arima—ten minutes."

We nod. Ten minutes is no time and all the time. I close the score, open my hands over the keys one last time, then close the fallboard gently. Kaori wipes the strings, checks the bridge, touches the chin rest like a talisman, then lets her hands hang loose at her sides for two breaths.

"Ready?" she says.

"Ready," I say. I offer my elbow like we're about to cross a busy street. She hooks two fingers there for exactly as long as it takes to feel stupid about being sentimental, then lets go. The touch stays.

The wing is a thin slice of shadow smelling faintly of rosin and curtain dust. From here the hall sounds like a held breath. The pair before us ends; applause gathers and falls away. Our number is called. The world shrinks to a square of floor.

Kaori tips her head the smallest degree. I answer with the bench: hands on the edge, a slow sit, a gentle scoot. Feet planted. Shoulder rolled once. My fingers hover and do not touch. She lifts the violin, bow angled like a weather vane searching for wind.

...

The opening is a shape I can draw blind: delicate, then speaking, line and floor, the world gathering itself. My hands find the intro and spread it thin so she can lay color on top without cracking the surface. Her first entrance is a thread pulled through silk—small, bright, decisive. The hall tilts toward it as if the sound has a gravity of its own.

Two bars in, my body reaches for old shadows the way sore muscle reaches for a flinch. I feel the pull and let it pass like weather. My mother's hands, that old white room with its locked air—I do not open those doors. I pick the other door: the girl beside me, alive and fierce and here, asking not for a ghost but for a partner.

Kaori pushes a phrase a hair forward. I bring the floor up under it before it has a chance to fall. She hears it and lets the next line sit a little longer on the edge before stepping off. Her sound isn't safe; it's brave. There's a difference. I let my left hand tell the truth and my right hand make sure it's a truth we can both stand on.

We used to wobble here, in the last life, at this bend from introduction to light. The hinge would squeak; I would hear myself from outside myself and try to step on a floor I'd hidden from. Not today. The corner comes and goes clean. The judges lean in. One of them stops writing.

Kaori breathes a touch deeper before a tricky entrance. I catch it in the edge of my vision and nudge the tempo by something you can't count, just enough for her left hand to set without having to pretend it's not being careful. She does not falter. She never does in public. But there is a cost to every smooth line, paid out of sight. I am the ledger. I adjust the balance.

We move through the dialogue the piece expects: her heat, my held line; her dare, my answer; her sudden turn into silk, my quiet breath under it so it doesn't look lonely. When she lets a note hang too long for ordinary air, I hold mine with it until the hall decides to breathe for us. When she bows through a run like she's breaking through water, I clear the current a half beat ahead. She smiles without looking; I feel it in the sound, not my eyes.

Somewhere in the second section, the room stops being a room full of faces and starts being a thing we are building. I know when it happens because my hands stop feeling like separate tools and become one body moving. Kaori drops her heel and the tone grows larger without getting heavier. I keep the undercurrent fast and flat so the size has a place to go. The piece asks for sparkle; we give it light that isn't cheap.

There is a moment where she takes a line and shapes it more playfully than we planned, a small bend as if she's turning to grin at me mid-run. I answer with a grace that makes her choice sound inevitable. The two ideas click, and the click is audible only to us. Her shoulder loosens. Mine drops a half inch. We're not fighting this thing. We're flying it.

The hall catches up to the idea of us. You can feel it even from the bench—the way a crowd decides to trust the people on stage with their next three minutes of blood pressure. There are little sounds you only hear when a performance is working: fabric settling without fidgeting, an exhale nobody notices having. Somewhere near the aisle a program slips to the floor without being picked up.

Kaori's right hand does a small tremor after a long phrase. Not during—after. It's gone in a blink. If you didn't know to watch for it, you would never see it. I widen the next corner without changing the ink, just a soft rounding, so she can take it with speed that doesn't cost. She takes it and throws a spark over the top just to prove she noticed the gift. Somewhere in the first row Watari makes a strangled noise of pride that wants to be a cheer and barely manages to become an inhaled gasp.

The cadenza comes and she owns it. I step back and forward at once: back from the center, forward to keep the air held at the right tenseness. Her bow climbs and lands; her left hand writes its little miracles with a calm that does not match the engine under her ribs. She pushes, then lets go. I lift the floor back under her foot the moment she lands. The judges are not smiling, not frowning. They're listening. It's better than both.

I think, not as a distraction but as a statement, we did it. Not finished, not safe, but we did it: the part where I used to hear the wrong voice in my head is quiet; the part where she used to have to drag me is gone. We are the only two people on this stage. It feels like the first honest version of that fact I have ever lived.

We take the last page like a promise kept. She leans one final time into a line with more weight than paper can hold; I give her a floor that will not crack, even if she jumps. She doesn't jump. She lands clean. My hands do the simple, exact thing they're supposed to do. The cadence locks. The last note blooms and goes still. For one second there is a hush so complete it feels like an extra world we fell into by accident.

Then the hall remembers that it has hands.

Sound comes at us like weather. It isn't polite applause; it's the sound a crowd makes when it forgets itself. Not a roar, not a scream—just a human thrum, a thousand small agreements turning into one big one. People stand. Some don't, but they clap like they want to. I don't hear Watari, which means he's yelling something too loud to register as one sound. I don't look for him. I look at her.

Kaori lowers the violin. Her shoulders are trembling the way a held plank trembles when the weight is set down—relief after a big ask, not failure. Tears slide down her cheeks with the easiest gravity I've ever seen. They're not show. They're not shock. They're gratitude and defiance and joy threaded together until separating them would be cruel. She looks at me, and I see the truth of them now where I missed it before. I see the cost and the choice. I see the living person in the middle of the scene, not a symbol and not a wish—just Kaori.

My own eyes burn without warning. It's not dramatic. It's just honest. I let the water come and don't wipe it because wiping would be lying. She laughs once, a small startled sound like a hiccup made of sunlight.

"Up," she mouths, and then she doesn't wait for me. She grabs my sleeve, the same old habit but harder, and pulls. I stand. Together we bow. When we rise I find Tsubaki—aisle seat, chin up, eyes glassed with pride and worry. Watari is all teeth and clapping, a barely-contained shout. Their faces blur back into the sea.

We turn. The lights tilt. The curtain's edge becomes a doorway. Backstage is dimmer, warmer; the applause thins like surf around a corner. Kaori's hand is still on my arm. We take three steps that feel like one.

She looks up, tears still on her cheeks, and smiles as if the day is a jewel she can finally hold. "I will never forget this day until I die," she whispers.

The sentence cuts clean through me.

"Kaori—" I start, meaning lean if you need to, I've got you, stay—but her fingers loosen.

Her knees soften, then go. The case knocks lightly against the floor. I catch her before the sound can turn into panic, one arm around her shoulders, the other guiding the violin away without thinking. Her weight isn't much. It is everything.

"Hey," I breathe, close to her hair. "I'm here."

Her lashes flutter once, a moth's wing. The world hushes to the small circle we make on the carpet. The stage keeps on somewhere else. Time does not.

A thought lands the way a stake goes into ground: Not again. Not this time. I will spend whatever is left of me. I will save you.

She sags further in my arms, weight settling like sleep. The light goes a shade too white. I hold her tighter and listen for the next breath, willing it into the same rhythm as mine.

I am once again reminded of the living nightmare that she faces. Of course this would happen again terminal diseases don't just get better. He won't let this curse be the end of her beautiful life,He won't let her light be extinguished...

Not again

Chapter Text

The hallway smells like lemon cleaner and late afternoon—bright lights, soft shoes, doors that close with polite sighs. Watari walks two steps ahead, balancing a pastry box like it's a sacred artifact. The logo of Kaori's favorite bakery curls across the lid in gold. He keeps glancing down to make sure the ribbon hasn't come loose, as if a croissant might attempt escape.

"She's going to love these," he says for the third time, voice pitched high with optimism. "They're the flakey ones with the sugar crust and the—"

"Watari." Tsubaki doesn't look away from the room numbers as we pass them. "She fainted. This is not a 'sugar crust' emergency; it's a hospital emergency."

"It's called morale," he counters. "I am boosting it." He lifts the box higher, proud. "Morale-enhancement pastries."

"Your 'morale enhancement' better not get crumbs on her sheets." Tsubaki's ponytail is crooked and furious, her hands sunk into her skirt pockets like she'll rip the fabric if she takes them out. "shes staying for tests. That's not nothing."

I don't say anything. The fluorescent light turns the floor into moving water. My eyes feel like I sanded them with my palms and forgot to stop. The applause, the bright stage, the weight of her knees sliding out from under her—everything from a few hours ago keeps rising and falling behind my ribs like a tide I can't outrun. Overexertion is a word people use when they need a lid for a box that doesn't close. The dazed, grateful joy on her face, the sentence she whispered—I will never forget this day until I die—has been replaying in my head with the brightness turned too high. The next frame is me catching her before her violin hits the floor.

"Here." Tsubaki has to tug twice before I realize she's pressed a small can of tea into my hand. "Drink. You look like a chalk outline."

"I'm fine," I lie, and put the cold rim to my mouth anyway. It tastes like tin and barley and a scolding that won't let me sleep standing up.

We stop at a door with a paper name tag clipped to the sign. Miyazono. The letters sit there calmly, as if they're not the center of a small storm. Watari shifts the box to one hand and smooths his hair with the other. Tsubaki rolls her shoulders, then pushes the handle.

She doesn't ease it open; she swings it in with full force. "Yoo-hoo—!"

We rush through like confetti. And freeze.

Kaori is on the bed, knees tucked into the sheet. Her back is bare—slender, pale, a faint map of muscle and the light trapezoid where her shirt was. A nurse in pale scrubs stands behind her, washing the curve of her shoulder blades with a square of gauze. The disinfectant catches the light in a small, clean sheen.

For the briefest blink, Kaori's eyes go dull—like someone switched off the stage lights behind them. Then she sees us, sees herself seen, and the brightness snaps back, too quick, too bright. "Kyaaa!" she squeaks, grabbing the sheet with both hands and yanking it up to her shoulders.

The nurse rounds on us without moving her feet. Her eyebrows do what words would only slow down. "Excuse me," she says, which is hospital for get out.

Tsubaki reacts before anyone else. She wheels around and boots both me and Watari with a swift, precise kick to the backs of our heads. Not hard enough to be cruel—just punishing. Our foreheads knock together with a comic thunk. The pastry box wobbles; Watari claws it back with an inhuman noise of pastry-protective terror.

"Ow!" he yelps, staggering sideways into the curtain. "Why is your foot made of rebar—?"

"Memory erasure kick," Tsubaki says, each word a stamp. "Wipe the film. Say 'white screen'. Now."

Watari claps a hand to his head. "White screen—ow—white screen—" He blinks at the ceiling tiles like they're the night sky over a desert and he's forgotten his name. "Who am I? Where am I? Why am I holding cake?"

Kaori makes a strangled sound halfway between horrified and delighted, cheeks turning the color of a watercolor wash. "I can never get married now!" she cries from behind the sheet, voice muffled. "My back has been—seen!"

"Forgive us," Tsubaki says to the nurse, bowing so fast her hair tries to fall and doesn't. "They're idiots. They will atone."

The nurse softens a notch and finishes with the gauze, folding the used pad into a neat square. "You can atone by standing there until I say you can move." She gestures us into a corner and goes back to Kaori, low voice practical and kind.

Watari sidles to the appointed spot with the exaggerated carefulness of a bomb technician, cradling the cake box against his chest like a small animal. I follow, rubbing the place where Tsubaki's shoe made friends with my skull. I'm awake, at least. Thoroughly.

"Okay," the nurse says at last, stepping back. "Shirt."

Kaori slides her arms into the sleeves and closes the buttons with fingers that don't tremble. The sheet drops to her lap. Her violin case sits on the bedside table like a loyal dog. A monitor blinks some patient, patient number. The nurse checks a chart, glances at us, decides we have done nothing unforgivable, and departs with a warning look Tsubaki returns with a soldier's salute.

"Now." Kaori makes a show of smoothing the hem of her shirt, sniffing dramatically. "Apologize to my innocence."

Watari practically launches himself to the edge of the bed, thrusting the pastry box forward with redemption blazing in his eyes. "I will make an honest woman of you," he declares. "Cakes first, vows later."

She drops the pout an inch and lets a sparkle slip through. "Ohhh?" she sings lightly, tilting her head. "Is that so?"

"I would bring a dowry," he says, tapping the box, "of sugar and butter and... friendship."

Tsubaki sighs so loudly the blinds tremble. "You cannot propose with muffins."

"These are gateaux," he says, deeply offended.

"Those are pastries," I mutter.

"Gateaux," he insists, wrapping the word in an accent he found in a cartoon. Kaori giggles, finally, real and bright. The room exhales.

We pull chairs into a crooked semicircle, Tsubaki claiming the left flank like a guard, Watari perched on the right like a nervous bird who packed snacks, me at the foot of the bed where I can see her face without being in the way. The window shows the top halves of other buildings, their windows square with indifferent light. The hallway hum is a constant under note.

"Everyone okay now?" Kaori asks, teasing gentle. She tries to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear and misses twice.

"We're fine," Tsubaki says, her voice softening as if the nurse left some of her professionalism in the air. "You scared us."

Kaori lifts one shoulder, not quite a shrug. "They're keeping me for tests." She goes breezy, the tinsel-light version of her smile slipping into place. "Just to be sure. Probably nothing. You know how hospitals are—make you stay, poke you with a hundred tiny sticks so they can say you're fine and send you home anyway."

I feel my jaw set. "You fainted," I say. The words are simple, flat. They fall into the space like a coin dropped into a clear jar; there's no sound afterward but the echo.

Her eyes flick to mine. The smile holds, but a sheet goes up behind it. "Maybe if a certain sleepy piano-kun hadn't wandered off like a stray cat before lunch, I wouldn't have had to sprint around school looking for him," she says, sweet as tea with the sugar doubled. "Ever think of that?"

Tsubaki doesn't miss a beat. She leans forward and flicks my forehead—not hard, just a reminder. "He has a point," she says, and then contradicts herself with a glare. "But she has a bigger point. You vanished."

"I was on the roof," I say. The sentence tastes unhelpful even as it leaves my mouth.

"Exactly." Tsubaki points, then taps my temple with two fingers, less a poke and more a post-it note of correction. "No roof naps the day before a competition, genius."

Watari leans in and pokes my shoulder with the corner of the pastry box like a rubber mallet. "You heard the lady: no naps when people need their duets. Also: hydrate. Also: stop looking like a ghost who won a trophy."

"I am," I say, "hydrated." The can of tea sits on the windowsill, proof I at least tried. Across the bed, Kaori's gaze doesn't move. I could say a hundred technical things—we were clean, we held the line, the cadenza was honest, we turned the last page like a door—and none of them would reach what I mean. So I say only, quieter, "You fainted."

She glares at me, and for a second I can see the wire she walks, the way she keeps it taut. "And you made me add cardio to my day," she says, chin tipping. The glimmer in her eyes is mischief; the steel under it is the shape of a wall. "Maybe next time don't play hide-and-sleep."

Watari whistles low. "She deploys barbs today."

"It's called boundaries," Tsubaki says, but the corner of her mouth is betraying her. "We support them."

"I get it," I say. And I do. I get that there's a part of her that has to make this a joke or it will become something she can't turn into music. I know the cost of letting the ground open. I meet her stare, just long enough for the message to travel without words: I don't believe you. I won't force you. I saw you.

She looks away first, but not because I won. She looks away because she chooses to end the exchange. "So," she says briskly, eyes jumping to the pastry box. "What did you bring me—wait, is that—?"

"Melon pan, strawberry short, and the flakey things whose French name begins with chou and ends with delicious," Watari says with ceremony, opening the lid with a flourish. Pink cream and sugar-glass gleam like a tiny parade. "Your favorites."

"I love you," she tells the pastries, hand to chest. "And maybe you, too," she adds, pointing the second declaration at him with suspicious generosity.

He beams like a lighthouse. "I accept being second to sugar."

The nurse's head pokes back in at the smell that probably crossed the entire floor. "No food yet," she warns, and the chorus of groans would be funny if it weren't so heartfelt. "After the blood draw. Then small bites."

"Small bites," Kaori repeats, crumpling into theatrical despair. "How cruel."

When the nurse vanishes again, Tsubaki sits back. "Speaking of cruel," she says, softer now. "You scared us. We were in the front row. Watari almost fell over."

"I did not," Watari says instantly, then ruins his defense by adding, "I sat down very quickly in a dramatic manner."

Kaori looks from one to the other, and then to me, and something gentler passes through her eyes—like dawn light cutting between buildings. "I'm okay," she says, more honest. "Really. They're just checking things. I promise." She says promise like a fragile object she wants to put in our hands. I want to hand it back so she doesn't have to carry it alone.

A new thread appears, bright and unbelievable. "Also," Watari says, already vibrating. "The results."

Tsubaki straightens. "Already?"

He holds up his phone like a priest holding a relic. "Posted online ten minutes ago. Do you want the spoiler or the live reading?"

"Live," Kaori says, instantly. She sits taller without meaning to, one hand on the bedrail like she's about to lean into a hard phrase. I feel the hall's hush again, the way sound can wrap a person.

Watari clears his throat, adopts a voice two octaves deeper than his. "Towa Hall Youth Duos, Division B. In first place..."

He drags it out so long Tsubaki threatens to strangle him with his own headphone cord.

"—Miyazono and Arima."

The room's noise is tiny and enormous at once, a pop of air in a sealed space. Kaori's mouth opens, then shuts, then opens again like she forgot what order breathing comes in. "First?" she says, small and awed, as if she doesn't trust the number to sit still.

"First." Watari shoves the screen under her nose. Her name and mine crawl across the display, black on white, solid as road paint. "And finals next month. See? Right there: 'advance to finals.'" He thumps the line like it will purr.

Tsubaki's smile spreads slowly, as if she's letting herself do it in stages. "You did it," she says, pride tightening her voice into something almost stern with relief. "You actually did it."

Kaori's eyes shine the way they did on stage—full, wet, not show—and she laughs, helpless and delighted. "I told you," she says, laughing again, a little breathless. "We were great. You were great." She points at me like an accusation of excellence. "Piano man. You were there."

For a second I can't get any words to come out. It's not the praise. It's the weight of how badly I want this version of her—this bright, laughing, completely present Kaori—to be the one we keep. The frame blurs and sharpens, and over the joy slides a colder fact: every day we spend building toward a stage is a day I might not be building toward a lab bench. Finals are a calendar, not just a performance. The boxes I drew last night reappear behind my eyes, inked arrows threading from one scheduled thing to the next: approvals, consults, the Tuesday lobby meeting turning into a door that should open sooner than Tuesday.

Tsubaki feels the shift in me the way she always does. She bumps my ankle with her shoe. "Hey," she says, warning folded into comfort. "Enjoy this part at least."

"I am," I say, and I am. The two truths refuse to cancel each other.

We try to talk about other things and fail—our conversation circling back to the performance like a magnet. We trade the details that only we would notice: where the hinge didn't squeak this time, the small bend she threw without telling me, the way I answered it so it sounded inevitable. When she smiles, the gray light of the room turns warmer by a shade you can't measure with instruments. I tuck that away in the part of my head where I keep small proofs that the world hasn't broken entirely.

A phlebotomist arrives with a cart rattling plastic vials. We shuffle back. Kaori offers her arm without flinching. "Small bites, then?" she asks the nurse hopefully as the vials fill.

"Small," the nurse confirms, amusement threading her voice. "Your cheering squad can parcel it out."

Watari nods with the solemnity of a man given a sacred duty. "I was born for this."

"Born to miscount and eat half the rations," Tsubaki mutters, but she opens the pastry box and chooses a piece of melon bread the size of a coin, holding it like medicine. "Tiny. Don't inhale it."

Kaori nibbles and closes her eyes like sunshine happened in her mouth. "Victory bread," she sighs. "The best kind."

We linger until visiting hours glare at us from a clock. The room dims by degrees—corridor sounds growing softer, the building settling into its night posture. Watari stacks the pastry box on the table for later like he's leaving a shrine. Tsubaki fusses over Kaori's blanket and threatens to fight anyone who wakes her.

"Text when they kick you out in the morning," she orders. "We'll come kidnap you."

Kaori salutes without sitting up. "Yes, captain."

Watari leans over and takes her hand with a grin he can't sit on. "First place." He squeezes. "Finals. I'm going to brag until the cops ask me to stop."

"They're not going to ask," Tsubaki says. "They're going to arrest you."

"Worth it," he says, and somehow means it.

They say goodbye in a tangle of jokes and real concern. The door clicks shut behind them, and the quiet that follows is different—less crowded, more fragile. I stay where I am by the end of the bed. Kaori watches me watch her, head tipped, eyes seeing more than I want to show.

"Hey," she says finally. "Piano man."

I lift a hand, the smallest answer.

She pats the space on the bed near her hip where the blanket is smooth. "Come closer. I'm not going to bite. Yet."

I step closer, careful of the IV line curling like a lazy vine. The antiseptic smell is brighter up close. Her hair has escaped its tie and frames her face in tired curls. She looks like she could sleep for a century and still wake up humming.

"We did it," she says, and the grin that comes takes years off her. "I knew we would be great. Look—first place! We made it to the finals!" She spreads her fingers as if to display the word finals in the air between us, a bright coin she expects me to catch.

The word lands and wobbles. My heart surges up like it wants to agree without asking me. Behind it, the part of me that hasn't slept and doesn't forgive fate puts both hands up to slow it down. Another competition means days blocked out: rehearsals, warm-ups, travel, more chances for her to pour everything out and then vanish into white light while people clap. It means my calendar bleeding time where I wanted to write call Uncle and secure centrifuge time and get in the room with someone who has the keys.

A thought arrives so clean it feels like it's been waiting: what if I drop out...?

The phrase is disgustingly practical and heavy. It unfolds further without permission. If I step back now—if I make some excuse, if I let a different duo take our slot—those days come back to me. Hours I can spend making the phone calls that become doors. Hours I can spend turning what I know into something that doesn't just live in my head. Saving her is not a metaphor. It's a schedule. It's reagent orders and equipment time and a human who will say yes to a favor because I ask in the right voice at the right hour. Finals do not move that needle. Finals feed her joy. Finals break my heart. Finals cost us days I do not know how to buy back.

Her eyes are so bright. She is so proud.

I look at her and feel the cruel geometry of it: the line that runs between what will make her glow and what might keep her living long enough to glow again. I have never wanted to be two people more. One to stand on a stage and play until the hall forgets itself. One to stay up all night in a room with white floors and a hum in the walls and force the future to arrive early.

I sit on the edge of the bed without quite sitting, my weight in my feet, my hands on my knees. The hospital-green blanket whispers under my fingers. "Yeah," I say, but the word has to cross a long distance to get out of me. "We... we made it."

Her smile falters a fraction, just enough to let me see she sees me. "What?" she says, so gently it almost makes me angry—at myself, at time, at the way she reads me without needing sheet music. "Why the face?"

I don't give the thought language. If I say drop out, the air will change shape and I won't be able to change it back. "I'm just... tired," I say. That part at least is true. "It's been a big day."

Her expression softens until it's almost sleep. "It has," she agrees. "You were so good." The way she says you makes the bed tilt a little; the room gets a fraction warmer. "I didn't have to drag you at all."

"You dragged me to the hospital with your dramatic timing," I say, and try to make it sound like a joke. It almost is. Her giggle comes out small, then gets larger.

She tucks the blanket corner around her hip as if she's nesting, then reaches one hand toward me, palm up. I don't make her wait. Our fingers fit in the way that makes time sit down and behave: not a clasp, just an alignment.

"Don't vanish," she says, hardly more than breath. It's not about stages. It's not about finals. It is a little rope she tosses across the space between us in case the space tries to grow.

"I won't," I say. The words taste like a promise I can keep without tearing something else out of place. I squeeze once, carefully, then let go before the nurse reappears and scolds us for reckless hand-holding.

"You'll come tomorrow?" she asks, a child asking a question she already knows the answer to but wanting the answer anyway.

"As soon as they let me," I say.

"Bring music," she says, eyelids lowering. "Or don't. Just bring you."

The monitor blinks. In the hallway, a cart goes by with a metal rattle. Somewhere down the corridor, someone laughs, then catches themselves and turns the laugh into something hospital-appropriate. Kaori's breath evens, then hitches once like a skipped beat, then settles. If I watch long enough I could set a metronome to it.

"Kaori," I say, because if I don't say her name now, it will build pressure inside and crack something. "We did it."

She smiles without opening her eyes. "We did."

She drifts. I sit a little longer, then stand. The chair legs tuck back under the bed with a quiet scrape. I stack the empty tea can next to the pastry box and straighten the ribbon because leaving it crooked feels like an insult to good luck. I look at her one more time. She looks like a person who made a room believe in something for four minutes and then had the nerve to be tired.

On the way to the door, the thought tries to stand in front of me again—drop out. It doesn't sound less cruel in a second pass. It doesn't get prettier if I rename it step back or prioritize. It's a knife with a clean edge. The handle fits my hand too well.

I turn the handle quietly and step into the hall. The door clicks behind me. The corridor is a long strip of light with soft noises moving through it—pagers, long shoes, the faint music of a TV from a room where someone has decided silence is worse. The air is cooler out here. I lean my forehead against the wall for one second and allow myself the indulgence of being exactly as tired as I am.

Watari and Tsubaki are sitting on the bench outside like they couldn't figure out how to leave either. Watari has his elbows on his knees and his hands tented in front of his face like a detective considering a case. Tsubaki is scrolling without seeing, the screen lighting her determined frown.

"How is she?" Watari asks softly, and I hear the way his voice fails to bounce like usual.

"Good," I say. The word is true on one axis and a placeholder on another. "They'll draw blood, then let her sleep. We can come back in the morning."

"First place," he says again, like repetition will cement it into the universe. "I keep thinking I misread it."

"You didn't," Tsubaki says, standing. She touches my sleeve, familiar as measuring a seam. "You were there when it mattered," she says, gaze skimming my face for signs of collapse. "Now go home and be a human. Sleep in an actual bed."

"I will," I tell her. Some. The metronome in my head ticks once, as if it knows I'm telling a truth and a lie that will hold each other up for one night.

We walk to the lobby together, three pairs of footsteps and one shadow that stays behind in a room with a sleeping girl and a box of pastries. The automatic doors breathe open. Night air folds around us, soft and damp, city sound softened by distance. Watari peels off toward the station with a hand flung over his shoulder, a buoyant silhouette even when he's trying to be solemn. Tsubaki lingers one more second.

"Text me when you're home," she says, echoing Kaori without knowing she's echoing her. "Eat something real. Don't... you know." She can't say vanish without pulling the wrong thread. She says nothing and everything with her eyes.

"I won't," I say again.

She nods, satisfied enough to turn and go. I watch her until the corner takes her. The hospital behind me hums. The street ahead doesn't care. I shove my hands into my pockets because I don't know what to do with them when I can't touch a keyboard or a lab bench.

I look up at the blank, ordinary sky and think of the two lines I can't hold at the same time: the one that leads back to the stage, to the finals, to the sound of her catching the light and bending it; the one that takes me through doors with badge readers and into rooms where answers are slow and real. Then I think of her whispering We did it, and the way her weight felt in my arms when the lights went white.

"Yeah," I say to the indifferent night, to the locked hospital windows, to the part of me that wants to tear the calendar into a different shape with my hands. "We made it."

Well..... No time to rest...

I start walking.

Chapter Text

The ball leaves the bat with that flat, ugly sound that means it's not going where it should. Tsubaki watches it anyway, eyes too slow, thoughts too loud. It lopes toward right like a lazy comet. She breaks into a run, cleats biting dirt, glove up—then thinks, without permission, of Kousei's face lately: the hollow under his eyes like someone erased sleep with an eraser and didn't bother to brush the crumbs away.

The ball smacks her palm, pops out, skitters. She curses, drops to a knee, scrapes it up, and fires to first. The runner's foot slaps the bag a heartbeat before the ball kisses leather.

"Safe!" the ump bark-sings. The other team whoops. Her dugout exhales the synchronized groan of eight people watching a sure out turn to mush.

"Argh!, Tsubaki!" someone whines.

"Head in the game!" the coach calls, not unkindly, the way you call a dog back to the porch.

She flips the ball in her hand and forces a grin at the infield like, yep, my bad, won't happen again. Dust lifts off her knee in a brown ghost. Her shin stings. On the chain-link, Kashiwagi watches with her eyebrows staging a quiet interrogation. Tsubaki pretends not to see the question there. She takes the next hitter's stance inside her head, same as always: narrow your eyes; lean into the pitch; dare the world to throw you something you can't hit.

It works for nine seconds. Then a breeze pushes through the outfield and the trees past the fence shiver, and she's remembering a different fence, a different day—the school roof and how Kousei turned up with that dry, floaty voice that means he hasn't slept, pretending water is enough to glue somebody back together.

The inning ends. She jogs in with a smile that shows teeth and nothing behind them. The team crowds the bench, complaining in a friendly knot, already onto the next play. She nods and nods and hears none of it. When the coach calls her name she jumps like somebody snapped a rubber band against her wrist.

After, she changes fast, shoving her knee into the leg of her uniform pants and yanking them up like speed can undo the fumble. Outside, light has gone thin and clean, like the sky washed its face and refused to dry it. Kashiwagi peels off the fence and falls into step.

"You dropped an easy one," Kashiwagi says, because she is the kind of friend who doesn't put lace on things that don't need lace.

"I know," Tsubaki says, because she is the kind of person who will run through a wall if a friend points at it. "It had ugly spin."

"That ball was a potato, Su." Kashiwagi flicks her a look. "You okay?"

"Fine," Tsubaki says, too quick. "Just hungry."

They cross to the river because it's the long way home and the long way gives feelings more time to exhaust themselves. The Dare You Bridge sits like always, a concrete shrug over water. Three middle-schoolers stand on the rail, chests puffed, bravery on loan from each other. One leaps. A slap of water, then the muffled shout of cold pretending not to be cold.

Kashiwagi snorts. "You did that every summer. Dragged Arima up here by his scrawny collar and shoved him off, like—" she demonstrates—"boop."

Tsubaki bristles before she can stop it. "That's not what happened," she says. "He always smiled after. He had fun."

"Still mean," Kashiwagi says, without juice. Her eyes hold on Tsubaki's face a beat too long. "You've been... different."

"What does that mean?"

Kashiwagi picks a leaf out of her hair like she's tidying the sentence. "You usually bounce. Even when you're mad you bounce. Lately you look like someone put a wet towel over your head."

Tsubaki laughs. "That's a look?"

Kashiwagi doesn't laugh back. "Did something happen with Arima-kun?"

Tsubaki fumbles for her default joke and comes up with air. "Happen how? He's his usual weirdo self." She tries to make it light. It lands heavy. "He just—" She gestures vaguely at the air. "He looks tired."

"Everybody looks tired during exams."

"It's not that kind of tired." The words are out before she can corral them. She stares at the river to distract her mouth. "It's like his eyes are... I don't know." She forces a grin. "Ugh, listen to me. Who am I, a poet?"

Kashiwagi watches a kid climb back on the railing, tiny hands white on concrete. "You don't have to be a poet to notice your best friend looks rough."

The sentence hits like the ball she didn't catch, right in the meat of her glove. Tsubaki swallows. The water murmurs. The littlest boy jumps with his arms out like he's surrendering to gravity and daring it to be gentle. For a second she sees Kousei there, the old version with knees covered in summer and a face that looked surprised when he smiled. Then the picture swaps to him lately: cheekbones sharp like somebody scraped off the extra; that far-away look he gets where you can see the whole day squinting to keep him in focus.

"Maybe I pushed him too hard when we were little," she says, and her voice comes out sideways, like she threw it and missed. "Maybe that's why he never—" She shakes her head. "Whatever."

Kashiwagi's mouth does the careful line it does when she wants to say a hundred things and knows she will only get to say five. "You know you don't have to fix everything by kicking it," she says. "Sometimes you can just... stand next to it until it stops being scary."

"Standing isn't my brand," Tsubaki says, but it comes out thin.

They step off the bridge and onto the street that lifts toward the crossing. The signal's already dinging, the bar half down. At the corner, a boy in a high school uniform slings his bag higher on his shoulder and turns, broad grin, eyes creasing, the poster in the clubhouse of what "reliable" looks like.

"Saito-senpai," Kashiwagi sings, because she enjoys causing tiny earthquakes.

"Tsubaki," he says, delighted like the name is his favorite word. "Your game?"

"Fine," she says, because she is not about to recap her potato error. "You?"

"Practice." He gestures vaguely, which for him means weights, drills, leaders' meeting, doing everything right because the whole team expects it of him. "You looked good out there."

Kashiwagi gives Tsubaki the tiniest hip-bump: say thank you to the compliment, gremlin.

"Thanks," Tsubaki says, trying to make her voice the right shape. She can feel the comparison factory spool up in her head without her permission. Saito's neatness. Saito's schedule. Saito's steady. Kousei's the opposite of a schedule, lately—he's light bulbs left on at the wrong hours; he's that strung-out look when you don't eat and pretend you did. And it annoys her that she keeps thinking about him at all right now, in this clean little moment where a boy who is not a problem is smiling at her like she's the easy part of his day.

Kashiwagi's phone buzzes. She glances down, makes a face that means her mom has activated the summon spell. "I'm going to sprint before 'dinner' turns into 'lecture'," she says. To Saito: "You two can talk about sports or whatever." To Tsubaki, sotto voce: "Text me."

Tsubaki makes a face back that means absolutely not and also definitely yes. Kashiwagi peels off at a diagonal, all elbows and contentment, leaving a tidy little silence in her wake.

They stand under the crossing gate with the world held on a string. The train's far yet; the bell keeps up its agreeable nag. Saito kicks the toe of his shoe against the curb once, casual, then shoves his hands in his pockets, suddenly less casual.

"So," he says. The word is small, the space after it bigger. "You seem... I don't know. You seem like you're thinking about something far away."

She huffs a laugh. "What gave it away? The potato?"

"The potato was a clue," he admits. He glances at the track, then back at her. "You're always moving forward like you know where the next step is. Today you looked like you were waiting for somebody to tell you where to put your foot."

She blinks. For no reason at all her throat warms. "Well," she says, aiming for flippant and landing somewhere near sincere. "Sometimes the ground isn't where you left it."

He nods, relief in that motion like he solved a minor equation. The bell clangs louder. The bars finish their slow fall. Wind starts up the track, carrying that far iron shush.

"Hey," he says, because apparently he has decided not to let the train speak for him. He pulls his hands out of his pockets like they weigh something. "Tsubaki. Do you want to—" He clears his throat, which is ridiculous because his voice never breaks when he's yelling at nine boys on a field. "Do you want to go out with me?"

The words land between them with surprising softness, as if they came wrapped. Heat rushes her face so fast she feels it in her ears. She scrambles for the usual joke and finds only one picture: Kousei's profile, tired and stubborn, walking beside a girl with a violin case like they were built to be a pair of parentheses. Annoyance flares—at herself, at him, at the way her brain is a feral cat that drags the same toy back to the porch no matter how many times she throws it into the bushes.

The train arrives as a warm moving wall. Air flips her hair into her mouth and she lets it, grateful for something to do. She looks at Saito. He looks at her. They both look away and then back at the exact same wrong moment and laugh, because their faces have decided to do the laughing for them. She does not know what she's going to say. She knows only that the question will sit in her pocket now, a coin she will keep worrying with her thumb until it's smooth.

The cars rattle past. Their reflections on the windows are two awkward people on a sidewalk who briefly look like they are in a music video. The last car goes, the bar lifts, the bell stops, the world remembers how to be normal. She opens her mouth—

—and closes it, because sometimes the next step doesn't require a sprint. Sometimes you can stand where you are and feel the ground hold.

She tucks a piece of hair behind her ear she doesn't need to tuck. Her cheeks are hot. His are, too. The silence is the good kind.

— — —

The ball hits the fence three inches from my head and makes the mesh sing. I don't jump. The notebook's edge is under my wrist; the page is a mess of arrows and boxes, the kind of drawing you do when the inside of your head feels like a crowded hallway and you're trying to put the people in line.

There's a thud and then Watari's face appears between diamonds of chain-link like a very loud saint stained into a very rude window. "RAA!" he yells, because subtlety never met him. "You're supposed to be watching me score! How can you read at a time like this?!"

"I'm not reading," I say. "I'm writing." I cap the pen anyway and look at him. His hair is a storm. There's a streak of grass across his cheek like paint. His eyes are incandescent. "You look extremely fired up."

"Extremely fired up is my middle name." He leans into the fence with both hands, cleats squeaking behind him. "No, seriously, I'm on fire. That performance? You two? How am I supposed to do anything today except be better?"

A small, dark thing flickers across the edge of my chest. The image is so fast it doesn't even earn a whole picture: the light on Kaori's cheek, the sentence she whispered, the way her knees forgot how to be knees. I know what it is. I let it pass. I push up my glasses and aim at the part of Watari that needs words.

"I have the two of you burned into my memory," he says, and he means it. "How could I forget it?"

He grins like the sun remembered a joke. "That's right. Save it. Engrave it." He slaps the fence as if to bless it. "Besides, when we win state finals, I'm going to have a whole harem chasing me down the street. Autographs, confessions, marriage proposals, the works."

"Please don't say 'harem' within earshot of the coach," I say.

The universe, which enjoys good timing, appoints one of his center backs to be karma. The kid jogs up, reaches over, and bonks Watari on the back of the head with his hand. "Stop flirting with the fence," the teammate says. "Drills."

Watari makes a tragic noise like a hero dying in act three. "Fell betrayed by my own men," he says, and then the teammate hooks him by the elbow and tows him backward like a shopping cart. Watari keeps his eyes on me as long as he can. "Watch this next one!" he yells, pointing two fingers at his own face. "Eyes up! No notebooks!"

"Eyes up," I echo, and settle back onto the bench that used to be a bench and is now my desk. The field clatters with feet and shouts and whistles that mean do it again until 'again' stops existing. The notebook's spiral has carved a small arc into my forearm where it rested. I turn the page before the lines I already drew can trap me inside their geometry.

Tomorrow, Uncle.

I write the word like it is heavier than ink. Uncle doesn't have a lab in his pocket to give me. He has something better: thirty years' worth of people who pick up when he calls. He has a list of rooms where the air hums like thinking; he knows which doors stick and which doors swing if you lean on them just right. If I can get into one of those rooms—even as a shadow, even as the kid who holds lids and labels samples and shuts up—then proximity will do its quiet work. There's a kind of learning that you only get by standing next to a thing until it admits you exist.

I draw a box around tomorrow and draw lines out of it, spines of a fish: one line to the name I circled three times last week; one to a number I plan to call with my best voice; one to a favor I don't deserve but might be able to borrow. I don't need the perfect arrangement. I need motion. I need to get near the centrifuge, the incubator, the white bench that looks like a piano made angry. I need to trade the pictures in my head for the sound of machines doing their small, patient work.

The pen skates. The metronome in my skull ticks, not bossy, just there. On the field, Watari hauls down a cross he has no right to touch and blasts it with his whole heart. It skims high off the keeper's fingers, rattles the bar, and kisses out. He howls like a man who did, in fact, score. His teammates heckle him anyway. The coach blows two short bursts that say both good and again.

I look up long enough to watch him sprint after a lost cause like it owes him money. His legs are all bravado and joy. There is something so beautiful about how uncomplicated his energy is—no bargaining, no hoarding, just all of it given to the day like the day asked nicely. For a second I feel an ache that is not the ache I usually carry. This one is streaked with envy and gratitude in equal measure. I hope he keeps this piece of himself intact forever. I hope nothing gets the idea it can take it from him.

I drop my eyes back to the paper. The lines I drew earlier begin to look less like panic and more like scaffolding. If Uncle can put me in front of the right person, if I can be in a room where words like access and protocol and run time are the common language, then I can stop pacing the same square in my apartment pretending that thinking harder is the same as moving. This is not a poem. It's a schedule.

I make a list because lists bully chaos into being polite. Under TOMORROW: Meet Uncle at nine; bring the two-page summary I edited down until it hurt; wear the blazer that makes me look less like a sleep-deprived student and more like a person who could be allowed to hold glass; do not forget gratitude; do not forget to ask small, specific things instead of one big impossible one; say yes to anything that involves the phrase "come by."

I add: Text Tsubaki when I leave. If the rule is no vanishing, then no vanishing is a rule even when I'm chasing a door that moves. I write: Hospital visiting hours? and circle it. If they let me sit by the bed with a notebook and pretend to read while she sleeps, I will. Sometimes the only thing you can do is be furniture someone can lean against.

They made it to finals... but nervousness never left me. Kaori would expect his all. He couldn't give it he just couldn't....  Time was thin and short....  And then what he also has to watch her collapse again? The second time was enough. They got first place,wasn't that good enough?.

Watari finishes his sprint, hands on his knees, grinning like oxygen is a rumor. He glances toward me to make sure my head is up. I tilt the notebook so he can see a blank page and a pen. He puffs his chest and points at the goal like he put it there. A defender clips his ankle by accident; Watari almost falls and then decides not to.

I lean back and let the fence hold me. The mesh presses diamonds into my shoulders. A kid on the second field whiffs a shot so spectacularly the ball rolls directly across ours and causes chaos, which causes laughter, which causes the coach to look to the sky like he is checking for the possibility of patience.

The metronome ticks. Not now. Later. Move.

I cap the pen and slide the notebook into my bag like I'm putting something to bed. Tomorrow is a noun and then, if I'm lucky, a verb. I breathe in chalk and grass and sunburn and cheap whistle. I breathe out. The lines I drew on the page hum underneath my sternum, a blueprint I can carry without paper.

On the field, Watari takes off again, joy ridiculous, future imaginary and loud. At the hospital, a girl with a violin case is asleep or pretending to be. On a sidewalk somewhere, a friend with a crooked ponytail is standing under a crossing arm with her cheeks warm. Everyone is moving. It feels like the only true thing left in the world.

I look down at my hands and think of the bench I want and the bench I need, and I tell myself a simple sentence I plan to obey: Do the next small right thing. Then the next. Then the next.

Chapter Text

The river is green glass and dare. Watari is already up on the railing, socks rolled, shirt stuck to his back, yelling something heroic that mostly sounds like wind. Tsubaki stands on the concrete lip like it insulted her and cracks her knuckles. I hover a step back with my hands on the straps of a life that is mostly rules.

"C'mon, Kousei!" Watari crows, arms flung like wings. "Three! Two—"

"No," I say, very quietly, to the rail, the water, my knees.

Tsubaki pivots, eyes bright enough to start a small fire. "You never have fun anymore."

"I have fun," I say, which is not the same as true. "My mom—she'll get mad. If I get sick. I have recital If I—"

Tsubaki blows air through her teeth like a pitcher annoyed at the ump. "Your mom's not here." She taps my chest with two fingers, quick and practical. "You are."

Watari vanishes mid-lecture. One heartbeat he's crowing on the rail, the next he's a body slicing color into the river, a thunderclap of splash and echoes bouncing off the bridge girders. He pops up immediately, hair slicked, mouth wide in happiness. "It's perfect," he shouts. "Jump, you cowards!"

I stare at the drop like it owes me an apology. The water smells like summer and algae and somebody's lost courage. "I can't," I tell Tsubaki. "Really. I'm not—"

She makes a noise like a decision. "Fine," she says. "I'll do the fun for both of us."

And then I'm air.

I don't remember her bending. I remember weight leaving my shoes, the horizon doing a lazy cartwheel, the taste of my own shout when it realizes no one will catch it. Tsubaki has me hoisted piggyback—no, shouldered—no, some wild tangle that used to be dignity and is now momentum. We drop. The world slaps.

Cold happens all at once. For a second there isn't water, there's just pressure, like the sky sat on my chest. My arms forget grammar. The sound is a roar inside my bones. Tsubaki tears away from me toward light; I reach, find only silk weeds and the slick spine of panic. My lungs lurch. Instinct, late and loud, wakes up and flails in the wrong direction.

Hands catch me. Not hands—Watari's fist on the collar of my T-shirt; Tsubaki's grip iron around my wrist. The river gives me up like something it didn't want in the first place. We tumble onto the bank in a rain of our own making. Everything is noise: their breath, my coughing, the river applauding itself for not being worse. Tsubaki's face is inches from mine, all pupils and fury. "Breathe," she orders, like air is a machine she can repair on command. "Hey—Arima—look at me. Breathe."

I breathe. It hurts. I breathe again. It hurts less. The world comes back in little squares—Watari's was frozen in fear ; the mud on Tsubaki's knees; a beetle trying to decide if we're a hill.

And then something happens I don't recognize until later: a laugh falls out of me. Not polite. Not allowed. Just a sound bigger than sense. Tsubaki blinks, as if I've spoken in a language only she knows. Watari starts laughing too because laughter is an infection if you want it to be. My chest aches and I don't care. For a moment the river is applause and we're the orchestra and every wrong thing in my life is upstream somewhere losing interest in me.

Tsubaki thumps my shoulder with the part of her hand that says idiot and alive. "Don't do that again," she says, but she's smiling in the way that means she didn't mean it exactly like that.

Things were so simple...

A white shape arcs into the corner of my eye...

The splash becomes a smack and the green becomes a gym, the soft thwomp of a volleyball punching the floor exactly where my head was until I leaned on accident and luck. The ceiling lights are a grid. The echo is laughter and squeaking shoes and the P.E. teacher's whistle trying to be God and failing.

"Earth to piano-kun!" Watari sings from the opposite court, already airborne in a way humans shouldn't be. He hammers the ball into the empty part of the world like he's settling an argument with gravity. "You planning to move your feet sometime this century?"

"I moved," I say to nobody as the ball skids past my shoe.

"Barely," Tsubaki answers for the universe, sliding in a low dig that makes the floor complain and sending the ball back up like a dare. Her ponytail is crooked and righteous, her eyes in that narrow place between joy and murder.

The rally is more a sitcom than a sport. The ball loves chaos; we oblige it. I get my hands on one pass and my wrists ring; I get out of the way of three more like they know my birthday and want to end it early. Watari is everywhere at once, golden retriever disguised as striker disguised as volleyball savior. When the whistle finally declares us done suffering, I stagger off the line and make for the sideline like it has water I can own.

It does. I collapse into a sit that would be a lounge if I had any lounge left, the wall at my back, the bottle cold against the part of my mouth that still believes in relief. Watari slings himself down beside me with theatrical groans, then pops up to make sure Tsubaki sees how not-tired he is, then flops down again because attention is a renewable resource and he wants all of it.

"Hold still," he says, and before I can say please don't, he's got his phone out and my face in the frame. "This is incredible content. Our brave pianist, freshly deceased at practice. I'm sending it to Kaori-chan. She deserves to know the thrilling condition of her accompanist."

I tip the bottle back and let the water turn into a scold. "Don't," I say around the mouth of it.

"Don't?" He makes his voice hurt. "Don't support your violinist's morale? Don't give her joy in her darkest hour? Shame." He snaps a picture anyway, then lowers the phone and, without fanfare, flicks a glance at me that is not the same as a joke. "Seriously, though," he says, with that sideways smile he uses when he's hiding something kind behind humor. "You look like an extra from a zombie movie. She needs you awake, not... whatever this is."

I roll my eyes because eye-rolling is cheaper than honesty. "I'm fine."

He bumps my shoulder with his because shoulders are what he has instead of subtlety. "Uh-huh. And I'm going to adopt three golden eagles and teach them to fetch. You going to the hospital after? I can swing by with you. I bring soup and incredible charisma."

I stare at the line of tape on the floor like it might reveal a path. "I can't," I say, softer than plan. "I have to see my uncle."

Watari makes a face like someone took his ice cream. "Booo. Kaori-chan is my Kaori-chan now." He grins before I can bristle. "Kidding. She's everyone's Kaori-chan. But since she needs you for piano, I will magnanimously share her with you. After I hog most of the credit."

"I'll see her when she gets out," I say. It comes out too quick, like I rehearsed it, like it's supposed to sound like less than it is. "I've got... stuff."

"Stuff," he echoes, heavy with meaning and empty of specifics. He leans closer, drops his voice without dropping the joke. "Don't disappear on her, okay? She hates when you vanish, and then I have to go on side quests and it ruins my level-up schedule."

"I won't." The promise tastes like something I can pay for only once.

"Good." He pokes my cheek with his finger, delighted at his own audacity. "Also, be honest: don't you wanna see her naked again?~" He sings it, awful and high, a memory of white hospital sheets and a back we were not supposed to see. "Come on, come—"

The first ball hits him in the ear with a sound like a punctuation mark.

We both freeze, then turn at exactly the wrong speed. Tsubaki stands a few yards away with another volleyball in her hands and murder in her soul. Her cheeks are lit with outrage. "I can't leave you idiots alone for two minutes," she says, very calm in the way that means not calm at all.

"It was a tasteful joke," Watari lies, rubbing his ear and preparing to sprint.

"Say tasteful again," Tsubaki says, and throws the second one.

We scatter. Watari zigzags like a child who believes serpentine evades bullets. I choose a straight line because my brain has lost preferences. Tsubaki machine-guns us with playground-precision, each ball a verdict. I get pinged in the calf and the shoulder and the part of my pride that tried to be amused. Watari yelps, "Mercy!" and Tsubaki yells, "No!" and the class watches with the kind of reverence people reserve for natural disasters and childhood friendships they can smell from across a gym.

"Those three are always like this," someone says near the bleachers, a whisper that isn't private at all. "Since forever."

When the whistle calls timeout and the teacher tells Tsubaki to stop terrorizing the student body with poorly regulated affection, she drops the last ball and points at each of us like a goddess of consequences. "Behave," she says. "And stop being gross." Her eyes flick to me for a half-second longer than to Watari. You okay? is there, unsaid. I shrug a lie that means please don't make me open my mouth.

The locker room smells like soap trying to win. I change by habit more than order, hands doing what they always do while my head is eight minutes behind. The bell is something I walk through. I tell Tsubaki I'll text. Watari tries to draft me into a celebratory snack run; I tell him I'll pass. He complains at full volume, then winks at half-volume and says, "Don't be a ghost."

The sidewalk is a long drum. Shoes, wind, the city doing its evening stretch. A kid in a uniform two sizes too big barrels past chasing a ball that looks like it belongs to an older sibling. A delivery bike sings down the lane with a bell that apologizes for existing. I breathe and the air tastes like the end of something that refuses to end.

I haven't thought about that bridge in years. Not exactly. It gets folded into other summers, other afternoons, other arguments about who I am allowed to be. After Kaori died the first time, I swept whole rooms of memory into bags and shoved them into a back closet I never opened. Good things especially. Good things hurt more because they'd had the audacity to be good in the first place. The river was one of those rooms. Tsubaki's laugh that day. Watari's stupid victory pose. My own laugh, strange in my mouth, like someone else had borrowed my voice and used it better.

Now she's here again, like the hinge of time got bored of being straight. And all the rooms are opening on their own. The light from those afternoons keeps creeping under the door and across the floor and up the bed until I have to sit up and admit I'm not asleep. I don't know if it's mercy. I don't know if it's cruelty. It feels like waking up to a favorite song and remembering halfway through that the person who loved it most is the reason you put it on.

I think about finals and the word lands like a weight. The schedule printed in black ink, innocent as a calendar that doesn't know it's heavy. Rehearsals. Warm-ups. The hall. The joy on her face when she said We did it. The exact shape of her mouth around the word first. I could drop out, whispers a voice that tries to be practical while my ribs argue. If I step back, there are hours to buy. If I step back, the lab moves closer. If I step back, maybe the future shows up early out of spite.

What if I step back and she dies anyway?

The thought is not a thought. It's a cliff. My feet try to stop but the sidewalk insists we keep pretending this is casual. The nightmare has two heads: in one, I stand on a stage with a girl who is running out of music. In the other, I'm in a room full of white machines while she's somewhere else, and when she runs out of days she thinks I chose not to play with her. I can live with being wrong. I can't live with that.

A streetlight twitches awake. Another follows. The whole block catches the idea one bulb at a time. A bus exhales at a corner and decides not to wait for anyone. My phone buzzes. Tsubaki: got home. eat food. don't be stupid. She leaves out the rest on purpose. I type: alive. uncle now. talk later. I almost add a joke. I don't have one that isn't true.

I am so tired. Not the interesting kind. The kind that makes you want to lean against buildings because standing is too proud. My legs have that hollow feeling like I used too much of them somewhere else and expect them to still deliver me at every door. My head is a crowded hallway again—arrows, boxes, the names of people who might say yes if I catch them at the right hour. The metronome that lives between my ears ticks calmly, unconcerned with my panic. Not now. Later. Move.

If I get a lab position—and that's still an if with teeth—everything tightens. School doesn't stop. The piano doesn't stop unless I make it. Kaori does not stop. None of it will politely move aside because I've realized I'm one person pretending to be two. I already feel the edges fraying and I haven't even crossed this threshold yet. How bad does it get when the centrifuge enters the chat? When a person with a badge tells me to come in at 6 a.m. or 10 p.m. or both? When finals ask for my afternoons and nights and the research asks for my life?

Money helps, the same way a glass of water helps a house fire because you feel like you're doing something. The stocks I nudged at the right times, the bets I made on games whose endings I remembered too well—it means I can pay for trains and tools and tea, maybe slip someone a favor without writing it down. It does not make the day longer. It does not stop her from getting small under hospital lights. It doesn't play the second page while she breathes through a tremor and pretends it's nothing.

A couple walks past arguing in low voices about detergent. A bicycle chain sings pain. A cat decides I am not a threat and then revises its opinion and vanishes under a car with a tail like a question mark. Somewhere a television laughs at something no one will remember tomorrow.

You're already exhausted, I tell myself, in the tone I reserve for students who forget their own hands. Mentally. Physically. On two axes at once like a joke drawn on graph paper. You will not get a parade for collapsing gracefully. If you're this drained now, what does it look like when the lab is real? When the finals land on the calendar like a falling piano? When she needs you to be two things at once and you still only have the one body that keeps thinking about sleep like it's an elective?

I pass the bakery that pretends every hour is morning. A tray slides into the case with a shine like new cars. For a blink I see Watari balancing a pastry box like a relic, see the nurse's eyebrows, see Kaori's shoulder blades glinting with disinfectant and embarrassment. The part of my brain that edits me tells the rest to cut the scene. It doesn't listen. I let the door of that memory be open for three steps and then close it gently so I don't slam my own fingers.

They and passed the Finals.... He had already made significant changes.... Last time they failed and Kaori urged him to join a piano competition. He needed to deal with this situation whether he liked it or not. But the thought of talking to Kaori... and seeing her dejected and betrayed face once i tell her my intentions. It made my gut wrench

Uncle's street is a little different than mine in ways you can only hear—older trees, less traffic, somebody's piano the next block over practicing scales like they're a prayer. I've done this walk in my head a hundred times with different weather, different shoes, different versions of me. In most of them I arrive smarter and earlier in the story. In exactly one I arrive too late. I try not to step on that version of the sidewalk.

He doesn't have a lab in his living room. He has keys to rooms where a person might let me stand and learn. He has names of people who can teach me the parts I faked the first time with stubbornness and rage. He has the patience to tell me I am not special and then the audacity to call in a favor anyway. He will look at my face and see the lack of sleep and decide how much of it is integrity and how much of it is stupidity. He will hear the part of my voice that shakes and file it under things we don't mention if we can help it.

I could drop out. The sentence keeps trying on different coats to see if any of them make it less naked. Step back. Prioritize. Optimize. It stays a knife no matter what outfit it wears. If I set it down now, do I save her later? If I set it down now, do I cut something I can't mend?

The house is there before I'm ready for it. Same bricks. Same small garden that manages to look like attention even in bad months. The upstairs light is on, soft and useful. Through the front window I can see the corner of a bookcase that smells like the years that built it even though smell doesn't carry through glass.

I stop at the gate and then at the walk and then at the invisible line where the threshold begins even though it's still three paces away. The breath I take feels like the one before the first note—light, precise, unnegotiable. My hand finds the strap of my bag and squeezes the fabric like it might answer a question I haven't figured out how to ask.

On the porch, the paint is the same stubborn blue. The bell still has that tiny chip like a bitten lip. The door is the ordinary kind that opens if you want it to.

I stand there and listen to my heartbeat count out the measures of the next thing. I think of a girl who laughed with tears on her face, of a friend hurling volleyballs at my bad ideas, of a boy who refuses to stop being sunlight just because the day got complicated. I think of a river that gave me back my breath and my laugh in the same instant and wonder if time is a river or a wall or neither.

I don't knock. Not yet. I stand at my uncle's door and try to pick a life in one breath.

———————————-
The rice bowl is still warm in her hands when she realizes she has been staring at nothing for three minutes. The TV in the other room murmurs about weather and someone laughs like it's their job. Her mother asks if she wants seconds; she says no without moving her eyes. The chopsticks rest on the lip of the bowl like they're waiting for a signal. She gives them none.

Upstairs, her room is the same as always—pinned tickets, tournament brackets curling at the edges, a string of tiny lights she forgets to turn off, the bat leaning in the corner like a friend who didn't go home. She drops onto the mattress and the bed springs make that small complaint they always make when she lands too hard. Her phone is a cold rectangle on her stomach. She taps it awake and scrolls nothing: old pictures of the team chirping victory signs; a video of Watari doing shoulders in a way that looks illegal; a blurry shot of Kousei pretending to be invisible at lunch and failing.

He looked awful today, she thinks, and the thought lands like a ball right in the meat of her glove. Not the dramatic awful, not a fever, just that paper-thin version of him that shows up when he's been borrowing from tomorrow for too many tomorrows. He said "I'll see her when she gets out" and smiled the smile that means he is building a lie carefully so no one gets cut on it. She can still hear Watari's laugh turning serious under the joke, hear herself turning into a ballistic missile with a ball for a nose because if she doesn't keep their lines straight, who will?

Her phone buzzes.

saito-senpai: can you talk?

She stares at the three words long enough to feel the heat creep up her neck. It's stupid how fast her thumbs get nervous. She doesn't like when her hands don't belong to her. She types: sure and then, like she didn't mean to be that available, adds: for a bit.

The ring is barely half a ring before she swipes. "Hey." It comes out like she's jogging even though she's lying perfectly still.

"Hey." He sounds like a gym after lights-out: quiet, echoing, everything put away. "Did I catch you at a bad time?"

"No," she says. "Just... digestion."

He laughs, low and a little embarrassed. "Same. I swear our coach feeds us like he's trying to grow us two inches by Friday."

"You wish."

"I do," he says, and she can hear the grin even if he's trying to play it down. "How's the head? You took a weird hop at short last game. Looked like it caught you on the lip of the glove."

"It did," she admits. "Bad read. I was thinking of other things."

"Don't," he says, without scolding. "You know the drill—first step in, never up. Let the body act stupid so the brain can be smart."

She snorts. "Your brain has never been accused of being smart."

"Ouch," he says, pleased. "Okay, Ms. Fundamentals, let me return the favor: double-play feeds. You're drifting too close to the bag. Plant earlier, turn on the line. Trust your second to get there."

She slides her eyes to the ceiling and feels the old thing she doesn't like to name: respect that grew into a crush that grew into a comfortable memory she could keep in her pocket without it poking her. "Yes, senpai," she says, mocking and not. "Regionals are going to eat us if our pivot is late."

"They won't," he says, and for a second he is all captain and no boy at all. "We keep the infield clean, we save a pitcher an inning. You and me—" He catches himself and resets, pretending he doesn't know he almost included her in something that is his to own. "Our teams, I mean."

"I knew what you meant," she says, quiet enough to slip under his guard. She props the phone on her shoulder and stares at the glow making a small halo on the wall. "How's your side of the bracket?"

"Rude," he says instantly. "The kind of rude that pretends to be polite. Sakanishi's got a freshman who thinks he's already in Koshien. He's not wrong."

"Throw him junk," she says. "See if he can keep his hands back."

"We will," he says. "If we meet them. First we have to get through Mr. Forkball and his merry band of slappers. It's like trying to close a window in a hurricane."

She laughs, this time real. "I hate slappers. Pick a side: be fast or hit."

"Some people get to be both," he says, swagger turned down to affectionate. "Some people are shortstops who can cover half a county and still complain about their throws being off by an inch."

"If you're not aiming for perfection, what are we even doing?" She says it like a joke and tastes the truth in it anyway.

There's a little beat where all she hears is his breath and the tiny sound of him shifting the phone from one ear to the other. He does that when he's about to say something he hasn't practiced.

"So," he says, trying the word on and finding it larger than expected. "About what I said earlier."

She rolls onto her side, the ceiling becoming a wall. Outside, a scooter whines past like an insect with opinions. She pinches the corner of her pillow and waits for her mouth to find a position to hold that won't break. "Yeah?"

"I meant it," he says, and the bravado he usually wears like a jacket isn't there. He sounds like a person without a uniform. "I mean—if you'd want to... go out. With me. Not as a team thing. Just us."

Her face goes hot in a way that annoys her because she's not a blusher and she doesn't want to start now. She says, to buy herself a heartbeat, "You're bad at this."

"I am," he agrees, relief making him almost laugh. "You make me bad at it."

"Good," she says, and hates that her voice wobbles on the d. She sits up so the blood has somewhere else to go. The room looks exactly the same and not at all. She turns her bat in the corner into a lighthouse and tries to steer toward it. "Why now?"

He exhales. "Because I'm dumb," he says, then tries again. "Because regionals make me honest. Because I kept waiting for the right time and it turns out there isn't one. And because—" He stops like a runner seeing if he can make third and deciding not to. "Because you were always kind of my favorite kind of problem."

She laughs, a small burst that escapes. "That's terrible."

"I know," he says, and now the bad-boy act sneaks in like a cat at a door. "I'm a menace. I'll write you an apology on a baseball."

"You'd only spell my name wrong," she says. His chuckle tumbles into the line and lands on her shoulder like a coin.

He shifts again. She can hear a street outside on his end too: a car starting, someone calling a dog, the metallic click of a bicycle being convinced to behave. "I thought about asking you a bunch of times," he says, softer. "After the fall tournament. After that game where you turned that stupid hop into an out and looked at me like you could take my job if you wanted to. After graduation last year—" He stumbles over the timeline and corrects without making a big deal of it. "You know what I mean. Moments. And I didn't. I always, I don't know... acted like I didn't care enough to try. Because that's easier."

She knows exactly what he means: the pose, the lean, the way he throws his cap and slouches and pretends to be made of shrug because being earnest is like stepping up to a pitch without a bat. She used to look up to it because it meant he wasn't afraid of the mask. Later she noticed it was the mask.

"I liked you," she says, not a confession, just a fact placed carefully on the table between them. "Like-liked, the middle school kind that thinks liking is a sport. It was... shiny. I thought if you asked me then I'd die of happy."

He doesn't say anything, and the silence is decent about it.

"And then it kind of—" She rotates her hand in the air at nothing. "Maybe I grew up. Maybe you did. Maybe I was too busy dragging a certain piano idiot around by his collar to notice that the glow changed." She smiles so he can hear it. "It got... softer. If you had asked me at graduation, when the air felt like a big yes and everybody was crying and pretending they weren't, maybe I would've lit up like a stadium. Now it's—" She searches for it honestly. "Warm. Nice. A good thing. But not fireworks."

"Not fireworks," he echoes, and he doesn't make it a wound. He says it like he's holding something that can still be useful even if it isn't a sparkler. "I'd still take warm."

"I know," she says, relieved he said it first. She flips onto her back again and drags the heel of her foot along the sheets because the body needs a job when the heart is writing memos. "I'm not saying no."

He makes a sound like his chest just untied itself. "Okay. Good. Because I'm terrible at being rejected. I'd have to move prefectures."

"You can't," she says. "Regionals."

"Right," he says. "Duty."

They drift for a minute in the easy parts: who's batting second now that Yamada can't track a curve; whether Coach is really going to make them shave for the tournament like it's 1992; how Kashiwagi will laugh if she hears any of this and how she will absolutely hear any of this. He gives her one more practical thing, because that's how he says I like you: "On short hops, stop stabbing. Beat it to the spot with your feet. You already know this."

"I know," she says. "Tell my legs."

"I will," he says. "I'll send them a letter."

"Use small words," she says, and he laughs again, and she feels the old small lift in the center of her chest, the one that shows up when a person is uncomplicatedly kind to her.

"And... him?" he says, quiet, like he's asking a plane to land safely. He doesn't say Kousei. He doesn't have to.

She bites the inside of her cheek and looks at the tiny lights strung over her desk, a galaxy as cheap as it is sincere. "He's..." She stops, because she doesn't want to lie and she also doesn't want to open the window so wide the night comes in and refuses to leave. "He looks tired," she says, which is true and not the whole truth. "He's always looked tired, but lately it's like his bones forgot how to rest."

"He won't tell you why," Saito guesses.

"He won't tell anyone why," she says. "Even when he's trying to. He gets this look like he's holding a note you can't hear."

Saito hums like he gets it without needing the details. "Then you'll do what you do. Throw balls at his head until he drinks water."

"That's the plan," she says, and he accepts it like it's a strategy and not love wearing a helmet.

He clears his throat. It is ridiculous how endearing it is that he does that before every brave thing. "So. Saturday? After practice. There's a place that pretends to be a café but it's really a crime scene for pancakes. I can take you. Or we can go stand on the bridge and dare the water to do anything about it."

She laughs, and it's easy. "I'm not carrying you if you drown."

"Fair," he says. "I'm heavy with muscle."

"Lies," she says. "It's all hair gel."

"Cruel," he says, delighted to be called on a product he does not actually use. "Saturday, then?"

"Saturday," she says, and the word sits in her mouth like a coin she hasn't decided to spend. "Text me."

"I will," he says, and then, because he's decided to be brave all the way through tonight, "Goodnight, Tsubaki."

She hides her face in the pillow and says, "Goodnight," into cotton, and hopes it didn't sound like she threw it too hard.

When the call dies, the room hears itself again. Someone bicycles past outside and whirs down the block. The house creaks its old familiar creaks. She flips her phone face-down and then back up again because she wants the dark and she wants the glow. She settles for the glow dimmed to a whisper.

She is happy. She is. It is a clean happiness, the kind that stays on the plate and doesn't make a mess. He's good. He's better than the act he sometimes wears to make boys listen. He sees her as a player first and a girl second and then both at once without making it complicated. He has hands that know how to field a bad bounce and still get the out. If the story ended here, she thinks, it would be the kind of ending you can bring home to your parents and no one has to fight in the car afterward.

But her heart isn't sparkling. Not like it used to when she was twelve and Saito looked like a poster and she looked like a person who could run forever and the idea of being chosen tasted like soda. Not like it might have if he'd asked on a day when everyone was dressed in leaving and the air was an open gate and the sun was saying yes to everything. Not like it does when a boy with a piano in his shadow looks at her like he's trying not to ask for help and she throws a ball at his head so she doesn't have to answer the question.

She thinks of the gym today—the volleyball arcing, Watari's ridiculousness, Kousei's almost-smile that never made it to his eyes. She thinks of the way he said "uncle" like it might save someone. She remembers being small on a bridge and furious that he wouldn't jump and then dragging him into the air anyway because if she had enough courage maybe she could lend him some. He laughed when he woke up. She did not. She was too busy counting the seconds he'd been gone.

Maybe that's the problem, she thinks, and the word problem isn't fair to anybody. Maybe she doesn't know how to stand next to a thing until it stops being scary. Maybe she only knows how to kick it or throw something at it until it changes shape. Kashiwagi told her that on the bridge walkway today with the boys being idiots in the background and the river pretending to be wise. You don't have to fix everything by kicking it. Sometimes you can just stand.

Stand. She rolls the word around on her tongue. She could stand with Saito. It would be easy. There are worse lives than easy. She could stand with Kousei too, but that's a different verb in a different language, one that costs you days of sleep and makes your chest tight and turns you into the kind of person who keeps snacks in her bag because he forgets.

Her phone lights again with a new message. saito-senpai: i'm serious, you know. i'll be good at this.

She smiles because it's sweet and because he thinks affection is a skill you can train like footwork, and maybe he's not wrong. She types: i know. and then, because she's trying to be a person who doesn't lie as much as she did last year, she adds: thank you for asking me for real.

Three dots. He sends back a flexing arm and then: goodnight for real. dream of hitting lasers.

She laughs into the quiet. okay, captain.

She switches the phone to do-not-disturb and lies back, staring at the ceiling that is also her sky. The tiny lights are uneven. One flickers like it's remembering something. She lifts her hand and pretends to catch it between her fingers. She thinks of Saturday. She thinks of regionals. She thinks of the finals she's not supposed to be thinking about because they don't belong to her, and of the girl with a violin case who can turn a room into belief and then pass out in the wings because belief is expensive. She thinks of a boy who looked at a door today like it might be a stage and a sentence that lives in his mouth too often lately: I'm fine.

She turns onto her side and pulls the blanket up to her chin even though it isn't cold. The house settles. Her mother laughs at something downstairs and coughs and laughs again. Tsubaki closes her eyes and tells herself she is happy and believes it and also doesn't, both at once, which is just another way of being alive.

If he had asked me at graduation, she thinks, and the picture is bright for one second—caps flying, the light on everyone's faces, the feeling like the world is a road you can actually see. If he had, maybe I would've been fireworks. Tonight, I am a porch light. On. Warm. Waiting.

Her phone is a small moon facedown on the pillow beside her. She does not touch it. She breathes. She listens for a train far off that sometimes threads the city with a line only the sleepless can hear. It takes a long time to come. When it does, she's already almost asleep, her hand curled near her cheek like someone put something there and asked her to keep it safe.

Chapter Text

The door paint is still the stubborn blue I remember. It has chips the shape of countries if you squint. The porch light draws a soft circle on the stoop; moths patrol its border like sleepy guards. When I press the bell, the tiny crack in the enamel nicks my fingertip the way it always has, a small ritual that says: this is family, not a transaction.

My uncle answers in his house sweater and reading glasses, an ink thumbprint on the cuff like he tried to hold a sentence and it ran. He takes me in with one quiet glance—the scuff on my shoes, the way my bag strap bites my shoulder, the hollow under my eyes I forgot to cover.

"You look like your bed lost a fight," he says, which is his version of hello.

I bow a fraction too deeply, because if I try to speak right away I'll say something I didn't plan to. "Evening."

"Come. Shoes," he adds, because the old rules keep the floor polite.

The entry smells like cedar and rain. A row of umbrellas leans together like gossiping aunts. Inside, the lamps are warm and placed for reading, not for decoration; his living room has the calm of a laboratory that learned to exhale. A kettle murmurs in the kitchen like someone telling good news far away. There's a mug already set on the counter, a second set beside it the way some people keep a spare heartbeat. He pulls it down when he sees me and sets it next to the first without comment. A plant I always forget the name of reaches for the window with a green hand; a bowl of clementines glows on the table like low suns.

"Tea?" he asks.

"Please."

He works in quiet, practiced motions—spoon, leaves, water, the small clink of ceramic that turns a house into a place you can be a person. He does the thing where he turns the mug so the painted crane faces me; he's done it since I was small enough to think the bird was looking at me on purpose. He carries both to the table and gestures to the chair with the better back support. He sits opposite and considers me across the steam like a problem he can't measure yet.

"I didn't expect you tonight," he says. "Or maybe I did. Your texts use perfect punctuation when you're lying about being fine."

"I'm not lying," I say, and then soften it into something not stupid. "I mean—I'm okay. Just... full day."

His eyebrows say: and a night before it, and the night before that. He doesn't reach for the easy questions. He lets the steam do its work between us, aromatic, a small fog where urgency can get its breath.

I take the handle like it's a hand I'm allowed to hold. "I needed to ask you something."

"Ask."

I feel the sentence trying to leap out of me and break something fragile on its way. I lower my voice so it has to step carefully. "I wanted to see if you knew anyone who'd... let me observe. A lab. Any lab. Just a few hours a week, or—" I keep it tidy. "My teacher said I could do a research project if I wanted. Something unusual helps for certain programs. It would look better if I'd actually seen the inside of a room where real work happens."

He watches me over the edge of his mug, eyes steady. "Most fourteen-year-olds ask for part-time jobs at smoothie shops. You're asking for centrifuges."

I try a smile. It stays on the surface. "Smoothie shops don't have pipettes."

"Some would argue they do." The corner of his mouth nudges upward and then rests. "What kind of project."

I put the words down like I'm handling glass. "Rare diseases. Ones that... get worse. Progressive. Incurable." A breath. "I picked Friedreich's ataxia."

The name sits between us with more gravity than a school paper should carry. He doesn't move for a heartbeat, two. The steam curls and uncurls like it's trying to decide whether it was invited. When he speaks, his voice is a step slower, like he's testing a stair.

"That isn't a word I expected to hear from you."

I look at the teabag string as if it provides instructions. "We could choose anything. My teacher said to pick something we didn't already know." Careful, casual. "I was reading—open journals, forum posts—and it sounded... it stuck."

"Open journals," he repeats, skeptical without being unkind. "And you just happened on that one."

I shrug in a way I practiced on the walk over. "It was in a list. 'Rare, progressive, inherited, no cure.' It sounded... important." It comes out steady, which feels like telling the truth and lying at the same time.

He takes his glasses off and polishes them with the corner of his sleeve, a think-better gesture I remember from parent-teacher meetings where he saved me with the exact tone of his hum. "Describe it to me."

"Clumsy at first," I say, the words finding the track they rehearsed all afternoon. "Then walking gets harder. Balance, coordination. Speech goes. Hands." I close mine and open them so I don't talk with them. "Sometimes the heart gets involved. Fast heart, thick walls. There are... studies. People talk about weak ankles and... the way stairs get longer. It's... cruel."

He puts his glasses back on and looks at me like he's checking my work. "Cruel is accurate."

"I thought I could... write something that wasn't just copy and paste," I add quickly, before the part of me that wants to confess decides to do anything heroic and foolish. "If I could ask someone who actually knows the shape of the problems. If they'd even let me watch how they think."

He leans back a half-inch, enough that the chair creaks a small opinion. The kettle clicks off in the other room. The sound feels like punctuation.

"I knew a man," he says finally, and his breath fogs the edge of his glasses with the weight of it. "A long time ago. Brilliant. Too clever for his own comfort. He worked on mitochondrial disorders. We wrote a paper together that nobody but six people read." The smallest smile, brief as a passing light. "His name is Saitou Yonoshita."

The name lands with the kind of immediacy that makes the air thinner. I don't look up sharply because people notice sharpness. I let my eyes stay on the crane on my mug, as if it might keep flying if I don't spook it. "What did he do?" I ask, careful.

"He married too young and loved exactly the right amount." My uncle's mouth makes a line that isn't disapproval so much as respect trying not to become a eulogy. "His wife had Friedreich's. It was... a long road. He stayed until the end and then some. After she died, he left the track he was on. Didn't want to write about energy metabolism anymore. Didn't want to write at all. The last time I saw him, he looked like someone dropped a piano on his shadow."

The tea turns the back of my throat warm and useless. For a second, against my will, the hospital room from last night overlays this kitchen—the clean smell, the pale sheet pulled over skinny knees, the brittle way she smiled around a word she wanted to hold without bleeding. I swallow and the taste is bitter in the way medicine is bitter, a sign that something functional might be hiding in it.

"Is he..." I let the sentence wander as if it doesn't know what question it wants to be. "Do you still talk?"

"Not often," he says. "He sent me a postcard with a picture of a mountain on it two years ago. The mountain looked cheerful. The handwriting did not." He rubs his thumb along the mug like he's smoothing a memory that won't lay flat. "He teaches, technically. Mentors a graduate student or two if they don't say anything optimistic. Keeps a room somewhere that smells like solvents. He is not, I must warn you, a kind man anymore."

The caution wants to sit on my tongue and do something reasonable. I don't invite it. "Do you have his number? An email? Where is the room."

He looks up at me sharply enough that I feel the wind of it. "No, Kousei." Soft, firm. "You will not go knocking on that door and ask a man with that history to help you write a school essay."

"It's not—" I start, then change lanes so fast my chest stings. "I know it's... odd. But you always told me if I wanted to understand something, I should stand next to it until it admits I exist. Even if someone says no at first. Even if I'm the least useful person in the room." I make my voice smaller so the words fit in it. "I can stand quietly."

He studies me. The clock in the hallway moves one step the way time does when it knows you're listening.

"Why that disease," he says finally. Not a challenge. An invitation to make a better lie.

Because I know the shape of its teeth. Because I can hear the tick of it behind everything she says is fine. Because the first time, I watched it take her and I let the world happen to me like a person in a seat facing the wrong direction on a train.

"Because my teacher will be impressed," I say instead, and hate how thin it sounds next to the weight of the truth. I reach for something that isn't only performance. "And because... because I watched my mother be sick for a long time." The room tilts a little and then settles. "I know what helpless feels like when the person you love is in a room you can't fix. It's not the same disease. I know that. But the... the powerlessness is the same shape." My throat tries to close and I let it try and then ask it kindly to move aside. "I don't want to write a paragraph and then go back to lunch. I want to know what people actually do when a disease tells you 'no' and you argue with it anyway."

He looks at me, and I watch the two parts of his face—scientist and uncle—try to decide who gets to speak. The scientist admires my argument; the uncle hears what I left out like a wrong note in otherwise pretty work. He was there for the endless herbs and incantations, the waiting rooms that smelled like television light, the soft click my mother made with her tongue when she didn't want to wake me but needed to signal that she was still here. He knows I'm using her pain as leverage and he knows I'm not faking the weight of it. Both things can be true. Both things are.

"You're too young to be this serious," he says quietly, and then, because he is a decent man and decency is inefficient, he adds, "But I suppose some of us don't get to pick when we become boring."

"Boring," I echo, because humor is a trick that keeps you from falling down. "That's me."

He stands, slow, like his knees aren't convinced the day requires further standing. He walks to the desk in the corner with the blotter and the pencil cup full of pens that all write better than the cheap ones at the convenience store. He opens the narrow drawer where he keeps the address book nobody under thirty uses; the rotary of names that smell like anniversaries and old coffee rides under his finger. He finds an index card that's been used for other truths and flips it to a clean side. The pen makes a soft hairline sound against the card as he writes, pauses, adds a building floor and a name for the security desk that will make the guard look at me like I fooled him into smiling.

He stays still for a second with the pen tip on the paper, as if the right warning lives in the last dot of an "i."

He returns and sets the card on the table without pushing it toward me. It sits there—stark, useful, no ceremony except the weight it radiates by existing.

"If I give you this," he says, "you will go. I know you." No anger. A statement of the facts like a weather report.

"I'll be polite," I say, because that part is easy.

He exhales through his nose in the way he does when a reaction has too many components and he refuses to pretend it's one. "Don't expect much," he says. The words are not unkind. They carry the tired wisdom of a person who has been disappointed without becoming cruel. "He is not the man I worked with. He may not answer when you knock. If he does, he will test you in ways that have nothing to do with science. He won't care about a school rubric. He won't be moved by your apology for interrupting his solitude. He may say something that sends you home before you sit down. Don't take it personally." A beat. "Even if he says something designed to make it personal."

I nod, and the nod feels like a vow I don't say out loud: I have already survived being told "no" by the universe in more expensive rooms than any lab a bitter man can keep. I can go home with a closed door and still call it movement.

He taps the card, once. I pick it up, and the paper behaves like paper, light and ordinary and completely unprepared to carry destiny. The address is a place I can reach by two trains and a bus or one longer train and a walk. The name under it—Saitou Yonoshita—looks like the kind of person you pass on a campus and think you've seen in a photograph with eyebrows raised at the camera's poor timing. The floor number is high enough for windows with a view that could make the world look solvable if you were allowed to look down from there and pretend people are dots.

"Thank you," I say, not performative, not stiff, only what the moment deserves.

He eases his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose. "You remind me of him when we were both prettier," he admits. "It frightens me to think of you becoming him. It also... reassures me. It means you might be useful where I've been merely amused."

"Being useful would be... nice," I say, and we both smile because nice isn't the right word and we both know it.

The tea has cooled to the exact temperature where it tastes like the idea of tea. I finish it because finishing small things makes larger ones feel possible. He asks about school in the way that lets me dodge particulars; I tell him just enough for him to make an adult noise that means life persists. We sit a while in the gentle clink of clean-up. He dries; I stack dishes because muscle memory is older than despair.

When I stand to go, he follows me to the door without making it ceremonial. He opens a drawer by the shoe rack and takes out a folded umbrella with a dumb pattern of clouds on it. "It'll mist in the morning," he says, like this is a weather report and not permission. "You'll hate yourself if your hair tries to leave your head."

"I'm not my hair," I say, and tuck the umbrella under my arm anyway.

On the threshold he does something he doesn't do every time. He sets his hand on my shoulder, light, like he's checking the tuning of a violin string. "Kousei."

"Mm?"

"If he is unkind, and you don't have to be noble about it, leave." His mouth makes that line again, the one that is so close to a smile and resolutely stops. "You are allowed to protect the parts of you that music needs."

Parts of me that music needs. The sentence fits like a switch I didn't know how to flip. I nod because my throat is busy.

Outside, the night smells like wet concrete and far-off udon. The streetlight over his gate has learned not to flicker. A cat I've never met owns the neighbor's low wall and blinks at me like it has an opinion about my shoes. I put the card in the inner pocket of my jacket, not the outer one where rain could find it and turn fate into papier-mâché. It's warm there immediately, as if paper learns body temperature faster than objects should.

I walk slow at first because there is pleasure in the state of having a direction when you didn't a minute ago. The card sits against my ribs like a small metronome, not loud, just insistently ticking—tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow—until the idea becomes a thing with train lines and a departure time. At the corner, I pause under a lamppost and open my notes app with thumbs that suddenly remember what hands are for. A list forms without my permission: blazer, clean shirt, summary page (short, not a manifesto), ask one specific question if he lets you, don't beg, don't pretend you know more than you do, don't pretend you know less.

The map app shows me two routes. One cuts across the city like a scalpel and leaves me with a long walk. The other takes a bendy path but drops me at a station that smells like coffee and printer ink. I pick the one with the coffee because if this goes badly, I'll want to sit on a bench afterward and pretend to be a person whose problems are on paper.

A bus hisses by with two passengers and a driver whose face says the day told him a joke he's still thinking about. Windows above me hold rectangles of lives in different brightnesses. Someone's television laughs at something my uncle would call unfunny with love in his voice. Behind one window a piano is practicing scales that sound like an apology. I try not to get sentimental about the fact that the world keeps turning its quiet wheels when I have a card in my pocket that feels like a lever.

Don't expect much. The warning travels with me as faithfully as my keys.

I turn it over in my head the way you handle a coin you might spend and might take home because it has a commemorative bird on it. Don't expect him to answer. Don't expect him to be gentle. Don't expect him to reward your courage with anything but the door closing. Okay. The part of me that loves her doesn't run on expectation; it runs on something older and dumber that refuses to die when told to.

Another man who lost the woman he loved. I hold the idea in my mouth like a secret candy and let it dissolve slow. It tastes like rust and something medicinal. It tastes like church in a culture that doesn't do church. I imagine his face—not the actual details; I let my brain draw him out of shadows, the way grief hollows people in the same three places. I imagine him looking at me and seeing a boy. He will. That's fine. It's the costume I'm wearing this time. I can perform it if it gets me through the door.

A couple passes holding hands like something they learned in a class. Their heads are bent toward each other in a small architecture that looks like it could survive unless someone sneezes at the wrong moment. A dog drags a man who pretends not to be dragged. A bicycle whispers chalk on asphalt. The city gives me the soundscape for resolve to brew in. Not a boil. Something slower. Yeast at work. Sugars turning to something that can rise. Fermenting, the way Tsubaki looks at me when she can't decide whether to throw a ball at my head or stand beside me breathing in rhythm. I let the feeling lift under my ribs. It's not fireworks. It's a steady fizz, an interior carbonation that says: you are not done yet.

At a red light I rehearse the first sentence a few different ways and choose none of them. The right opening line will not announce itself from here; it will be whatever vocabulary that room allows. Maybe it will be, "I'm sorry to bother you." Maybe it will be, "I read your paper from 2009 about coenzyme response and I didn't understand two-thirds of it." Maybe it will be no words at all until he lifts an eyebrow that means: speak.

At home, I put the card on my desk and then immediately put it back in my jacket because paper on wood looks too unarmed. I set an alarm for earlier than for school and then set a second one because I don't trust sleep not to be greedy. I lay out my blazer and the white shirt that makes me look less like a ghost and more like a kid trying to behave. I fold a single page of notes until it's the size of a playing card and tuck it where the address lives, a tiny pack of courage. The umbrella leans by the door like a joke.

Before I turn off the light, I stand by the window and watch the street gulls argue with nothing useful. My phone sits face-down, good and quiet. For once I don't pick it up and text Tsubaki I'm alive. She'll feel me in the air anyway and call me an idiot tomorrow if she needs to. Watari is probably asleep upside down like a bat who talks in his dreams. In a building across the river, a violin case leans against a chair, and I pretend I can hear someone breathing evenly in a room that forgives her for being tired.

"Don't expect much," my uncle said. I honor the advice by lowering my expectations to the floor. But hope doesn't ask your permission. It ferments. It changes the chemistry of whatever space you store it in. It seeps into the paper in my pocket and the cotton of my shirt and the gap between two beats in my chest.

Tomorrow, I think, and it lands inside me with a small, decisive click, the way a latch finds its other half in the dark.

I turn the light off. The room keeps its shape without me. I lie down and don't fight when sleep tries to teach me what to do with my hands. The card warms the jacket chair like a living thing. Night goes about its business. Resolve bubbles quietly under my ribs, not flashy, not loud, just ready.

Chapter Text

The cafeteria smells like a hundred different decisions. Mine is an egg sandwich and a paper cup of something pretending to be tea. I eat fast, like finishing this will make the clock move where I want it. Noon light slants across long tables and faces I don't have room for. My bag lives on my shoulder like a second torso; every time it knocks my ribs it reminds me what's inside—notes, a summary trimmed until it bleeds, and the small pink shape I keep telling myself I only packed because I'm superstitious.

After school, straight to Saitou Yonoshita. No loops, no waiting, no "maybe if I rest first." I'll beg. I'll prove it. I'll cry if I have to. I picture the building, the security desk, the elevator panel that will feel like a test before the test. I rehearse an apology clean enough it doesn't look like a bribe. I tell my face to remember how to look like a person and not a plan wearing a face.

I crumple the wrapper, toss, miss, retrieve, try again. My hands are doing tiny chores so my brain can run laps. I check the blazer folded in my bag one more time, as if the cloth will tell me I'm older than fourteen if I crease it just right.

When the bell finally hammers the air back into motion, I peel myself off the chair and let the tide carry me into the hallway. Kids pour from doors in eddies. My metronome ticks under the noise—after school, train, lobby, seventh floor, do not flinch. I'm halfway to the back stairs when the building shifts around a single fact and stops being one.

She's there.

Kaori stands at a window at the far end of the corridor, shoulder to the glass, sunlight pinning her hair into gold geometry. The world inside me lurches like the elevator I haven't gotten in yet. The sling of my bag digs a little too deep. For a few seconds my only talent is not moving. She's out. Of course she's out; that's what "discharge" means, but my body didn't believe it until this exact frame, her reflection nested in daylight, her hand idling over the strap of her case like it's listening.

Watari catches sight of her a heartbeat before she catches sight of anyone. He lifts a hand, grin already switched on, moving toward her with that ridiculous stride that thinks every hallway is a runway. I shrink half a step into the doorway's shadow—bad habit, second nature. Old life muscle memory threads a needle through my chest: I thought she liked him. I thought if I stood very still the idea would pass.

What an idiot I was.

My mouth makes a soundless sorry at a boy I used to be. The burn behind my eyes is the kind that says "not now" and means "not now." I squeeze the strap until my knuckles discuss whiteness, and I tell myself the most reasonable lie I own: tomorrow. I'll see her tomorrow. This isn't abandoning. This is triage. This is choosing the thing that might give her more tomorrows to stand in windows and laugh at the angle of the sun. I'm not running. I'm moving in the only direction that doesn't feel like backward.

I pivot toward the exit before my courage has time to ask a question I can't answer.

Outside, the day tastes like chalk and bicycle chain. My feet know the route before my head catches up—across the courtyard, down the side street with the vending machine that's always out of the only flavor anyone wants, past the park bench that pretends to be a bench until your spine reminds you it's a plank. The notebook is in my hand without permission. I'm halfway through a page of possible openings before I notice I've started.

"Dr. Saitou, I'm sorry to impose. My name is—"

Too formal. He'll throw that away before the comma cools.

"Mr. Saitou? I read your—"

No. Don't lead with flattery. Lead with work.

"Sir, I have a two-page summary of a study proposal in early-stage review of—"

Study proposal is a generous phrase for a teenager's wishful thinking, but I cross out nothing. I add a box that says ASK SMALL THINGS. I underline it twice. I scribble: do not lie about what you don't know. Then I scribble it again because repetition sometimes tricks me into honesty.

I am fourteen. I write it like it's a stupid joke at my own expense and not the absolute ceiling grown-ups will see first. Lab doors don't open to kids who still hand in math homework. People do not take you seriously just because you've learned the habit of seriousness. But today is not an application. It's a knock. A knock doesn't need age; it needs knuckles and direction. I can provide both.

The metronome ticks. My head tips down, eyes on paper lines so I don't look at faces and forget the sound my feet make.

"Ken... pa!"

Two syllables hop across the road and land in me like pebbles tossed at a bedroom window. I look up. Two little girls in bright socks are doing the world's oldest experiment with squares of chalk—one foot, two feet, pause, clap, giggle. Their braids swing like punctuation. They chant again, little lungs throwing their whole bodies into it.

"Ken—pa! Ken—pa!"

I want to smile. I'm too busy bracing. Across the narrow street, by the low rail above the river, she stands. Casual as gravity. Kaori's hand sits on the chalk line like she was born knowing where to place it. She taps one square with the toe of her shoe, the way you do when you're timing your jump and also teasing a decision. She says the game along with the girls softly, like tasting an old word.

"Ken... pa."

She looks up and her eyes nail me to the moment cleanly. I don't have anywhere to hide; not here, not now. We just stand there with the stupid sky being exactly the shade of blue that makes poems make sense. Her mouth opens around my name and closes on something gentler.

"Out of the hospital, huh," I say, because my throat picks the wrong sentence and refuses to return it for store credit.

She smiles. It's not the hero's grin from the stage. It's the quiet version, the one you could fold and tuck into a pocket and it would still be a smile when you opened it later. "Yup," she says, maddeningly cheerful. "A-okay now."

"What are you doing here...?" It comes out more helpless than I intend.

"Playing Kenpa," she says, putting mock patience on the obvious. She gestures with the ease of a person who expects the world to meet her halfway. The girls giggle, sensing drama the way birds sense rain.

"She's waiting for somebody!" one singsongs.

The other nods fiercely, delighted by facts that aren't theirs. "Somebody!"

Color flashes in Kaori's face—annoyance, then fluster, then an expression that is somehow both. "Hey, shhh," she hisses at them with zero authority and total entertainment value. They grin wider. I feel my mouth tilt without permission, the old tease muscle remembering its job.

"Woah," I say, widening my eyes like an idiot and leaning in as if I'm hearing this for the first time. "I wonder who you're waiting for?"

The glare she throws me is legally distinct from a glare. It's a glare with warmth baked into it, which is cheating. She turns on her heel and steps close enough that I smell hospital soap hiding under river air. She sticks out a hand, palm up, fingers expectant. "Give it."

"Give... what?"

"My gift for getting out of the hospital, duh." Chin tip, challenge, whole act of a person who refuses to let a single beat of the day go unscored. "You didn't forget, did you?"

The old timeline throws a scene up on the inside of my skull: her palm landing on my shoulder with theatrical injury, the fake tears, the little girls scolding me for being a cad. We laughed because we had no idea we were laughing at a cliff.

Not this time.

I unzip the top pocket of my bag without breaking eye contact. My fingers brush the soft plush the way you check a pulse. I didn't plan to hand this over this soon; it wasn't supposed to be for light. It belonged to winter and late and a room that smelled like bleach. But if time is a river that sometimes returns what it took, then I won't argue with the current.

I bring out the pink bunny, ears folded from being carried, stitching neat, eyes wide with the kind of innocence that survives manufacturing deadlines. Kaori's breath catches. It's audible. She blinks twice like her body needs help believing itself.

"W-wait," she says, voice smaller than she lets it be in public. "You... you really got one?"

"Seems like it," I say, and it's nothing, and I'm shaking.

She lifts it carefully to eye level like you would a creature you don't want to spook. The ears flop. The battered softness of it makes the afternoon kinder by three degrees. She tucks it to her chest. The way she hugs it is not theatrical. It's the sort of hug that blesses both giver and gift.

"Suitable gift," she pronounces, and the warmth of the sentence lands on the bridge of my nose and burns. For a blink, this is the version of the world where small edits compound into miracles. For a blink, I'm allowed to imagine that changing one detail rewrites the paragraphs after it.

Then she ruins me with two syllables.

"So," she says, as if we've been on this path since the first listen. "Finals."

My eyes go somewhere over her shoulder where the river pretends to be a mirror. I can feel the color draining off my face; it leaves me a sketch. The silence stretches just long enough to make itself comfortable. My mouth opens around truth and closes on mercy.

"I..." I have to swallow around a lump the size of what I owe her. "Maybe we... shouldn't?"

Her brows jump. The bunny slips a fraction in her grip, caught, corrected. "Why not?" she says, astonished that a boy could be this dense where applause is concerned. "We played great. Are you still scared?" She leans a little, conspiratorial. "We're all scared, Kousei. Every time we stand there. That's the deal."

She thinks it's my mother again. She thinks the ghost in my spine is a woman with a metronome for a mouth. It's worse and not her fault. How do you explain to someone that you have already watched a day finish with them in it and can't bear to run the piece again? You don't. You steal air from your own lungs and let them keep theirs.

"I bet there are a million musicians who have done that," she barrels on, adopting a mocking whine. "'No way, I can't do this!'" She hides behind the rabbit and peeks around it in a way that makes the two girls squeal. "But they always pick it back up and face the music. That's how—"

The words punch me with how perfectly they remember themselves. They're the same notes, in the same order, pouring from the same mouth that will later shape a different kind of goodbye. My back tightens like the body is trying to retreat from the past in the present tense. The sentence that killed me once moves through me again, and I hear myself answer it under my breath, too soft to be heard by anyone but my bones.

"The most beautiful lie is born," I murmur.

"What?" She tilts her head.

"Nothing," I say, because everything is the opposite and I won't put it in her hands. "Just... thinking."

She studies me, the way she does when she's about to dare me into breathing. The light on the water gets brighter like daylight is auditioning to be memory. The girls have started arguing about which chalk square is luckier. Somewhere behind me a truck coughs past; a dog decides not to bark. Life keeps flowing like it didn't just run into a wall.

I should tell her now. I should be brave in the useful way and say the sentence that will take a bite out of her smile and maybe save her a different kind of pain later: I can't. I won't. Not because I'm scared of a stage or a ghost with a baton, but because there's another door I have to pound on with both fists until blood answers.

But she's holding a bunny I brought from a different ending. She's brand-new out of a room where machines keep count. She believes in what we did together with a faith that makes new rooms out of empty air. I can't be the person who breaks that in a hallway with children chalking the ground into squares of permission.

She fills the silence herself, like she always does, generous enough to hand me a way out and also a way forward. "We're only fourteen," she says, and her grin does that knife-trick where it's sharp and somehow not cutting. "Let's jump in with both feet first."

Before I can answer, her palms kiss the rail—skirts flick, a flash of heel—and she's already gone over, vanishing in a spray of light and air as the two girls gasp and my breath forgets me.

There's a hollow slap and then water everywhere—silver droplets, a quick-blooming ring, the kind of splash that erases everything for a beat and writes joy in its place.

The two girls squeal like a firework just remembered its job. I stand rooted to the rail, hands useless at my sides. She just got out. That sentence blares in my head and has no effect on the world at all.

Kaori breaks the surface like a secret surfacing to laugh. Hair slicked back, eyes bright, she whoops, spins, and flings a fan of water toward the sky just to see what it looks like when it falls. "It feels so good!" she calls up, giddy. "I always wanted to try that!"

Of course she did. Of course she would say that—take something ridiculous and make it ordinary by doing it first. The girls bounce on their toes, clapping. "She's crazy!" one declares, which in their language is another word for brave.

"Are you okay?" I hear myself ask, and it comes out thin, a thread tugging at a kite already airborne.

Kaori floats on her back for a second and kicks lazily, as if the river were a couch and the sky polite enough to make room. "I'm perfect," she says, and she clicks the p in a way that makes the afternoon grin. "Come on!"

I look down at my shoes, at the damp rail, at the chalk squares now freckled with drops. My mind starts doing math on reflex—water to hospital discharge to body temperature to bad ideas—and then trips over its own seriousness. She waves, and the wave is aimed at all of us: the little girls, me, the part of the day that might have chosen to be dull.

The bunny's ears peek from her bag, looking ridiculous and right. The sight makes something pinch in my chest. Last time this memory carried me like a bridge. Now it carries a countdown. Same sun, same river, same girl, and I can't separate any of it from the red second hand I can't unsee.

Why her? Why is the person who makes everything lighter the one with weight tied to her ankles? The unfairness tastes metal. I grip the rail hard enough that cold bleeds into my palms and has nothing to say.

A knot tightens behind my eyes. I rub it away, impatient, then slower, then not at all. Great. Tears. The day is so bright I can feel each one like a betrayal, heat traveling where it doesn't belong. I angle my face so the kids don't notice and fail anyway.

"Are you crying?" one whispers, delighted and concerned in equal measure.

"Wind," I lie, even though the air is barely moving.

Kaori swims to the shallows and plants her hands, boots digging into the riverbed, then stands with water cascading off her like a second dress. She pushes her bangs back with both wrists and beams up at us. "See? Easy."

"Easy," I echo, and it sounds like another language.

She hikes the bag higher on her shoulder so the bunny can watch properly, then looks up like she expects me to join her, to vault the rail, to say yes with my whole stupid body. That used to be who she was trying to build in me: someone who didn't ask the ground for permission. Today I have an appointment with a door that will not swing open for anyone who can't explain themselves. Being brave in one direction makes me a coward in another. I hate the arithmetic of that.

"Are you coming?" she calls.

"I have to—" my mouth starts, and I stitch the rest shut. Not here. Not after that smile. I let my hands do small useful things: check my watch even though I know the time, tuck the notebook deeper under my arm, smooth a wrinkle in the blazer sleeve like that could organize me. I want to tell her I can't stand on that stage. I want to say I already chose. My throat won't carry it. The act of speaking would dent this moment, and she just earned it with both feet.

Watari would yell something obnoxious and leap. Tsubaki would throw a shoe at my head and call me names designed to get me moving. I stand there like a signpost while the river tries to show me how to live.

Kaori turns a little circle, soaking in everything she can—pigeons bickering on the bridge, the girls imitating her kick on dry land, me failing to wave back. She cups her hands around her mouth. "You're allowed to be happy, you know!"

The words land and roll around inside, knocking against sharp corners. Happy is a door with a lock on the outside. I'm not barred; I'm the one holding it shut. I think of Yonoshita's address, the floor number, the way my uncle said don't expect much like advice and weather. I think of a room with solvents in the air and a man who stopped writing sentences because one person he loved ran out. If I make it past his threshold, if I can be in the hum of machines, if I can fetch and label and learn without being a nuisance—maybe that's what happiness looks like from this angle. Not a rush. Not a plunge. A series of doors that grudgingly click.

"Ken... pa!" one of the girls chants to herself, scooting on two feet through chalk lakes. The other turns to me, eyes big. "She's so cool," she says, confiding a secret that the day already leaked.

"She is," I say, and my voice cracks the way it does when a note is almost in tune and decides at the last second to be honest instead.

Kaori sloshes toward the steps built into the bank, wringing water from her sleeve and then deciding not to care. When she reaches the top she shakes like a dog and makes both girls shriek and laugh. Then she looks at me, and the last of the river drains from her lashes, and for a heartbeat we're alone in a room made of afternoon.

"Don't vanish," she says. Not sharp. Not even a request. A habit we're both trying to keep alive.

"I won't," I answer, and I feel the lie and the truth share a cup. I won't vanish on purpose. I will disappear into a lab if I can, into tubes and benches and a stack of protocols, into the kind of work that doesn't clap when you're done. That isn't vanishing. That's... trying differently.

The metronome starts up behind my ear again. Not loud. Present. After this, go. Train, lobby, seventh floor. Knock until my knuckles learn the door's shape. Don't apologize for existing. Apologize for the interruption and then refuse to leave as politely as possible.

Kaori squeezes water from the ends of her hair with both hands and laughs at how much there is. "Look," she tells the girls, solemn as a priest. "Scientific fact: hair multiplies in water."

They nod, enthralled by a law of physics that belongs solely to her.

I take one small step back from the rail. The movement feels bigger than it is. She notices. Of course she does. Her smile flickers, then holds steady. She knows me well enough to smell a retreat. She's kind enough to pretend she doesn't.

"Saturday," one of the girls says to the other, already writing this down in whatever calendar children keep. "We'll come back Saturday and practice being brave."

"Okay," the other says, like agreeing costs her nothing.

I picture a different Saturday—the one Kaori suggested with her eyes when she talked about finals, the hall full of people who don't know they're waiting for a miracle. I can't stand next to her there and also stand where I need to stand now. The day refuses to make room for both.

"Thank you for the bunny," she says suddenly, quieter, sincerity folding the words into something small enough to hand back to me.

I nod because my mouth is busy stopping more things from falling out. "Don't let it swim," I manage.

She glances at the ears peeking from her bag and smiles like I gave her something clever and not obvious. "I'll make it a life jacket."

The little girls bolt down the steps to throw pebbles, declaring each one a wish. Kaori waves at them, then at me. The wave is easy, no strings. I'm supposed to wave back. The signal fails to leave my shoulder. All I can do is look, and looking hurts in a clean way I don't know how to bandage.

I print the next hour in my head so I can read it when fear tries to edit: cross the bridge, train, station coffee I won't taste, lobby with potted plants that think they're trees, elevator chime, hallway, a door with someone's name beside it who loved a person who ran out of time. I'm fourteen. I am also the weight of two lives' worth of regret stuffed into a blazer that fits better than it should. If he tells me to leave, I'll leave. If he tells me to sit, I'll sit. If all I get is a map of what not to say next time, I'll take it like medicine.

She laughs. The sound climbs the rail and catches on my jacket and decides to ride with me for a while whether I want it to or not.

I back away another step, then another, memorizing: the exact angle of her stance, the way the bunny's ear tilts like it's curious, the girls inventing a game with new rules in wet shoes. She lifts her hand again, bright as the day.

I don't lift mine. I just stand there, full of motion I can't show, and look down at her—still waving at me, and at the kids, and at whatever comes next.

Chapter Text

The lock sticks for half a second like it's deciding whether I deserve to come home. I shoulder the door and it gives, and then there's Kaori in my doorway making a small lake on the genkan.

She's dripping from hair to socks, an outline of sunlight and wet. Her bow case thunks against the wall like it's also exhausted from bad ideas. The air fills with that river smell—cold metal, green things, summer trying to be brave.

"Permission to squish around your house," she says, already squishing.

"Shoes," I hear myself say, because if rules exist anywhere, they should exist here.

She toes them off with exaggerated care, then wiggles her bare feet on the mat like she's blessing the floor. "Ta-da. See? I'm civilized." A drop jumps from the tip of her nose to the tile. She watches it fall as if it were art.

The clock in the kitchen does a single proud tick. The thought arrives on its heels and dents my mood: I was supposed to be on a train already. Seventh floor, security desk, a door with a name in small letters. Saitou Yonoshita. Tomorrow, then. I shove the irritation down where it can chew on my ribs in private.

"Stay there," I say. "You're a hazard."

"I'm an ambiance," she says, delighted at being upgraded. "I bring freshness."

"You bring mildew." I step around her puddle, grab the old laundry basket from the hall closet, and set it on the mat like a moat. "Wet things in here. Clothes—" I glance at her and realize there is no universe where the sentence ends politely. "Hang on."

I raid my closet. The first shirt my hand finds is the white one that makes me look like I'm trying too hard. No. I dig deeper and come up with an old basketball jersey I never had the height to deserve. Twenty-three. The number looks too confident. I pull a pair of long gray sweats off a hanger that never asked to be useful.

When I return, she's touching my doorframe with the kind of curiosity that belongs in museums. Her fingers trace a nick in the wood like she's reading braille. "First time I've been here," she murmurs, to the house, to herself, to me.

"Here." I thrust the clothes toward her with more force than necessary. The jersey slaps into her hands like a surrender flag. "Bathroom. Second door."

She holds the jersey up, squints like a jeweler. "Twenty-three. Nice. Confidence number. You, sir, are secretly arrogant."

"I'm secretly trying not to have a flooded hallway."

She grins, bows to the laundry basket like it's an old friend, and disappears down the hall with a patter of damp footprints. The bathroom fan starts its moth-wing whirr. Pipes knock to themselves. Somewhere in the neighborhood a delivery scooter argues with gravity.

I lean against the wall next to the door and count seconds and stupid decisions. The train map unfolds in my head unhelpfully: change at Nishi, walk two blocks past the coffee-and-printers station, elevator that smells like old bureaucracy. Tomorrow. I will go tomorrow. I will wear a different shirt and a better face. I will knock until my knuckles learn his door.

The bathroom clicks open. Kaori steps out in my jersey and sweats, sleeves swallowing her wrists, the number stark against the fabric like it's announcing a parade. Her hair is a glossy mess, drops still finding escape routes along her jaw.

"If you say I look ridiculous," she says, striking a model pose that's 40% irony and 60% invincible, "I will throw your fancy soap at your head."

"You look like a burglar who targets sports stores," I say, because honesty is a limited resource and I'm hoarding mine.

She laughs. It warms the hallway three degrees. "New aesthetic unlocked." She plucks at the hem, admiring the oversized swing of it. "It smells like... detergent and notes."

"That's just... house.."I say, which is not an answer.

A drop races down a strand, hesitates at her chin, leaps. Instinct moves me before dignity votes. I herd her toward the couch with the towel I grabbed from the linen shelf.

"Sit."

"Bossy."

"Wet." I plant her there and drape the towel over her head like a ridiculous blessing.

"Hey!" comes muffled from under cotton. "I am not a dog."

"Then hold still like a person," I say, and scrub.

She yelps. "Gentler! That's my brain."

"It's misbehaving." I slow down. The towel hisses the way towels do when they pretend to be ocean. I try to be efficient, but the act of taking care slips under my guard; I find I'm smoothing more than drying, gathering water from the ends so it doesn't climb back. She goes quiet under my hands, a small, contented hush that feels like a song I forgot I knew.

"That's better," she says, voice normal again when the towel lifts. Her hair springs into something halfway between order and storm. She pats it, satisfied, and then looks past me, eyes catching on the framed photos in the narrow hall.

She stands before I can invent a distraction. "So this is your house," she says, as if telling a friend their own name. She wanders like gravity got upgraded. Fingers hover over the metronome on the sideboard. She taps it gently; the weight clicks once. "This little tyrant." She smiles at it as if it were a child who used to bite.

She stops at a photo of my mother taken in a year that feels like a lie now—face turned slightly to light, mouth mid-laugh. Kaori doesn't speak. She doesn't have to. The room edits itself around that silence, kinder than usual.

Then she moves on, because that is her way: not disrespecting the past, just refusing to drown in it. The house, traitor that it is, brightens for her, like walls crave oxygen.

She reaches the end of the hall and pauses at the closed door. It is just a door. It also isn't. Inside is the life I am trying to assemble with string and paper, stacks and stacks of proof that I am either serious or naive. Also sheet music. Also dust. Mostly dust.

She tilts her head like a sparrow, which I recognize now as a warning. "My woman's intuition," she declares, and the grin is already building, "is telling me something."

"Don't," I say. The word lands sharper than I intend.

She pivots, clocking the tone. Her eyebrows climb. "Oh?"

"It's a disaster." My throat is suddenly too small for air. "Private." I hear how that sounds and hate it for a dozen reasons I don't have words for. "Please."

Her smile turns thoughtful rather than cruel, which makes it worse. "If you say 'please' like that, it means there's treasure." She faces the door. My heart does a stupid drumroll. "I'mma do it."

"Kaori—"

The handle turns. The door opens.

Paper has a smell. People forget until it hits them: heat-softened ink, oxidized edges, a sweetness like old glue. It breathes out of the room in a tired sigh. Sunlight angles through half-shut blinds and lands on crumpled printouts, spines of notebooks, the off-white of copy paper that has known fingerprints and bad ideas. There are sticky notes on sticky notes. A mug with something unspeakable at the bottom. On the desk, a spread of my handwriting so dense it looks like a net thrown over drowning thoughts. In the corner, under all of it, the shape of a piano like a whale under snow.

Kaori's voice lowers without asking me. "Oh."

She takes one step in, then another, as if the floor might complain. Her fingers trail over the nearest stack, picking up a corner of some graph I no longer trust. She is not afraid of mess; she is offended by it on the piano's behalf. She reaches the instrument and stops, a small frown softening the knives of her eyes.

The piano is dusty in the way things get when the person who loves them learns to love them in the wrong time. Keys wear a veil of ash. The fallboard is an accusation in satin finish.

I grimace as I know exactly what's going to happen as I open my mouth to intervene.

"Raaagh!!!," she says, a sound from somewhere below language, and then both hands sweep.

Like my previous life the notes leave the piano in a panic of paper. Pages skid to the floor. A notebook somersaults and lands open on a paragraph I do not want read by anyone, ever. A flimsy mountain collapses in dignified silence.

I flinch and grimace again down at the papers. "You could have placed it down nicely, you know?"

"Hush," she says without looking at me, and it contains all the patience I probably deserve.

She pulls a handkerchief from the pocket of the sweats like a magician coaxing a dove out of a shoe—where did that even come from—and sets to work. Not frantic. Reverent. Small circles first on the fallboard, then the lip above the keys, then the keys themselves. The cloth comes away gray. She refolds to clean, refolds again. She breathes on the A above middle C and wipes, as if fogging it will soften the past.

A tear falls before she notices it. It lands on middle D, bright and exact, and wobbles there like a taste of ocean. She doesn't wipe that one. Another follows, quiet as an admission. Her shoulders tremble on the inhale and hold steady on the exhale. It isn't a sob. It isn't theater. It is the simple physics of someone finding a thing important to them in a state that insists it was not.

Something tightens behind my sternum—a winch hauling up guilt from a deep place. I step forward, then stop, because there is nothing to say that doesn't tangle us. I want to tell her I have been playing in my head, that my hands still move in air when the subway is loud, that loudness itself has a key if you listen long enough. I want to tell her I've been selfish with time because I'm trying to buy more of it wholesale elsewhere. None of those sentences survive the brightness of her grief for an object that is not an object.

She presses the cloth between two keys and pulls it back slow. "There," she whispers to the piano, not to me. "You were suffocating, weren't you?"

I hate the part of me that wants to apologize to furniture, and I hate the part of me that already is.

"Kaori," I say, because if I don't say her name I might drown in the discretion of the room.

She stops, the handkerchief stilled over E. She doesn't turn around at first. I watch the moment wash over her: breath, decision, some private geometry righting itself. Then she sets the cloth on the closed fallboard like a folded flag and faces me.

Tears are still living on her face, making tracks they shouldn't have to make. There is nothing meek in them. They glitter like anger sometimes does when it's aimed at the right target.

She crosses the small battlefield floor—paper crushed under her heel with small apologies from the fibers—and halts an inch from me. Close enough that I can count the tiny droplets caught in her lashes. Close enough that the number on the jersey is an audacity I cannot look at.

She lifts her hand and presses a finger into my chest. The gesture is small. It lands like a verdict.

"We're not done talking about finals," she says.

The room hears it. The house hears it. The piano, cleaned in a strip like a runway, hears it. Somewhere down the block a dog decides to bark because this is the kind of sentence that makes living things nervous.

In the hall, the metronome clicks once, unbidden, like a judge clearing his throat.

I swallow against the lump that has been there since the hallway at school and find there are two kinds of air in this house now: the kind that keeps you breathing and the kind you have to earn.

Her finger digs into my sternum like a metronome spike.
"About the finals," she says. "We're not finished."

The house holds still. Dust floats like held breath. The strip she cleaned on the fallboard gleams like a runway; everything else is wreckage.

"You collapsed," I say. The words come out before the committee in my head can vote them down. "On stage."

She flinches—small, almost nothing—then pastes the smile back on. "And then I stood back up."

"We already won," I push, because if I stop pushing I'll fall. "First place. We proved the point. Why do it again?"

"Because that wasn't the point," she shoots back. "Winning was just the world catching up."

"It's enough," I insist, hating the sound of it and needing it anyway. "We don't have to—"

"We?" She arches a brow. "So it's a we when it's a retreat."

I stare at the scuff mark I've been meaning to scrub near the baseboard. Saying the quiet thing out loud makes the room tilt. "You fainted, Kaori. That's not a rumor. I watched you hit the floor."

"Don't say it like that," she says, sudden heat in the words. "You make it sound like I broke. I stumbled. Human bodies do that."

"You were white as the stage." My voice goes rough around the edges. "You scared me."

For the first time her anger misses a step. There's a hitch, a stutter, then the engine catches again. "Good. Now you know how I feel every time you vanish behind a dumb excuse."

I want to tell her where I went instead—the trains I didn't take today, the elevator I didn't stand in, the door I didn't knock on. The address is a hot rectangle in my pocket, paper learning me by heart. Saitou Yonoshita. Tomorrow, I promise the future I've been building with a pen. Tomorrow.

"I'm not vanishing," I say, quieter. "I'm choosing not to watch you crumple again because I chased your tempo instead of the truth."

She steps closer until the jersey's big white 23 fills my peripheral vision like a dare. "Then catch me. That's the job, remember?" She taps my sternum. "You keep time. I jump. We land together."

"It's not a trick jump," I say. "It's a cliff."

"Maybe I like cliffs."

"That isn't bravery; that's—" I bite off the word reckless before it can ruin what's left.

She hears it anyway. "Say it." She glares down

"Reckless," I say, and the syllables taste like guilt.

Her jaw sets. The handkerchief she left on the fallboard watches us like a folded flag at the wrong ceremony. She drags her gaze over the toppled papers, the books stamped with other people's names, the pencil I snapped and kept because wasting still feels like a sin.

"What is all this?" she asks, voice low now, the heat turned to something tighter. "You say 'we' when you want out, and 'I' when you want to disappear. Which is it? Where are you going that isn't the stage next to me? You said you would be my accompanist!

I should lie better. I should say college entrance nonsense and "teacher's project" and "extra lessons" and other normal teenage scaffolding. Instead the truth walks to the edge of my mouth and dangles its feet. My Guilt spikes at her last words.

"I had an appointment," I say, which is the skeleton of a confession. "Missed it. I'll go tomorrow."

"With who?"

"A person who knows more than I do," I say, which is both everything and nothing. "Someone who might help me not waste time."

"What time?" She gestures to the rubble at our feet. "All of this looks like wasting. The piano's drowning in it."

"I know," I say, and the admission shakes something loose in my throat. "I know."

She studies me like she did the dusty octave, patient, methodical, finding where the grime hides. "You're not afraid of the piano anymore," she says, not a question.

"No," I answer. It surprises us both to hear it without the usual choke. "Not her. Not that."

"Then you're afraid of me," she says, and it isn't cruel; it's precise.

"I'm afraid of watching you fall," I say, because that much belongs to anyone who saw it. "I'm afraid of pretending it's fine and then carrying you offstage again while people clap for the wrong thing."

Her eyes flare. "They clapped because it was beautiful."

"They clapped because they didn't know where else to put the noise inside them," I say, and hate how old it sounds, how tired. "I'm not interested in applause if it means you on the floor."

She laughs, short and sharp. "You think saying no will keep me standing? You think you can control that? The stage is where I'm alive, Kousei. With you. If I fall, I fall where I'm supposed to be."

"So your plan is to drag me to the edge and make me watch?" The words come out harsher than I intend. "That's... that's cruel."

"Cruel is quitting on me," she says, voice suddenly soft, which hurts more. "Cruel is telling me that the most honest thing I've ever done with another person is optional." She says softly "Cruel is telling me you would be my accompanist to just... do this..."

The radiator ticks once like a bug trapped in a clock. A siren far away decides we are not its business. My palms itch with the urge to put them somewhere—her shoulders, the clean strip of wood, my own pockets where the card lives like a pulse.

"I can't split," I say. "School is a pile, rehearsals are another, and then there's—" I wave at the desk where my handwriting looks like a thousand small attempts at not drowning. "You want me to be a perfect accompanist, a good student, a son who doesn't wreck the floor plan, and—" and a boy who breaks a door open on the seventh floor tomorrow and learns enough in a week to change the slope of a life. "—and I'm fourteen. There aren't that many hours."

She snorts. "Perfection again. That old god. Kill it."

"I'm not worshipping it," I say. "I'm just counting. There are only so many things you can carry before one of them breaks your hands"

His hands were already breaking with what he had so far. If he added one more thing which we finals... the emotional and physicals toll of everything will just be too much...

"Then we carry different things," she says, and suddenly she's inches from me, damp hair cold on my knuckles where I didn't notice my fist had curled. "I carry the fear. You carry the time. That's the deal."

"I don't remember signing," I say, and hate the whine in it.

"You did when you played with me," she says simply. "That was the contract."

Silence opens like a trapdoor. I look at the cleaned keys. It would be so easy to sit down and let my hands do what they know. It would be so easy to give her this now and figure out a different tomorrow later. But the address in my pocket burns a hole the shape of a window I haven't looked through yet. If I choose the sound right now, I'm choosing not to knock later. If I choose later, I'm choosing not to stand next to her under lights that become a cathedral when she breathes.

"Why is it all or nothing with you?" I ask. "Why can't we not do the finals and still be us?" He said it yet I knew exactly why. It was a dumb question and I berated myself mentally for it

Her eyes go glass-bright, no tears this time, just the sheen lacquer gets when light hits it clean. "Because my 'us' happens there," she says, pointing toward a hall neither of us can see from this room. "On a stage. With you. I'm not asking you to do it forever. I'm asking you to do it now."

I shake my head. "I can't build a later if I set fire to now."

"And I can't live a now that's empty"she says. "Now is all I have..."she says much more softly but I hear it perfectly.

We stand in that terrible math. My throat tastes like metal. Her fingers twitch like they're resisting grabbing mine and making me agree by force.

"Okay," I say finally, not agreement, not surrender—just a word to keep the ceiling up. "Okay."

She waits. When I don't add anything, her mouth hardens. "You're impossible."

"And you're—" I stop before I say reckless again. "Unfair."

"Good," she says, and somehow she means it. "Then we match."

She turns away from me because the room ran out of places to put our eyes. The air has gotten thick with the smell of paper and old polish and the river still clinging to her hair. She stalks to the window and throws the latch with a violence the brass doesn't deserve.

The sash grinds up. Evening spills in—cooler than before, clean. The street offers up its usual chorus: a bicycle chain complain-humming, a pushcart seller talking a price down to himself, a far train putting a line under the skyline.

She leans into the frame and inhales like she hasn't all day. "You're suffocating," she says over her shoulder. "Open a window sometimes."

"I just did," I say.

"Not this one."

It would be funny if we weren't both made of flint.

Her breath slows. My ribs try to copy hers and fail. The angle of her cheek softens in the wedge of light, the jersey bunching at her waist in a way that feels like it knows secrets. I let my eyes come down from the ceiling for the first time in minutes and think I might be able to shape a better sentence next try—

—and then the air changes. Not wind. Attention.

Across the narrow residential lane, framed by a rectangle that mirrors ours, someone is standing at a window too. Hair pulled back from practice, jersey in a different color, bag strap still across one shoulder like she hasn't decided whether she's leaving or arriving.

Tsubaki.

Her eyes go straight to Kaori—damp hair, my clothes, in my house—and then to me, and then back again. It happens in less than a breath, a three-beat scan that writes the whole scene in her head in permanent ink.

Kaori, who can smell weather but prefers to name it late, lifts her arm and waves like a sunrise. The grin is immediate, reflexive, the kind that throws a rope across any gap. "Tsubaki!" she chirps, bright enough to be mistaken for normal.

It lands like an insult.

Tsubaki doesn't wave back. The surprise that hopped into her eyes gets eaten by something darker. Her mouth presses into a line so thin it might cut you. The hand on the bag strap tightens until the knuckles flash. She doesn't blink. If she blinked, she might miss the part where I say something reasonable. I don't say anything.

Kaori's wave falters, then tries to recover with an extra wiggle, like she can draw a smile on the world by shaking her hand harder. "Hey!" she calls into the alley of afternoon. "We were just—" She doesn't finish because there isn't a word that covers all the were justs we were just.

Tsubaki's stare moves again, not fast, not flashy—over the soaked strands clinging to Kaori's neck, over the big white 23 jerking a joke out of a serious moment, over the naked strip of clean wood on my piano like a wound. She takes in the towel I dropped, the mess I let exist, the way my shoulders have curled in as if that could make me smaller than a frame can contain.

Her face shifts. Not shouting. Not tears. A steadier anger—dense, cold. The kind you can build a wall with.

Kaori lowers her arm, cheerful exhausted out of it. She keeps the smile because letting it go would be admitting we've crossed into a different kind of day. "It's not what—" she starts, and the sentence trips over its own feet.

A breeze moves through both rooms at once, twin curtains lifting like ghosts practicing their exits. Somewhere a TV tells a joke on delay. My heart chooses that moment to discover it can bruise itself.

Tsubaki reaches up and slides her own window higher like she needs more oxygen to not say anything. The light on her skin is softer in her room; behind her, a bat leans against a wall, a uniform shirt hangs from a chair back, a trophy gleams with reflected afternoon. It looks like a life where things have names. Her eyes don't belong to that life right now. They belong to a place where the history of three kids is a tight knot and one pull can ruin a neckline.

Kaori tries one last time—palms up, helpless, still shining because shining is her only weapon. "Hi," she says, ridiculous and brave.

Tsubaki looks at her hand. Then at mine. Then at our window, which has become a confession booth with the doors ripped off.

I feel the moment I run out of cleverness. It's when your mouth has a word and you can't find any place in the room to put it where it won't explode. The address in my pocket does its tiny heartbeat. Tomorrow, I think stupidly, as if scheduling will save us from what's happening now.

"God," I say, which is a prayer, and then the prayer realizes no one is available to take it. "God damn it."

The syllables fall into the space between the windows and make no sound at all.

Chapter Text

The music room holds the day's heat the way a case holds a violin—close and protective, smelling faintly of rosin and skin. Someone's last scale still seems to tremble in the rafters. Stands have been nudged to the walls like chairs after a party. The piano sits where it always sits, patient and square, a black animal that already knows our arguments and is bored by them.

Watari's by the door, half in and half out of his practice gear—jersey clinging, sneakers squeaking when he shifts weight, a duffel strap carving his shoulder. He spins a ball on one finger and then drops it, catches it, grins like gravity is a joke he'll get the hang of. Tsubaki leans into the frame of the window with her bat bag at her feet, ponytail damp with sweat, arms folded so tight her elbows look like she's trying to keep two secrets from escaping at once. The sun stripes the floor in long bars; we're all standing behind them like notes waiting to be played.

Kaori paces, bow case thunk-thunking the desk every time she turns too fast. Her hair is still damp at the ends, like it can't decide whether to obey a towel. She's trying to pretend she isn't vibrating, which only makes the vibration more obvious. The pink bunny's ear peeks from her bag, scandalized to be present for a fight.

"Okay," she says, and the word lands like a downbeat. "Let's stop doing the thing where we pretend not to hear the metronome. The finals."

I pick at the edge of the bench where the lacquer chipped last year, as if I could worry it back into place. The Saitou card is a small rectangle burning a pocket into my thoughts.

He had wanted to avoid this conversation again but avoiding Kaori's will was easier said than done, and now they had their own little audiences.

Watari bounces the ball and waggles his eyebrows, trying on a tone that would rather be anywhere else. "Sounds serious. Should I... I dunno... stand behind something?"

Kaori doesn't take the bait. She swings toward me, eyes bright and already narrowed like sun on water. "We're entering. We're not throwing away the slot we bled for."

"Bled for?" Watari echoes, then thinks better of it and mimics zipping his mouth.

I let silence try to communicate caution. It makes the wrong shape.

"Don't look at the floor," Kaori says. "Look at me."

I look. That's the problem.

"Tell him," she says, pivoting to Tsubaki with a speed that would give a different boy whiplash. "You know I'm right. Tell him to get over himself."

Tsubaki's jaw ticks. The blink she gives is slow and deliberate and full of teeth, like an animal considering whether the fence is electrified. She manages a laugh with no laughter in it. "Kaori..."

"Come on," Kaori insists, planting her hands on her hips with theatrical patience that isn't patient at all. "It's not complicated. We won. We made it. He—" She flings a hand at me, as if I'm a stubborn appliance. "—he was the elementary division champ!"

Watari winces, genuine and sympathetic on my behalf. "He was," he says, quietly, as if confessing to something embarrassing I succeeded at on a dare. "A little monster. Tiny hands, big sound."

I can feel the line of my mouth flatten. My shoes decide to study a scuff that might be the shape of Japan again if you're cruel to outlines. The bench edge bites my thigh just enough to be useful.

Tsubaki doesn't meet my eye. She grimaces and looks out the window, blinking once, twice, anger adding weight with each lower lid. It's the blink she uses when a line drive goes foul because someone wanted too much. I know that blink. I earned a small collection of it.

"We're fourteen," I say, finally, which is both a fact and the wrong answer to an entirely different test. the value of the words were cheap, she wouldn't make it past the age not even to her birthday.

Kaori laughs at that like the word itself is trying to sell her soap. "That's your big defense? 'We're fourteen'?" She throws a tiny hand up, letting the room see how small the number looks in the air. "Being fourteen is the discount you get at the door. After that we pay full price like everyone else."

"Not if we don't go in," I say. It's meant to be light and fails halfway through being a sentence.

She takes two quick steps, the bow case knocks the desk again with a thunk like a judge's gavel. "You scared?" she asks, voice gentling in a way that hurts more than if she'd thrown it. "Is it your mom..? Are you still afraid of playing on stage..? I don't understand this is an opportunity for you to show everyone who you are…”

"It's not—" I begin, then stop, because truth makes itself heavy and refuses to be carried on a single syllable. Not like that. Not today. Not here.

Watari pushes air out through his cheeks and glances at Tsubaki, eyes asking if he should keep standing here like a coat rack. Tsubaki doesn't look back. She's somewhere between the heat of Kaori's words and the cool of the windowpane, and it's a latitude she knows better than I do.

"Tell him," Kaori says again, turning the pressure up a quarter-turn, like tightening a fine string. It isn't cruelty. It's belief with a megaphone. "Tell him he doesn't get to walk away when we've finally got the stage that fits us."

Tsubaki's mouth opens, closes. She looks at me then, the briefest flash, and it's not the look I deserve or the one I expect—it's the one she gives when she watches me step into traffic without checking twice: both furious and terrified, two magnets fighting in her chest. "He looks like he hasn't slept in a week," she says, to the air, to no one, to me by accident. "He looks like he's trying to hold his breath until the semester ends."

"Oi I'm fine," I say, and the lie skates across the floor and hits the baseboard and drops dead.

Kaori's eyes soften, then sharpen right back. "No one's fine," she says, cheery in the way only honest people can be. "That's not a reason not to do the thing."

"The thing," I repeat, as if it were an object that could be put on a shelf with a label and dusted and not something that builds its own room inside me and pushes the walls out.

The “thing” would make you collapse again…. The “thing” would make you die even faster than the original time. The “THING” will make you inevitably collapse again and show your weakness to the world and me sooner than it should….

She closes the distance in four strides that take an entire future hostage. Her finger lands in the center of my chest, hard enough to make the bench shift a centimeter. "Listen to me, Piano-kun." Each word is a light she turns on. "I am confirming our entry into the finals. I don't care."

"Kaori..." My voice comes out of a throat that doesn't want to be a throat right now. I look up into the brash mask she's wearing for us, for herself, for the part of the day that keeps wanting to be longer. Underneath it I can see the rawness, the seam where brave is stitched to terrified by someone in a hurry. The pull to nod is so strong I feel my neck prepare without me. Practicality to save her and the need to please her were at war.Yes, fine, I'll split into three people and none of them will sleep and one of them will carry a lab notebook and one of them will hold your hand on a stage and make sure you don’t overexert yourself and the third will keep the first two from drowning. I can do that. I can't. I can try. I can't.

I say nothing, because silence is the only thing with the right weight.

Her chin lifts. She searches my face for something that wants to be useful and finds the blank place where a promise should be. The glare she gives me is edged but not serrated—it cuts clean. "Unbelievable," she says, more to the room than to me, because the room is a safer recipient of disappointment.

Watari edges a step toward us, and the floor under him makes a sound like a question. "Uh... guys—"

"Don't," Kaori says, hand flipping to halt the empathy. She grabs the strap of her bag like a leash on an impatient dog. "Fine." She pivots so fast the bow case kisses a chair with a clack. "If he wants to sit in here and practice looking at the floor, then he can practice alone."

She throws a glance at Tsubaki that looks like an invitation and a test at once. Tsubaki's blink this time is a flinch. She looks away deliberately, like a person declining to look at a fire because if she looks she'll run at it. Kaori nods tightly, as if that confirms a theory she doesn't want to write down yet.

"Come on, Watari," she says, bright again, weaponizing the cheer. "We're going to watch your game."

"Now?" Watari's grin tries to find the angle and misses. He glances at me and Tsubaki, surprised shaving into worry. He points vaguely at the two of us with the ball like he's asking permission from a substitute teacher. "You guys—? I mean, you good?"

The look Tsubaki sends him is a razor wrapped in towel: we are very not good, don't make this worse. My mouth can't think of a word that wouldn't turn into a curse when it exits, so I go with a shrug that wants to mean I'll live and probably doesn't convince anyone.

Watari's shoulders go up, then down. "Okay," he says, dragged along by devotion and habit. As he lets Kaori hook her fingers into his sleeve and tow him, he throws me a last look—surprised, yes, but also the kind that says: man, I thought you'd be braver than this. He doesn't mean it like a knife. It still goes in like one.

They're at the door when Kaori glances back. Not at me. At the piano. Her jaw sets, and for a second I think she'll come back and wipe a spot on it out of spite. Instead she just shakes her head like she's scolding a child for playing with the wrong toys and yanks the handle.

The door swings open, the hallway's colder air leans in nosy, and then it shuts with a sound the room has absorbed a hundred times and will never get used to. Their footsteps recede, Watari's sneakers telling the floor jokes, Kaori's pace a drumline that has no use for syncopation.

Silence arrives like a person who's been listening outside and only now lets themselves in.

The piano breathes. The sun takes a long breath and lets go of a dust mote parade. I hear the faintest clack from the metronome on the side table—was it me? Was it the door? Was it the memory of someone obeying and resenting the same beat at once? The room and I do not discuss it.

I can feel Tsubaki on my left without looking, the way you feel a teammate at second who has already decided where the throw is going before the ball leaves home. Her arms are still crossed, but softer now, like a barricade you keep up because it feels safer than seeing if you can stand without it.

"She's not wrong," she says after a while. The sentence is as careful as carrying soup across a crowded room. "About you being good. About... what happens to you up there. It's like—" She does a small frustrated circle with her hand, searching for a sports metaphor that won't sound like she's mansplaining baseball to a piano. "It's like you turn on."

I let the praise land and then crawl off the bench when it realizes it came without a chaperone. "It's not about good," I say. "It's about... time." That's a cop-out and also true. "There are only so many hours."

"Then pick different ones," she says, too fast to be wise, which is how most wisdom gets born.

I exhale and hear how old it sounds, nineteen in a fourteen-year-old's mouth. "I'm trying."

"You're trying to explode," she says, and the fondness in it is the sharpest thing she's said all day.

My hands want to do something useful—wipe the keys, straighten a stand, find a page of Kaori's sheet music and align it with something square. I don't. I let them go stupid in my lap. The Saitou card throbs against my thigh like a timer that refused to be turned off. Tomorrow. That was the plan. Today has other ideas.

Out in the hall, someone laughs the way people laugh when they don't know someone the next room over is trying to figure out what stupidity to commit in the name of love. The room swallows it. Tsubaki watches the window like it might try to run away.

"Watari looked flustered," I say, because talking about him is safer than talking about the open hole in the middle of the floor I keep walking around. "Like he forgot the line in the script that gets us out of this scene."

"Watari doesn't have a script," Tsubaki says. "He has vibes. He's very brave that way." The fondness reaches him too. Then it collapses back into worry like a wave that wanted to be a mountain. "And you—" She stops and shakes her head, like starting the sentence would pour gasoline we don't have a bucket for.

The air between us is warm enough to feel like a hand on the back. I think of Kaori's finger in my sternum, of Watari's surprised eyebrows asking me without words to be the person they think I am, of Tsubaki's blink that now has anger and something colder behind it—fear. The urge to run after Kaori and say fine, I'll be your zombie, I'll carry your tempo in one hand and a centrifuge schedule in the other and I'll learn to sleep while walking—God, I want to give her that version just to stop this feeling. The smarter part of me—the one that sounds like my uncle when he's pretending to be a scientist and failing because he's really a person who loves you—tells me not this time.

"Hey," I say, and it sounds like a word you use to keep a door from closing on your fingers. "I'm... sorry."

"For what?" Tsubaki asks, and her voice is gentler than her stance. "Being fourteen? Being ridiculous? Being you?"

"Yes," I say, because it's easier than ranking my crimes.

She huffs out something that could be a laugh if you were generous and could be a sob if you weren't. She uncrosses her arms and rubs at her eyes with the heel of her hand like she's trying to erase the last five minutes from the whiteboard of her day. When she drops her hand, her gaze finally meets mine and doesn't flinch.

"You look like a raccoon," she says, and it should be an insult but it's a diagnosis. "A very stubborn raccoon who lost a fight with the sun."

"I'll take raccoon," I say. "It's better than zombie."

"I didn't say zombie," she says, and then the corner of her mouth betrays her. "Yet."

We stand there in that not-quite-funny, not-quite-crying place people end up when they're too young to be this tired and too old to pretend they aren't. The piano watches us like a stern aunt. The metronome pretends it has never made noise in its life.

"Do you want me to tell you you're doing the right thing?" she asks, and the question is such a trap we both smile at it like a mousehole.

"No," I say. "I want—" I stop. Want isn't the right verb. Want is for candy and naps and the wrong kind of courage. "I need time."

"Time," she repeats, as if testing the weight. "Which you keep spending like it's fake money." She catches herself and softens it with a sigh. "You're not eating enough, either."

"I ate," I say, defensive out of habit. "An egg sandwich."

"That is not a food," she says. "That is a rumor."

The laugh that comes out of me is a broken thing and therefore the best kind. It runs around the room, finds no corners sharp enough to cut it, and returns unharmed. Tsubaki's shoulders drop six millimeters. I see the exact moment she decides not to be angry at me for being me. It's both a relief and a disaster.

"He was the elementary division champ," she says, quoting Kaori but making it an old joke instead of a fresh wound. "You know that makes you an easy target, right? People remember trophies like they remember car accidents."

"I didn't ask to be a small and loud crybaby,”I say. "It was a package deal."

Her smile, when it comes, is the kind you hide in your pocket to take out on bad days. Then it slides off her face because the bad day is now. She steps forward one pace, and it feels like the floor moved toward me instead. She doesn't touch me. She doesn't have to. The care sits between us like a bowl of cut fruit.

"You're getting worse," she says, soft. "Your eye bags are—" She waves a hand like she can fan exhaustion away. "You don't look okay, Kousei."

And because something in me is tired of letting the day win, because I need to hurt something that will forgive me, because she is the one person who can take it and still come back tomorrow, I do the stupid, tender thing: I lift a hand and cup her cheek.

She freezes, eyes wide, the alarm and the relief hitting at the same time. Her skin is warm from running, from worrying, from being the person who notices. Her breath catches on a note between anger and something older.

"Where the hell would I be without you, Tsubaki?" I say, and it comes out like a smile that had to fight its way through brambles. "Probably dead, right?"

Her eyes fill with four emotions in four frames: flustered, furious, terrified, fond. She bats my hand away—not really, more like a pantomime of batting, because if she actually removed it she might cry—and then she scowls so hard the air gets out of our way. "Don't say things like that, idiot," she says, and her voice shakes and holds. "Not funny."

"I wasn't trying to be funny," I say. "I was trying to be... true and failing. It happens."

She glares at me and then at the ceiling and then at a poster about proper posture as if it personally wronged her. When she looks back, the edges have come off. The bat bag by her foot looks like it wants to be useful and is sad it can't be here.

"I hate that I get it," she mutters. "I hate that I can see every reason you think you have." Her mouth tugs into a shape that might be a smile if no one looks directly. "I hate you a little."

"Fair," I say. "I hate me a little too."

We stand shoulder to shoulder, not touching, watching the dust shift weight in the light. Outside, a whistle blows from the field, and somewhere Watari yells something obscene at the sky and the sky forgives him. I imagine Kaori on the bleachers, shouting his name until the letters rearrange themselves into a different language that only games understand. The pull to be where she is is a physical tug on muscle. The pull to be where Saitou might be is a tug on something like bone.

"Go," Tsubaki says at last, and I can't tell if she means go after Kaori or go toward the thing I haven't told her about. Maybe she means both. Maybe she means neither. She swallows, and I hear the sound over the quiet of the room. "Just... don't vanish."

"I'll try," I say, because promising would be an insult.

She rolls her eyes in slow motion. "Eat something with a color," she adds, because she knows which instructions I obey when the rest fall apart. "And sleep. Horizontal. For more than an hour."

"Bossy," I say, and she snorts so softly only people who grew up in my kitchen would have heard it.

At the door I pause because rituals keep floors from opening, and I don't have many left that aren't soaked in other people's expectations. I glance back: Tsubaki with her arms folded but looser now, her face making lines it shouldn't have to make yet, the bat bag a ridiculous anchor by her shoe. Her eyes are the color of the part of the day that refuses to end just because the sun is bored.

"Thank you," I say.

"For what?" She makes a little dismissive sound. "Existing? Basic duties."

"For staying angry at me in the right direction," I say.

She sniffs and pretends to be unimpressed. "Shut up and go before I change my mind and tell you what to do with more detail."

Watari's ball thunks somewhere far away. Kaori's laugh floats past the window in a key the room can't hum. I put my hand on the handle. The metal is cool, like a coin you're not sure will buy what you need. The Saitou card in my pocket presses into my leg, a small, rectangular insistence.

I open the door and step into the hallway that smells like floor polish and hallway decisions. The room lets me go reluctantly. Behind me the piano keeps being a piano. The metronome does not click. The lights don't dim. The world refuses to make a scene out of my departure, which feels rude and exactly right.

I don't look back. I don't have to. The shape of her there, arms folded, eyes narrowed in a way that means please don't die and also you owe me twenty explanations—that shape is a thing I'll carry into whatever room asks me for a password next.

The hallway smells like floor polish and the last bell. I take the stairs because elevators make you wait and I have run out of respectable ways to stall. The Saitou card rides my pocket like a second pulse. I don't look at it. I already know the font of the address, the slope of my uncle's handwriting, the name for the security desk that will put a smile on a guard's face and suspicion right after.

Outside, the air has dropped a few degrees, cities' way of forgiving everybody. The field coughs up a whistle; Watari whoops at a sky that always forgives him back. I don't look. If I look, I'll be there, and then I'll be nowhere. My feet make a decision before the rest of me votes—left at the gate, past the vending machine that never stocks the only good flavor, onto the street that smells like printer ink and dinner.

"Eat something with color," Tsubaki said, like it was a spell you had to say right or it wouldn't work. At the corner store I buy the brightest thing in reach: a clementine with skin like a small sun. I peel it on the walk to the station, oil misting my fingers, rind cracking with the soft little sigh that makes you think fruit wants to be rescued. The segments are sweet and a little sour, stubborn strings clinging no matter how careful I am.

The train arrives pretending not to be late. Inside smells like steel and old magazines. I find a spot between a window and a man asleep in a delivery jacket, and I take out my folded page. The summary has been trimmed until it bleeds. It says I know how to read and rank and not pretend. On the back I've written three questions and crossed each of them out twice.

If you only had one run left this week, what would you measure and why?

Is there a way to separate the heart from the ladder; if you had to pick which you'd save first?

What did you stop believing in after she died….?

The last one is a door that opens into a staircase that falls into a hole. I draw a line through the line through it, then write: ask something that costs him time, not blood.

Stations flick by like edits. A girl in a uniform nods off and wakes at the jerk of the car, eyes wide as if she lost a whole month. Two boys argue softly about a lyric that doesn't scan. I count the beats between the chime and the doors closing and try to match it to the click of the metronome back home. It doesn't match. It shouldn't. The lab has its own measures. If I'm lucky, I'll learn how to hear them.

Kaori's finger lands on my chest again, a ghost tap in time with the rails. I'm confirming our entry. I don't care. Her brave front is still being brave in my head, soundproofing around the fear. For a second the image of her on the bleachers jumps in—#23 sagging off her shoulder, hair still not deciding to be dry, yelling Watari's name like it owed her money. I taste river on the air that isn't there. In the next breath I get Tsubaki's face instead, the exact second she tried not to react to the way I thanked her for keeping me alive. Where would I be. Don't say that, idiot. Color in your food. Horizontal sleep.

I push them both back gently, like returning borrowed books to the right shelf. Not because they don't matter. Because the door I'm walking toward requires a different language, and I can only speak one at a time without tripping.

We surface into evening. The station by the coffee-and-printers place smells like ambition and toner. I check the map even though I could walk this with my eyes closed by now. Two blocks. The kind of walk where you could decide to turn around twice and still arrive on accident. I don't turn.

On the way, my brain tries openings again because it thinks good manners will save me. "I'm sorry to impose" dies before I finish the sentence. "I read your paper" is something people say when they want to be liked and don't know how to be useful. "I brought questions" is closer, but it sounds like I expect him to answer them for free. The right first line is probably no line. The right first line is a label on a bottle he doesn't have to fix.

The building rises like sensible advice. Not glassy or new—something that's been there long enough to know what it's for. The lobby is behind panes that reflect a thinner version of me back at myself. Inside: a rectangle of carpet, a security desk with a lamp, two potted plants that think they're trees, an elevator waiting with its mouth closed. The guard—middle-aged, bookish—leans on a newspaper and a thermos. Above, a directory I can already recite: departments as organs, floors as ribs.

I stop on the sidewalk because movement has carried me to the place where movement needs a reason. The card in my pocket heats like a compact star. I press my palm against it through the blazer and don't take it out yet, like saying a name only inside your mouth so it doesn't get stolen by air.

"Don't expect much," my uncle said, like weather and kindness. Okay. I won't. I won't expect a smile or a chair or a second minute. I won't expect the questions to land anywhere but the floor. I won't expect him to see anything in me but a boy in a tie who thinks reading late at night is a substitute for work.

What I will expect: a smell of solvents that says I have come to the right kind of room, a timer that ticks without asking me to play, a task that makes my hands competent or proves they aren't yet. If he gives me glassware to wash, I will make it a prayer. If he gives me a label to write, I will write it like a name on a headstone, clean and forever.

Across the street a couple argues softly about dinner and laughs mid-argument, remembering food is not a crisis. A bus kneels and hisses and kneels again, bored of its own grace. The building's windows hold rectangles of other people's late days—someone in a lab coat gesturing with a pipette, someone at a computer rubbing their neck, someone finally standing and remembering what knees are for.

I take the card out. The letters are the same as when I looked an hour ago and last night and in my dreams where the fonts change to see if I'm paying attention. The name sits there, a door that only opens from the inside. Saitou Yonoshita. Floor seven. The guard's name, a password disguised as courtesy.

Kaori's laugh hits me on a delay, as if someone opened a window two blocks away. Tsubaki's hand is still warm under my palm where I placed gratitude like a bandage that doesn't stick. I let them both be true for one breath longer. Then I fold them and put them back where the good things go when it's time to do the hard one.

I straighten the blazer. I tuck the page with the questions behind the card. I look at the door and imagine it opening, or not. Either way, the ground exists on both sides. Either way, I am here.

I breathe once to count it. Then I step off the curb toward the glass.

Chapter Text

The lobby glass hands me back a thin boy whose blazer tries too hard. Inside smells like printer heat and the kind of coffee that has given up on being called coffee. A guard in a sweater reads a paperback with one finger parked as a bookmark. Fluorescent panels turn the floor into patient paper.

"Evening," he says, because he's the sort of person who makes room for niceties.

"Evening," I echo, because I'm trying to pass for human. "Yonoshita's lab."

He glances over the rims of his glasses: school shoes, too-straight jacket, a posture pulled forward by an invisible string. "You delivering something?"

"Worse," I say, then regret it. "Visiting."

He sighs like the building does that to him ten times a night, picks up the receiver, murmurs into it, waits for a buzz. A green light flicks on. He gestures with his chin. "Seven."

The elevator hums like a throat holding back a cough. In the steel I catch a smear of my face—dark crescents under the eyes, mouth practicing sentences it hasn't earned. Kaori's fingertip presses phantom-hard at the center of my chest: We're not done talking about finals. Tsubaki's voice laces itself through that memory and ties a knot: Don't vanish. Eat something with a color. The doors open.

Seventh floor is whisper-bright. The carpet knows how to swallow footsteps without chewing. Somewhere a compressor breathes in a square rhythm. The name beside the frosted glass is small and sure.

Saitou Yonoshita.

I knock three times because I need the sound to be more than my pulse.

A chair scrapes. The handle turns. The door opens exactly far enough to justify hinges.

The man framed there looks like a sketch that refused to become a painting. Hair combed back by impatient hands, coat thrown on a body that doesn't ask for warmth. His face is the color of sleep that didn't help. When his eyes land on me they do the math and write No on a line I can't see.

"Wrong floor," he says. "Middle school is downstairs."

"I need five minutes," I say. My voice files an exhaustion report without asking me. "I'll give back four."

"Find an adult," he replies, already closing.

Words jump out of me like I knocked them free. "Frataxin collapses when the repeats balloon. The cell chokes on its own iron and pretends it's air. The heart keeps quiet until it can't. Idebenone looked good, then didn't. EPI-743 twitched the right way and scared people into hoping. The stress switch—the one that tells cells don't burn down—isn't bolted shut. It's just too heavy for one hand."

The door pauses mid-swing. His grip on the edge tightens. The look he gives me is not admiration; it's a scalpel deciding whether you're worth the cut.

"Who taught you that," he says. It isn't a question. It's an accusation with an empty nameplate.

"Papers you have to dig for," I answer, trying to sound like ink is a friend. "People who wrote them and then didn't sleep." I force the next part. "My uncle sent me."

He doesn't react, not with his mouth. His eyes spend a heartbeat on that and then shut down like blinds. "Name."

"Hayase Arima."

That gets an actual flicker—recognition or irritation or both. It's small, and it dies fast. "He should know better," Saitou says flatly. "He has always known better."

"He told me you wouldn't listen." I try to stand still without looking like I'm bracing. "He also said you're the only person worth trying."

"Your uncle's compliments buy you nothing."

"I'm not asking them to."

He looks me over again, slower. "You smell like lost sleep," he says. "You'll burn out before you touch a beaker brat."

"If being tired buys her standing time," I say, my throat catching on the pronoun, "I'll pay for it."

Something in his face shifts—muscle memory of a flinch—but he steps back. Not invitation. Absence. I step in anyway, because staying in the hall would be a different kind of lie.

The lab carries the ordinary cathedral of bright light and plastic. Benches lined with glass that looks like it keeps secrets for a living. A hood with a sash set to a height it likes. A centrifuge counting down a number no one has time for. In one corner, a corkboard holds photographs like breath. The woman who smiles in two of them teaches the room how to be gentler. A bed takes that lesson away in the third. There's an empty square at the bottom right; absence pinned to cork.

"Talk," he says. The syllable is a tray: put usefulness on it or leave.

"I want a corner," I say, laying my folded summary on a clean patch of bench like it's an apology. "A label maker with my name on a strip if that helps. I'll wash what needs washing. I'll be quiet until there's a reason not to be. One project. Small steps. No grand claims."

"You want." He says it like the word is a fly in his drink.

"My mother had it," I say, and the lie fits my mouth too easily. "That's where the reading started." I pull breath through glass. "And someone I love does now." Not a complete lie but half of one

"Stop." He doesn't raise his voice; the silence does it for him. "Don't toss that word around to pick locks."

"I'm here because the locks are killing people," I say. "Because I'm fourteen and everybody thinks that means I should practice being a person instead of being helpful while I can."

He picks up the paper between two fingers like it's on probation. He doesn't read. He taps it against the air between us.

"You're a child," he says. "You're built for desks and exams. Not for rooms that chew up whatever you think your time is worth."

"Time is the only thing I have to spend," I say, "and I'm on a worse clock than you think."

He cocks his head. It's the only sign he's listening for meaning and not just for noise."Two people in one life..." he murmured

"How did you find me," he asks harshly, as if checking if the lie has a matching set.

"Like I said Hayase, my uncle" I repeat "He said you'd hate this. He also said you hate a lot of things that deserve it." I let a beat be what it is. "He said you're the smartest bitter man he knows."

"That sounds like him." It comes out like an insult that wishes it could be a compliment, or the other way around. His eyes flick back to the corkboard and then refuse to return. "Why are you here."

"Because the door that tells the cell to stop panicking when it's on fire—" I stop myself before I start trying to be poetic to a man whose poetry died the day someone else did. "Because there's a lever we can pull without breaking the wall to get to it. People tap it. No one leans hard enough."

"We." He chews the word with visible skepticism. "You and your science club?"

"You and me," I say, because swallowing that is worse. "I can help you measure whether we're leaning in the right place without bleeding out months. If I'm wrong, you throw me out. If I'm right, you get to be angry at your own success instead of at the world."

"You rehearsed that in an elevator."

"In a notebook, a train, a hallway, and my head," I admit. "I don't have the luxury of being elegant."

"What you have is a mouth that thinks speed equals conviction." He yawns without opening his mouth. "You know a handful of terms. You have no hands."

"Then I'll borrow yours," I say. "Or learn fast. Or both."

Something mean rises in his eyes, the sort of meanness grief uses when it is tired of crying. "Do you think I didn't stand where you're standing," he asks, almost conversational, which makes it worse. "Do you think I didn't read until the letters went on strike? I begged men with shiny names for ugly favors and paid for them. I traded time I needed for time I didn't get. She died anyway. And the building kept all its lights on."

"I can't rewrite that," I say. "I'm not asking to. I'm asking you to let me try before I run out of chances to deserve trying."

He stares. He's not trying to see through me; he's trying to see how much of me can survive being seen.

"Don't say her," he says, nodding toward the corkboard without turning. "Don't make her your lever."

"I won't," I say. "I'm using mine."

"And this person you 'love.'" The word is careful in his mouth, like he borrowed it. "You will not bring her here. You will not tell me her name. You will not use her as your excuse when you fail."

"I won't bring her," I say. "I won't say her name. I don't need an excuse." The next sentence falls out because if it doesn't now it never will: "She plays like gravity took a holiday. She fell and people clapped because they didn't know where to put their hands and I wanted to set the world on fire for it."

He closes his eyes for exactly the length of one breath. When they open, they're glass again. He sets the summary down without reading it, as if eye contact with paper would be too intimate.

"Your uncle," he says. "He did you a favor and a cruelty. He always had a talent for both."

"He told me not to expect much," I say. "And to knock anyway."

"You're good at anyway." His mouth twitches. Not a smile. A spasm of muscle that remembers how. "You look like a cautionary tale, Arima."

My last name sounds strange coming off someone else's bone. It makes this real in a way the lab didn't yet. "That's generous," I say. "I was aiming for footnote."

"Here is my generosity," he says, dry. "Go home. Sleep. Wake up less theatrical. Then stay out of my way."

"I don't know how to do two of those." I swallow the rest because arguing about sleep is an insult to anyone who has sat next to a bed long enough for morning to stop mattering. "Let me put one thing in your head. Then you can throw me out."

"You already shoved five in." He gestures with his chin. "One more and I charge admission."

"The measurement," I say. "Not the ruler everyone keeps using because they're scared of building a new one. A quicker way to tell if we're leaning on the right door. No miracles. Just less guessing."

He's quiet for a beat too long to be nothing. "Less guessing," he repeats, like a man indulging a child with fake steering wheel. "You think I haven't watched men build rulers and declare themselves tall."

"Some rulers are crooked," I say. "If we fix the bend, at least we stop lying to ourselves."

"Do you hear yourself?" His voice stays level but the edges sharpen. "You think words are wrenches. They aren't."

"My words aren't the wrench," I say. "My hands will be. If you let them."

He looks at my hands. It's worse than a slap. "Hold them out," he says.

I do. They shake a little. They always do now, when I haven't eaten right or slept right or told the truth right. He doesn't flinch. He's seen worse.

"Put them down," he says. "You're scaring the glass."

My mouth is dry. I know what has to happen, and hating it won't make it smaller. I bow. Not a gesture—an angle. I let the world tilt over me and I don't fight it. My forehead doesn't touch the floor. We're not in a place that deserves that. My breath stutters anyway.

"Please," I say to the tiles. "If all you let me do is rinse and label, I'll do it like it matters. If you let me learn, I'll learn without talking until talking is useful. If I waste your time once, I'll never trouble you again."

A timer on a far bench ticks to zero and complains to no one. My knees burn. I let them. He leaves me there long enough to make a point. Then:

"Up," he says. "You're making the floor think it's church."

I straighten. The lab swims and then considers that beneath it. He paces three steps. Turns. Comes back two. He studies me like I'm an instrument he doesn't use anymore.

"You're fourteen," he says, not for the first time, but this time it sounds less like an insult and more like a diagnosis. "You look older in the ways that don't help."

"I don't have the right ways," I say. "I have this."

"You have an uncle who should know better." The name is in his mouth again like something he doesn't want to chew. "You have a talent for walking into rooms that will not thank you."

"Then I'm with the right person," I say.

He exhales. Not quite a laugh. Not relief. Something that admits to being tired of anger.

"Fine," he says. The word lands like a coin thrown to stop a beggar from singing. "Leave your number."

The pen appears in my hand as if it had moved there to be helpful. I write in the corner of the summary: name in small capitals, digits, a time that looks reasonable and another I will answer anyway. The numbers blur for a second and then be themselves again.

"When I call," he says, chewing each word as if it has fiber, "you come. And when you get here, you will impress me more than this performance. I don't need another body to shuffle boxes and peel labels. If that's all you are, I will send you back to your textbooks."

"Yes," I say, because breathing anything else would be stupid.

He turns as if to end me, then pauses. I make the mistake I came to make.

"I have something," I say. "I'll bring it next time."

His head snaps back. "Why," he growls, "wouldn't you bring it now."

"Because if I walked in waving it, you'd have shut the door before I finished the sentence," I say. "I needed to touch base first. Hitting you with a trick would have made you throw me and the trick out together."

He scowls because I'm right and he hates that. "It had better be good," he says. "If it isn't, don't come back."

"It will be useful," I say, choosing the smaller word because it's truer. "I'll bring it clean."

He doesn't dignify that. He flips the summary, scrawls a room number and a window of time like a dare. His writing is quick and square. He underlines nothing.

"One more thing," he adds, voice reverting to the tone of a man who has memorized his conditions. "Anything that starts in a room with my name on it ends where everyone can reach it. If you are here to keep something for one person, take the elevator."

"That's the point," I say, and the relief in that sentence almost sinks me. "If it works at all, it shouldn't belong to me."

"If it works," he repeats, and the four letters sound like a superstition he doesn't wear in public.

We look at each other over the bench. For a second the lab belongs to our breathing and the small machines that ignore us. There is no warmth in it. There is something else I can use: permission that doesn't like itself.

"That's all," he says, with finality sharp enough to cut a page. "Go home. Try the sleeping thing. You look like a bad example."

"Yes," I say, and each time I say it tonight I dislike the way it makes me sound and like what it makes possible.

The hallway owes no one applause, so it gives none. At the elevator I see my hands shake and choose not to be theatrical about it. The doors close on a reflection that looks like a boy who got allowed to fail somewhere important.

Downstairs, the guard glances up without lifting his head. "Got what you came for?"

"I left a number," I say. "That's as far as I got."

"Sometimes that's the whole job," he says, and finds his place in his book again.

Outside, the air has cooled into something that forgives without forgetting. Streetlights learn their names. I walk because standing still invites panic to come sit on my chest and ask how my day was. The glass throws me back; I walk through myself. A vending machine blinks. I buy a bottle the color of oranges and faith, and a rice ball with a green fleck that might qualify as vegetable if Tsubaki were in a generous mood. I peel, chew, swallow, because caring for the machine is sometimes the only way to keep the music from dying.

My phone buzzes. You alive? from Tsubaki. The echo of the music room tries to stand up again—the heat, her bat bag, my mouth finding a bad joke to set on fire before it left. I type:

Home. Ate something orange. Will lie down.

I don't add: Thank you for being angry in the right direction. I don't add: I chose a door and it opened a centimeter and I am trying not to weep on the hinges. I press send. The tiny whoosh sounds like a bird too small to matter, and still, it matters.

Two blocks from the station the river runs like a sentence that hasn't chosen its verb. It behaves. It has no idea it was a stage this afternoon. The railing is cold when I touch it. I breathe against the metal until it fogs and then clears, fogs and clears, like a lesson about patience I don't want.

The train pretends to arrive on time. Inside smells like coin and old magazines. I find the same spot by the window by a man asleep in a delivery jacket and look at nothing that helps. The summary paper is no longer a weight in my pocket; the number I left is an ache under my skin. The car rocks and the city edits itself past us. I count the clicks it takes to cross a bridge. I do not count anything else.

At my stop the platform sings metal and boredom. The stairs argue with my knees. The door to the apartment sticks and thinks about asking me to earn it; then, with a small shudder, it decides to be reasonable. The room smells faintly like dried ink and something citrus I forgot to throw out. The towel Kaori left folded on the piano bench in all the wrong ways is still where she put it. I don't touch it.

On my desk I lay out a clean sheet. In the top corner I write his name in block letters I can't mistake through fatigue. Under that, the room number he scrawled. Beneath that, a window he gave me to fall through. I don't draw maps. I list: what to bring, who not to be, how to keep my mouth closed until it can carry weight.

I add one line:

Do not perform. Work.

Across town, there's a lab with a corkboard and an empty square. A man with a voice like clipped wire has my number next to a summary he didn't want to read. Somewhere he's arguing with the part of himself that recognizes the look in a boy's eyes as something he lost and something he despises. Somewhere he's deciding whether to dial.

I turn off the light. The dark makes the room honest. I lie down the way Tsubaki instructed—horizontal, like a person—and wait for sleep to forgive me. It confuses me with the hallway on the seventh floor: carpet that muffles, a door that listens. When I knock this time, it opens without asking who I am. In my hands there is weight that isn't fear. On the bench there is a place where something belongs that didn't yesterday.

Morning won't care about my metaphors. It will care if my hands are steady. It will care if my feet know the way back. It will care whether the person I love is upright long enough for a day to call itself worth it. The lab door is closed now. That's how doors begin. My number sits on his bench. That's how some futures begin.

I sleep as if I'm being watched by a room with bright lights. I wake with the sentence already half-written in my teeth: bring it clean.

Chapter Text

The sky had the color of washed denim when they stepped out of the side gate. After hours, the campus felt like a stage after the curtain: scuffed, quiet, everything a little tender from the last scene. Kaori hooked her fingers under the strap of her bag and swung it forward so the bunny's pink ear could peek out. The rabbit had been an accident of timing and softness; now it lived at her hip like a superstitious charm, like proof.

Tsubaki fell in beside her without asking. She usually walked a half-step ahead of people, cutting wind for them without thinking. Today she matched Kaori's pace and let the evening draft decide.

"Watari played well," Kaori said, too lightly. "He always plays well when he's pretending not to care."

Tsubaki didn't answer at first. She was watching the pavement the way athletes watch a pitch: like it might change on them. "He's good at pretending," she said finally. "We all are."

Kaori laughed as if that were harmless. "Speak for yourself. I'm terrible at it."

They turned onto the narrow residential street that emptied toward the river. Air conditioners muttered from windows; a bicycle bell chimed like a polite cough and then faded. Kaori tilted her face to the breeze and let it lift the damp ends of her hair. Everything in her wanted to talk about anything except the thing that had cracked the day open: the music room, the way Kousei had sat and refused to say the sentence she needed, the look on his face like a door with a chair jammed under the handle.

"He's going to be fine," she announced to the part of the evening that was listening. "He's stubborn, but he's not stupid."

Tsubaki made a noise that didn't quite qualify as agreement. "Fine how?"

"You know." Kaori shaped the air with her free hand, as if the definition might appear if she carved the outline. "He just needs to get back on stage. That's how he gets free. You saw him last time. The way he—" She snapped her fingers, failing to catch the memory in one clean motion. "He makes the world shut up. He needs that. Otherwise the ghosts get loud and then we all have to live with it."

"Ghosts," Tsubaki repeated, slow. She didn't believe in them. She did believe in eyes that looked like they hadn't slept a week in a day. "Is that what we're calling it."

"What do you call it?" Kaori asked, glancing sideways with a brightness that wanted to be dared.

Tsubaki's hands were busy with their own problem, twisting one strap of her bat bag and then untwisting it. She saw again the moment in the music room when he'd bowed his head and the light hit his face wrong. Fear had hollows it liked to live in. She'd seen those hollows: under his eyes, at the corners of his mouth, in the way his shoulders curled like he was bracing for a pitch he couldn't see.

"I call it being exhausted," she said. "He looks... " She searched for a word that wasn't mean and wasn't a lie. "Spent. Like there's nothing left in the tank and he's pretending he can run on fumes."

Kaori's smile wobbled and corrected. "That's exactly why he should play. He needs to burn it clean. You know how it is with music. The pain goes in one way and comes out another. You can use it."

"You can," Tsubaki said. "That doesn't mean he can right now."

Kaori pretended she hadn't heard that last clause. "He's always better after," she said. "You saw it, when we... when we—" She tripped over the we, the memory of the stage, the way it had held and then let them drop. "We got through it. We were good. He was good." Her voice warmed itself on that proof.

Tsubaki's jaw flexed. She wanted to tell her that winning and being okay were not synonyms. She wanted to tell her that the things that made Kaori glow could make Kousei flicker. Instead she tipped her chin at the bag bumping Kaori's hip. "That rabbit's going to get whiplash if you keep swinging it like that."

Kaori looked down and grinned, caught. "He deserves to experience velocity." She patted the ear into cooperation and then, more quietly: "It was sweet of him."

Tsubaki kept her face pointed forward. "Yeah," she said, then added because she couldn't bear the mood getting too soft, "stupid, but sweet."

Kaori's laugh came easier this time. They passed the vending machine that never stocked the flavor anyone liked. The little green park bench pretended to be a bench until your spine complained. Kids were chalking squares and failing to keep their shoes clean about it. The day did its best impression of normal.

"I know you're worried," Kaori said, the cheeriness letting a crack show. "But this is how he gets over it. He has to go through. He's not going to wake up one morning and be less scared. He has to pick up the thing that hurts him and make it work for him. It's the only way."

"That's your only way," Tsubaki said, not unkindly. "You jump and figure out the landing after. Some people have knees."

Kaori cut her a look that was almost affronted. "You think I'm telling him to jump for fun? I know what I'm asking." She ran a thumb over the seam in the bunny's ear. "I'm not blind." A beat. "Okay, I'm optimistic. Those are different things."

"Are they." Tsubaki slowed to let a mother with a stroller pass and then sped up again. "Today he looked—" She broke off, picturing the precise curve of his mouth when Kaori had said we're entering and he'd said nothing. "He looked like he wanted to be anywhere that wasn't that room. And not because of the piano."

Kaori's head lifted: a small flare of defensiveness. "Then where?"

"I don't know," Tsubaki said. It was the truth and she hated it. "He's hiding something. He always has his secrets, fine, but this is... different." She clenched and unclenched a fist by her side. "He looks like he's carrying something heavy without asking anyone to grab the other end."

"I'd grab it," Kaori said, fierce for a second, fierce enough that her voice scratched. "I'd carry it. He's the one who keeps putting it behind his back like it's decorative."

Tsubaki looked at her, surprised into a small smile. "Yeah. That sounds like him..."

They walked a block in silence and let the neighborhood speak: a dog making editorial comments at nothing; a moped objecting to a hill; a woman watering potted plants with the care of someone who liked listening to leaves drink. The quiet wasn't unfriendly. It was an old blanket, worn and real, shared because both of them needed it.

"I don't want to break him," Kaori said into that quiet, so abruptly that Tsubaki had to rewind the sentence and make sure she'd heard it right. "I know I push. I know I... talk like gravity is optional and every cliff is a suggestion. But I don't want—" She exhaled. The breath trembled. "He's not made of the same stuff I'm made of. That's not an insult. It's just true."

Tsubaki swallowed lightly. "He's softer," she said, choosing a word that made her want to cover it with her palm. "That's why it works when he plays with you."

Kaori smiled with her mouth and not her eyes. "It does, doesn't it."

"Yeah." Tsubaki fixed her gaze on a power line, on the shape of the insulators against the evening. "Just... don't decide what his medicine is if you're not looking at the side effects."

Kaori glanced at her like she was a lecture and a kindness at once. "Thanks, doctor," she said, but the sarcasm was thin and grateful.

They reached the little intersection where their routes split: Kaori toward the bridge that flexed over the river like a wrist; Tsubaki toward the old shopping street where produce stood in crates like a line of colorful soldiers. They stopped under a streetlight that had come on early, like an overachiever.

"Do you want me to—" Tsubaki began.

"—walk me?" Kaori finished, smiling. "No." She lifted her bag and patted it. "I have security."

"Right." Tsubaki eyed the rabbit a smile building. "Intimidating."

"The most." Kaori bumped her shoulder against Tsubaki's gently. "We're okay," she said, meaning herself and Kousei and possibly the part of the day that had fallen in on itself. "Right?"

Tsubaki looked at her. Kaori's hair was messier than usual, her lipstick bitten off in the middle, her bravery sitting closer to the surface than was safe for anyone. "We're trying," Tsubaki said, because she hated lying and loved her enough to compromise. "Text me."

"You text me," Kaori shot back, already stepping backward toward her route. "If you see him, tell him—" She stopped herself, then shook her head. "No. Never mind. I'll tell him."

"What were you going to say," Tsubaki asked, even though she knew.

"That I'm not mad," Kaori said, which wasn't entirely true. "That I'm just very, very right."

"You two deserve each other," Tsubaki muttered.

Kaori's grin flashed full-wattage for half a heartbeat. "Working on it," she said, and waved, and turned.

Tsubaki watched her until the blocks ate her and the river air took custody. She didn't move right away. The streetlight hummed. A scooter zipped past, leaving a wake of fried-dough smell from a stall somewhere. She exhaled and felt the breath go out like something she'd been saving too long.

She should have gone straight home. There were drills tomorrow. There was homework. There was the part of her that wanted to march back into the music room and tell Kousei with full clarity that he was ridiculous and she was not going to let him waste away or die on her watch, and also could he please eat something with protein in it that wasn't a rumor. Instead she took her phone out of her pocket and stared at it as if it were a mouth she hadn't taught to speak yet.

The last messages on her thread were a stack of ordinary things: group chat noise; Watari sending a blurry picture of his own sweaty face captioned KING OF THE COURT (Kidding. Sort of.); Kaori posting an unflattering photo of the bunny wearing a bottle cap like a hat; a weather alert pretending to be important. None of them were what she was looking for. She scrolled up until the name she was avoiding stopped moving away from her.

Saitou-senpai had texted weeks ago, after practice, when she'd been bent over her cleats on the third-base line and he'd walked over with the kind of swagger boys borrowed from each other. You're fast, he'd said in person then, the compliment tossed like a ball, easy to catch. Want to see a movie sometime? He'd followed with the text because he'd seen her face go static and had decided persistence would do what charm hadn't. She hadn't responded. She'd told herself the reason was homework, season schedule, life. She'd told herself the real reason wasn't envy and fury and the helplessness that came from watching someone you loved grip the edge of a cliff and call it practice.

She tapped the message. The bubble opened like a held breath.

Her reflection looked back at her in the black at the top of the screen: hair yanked into a ponytail that had lost the argument with humidity, eyes that didn't belong to a girl who liked fun. She heard Kaori's voice in her head—He needs to play—and her own spoken in reply—He looks dead on his feet—and the part of her that had always put Kousei before the map of her day protested. It didn't matter. None of it changed the fact that she had to choose what to do with her own hands while she couldn't stop his.

Her thumb hovered over Call. She pulled it away. Hovered again. This was a bad idea, she told herself, which was why it might work as an antidote. He didn't have to be a person. He could be a task—put on makeup, meet at a place, talk about nothing, laugh at something, not think about boys who forgot how to eat.

She hit Call.

The ring purred in her ear like a cat that didn't get along with her yet. She considered hanging up before anyone could answer. She considered throwing the phone into the river. On the third ring, he picked up.

"Tsubaki?" Saitou's voice dragged a smile behind it, the kind that came easily to boys whose shoulders had never had to be anything other than broad. The field always filled his sentences with dust. She could hear cleats in the background, the metallic scrape of a dugout bench being moved, someone yelling nice cut at nobody in particular. "Did I finally win the lottery?"

She almost hung up. She almost said the thing she would have said any other day—Sorry, wrong number—and made it a joke they could both keep without using. Instead she cleared her throat and aimed for neutral.

"Are you busy," she asked.

"For you?" He laughed. It was a little too loud; he was showing off to someone within earshot. "Never. What's up?"

She had not prepared a script. Words shuffled. Pride tried to take the phone away from her and let her do something safer, like burpees. She thought of Kousei's face in the music room, the color gone out of it like someone had erased him one stroke at a time. She thought of Kaori walking away and calling herself right as if that were a spell. She thought of how much she hated liking and losing control in the same week.

"About what you asked," she said.

A beat. "Movie?" His tone pulled its volume down like a curtain.

"Yeah." She tucked the phone between her shoulder and ear and readjusted her grip on the bag. Her fingers smelled like rosin and metal. "If that's still... if you're still asking."

"I'm still asking," he said, warmth turning real now that he wasn't performing for the bullpen. "I thought you'd forgotten me."

"I didn't forget," she said. "I was just—" She stopped. She was not going to hand him a paragraph about other people's bridges. "Busy."

"Good busy or bad busy?" He sounded like someone who believed those categories mattered.

Tsubaki squinted at nothing. "Both," she said. She stared past the street's end, where the river shrug-shrugged under the footbridge. The air lifted a strand of hair into her eyes. She blew it away. "Senpai... "

"Yeah?"

The word landed weird in her mouth. She'd said it a thousand times to a thousand boys without giving any of them space in her head. He was friendly, not an idiot, and his hands knew how to catch. Those were not credentials for the job of being anything that mattered. She knew that. She also knew the value of moving her body in a direction until her brain quit arguing.

She swallowed. "Senpai... let's... go out."

Morning comes like someone dragging a wet blanket off my face. My desk is a low hill of paper—scribbles in pencil that look like I was trying to hold a storm down with handwriting. The chair has a groove that remembers my spine too well. My phone lies facedown on a notebook like it fell asleep first.

I flip it over. One message from an unknown number that isn't unknown anymore.

Thursday. 6 PM. Don't waste my time.

Thursday....

My stomach does the thing it has been doing since last night—falling and then remembering it can't, not from this height. I copy the number onto a scrap and tuck it into my wallet like people do with prayers. The clock on the wall tries to pretend mornings have value; my body isn't convinced. I wash my face until the mirror stops looking annoyed, pull on the blazer that gives me a shape adults respect, and tell my hands to stop shaking until I can afford it.

The train breathes warm into the platform like a tired animal. School smells like yesterday when no one had the nerve to open a window: floor polish, pencil shavings, lunch plans muttered like strategy. I keep my head down and maneuver through the hall with the old skill—timing steps to avoid a classmate here, a teacher there, the way you memorize where the creaky board is in a familiar house.

I don't look for Kaori. I don't look for Tsubaki or Watari. I carry my map in my head: homeroom, math, a stop at the vending machine to put sugar in my body until it remembers what food is, back stairwell up two flights, library doors with hinges that squeal like gossip.

I take the back table by the window where the light is good and the librarian is either kind or too tired to fight. I unfold three pages and pretend to study history; behind them I have my real notes—titles and abstracts printed small, lines where I tried to simplify something complicated enough to make most people give up. I draw a box and write Thursday in it, then underline it until the paper starts to resent me. Two days. Forty-eight hours is a polite way of saying don't screw this up.

Somewhere in the courtyard, someone laughs in Kaori's key. It threads through the window glass like a tuning fork. I keep my eyes on the page.

Lunch is an egg sandwich and a bottle of tea that doesn't promise to be good; it promises only to be wet. The cafeteria is a mouth with ten conversations going on at once and chewing with its mouth open. I take the outer aisle, move against the wall, keep my head down so the neon lights of a certain bow case don't catch me. I've become very skilled at looking like I'm going somewhere even when I'm going nowhere at all.

The day unspools. I write notes in class and do not retain them. I copy down homework and forget. The bell at the end of last period rings with relief it doesn't own. People pack up and spill into the halls, all elbows and relief. I let the current carry me for three steps and then slip sideways, cut under an arm, duck through a closing door, and suddenly I'm in a quiet place with dust motes practicing their ballet.

The music room holds the day's heat like it's a secret. Stands are pushed back like shy people. The piano sits with its lid shut, patient the way only furniture can be. I close the door and the click sounds like consent. I set my bag down, take my notebook out, lay my pen on the page like a divining rod. The relief that hits me is stupid and immediate: no eyes, no questions, no smile that could disarm me.

I spread pages on the floor the way kids make forts out of blankets. Terms and arrows, a sketch of a thing that is not a machine but acts like one inside a dish. I write measure and circle it and then draw a smaller circle next to it and write fast. I could lie and say I like the science for its own sake; maybe once I did. Now it's a tool I have to sharpen until it cuts what I want cut. Measurements are the only honest thing in my day—numbers that don't clap even when you want them to.

The air in here is a mixture of varnish, old rosin, and the perfume of other people's skin after nervous hands. I press my palms flat to the floor and tell myself to breathe like a person and not like a broken machine. Then I get to work. I translate a paragraph into something my hands understand. I scratch out a step that will take too long and add a smaller, meaner step next to it. I write controls twice because Saitou's voice in my head is already tired of me.

The clock above the door does its slow clack, a metronome pretending to be better than it is. The sun slides off the floor in a long sigh. Students pass the door in clusters and then stop passing it. The building empties itself the way it does every afternoon—down stairwells, into bikes, toward dinner. I stay. It's quieter to fail when nobody can see it.

At some point the numbers swim. My handwriting drifts at a tilt. I get up to stretch and my spine corrects a complaint I didn't hear it file. I sit down again, and the floor has become very persuasive. I put my head down on my folded arm to rest my eyes for a minute.

It is not a minute.

When I open my eyes, the room is navy blue. The small red exit sign is the only bright thing; it paints the corner like a bruise. The window turns the campus into a handful of scattered lights and the suggestion of a field. My cheek has printed a name on my arm in reverse. I peel my face off my skin and sit up slow. There is a patch of drool on the page. The ink resents me and has run in a little flower. I wipe it with the side of my hand and succeed in nothing useful.

I sigh. Great I slept the whole day.... My eyes instantly direct towards the door as I heard noises of someone trying to enter

I sit up readjusting the glasses that fell.... I should really go back to contacts...

The door moves. Wood sighs. A strip of brighter hallway swings across the floor like a slow blade. The handle doesn't squeak. It's the small click that tells me whoever is on the other side knows how to open this door without needing it to make a scene.

Kaori...

She stands framed in the rectangle of light, hair messy in the way wind makes art, socks showing an inch above her shoes in defiance of a rule somewhere. A juice box dangles from one hand like the least dignified, most necessary offering in history. She looks at me like I am a puzzle the day has been saving. Then she steps inside, nudges the door closed with her heel, and the world shrinks to the shape of this room.

She walks up to me maintaining eye contact.

"Here," she says, holding out the juice like she found it on the sidewalk and it has been waiting for me all day.

"Thank you," I manage. My voice sounds like I left it somewhere and came back for it. The straw resists me until it doesn't. The first sip is unreasonably sweet. It tastes like every childhood bribe.

She sets her bag down and walks to the window and leans her forearms on the sill, chin tipped just enough to see the field. The night outside sits with good posture. If I were a braver person, I would say something small and useful. It's late, maybe. You should be home. I say nothing because wrong words multiply in rooms like this.

"You should call it a night," she says, without turning. "It's late."

"That's my line," I say, and make it sound like a joke so it doesn't sound like fear. "I'll leave soon. Don't worry."

"Mm." Her reflection in the glass lifts an eyebrow. The glass puts stars in it that aren't real. "What are you even working on?"

"Nothing." The lie is a poor one and doesn't even dress up. "Homework."

"Homework," she repeats, an insult and not. She picks at a chip in the paint with one nail and blows the dust off her finger. "You fell asleep on the floor doing homework."

"I'm very studious."

She snorts, soft. The silence after is not hostile. It's a calm lake that hasn't decided whether to drown you. The clock does not tick louder. My heart does.

When she speaks again, it's small enough that the glass keeps some of it and only a piece makes it back to me. "...Do you hate me?"

The juice box stops halfway to my mouth. The straw bends under my teeth and squeaks. "What?"

"Do you—" She swallows the rest of the sentence, then forces it up again. "Hate me."

I sit very still because moving would make the moment break into pieces I'm not sure I can pick up. "No."

She nods once as if she expected me to say that and respects my good instincts while preparing to ignore them. "Tsubaki told me this was pain for you," she says, still to the window, to the field, to the version of the night that doesn't have to answer. "I knew that. I know that too. I could tell when I saw your room." Her shoulders hunch a millimeter. "You're sad and hurting and I pretend not to notice."

"Kaori—"

"I keep pushing you to play in the finals." The words come faster now, as if they have to clear a narrowing passage. "What right do I have? I kept saying all those things—" She mimics her own brightness bitterly. Jump. Don't look down. Who cares if it hurts. "Play the piano and don't care about the consequences. Like pain is interesting. Like it's a story."

"It's not your fault," I say, because I want it to be true for her, if not for me.

"You're suffering," she says, and the sound of it in her voice is a blade that isn't aimed at me. "And it's my fault." She laughs a little; it breaks halfway through and turns into a sound that has no name. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." She folds her arms and puts her face on them and shoulders that spend most of their time at angles meant for duels slope into something like surrender. Her hair hides her. Water makes its small, ugly tracks.

My body moves before my brain files a request. I stand and go to the window and I don't talk. Talking would be a betrayal. I wrap my arms around her and put my head next to hers.She gasps, a small intake that isn't theater. For a heartbeat she stays rigid. Then she melts two centimeters, enough to let me know I haven't misread the room completely.

We stand there with the crooked city outside the glass and the straight lines of the piano's reflection inside it, and I think of all the sentences I have practiced. None of them matter.

"I care more about you than myself," I say into her hair, because truth is cheap if you wait long enough to say it. "I don't hate you. I hate myself." The words are not brave; they are what's left. "There are reasons I don't want to continue this competition and none of them are because I dislike you."

She pulls back a little so she can glare up at me. Tears make her eyes wide and too bright. "You can't just say that, idiot," she says, and the insult is a lifeline, and I take it.

"You're one of the three things keeping me sane, Kaori," I say. The other two sit unnamed because I am a coward and because saying them out loud would make them into a list, and lists can be lost. "If I look like a ghost lately, it's not because of you. It's because I don't know how to be a person and a plan at the same time."

She blinks hard, twice, the lashes sticking briefly with salt. The anger in her face doesn't leave; it just softens until it can be worn without injuring anyone. "Fine," she says, like pulling a tooth. "Fine... Don't compete in the finals."

I'm so surprised I forget to breathe. "What?"

She sniffles, wipes her cheek with the heel of her hand, and squares herself like a tiny general. "If you won't give me that," she says, "then give me something else."

"What," I ask, cautious as a person feeling the ground for buried glass.

"The Maihou piano competition," she says, and the room hears how much she has already rehearsed this line in her head because it comes out clean. "If you won't do the finals with me, then do that. Win it." Her mouth twitches toward a smile that has grief in it. "Winner gets an invitation to Europe. The piano competition there. Imagine what that could do for you."

She was such a good person.... But Prestige has no weight in my hands right now. Europe is a picture in a calendar someone else bought. All of it is time. Time is the only currency I have, and I am already in debt. I grimace and fail to make it look like a stoic smile. "Must I?"

"Yes," she says, and glares because glares are her easiest armor. Then, softer, like the light deciding to go easy on a room: "Yes, you must." She bites her lower lip and says in a voice so honest it makes my ribs hurt, "Please? For me?" She swallows the next sentence and then doesn't. "I want to see you play. I want to see you show everyone your symphony."

" And that way...... you don't have to worry about me....."

The word shouldn't land like it does. It's a black box where you put all the meanings that hurt to carry loose. It's also a promise I wrote in a different life with different ink. The part of me that had started to grow claws around the idea of no retracts them because she asked with for me in the middle and because her eyes are wet and not manipulative and because my spine is not made for refusing her. Her final words dug deep into his heart.

I hurt her deeply i need to make up for this in the future 100 fold. I felt like a practical cold monster....

Join The Maihou Piano competion.... Again...

Inside, the math explodes. Every hour I'll have to tear from somewhere to practice scales I can do in my sleep and the pieces I can't, every minute I won't be at a desk figuring out how to bring her something that weighs more than a sentence, every piece of me that will get burned because sleep becomes a rumor. The new plan drafts itself in a single breath: become a zombie, become a martyr, treat the body like a thing you can ignore until it breaks, keep smiling if she's looking.

She had died after his final competion. His symphony didn't get to her. He had gotten the invite to the European competion. He had gotten first place and done it.

Yet.....He felt absolutely nothing looking at the letter. Absolutely Fucking Nothing.... Like losing an arm and expecting ice cream to fill the vacancy.

He promptly ripped up the letter and tossed it into the trash. The only association he had with music was pain and regret. And Death.

It horrified the people around him. He will never forget Tsubakis face when she found out....

I inhale deeply

"Okay," I hear myself say, the syllables heavy and too soft.

Her eyes widen, the tears gathering but resisting the fall. "Really?"

"Yeah," I say, and I'm surprised by how tired I sound. "I'll do it."

She shifts on her feet, and then the smile happens. It isn't the stage grin that knows how to make a room stand; it's the small, private smile that makes any room kinder by existing in it. Warmth pours out of it like someone opened a door in winter. The look is so bright it pushes at the dark thing inside me until it retreats to a corner and curls there, smaller but harder.

"Thank you," she says, and the gratitude is not performative. It lands on my chest and burns pleasantly. "You won't regret it."

I will. That's fine. I would regret the opposite more. I nod and finish the juice box because it feels like the right punctuation and because she brought it and therefore it is sacred. She watches me like she can see the parts of me rearranging themselves into shapes that will hold when she is not here to check them.

She glances at the clock and winces. "We should go," she says, already bending to scoop her bag up, already a girl with a train to catch and an argument to win later in a dream. "It's late."

"Right." I gather my papers quickly, stuffing them in at angles I will hate myself for later. The room returns to the shape it had before I decided to make it an office: stands aligned, piano quietly judging, window measuring out the dark. I flick the light switch and the fluorescents take a second to remember how to die.

We step into the hallway. The school is a husk, the kind that needs voices to feel like itself and doesn't get any. Our footsteps bounce and come back thinner. She bumps my shoulder with hers without comment and the gesture is more intimate than any hand-holding would be. We walk down the stairs like a single thought.

At the gate, we stop because habit makes you stop at thresholds even when there's no reason. She looks at me and I look at her, and the air between us tries to come up with an excuse to keep us here. It fails.

"Practice," she says, grinning because she has put her mask back on and because this kind of bossiness is a language we share.

"Sleep," I shoot back, and she rolls her eyes so hard a city should take notes.

"Eat something with color," she adds, stealing Tsubaki's line without knowing it.

"I'll try." It's the truest promise I can make that doesn't steal from a future I haven't earned.

She salutes with two fingers; the gesture should be ridiculous, and somehow it isn't. Then she steps backward, then turns, then is gone—down the street that hears everyone's secrets, toward the bridge that thinks it's a wrist, into a night that will keep being a night whether or not any of us behave.

I stand there for a second longer than is polite and let the breeze move the hair at my temple like a hand. My phone is heavy in my pocket with a Thursday-shaped message. My hands smell like paper and a little like juice. The plan in my head has too many parts and not enough sleepi. I take a breath and let it out and the air does not collapse from the weight of my decision.

Life is about to become ten times tougher than tough. That's fine. Tough is a word people use when they don't have a better one. I start walking, because standing still has never saved anyone I love.

Chapter Text

The world is all back and legs and hiccuping breath. I'm on Tsubaki's back with my arms cinched around her neck like a life preserver I don't deserve, my knees thumping against her hips every time she jogs to keep from dropping me. My scraped knee burns in a very loud way—small and bright and certain of its importance. The hill we came down looks taller behind us than it did before I met it with skin.

"Ugh, Kousei, stop crying!" Tsubaki barks over her shoulder, more winded than angry. "It's just a little scraped knee—be a man already!"

I sob harder on principle. Tears make heat on the side of her neck where my cheek keeps slipping. Her ponytail swishes my nose like a horse's tail deciding I am a fly. She smells like dirt and sun and the aluminum tang you get when you lick blood by accident.

"To prove my point," she announces to nobody, "behold!" She twists, showing me the outside of her calf as far as physics will allow from a piggyback. There's a purple-yellow bruise there shaped like a continent no one will ever visit. "My leg went scrunch, okay? It still hurts! See me crying? No, you do not!"

"It hurts," I insist, voice breaking into pieces and then stepping on them. "It hurts."

"Yeah, genius, I can tell." She snorts and shifts me higher. Her hands are hooked under my thighs, palms calloused from a bat, from summers spent proving she exists with motion. "Ugh! I wish you could carry me for once! I swear, one day you're gonna grow up and carry me and everyone is gonna think I'm the coolest girl in the neighborhood."

For a second she drifts somewhere I can't follow—eyes gone glossy with a daydream that has a camera angle and maybe a breeze. I can feel her grin soften against my cheek. In her head she's got a cute boy—not necessarily me, maybe me if I behave—giving her a movie piggyback into a sunset that cooperates.

"This is all your fault!" I wail, detonating her fantasy on impact.

She jolts; the future pops like a soap bubble. "What, you wanna piece of me, punk?" She can't turn to glare properly so she glares at air. "Say that again and I'll body-slam you gently."

I swat at her shoulder with all the force of a damp sponge. She pretends to stagger. "Oh no, he's so strong," she deadpans, trudging. The hill drops away under us; the grass slips under her shoes and for one terrible, thrilling moment the two of us tilt together. We almost roll—she laughs in a way that says, If we roll, I will never let you forget it—and then she plants her feet, legs braced, breath bursting out of her like a whistle. I end up clinging harder, hiccupping in the aftermath.

We go a few yards in a stubborn kind of silence, the kind only kids can make: full of performance, empty of malice. Her hands tighten around my knees. Mine loosen around her neck when I remember she is not a lamppost.

"I'm glad it's just your leg," she mutters, quieter, the joke stepping aside. "Your mom's gonna be furious though." The word furious lands like the shadow of a hand. "She's always... you know. When you get hurt."

My throat closes. The hill smells suddenly like iodine and piano polish. I see the living room with its regimented quiet; I see the the look that means I have misplaced the day's quota of perfection. It was almost better when I thought the grass was the enemy.

"She's gonna be mad anyway," Tsubaki adds, kicking a stone so she can pretend to be casual. "So... so whatever. I'll tell her I pushed you by accident and then she can be mad at me instead." She says it like she's volunteering to get hit by weather.

That does it. My little brave collapses. I start crying again, because it's the only trick I know that isn't music and because music sometimes makes it worse. The sound jumps in my chest, trips over my ribs, tumbles out of my mouth in a stuttery mess.

"Oi!" she yelps, instantly soft. "Don't—hey, c'mon, don't cry. You're gonna make me—"

She does. The words melt into her own wetness. It's contagious: my noise makes hers; hers feeds mine. Now we're two dumb kids on one pair of legs, ugly-crying at the sky, scaring a pigeon that had plans for this patch of sidewalk. She doesn't set me down. She adjusts her grip and keeps walking, and if her calf shudders under the bruise she doesn't tell me. If I squeeze too tight and make it worse, she doesn't tell me that either.

We pass into the cool strip of shade thrown by the apartment block at the corner. The world quiets in the way it does when a cloud is generous. She hitches me up one last time and sniffs hard enough to clear a small road. "Okay," she says, voice raw but working. "Battle plan: we go to my place first. I wash the gravel out of your knee. You squeal. I laugh. Then I walk you home. If your mom gets scary, I stand there like a wall and you hide behind me like always."

"I don't hide," I lie into her shoulder. "I... reposition."

She barks a laugh. "Sure, soldier." And then, because she's Tsubaki and she can't let the last word belong to fear: "One day, Arima, you're gonna carry me up a hill and I'm going to make you cry from how heavy I am. That's a promise."

The memory fades on that ridiculous oath—us, small and wet and solid, going where the day told us and insisting it was our idea. The sun in the memory gives way to a rectangle of cheap morning, a desk, the rubbery taste of drool.

I wake with my face stuck to paper.

For a moment the past and present overlay badly: Tsubaki's breath under my cheek becomes the stale heat off my notebook; the grip of her hands under my knees becomes the cut of my chair into my thigh. Fate feels like it reached into the drawer the night keeps and threw a handful of old person Polaroids at my head. Cruel. Specific. Taunting.

My neck is a hinge someone didn't oil. I straighten with a sound that belongs in a much older person's mouth. The desk is a landscape of last night: pens uncapped at graceless angles, a ruler asleep halfway off the edge, three pages of notes that look like I tried to hold a storm down with handwriting. The fruit of my labor sits there without a label and without needing one. I don't touch it. Touching makes it too real for this hour and too unreal for the hour I need it.

The shower slaps me awake in a series of impatient hands. I stand under it until the skin at my shoulders goes pink and the part of me that wasn't convinced it lives here admits defeat. My glasses fog, then clear. Contacts, I think mutinously, and curse the me who hasn't got a prescription for them yet.

In the mirror, a stranger in a uniform tries hard to impersonate young me and fails. The collar is cockeyed; the top button is making its case to be disliked. My tie looks like it lost a bet. My hair appears to have had an argument with gravity and settled on a truce that doesn't flatter either of them. The bruised half-moons under my eyes have spread their empire farther than anyone voted for. Two weeks ago someone called me "innocent-looking" in a way that embarrassed me enough to smile. That boy left without forwarding his mail.

I shrug at the mirror. I am not an exhibit. I don't need to look good. I need to be operational.

The day has the smell schools have on mornings when nobody has figured out yet that the air is pretending to be safe: eraser dust, floor polish, gossip left out overnight. I fold myself into it with the practiced courtesy of a person who needs the building to overlook him. Backpack strap on the same shoulder, because the other one has started to ache in a way that warns you about future problems. Shoes a little too quiet. Eyes down not because I'm timid but because eye contact invites scenes.

My homeroom is a bus terminal. People throw words over one another and hope the right train catches them. I sit, I copy, I let the teacher's sentences pass through me like light through milk. When I try to put them back together later, I will have to guess which parts were meaning and which were glare. The clock's minute hand dials itself forward in sneaky stutters. Four classes perform the math of survival: what's due, what counts, what jokes can be smuggled in without confiscation.

By the time the pep rally arrives, my spine has resigned itself to being a clothesline.

They herd us into the gym the way you herd cats who have been trained by centuries of cats to appear cooperative while plotting a revolution. The banners have their mouths open. The bleachers creak and accept our collective weight. The sound in the space is a soft roar, the breath of a large, excitable animal. Someone has drawn lightning bolts on their calves in marker. Someone else has made a ridiculous hat that declares fealty to a sport. Another had face paint.

A woman with a clipboard and the voice of a person who has learned how to make teenagers hear says names that stand for teams. The microphone keeps its grudges to a minimum. "As you all know," she hums, "we've got competitions coming up across the board—track, baseball, kendo, soccer." She smiles against a wooden smile. "Now a representative from each team will show their spirit, starting with the men's s—"

There is a blur of motion that belongs to only one species of boy. The microphone migrates into a new hand as if it was always meant to. The gym inhales in anticipation of something preventable.

"You're a lucky lot to have been born in this generation," says Ryota Watari, smirk calibrated for attention. He lifts the mic like a trophy he hasn't won yet. "Because you get to witness the birth of a star named Ryota Watari!"

The sound that follows is engineered to be recorded: shrieks, laughs, a wave of woo that starts at the front and breaks on the back wall. And plenty of "Kyaaas!"And "He's so hot!" From the girls were shrieked out.Watari accepts it all with a bow that is ninety percent joke and ten percent actual gratitude. He knows how to take noise and eat it for breakfast.

I find Tsubaki on the edge of the platform with the rest of the baseball kids—the stance, the shoulders, the posture of people who can throw toward a future and trust some part of it to come back. Her head is down. She's looking at a scuff on the floor that doesn't deserve the care she's giving it. She could own the space with the way she moves. She declines. Watari rides the crowd like a wave; Tsubaki stares out of it in her own world.

The Spanish teacher next to me yells in the way adults do when they want to be part of something real and only have volume to spend. Two rows back, someone bangs on a sign until the sign loses some of its structural integrity. The gym's ceiling lights buzz as if they are trying to out-cheer the crowd and will need to be replaced for their trouble.

Watari does a little victory lap of a sentence about giving it all on the field and not leaving love letters unmailed—to the ball, to the net, to victory, he's equal-opportunity about his declarations. He points at someone I can't see and winks. The wink creates a small thermal in the bleachers that lifts a handful of squeals another octave higher. He's good at this. He always has been. It looks like it costs him nothing. I know better. I also don't know.

Names keep happening into the microphone. Faces I share hallways with grow several feet taller under applause and then shrink back to their familiar sizes when the moment moves on. A boy I know from math class shouts himself hoarse and grins like pain is a handshake he's making friends with. I clap at appropriate intervals. My hands make the shape of enthusiasm and the sound it makes without negotiating with the person inside them.

From this height the floor looks like order. Lines promise games will follow rules. But I've seen rooms hold rules like they hold breath: temporarily, with effort, and not without cost.

The woman with the clipboard returns to the mic to wrest the gym back from chaos with a smile that means she likes her job and also earns every yen of it. "Thank you, teams! Remember—" she calls, above a final ripple of noise, "—we're all here to support one another. Competitions run all week! Check the posting board!"

The gym exhales into chatter. People stand up in waves and sit back down when it turns out standing isn't on the menu yet. I see Tsubaki look up once—just once—and catch Watari's eye. He's still a little drunk on attention; she's still a little seasick from it. He beams at her. She answers with a bare, specific twitch of mouth that says: I'm proud of you; don't be insufferable.

I sink into my coat of borrowed quiet and let the bleachers hold my bones. If I squint, if I pretend, I can make the roar of the gym into the white noise of a lab fan; I can turn the beat of the clapping into the regulated thrum of a piece of equipment that doesn't care about me and does its job anyway. I rub my thumb against the pad of my index finger until the friction warms me. It doesn't. Not really. It's fine.

A stray streamer lands on my shoulder and sticks, static or fate. I peel it off and spin it around my finger like a thin idea. The pep rally is designed to make you feel like part of something that will outrun your private life if you let it. I look at the floor. I am tired of being outrun.

The whistle shrieks. The herd reconfigures itself into lines that will eventually become exits. I stand when the people in front of me stand and sit when they sit and stand again when it becomes ridiculous not to. Watari vanishes into a knot of admirers. Tsubaki disappears into the crush of uniforms headed for the side door, her bat bag thudding her shin in that familiar way. She doesn't look back. I don't wave. We're both too good at not being seen when we don't want to be.

"Arima," a teacher says as I'm shuffling with the current. I look up, don't immediately recognize which adult owns my name, and locate the tie that goes with the voice. "You okay?" he asks, because I look like a modest disaster.

"Fine," I say, because the truth is complicated and fine is a the ultimate cover.

"Drink water," he advises giving me a stern look, and lets me go.

I find the stairwell that smells less like victory and more like wet concrete. The shouting dilutes with each step. Out a narrow window the field spreads like a promise people made to themselves when they were nicer. The sky is a blank staff waiting to be written on; I put nothing on it. My hands go into my pockets without checking with me first. The day keeps happening in the place I'm not. I let it.

By the time the hallway learns my name again, the gym behind me has gone back to pretending it's a tame room. My body remembers the shape of the music room door handle before my hand finds it. There's a long moment where the plan and the future argue about what counts as necessary. Then I open the door and step into the quieter kind of noise I understand.

The music room is the inside of a held breath. Door shuts, latch clicks, and all the cafeteria noise and pep-rally leftovers seal on the other side of a thin, polite world. Dust floats in the long bars of afternoon as if somebody cut the sun into staff lines and told the motes to read.

I set my bag down so carefully you'd think it contained Glass. The piano waits, a black animal with its head on its paws, pretending not to notice me until I prove I know how to touch it. The bench is where it always is, three centimeters to the left of where a nervous person would leave it. I slide it half a hair with my knee and sit. My spine remembers its script without consulting me.

Hands hover. Keys breathe back.

Bach first—the old discipline, the house that never collapses, the staircase you can climb in the dark. Clavier in G: tiny sunlit mechanisms all clicking in their proper teeth. I drop the hands in and let them do the job they were trained to do when the rest of me was younger and thought obedience would save us. The figures chase one another across the keyboard, polite and exact, a conversation that never raises its voice. Every trilled laugh lands where it should; every step finds the tread. My wrists float, my fingers curve, and for a merciful minute there is nothing to be except correct.

The room reflects me back in black wood and ghosted glass. The metronome—face turned toward the wall like a child in time-out—keeps its mouth shut. I don't need it. I am the meaner parent.

Chopin next. Op. 25, No. 5—the wrong-note etude, the pretty joke with teeth. The left hand lays silk; the right hand twitches an eyebrow in the wrong place on purpose and then makes the insult into wit. I run through it as if someone hidden in the woodwork is giving me a mark for every millimeter of controlled blasphemy. No smudges. No tiny compromises you let live because they come with a cute face. I sand everything smooth. The wrong notes sound wrong in exactly the right way, which is another kind of lie I know too well.

Somewhere between the second page and the slightly vicious little ending, a thought tries to rise and I push it back down. Not now. Not here. Not when the one part of the day will line up the way you tell it to if you keep the rest of you out of its way.

The last cadence lands like a stamp. I hold the finish a beat past dignity, because I can, because control feels like moral goodness if you haven't slept.

I take my hands off the keys and only then notice that I've been clenching my jaw. Teeth let go of one another with a complaint.

From the door behind me, a voice: "Utterly soulless."

The word utterly has an appetite. It eats the leftover ringing out of the room.

I don't flinch, but I turn. Kaori is already inside, the door closing with a soft clink behind her heel. One hand holds a bagel by its paper collar like she arrested it on suspicion of being breakfast. There's a constellation of crumbs on her wrist. Her hair is loose from whatever held it earlier; the wind-light mess looks deliberate even when it isn't. She's chewing. Somehow she chews like a performance too. Her blazer was forgone with only her uniform shirt on.

"You heard me," she says around the bite, eyebrows knitting in a frown that would be cruel on someone else and is only exact on her. "Soulless."

"Hello to you too," I say, and my voice comes out even, because I spent years learning how to pass for calm while parts of me took turns drowning.

She takes another bite as if fuel is an argument you should always be prepared to make. "Where's the color?" She gestures with the bagel, a sesame seed launching bravely and dying on the lid. "Where's the ambition? You're coloring inside lines that are already printed onto the page. You don't even press hard enough to leave an indent."

"It's enough for the competition," I say, aware of the precise way my mouth flattens on enough and hating that I know it.

She stops chewing. That's the part that hurts: how quickly she can turn off her own brightness when she wants to look directly at you. "Maybe for judges." The word judges has too many consonants when she says it; it sounds like a broom sweeping up people. "Not for humans."

I could say a lot. I could tell her I do not have time to lavish on making the thing pretty when I'm already bleeding hours for a different kind of pretty that isn't pretty at all. I could tell her perfection is cheaper than feeling; perfection is a machine you can switch on and off. I could tell her I don't want to open the door inside a door inside a door that music always is, because the room at the end is the one where everything I couldn't save lives on the floor and looks up at me. A room where the truth of his life shines through and reminds him how destroyed everything really is- his whole life...

Instead I rest my fingers on the keys again and play a single C like it's a diagnostic. Color? my head thinks, meaner than I want it to. What about the color in your face? The thought hits me like the clap of thunder that gets lost after a firework; it flashes, makes the cheap bright, and is gone. I say none of it. I don't want to spend that kind of honesty in a place that remembers.

She comes closer, sets the bag on the bench beside me, wipes crumbs off her thumb with a seriousness that would be comic if it weren't part of how she works. "I know you can be messy," she says. "I've seen you be messy. That—" she nods at the motionless piano like it owes her money "—was not messy. It wasn't even clean. It was... polite." She makes a face as if she found raisins in her cookies. "Are you trying to bore me to death so I'll haunt you and yell in your ear for the rest of your life?"

"I thought you already planned on that," I say. "Given the schedule."

Her mouth twitches and then refuses the laugh. She leans in, squinting at my face like she's trying to read the notes someone scribbled on me when I fell asleep. "You didn't sleep."

"I did," I protest automatically. "Horizontally, even." It's half-true. The floor counts as horizontal.

She rolls her eyes with the operatic precision of a person who has trained in expressive muscles. "How long?"

"A while," I say, and she makes an unprincessly noise to register her contempt for that answer.

She looks at me with a face that clearly doesn't believe my lies "We're getting you out of here for today no more practicing we're gonna go watch the Athletics teams"

"Shouldn't I practice to be less soulless?" I ask dryly, because jokes are cheaper than apologies and because if I hand her something to slap she'll slap that instead of the part of me that is already falling apart.

She glares, victorious, as if I've stepped into the ring she set up for me and acknowledged her title. Then—because she is genetically incapable of staying inside one mood longer than it does its job—she hooks her finger under her lower eyelid and pulls it down at me, tongue out: comically rude, aggressively childish, impossible to take personally.

"No," she says when the face returns to addresses-only. "You shouldn't try to be anything. We're going to fix it the old-fashioned way."

"What's the old-fashioned way," I ask, against my better judgement.

"Seeing our friends." She says it like the formula for an antidote. "Musicians need to see the sky sometimes."

I can feel the argument spool up in my chest like measuring tape: retractable, precise, satisfying to snap closed. The sky is not going to help me on Thursday; the sky is not an input that produces the output I need. But I also remember the gym, and the roar, and the way Tsubaki looked at the floor like it might do her the favor of opening. I can't tell whether my resistance is a matter of time or a matter of cowardice. Either way it's boring.

Kaori inhales, then pivots, the bagel a pointer in her hand. "By the way: what club are you in?"

The subject change makes a noise in my head like a gear shift in a badly maintained car. "What?"

"Club," she repeats, as if the word were a vocabulary term I should have underlined in my notes. "You are in one? Or you're intending to be in one? Or you're avoiding the question because the answer is embarrassing?"

"The Blonde Appreciation Club," I say, before my better self can stop me. It slips out with the exact intonation of a boy choosing the path of maximum doom because he wants to see what kind of firework it makes.

Her cheeks go pink in a fast, furious bloom, which, in a betrayal of both our interests, looks very pretty. She does not dignify it by looking away. She glares down at me as if daring the color to be permanent. "Idiot."

I shrug, caught and not sorry. "None," I add, because truth does eventually have to show up for work.

"Good." She plants the last bite of bagel in her mouth with a little theatrical chomp, dusts her hands, and points at me with a newly clean finger. "Because the cultural clubs have to go watch the athletic teams this week and turn in an attendance slip. Today and tomorrow. Which means you're coming with me."

"Is this punishment or medicine," I ask.

"Yes," she says, not quite an answer. "Think of it as scurvy prevention. Vitamin... human. Fresh air. Other people's sweat." She wrinkles her nose. "You're invited."

I look at my fingers splayed on the keys—ten pale arguments for staying exactly where I am until the day runs out of me—and then at her. She's already made more decisions about my afternoon than I had patience to make. She is also holding the door I keep insisting is not there.

"Are we going to watch the soccer team?" I ask, aiming for neutral and landing near resigned.

Her mouth goes mischievous, a little tilt that puts trouble in her teeth. She taps the closed lid of the piano with two knuckles like announcing a magic trick. "Nein."

Chapter Text

The outfield hums like a big green amplifier. Chalk flares white under cleats; the infield dirt has been combed into tidy ripples that will be wrecked within minutes. A classmate waves a hand-painted banner that sheds flecks of paint every time he pumps his fist; another cups her mouth and tries to turn her voice into a trumpet. The sun leans on the backstop and pretends it's a spectator.

Kaori and I slide into a gap along the first-base line, pressed between a cracked fence post and a clump of sophomores who have decided their job today is to yell "LET'S GO" until the phrase means something new. Kaori's already on the balls of her feet, sleeves shoved to her elbows, clapping like applause is cash and she intends to tip generously. I keep my hands in my pockets, a compromise between showing up and hiding.

"Participation includes noise, Piano-kun," she says without looking at me. It's not scolding so much as a nudge shaped like a sentence.

"I'm making internal noise," I say, and get an eye-roll that contains more warmth than most hugs.

Tsubaki is in right, hat brim low enough to shade intent, ponytail swung through the hole like a flag that chose discipline. From here she reads as straight lines and angles: shoulders squared to the diamond, knees loose, weight ready to lean toward anything. She scans the bleachers out of habit—the quick accounting a player does to locate wind, sun, coach—and her gaze trips across us the way a hand catches on a nail.

We lock eyes. My stomach does that bad elevator lurch; my face, traitor, arranges itself into encouragement. I lift both hands and smile thumbs up like an idiot version of a coach.

She startles. It's tiny—just a soft widening of the eyes—but on her it rings like a dropped coin. Her chin tucks down; a breath later she looks past me as if the bricks over our shoulders are thrilling. Her shoulders claim new casualness. The top of her bat taps her cleat twice: ritual stitching the moment back together.

"Cute," Kaori murmurs, equal parts mischief and fondness.

The inning rolls over. First batter for us swings out of his shoes and discovers the air is heavier than it looks. Second lays down a bunting attempt so tentative even the ball refuses the invitation. Clap, groan, clap. Kaori whistles; somebody answers from the far side with a counter-whistle that has no pitch discipline at all.

Then Tsubaki steps into the box.

Her pre-swing has a grammar: tug the strap, test the dirt, blink the left eye, breathe. The catcher sits low, glove a square mouth. The pitcher shakes once, twice; the catcher wiggles a signal only his mother would understand, and the boy on the mound decides he is the kind of person who throws a rise on the first hello.

The ball leaves his hand looking polite and reaches the plate with an upward grin. Tsubaki can't help herself; the bat scythes along a path that would have been perfect an inch lower. Whoosh—nothing but air, the sound of paper tearing. Strike one.

The bleachers manufacture pep because that's what they were built for. "You got it," "good eye," the lies teammates tell to keep one another from dying of honesty.

Tsubaki steps out, resets. The pitcher likes what he felt and does not pretend otherwise. Here comes the twin: same arm slot, same late hop, same rude little lift. She chases again—less fooled, more stubborn—and misses by the width of a regret. Strike two. The ump is a man stamping passports.

My pulse climbs into my throat. I see the twitch in her grip she gets when she wants to murder the ball for being smug. I see her jaw notch the way it did in middle school when she'd decided the outfield fence was a dare. Kaori's hands slide together like she's praying in a religion that tolerates snacks. Around us, a line of first-years begins chanting her surname on a rhythm that does it no favors.

The diamond shrinks. The breath of the crowd clots into a single weather system, and then it drops away entirely. The noise thins like someone pulled a fader. The field goes gray at the edges. My brain, polite monster that it is, drags me sideways into a room I didn't choose.

It's the week after Maihou. Not the smiles, not the handshake, not the polite compliments from adults who admire children like they admire a well-made clock. After. Back door of the hall, loading ramp with the echo of a laugh that doesn't belong to anyone anymore, sun sagging toward evening with a bad taste in its mouth. My blazer hangs wrong because I put it on wrong; my tie has decided it likes asymmetry.

Tsubaki stands square in front of me, breath a little sharp from running down stairwells to find me first, hair debating with the wind. There's a cream-colored envelope in my hand thick enough to be a future. "So?" she says, and her voice tries for light and misses. "Europe."

"It's just a letter," I say, folding the corner down like I'm trying to make it forget its name.

"It's a door," she corrects, stepping closer the way you step closer to stop an animal from bolting. "You won. You earned it. You're going." Her eyes say the other thing out loud in the space between us: Let something good survive. Please.

"I'm not—" I start, and she slices a hand through the air, impatient with my usual tricks.

"Don't start with the noble martyr noise. You worked for this. She..." The word catches; she swallows, changes lanes without signaling. "You can't throw this away and call it grief."

"I tore it up," I say, the way you admit to a petty crime in a confession booth. "I'm not going. I won't go. Not now. Not ever."

Her face empties. It's not dramatic—no gasp, no slap, no shouted monologue for the stagehand lurking in the alley. It's worse. Disbelief trips, bruises into hurt, collides with anger and can't find a place to stand. "Y-you... w-what...?" She looks at my hands like her memory is lying to her. Her jaw works, then gives up. The hope in her posture has nowhere left to live....

That moment sticks to me like a label soaked and peeled but never fully gone. The look is a scar that didn't ask permission.

The present slams back in with the ugly grace of a door kicked open. Leather pops; wood complains; somewhere a sophomore drops a soda and it clatters all the way down the bleachers like coins changing their mind. The pitcher coils. Tsubaki squares, one heel grinding just enough to write a small dark word into the dirt.

He comes high again—humble arrogance, daring her to repeat the mistake. She waits half a heartbeat longer than a smart person would and lets all that irritation in her wrists do what it wants.

Contact.

Not a perfect barrel, not a majestic flight into somebody's picnic. More a hard insult—low, mean, skipping toward the hole between short and third like it knows something about the geometry of panic. The fielder charges a hair too fast, takes it on the heel, juggles his own nerves. The ball pops away a meter and acts coy.

Tsubaki is a streak. First in a handful of explosives; second on a lean that would get a lecture in any sport that loves knees. The coach at third windmills like a man summoning wind. She doesn't need the sign; you can read go in the angle of her neck. The relay comes in cleaner this time, hands to hands, the arc tight, the catcher planting a wall at the dish because the rulebook allows it and he likes feeling important.

She could hold. She won't. Of course she won't.

She drops into the slide a breath too early because bravery is hurry with better PR. Dust lifts in a halo that tastes like old pennies. The tag sweeps across her hip; the world becomes contact points and nothing else—shin to dirt, glove to thigh, toe to plate. The plate is a rumor under the cloud; the umpire is a throat that wants to be a gavel.

"OUT!"

The word hits the bleachers like a hammer. Everything else—cheers, groans, the clatter of cleats—arrives late.

————————

I heard the word before I felt my body again.

"OUT!"

It hit like a stamp. The cheers rose up around me a half-second late, and for a moment it seemed like everyone had agreed to move underwater. I grinned fake and big enough for a yearbook and let the dirt fall off me like confetti I hadn't asked for. Someone tugged my elbow; someone else hit my helmet; the catcher said "nice try" in that bored way boys do when they win. I stood, pretended my foot wasn't yelling into a pillow, and jogged toward the dugout with the gait of a person who thinks swagger is a painkiller.

Coach caught my shoulder and said something about "good try" and "That's how it is," and I nodded the way you nod when you're translating from a language you don't plan to use. The bench smelled like dust and rubber and the last three years. I clapped for the next batter because that is the job, and when the inning collapsed, I trotted out to right like my legs were on a delay.

We lost. Of course we did. It was the kind of loss that teaches you nothing except how to count. And her final game of the middle school season.

The line at the plate was a parody of politeness. We dipped our chins at boys who had discovered they were invincible for the next twenty minutes. The banner came down with a slap; the freshmen's chant died of embarrassment mid-echo. I stuffed my bat into my bag and cinched the strap with my teeth because my hands had become stupid, then climbed out past the chain-link because the gate jammed and I didn't want to wait for anyone's help. On the other side of the fence the world turned back into a street.

Kashiwagi fell in beside me before my body could decide whether to limp. She didn't look at my foot. She looked at my face, which is worse.

"You okay?" she asked. Neutral tone. Her eyes gave it away.

I made a noise that could mean anything. "I'm starving," I said, which was true and therefore not helpful.

"You ran through that stop like it owed you money," she said. "Coach will print a lecture and staple it to your forehead."

"Staples bounce off me," I said, managing half a grin. My breath measured wrong in my ribs. The ankle had decided to become a fist; my sock was turning into a tourniquet by millimeters.

We walked a few steps. I waved at a group of first-years who waved back too hard, their smiles wired on with hope. Someone's mom offered oranges; I shook my head. If I opened my mouth for anything, the wrong thing would come out.

Kashiwagi followed my glance down the sidewalk and snorted softly. "Have your boyfriend cheer you up," she said, casual like dropping a coin in a jar.

I stopped because my brain didn't know what to do with the word. "My—what?"

She hiked an eyebrow. "You know who. The ghost boy you keep pretending you don't see." Before I could produce the correct legal response, she bumped me with her shoulder—gentle, on the good side. "I'll text you notes from the postmortem. Go home before your ankle gets ideas." She stepped away, weaving into a clump of teammates who needed a person to make jokes, and left me with the street's thin breeze and a foot that had started whispering plans.

Boyfriend. Right. As if we were simple.

I leaned against the low wall by the hedge and breathed until the sharp part rounded off into a heavy ache I could carry. You learn to triage. You learn which muscles lie best. I pulled my cap off and let the sweaty ponytail breathe; the back of my neck felt like a stove set on low. I wanted water, a time machine, and five minutes where nobody looked at me like I was a map they'd lost.

When I glanced up the path again, there he was—walking like gravity meant more to him than it does to other people. Blazer wrong, tie sullen, hair pretending it hadn't met a comb this week. His face—God—his face had the gray to it that only shows up after too many nights done wrong. Not dramatic. Just emptied out. If he were a building, there would be lights on in exactly two windows and the rest of the floors would be dark.

He didn't wave. He didn't do that polite half-smile he performs for teachers. He just stopped in front of me and took inventory with his eyes, which was almost worse. He looked at the shoulders (fine), at the hands (steady), at my mouth (lying), and then he looked at my ankles like he was reading a chart no one else could see.

"Don't," I said out of reflex.

He tapped my bad ankle with the toe of his shoe.

It was a light tap. An insult more than an action. My leg answered like he'd set off fireworks under the skin.

"AH—!" The sound came out too big, too clean. It bounced off the hedge, ran across the street, and made a dog down the block decide he had something to add.

Kousei's mouth didn't change, but his eyes said, there it is. "Knew it," he said, like he was marking something in a notebook.

"Stay away from me, creep," I hissed, grabbing the fence to keep myself from kicking him with the other foot out of pride. Pain had turned hot, the kind that makes you sweat in weird places. "Touch me again and I'll—"

"Hold still," he said, as if he were the one with seniority and a whistle.

He set his school bag down, rummaged, and produced an elastic roll of athletic tape and a soft ice pack that had probably lived at the bottom of some dugout cooler five minutes ago. He held them up like a villain in a cheap commercial. I wanted to laugh; I wanted to cry; I wanted to take them and also bite him.

"Absolutely not," I said, aiming for aloof and landing somewhere near panicked. "If you wrap me, I owe you something."

"You already owe me for the scream," he said. "Sit."

I sat because the curb looked too much like a suggestion I didn't want to fight. He knelt on the pavement and I tried not to look at his hands. They were steady in the way I trust more than anything else about him, and that made me angrier than if they'd shaken. He pressed the ice to the swelling until my skin argued, then swapped to his sleeve for a barrier and pressed again. The first sting settled into a bearable cold; heat leaked into the pack and away from me in tiny sighs.

"You look worse than I do," I said, because I can only be quiet for so long before the truth starts to chew on me. "At least I have an excuse, what's yours?"

He didn't look up. "I'm operational." He said it like a mechanic.

"That is not a human sentence," I muttered, and then hissed when he tested the angle of the joint with two fingers. "I will end you."

"This will help," he said, completely unmoved by my homicide plans. He started to wrap, securing the figure-eight with a concentration he used to save for Chopin. The tape whispered as it unrolled. The smell of the adhesive reminded me of tournaments and early mornings and all the times his uncle scolded me for not warming up right while feeding me onigiri.

When he finished, he slid the ice in under the tape, snug. "Okay," he said, sitting back. His eyes flicked up, finally meeting mine. Something soft and awful passed through me.

"Okay," I echoed, and hated how small it sounded. "Now get away from me before people start thinking you're helpful."

He stood and then crouched again, turning his back to me. "Get on."

"No." It came out fast, automatic. "We are not doing the backpack thing. I can walk."

"You can walk until the corner and then you'll swear at a storm drain," he said. "Get on."

"Bossy....," I grumble , because I needed to have the last word about something today.

"You can fight me about it," he said mildly, "or you can not fall down in the middle of the street." He glanced over his shoulder. "Three... two..."

I threw my bag over his opposite shoulder with a growl and climbed onto his back, the motion making my ankle howl and my pride do something worse. His hands caught under my thighs like he'd been planning for it all along. He stood without stagger. He's stronger than he looks; I hate that I forget.

He took a step. Another. The ice pack shifted against the tape; cold pulsed, numb then ache, ache then numb. His blazer scratched my bare forearms in a way that felt almost like an apology.

"I can always tell when you're in pain," he said, quiet enough that the hedge didn't get to hear it.

"Yeah?" I dug my chin into his shoulder so he wouldn't see my face. "Then look in a mirror, smart guy." I wanted it to sound like a joke. It didn't.

He didn't answer. The silence between us went warm. We passed the vending machine that never has the right flavor; it flashed light on his cheekbones and the deep crescents under his eyes. The campus behind us gave up the ghost of the game and went back to pretending it was a place where people learned.

"Where's Kaori?" I asked, because someone had to say her name so it didn't turn into a superstition. "I thought she'd be trying to carry you instead of me."

He shrugged, and the motion jostled me. "Do I look like I have a tracker?" There was a ghost of humor in it, the kind that knows how to act like humor while the boat is sinking.

I smacked his shoulder with the flat of my hand. "Don't be a jerk." And then, softer, because it was going to rot my tongue if I didn't say it: "She'd worry less if you didn't look like... this."

"Like what," he asked, not offended.

"Like a haunted coat rack," I said. "Like your soul is two coats too big." My throat went hot. "Like you're not eating, and you're not sleeping, and you're pretending it's fine because 'operational' sounds like a plan."

He kept walking. Streetlights decided to matter one by one. "Thank you," he said after a minute.

"For what?" I snapped, because gratitude is sometimes worse than insult.

"For being with me." His voice wasn't brave; it was tired in the honest way, the way that almost let me cry. "I know I make you worry. I want to be the one worrying from now on. I might be an unreliable piece of crap, but—"

"Don't say that," I said into his shoulder, and my hands tightened around him like the words were something I could keep from falling out of his mouth by force. "Don't you dare. Not about you. Not to me."

He was quiet a beat. Then he tried to pull us both back toward the surface. "You're so light," he said, and the smile was in it even if I couldn't see his lips. "Sometimes I forget you're just a small girl."

I yanked his hair gently because he deserved it. "What's that supposed to mean, weirdo?" My face went hot in the stupid way. "Call me small again and I'll suplex you."

"Maybe the season's making me feel funny," he said, which is Kousei for I said something truer than I meant to, please don't look at it too closely.

We turned onto the quieter street that leads to my building. The trees are terrible at confidence; they whistle when the smallest wind bullies them. A scooter zipped past trailing the scent of batter and oil, and I almost asked him to stop so I could buy something fried and orange and punish my stomach for being attached to me.

The silence stretched. I let it. I listened to his breathing, which was even but a little deep, like walking and thinking at the same time was work these days. His shoulder bones felt sharper under my forearms. My ankle throbbed in a slow pulse now that the anger had bled out of it, and each pulse made space for another thought I didn't want.

We lost.

It arrived like a verdict. Not even the kind you argue with. The kind that writes itself down and files itself away under Of course. My chest went tight around it, and then the tightness broke with a sound I didn't mean to make.

"I hate this," I said, not to him and entirely to him. "We lost."

He adjusted his grip and didn't pretend to have a fix. "I know."

"It was my fault," I said, and the words were smooth with repetition; you could string them on a chain and sell them as beads. "I went. I shouldn't have gone. Everyone worked so hard. I wanted to be a star and instead I was a traffic cone."

"You read the relay right," he said, steady. "You wanted a run. That's not a crime."

"I slid like an idiot," I said. The heat climbed my face and made everything feel like bad weather. "And then I—" I sucked a breath through my teeth because the pain at the word then punched from the ankle up. "I can't even be properly injured. I'm dramatic and useless."

"You're neither," he said. He slowed a fraction so a couple with a stroller could pass, then sped up again. "You're loud about everything except pain."

That did it. The thing I'd been holding in my throat—the hot, stupid, choking thing—barreled up and out. I pressed my forehead to the back of his neck because there wasn't anywhere else for my face to go. "I hate this," I said again, louder, and then the words lost shape and turned into water.

We turned down my block while I cried on his back like a child, and if the neighborhood could see me I hoped it choked on its opinion. The tears weren't pretty; they were all snot and hitch and this is not fair. "We lost and it was my fault," I repeated, as if repetition could turn into understanding if I made it brave enough. "Everyone worked so hard. Coach will—" I hiccuped. "—coach will try to be nice about it, which is worse, and the first-years will pretend not to be disappointed and I'll have to be someone's example about grit and I hate that word, I hate it, I hate—"

Kousei let me pour it into the street. He didn't tell me to breathe. He didn't tell me it wasn't my fault. He carried me like that's just a thing he does on Thursdays, and the corner store's neon sign hummed an ugly halo over both of us. The ice pack dripped down the back of my leg in cold lines. A cat watched us with contempt and approval.

Somewhere between "I hate this" number nine and "I hate me" number one, I ran out of enough air for either. The crying didn't stop so much as give up. My breath kept working like a machine that wants to retire and isn't allowed. The ache in the ankle had settled into an argument I could walk away from someday. The ache in my chest took longer.

"Why does this feel okay," I asked the back of his collar. My voice sounded small and stupid and truer than I intended. "Everything's wrong. But—" The but hung there, a tangled string with no kite.

"Because I'm here," he said, and it should have been arrogant and it wasn't. "Because you're not alone." The words weren't a line; they were an inventory.

I closed my eyes because if I kept them open, I would have to witness myself. Everything is collapsing, I thought, and the thought didn't hurt like I expected. Somehow, right now, it's okay—because he's here.

Chapter Text

Morning is a curtain that forgets to open. My room has the color of inside-a-pocket; the light that does get in is tired and thin, like it had to fight the hallway to reach me. The desk looks like it tried to build a small city out of paper and gave up at dawn: scabbed mugs, graphite smears, capped pens lying like spent cartridges, a stack of drafts that lean against one another for balance and dignity. In the middle, wrapped in clean cloth, sits the thing I pretended last night I would stop touching so I wouldn't ruin it.

I reach for my phone before I reach for water. My thumb hovers long enough to register the guilt and then refuses to carry it.

Not coming in today. Sick.

I add nothing. No emoji to sand the edge off. No promise to bring notes later. I send it to Tsubaki and flip the phone face-down before it can decide to act like a conscience. The screen thuds softly against the wood. I stare at the blank back like it could leak relief.

"Time to get to work," I tell the air, which doesn't need a pep talk.

I don't put on my uniform. The blazer hangs off the chair like a witness. I step around it and sit, the chair's old complaint rising up to greet me, the kind you learn to stop hearing. My hands are already moving—glove, cloth, tiny bottle, the neat brutality of getting a station ready. Cover the lamp, check the seals, count the disposable things as if counting them can keep the clock honest. I unwrap the cloth and the room inhales with me.

You're not a cure, I tell it, the way some people tell dogs they're a good boy just to hear the cadence. You're a doorstop. A piece of chalk to hold the door open a little longer.

The quiet is so clean I can hear my own pulse. I make it dirtier with work.

Hours do the rubber-band thing. I write and test and cross out, rewrite with a smaller hand. I adjust a ratio that looked perfect at midnight and insolent now. I solder one sentence onto another and then cut them both apart because when I say them aloud they wobble. I pick up a pipette and my fingers forget elegant, go for reliable. I whisper through steps like dates for a quiz I can't fail twice.

When the edge of the table grooves my forearms too sharply, I stand, stretch, apologize to the spine for the way I treat it. The window shows me the school roofs in the distance like ships beached on asphalt. Somewhere in there a bell pretends to matter. I don't check the time. Time is big and rude and doesn't deserve politeness today.

Thirst elbows hunger out of the way. I find half a bottle of tea and take the gamble. It tastes like leaves that didn't win, but it convinces my throat to let my voice work. "Not a cure," I say again, to the object and to myself, "time." The word is already sore from overuse and still the only one that fits.

I turn back to the desk and the edge of the world narrows until I can balance on it.

Every few minutes my brain tries to be helpful and drags in a scene I didn't invite. Kaori on a bench, kaoris-laugh: you're dramatic. Kaori on a stage, the moment before color. Kaori on a floor, the color wrong. I shoo them like sparrows. Not because I don't want them; because wanting them is an unhelpful luxury mid-procedure.

Then, because my brain is a worse friend than it knows, it opens a door that hasn't been intruded on in years.

Her parents.

Not the hospital corridor memory everyone has—you know the one, with the machine that insists on telling the truth too loud, with the nurse who has perfected the art of being somewhere and nowhere at once. A different one. A kitchen, quiet enough to hear the refrigerator consider its own mortality. Bowls stacked like they were expecting soup. A calendar with a cheerful fruit print, days crossed off neatly until they weren't. He stands there with his hands on either side of the sink as if it might tip if he lets go. She sits because the floor is the only thing that will agree to hold her. Their faces don't look broken so much as rewritten in a handwriting no one can read.

My grief in that timeline had felt like a room I couldn't get out of. Theirs was the house being condemned around them. If I'd been gutted, they'd been taken apart and left in the yard for weather to decide the rest. The storybook comparison arrives uninvited: the three bears, their cute domestic home —chairs, porridge, beds—emptied, the smallest bowl knocked to the floor, everyone acting like it was inevitable, like the story had always had that missing line and we just hadn't learned to read it yet.

I realize I'm holding the pen so tight my fingers have turned into strangers to their own blood. I put it down on purpose and press my palm to the wood until the grain remembers me. "Never again," I say to the desk and the tea and the cloth and the lamp and the object and any god bored enough to eavesdrop. "Never."

The next five lines I write are very neat. Then the neatness gets tired and surrenders to speed. I build a tiny bulwark out of bullet points. I draw an arrow that argues with gravity and wins. I scratch out a sentence it took me ten minutes to love because love is not the point. I mutter, "controls, controls," so I don't dare omit them out of arrogance, because the man I'm taking this to does not forgive arrogance in children.

I get dizzy. You can function on vow-fumes only so long. I peel a clementine I didn't remember buying. The skin comes off in a single surprised ribbon; oil freckles the air; my fingers learn the lesson and stay bitter. I eat too fast and hiccup and then laugh at the hiccup and then breathe carefully like I'm in a class about not making a fool of yourself in small ways.

The phone buzzes, a cat stirring with opinions. I don't look at it. I look at the window and let the buzz use the glass to leave the room. The silence that returns feels offended. Good.

Back to it. I adjust the way a sentence reveals information. I move a clause to the front like showing ID before the bouncer asks. I add a diagram I can justify if someone grinds it between their teeth. I underline one warning three times and then erase one of the lines because two is urgent and three is panic and I don't want panic on the page.

I blink and discover my neck has turned into metal you shouldn't bend. I knead it with the heel of my hand and find a spot that telegraphs a pain all the way to my eyebrow. "You're a map," I tell myself. "Stop being a puzzle." The joke isn't funny but it makes the room agree to be a room instead of a complaint.

I keep pausing to rehearse how I'll say it to him, the line that isn't a pitch, not in the sales sense. Not a cure. A foothold. Enough time to climb to where the cure lives. Say it plain. Don't sell what you don't have.

And because every vow needs a cost, my brain gives me one: the image of Kaori reading a press notice, the thin draft they give families to prepare them for the possibility that something experimental might hurt a little and help a little and then, with luck, help more. She would make a face at the jargon and then make me explain it to her like we were cooking, and then throw the paper away and say, "We're busy today," and pretend not to be relieved until I looked away.

The chair doesn't feel like a chair anymore. It feels like an audit. I stand and stretch again and the room warps in the friendly, scary way that means your body is tired of pretending to be a machine. I sit immediately, because tipping now is stupid.

The lamp makes a circle of bright purpose, a stage for things that deserve a stage. The corners of the room have gotten fat with shadow; the light doesn't bother to go shake their hands. I check, for the fifth time, the seals on the case I'll use to carry the thing. The hinge still wants to act like drama; I soothe it with a patience I don't own any more of.

The phone hums again and again. The internal clock says: classes let out, this is where people text each other to invent purpose out of afternoon. Maybe Tsubaki wrote back with a scolding that sounds like a joke if you read it with a certain voice. Maybe she wrote, in that clipped way that makes you do what she says, Eat. Maybe she wrote nothing because she's busy being the gravity for eight different versions of a team. I keep the phone reversed, its lit face a suggestion I refuse to consider.

I sharpen a pencil with a pocketknife because the sound of it is clean. I erase carefully because haste ruins paper and I need the paper to remember me fondly when we arrive. I tape one edge down because the world keeps trying to make corners behave like ideas.

When the first crackle of evening gets in—the kind of light that knows how to find glass and call it by its name—I see my hands. They are not steady; they are steadier than I am. There's a respect you owe your own limits, and I am in debt. Fine. It will no doubt collect later.

I think about the meeting like it's a concert: the walk to the building my backstage, the elevator the wings, the man behind the door the audience you don't try to charm, because flattery is a language the room doesn't speak. You go out and you play truth, ugly and tuned, and you don't ask it to clap. You ask it to listen.

I take the cloth back in my hands and wrap the thing with what I hope looks like care and not like fear. It fits the case with a precision that makes my shoulder blades lower a fraction. I write my name on a small label because ownership is less about pride and more about making sure a stranger knows who to curse if they drop it. I slide the notes in under the elastic strap; the paper resents being restrained; I tell it to behave.

I allow myself the sin of a shower. Hot water believes in a world where muscles remember how to be muscles. Steam notices my lungs and acts like a guest who has brought jokes and a bottle. I stand there long enough to remember I am skin as well as intent, then turn it off and watch the mirror do that ghost thing. The person in it looks like he has been practicing a role called human and hasn't booked it yet.

I put on the uniform because the act turns the day into something that has shape. The tie gives up after the second try; I let it slouch. I run a hand through my hair and it resists on principle. I pick up my glasses and decide not to bother with contacts because I don't need to pretend to be bright-eyed for someone whose favorite pastime is telling the truth.

I touch the phone. The muscle memory almost flips it. I stop at the last inch and let it do what I asked it to do all day—stay shut. I only want the time. I only want the number that makes evening official. When I do flip it there's a small blizzard waiting—two from homeroom, one from a class chat, one from Watari that is probably a photograph of something stupid, maybe a shoe; three from Tsubaki. I do not read any of them. I drag my eyes to the top right corner and say out loud, "Five-thirty-eight."

Enough to get there and not have to pretend to be casual.

I slide the phone into my pocket face-out, so I can look at the minutes without letting any letters in. I take the case in one hand, the keys in the other. I do the ritual where you touch your back pocket for the wallet as if the city needs that talisman to allow you passage. The door sticks at first and then agrees to be a door. The hallway smells like other people's dinners and detergent. I lock out of habit and out of superstition and because there is a version of me in some possible afternoon who forgot and paid for it.

The stairs look like they have opinions about my knees. The street says it is evening by showing me people with bags and people with dogs and people who look like they don't remember where work ends. Somewhere a TV leaks laughter into a courtyard and the courtyard acts like it invented sound. The sky decides on a color and then changes its mind every few seconds, like an indecisive shopper.

My shoes walk me more than I walk them. I know the route so well I could draft it with my eyes closed—convenience store that sells gum and existential crisis by the register; a convenience store is a church if you need one. The crosswalk where the don't-walk man thinks he's a sheriff. The bus stop with an advertisement that promises a future for a low monthly payment and happiness in small easy installments. The building I'm heading toward rises in my memory and then in fact, the way important places rehearse their arrival before you get there.

On the way, my brain tries out sentences for when the door opens and the man expects me to waste his evening with a child's drama and I refuse to comply. *Thank you for seeing me.* No. That's true and useless. *It won't save her; it will buy her time.* Better. *If it collapses, I'll carry the collapse.* Honest and a little theatrical. *I know what I'm asking you to risk, and I also know what happens if we risk nothing.* Maybe that one. Maybe if I say it like it isn't a performance, he'll believe it isn't one.

The case sweats against my palm. I switch hands to fake out the ache and fail. A salaryman in a tie older than mine bumps my shoulder and apologizes with his whole body the way men in good shoes do. A small group of classmates in another school's uniform laughs at something I don't get to hear, and for a moment I miss belonging to conversations that aren't architecture holding up a future.

I let myself think of Kaori for one breath exactly, because not thinking of her entirely is a cruelty I'm not strong enough for. She's in a window seat somewhere in my head where light behaves; she's making a face at a term I took too long to explain; she's eating the middle out of a piece of toast because she insists that's where the flavor is; she's doing that pretend-mean voice that fools no one..

And her parents—my feet know better than to put them in the middle of the road. They walk alongside for a dozen steps anyway. I repeat the line under my breath that makes me move. "Never again. Never..." It isn't magic. It's a lever under the weight. If I sound dramatic, fine. The street can handle drama. It sees more every day in smaller disguises.

The building arrives with the kind of posture older buildings have: competent without having to prove it. The lobby is the same rectangle of light and laminate and the guard like a piece of furniture that reads. His sweater is a different color; the lamp on his desk is the same. He glances up, recognizes, nods. "Evening."

"Evening," I say back, politely, as if I belong here—which, for the next hour, I will insist is true.

He presses the button the way he did last time, with the we've-done-this-dance economy of people in recurring roles in one another's days. The gate clicks; the little green light does its tiny performance. I move to the elevator and the elevator obliges by arriving without a chime, like a serious person entering a room.

Inside the box there is my face and its sketch—eyes haunted by their own sockets, mouth set against its own softness, hair having lost an argument with everything. I don't try to fix it by looking. I fix the case in my grip and plant my feet and tell gravity I'm onto it.

Seven. The button glows and I decide not to decide how many times I will check my breathing between here and the door. The doors close with the same quiet dignity they had last time and the time before. The elevator hums, an old machine with a warm voice. Somewhere a compressor does the square-breath thing that used to annoy me and now sounds like a metronome I'm allowed to obey.

If I could have stayed fourteen in a way that made sense, I might be in literature right now, labeling metaphors until they gave up their secrets. I might be in the courtyard with a bag of fried things with Tsubaki pretending she's not counting my bites. I might be in a practice room with Kaori telling me my playing sounds like a person pretending not to cry. Instead I am here, which is the point, because every other place is a room in a house I already walked through once and the upstairs burned down at the end.

The doors open on the same carpet that protects footsteps by eating them. The hall smells like chemistry and vacuumed air. The frosted glass with his name is still small and still sure. I stop with my fingers on the seam of the case and count four heartbeats, the way you count before stepping into cold water. I have brought a thing that shouldn't exist yet, on a day I wasn't supposed to have for this, and I have two sentences ready and a third if he makes a face.

I lift my hand. I knock, three times, like I'm telling the door I'm here instead of asking permission to be. The sound is steady. That will have to be enough.

I wait.... Then

The door opens a fraction, like it's conserving hinge life. The strip of light from inside cuts the hallway. Saitou fills the gap as if gaps were invented to be filled by people who dislike them.

He looks me down "You look like hell," he says. It isn't curiosity. It's inventory. His eyes flick from my hair to my hands to the case. "You skipped school for this, didn't you."

"I worked," I say.

"Children work at desks," he replies, already turning his back. "Come in, then. Be quick."

The lab greets me with the clean cold of air that's been persuaded through filters. The light is the same disciplined bright that was here last time; the machines are still doing their polite hum-drone; the glass still glints in that patient way glass has when it expects to be asked to hold something important. On the far wall, the corkboard watches us like a jury. The empty square is still empty. I don't look at it, which is looking.

He gestures at the nearest bench with a chin movement so small it seems stingy. I set the case down. My fingers know the lock; they hesitate anyway. The click sounds louder than it is because the room doesn't waste noise.

"If you brought me a PowerPoint, I'll throw you out," he says.

"I brought something that doesn't present well," I answer.

"Most good things don't," he says, impatient. "Open it."

I peel the cloth back like undoing a bandage that doesn't want to admit it has nothing underneath to protect. The thing sits there in the lab light, unhandsome, exact in its smallness. Fragile, but not precious. A tool, if I am careful. It looks wrong on the polished steel, like a street stray in a vestibule.

He gives it a look that starts as contempt and shifts, minutely, toward caution. "And this is...?"

"Skyclarsin," I say. "Working name. Not a cure—a lever. A way to buy time."

"Skyclarsin," he repeats, flat as a ruler. "You named it."

"It named itself once I saw what it could do," I say, and thumb the latch on the second compartment. The papers are squared and clipped. The top sheet reads, in block capitals I can defend: SKYCLARSIN — Acute-Phase Modulation Strategy (Prototype). I lay the packet out not in a neat stack—he would take that as performance—but in the order you put knives on a tray for a surgery you plan to survive. "The thing that trips first when the house starts burning—this nudges that switch before it welds shut."

"You're still fond of metaphors." He doesn't touch anything yet. He inclines his head to the pages as if they might repent without his fingers. "Speak in sentences I can clearly hear ."

"You know the frataxin story," I say. "The metal mishandling. The false oxygen. The mitochondria throwing a tantrum that turns into a religion." I tap the second page. "Everyone keeps trying to calm the whole church at once. That takes a lifetime. I don't have one. So Skyclarsin...this is me bribing the usher."

"'Bribing the usher,'" he says, perfectly dry. "You are fourteen."

"I am," I say, and try not to sound apologetic about it. "And I have read far more than the polite amount."

He is still not touching the papers. It's a game he plays with himself: make the boy talk until he says something stupid. I meet the game with another: say the truth plain and refuse to dress it.

"It won't save her," I say. The air in my throat scrapes. "It will buy her time. And time is everything."

His eyes do a small, hard flinch he probably doesn't know he has. He still doesn't look at the corkboard. "There is no 'her' in this lab," he says, flat. "There is only 'it.' You will do better work if you keep it that way."

There are a dozen sentences I could set against that and none of them would land where I want. I swallow them and push the top page his way just enough to reset the distance between us. He gives in, which is not the same as agreeing. He hooks two fingers under the edge like the paper might bite.

He skims like a man at a train station, impatient for his stop. The first quarter-page gets a sneer—he finds a glossed step and assumes I'm lazy. He turns to the next and the next, and his mouth closes into the line that says he is doing the thing he hates: paying attention.

He flips back a page, forward two. The pencil in his free hand taps once, twice, as if testing the bench for resonance. His eyebrows, usually composed like they've been told not to embarrass him in public, begin the small migration toward each other.

"You," he says, without looking up, "are very lucky if this is luck."

"It's not luck," I say. "It's theft from a future that exists and should exist sooner."

"Grand," he says, thin. "You've added delusion to your inventory."

He reads another paragraph and his jaw shifts—just a millimeter, a sign someone at home would notice and someone here should not. He tracks a line with the tip of the pencil as if to underline it without leaving a mark. He stops at my warning block. He doesn't give me the satisfaction of saying I was right to place it there, but he lingers long enough to make the point.

"Your controls," he says grudgingly. "You remembered to have them."

"I remembered you would ask for them," I say.

"I always ask for the things that prevent funerals." He flips again. "Who told you to chase this angle."

"No one," I say. Everyone eventually.I let the implication sit. In a timeline where time behaves, this idea doesn't have to be stolen by a child in a desperate scenario.

He finally picks up the object itself as if it were a small animal that might decide to be a device at any moment. His hands, which are not gentle but know how to be careful, weigh it, rotate it, set it down in three positions that test a shape the way a musician tests a phrase in three rooms. "Where," he asks, "did you get—" He stops. He knows that question is a request for a lie.

"Built," I say. The honesty is a dare. "Not from scratch. From what the world leaves lying around when it thinks no one is desperate." My Stocks had come in useful aiding me in purchasing the resources to even get this started

"Desperation," he says, eyes still on the notes, "is a poor engineer. It over-tightens bolts. It sands away tolerances." His pencil lands on a formula I left like a guilty conscience and sits there. "This is...not what I would expect a child to conjure."

"That's the second time you've called me a child," I say. "I am not out here trying to grow a beard to make you like me. I am here because she will not live long enough for you to call this slow, careful work."

"Half-measures kill as easily as silence," he snaps, finally looking up, anger arriving as a courtesy to mask something else creeping in behind it.

"Silence kills faster," I say, before I can sand the edges off. "I have watched it do that. I don't have the patience to be polite to it."

He holds my stare for the length of three exhales. There is an entire conversation happening in his eyes with a person who is not me and not here. He drops his gaze back to the paper like it offended him by being true. His brows keep traveling, knitting the more they touch sentences he did not expect to find written by my hand.

"You do not claim cure," he says, as if saying it out loud is a test of my ability to tolerate reality.

"I do not," I say. "I claim months. Maybe years. Enough to climb to where the cure lives."

"You have an interesting relationship with hope," he says. "You throttle it until it behaves."

"You have an interesting relationship with anger," I say. "You use it so you don't drown."

"Do not diagnose me," he says, but the heat in it is brief and mostly for form.

He turns to the figure I drew with a pencil because printers do not respect miracles. His finger traces the pathway that looked sane at two in the morning and dangerous at four and stubborn at noon. "If Skyclarsin holds," he murmurs, mostly to the paper, " you will stabilize a system that screams first and settles later. If it doesn't hold, you will teach me how children break expensive things."

"It will hold enough," I say. "It will hold what it can. It is honest about its limits."

He snorts without humor. "You are not honest about yours."

I think about the mirror and the circles under my eyes and the way that shower steam felt like permission and decide not to argue, because he is not wrong. "I am aware of them," I say instead. "I plan around them badly."

His thumb settles at the margin of one page the way a thumb settles on the spine of a book you didn't mean to read all the way through. He lifts his eyes at last and there is something like—no; not respect. Not yet. The shape before respect, when a person accepts that not everything you've brought is nonsense.

"This," he says quietly, "should not exist. Not from you. Not from anyone...yet." It made sense. It only came with future technological developments this drug. He had to use several workarounds to make it due to technology being far less advanced and precise.

"But it does," I say. "And it can exist now. So it should."

"'Should' is a priest's word." He rubs the bridge of his nose, then puts the pencil down and picks it up again, as if punishing it for failing to be useful. "You understand the ethics of this about as well as a fox understands a henhouse."

"I understand the ethics of letting someone die when you could have given them a week," I say. "I understand the ethics of telling parents 'maybe tomorrow' until tomorrow runs out of tomorrows." The kitchen flickers in my head—the bowls, the fruit calendar. I keep my voice even anyway. "I am not trying to take your job. I am trying to make yours matter faster."

He does not like that sentence. He likes it enough to hate it. He flips to the back page and there they are—my warnings written like a scold delivered in glass. He reads them all the way through. He reads them twice. He nods once, the smallest concession, to the reality that I am not trying to sell him a miracle.

He asks three technical questions in a row in a cadence that would make a junior postdoc cry. I answer them with the honesty of a person who knows where his own notes are thin. "That will fail at heat," I say about one. "We'll need to baby it," I say about another. "Yes," I say to the third, "and the side effect is not lethal. Irritating. We can contain it in a trial to a point that will let you sleep three hours instead of none."

"You presume trials," he says, but not with the scorn he began with. "You presume resources."

"I presume you," I say, surprising both of us with the cleanness of it. "I presume you will call people and force their hands with your name. I presume that if I leave Skyclarsin with you, it will become more than something a boy made on a table in a room where the kettle forgets to whistle."

He stares as if weighing whether to throw me out just because hope is an irritant and I've brought a rash of it into his lab. He looks over his shoulder as if something on the corkboard asked him a question in a voice only he can hear. He turns back, angrier for having heard it.

"You will leave this," he says, clipped. "All of it. You will not speak of it to anyone. Not your uncle. Not your...friends. You will not make a poem out of it for some girl."

"I won't," I say. "You can write the first words anyone sees about it. That's the point. It shouldn't belong to me."

"Nothing belongs to you," he says, with professional cruelty. "You are fourteen."

"Everything belongs to me," I say, because the other truth is impolite. "I am fourteen."

He lets the echo of that sit. Then he takes the object again, pins its weight in his palm, and sets it down with the kind of gentleness that means he's already adopted the possibility of it. "I will run my own tests," he says. "I will make it prove itself to me, not to you. I will try to break it. If Skyclarsin breaks, you will not darken my doorway with this again. You will go back to your desks and your pianos and whatever keeps you from inventing more ways to make me die younger."

"If it holds?" I ask.

"If it holds," he says, and the word has more superstition in it than he would like, "then we will talk about next. And I will decide how angry to be."

"Angry at me?"

"Angry at the fact that you did this," he says, "and I didn't. And angry at the fact that it took a child to move a thing I have been standing in front of for years because the world refused to budge."

There is nothing to say that wouldn't turn the moment into theater. I bow. Not performative—an angle that says I know where I am. When I straighten, the room tilts once and then remembers it's bolted to the earth.

He stretches out a hand without looking at me and I put the sheaf of notes into it, because we both agree paper belongs better to him than to me. He slides them into a folder like closing a lid on a jar with a live thing inside and writes nothing on the tab. The absence of a label is its own label.

He gestures without ceremony at a small pad on the bench. "Write the name I should use if I have to call an ambulance."

"Kousei," I say. I make the letters clear, because clarity is a moral choice. I add the number he already has because rituals protect floors from opening up. I do not write 'Arima' but he does it for me, under the line, his pen neat and square as if to reassert adult status.

"You will sleep," he says, already riffling to the first page again, pulled back in by the offense of possibility. "You will eat food not found in a machine. And you will not come here tomorrow. If I need you, I will call. If I do not, I will be busy proving you wrong."

"Okay," I say. I mean it. I don't. Both are true.

He looks up one last time, pinned to the present by the small cruelty of concern. "You do understand," he says, enunciating as if to help the idea stick, "that if this kills someone, it will be a weight you carry for longer than you plan to live."

"I understand," I say. The kitchen is there again. The bowls. The calendar. "And I understand what it means if we do nothing."

He grimaces at that and flicks his hand in the universal sign for get out while I still like you less than this work. I close the case, which is lighter now that it carries only air. I want to say thank you and don't, because thanks would make it smaller.

The hallway's carpet eats my steps again. The elevator performs its kindness. In the mirror I am the same and not. My hands shake now that they've been dismissed from the job of pretending. I let them. The doors open with the same small breath of air they stole to arrive.

Downstairs, the guard looks up without lifting his head. "That the face of a win?" he asks, deadpan.

"It's a face," I say, which is safely accurate.

"Sometimes that's the whole job," he says, returning to his book. I appreciate men who collect useful sentences and hand them out sparingly.

Outside, the air is cool in the way cities apologize. Neon has begun to practice its pronunciation; scooters draw lines under the evening; the crosswalk man still believes in his authority. My pocket vibrates—a small, insistent insect—but I do not look. Not here. Not yet. I already spent all my sentences for the day on a man who doesn't clap.

I stand on the edge of the building's light, the night's edge testing my shoes. There's a temptation to narrate the moment, to write a line about shifting futures and doors that opened a finger-width. I don't. I shoulder the case that isn't a case anymore and start walking, the word I brought to the lab still hot in my mouth.

Never again. Never

Chapter Text

The swing hangs from nowhere and still knows how to creak. Metal chains go up into dark that doesn't have a ceiling. I am sitting on the narrow plank of wood and the light around me is a small island cut out of a much larger night. My shoes drag lines in dust that isn't dust. When I pump my legs, nothing moves. The swing obeys, but the world stays fixed, like the light is nailed to me and the rest of it refuses to come closer.

A shape peels away from the edge of the circle. The shape becomes a step, then a tail, then the soft black of a cat that learned to walk without noise. Its eyes are coins. It stops just short of the light and waits, making me say it first.

Chelsea

"Hey...."it says, and the voice is not a voice but I hear it. "Long time no see."

My throat tightens. I haven't had this one in a while, not since before everything got loud again. The swing sighs under me. I keep my hands tight on the chains. "Yeah," I say. "Long time."

The cat tilts its head the way living things do when they pretend not to already know the answer. "It's almost time," it says. "For the competition.... Again."

"Yeah," I answer, and the word tastes like metal. The light around us flickers once and decides to stay lit. "Again."

"You must push forward," it says. The words don't scold. They are a set of instructions, like how to breathe when you forget.

"I know."

It comes closer. The paws are silent. The shadow it drags behind it is not. It stops at my knee and lifts its face. "Your eyes are soulless."

I want to look away. There isn't anywhere to look. "They'll do the job," I say.

"Who are you?" The question is not a test. It lands inside my chest and echoes like a thing dropped down a well.

"It doesn't matter." My voice sounds like a boy who had to grow up in a hallway and decided he could do it fast. "It doesn't matter who I am. This isn't about me. This isn't my story to cope again."

The cat blinks slow, then slower, like the dark itself is considering whether to answer back. It quiets, and in the quiet I hear the small mechanical squeal of the swing chains arguing with time. The cat opens its mouth and the words arrive without effort.

"You are haunted," it says. "Eternally."

The light makes a shape of my hands, white against iron. The dark breathes in. The swing leans back just enough to feel like falling. I let go.

I blink into noise.

A whistle shrieks and a hundred other sounds rush in to fill the space around it: shoes biting grass, the low roar of a crowd trying to choose a shared heartbeat, the clatter of banners against railings, the soft thud of a ball being pushed from foot to foot by somebody who learned to dance on fields like this. Late afternoon is sitting on top of the school like a hat. I am in the stands with a case of stale air in my lungs and the feeling you get when a dream leaves fingerprints.

"GO FOR IT, WATARI!" Kaori's voice breaks the air in two. It has that perfect mix of cheer and command she keeps in her pocket for when the world needs to be told what to do. People flinch and then grin. Beside her, Tsubaki takes a breath like a pitcher and unloads a second shout that makes the first one proud. She throws her bruised foot into the air like a flag—tape peeking from under the sock, the whole ankle saying yes while it means no. The girls in front of us recoil like wild animals just snarled behind them, then laugh at themselves.

The field is green and honest. White lines keep their promises. Watari is a bright shape in the middle of it, number catching the sun, hair doing that thing where it pretends he woke up like this. He moves the way he always has when he gets to be all legs and sure decisions—cutting past one defender who arrived late, teasing the next with a tap that says, chase me if you want to be embarrassed. He pulls the ball with the outside of his foot and the crowd stands without knowing they did.

Kaori is all fists and angles. "Yes yes yes—" she chants. Tsubaki leans forward until the bench complains. Her eyes have that hard shine that means she would step onto the field with a bat if they let her and dare anyone to stop her. She hisses "Inside!" like he can hear her across twenty yards and a rulebook.

Sumiya banners flap with that last-game smell: fabric that survived a season, ink that didn't run, hands that didn't stop clapping even when their owners hoarse-whispered about homework on the way here. Daito's section hums in a single note like they practiced it. The scoreboard sits in the big blue like a truth that didn't need drama—0–1. That single digit hangs there, kicking its legs.

Watari takes the angle no one expects, outside instead of inside. Three touches, the third short and mean, and he's free. The keeper steps out because that's what you do when physics and fear tell you the same story. The last defender lunges. Watari lifts his head. I can see the thought move across his face like a cloud across a bright day.

He hits it.

For a second the ball is a line. It tears half a meter above the grass and refuses to dip. It reaches the left post like a magnet finding its opposite, smacks it with a noise that somehow sounds like a yes and a no, and spits back into a direction nobody asked for. The net shivers at wind that isn't there. The keeper turns to check a thing that doesn't need checking. Daito exhales as one body, the sound you hear when a cartoon bomb shows a fuse running out. The ref's whistle tries to be neutral about it and fails.

The whole world inhales and then falls apart in little side conversations. The girls behind us squeal and groan and then squeal again because the squealing belongs to them regardless of the score. Kaori shoves her hands into her hair and then drags them down her face like she can pull a different outcome out of her cheeks. "So close," she says, half prayer, half complaint. Tsubaki slaps her thigh and winces and glares at the thigh for being a snitch.

Watari rocks back onto his heels and goes down to one knee like someone cut a string. He doesn't swear. He doesn't yell. He looks at the goal like it's a math problem that almost solved itself and then decided to be difficult for the sake of the story. His chest lifts and falls. His mouth is set. He stays there for a beat and then two. Then he stands because time keeps going if you ignore it or not.

0-1 and on there last game of middle school. Guess they couldn't do it this time either huh.

The field goes quiet in pockets and loud in others. Our row is all punctuation. Kaori's voice drops to normal human levels. "He had it," she says, stunned at the cruelty of geometry. Tsubaki blows air out through her cheeks and says nothing because she has learned when saying nothing is the best way to keep from falling apart and she is not currently in a uniform that allows drama.

Watari finds a teammate who didn't handle the sound of that post as well as he did. The kid has his face hidden in his sleeve and looks like his bones are trying to leave him. Watari puts an arm around him and says something I can't hear. It's not the careful talk they teach. It's the honest kind you learn next to goalposts in winter, when your breath makes clouds and you decide who you're going to be next year while your grown-up hasn't arrived yet to drive you home. The kid snorts laughter into the fabric because you can't cry and laugh at the same time unless someone makes room for it.

The girls to our left compare angles and eyelashes. "He looked so dreamy," one says, like that was the point. "Even when he missed." Another says, "He looked like a movie," and then looks embarrassed because real life is standing right there.

Watari finally looks up. Crowd waves swarm and recede. His gaze lands on me and sticks for a second. He smiles, not the bright ad-smile, not the one he has when he throws a peace sign into a camera. It's smaller and better. It says: that sucked; I'm okay; don't you dare pity me.

I meet him at the barrier as the players drift toward the tunnel. Up close his face is all sweat and dust and ordinary courage. He smells like grass and effort. The underclassmen open a lane for him without knowing they're doing it. He rocks on his heels, still catching breath.

"You looked like a superstar out there," I say. The truth doesn't care about the scoreboard. "Even if you lost."

He huffs a laugh that feels like it had to be wrestled into being. "Thanks for cheering me on." He slants his head toward the stands where Kaori is still buzzing and Tsubaki is pretending not to test her ankle with her hand. "fan club is scary."

"Terrifying," I agree.

He glances back at the goal and then at me. Something in his eyes goes very clear, like a window after a storm. "I lost my chance to be a star," he says, and it isn't drama; it's math. Then he bumps his shoulder into mine, gentle and enormous at the same time. "But... it's all up to you now. See ya." He smirks a grin that is part facade and turns away.

He turns and hooks that same arm around his teammate again and they walk toward the tunnel with their heads together. I hear him say, "We'll try again harder in high school," and the other boy nods like he just got permission to keep his heart in his chest.

The field gets smaller by degrees. The crowd thins into lines. Cleanup starts with the speed of people who have done this ritual many times—unstick banner tape, gather stray cones, shake out a tarp that pretended to be important. Kaori skips down two steps and then thinks better of it and walks the last one like a person who's just remembered she isn't immortal. She bangs her shoulder into my arm and says, "Next time he scores three," like the universe takes orders from her if she's loud enough.

"Sure," I say. "You'll will it into being."

"Obviously." She grins, then looks past me. "Where is she—oh." Tsubaki is already next to me. I never heard her arrive.

"Hey," she says, looking out at nothing. Her voice is sanded down, casual in that way she uses when she's testing the ground before she steps. "Let's go home."

It's the sort of small sentence that means something large. She says it like we always do, like it's habit, food, a bus route. Her elbow bumps mine, quick and warm. She does not look directly at me while she asks. Her ankle is swelling under the sock in a way that would live rent-free in a trainer's nightmares. I see the way she keeps her weight a little to the outside to trick the pain into thinking it's involved. She notices me noticing and fixes her ponytail like that was the point of her hand being there.

"We can catch the river path before it gets weird," she adds, as if scheduling the walk makes the invitation reasonable.

"Yeah," I say. My mouth is dry. The dream sits in the back of my head and refuses to evaporate. I adjust my bag strap. "Okay."

Kaori is already plotting detours for snacks that do not exist on any map, but her eyes flick to my face, a quick diagnostic. She looks me over with narrowed eyes likely deeming my current state Terrible upon closer looks.She doesn't say anything, which is its own kind of shout. Tsubaki, without looking, angles herself a little between me and the exit, the instinct she's had since we were kids and she decided I needed shepherding even when I insisted I didn't.

We start down the steps, moving with the river of people. I don't love being one more trickle in a group that's blending into the evening, but the rhythm of feet on concrete is steady and the air tastes like cut grass and cheap soda, which is another way of saying: ordinary. Kaori tells a story about a girl three rows up who tried to start a chant and cheered the wrong name and refused to stop because commitment is its own religion. Tsubaki makes the right noises in the right places. She falls a half-step behind to let an older couple through, then returns to the level of my shoulder without making it obvious she's watching the way I move.

Past the gate the light turns softer, the kind that forgives skin and benches. Vendors dismantle their small economies and pack hope back into crates. Daito kids are louder here, and the sound washes over us with the harmless arrogance of people who get to brag for a bus ride and then forget to brag later because life keeps happening. Watari's name pops from a cluster to our left and four first-years giggle like they just stole a word and need to hide it.

Kaori breaks off with a "I need carbohydrates," pointing at a stall that has warmed bread the color of good luck. "Don't you dare leave without me," she says, half to me, half to Tsubaki.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Tsubaki says, then watches her go. The smile falls off her face the way a glove comes off a hand—shaky but practiced. She tilts her head at the path. "Come on, Piano. Before she buys the stall out."

We walk. The path along the fence is uneven, the kind of uneven that makes you put attention into your ankles. Tsubaki does the calculus and adjusts. She keeps her voice light. "You looked tired when we got here," she says, as if commenting on weather. "Tired now, too."

"Yeah," I say. No point in pretending. "Didn't sleep great."

"You never do lately... at all"she says, and then, quieter, "and you look like you're trying not to fall down in public."

"I'm not that theatrical."

"Could've fooled me," she says, annoyed. She bumps me again. "Go home with me. Eat something that wasn't born in a vending machine. My mom is making food"

"I—"

My pocket vibrates.

It's not a polite buzz. It's the kind that says: move. I fish the phone out. The screen lights my fingers, makes them look like they don't belong to me. One new message. Unknown number that isn't unknown anymore.

'Get your scrawny ass over here, Little Einstein....'

Saitou

I feel the grin headline itself across my face before I mean it to. The timing is rude. The day is rude. I can hear Watari's shot hitting a post in the hollow between two heartbeats, and still, I smile. It's small at first, then bigger, not because the words are kind—they aren't—but because of what sits underneath them: the door, cracked open; the folder on the bench; the possibility that something I dragged out of the wrong year might matter in this one.

Tsubaki catches the change in my expression. She gives me a sideways look, careful. "What?"

"Errand," I say, keeping it light. "Family stuff. I'll walk you a bit, then cut across."

She nods once. Her mouth makes that line it makes when she wants to ask more and decides she won't. "Text when you get home," she says, like a habit she refuses to break.

"I will."

Kaori returns with bread that makes steam like conversation. "I got the good kind," she announces, and shoves a piece into my hand before I can pretend I'm not hungry. "We going?"

"In a second," I say. When she turns to argue with the vendor about change and Tsubaki glances down to retie a lace that doesn't need it, I thumb a reply fast, the words small against the bright: On my way.

The path takes a bend. The stadium sits behind us, a big oval full of almosts and one loud lesson. Up ahead the river shows a strip of itself between buildings and trees and looks like a ribbon someone put down and forgot. Tsubaki tugs on my sleeve—not enough to stop me, just enough to remind me where the ground is. "Come on," she says, gentle. "We'll see you off at the corner."

"Yeah." I pocket the phone. The cat from the dream steps beside my memory without making a sound. The light in the circle holds. The swing creaks once, then gets quiet, like it knows how to wait.

We cross the street together. The crosswalk man believes in himself. The air has that early-evening temperature that lets you pretend the day didn't have sharp parts. Kaori bumps my shoulder with hers and points the two of them toward the river path. "Don't get abducted by chores," she orders.
"Also.... Get some sleep please?"

"I'll try," I say knowing full well both of her fears will happen. She shoots me a lingering look her mind seemingly trailing off

Tsubaki lingers half a breath longer. "Eat," she says. "Sleep. Text."

"Okay miss bossy," I say, and she huffs but almost smiles.

They peel off. I watch them go until the crowd edits them into evening. Then I turn the other way, the phone a quiet weight against my leg, and start walking.

Chapter Text

I get to the lab twenty minutes early because sitting still at home feels like waiting for bad news. The seventh-floor hallway hums. The stencil on the frosted glass still says SAITOU YONOSHITA in the same unbothered font as last time. I shift the folder under my arm and tell my foot to stop bouncing. It doesn't.

A chair scrapes inside. The handle turns. The door opens far enough for a decision. I go in.

Same room. Same bright hoods and taped-down cords. Same scent of ethanol, plastic, and coffee that died on the counter. On the corkboard, the photos haven't moved: hands in gloves doing real work; one smiling face that makes the space feel borrowed; one empty square like a thumbprint.

Saitou stands at the bench with my printouts spread flat under the lamp. He doesn't start with hello.

"You're fourteen years old," he says.

"Yes." I hold his stare. No point pretending.

"Most fourteen year olds don't have knowledge experts in their forties work for."He lifts the top page by two corners, tilts it as if the light might betray a trick. "I looked it over," he says. "It looks good."

A breath leaves me. I try not to make it visible.

"Shockingly good," he adds, as if annoyed with himself for the adverb. The paper goes back to the bench. "But..it's a prototype."

"I know."

"Do you?" He taps three different places with a pen cap. "Mechanism sketch—plausible. The rescue cue—plausible. Your way of skirting the inflammatory window—clever, if you're lucky. But this is still a sketch. It hasn't carried any weight yet."

"It can," I say. "If we—"

He cuts me off with a look. "Listen before you sell me anything." He flips to the next page. "We lack a proper dose–response. We don't have stability in serum. We don't have any toxicity data beyond a single plate that calls itself a study because you were tired. A prototype kills as easily as it cures."

I clamp down on the first answer that wants out. "I can run the curves," I say instead. "Controls you like, multiple lots. Triplicates. We can move fast."

"You'll move as fast as the data allows," he says. "Not as fast as your fear wants."

The word lands hard, accurate. I don't flinch.

He flicks the pen toward a box on my diagram. "This 'pulsed' dosing to hop past the burn—why do you think it won't stack injury?"

"Because we don't linger," I say. "Short exposures, long intervals. Nudge; let the cell finish the job; get out. The signal persists if we don't overstay. We stratify by markers first, so we're not throwing it at the wrong samples."

"How generous." He sounds bored, not impressed. "And when we miss?"

"Then we stop. We learn. We don't keep burning."

His eyes linger on my face, weighing whether I believe my own words or just like how they sound. "You're in a hurry," he says. "I am not immune to that feeling. Don't pretend urgency is your exclusive property."

I glance at the corkboard once and away. "I'm not. I'm saying the illness doesn't give us years. If early data looks strong, regulators fast-track when there's nothing else. With a respected PI vouching, they'll at least read it. We can get to trials."

He grows quiet in that specific way he does when he wants me to hear the next part. "You're talking about patients already. You are fourteen and waving an untested compound at a cliff. That should scare you more than it excites you."

"It scares me," I say. "And I still think we have to move."

He stares for a beat longer than is comfortable, then drops the argument without surrendering it. "Here are the terms."

I nod. This is the part that matters.

"You come in the afternoons," he says. "Mondays. Thursdays. Fridays. You show up fed and conscious. You do what I assign. You document in a way an enemy could reproduce. You give input where you should. You do not wander because a label called your name."

"Yes."

"You don't use adjectives when numbers will do. You don't touch anything you can't explain in under a minute. You don't talk about anything that starts here without my permission. You keep impressing me and you keep your little role . You perform instead of work and I walk you to the elevator."

"Yes," I say again. The word is small on purpose.

He gestures at the stack. "Now, say the weak seam out loud."

I point. "Off-target stress. Not catastrophic, but it shows up the day after doses—three to five percent drop in cell health. It recovers in forty-eight hours if we respect the intervals. If we don't, it stacks."

"Good," he says. No smile. "So: we find it, put it in a cage, see if the animal is a neighbor or a thief. But we don't parade it and call ourselves brave."

"Okay."

He exhales through his nose, the closest he gets to relief. "Skyclarsin," he says, like he's testing whether the name tastes like sugar. "This name is a problem."

"I just needed a handle," I say. "We can call it anything. Or nothing."

"We'll call it Batch A until it earns a noun," he says. "Names make bad ideas sticky."

He flips my top sheet over and writes three bullets in quick block print.

"Here's what you're doing now," he says, and starts ticking on his fingers:

"One: Plate a proper viability series—control, low, medium, high, and absurd. You include the absurd because it catches liars. Triplicate each. Two separate plate lots; manufacturing lies when you're not looking."

"Two: Run a stress assay. Not because it's pretty—because the ugly part hides there. Measure what you don't want to move."

"Three: Label like a grown-up. Date, batch, operator, plate lot, dilution scheme. No 'Skyclarsin' on any tube. No jokes."

I'm writing as fast as he's talking. He watches my pen, not my face.

"Four," he adds. "Write an ugly SOP draft before you touch anything. Step by step. No prose. Then cut it in half and run what's left. Then verify you did what you wrote."

He tears the corner off a sticky pad and writes in large letters: WRITE / CUT / VERIFY. He slaps it on the bench. Then he rips it up and hands me the piece. "Pocket," he says.

I pocket it.

"Questions that change your hands are allowed," he says. "Everything else keeps until we have data. Now show me you can actually use your fingers."

He pulls a stool out with a foot. For the next fifteen minutes it's verbs only. Calibrate. Pipette. Label. Seal. He taps my wrist once when my grip makes a wobble likely. He makes me repeat two steps back to him without adjectives. I mess up a word; he stares; I get it right the second time. We set up the first plate. The hood's fan eats the rest of the room.

"Timer?" he says.

"On," I say, and hit start.

"Where would you look away?"

I point at the rinse step. "There. Also the absurd concentration—temptation is to treat it like a joke. And when the spreadsheet spits numbers clean, the brain wants to relax."

He nods. "So you write myself three traps there and put them on the bench. I want to watch you trip them less."

We move through the rest. By the time the incubator door shuts, I'm sweating and my hand is cramping but everything is labeled so obviously even a thief would feel guilty.

He checks the clock, checks me, then opens a drawer and tosses me a protein bar without looking like he would ever admit to caring. "Eat," he says. "You don't impress anyone by shaking."

"I'm fine," I say reflexively.

"Good," he says. "Be fine and eat anyway."

I tear the wrapper. It tastes like cardboard that once met chocolate. It still helps.

He goes back to the stack while I chew. When he speaks again, the sentence is lower.

"It looks good," he repeats, this time without the annoyance. "It makes my hands itch in the right way. Which is why I'm not letting you ruin it with hurry."

"I'm not trying to ruin it," I say. "I'm trying not to be late."

"Your clock is loud. Mine is older," he says. He taps the printout. "If this holds—if—the numbers will make the Japanese agency listen. They'll still make us walk the paper hill. Ethics first. Then more benches. Then independent hands. Then maybe a compassionate path if we're very lucky and very clean. That is months even when everyone leans in."

"We don't have years," I say.

"We may not," he says. "We still have rules. Rules are how we don't lie to ourselves."

I nod. He looks at me like he's deciding whether to say the next thing. He says it.

"You understand that I don't trust you yet," he says. "You bring me work that shouldn't live in a teenager's head. It makes me listen. It also makes me suspicious."

"I don't need you to trust me," I say. "I need you to trust the work."

He makes a noise that might be approval if you squint. "Fair," he says. "Don't get noble about it."

We set up the second series as a rehearsal, mapping the motions so Monday won't waste time. He has me label in block capitals so he can read from across the room without squinting. When I reach for my notebook to write "elegant" he says, "No," without turning and I cross it out before the ink dries.

While a timer runs, I ask the thing I've been trying not to ask. "If the first data are clean—like really clean—what's the fastest you'd move? What does 'fast' even mean without cheating?"

"Fast means this stays in the building until it can survive men like me trying to kill it on paper," he says. "Then we take it to people whose job is to say no. They will. We answer their no with better yes. We hand it to a lab that does not like me and let them try. If it still stands, we talk to the hospital. We don't bring anyone we love through that door first."

I nod. He watches me to make sure I understood the last part.

"I'm not bringing anyone," I say. "I just... want it ready."

He accepts that with a small tilt of his head. "Good. Now, school."

"School?"

"You will go," he says. "You will pass. You will not use this place to excuse walking your classes into a ditch. I don't need the building asking me why a first-year has raccoon eyes and fancy handwriting."

"I can do both," I say.

"You will try," he says. "Try better than you have been."

We work until the second incubator door closes and both of us do the mental calculation that says, we can't rush what happens now. He kills the hood light; the room returns to ordinary bright. He writes a time on a sticky and puts it on the incubator—"do not open before." Then he peels the note off and hands it to me.

"Use your phone like an adult," he says. "Set alarms. Don't rely on drama to remember."

I set the alarm while he watches because pretending won't help me here. It dings once to confirm. He nods, satisfied as a man gets when electronics obey.

We pause by the bench. I don't know whether to say thank you, so I don't. He doesn't know whether to say you're welcome, so he doesn't. He wipes a fingerprint from a tube rack with the edge of his sleeve, sees me looking, and pretends he didn't.

At the door he stops me with my last name. "Arima."

I turn.

"You'll make me angry this year," he says. "You'll make me bored. If you're useful, you'll make me tired in the good way. Don't make me write your name on a story that ends with a photo on that board. Don't be dangerous."

"I won't," I say. It sounds like a promise because it is.

"Monday," he says. "Afternoon. Knock three times. Don't bring anyone, don't let anyone follow you, don't be dramatic about it."

"Yes."

He waves me out with the back of the hand that isn't holding a pen. Dismissed.

The hallway is the same. The guard downstairs doesn't even look up from his book when I pass; he just lifts one eyebrow like a stamp. Outside, the air is cooler than the room, and for the first time all day my shoulders drop. I check my phone out of habit. A message sits there from earlier—Tsubaki asking if I made it home after the game—and another from Kaori about a bagel place that "might change your life if you stop eating like an abandoned raccoon." I type back home and carbs noted because the truth fits in those words, then mute the thread. They don't need to know where I am. They don't need to carry this part.

I walk two blocks before I realize I'm still holding the protein bar wrapper. I ball it up and stuff it in my pocket with the sticky: WRITE / CUT / VERIFY. It feels like a small weight that is heavier than it looks.

On the train I stand with my back to the doors and replay the scene without letting it turn into a movie. The words that matter are simple: prototype, tests, schedule, rules, afternoons. The fight we had will come back; I'll want to push again; he'll grind me down with process again. Good. If the thing is real, it will survive that friction. If it isn't, better to break it here than under hospital lights.

I picture the first graph coming off clean: a smooth curve, the ugly spike tamed, recovery in the window we promised. I picture the opposite: noise, drift, the microtox taking more than it should. I picture what we'll do next in each version. Both pictures end with work.

When I get home, the apartment is quiet and smells faintly like ink and the citrus cleaner I bought with pocket change. I drop the folder on the desk, pull my blazer off, and set my phone face down. The mirror over the sink doesn't lie. I splash water on my face anyway and pretend it helps.

At the desk, I open a fresh page and write an SOP the way he told me to: ugly and literal. No metaphors. No "elegant." Step one, step two, timer. I cut it in half. I print it. I circle the rinse step and the absurd dose and write DO NOT TRUST next to both. I put the alarm on my phone for Monday, Thursday, Friday, three different times with three different names: LAB IN, LAB MID, LAB OUT.

My thumb hovers over Kaori's thread. I put the phone down. Not this part. Not now.

Before I try to sleep, I take the sticky from my pocket and stick it on the edge of my monitor. The glue barely holds. I press it flat with my thumb.

WRITE / CUT / VERIFY.

Monday. Thursday. Friday. If I do my part, the work will have a chance. If the work holds, even the Agency will have to hear it. If they hear it and it still stands, then maybe the people this was always for will get time.

It's not a cure. Not yet. Maybe never. But time buys chance. Chance buys the next step. That's enough for tonight.

I close the notebook and turn off the light. The apartment goes dark the way rooms do when they trust you to find your way in them. I lie back and count the three days on a loop until the numbers stop being numbers and become a rhythm. When the alarm I set for the incubator buzzes later, I smile into the pillow because it means I'm already living on the schedule that matters. Then I sleep, not like a hero, not like a tragedy—just like a kid with homework and a lab badge he hasn't earned yet, who knows where to be on Monday afternoon.

Chapter Text

They slotted me into third-period PE to make up missed laps. Not detention, but close. Our class jogs the same oval twice a week; I'm usually with a different group. Today it's kids I barely know. No Watari to drag the pace, no Tsubaki to chirp at the teacher until the drills turn into games, no Kaori waving a juice box from the fence and yelling advice no coach would endorse. Just twenty teenagers, a clipboard, and a track.

"Six laps," the PE teacher says, tapping the board with the butt of his whistle. He's got the calm eyes of a man who has seen every excuse. "Steady pace. Don't be heroes."

The pack goes out fast anyway because that's what packs do. I go out last because that's what my body allows.

The cinders chew my soles. First lap, I try to find rhythm: inhale steps one-two-three, exhale four-five-six. It doesn't stick. My chest is tight in that way that says I slept badly and ate worse. Tea, half a rice ball, and a protein bar murdered by my bag. That's it.

Second lap, the pack spreads into clumps. Shoes slap. Someone's speaker leaks a beat until a teacher's glare kills it. I'm already trailing, hands cold even though my face feels hot. Every forty steps, my brain reminds me of everything I haven't done: scales, arpeggios, the Chopin Kaori wants brighter, the sight-reading I promised myself I'd touch, the SOP I cut last night for Saitou, Monday-Thursday-Friday afternoons blocked out like bricks across my week. I keep hearing the same sentence from three directions: eat, sleep, practice.

Third lap, my stomach complains. I should have skipped this. I should have written a note. I should have lied. But I could hear Tsubaki's voice if I did—Don't turn PE into a ghost. Run, then rest. So I came. Good job, me.

I pass the 200-meter mark again and try to count heartbeats to settle down. Bad plan. Counting makes me hear how uneven they are. A few kids lap me. One mutters "You got it, man," like I'm eighty. I give him a thumbs-up because using my mouth seems expensive.

On the fourth lap, the wind shifts and hits me square. My legs go stiff, then jelly. I try to stretch my stride on the back straight; my hamstrings argue. Sweat crawls into my eyes and burns. I blink; the lane line wriggles like a bad download. Don't be dramatic. Keep moving. I shorten up, aim for survival.

Fifth lap, my vision narrows. Sounds stretch out. The teacher's whistle chirps at a kid cutting the corner; it takes a year to arrive. My feet feel a half-second late. I'm not running anymore; I'm keeping up appearances.

Sixth lap should be the victory lap. Instead it's a negotiation. My lungs pull and get nothing. My hands tingle. I taste metal. I tell my body: straightaway, curve, straightaway, done. My body replies: no guarantees.

Middle of the straight, my left foot lands wrong. Nothing big, just the angle of a tired step. My right follows with less confidence than a foot should have. The white line goes soft. Someone's ponytail, three lanes over, smears into a stripe. I tell my knees to lock, then tell them not to. Both orders are ignored.

I try to coast it in. The ground has other plans.

The world tilts a little, like a tray in a cafeteria when you catch it too late. I hear my breath hitch. I remember Kaori saying, don't vanish, and Tsubaki saying, eat something with color, and Saitou saying, write, cut, verify. I think about how stupid it would be to face-plant in front of twenty strangers. Then I do exactly that.

It's not dramatic. No flailing. Just a soft fold, knees first, hands late, cheek to cinder. The track is rough and cool and near. There's a scatter of sound—sneakers scraping, a girl saying "oh!" too high, the whistle turning shrill for real.

"Don't crowd him," the teacher says, which is the only thing that prevents a circle of kids from standing over my face, diagnosing me. I feel a hand roll my shoulder careful. "Arima? Hey. You with me?"

"Yeah," I say. It comes out under the track instead of over it. I am surprised to discover how heavy my tongue is.

"You're done for today," he says, already knowing the joke I was about to try. "Sit. No, lie. We're calling the nurse."

I comply because compliance is easier than inventing a valiant lie on low oxygen. A shade moves over me—someone holding a jacket near my face to block the glare. A water bottle touches my lips. I sip; it splashes my chin. I laugh once, a dry cough pretending to be humor. Then the edges of the world go soft, and the middle follows.

—

I wake to ceiling tiles, a thin curtain, and the sweet-clean smell of antiseptic. Nurse's office. The pillow under my neck is the flavorless kind every school buys from the same catalog. My eyes take a second to work out how far the ceiling is.

"You with me?" The nurse stands at the foot of the bed, a clipboard in one hand, the other hip cocked in a way that says she has done this exact conversation too many times this year.

"Yeah," I say. My voice sounds like someone else used it and forgot to clean it.

She checks my pulse, glancing at her second hand. "No fever. Pressure dropped on the field. You're dehydrated and you look like you owe sleep to two nights, minimum."

"Three," I say before I can stop it.

She lifts an eyebrow. "Don't brag. Water." She hands me a paper cup and waits until I drink the whole thing. I do, because authority plus thirst equals obedience.

"What did you eat today?" she asks.

"Half a rice ball. Tea." I hesitate. "And a protein bar. I think it was real."

"You think." She makes a face. "You're not built like a sprinter, Arima. If you want to keep that brain working, you have to feed it. And if you're running on fumes, you skip the lap, not breakfast."

"I'll write that down," I say.

"Write down 'sleep,' too." She pulls a thin blanket up over my shins like she's tucking in a five-year-old but won't admit it. "I already told your PE teacher you're done for the day. Rest. If you stand up and the room tilts, you yell. I'll call your homeroom if I have to."

"Please don't," I say, automatic.

"Then don't make me," she says, automatic back. She steps away, pausing at the door. "You kids try to live three lives at once. Pick one body to carry them with. Close your eyes."

I do, if only because the light is making my skull feel like a jar with a lid tightened too far. Sleep comes in clumsy pieces. I drift, surface, sink. In the in-between, I see a swing in a circle of light and a black cat sitting just outside it, tail curled around its feet. It doesn't speak. It just looks. I open my mouth and the picture blurs into the hiss of the heater and the distant squeak of a rolling chair.

Footsteps. The door opens without a knock. I don't have to turn my head to know who it is.

"Idiot." Tsubaki's voice lands like a baseball in a glove: loud, accurate, and familiar. "You scared me."

"I scared you?" I look over. She's standing there with a convenience store bag clutched like contraband. Her uniform is rumpled from a rushed sit and stand; her ponytail has lost a battle with gravity. There's a flush across her cheekbones that could be sprinting or anger. Both, probably.

She drops the bag on the bedside table and starts taking things out with decisive hands: five plastic triangles—egg sandwiches—the good kind from the store across from the station. A small bottle of water. A pack of wet wipes. She is a one-person disaster kit.

"Eat," she says, sliding a sandwich into my hand, already peeling the corner so I can't procrastinate. "All of it. Don't pick at it. And don't try to be cute."

"Hi to you too," I say.

"Hi," she says, deadpan, then points at the sandwich again. "Eat."

I take a bite because refusal would be pointless and also because my body is suddenly so grateful it might cry if I let it. The bread is soft and sweet; the egg and mayo are cold and bland in a way that tastes like mercy.

She watches me chew like she doesn't trust me to swallow. "When did you last eat something that wasn't an accident?"

"Lunch," I say around the mouthful. "Sort of."

"Not convincing," she says. "Breakfast?"

"Tea," I say.

She gives me a look that could peel paint. "You can't do this."

"doing it right now," I say, lifting the sandwich.

"You know what I mean." Her voice pushes and then pulls back to keep from breaking. "You look worse every day. Your eyes look like smudges. You're so thin your blazer hangs like it belongs to a different person. You're running yourself into the ground and you won't even tell me why."

"I told you," I say. "PE. Laps. Poor planning."

She takes a breath so long I can hear it fill and empty. "Don't lie to me."

"I'm not—"

"You are." She sits on the edge of the chair and leans forward, elbows on her knees, hands clasped so tightly the knuckles go pale. "I'm not asking you to put your whole brain on the table. I'm asking you not to pretend I can't see what's right in front of me."

What's right in front of her is a half-eaten sandwich and a boy who can't decide which keeps him alive more—science, music, or the people who yell at him to chew. I look at the plastic and take another bite.

"I'm handling it," I say, aiming for calm and landing somewhere near tired.

"You're not," she says. "You're triaging yourself and calling it a plan."

The nurse passes the door and looks in. Tsubaki straightens on instinct, then slumps again when the glance moves on. She reaches up without thinking and touches my forehead, then drops her hand like the contact burned.

"No fever," she mutters. "Just classic Kousei nonsense."

"I prefer 'strategy,'" I say.

"Your strategy is dumb." She points at the second sandwich, still in its plastic. "After that one, start the next."

"Yes, Coach," I say.

She folds her arms. "Don't 'coach' me. Eat."

I eat. It's quiet except for the clock and the careful sounds of chewing we both pretend not to hear. After a minute she exhales, some of the sharp edge leaving with the breath.

"Towa's getting close," she says, not as a scold, more like a date circled on a calendar. "You know what happens if you go on that stage without a body."

"I freeze and embarrass the school," I say. "I know."

"You don't care about embarrassing the school." Her mouth twitches despite herself. "You care about embarrassing yourself. And Kaori. And me. And we care about you not fainting on a grand piano."

"Im sure I'll manage," I say.

"Like you managed the track?"

"Better than that," I say, because it's the only acceptable answer.

She studies me like she's trying to see through bone. "What are you even doing every night?" she asks, quieter now. "You practice. Okay. You do homework. Fine. But this—" She waves a hand at the whole scene: me, bed, nurse smell, wrapper. "—is not just a boy who practiced too much. Something else is eating hours."

I pay for a second of silence by finishing the last bite of the first sandwich and crumpling the wrapper small. "Stuff," I say.

She waits. When more doesn't come, she shakes her head once, quick, like she knew that was all she was getting and still hoped for better.

"Do you think I don't want to help?" she asks. "Do you think I like pretending not to notice? I hate this. I hate watching you rot your battery down to zero and then kick the screen until it lies to you."

"I don't want you worrying more than you already do," I say. The truth sits between us like an unhelpful chair. "It's heavy. I'm trying to carry it."

"I've been carrying you since you were small enough to fit on my back," she says. The corner of her mouth lifts and falls. "Don't act like I'm fragile."

"I know you're not," I say. "That's why I don't want to use you up."

She makes a quiet, frustrated noise in her throat. "You can't use me up," she says. "I'm rechargeable, idiot."

We let that sit until it says what it needs to. Then she pushes the second sandwich into my hand. "Two more," she says. "I'm not leaving until I see mayo on your soul."

"That sounds sanitary," I say, but I open it. The first bite feels easier. The second feels like I might survive the afternoon.

"Water," she prompts.

I drink. She watches the cup tilt like she's keeping score. When it's empty, she refills it from the bottle she brought and sets it within reach as if she doesn't trust gravity to help me.

"What did Kaori say?" she asks after a moment.

"Nothing yet," I say. "You beat her here."

"She's going to scream," Tsubaki says, but there's fondness in it. "Pretend to be deaf."

"I will," I say.

"And don't let her talk you into pretending you're fine if you're not," she adds. "She does that thing where she jokes and then she forgets to rest."

"I won't," I say.

"I'm serious," she says.

"I know."

She sits back and looks at me like she's trying to memorize a before-photo. "You're scared," she says, not asking.

"Of what..?," I say, buying time.

"Of everything," she says. "Of not being enough. Of being too much. Of the stage. Of the days after. Of letting people down. Of the piano leaving without you." She shrugs. "I know how your brain plays."

"It's a loud band," I say.

"Turn it down," she says. "Just for a day."

"I'll try ok..?"

"You promise a lot lately," she says, but she doesn't make me take it back.

The nurse reappears, drops a form on the counter, and gives us a look that says wrap it up in five. Tsubaki stands, picks up the empty wrappers, and shoves them into the bag like she can remove evidence and truth together.

"I have practice," she says, and it sounds like a complaint and a relief at once. "I'm going to be late because of your nonsense."

"I'm sorry," I say.

"You should be." She moves closer, hesitates, then leans in and bumps her shoulder against mine gently so I don't have to react with muscles I don't own right now. "Text me when you get home. Not 'maybe later.' Now. Immediately. One word. Home. Got it?"

"Got it," I say.

"And if you feel weird, you go back to the nurse," she adds. "Don't walk it off. Don't be brave. Be boring."

"I can do boring," I say.

"No you can't," she says, rolling her eyes. "Try anyway."

She takes a step toward the door, then turns back, mouth half open like she forgot a thing. She doesn't say it. Instead she reaches out and fixes the collar of my uniform because I am apparently a mannequin with bad posture. "Eat the last one," she says, flicking the plastic triangle with a fingernail. "I'll know if you don't."

"How," I say.

"I always know," she says, and for once I don't argue the point.

At the door she pauses again, hand on the frame. "Don't make me carry you home," she says, and there's a wobble under the joke, quick and small. "My back hurts today."

"I'll walk," I say.

"Good." Her eyes soften, then shutter. "Don't scare me again."

"I'll try," I say, which is the only promise I can make without lying to both of us.

She leaves. The door closes with that soft hydraulic sigh every school door makes. The room is quiet again. The clock clears its throat once a second. My body realizes the conversation is over and asks for more food like a kid who behaved for company.

I peel open the last sandwich. My hands shake less than when she came in. I take a bite. It tastes like egg and relief and a little like defeat, which is fine if defeat means I get to stand up later.

I text her: Working on the last.

Three dots pulse, vanish, return. Good. Don't nap there all day. And drink water.

Yes, boss, I type, because she's earned it.

The nurse glances in. "How's the world?"

"Closer," I say.

"Eat, drink, ten more minutes," she says. "Then you can go." She eyes the sandwich. "And take the pace of a human being on the way out."

"I'll do my best impression," I say.

She snorts and disappears again. I chew, slower now because there's no one timing me. Outside, the hallway runs on normal school noise: lockers, a laugh, the squeak of rubber soles. Inside, it's just me, bread, egg, and the small quiet after somebody who knows you leaves the room still worried but a little less terrified.

I finish the last bite, drain the cup, and set both wrappers and the empty bottle back in the bag so the nurse doesn't have to hate me. The blanket is too warm now. I push it down to my knees and lean back, breathing steady for the first time today.

Ten minutes, the nurse said. I can do ten minutes.

I close my eyes, just to practice resting, and somewhere down the hall a door opens too fast and hits the stopper with a clang. Footsteps rush. A familiar voice hits the end of the corridor like a lit match looking for oxygen.

I open my eyes and sit up a little straighter, the empty sandwich wrapper crackling in my fist.

The door bangs against the stopper and rattles the glass. I'm already sitting up, wrappers crinkling, when Kaori skids in like a small storm that got impatient.

She stops, eyes flicking from me to the IV pole that isn't there to the trash bag to the water cup. Her mouth opens. Nothing comes out for a beat. Then she narrows her eyes like she's focusing a camera.

"...Sup," I say, because my brain has a half-second head start and decides to be stupid.

"Sup?" she echoes, too calm. "Sup? SUP?!"

Her voice rises on the last one hard enough that the nurse down the hall calls, "Indoor voices, please," without even looking.

Kaori slaps both hands on her hips and leans over my bed like she can shake the truth out of me with posture alone. Her hair's a little wild, like she ran from somewhere and the wind took liberties. The usual light in her eyes is there, but there's something sharper behind it.

"You don't get to open with sup," she says, stabbing the air for punctuation. "You pass out on the track, they text the group chat the word collapse like it's a fun vocabulary word, and you—" she flings both hands "—what? You shrug with your mouth?"

"They texted?" I say, because my last two brain cells are committed to bad choices. "How many laughing emojis?"

She glares. And then does a tiny double take at the pile of empty wrappers on the tray. "You ate?"

"Evidence," I say, lifting the last crumpled plastic triangle. "Tsubaki carried out a sandwich intervention. It was... effective."

"Of course she did," Kaori mutters, and for a fraction of a second her face softens like a sigh. It snaps back just as fast. "But also: unbelievable. You're tired and now you're not eating?"

"It's fine," I say. "It's not so bad. Tsubaki gave me a pack of three egg sandwiches."

"That's not a plan, that's an obituary with extra mayo." She grabs the empty water cup, frowns when it's actually empty, and refills it from the bottle on my table like she's calling my bluff. "Drink."

"I did."

"Drink again."

I drink again. My stomach doesn't love it; it agrees to negotiate.

Kaori pulls the chair closer and sits backwards on it, arms folded along the backrest, chin set. It's the posture of a coach who has decided a speech is coming. I brace.

"What happened?" she says, dropping the volume but not the edge.

"Make-up PE. Six laps. My body filed a complaint mid-lap five." I shrug. "I appealed and lost."

"Cute," she says dryly. "How many hours did you sleep last night?"

"Some."

"Is 'some' a number now?"

"Four?"

Her eyes narrow. "Liar."

"Three and a half," I say, because her face is not a face you lie to and walk away unpunished.

"Why," she says, no decoration.

"Practice," I say. "Homework." I add a third thing that is technically true. "Thinking."

"That third one doesn't count toward sleep," she says. "And you can't make up food with thoughts. Or hydration with sarcasm."

"I'm aware," I say.

"Are you?" She leans in. "Because my phone pinged like it was being electrocuted and I thought oh no the idiot finally died and then the next message was he's in the nurse's and I still saw white at the edges." She thumps the chair back with a small, angry rhythm. "You cannot do this two weeks before Towa. You can't do this ever."

"I've already been yelled at for the 'ever' part," I say. "The nurse did it with professional technique. You are... more freestyle."

"Freestyle wins medals," she says. "Don't dodge me."

"I'm not dodging," I say, which is, in fact, a dodge. I lift the empty wrappers again like a shield. "Look, I ate."

"Three egg sandwiches do not erase the last month," she says. "You've been getting paler, thinner, and somehow more stubborn. It's like you're winning a contest nobody else entered."

Across the room, the nurse glides in, gives Kaori a look that says dial it down, gives me a look that says stay horizontal, and glides out without breaking stride. Kaori lowers her volume to a hard whisper.

"Is it the piano?" she asks. "Are you pushing too hard? You looked fine the last time I heard you. Clean. Boring." She wrinkles her nose. "Soulless, but in a way we could fix."

"Thanks for the compliment-insult," I say.

"I'm a generous person," she says. "And I keep saying things like color because I need you on stage with me not looking like a ghost trying to remember which planet he lives on."

"I know," I say, and try to make it not sound like an apology.

"Do you?" She tilts her head. "Because the voices in your head keep winning, and they're terrible coaches." She taps her finger on the chair back. "You have to eat. You have to sleep. You have to practice like a person and not like a myth. Those are not optional."

"I hear you," I say. "I hear Tsubaki. I hear the nurse. I hear the PE teacher. I hear... everyone."

"And yet," she says, gesturing at my entire situation.

"And yet," I echo.

She looks at me for a long second, the fight in her eyes sharing space with something scared. "Hey," she says, softer. "You with me right now?"

"Yeah."

"Promise?"

"I promise," I say.

"Good." She stands, restless energy leaking into her legs. "Come on. If you can walk, we're getting out of here. The nurse will release you if she sees you upright and not wobbling."

"She told me ten minutes," I say.

Kaori checks the clock. "It's been thirteen."

"Has it?"

"Time moves faster when I'm mad," she says. "Let's go."

I swing my legs over the side of the bed. The floor tilts a degree and then behaves. Kaori watches my knees like she'll kick them if they betray me.

"Slow," she orders.

"Yes, Captain."

We stop at the doorway so the nurse can do her ritual—temperature, pulse, a few questions to make sure I know where I am and what year it is. When I answer correctly, she signs a slip and gives me a warning look that could staple a teenager to a chair.

"Walk," she says. "Don't test gravity this afternoon."

"I'm a fan of gravity," I say.

"You have a funny way of showing it," she says, then nods us out.

We step into the corridor. It's the usual end-of-day mess: lockers clanging, sneakers squeaking, the smell of a hundred different snacks trying to live in the same air. A group of first-years spill past, all elbows and gossip. Kaori slips into their wake and I follow at a non-heroic pace. The automatic doors breathe us out into light.

It's the hour between afternoon and evening where everything gets gentler without promising night yet. The campus walkway is a slow river of students streaming toward the gates. The flag hangs tired. Someone's bike rattles by. Far off, the field has a last cluster of kids kicking a ball around like it owes them money.

Kaori falls into step beside me and glances down at my hands to make sure they're not shaking. They are, a little. I stuff them into my pockets to hide it; she notices anyway.

"Unbelievable," she says, picking up where she left off like there was no pause. "You're tired and now you're not eating."

"It's fine. It's not so bad," I say. "Tsubaki gave me a pack of five egg sandwiches."

She gives me the look she reserves for terrible ideas. "It is bad," she says, each word a separate scold. "You don't get points for crisis-eating in a nurse's office. You need to act like a human before you faint, not after."

"I prefer planned interventions to surprise ones," I say.

She throws me a glare that isn't quite real, then checks my pace, slowing when I slow so I don't have to pretend. "When did you last practice without falling asleep on the keys?"

"Last night," I say. "I didn't fall asleep on the keys. Just... near them."

"How near?"

"Chair-near."

"That's still bad," she says. "You can't show up at Towa with 'chair-near' under your eyes. The judges will press the minus button."

"Is there a minus button?" I ask.

"In my head there is," she says. "And I push it with passion."

We cross the courtyard. A couple waves at Kaori; she waves back with two fingers and a grin that doesn't fully reach her eyes. She's still watching me in the corners.

"Okay," she says. "Plan. You go home. You shower. You eat something that isn't a sandwich from a triangle. You nap for one hour. One. Not four, because then you'll wake up at midnight and be feral."

"An hour," I repeat, like a password.

"Then you do slow practice," she goes on. "Not the kind that turns your brain into a blender. Scales, a little Chopin, something that makes your hands remember you're friends. Then you stop. Then you text me alive. Then you do homework like a person who cares about not repeating a grade."

"Your plans are always very specific..," I say.

"If I don't do specifics, you do chaos," she says. "I am trying to push against entropy."

We step past the main gate. Outside, the street is busy in that steady neighborhood way—moms with bags, old men walking tiny dogs like they're escorting soldiers, scooters complaining about hills. Kaori steers us toward the direction of the station, then cuts across to the quieter side road where the trees throw a little shade.

She keeps talking because if she stops I think she might start thinking. "Also," she says, "you will not lie to me when I ask you tomorrow if you slept. Your face is a terrible liar. It twitches."

"My face is picture perfect," I say.

"Your face is a snitch," she counters. "I can read it."

We walk. For a few minutes we even do it in silence without the silence feeling heavy. The air smells faintly like gyoza from the corner shop and the late roses that refuse to die in the school's small garden. My head stops ringing. The egg sits in my stomach like a warm rock. My legs remember how to be legs.

Kaori glances at me. "You okay?"

"Better," I say, honest.

"Good." She kicks a stray pebble off the sidewalk and watches it skitter. "Don't do that again."

"I'll try."

She snorts. "You're not allowed to use try as a magic word."

"What's the magic word, then?"

"Do," she says. "Or at least don't."

"Yoda," I say.

"Who?"

"Never mind," I say. "Obscure reference."

She bumps my shoulder with her elbow, gentle, like a cat checking if the furniture is still where it left it. "Hey," she says, almost in a different voice, like she reached for one she doesn't use often. "You're not alone in this."

"I know," I say.

"Do you?" She doesn't look at me when she says it. "Because you keep acting like you have to do all of it by yourself and then you collapse in PE and make me want to commit crimes."

"I don't want to make you a criminal," I say.

"Too late," she says. "I already stole three minutes from class to run to the nurse."

"Theft justified," I say. Shrugging

"Obviously," she says.

We reach the long residential stretch that points toward the station like an arrow. The sun slips behind a seam of clouds and the road falls into that softer kind of light that makes everything flatten a little. Two kids in baseball uniforms race each other, cleats clacking on asphalt. A bike bell rings politely. Somewhere a TV leaks a game show laugh track out an open window.

Kaori inhales like she's about to start up another rant, then stops. Her eyebrow creases. She squints ahead, blinking twice like she's not sure what she's looking at.

"What," I say, following her gaze.

She doesn't answer. She just slows, and because she slows I slow. On the road ahead, under the weak circle of a streetlamp that decided to come on early, something dark sits in the center of the painted line.

A cat. Black. Full black, fur taking the light and keeping it. Ears up. Tail curled around the paws in that neat, composed way cats have when they think they own the scene. It's not moving. It's not afraid. It's just there, exactly where our path points.

"Ohhh kitty!"Kaori says with sparkling eyes and a smile.

I stop because stopping feels like the right thing. My chest does a small, ridiculous stutter. The cat turns its head. The eyes catch the low light and go coin-bright, a sharp green that cuts even in the dull afternoon. Not glowing. Just bright enough to feel like a tap on the sternum.

In my head, a swing creaks. A circle of light. A black shape sitting just outside it, tail wrapped, patient, asking a question I keep refusing to answer.

Kaori glances at me. "You okay?"

I can't decide if I want to laugh or say a prayer I don't believe in. "Yeah," I say, voice lower than a second ago.

We stand there for a heartbeat longer, the street briefly quiet between breaths: no scooter, no voices, just our steps stalled and the cat doing what cats do—judging and not judging at the same time. It blinks once, slow, like a door closing.

The cat's head tilts, listening to something we can't hear. It rises, smooth and silent, like it belongs to a different kind of gravity. For a split second those green eyes fix exactly on me. A chill runs along the rails of my arms as if a small wind remembered my name.

The world waits.

Chapter Text

"Oooh, kitty!"

Kaori's voice came out bright and careless, the way you talk to vending machines that finally surrender your drink. She pointed down the quiet side street. Under the early streetlight, a black cat sat right on the center line like it had rented the road. Tail curled. Ears up. Calm as a metronome that knows it's in charge.

I didn't move. The sight hit me sideways—like the dream had followed us out of the nurse's office and found legs.

The cat turned its head. Green eyes caught the weak light and held it. Not a glow—just that crisp coin color that dares you to blink first.

The swing. The pool of light. That voice like the part of my brain that only talks in final drafts

You are scarred eternally.....

My throat got tight. Something in my chest slid.

"Hey," Kaori said, half laughing, half shushing. "You're going to scare it if you stare like that."

I couldn't answer. It was stupid. It was an animal and a street and a too-early streetlamp. But the dream didn't know that, and apparently neither did my hands, because they had already clenched into fists inside my pockets.

The cat blinked once. Slow. Like a door closing in perfect silence.

And then I wasn't on the street anymore.

—

Fluorescent hallway. That thin hospital smell that lives in the throat. Footsteps bouncing off tile because the ceiling refuses to help.

Watari walked beside me, jacket over his shoulder, hair a mess, grin less of a grin and more of a reflex. He nudged my arm with his elbow.

"Can't wait to see my Kaori-chan," he said in that drawl he used when he wanted to sound cooler than a middle school uniform would allow.

I snorted. "Your Kaori-chan, huh."

"She becomes everyone's Kaori-chan the second she smiles," he said, not even embarrassed at how true it was. "I'm just smart enough to admit it."

The paper bag in my hand rustled—her favorite pastries, the ones with the custard that always got on your fingers no matter how careful you were. I pictured her face when she saw them. The ridiculous little gasp, the fake scold: You're going to make me fat! The bite anyway. The wink. She would break the piece in half and shove the bigger half at me like that solved something.

We turned the corner toward her room. The floors always looked newly mopped but never felt clean. The numbers on the doors marched like soldiers. The hallway air had that cool, filtered quiet, like sound didn't stick here on purpose.

I heard it before I saw it.

Not loud—just wrong. A monitor beeping too fast. A metal tray bumping against something it shouldn't. Shoes moving like they were deciding whether to run.

Watari kept talking because he hadn't heard yet. "We should get a pic of her with the pastry. For the montage at my wedding later, you know? 'The day I knew she liked sugar more than me.'"

"Shut up," I said, automatically, and then the beeping sharpened, and Watari's mouth forgot what it had been doing.

We stopped just short of the door.

From inside: a nurse saying something in a voice that doesn't want to sound scared. Another voice—older, lower—answering, "Call the doctor." A rustle that sounded like a bed being moved fast and not wanting to.

Watari's face went pale in two seconds, like someone shook all the color out of him. "What—"

I stepped forward because my feet hadn't gotten the memo. The paper bag crinkled in my fist. My shoulder hit the door. It wasn't closed all the way. The gap widened when I breathed.

She was there.

Of course she was there—she'd been there in our heads even when she wasn't in the room. But this was small and terrible and real. Kaori lay on the white bed that made everyone look like they'd been erased halfway. Her hair was too clean. Her mouth was open on a breath that didn't know if it wanted to be a sound. Two nurses braced her shoulders and wrist—gentle, quick, practiced—like they were holding the edges of a map that wouldn't stop folding itself.

Her body jerked.

Not a big movie jerk. A stuttering, stubborn one. Hips and chest. A shiver that decided to become an argument. Her hand—the bow hand—twitched against the sheet.

The nearest nurse said, "Doctor, now," in that same not-scared voice that makes you hear the scared anyway. Another nurse turned for the alert button. Something metal clacked against the side rail. The monitor beep found a faster gear and rode it.

The smell in the room changed—the cold in your mouth when you bite a coin by mistake.

Watari made a sound I'd never heard him make. "K—"

His hand reached for the door and didn't touch it. He took half a step forward and froze like he'd run into a glass wall.

The paper bag in my fist got heavy. I should have moved. I should have walked in and been useful. I should have done anything except stand there and watch the person who made rooms feel like unassigned music become a body that didn't belong to her.

Her leg jerked again. The sheet dragged. The nurse said, "Breathe, sweetheart," like you can ask a storm to remember how.

Someone shouted down the hall. Fast feet. The bed controls whined. The nurse by the alert button looked over and didn't see us and looked back because of course she didn't; we were nothing in that doorway. We were clutter.

The pastries. The stupid pastries. I remember looking at the bag and thinking I had never held anything more useless in my life. Custard and sugar and paper and bright. She was being called back from the edge by people who knew what edges looked like and my big idea was to bring dessert.

It wasn't the beginning. It wasn't the end. It was just a minute where the room lost gravity and I watched what happens when it gives up.

My brain did something ugly to protect itself. It made the scene smaller by cutting the sound and smearing the edges. I looked at the shape on the bed and decided she was some other girl. I looked at the way her fingers jumped and told myself I was seeing an instrument and not a person. The bag crinkled. The crease dug into my palm. I held tighter because otherwise I would drop it and I didn't know what it meant, dropping it, whether that would be a kind of admission.

Watari whispered, "No, no, no, no," under his breath like he could staple reality back together with repetition.

A white coat slid past us. The doctor's eyebrows were already pulled together. He didn't look at us. He looked at the numbers. He looked at the nurse. He looked at the shape. "Seizure," he said, confirming a thing air had already learned.

I couldn't move. The floor wanted to pitch me forward. The doorframe felt like the only solid in the building.

Kaori's face—there are expressions you never get to see on people and you should never have to. It wasn't pain, exactly. It was like her body was a room where the lights flickered and someone was scraping a chair back across the floor in another apartment and no one could find the switch.

Someone said, "Step back, boys," and a shoulder eased the door shut the rest of the way.

The sound came back first. The monitor, the voices. Then the hallway returned. A visitor cart squeaked by at the far end, oblivious. A woman in a coat checked her phone and frowned. Two orderlies argued softly about a score from last night's game. The world kept doing what it does when you want it to stop and learn some respect.

Watari put both hands on his head like he could keep it from coming apart. He laughed once, a crushed little thing that bounced against the tile and died. "What—what are we—" He didn't finish, because there wasn't a sentence after that.

I looked down. The bag in my hand had a wet spot where my palm had sweated through the paper. Custard made a tiny, cheerful smear like a sun in a child's drawing.

My soul took a step toward a darker room.

—

The street came back with the smell of warm asphalt and gyoza from three houses over. My stomach flipped. The cat was still there. It flicked one ear like it was bored of us and looked away.

I didn't. Couldn't. The past and the present knocked into each other like two trains that had never met but were built to collide.

My body made the decision for me.

I covered my mouth and lurched for the nearest trash can by the lamppost. The first heave took everything I had left in the polite part of my stomach. The second was worse. The sound bounced off the quiet street and came back to hit me in the back of the head. My eyes watered. The night tasted like acid and sugar. My ribs ached from the suddenness of it. Knees met pavement—soft, but enough to make my bones remember they were attached.

"K—Kousei!" Kaori's voice broke in the middle like it had tripped. "Over there! Restroom over there! Go!"

I waved her off without looking. The trash can did its job and held the worst; the rest I scrubbed off my mouth with the inside of my wrist because my pride was on vacation.

Air came in shallow jerks. I put the back of my hand against the cool metal rim and waited for the spin to stop. It didn't. Not right away.

The cat had stepped off the line into the gutter, casual, indifferent. It cleaned one paw and pretended the street belonged to it. Maybe it did.

"Hey. Hey." Kaori crouched next to me, hand hovering in the space between my shoulders. "You okay? Can you—look at me."

"I'm fine," I said, which is a word people use when they've decided lying is a form of courtesy. My voice sounded wrecked. I cleared it and tried again. "I'm okay. That was—" A breath. "I ate too fast."

Kaori looked at the can, then at me, then back at the can, then up at the sky like she wanted to request a replacement human. "You just—what? Won a speed-eating contest with an egg sandwich and decided to decorate the neighborhood with the trophy?"

"Don't be gross," I muttered, wiping my mouth again. The taste had settled into a film you couldn't argue with. I swallowed water. It hit my stomach and made a face.

"Stand up," she said, not quite a command, not quite a plea.

I pushed myself upright slowly. The world tilted a degree to the left and then, grudgingly, leveled. My legs wobbled once and remembered how to be legs. Kaori stayed close enough to catch me and far enough to pretend she wasn't there to catch me.

"We can go to the restroom," she said, nodding toward the park entrance across the street, the one with the chipped sign and the swing set that sounded fifty years old. "Rinse. Sit. Breathe. You know. Being-a-person verbs."

"I'm fine," I said again, because if you double down maybe it becomes true.

She narrowed her eyes in a way that made every excuse feel like cheap plastic. "You are a terrible liar."

"Thank you," I said. "I work hard at it."

"That's the problem," she shot back. "You're working hard at all the wrong things."

The cat looked at us one more time, decided we weren't worth the story, and slipped between two hedges like it was smoke with opinions. The street felt bigger once it was gone. Worse, somehow.

Kaori took my elbow with two fingers—just enough pressure to say you're coming with me, not enough to make a scene. She steered me across the street when the light changed without telling me we were moving, which is how she won fights: she turned them into errands.

The park smelled like dust and old metal. Someone had drawn a lopsided heart on the slide in blue marker and written two initials I didn't recognize. The swings creaked politely. A vending machine by the restroom hummed, full of drinks that promised to fix you and would not.

She pointed at the outdoor sink. "Rinse."

"Yes, Mom," I said, and it came out meaner than I intended. She flinched, then shook it off.

"Don't make me wash your mouth out with ramune," she said. The joke landed. I cupped water, splashed my face. The cold helped; the world stepped half a meter back.

When I turned, she was watching me with that look she used when she'd run out of clever—accusation mixed with worry mixed with don't you dare do that again. It sat wrong on her; she was built for brightness, not this. Seeing it there made something inside me try to hide behind my ribs.

"What was that?" she asked again. Simple. No sparring. "You made me worried."

I opened my mouth. The hospital hit between my ribs again. The bag. The custard. Her hand twitching on the sheet.

"I ate too fast," I said, because the truth had sharp edges and tonight I didn't have gloves.

"That's not what I asked," she said. Calm. Worse than yelling. "What was that."

The answer I didn't want lifted through my throat like a hot balloon. I swallowed it and grabbed the nearest safer thing.

"Black cats," I said, and even to me it sounded like I was changing the subject with a hammer.

Her eyebrows went up. "What."

"I used to have one," I said. "Chelsea."

"That's a fancy name for a cat," she said automatically, but her eyes stayed on mine.

"She scratched me once," I went on. My voice found that flat place it likes to hide. "A nasty cut on my hand. My mom saw. Next day, Chelsea was gone. 'Too distracting,' she said. If I wanted to touch something, touch a keyboard."

Kaori's mouth opened, closed. "That's—"

"I didn't protest," I said, cutting her off. "Mom said it was necessary and I believed her because believing her was how you survived in our house." I stared past her at the swings. "I don't hate her. I can't. She was trying to beat a clock none of us could see. She wanted to see me succeed while she was still alive. It turned her into something sharp. I got used to being held by the sharp parts."

Wind nudged the leaves. The park light hummed. Far away, a train announced itself like it had good news and was lying.

"That still doesn't explain why you puked," she said, bite under the care. She didn't let me off. She never did. That's why I let her talk to me at all.

"It's fine," I said. "It's not—" Words scattered. The rest of the sentence hid under the bench with the ants.

Kaori planted her hands on her hips and looked down at me like a coach who had tolerated exactly enough idiocy. "We're not done," she said, voice steady. "Go sit. Over there."

I walked because she told me to and because sitting sounded like the best idea invented in weeks. The bench boards were warm from the day. I sank into them and felt suddenly, overwhelmingly old for fourteen. She sat too, an inch of air between us and a whole novel of things refusing to say themselves.

"I'm fine," I said again, softer, because maybe if you lower the volume it sneaks past defenses.

She didn't answer. She stared at the empty swings, one foot flicking dirt in short impatient arcs.

Her worried look wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. It sat on my skin and reminded me you can't outrun the people who have already learned your pace.

She didn't fill the silence with jokes. She just kept looking at me the way you look at a problem you intend to solve. It felt like heat on my cheek.

"That story," she said finally. "About Chelsea. I get it. I do." She turned her head. "It still doesn't explain why you puked."

"I told you—"

"Don't do that," she cut in, not loud, just sure. "Don't slap duct tape on it and call it repaired."

I stared at the ground until the pebbles turned into notes. "You sounded worried," I said, because it was easier than answering.

"Because I was." She blew out a breath, rubbed her wrists. "I had a whole speech ready for when you did something dumb in practice, not for when you collapsed on a sidewalk."

"I didn't collapse," I said, automatically.

She angled a look that could file paperwork. "You folded like a cheap chair."

I didn't have a comeback. The quiet stretched. A dog barked twice far away and then thought better of it.

"You do this thing," she said. "Where you turn into a robot. You decide what looks efficient, and then you erase the parts of you that get in the way."

"That's dramatic..." I muttered.

"It's accurate," she said. "And boring. You don't even make a cool robot noise."

"I'm fine."

"You're not a machine," she said, turning so her knee bumped mine. "You are you. Understand?"

The words landed and sat there. Simple. Heavy.

She lifted a finger, started counting, weirdly official. "You like milk with the cute cow logo—the one that tastes like a refrigerator hug. You are a terrible athlete—facts. You can't say no to Tsubaki—she says please and you fold. And you're a little jealous of Watari's popularity."

"Am not." I retorted

"Yes, you are. Not in a gross way. You just notice how easy it is for him. Anyone would."

"I don't want applause."

"No," she said. "You want freedom. Sometimes your brain confuses the two." She put her hand on the bench between us, fingers spread, steadying the conversation. "You're not your mother's shadow. You're not the sum of her rules. You're you."

The park felt like it held its breath. I kept my eyes on her hand so I wouldn't have to answer with my face.

She lifted her chin, becoming every old-school teacher at once: "'Study the composer's intention! Respect the style of the times! Immerse yourself in the historical background!'" She sniffed. "We don't need funny wigs."

"We aren't Bach or Chopin," I said, the line falling out on its own.

"We're us. Right now," she said, tapping the bench with each word. "Take the you that you are, living the life you're living, and play from the heart."

It should have sounded like a poster. From her, it was a dare.

"Easier said," I managed.

"Everything worth doing is easier said," she said. "Saying it is how you start."

She turned her palm up on the bench and waited. Not dramatic. An instruction.

I put my hand in hers before my brain could argue. Warm. Small. Enough contact to count. She spread our fingers slightly, comparing the shapes.

"When you're depressed," she said, softer, "it always helps to lean your head on your arm. Arms like to feel useful."

My throat closed. "...And who said that?"

"Charlie Brown," she said, grinning. "Don't underestimate bald kids in zigzags." She looked down at our hands, turned them a fraction. "Big bony hands like a pia.... eh?"

She stopped. Her eyes had jumped back to my face and widened.

Heat climbed into my eyes. A tear slipped, cold on my cheek. Another followed.

"K—Kousei," she whispered, fear finding a grip. "What's wro—wrong?"

I shook my head. Talking would drag something out I couldn't stuff back in. More tears. My mouth tried to joke and failed. A sound came out that was half laugh, half break.

I pressed our joined hands to my eyes like a lid. It didn't stop anything. My breath hitched. Again.

She didn't pull away. She didn't stack *it's okay* and *breathe* like sandbags. She leaned a fraction closer, enough for her shoulder to be there if gravity won, not enough to trip the part of me that runs from help. Her thumb rested on my knuckle like a small anchor.

The hospital door shoved open in my head—the beeping, the rustle, the paper bag sweating custard into my palm. I pushed at it with the heel of my hand and made it sharper. My throat did the jump before the big ones.

"You don't have to be a machine," she said softly. "Be a person. Be you."

It shouldn't have held anything. It held me up. I let my head tip forward until my forehead met my forearm and our hands, making a small, ridiculous cave that hid nothing and helped anyway. My watch was cool against my skin. Her pulse was a quick drummer under my wrist bone.

The swings whispered once. The vending machine hummed. Someone called a child's name beyond the trees, not angry. My breath fought, then decided to work with me. Tears kept finding the corner of my mouth and leaving salt behind like I needed proof.

"I'm sorry," I said at last, wrecked.

"For what?" she asked, not a trap.

"Being like this." I had no better nouns.

"I like 'this,'" she said. "It's loud sometimes. But it's real."

A broken laugh got out and left the door open. Another tear landed on our knuckles like a small cold coin. I wiped at my eyes with the back of her fingers because I didn't want to let go and because letting go would make the moment pretend it was ending.

"Hey," she said, worry unclothed now. "You're scaring me what's wrong?"

"I know," I said, the second word wobbling. "I'm... sorry."

"Don't be sorry," she said. "Be careful." She nudged my shoulder with hers, gentle. "Eat things that have colors. And sleep at normal times"

I counted four slow like my uncle taught me when he pretended breathing patterns were science because he wanted me to trust them.

She said nothing else. She held my hand like a handle and let the quiet do some of the work. In that small circle of lamp and sand and metal and our two stupid hearts, the world got a little less sharp. The tears kept coming, not as an attack now—more like a leak that would stop when it had told the truth.

She watched them fall without flinching, wide-eyed and fierce and scared at the same time—looking at me like I was a person and not a project, ready to fight the air if it tried anything.

"Kousei," she tried again, softer. "What's wrong?"

I opened my mouth and closed it. The answer was a hallway, a door, a paper bag, a word I couldn't put in her ears without putting something else there I couldn't take back. I shook my head. Another tear made the same route. I let it.

We stayed exactly there: me crying because I couldn't not, her holding on because she wouldn't not—swing chains still, vending machine faithful, night air cool on hot skin—until the worst of it washed past and left me with red eyes, a sore throat, and the unfamiliar, impossible feeling that being a person might not kill me.

Chapter Text

The swing hangs in its lonely circle of light, chains whispering whenever I breathe. Past the edge of that pale ring, the dark is absolute—like the world forgot to load.

Here he was again

Chelsea steps into the glow like she was always there. Black cat, green eyes, patient tail.

"Your body said it for you," she tells me, almost kind. "You couldn't keep it down."

"It was days ago," I say. As if that makes it smaller.

"Your stomach doesn't keep a calendar." She sits under my knees, tail curling into a question mark. "You keep putting on 'fine' like a mask. It fits your face. It doesn't fit your pulse."

"I'm functional," I try.

"You're hollow," she says, no judgment, just diagnosis. "Like a house with the lights off and someone still walking around inside."

I watch the circle of light, wishing it would widen or wink out. "It's over I'm fine I won't collapse in front of her again ."

"The moment is over," she says. "The reasons aren't. And she doesn't have time for you to pretend otherwise."

"I know." It comes out too fast.

"You act like you don't. Or like you can buy extra days on credit." She stretches, long and silent. "Every hour you waste is an hour she never gets back."

"I'm not wasting hours...." Even here, it sounds thin.

"Then why are you walking into Maihou again?"

The chain creaks when I nudge the swing a thumb's width. "Because she asked."

"You could say have said no."

"Not to her," I admit. The truth is small and heavy.

"Then say the truth plainly," Chelsea says. "You're doing it for her. Not for you."

"I owe her," I say, knuckles whitening around the chain. "If you saw the hallway—"

"I'm telling you not to confuse being her hope with being alive," she says. "You've been using her a purpose of existence, A reason for you to live.  You have your own body to take care of and needs." It looks deeply at me "If you can't take care of yourself how can you Take care of her?"

I try for a laugh and don't get there. "Wise words from a professional cup-knocker." It was right and rational. But he has long foregone rationality

She blinks, unbothered. "Play because she asked. But don't lie about the price. And don't forget the other clock."

"The one over her head," I say.

"The one over both of you." Her ears angle forward. "Time is cruel. If you waste it, you're crueler."

"I just want to save her."

It looks at me and says words that spin my head "Just make sure there is still a person there for her after you saved her."

My vision goes white

The light thins, like a breath leaving. She backs into the dark like it's home. "Wake up, Kousei...." He heard faintly

Suddenly he was jolted awake

Hands clamp my shoulders. "Kousei! Up! Now!"

Tsubaki's face is right there when my eyes open—ponytail tight, jacket zipped, the you'd-better-move look she saves for bad umpires and me.

"What time—"

"Time to go!"She yanks the blanket off me like she's starting a lawn mower. Cold air slaps my arms. I'm still in a pajama shirt that said "No life is enough" in all black.My hair has invented new directions. My eyes feel like the bottom of a coffee cup.

"Five minutes," I bargain.

"You get thirty seconds." She thunks a canvas bag by the door—dress shoes, Dress shirt and pants,the clunk of a comb. "They're waiting."

"They—?"

We're at the door before the question's done. It slides open and morning dumps in: clear blue, bicycle bells, someone's breakfast drifting out of a window. Kaori and Watari are parked at the curb, bouncing on their heels like a relay handoff is late. Watari's pacing, phone in one hand, grin wired to a car battery. Kaori's bow case is slung over her shoulder; her eyes are laser pointers aimed straight at me.

"There he is," Watari crows. "Sleeping Beauty, late edition."

Kaori takes one look—pajama shirt, wrong hair, wrong face—and throws her hands up. "You cannot be serious. Today?"

"I have his stuff," Tsubaki says, hoisting the bag like evidence. "He'll change there."

"He'll change now if he tries to run," Kaori mutters, then plants herself. "Checklist. Shoes? Shirt? Brain?"

"Two of three," I say. "Brain's shipping tomorrow."

"Unacceptable." She glares past me at the sky like it owes us time, then jerks her chin down the street. "We're late."

"Very late," Watari echoes, already jogging in place like it might shave seconds off. "Go!"

Tsubaki shoves a convenience-store rice ball into my hand as we launch. "Eat."

"I—"

"Eat."

I tear the wrapper and chew. We run. The neighborhood blurs—laundry slapping on lines, a scooter whining, buses coughing. Kaori sets a sharp pace, breath steady, steps neat. Tsubaki holds my shoulder line, nudging me back to the sidewalk every time I drift. Watari jogs backward for a few strides just to grin at us, then spins and opens up because of course he can.

"You look like you slept fourteen minutes," Watari pants

"That's a generous estimate ," I get out.

Kaori cuts me a side-eye while keeping tempo. "You always pick the worst days to be a ghost."

"The black cat interrupted my sleep," I say. It slips out before I can choose not to.

Watari barks a laugh. "Excuses by your spiritual advisor!"

"Your dream cat..." Tsubaki mumbles, then, softer, to me: "You okay?"

"I'm moving," I say. It's not an answer. It's everything I have.

Left at the stingy vending machine. Right past the corner where the wind always ambushes you. Streets widen. Glass buildings start pretending they were always here. The sidewalk fills with kids in pressed clothes and parents in polite panic, cases and garment bags knocking lightly like distant applause.

"Is that it?" Tsubaki asks, pointing ahead.

At the end of the avenue a hall rises like a ship moored on land—broad stone steps, glass doors like teeth, banners snapping in the light breeze.

"That's it," Watari whistles. "Huge."

Even from here the building hums. Not sound—expectation. My ribs cinch down a notch. The last time I walked toward stairs like that, the lights boiled the world down to shapes and the melody felt like a wire across a canyon. My hands remember. So does the part of me that found a trash can because a hospital hallway decided to replay itself in public.

"Don't disappear," Tsubaki says, low. She doesn't slow.

"I'm here," I say. The truth and not.

Kaori hears the drop in my voice and bumps me with her fist like we're joking. "Hey."

"Hey."

"You're going to do it," she says, not pep talk, just declaration. "And if you don't, we'll fake it until you do."

"Comforting," I mutter, and feel the corner of my mouth consider moving.

"Eat real food after," Tsubaki adds. "Not rumors."

"Rumors?" Watari asks.

"He thinks egg sandwiches are meals," she says.

I protest on principle"They are, they have pr-"

"No," Kaori and Tsubaki say together instantly cutting me off

A red light halts us at the last big intersection. We bounce in place on the curb like four wind-up toys. Cars glide by, indifferent. My heart writes its own tempo. The dream's residue hasn't burned off; Chelsea's voice keeps threading through other sounds: Do it because she asked. Don't lie about why.

Kaori glances up at me. Her eyes are bright and sharp and worried, all at once. "Wipe that funeral face," she orders. "This is supposed to be exciting."

"I'm full of excitement" I lie.

"Your face disagrees," she says, but her mouth twitches like she wants to forgive me in advance.

The walk signal chirps and we explode off the curb. The hall swells, closer, closer, until it's the only thing ahead. The steps swarm with kids, parents, teachers with clipboards. Banners snap. Somewhere a scale leaks out of a practice room and is swallowed by the crowd. A staffer stands at a folding table rubber-banding programs, losing the fight.

"Shoes?" Kaori asks as we hit the base of the steps and squeeze into the current.

"In the bag," Tsubaki answers for me.

"Shirt?"

"In the bag."

"Comb?"

"Not needed.." I say, raking my fingers through my hair.

"Water," Tsubaki says, lifting a bottle out of the bag and shoving it at my chest mid-stride. "Sip. Small. Now."

I do, because she'll pour it over my head if I don't.

Watari tips his chin toward the banners with last year's winners. "We do the thing, then we go heckle track. Motivation."

"Encouragement," Tsubaki corrects.

"Same thing," he grins.

We stop where the steps start, our momentum stacking in a clumsy line. Up close, the stone feels cooler, the building bigger, the noise taller. The doors breathe people in and out.

Kaori hooks two fingers in the strap of my bag and tugs, small and sure. "Ready?"

No. "Yeah."

"Good." She squares her shoulders, already in coach mode. "We go up. You change. We find your number. We do this."

"Don't trip," Watari adds, entirely unhelpful.

"Not funny," Tsubaki says, but her hand hovers near my back like a guardrail anyway.

I look up at the banners, at the glass, at the stair that's about to turn into a runway. My stomach is stone and fuel at the same time. My hands feel numb. That's something.

"Okay," I say, to the steps, to the day, to the cat that isn't here. "Okay."

We take the first stair together. The city noise thins. The hall waits. We're outside it, close enough to count the doors, close enough to hear the building's quiet hum of rules and pianos and paper and names—and for one breath more, not inside yet.

The steps pull us up and the lobby hits all at once—cool air, banners, parents with tote bags, kids in uniforms, a staffer losing a battle with rubber bands and programs. Sound stacks into a polite roar: shoes on tile, whispered panics, a scale escaping from somewhere and getting swallowed by the room.

Watari snags two programs, flips one to Tsubaki without looking, then cranes toward the wall-sized assignment board. Kaori is already moving, eyes locked on the grid of taped names and numbers like it owes her money.

"Find him," she says.

"On it." Watari goes up on his toes.

I hang back half a step, the bag strap biting into my palm. The building hums. I can feel the piano two floors away like a storm you can't see yet. Kaori glances over her shoulder to make sure I'm still here. I lift the bag—bathroom, then warm-up—and nod.

I turn, meaning to follow the little stick-figure sign. Then I see the other corridor: wide, quiet, a soft slope down, a door that probably says STAFF. No crowds. No clipboards. It looks like oxygen.

I drift.

"Arima." Tsubaki's voice slices across the lobby.

Two more steps.

"HEY!" Kaori this time, not a word so much as a thrown shoe.

I turn just as she barrels in and shoulder-checks me off trajectory. My bag slips;we ping off the wall and stop, both breathing hard.

"Ow..."I say, more surprised than hurt. "What—"

"Wrong way, genius." She jams a paper into my chest. I grab it out of reflex

Watari and Tsubaki slide in behind her, both staring down the corridor I was about to marry. Watari deadpans, "Ah yes, the legendary Hall of Janitors. Very prestigious."

Tsubaki doesn't joke. She just gives me the flat, disappointed look coaches save for kids who forget which base is which.

I look down at the paper. My name. A number.

"Your entry," Kaori says. "We found it."

"Ah," I say, brain catching up. "My number."

Her finger taps the line, businesslike and bright at the same time. "Köchel number 265! Mozart's variations on Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star!"

She looks up, eyes nearly glowing a warm smile. A second beat, separate, softer: "The stars are shining over your head."

Two beats. Two sentences. Her smile is all excitement. My throat tightens anyway.

K. 265. Same piece. Same trap—cheerful on the surface, little knives in the corners. I see lights and a small, shaking version of me that never learned how to breathe under them. For a second the lobby tilts.

My face likely looked like it could be described as just having been to a funeral.

"Kousei...."Kaori says softly, reading it off my face. She was giving me that frown that hurt my heart.

"I see it," I manage. And I do. All of it.

Watari leans in with helpful nonsense. "Crowd pleaser, man. Everybody knows the tune. You can punt it into the sun."

"Focus," Tsubaki says, not to him.

Kaori doesn't look away. "Show some life. This is supposed to be exciting... right..?" She looks at my eyes with a strangely vulnerable look

The room presses at my ears—programs, shoes, names called from somewhere. Chelsea's voice threads through it: Do it because she asked. Don't lie about why.

"Sorry," I say, because it's the only clean word that fits. I make a smile. It feels cracked. "Just tired."

Concern elbows into Kaori's glare. She's still bristly, just with the bristles aimed at the problem and not me.

I lift a hand and cup her cheek because touch helps me land in my own skin and exist in this room. Warm. Real. Alive. Her eyes jump wider, then soften, steel still there.

"I'll get first place for you, blondie," I tell her, half joke, half vow.

She flushes at the contact and scowls through it. "Fine. You better. But it's not for me. It's for you..." A mutter, almost not a sound: "...It shouldn't be for me."

"It's not," I lie, then tack on the part that keeps me moving. "It's because you asked."

Her expression does three things at once—don't be stupid / thank you / I'm still mad. Tsubaki watches like she's ready to tackle me if I try any more detours. Watari looks like he's enjoying premium teen drama.

"Okay," Kaori says, snapping back to coach mode. She folds the entry sheet and tucks it into my hand like a ticket. "Bathroom. Change. Then warm up. Room C, third floor. Don't vanish."

"Copy," I say.

"Stop saying copy," she snaps automatically.

Tsubaki materializes a water bottle from the bag and slaps it into my palm. "Small sips. Now."

I drink, because ignoring her would result in hydration by force. She studies my face for a beat longer than is comfortable. "After you play, you come straight back to us," she says. "No solo brooding."

"Understood."

Watari taps my shoulder twice. The grin dims just enough to show the real person under it. "We're right here, man."

I nod. The floor stops feeling like a moving walkway. "Right. Bathroom, board, warm-up."

"Not board," Kaori says, exasperated. "We already did the board. You just do the things that require your hands."

"Those, yes." I hitch the bag on my shoulder. The strap creaks. "I'll see you after I get first place."

Watari thumbs-ups like an idiot. Tsubaki rolls her eyes like a prayer. Kaori gives me a look that says I'll hold you to that.

This time I take the correct corridor—the one with COMPETITOR in friendly all-caps and arrows even I can't misread. Kaori matches me for two steps and then plants both hands in the middle of my back and shoves.

"Go," she says. One word, all force.

"I'm going," I say, and mean it.

The competitor hallway is cooler, carpeted, a quiet river of kids and parents moving in an orderly trickle. A volunteer points, smiles, crosses off numbers. From behind a door, a few bars of a too-fast run leak out and die. Someone whispers a bar number like a prayer.

I look back at Kaori one last time looking in her eyes. She makes a shooing motion as Tsubaki and Watari gave me a thumbs up.

I smile slightly and turn around entering the hall

Time for the Maihou, again...

Chapter Text

The glass doors exhale cold air when I shoulder through them, the kind that smells like disinfectant and new paper. It's the kind of chill that doesn't just touch skin but slips under it, settling into the nerves. For a second, it feels almost cleansing, almost like stepping into another world. Then the weight on my hands reminds me what I'm carrying.

I'm still wearing a pajama shirt, washed too many times, the cotton clinging in ways that formal wear never would. The letters across my chest read *No Life is Enough* in stubborn block print, half-faded, but still bold enough to draw attention. The shirt hangs wrong without the blazer I'm supposed to wear over it. The blazer itself is folded inside a garment bag that cuts into my fingers no matter how I hold it. My grip adjusts every few seconds, but the straps keep biting down. Each reminder feels deliberate, like the blazer is scolding me for not putting it on yet.

The tote at my side is heavy with dress shoes. They knock against each other with every step, making a hollow rhythm that belongs in a different place, a different room. The sound makes me stand out, or maybe it only feels that way because I already do.

My hair refuses to cooperate, pointing in three directions at once. I tried, briefly, in the mirror at home, but the strands bent stubbornly back to their own geometry. Every reflective surface I pass in this lobby will remind me.

The air inside hums. Programs shuffle, their pages sounding like restless paper wings. Someone at the far end of the hall rehearses scales, starting strong, dissolving before they reach the octave, dissolving into the ceiling like smoke. A teacher whispers *breathe* to a nervous student, and somehow the word carries farther than a raised voice could. The building itself seems to amplify nerves. Even the fluorescent lights buzz as if their filaments have stage fright.

I aim for the assignment board, but stall halfway there.

Two familiar silhouettes cut into the lobby's flow like rocks in a stream.

Ah yes. These two. How could I forget?

Emi Igawa stands like a metronome, spine aligned as if posture is an instrument she's mastered. She's already dressed for the stage — hair pinned, bow clipped in perfect order, outfit neat to the point of invisibility. The kind of polish rehearsed until it looks like it was never rehearsed. Every detail tells you she belongs here, as much a fixture as the stage itself.

Beside her, Takeshi Aiza wears a white shirt with a flaming skull printed across the front. The skull glares at me, orange and jagged, ridiculous in this place. It's the kind of shirt someone wears when they lose a bet or when they want the world to know they don't care. Except Takeshi *does* care — too much. That contradiction makes the shirt look louder. His sleeves are rolled unevenly, collar crooked, but his posture pushes forward, stride clipped like he's already halfway onto the stage in his mind.

Their voices cut off the instant they notice me.

First, their eyes slide to the words on my shirt. Then, slowly, to my face.

They stiffen. Emi's breath pauses for half a beat, just enough to notice. Takeshi's jaw tightens. Both of them stand like they've seen a ghost that forgot to knock. Maybe I do look like one. My skin pale from weeks of bad sleep. My eyes ringed in circles that won't fade. My shirt more suited for a midnight convenience store than this lobby.

I look them over, noting every small tension — Emi's knuckles whitening around the folder she holds, Takeshi shifting weight between his feet as if ready to pace.

Now I really don't want to deal with either of them.

They don't think I even know them. Why would I, in this version of the story? I've made myself the quiet rumor — the boy who shows up late, leaves first, never joins the group photos, never lingers. Cold. Obedient. Forgettable.

"It's been a long time, hasn't it?" Takeshi says.

The line comes out practiced. I can hear the work in it, the rehearsals he must have run in his head. He's trying to sound casual, as if we're just old friends catching up, but the words bend under the weight of effort.

This time, I don't pretend.

I breathe once. "Long time, Emi. Takeshi."

The words drop between us.

They land harder than I expect. Surprise flares across both faces — bright and unguarded, like someone opened a curtain too quickly. Emi's fingers press into the folder, bending one corner into a small curl. Takeshi's mouth opens a fraction, then closes, caught in the act of forming a response he hasn't planned.

I smile at them — small, deliberate, the kind of smile that can't be mistaken for friendliness. Anything larger would feel like performance, and I'm not here to perform for them. I shift the garment bag higher on my shoulder and keep walking. Their eyes follow me like strings pulled taut, but I don't look back. I can already imagine the questions spilling silently between them, overlapping, clashing, unanswered.

The assignment board waits.

A wall of taped paper sheets sagging from overuse, corners wrinkled, names underlined by too many fingers. Ink blurred by toner running out mid-print, lists pinned over lists. The kind of board that holds everyone's fate in crooked pushpins.

My name. My number. My room. The piece.

Printed where it's always printed, with no ceremony. Names looping back into themselves like circles that can't help but return.

---

Competitor holding is a carpeted room with a *QUIET* sign no one bothers to obey.

It's the sound of nerves being built from spare parts. Mutters, throat-clears, the soft whine of zippers closing and opening again. Instrument cases cough plastic clicks. Pages turn in flurries, then again, then again. A kid rehearses the opening four bars without his instrument, fingers tapping on the cardboard of his score. Another leans into the wall, forehead pressed against paint like he's trying to charge himself with something stored there.

A girl rushes toward the bathroom, hand clamped over her mouth. The door shuts behind her and a moment later the tile answers her stomach.

The rows of chairs line the wall like soldiers waiting to be called. I don't take one. I slide down the baseboard, my back pressed into paint, the tote at my hip, the garment bag propped against my knee. The carpet resists, fibers stiff and stubborn. My head tips back until it touches the wall.

For five seconds, everything goes black — the kind of half-sleep where time stretches. Five seconds begging to turn into twenty. If I let myself fall into it, I'll dream of being late to something I don't want, and then I'll actually be late to something I don't want. Not an upgrade.

The nervous energy of the room swirls around me like fog. It hovers above shoulders, clings to sleeves, trembles in the hands adjusting sheet music. It doesn't touch me. Rivalry, scores, rankings — none of it matters. It never has. Points are for people who need the world to write it down to believe it happened.

I'm only here because I promised. Because last night I decided I wouldn't flunk on purpose. I'll play the way I have to — efficient, cold, perfect. No color I can't afford. No story I don't need. Win by doing the job and wasting nothing.

I almost didn't come. Twice this week, I thought about staying home. Twice, I pictured what would happen if I told her that. Kaori. That's one mention; it's enough.

The door opens. A volunteer calls two numbers. Two kids stand, startled like they didn't expect it to be them. Time slips again. Ten minutes pretend to be twenty. The room keeps rearranging itself around different pulses.

Then — heavy footsteps.

Marching with meaning.

I tilt my head even before I see him. Takeshi's stride — clipped, forward, the sound of someone who doesn't know how to hesitate. He cuts past me without a glance, already halfway into the performance in his mind. He turns the corner and is gone.

His footsteps fade into the hall.

"His turn," I say, too quietly for anyone else to hear. My voice blends into the baseboard.

I stand.

The bathroom is a rectangle of tile, bright and too honest under lemon-scented cleaner. I let the faucet run until the cold water is steady, then rinse my hands. My reflection waits above the basin, refusing to lie for me.

Eyes darker than last month. Mouth a straight line. Hair arguing with itself. I look awful.

I try pressing my hair into a truce with my palms, but the strands spring back, determined to fight. The mirror stares back with the kind of indifference only glass can manage.

The paper towels try to pretend they're fabric. I wipe my hands and listen. Through the wall, faint vibrations reach me — the squeak of a bench leg under weight, the pause of someone settling in. Then music. The first note like paper tearing clean.

Takeshi.

I follow the arrows toward the monitor room.

It's a classroom, desks pushed aside, a flat screen perched on a rolling cart feeding the stage. A woman with a lanyard guards the volume like it's her duty.

A handful of kids cluster in the back, pretending that standing far away makes them connoisseurs. The chairs near the screen are mostly empty, except for one figure who doesn't need to sit to pay attention.

Emi stands near the front. Hands clasped behind her back, hiding the nerves they can't stop from showing. She senses me before she turns, like awareness is another sense she's trained. When her eyes find me, I see the jolt beneath the surface — surprise wrapped tight around calculation. Her gaze flicks to my shirt, back to my face, then to the screen. No words. She doesn't need them.

Takeshi plays.

The camera flattens the piano into a landscape, his body into weather passing across it. His hands move with clean intention, choices executed with a plan. He leans into weight at the edges of phrases, the kind of choice judges reward. He pulls back where softer makes the whole seem larger. He builds the illusion that the music was always destined to go this way and no other.

Beautiful. Predictable. Not insults, unless you're chasing something else.

"He worked hard, you know..." Emi murmurs. Her voice is small but sharp, like a needle through cloth.

"Yeah," I answer. He did.

On screen, he adds a little extra emphasis on a line I've heard him underline since we were children. His profile catches the stage lights — hair outlined silver, a photograph someone would frame. A page turn whispers through the front rows. The air tightens. The last run gathers.

He lands where he always meant to. Clean. Solid.

For a heartbeat, the hall holds still.

Then applause detonates. Hard. Wide. It shakes through the floorboards, climbs the walls. Even here, in this monitor room, the air vibrates. Someone whistles in the back. The lanyard woman silences it with a glare, fingers tight on the volume.

Emi exhales through her nose. A tiny nod. Checking a box only she can see.

On screen, Takeshi bows. Shoulders squared, eyes lifted, soaking in sound earned with precision.

I watch pixels brighten around him, the stage glowing in a frame. Beautiful. Exactly what I expected. Clean lines. Big breaths. No surprises. He wants me to feel it, wants me to see him.

I get the shape. Not the pull.

Around us, kids murmur about tempo, touch, judges' faces. None of it matters. I'm here because I said I would be, because Kaori pushed me through the door, because sometimes showing up is enough.

The applause refuses to end, rolling like a train with no brakes. Emi tilts her head, already rearranging her plan.

Takeshi straightens. Breathes. Bows again.

I feel nothing I didn't choose.

Let them cheer. I've already decided how this ends.

Chapter Text

The applause was still going when the monitor flickered, cutting briefly to black before the camera caught up. For a second the room was plunged into a hush of static, and then the image returned—stage lights blazing, Takeshi Aiza in the middle of the screen, bowing to a storm that refused to end.

The sound system in the monitor room strained to contain it. The small speaker buzzed, rattling like it was close to tearing, every clap magnified, every whistle stretched thin. The applause was too big for the box it was being forced through, and the screen seemed to tremble under it, colors blurring at the edges as if the stage itself was shaking.

Kousei didn't flinch. His arms hung loose at his sides, his eyes steady on the glowing rectangle. The light carved his face pale, sharp, like someone had erased the warmth from him and left only outline. Beside him, Emi Igawa stood rooted, posture flawless, as though her spine had been poured into a mold. She hadn't moved since the first note. Her hands were folded neatly behind her back, locked there like they were handcuffed. Her expression was still—no smile, no frown, only a line across her lips and eyes that didn't blink.

The applause began to wane in waves, the first surge softening, only to rise again when Takeshi straightened for a second bow. The crowd refused to let him go.

And then Emi spoke.

"It's your fault."

Her voice slipped between the dying waves of clapping, quiet but clean, a blade laid gently on a table.

Kousei's head tilted, just enough to acknowledge it. "...Hm?"

"You're the one who pushed Takeshi that far," she said. Her gaze never left the screen. Her tone was so neutral it almost didn't sound like an accusation, but the words cut regardless. "Everything he just poured out there—it was to catch you. That's what the piano was telling me."

Her voice didn't rise or fall. No emphasis, no dramatics. Just an even line, like a measure marked in ink.

Kousei finally turned, watching her profile under the monitor's glow. Her features were calm, too calm—forehead smooth, mouth pressed flat, no giveaway in her cheekbones. She looked carved, like marble pretending to breathe.

"And you?" His words were soft, almost curious.

Her eyes flicked toward his. For the briefest second, the glow caught in her pupils like a flare. "Don't make me laugh."

The words fell like a lid closing. Her face didn't shift. It was the lack of movement that made it hit harder.

Kousei let his lips thin, but he didn't reply. On screen, Takeshi bent into another bow. The camera cut angles clumsily, catching the crowd mid-rise from their seats, hands clapping above their heads. Then the feed blinked and cut back to the stage emptying, light spilling over nothing.

---

The door swung open with a squeal of hinges. Heavy, uneven footsteps clattered against the floor outside.

Takeshi stumbled in. His shirt clung wet to his chest, dark patches spreading where sweat had soaked through. His collar had collapsed under the damp, his sleeves rolled too high, clinging to his forearms. Strands of hair stuck across his forehead, plastered down by heat. His breath came ragged, chest heaving in waves, every inhale sharp, every exhale dragged. His eyes shone too brightly, a feverish gleam that looked equal parts triumph and collapse.

His hands trembled. Not small tremors, but full shakes, like the piano keys had left their vibration embedded in his bones. He flexed them once, uselessly, as though to prove he still had control.

A man with a clipboard hovered beside him, patting his shoulder with brisk approval. "Good job, good job," he repeated, tone mechanical, like the words were stamped onto the back of the board itself.

Emi's hands unfolded from behind her back. Her shoes tapped softly as she stepped forward. At the same moment, Kousei moved too. Neither acknowledged the other; they simply converged toward him, their paths almost identical.

Takeshi's gaze shot up. Despite the exhaustion dripping from him, his grin spread wide, almost manic. His arm lifted—jerking, shaky—and he pointed directly at Kousei, finger quivering like the last note of a tremolo.

"How was that!?" His voice cracked on the first word. "Did you see that, Arima!?"

The question burst out like steam released from pressure.

Kousei's mouth curved. A smile—small, controlled, but real. "You were amazing."

The air between them shifted, subtly but completely.

Emi's eyes widened fractionally. Takeshi's grin faltered, then re-formed into something softer. He blinked fast, as though trying to make sense of what he'd just heard. The edges of his manic energy bent inward, melting into sheepishness. His hand dropped, rubbing at the back of his neck, the motion awkward, boyish. A laugh sputtered out of him.

"Heh... thanks. It was nothing, really, just—"

"But..."

The interruption landed like a bow pressed too hard into strings, a jarring scrape of sound that silenced everything else.

Emi's head snapped to him. Takeshi froze mid-laugh, mouth still open, breath suspended.

Eh... why not? Perhaps stirring their competitive spirits wouldn't hurt.

Kousei's expression didn't change. His eyes were calm, his tone even. "I'm going to be first yet again."

The smirk that followed was almost imperceptible—a curve of one corner of his mouth, no more. But it was unmistakable. Confidence. Not loud, not arrogant, but coldly certain.

For a moment, no one breathed.

Takeshi's jaw slackened, his eyes flashing wide. The disbelief on his face twisted with something else—shock, offense, and awe, the sudden sting of rivalry reignited. Emi's gaze sharpened like flint striking steel. Heat kindled in her eyes, her posture stiffened, her hands clenched behind her.

Her lips parted, words forming, gathering like storm clouds ready to break—

"Competitor 114. Emi Igawa."

The volunteer's voice cut through, firm, neutral, absolute.

The tension cracked. Emi exhaled, sharp and short, like air forced through her teeth.

Kousei lifted his hand in an easy salute, lips tugged into that same faint smile. "Good luck."

Her glare lingered, scorching, but her body turned. She marched down the corridor, every step clipped and forceful, heels ticking out a beat of defiance.

Kousei watched her go only a moment before he shrugged lightly, shifting the garment bag at his side. His stride back to the monitor room was unhurried, almost casual, as if the words he'd spoken had already vanished into the air.

---

The auditorium was alive with restless sound. Programs whispered as they flipped in laps. Shoes shuffled on carpet. Coughs punctured the air like commas in a paragraph of waiting. The stage lights dimmed fractionally, painting the crowd in a hushed twilight glow.

Watari leaned back in his chair, the program booklet stretched across his knees. His eyes moved lazily over the list of names, lips tugging as if he were reading in another language he didn't care about. Halfway down the page, something snagged him. His brows shot up.

"Oh-ho." He jabbed the paper with his finger. His grin spread instantly, wide and unfiltered. "She's adorable!"

Kaori was already leaning forward, her hair brushing against his cheek as she tried to peek. "Who? Let me see." She snatched the program straight from his hands, ignoring his protest. Her eyes darted quickly, scanning until they landed on the name. "Oh! Igawa-san! She's pretty popular too!"

Beside them, Tsubaki crossed her arms, a small scoff escaping her. "Of course. I've seen them before—Emi Igawa and Takeshi Aiza. I remember them from when we were little. Always ranked just behind Kousei. Like a matched set." She smirked, leaning back further into her chair, satisfaction pulling at her mouth. "But Kousei was always first."

Watari groaned loudly, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling. "So what are you bragging for?"

"Shut up," Tsubaki snapped, a pink flush creeping into her cheeks.

He ignored her, leaning closer to Kaori again. "So. This Emi-chan—"

"Already calling her by her first name," Tsubaki muttered, glaring at him.

"—is she good?" Watari finished, grin tilting sly.

Kaori tapped her cheek with one finger, thinking. "Hmm... Lately, not as much. She barely got through preliminaries. Third at the Tanizaki Festival. And at Koumegai..." She tilted her head. "Just an honorable mention."

"So she's been shaky," Tsubaki concluded flatly. "But back then, they always took the top spots. Right beside him." Her eyes flicked back to the program, narrowing. "Hey... tell me I wasn't the only one who felt like we just sent Kousei off to his execution earlier?"

Watari barked a laugh, though it carried unease. "Yeah. Looked exactly like that."

Kaori rolled her eyes, but a knot in her chest tightened. "He'll be fine. He's just tired. Barely slept last night."

Watari leaned back, folding his arms behind his head. "Don't know what's wrong with him lately. He's avoiding music like a cat avoids water."

Tsubaki shot him a look. "...Weird analogy."

"Shhh!" Kaori leaned forward dramatically, pressing a finger to her lips, closing her eyes as if she were scolding a child.

Tsubaki groaned. "You're ridiculous."

"He'll be fine," Kaori repeated, but softer now. Her eyes lingered on the stage, voice dipping. "But jeez... he's cocky."

"Cocky?" Tsubaki arched a brow.

"I mean—declaring first place already?" Kaori puffed her cheeks, her pout exaggerated but lined with frustration. "Who does that? He hasn't competed in forever. What is he, Mozart? He'll fall asleep at the piano. Or worse, he'll bore us all with that soulless perfection and then shrug and say, *'The judges know best.'*"

Her arms crossed tightly over her chest. The irritation was real, but it curled around something else—worry, affection, the ache of watching someone dance on the edge of collapse.

Watari and Tsubaki exchanged a look, their faces deadpan. Neither spoke, but the message was clear: *She's too invested.*

Kaori ignored them, pressing her cheek against her palm, lips pursed. He'll be fine, she told herself again. He has to be fine.

The stage lights dimmed further. A hush rippled across the hall like a single breath being drawn in unison.

The announcer's voice rang clear and steady.
"Next competitor: Emi Igawa."

All three heads turned sharply to the stage.

Kaori's heart thudded once, hard enough she felt it in her throat, as Emi stepped into the light. The crowd seemed to lean forward with her, waiting.

"Hey..." Watari whispered suddenly, though his eyes didn't leave the stage. "Didn't you and Kousei make it to the Tōwa finals..? What happened with that?"

The words froze her pulse. Kaori blinked, lips parting before she could stop herself. She pressed the edge of the program against her lap, paper biting into her skin.

Tsubaki tilted her head, curiosity mixing with something sharper. "Yeah, I remember. You both dropped out, right? And then—" her eyes flicked toward Kaori "—he shows up in Maiohiou instead? What's with that?"

Kaori felt heat climb her neck. Her fingers fumbled at the paper until it nearly creased. She forced a laugh, thin and brittle. "We... we missed the sign-up dates. That's all."

The answer fell flat between them. Watari arched a brow, unconvinced, but let it go. Tsubaki narrowed her eyes, sighed, and looked back toward the stage.

Kaori drew in a slow breath, shoulders loosening as she clung to the excuse. Her gaze locked on Emi, using the girl's stride across the boards as a shield against further questions. The piano bench scraped softly, the hall leaning forward into silence.

Kaori exhaled. Whatever else lingered between them could wait.

The performance was about to begin.

Chapter Text

The spotlight tracked the slow, exact path Emi Igawa cut across the stage. She moved as if each step had been measured earlier and laid down again now, one careful mark at a time. Her back stayed straight, shoulders loose, chin level. There was no smile, no glance to the side, no performance of greeting for the audience. The hush grew heavier the closer she came to the bench, as though the hall itself were holding its breath to avoid getting in her way.

Compared to Takeshi's broad warmth, her presence felt cool and narrow. He had walked out like a generous host. She came like a closed door, a clear line that said: listen first, decide later. Even in that restraint, something restless moved under her stillness. Two of the judges leaned in before she even sat. Pens settled on programs. A throat cleared and then dared not do it again.

In the rows just behind the judges, two seats that had been empty earlier now held a pair of watchful silhouettes. Emi's teacher and Takeshi's teacher sat near each other with the small, contained posture of people who knew when to remain unreadable. Their arms were folded in the same way, as if the position itself were a habit learned beneath stage lights. They didn't speak. They didn't need to. The set of their faces said they were counting everything.

Emi reached the bench and paused. She adjusted the fall of her skirt with one hand, then slid onto the seat with a small, exact scoot. Her feet found the floor and the pedals as if the wood had a pulse. She lifted her hands and held them above the keys—curved but relaxed, a shape that looked like readiness, not posing. The silence thinned into something you could almost see.

She took in one slow breath. The light cut a bright edge along her cheek. Her hands dropped.

Sound snapped the air taut. It wasn't a shout; it was a force. The opening rush carved a path straight through the center of the hall, and every head seemed to tilt the same fraction toward it. Her right hand burst into swift, even figures, the notes like bright grit; her left hand bound the floor under them so the rush would not lift off and vanish. Sharp runs, clean edges, a gust that stayed legible inside its speed—there was no blur. There was intent.

People stiffened without meaning to. The room's pressure changed the way it does when a door opens somewhere out of sight. Far back by the entrance, a latecomer froze rather than risk crossing that air. The piano sounded larger than the instrument that sat on the stage, as if a weather front had found its way through its strings.

She did not play politely. She did not show off. She drove.

In the monitor room, the first burst shook the little speaker on the metal cart. The sound tried to stretch to the size of the hall and discovered its limits with a rattling buzz along the edges. The flat screen caught the stage in a clean rectangle, the camera breathing slightly as if the operator couldn't help matching the pulse.

I stood with my hands loose at my sides, eyes steady on the light. The pallor from the screen erased the warmth of my skin, leaving a glass version of my face that gave nothing away. I didn't blink often. I didn't need to be closer; the set of my shoulders said my attention was already inside the frame.

Takeshi leaned against the painted cinderblock wall, arms crossed, his hair still damp at the temples from his own turn. A little laugh escaped him, not mocking, more like he had tripped over a feeling and pretended he meant to. "She's letting it out," he said. "Because you're here... also, especially with that cocky first-place remark!"

I didn't look away. "Maybe."

"You know how she is," Takeshi went on, watching the same center of the screen even as he tried to watch my face from the corner of his eye. "She's not friendly. I say good morning and she tells me to focus on my scales. I say nothing and she tells me to stop sulking. She told me my shirt looked like a crime scene."

"It had a flaming skull," I said.

"It had personality." Takeshi's mouth crooked into a grin anyway. "Point is, she's mean when she's bored. But she's obsessed with you, Arima."

I inhaled. "...Is that right?"

"Of course it is." Takeshi's grin widened, eyes bright with a teasing that wanted to bite. "It's almost like she yearns for your love."

I rolled my eyes. The expression didn't have heat; it was a small refusal to be dragged into the shape he wanted. On the screen, a strand of Emi's hair came loose and clung to her cheek. She shook it off with a small flick and dug into the left-hand ballast, punching the ground under the top-line glitter. The runs sharpened; the contrasts deepened.

Takeshi tapped his heel against the floor, half in time, half out. "She's always telling me," he said, "'You don't know the real Kousei Arima.' Those exact words. Like there's a secret map only she owns."

A quiet sound came out of me then—a short, honest chuckle that surprised even me. "The real me, huh?" A smile tried the corner of my mouth and didn't quite stay. "I don't even know the real me."

That answer eased the grin right off Takeshi's face. He stared for a second, a line appearing between his brows. He hadn't expected the joke to land there. He looked back at the screen as if the picture could explain it.

I leaned a fraction closer to the light. "She used to make a box around the piece," I said, voice lower, more to myself than to anyone. "She would keep all the lines inside every wall. Today she's pushing the sides out. She knows exactly where every nail is."

The deja vu pressed its cold hand along my ribs. I'd stood in a room like this—maybe this very one—and heard these words come out of Takeshi's mouth in this order. I had carried that conversation to an ending I never wanted and never forgot. I didn't say any of that now. The music had the floor.

On the screen, the camera found Emi's profile. The light drew a thin line down her nose and along the rim of her shoulder. Her mouth wasn't tight anymore. It was set. She nipped the dynamic down to a narrow wire and let it sing clean for a heartbeat, then snapped the sound back to weight. Even without the feel of the room, the little speaker telegraphed the shift, buzzing at the edges like a string pulled too far.

Takeshi let his arms drop and then folded them again, restless. "Say what you want," he murmured. "She plays like she picked a fight with the wind."

"She picked the right opponent," I said.

A tiny smile returned to Takeshi's mouth. "You're going to tell her she was amazing?"

I didn't answer.

"So what then?"

"Something that doesn't make it about me," I said, and the line sounded like a thing I'd learned the hard way.

Takeshi glanced over at me, questions stacked behind his teeth, then let them go for now. The picture was too loud to talk over.

—

Kaori liked the way Emi played

Down in the center section, I watched with the deep stillness of someone who knows how to listen and prefers it to talking. Watari sat at my right, hunched forward with his program squeezed in half like a crushed cup. Tsubaki was on my left, breathing through her mouth the way she does when she can't decide whether she's anxious or excited. The three of us were quiet in three different ways.

My eyes held steady on the curve of Emi's shoulders and the bright arc of her hands. I didn't rush toward names for anything I heard. Words could come after. Sound came now.

Chopin suits you, Emi, I thought, the sentence arriving simple and true. Etude in A minor, Opus twenty-five, number eleven. Winter Wind.

I could feel why the nickname had stuck. The fast figures skimmed across the top like hard weather, but there was a weight beneath them that refused to let the piece become just glitter. Anger lived in that weight—anger taught to run straight rather than burn everything down. Loneliness lived there too, not loud, but persistent, like the cold that finds its way through seams in a coat. And pride. Not the kind that looks around for approval. The kind that keeps its back straight when no one is watching.

I slipped my thumb under the edge of my program to turn a page. My finger trembled once. The paper stalled and then slid. I set it flat again and didn't think about it. My eyes stayed on the stage. A breath caught and then let itself go. The sound went on.

Beside me, Tsubaki whispered, "She's really going for it," and then pressed her lips together as if she hadn't meant to say anything at all. Watari nodded without looking away, his mouth open a fraction, a boyish wonder softening his face. He blinked hard, refocused, blinked again.

I listened the way one stands at the edge of a sea and lets the pattern of the waves teach the pattern of the body. I didn't compare this to anything. I didn't reach for the past. The present was full.

Up front, one judge set his pen down and folded his hands, the gesture small and total. The two teachers in the row nearby sat so still they looked carved. Without turning their heads, they watched in the same inward way, cataloging how the left hand laid ballast under the blur, how the pedal deepened the note when the air needed a darker spine, how the right wrist stayed soft at the top of the arc to keep the figures from hardening into noise. They did not glance at each other, but somehow they seemed closer for sitting side by side.

Emi's temple shone. A fine line of sweat brightened the light there. At one point she let a bass note ring a shade longer than strict taste might allow. It didn't read as a slip. It read as a stake. The hall accepted it the way winter accepts a fencepost in frozen ground—something to push against, not something to forgive.

When the piece thinned to a narrow line, I felt the audience lean forward as a single body. The soft thread was not a rest. It was a test of attention. Then the weight returned, heavier, clean, and I felt everyone rise back in their seats again without actually moving.

You entrust your feelings to music too....., the idea landing with no drama, like a truth that had been there all along and only needed to be pointed to once.

I didn't think of myself after that. I didn't think of Kousei. I didn't think of loss. The hall held one fact: a young woman at a piano had decided to speak in a way that could not be argued with, and the room had agreed to learn the grammar as she went.

The sound turned toward its last shape. Emi's jaw tightened for the length of a breath and then softened again. Her shoes found more floor. She inched forward on the bench—an invisible measure, nothing showy—and the runs kept their clarity even as fatigue tried to turn their edges to fog. She would not allow it. The left hand kept laying its iron at the bottom of the climb, one strike at a time. The right hand threw rope into the high air and pulled.

I did not realize I was holding my program again with both hands until I felt the paper's coolness under my thumbs. I loosened and then forgot I had loosened. The sound occupied everything.

The two teachers, still as photographs, shifted their weight at the same instant, the smallest acknowledgement of a risk faced and taken. The judges did not write. Some members of the audience had their hands pressed to their ribs as if to keep pace with the last rise.

—

Back in the monitor room, Takeshi exhaled through his nose and didn't try to turn the feeling into words. "What do you even say to her after this?" he asked finally, voice low.

I didn't blink. "That she was brave."

Takeshi looked at me and then back at the screen. "...Yeah," he said after a heartbeat. "Yeah."

We let the rest go quiet.

On the screen, the camera didn't dare cut away now. It kept a respectful distance, letting the whole instrument sit in the frame with the player, the bright board lifted high like a sail, the bench, the black floor. The little speaker did what it could and then rattled anyway.

Emi pushed into the last climb. The right hand's flight no longer looked like struggle; it looked like something that had learned how to steer. The left hand kept the wall fastened. Up, up, a thin moment of light, and up again.

She did not make the final moment "big." She made it exact. The last run arrived where it was supposed to arrive, not a breath early, not a hair late. The final chord landed with a clean slam, and she held the keys with both hands until the ring had nowhere else to go. Then she sat back a little, shoulders easing, breath leaving all at once.

"Whew......," she said—soft, honest, nothing performed about it.

Silence held the hall for a single beat, like a match cupped against the wind. Then the applause broke in all directions at once. People stood fast enough to scrape chairs. Hands came together with the sound of heavy rain on a roof. Whistles cut the air. Someone shouted a name and then drowned in the roar. Programs snapped along folded seams.

Up front, Emi's teacher and Takeshi's teacher—those two still figures—exchanged the briefest of glances, a tiny nod in the shape of their eyes. The glance said they had both been moved and would say so.

In the monitor room, the cart buzzed and the speaker surrendered to the size of the sound. Takeshi barked a laugh that had relief in it and something like pride. He ran a hand over his face and then just let his arms fall, as if nothing he could do with them would match what we had just watched.

I didn't clap; I couldn't from here. My mouth softened into a small, tired smile that belonged to no audience and no judge. I kept my eyes on the screen, on the way Emi stood from the bench and bowed once, formal, and then bowed deeper when the hall refused to quiet. For a breath her face opened the smallest amount, not to a grin, but toward it. It was the kind of unguarded edge that could become a smile if the world allowed it time.

Down in the crowd, I rose with everyone else. The sound poured over me like heat and air, not a thing outside me but a pressure I was part of. I clapped, steady and sure. The tremor was not there now; or if it was, the roar made it irrelevant. Tsubaki clapped with an intensity that tried to hide how shaken she was. Watari cheered from somewhere in the noise, voice lost in hundreds of others.

Emi stood in the center of the light, breathing hard. The hall kept calling back to her. The wind, for once, answered to the person who had summoned it.

Chapter Text

Emi held the bow until the sound in the hall shifted from heat to weight, until the clapping stopped being a wave and became a wall. She straightened with a small breath she didn't try to hide and bowed again—lower, precise, the kind of bow that says thank you and that's enough at the same time. The applause came harder for a moment, like the audience needed to prove it could, then broke into scattered cheers and whistles as people finally remembered they had voices.

The stage lights cooled a notch. That tiny change gave her permission to move. She turned, smoothing the front of her dress with one palm, and stepped into the wings. The sound chased her a few paces and then died at the curtain, like rain hitting glass. Backstage was dim and busy: a runner slipped past with a coil of cable; a stagehand tugged the board down an inch so it wouldn't catch. Someone offered her a bottle of water and she took it without looking, cap already twisting under her fingers. She took a drink like a person who knew how not to choke—small, careful sips even though her throat begged for a flood.

She kept walking. Her shoes learned the path without the rest of her; the map lived in her bones by now. The breath in her chest tried to turn into a sob and she pushed it back into a cough. It wasn't grief; it was the body trying to keep up with what the hands had just done. She pressed the bottle cap into her palm and felt the ridges leave marks.

A judge near the curtain leaned toward another and said something that made them both stop writing and start nodding; she didn't listen. Praise couldn't reach her right now. The piece was still moving through her muscles, a stubborn wind that hadn't decided whether to die or circle back.

She pushed through the side door into the hallway, where the air smelled like carpet and lemon cleaner instead of heat and people. The applause became a muffled roar behind a wall, then a memory. She didn't slow. If she slowed, she might start shaking.

—

"That was insane," Takeshi said. He wasn't trying to be dramatic. It came out like a truth that startled him the moment he heard it out loud. His arms fell from where he'd been hugging himself, as if he'd only just remembered they were heavy. "Like—did you see—"

I didn't answer. The monitor filled half the wall with light. The camera had nothing useful to show now—the empty piano, a too-close shot of curtain, a slow, unsteady pan as the operator looked for a face and found a microphone stand—but I stared anyway. The little speaker still buzzed at the edges from the force it had just been forced to hold.

I remembered the feeling from before—from the other life where I'd stood in a room that might have been this room and watched her finish this exact piece. It had torn at me then; it tore at me now. The difference was the weight. The déjà vu had mass today. It pressed under my ribs the way a hand presses when it wants to steady and ends up pinning instead.

Next to me, Takeshi laughed and rubbed his head like he needed to wake his scalp up from the inside. "She went all in," he said, softer. "She really did."

"Mm," I said.

He shot me a look, quick and sideways. "You're made of stone, huh?"

"I'm watching," I said. It wasn't an answer, but it was the best one I had.

He tilted his head toward the speaker, listening to the last of the applause as if he could make it behave by squinting. Then he pushed off the wall, took a step, and took it back again, nerves looking for somewhere to spend themselves. He had already played; his hands still twitched like they thought they were on stage. His mind lived in the moment he'd just left. Emi lived in hers. The present sounded like a big drum around both of them. I couldn't get my ear off the echo.

The door at the end of the hall squealed. We both turned.

Emi came in like someone who had outrun herself. She didn't look left or right; she was aiming at straight ahead and trusting the world to stay out of the way. A man with a clipboard stepped into her orbit because that was his job and patted her shoulder because he didn't know what else to do. "Excellent," he said. "Beautiful. Good job."

She nodded once, the kind of nod that doesn't take the word with it. Her eyes found the monitor first, out of habit, then slid to me. That was the moment her pace changed. The run stopped; the lean started. She covered the last few feet fast.

"Hey—watch it," the clipboard man said, jumping sideways as she breezed past the corner of his board. He looked at me and at Takeshi like maybe we were supposed to catch her. We weren't. She didn't need catching.

Her hand hit my shirt and closed. She pulled me down until the air between us went warm and damp. Up close, I could see the stray hairs pasted to her temple and the thin salt line under one eye where sweat had found its own path.

"I—!"she said.

"What..?" I asked. It sounded blunter than I meant it to. A question always sounds like a door closing when your throat is raw.

Her breath stuttered. Her mouth opened and nothing made it to air. I didn't move. Her fist loosened. She flattened her hand and left it there, steady pressure against my chest like you make when you're checking someone else's heartbeat and forget for a second which person is supposed to be alive.

"I..." Her eyes moved—my eyes, the hollow of my throat, the useless glowing TV, back to my eyes. "Sorry," she said finally. The word came out with the last scrape of her breath. "I'll go change."

"Yeah," I said. "Do that.... Good job"

Her eyes widened slightly,She nodded, small and shaky, like her body had to try the motion twice before it worked. She stepped back and her fingers caught in the fabric for a split second; then they were gone, and the shirt cooled where her palm had been. When she turned, her legs wavered. It wasn't dramatic. If you weren't looking, you'd miss it. I wasn't missing anything. A tremor passed from her calf to her heel and out through the floor. She corrected without breaking stride and walked toward the dressing rooms like a person who had nothing left and was going to act like she did.

Takeshi exhaled the last of whatever he'd been holding. "She'll kill me for saying it," he murmured, "but... I'm proud of her."

I kept my eyes on the corner she had turned even after it stopped being a corner in my head. "She gave it everything," I said. The sentence didn't need more.

The clipboard man checked his board and walked away like he had a schedule to obey even if the world was ending. Takeshi scrubbed a hand over his face and let his arms fall to his sides. We stood there with the speaker still buzzing like a cheap bee.

—

The bathroom was the one near the foyer with the big mirror and the bad lighting. The fluorescent hum made the whole room feel like it belonged to a fish tank. I went into the far stall because I didn't want to see myself. When I came out, I washed my hands, then slid my bag closer, twisted the cap off the bottle, and tipped two pills into my palm. One stuck to my skin; I tapped until it fell free. I swallowed both with tap water that tasted like iron and old pipes. No one was watching. That made it easier. I've always been better at doing ugly things when no one's paying attention.

Two women stood at the sinks, talking low. They weren't trying to be cruel. They weren't trying to be anything. Their voices had the flat, practical sound of people filling time with words.

"Did you see that girl just now?" one asked, drying her hands.

The other women nodded a complicated expression. "Yeah...."

"That was a lot of pills..."

Back in the hall, everything was loud and soft at the same time—programs flapping, shoes dragging, someone laughing because it was easier than crying. I found my seat by muscle memory. Watari was leaned into the aisle, pretending to check the exits and actually checking faces. Tsubaki sat very straight, both hands clasped between her knees like she'd tied them together so they wouldn't do anything she'd regret.

"You're back," Watari said, not taking his eyes off the row ahead. "Okay, Kaori, two rows up, left side, private school uniform—navy blazer, ribbon. I mean—come on."

I bumped his shoulder with mine. "You sound like you're birdwatching."

"Endangered species," he said solemnly, then ruined the seriousness by grinning. Tsubaki reached across me and smacked his program, just hard enough to fold the corner.

"It's okay," I told her, because she looked like a string wound too tight. "It's not like you're playing."

"Yeah." She didn't sound convinced. "But what about Kousei?" Her eyes flicked toward the stage door and stuck there like they'd been glued. "After a performance like that... could he get scared?"

"Don't worry." Watari finally tore his gaze away from the navy blazer and sat back. He crossed one ankle over his knee like he owned it. "He's a man."

Tsubaki tilted her head at him, unimpressed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means he won't fold," Watari said. "He'll—" he rotated his hand as if he could shake the word loose "—look, it's Kousei. He won't stop because someone else lit the room on fire. He'll just... move through it."

"That doesn't sound like a plan," she said.

"It's not," he admitted cheerfully.

Tsubaki turned to me. "How did he choose his piece? He wouldn't tell me. He barely says anything these days."

" Choipin 25 5,We rolled a pencil," I said.

Her eyes went wide. "Huh?!"

I shrugged. "It really doesn't matter what he plays. As long as he plays in the competition." The paper under my thumb had a bend that wasn't there a second ago. I smoothed it flat anyway. "The other pianists won't allow him to stay where he is. They won't allow him to stop. Arima-kun is a pianist."

Tsubaki's mouth pinched. She stared past me at the stage and then back again, slower. "The piano always drags him back," she said. The sentence came out of her like a thing she had been holding for months. "It's his chain. Every time he touches it, it feels like it owns him more than he owns himself."

"He likes it," I said too fast. The words were out before I could adjust them. "It's who he is. He can't run from it. He needs to face it instead of letting it eat at him."

"Maybe," she said. Her voice softened. "But sometimes it looks like it's already eaten so much."

We sat with that for a second. Watari's tapping against his knee slowed and then stopped. The hall breathed around us—rows shifting, a cough three seats down, the whisper of a program along a lap. Someone asked "Is the next break after this?" and someone else shushed them, not unkindly.

I stared at the door. I could feel the pills settle inside me like small round truths. I thought about how Kousei looks when he pretends not to feel anything. He wears that expression like a jacket he can sleep in. I thought about the way he smiles when he watches other people play—the real smile, the one he doesn't know he's making, that vanishes as soon as someone says his name. The weight in my head moved lower into my chest until I couldn't tell which was heavier, the thought or the blood.

"Don't worry," I said again, quieter. "He'll be fine."

He would...

Watari glanced toward the side door, following the thin strip of light under it with his eyes like he was tracking a comet. "He's not scared," he said, almost to himself. "He's tired."

Tsubaki didn't argue, but she didn't agree. Her hands tightened. The color left the first finger joint and came back.

The usher at the aisle leaned in to whisper to the front row. People shuffled their bags a little further under their seats. In the dark of the offstage corridor, something metal clinked on something wood and stilled. The sound was small enough that only people who were waiting for it heard.

—

The dressing room mirror didn't make me look better or worse. It just told the truth and then waited to see if I could stand it. I slid the tux jacket on and settled the seams with my fingers. The shirt collar scratched—cheap thread at the back of the neck. I didn't fix it. The old habit of checking the cuffs made my hands look steady even when they weren't. I closed the cufflinks and watched the little silver circles catch and hold a slice of light, like they were practicing for the stage.

Out in the hallway, the noise had the shape of a river from far away—one sound made of many. A zipper that didn't want to close. A snatch of an arpeggio in someone's throat. The odd, private little laugh of a person who had just remembered a mistake and was trying not to claim it.

I opened the door and stepped into the current. The man with the clipboard was there. He didn't look at me first; he looked at his list and then at me, like he didn't trust faces until they matched a name.

"Kousei Arima," he said, efficient without being cruel. He tapped the line with his pen. "Get ready to go on."

"Yes, sir," I said. My voice didn't crack. It knew the drill.

He nodded once and moved on, already talking to the next name. Jobs inside a competition are time zones; you live in the minute you're paid for.

I stood there a breath longer than I needed to, not because I wanted to delay anything, but because the strip of light under the stage door was moving like a thing that breathed. I could feel the last of Emi's piece still in the air—the way a smell clings to your skin even after you've washed your hands. I didn't try to get rid of it. You can't scrub wind off.

I rolled my shoulders back and let the old frame settle. There's a posture you learn when the only way out is through: spine tall, mouth quiet, eyes calm enough that no one tries to stop you. I found it the way you find a key in the dark drawer by touch alone.

Somewhere beyond the door, Kaori was sitting between our two oldest friends, trying to make her voice sound like certainty. Somewhere beyond the door, Tsubaki's hands were clasped so tight that the skin across her knuckles looked thin. Somewhere beyond the door, Watari was trying not to say something stupid and almost succeeding. And down the hall at the end of the turn, Emi was probably sitting on the edge of a chair she didn't trust, pressing her thumb into a bottle cap until the plastic remembered her.

Footsteps passed. A stagehand jogged by with a coil of tape on his wrist. The light under the door brightened and dimmed as someone crossed in front of it. From far away, someone laughed and then swallowed it when the usher hissed.

I took a breath that knew exactly how far it needed to go and no farther. Dust, lemon cleaner, a trace of rosin from some other room—it all mixed into a smell that meant here. The kind of smell you forget until you miss it.

"Ready," I said, though no one had asked me and no one was there to hear it.

I walked toward the light and didn't count my steps.

Chapter Text

My name is called.

The usher's palm opens like a quiet door. The stagehand tips his chin to the light. I step out.

The stage takes me the way the ocean takes a stone. No ripple. No fuss. Just heat and a circle and the black curve of the piano like a lake with glass skin.

I walk without pep. No rhythm to borrow from the crowd. Shoes on wood, a dull thud that the hall doesn't care to carry. The air has that held-breath texture rooms get before they choose to like you or not.

The room is quiet and tense. All watching me.. I'm remembered as a prodigy, but a marionette to my mother

I couldn't care less about what others thought of me however. I have already set things right once before. These demons have been faced

I stop beside the bench. I let my eyes pass over the crowd once.

Faces blur, then separate. Programs make pale rectangles in laps. A parent presses a finger on a restless knee. Someone's shoe buckle throws a tiny sun.

Then I see it.

A black plush by the aisle. Button eyes. Crooked stitching. Round ears. To anyone else, a nothing.

To me, the cat from my dreams.

My chest tightens in the way elevators make your blood pretend not to move.

"You are haunted eternally..."

I don't answer.

The bench gives a polite creak when I sit. Hands on my thighs. The fabric's cool. The hush gets sharper, like the room sharpened a knife and set it down between us.

I look into the lights on purpose. Better to blind yourself than be surprised. Dust moves like slow snow through the beam. I lower my eyes to the keys.

Thirty-six black. Fifty-two white. Thin scuffs where other hands have lived.

My fingers find their shape.

Oh well...

Time to get this over with.

The first notes are metal-cold.

Chopin. Études, Op. 25, No. 5. "Wrong-Note."

Kaori chose it for me via pencil spinning lottery. Same note as last life, how coincidental.

I started

Perfection is a posture until it holds you.

I play with economy. No flourish. No gesture you can photograph. I hear key bottoms. Felt catching. The tiny click of the pedal. Una corda shading color, not smearing it. Overtones stacking like sheets of glass.

This is control, I tell myself. This time I hear it. This time I respect it.

The room folds into one instrument. Coughs die. Programs flatten. Judges lift pens, then stop lifting them. No point writing in a blizzard.

The wrong notes bite. The lines run and turn. The wrist stays soft. The mind stays hard.

Bring enough ice into a room and it burns. I feel that flinch pass down the rows. The collar holds heat against my neck. My fingers feel like warmed ceramic.

I could win like this.

Not pride. Arithmetic. Do the work. Don't waste color. Make the judges feel safe, then leave with their certainty.

It was the Playing Kaori warned against. Treated like a chore and done perfectly

The Judges were frozen as I played as well as the crowd. He was no doubt better than anyone should be at this time, he had more experience than anyone here

I continued Face quiet. Hands honest. It's easier not to know who's making the sound.

A seam opens along the edge of my attention. A voice..

It intrudes on my thoughts softly

Don't go...... Kousei.....

No volume. All gravity. My hands keep moving—they're better animals than I am. A tremor taps the right wrist bone. Breath catches high. Left hand lays ground under the run. The whisper sits anyway.

Please... don't leave me... I'm scared....

I press harder into exactness. Step stones across floodwater: one-and, two-and, step and step. Sound stays clean. Heart argues with tempo. Lights prick my forehead. The floor under the pedal has a soft rim. Old scar in the wood.

Don't go, Kousei.....Don't leave me all alone....

A keyboard is an orderly country in a world that hates order.

Key lowers hammer. Hammer meets string. String gives pitch. Pitch makes interval. Interval makes a sentence no one has to translate.

Logic should save me.

It doesn't.

Snow.

Not in my ears. Laid over the present like a filter you can't turn off.

Stage light becomes streetlight through a flurry. The piano's curve becomes a roof rail. The bench tilts. Winter from a different life pours in.

I'm on the rooftop with her. In another place, another life.

My hands are on a different surface. A thin coat sleeve gone shine-slick at the elbow. The bend of a shoulder under wet wool. Kaori's head down. Hair in damp threads across her face. Trembling that isn't only cold. Her forehead pressed into my chest, like making herself smaller might stop the air from shaking.

"I don't wanna die, Kousei...."

White breath. Little ghosts.

"Please... don't go. I'm scared."

Her fingers knot the front of my jacket like fabric can anchor someone to the world. Blue shows at the back of her hand where bones push the age line forward. I remember the weight when I tried to pull her closer and there was no closer. I remember thinking how useless warmth is when what hurts isn't cold.

Below us the city looks grayscale. The noise wears a lid.

On stage, my left hand drops a breath and corrects before the line collapses. No one hungry for beauty marks it. The right wrist circles the dissonance and lays it clean.

My body keeps speaking the language it learned under threat.

The piece goes on. I go backward.

Her letter rings. Not a sound. A memory of a sound that teaches rooms to echo.

It doesn't arrive whole. It arrives like shrapnel.

I'm so so so sorry.

Thank you for everything.

Promise me you won't forget me.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

I love you...

Kaori Miyazano loved him

The words overlap where hands are meant to overlap. For a second I think I practiced the wrong voices.

There's a ring inside certain rooms after a loud sound ends—the ghost of it touching the walls. I feel that ring around the first time I carried her letter to the bench and learned eyes aren't strong. Ink bled where the pen paused. The strokes went heavy on choices that were hard. I'd pressed fingers to the page like I could push what spilled back into its lines.

Failed.

The page in memory weighs more than paper.

On stage, breath goes shallow. The damper's click grows too loud because my ears live in my head and my head lives in a room where a girl says she doesn't want to die.

The wrong-note figure lands on time. I count its teeth like pills. The failing isn't in the fingers. It's in believing speech can protect me from hearing.

Don't go, she said, that year on that roof. Please don't go.

Another life. Same mouth. Same eyes rimmed red. Same shake that wants someone else's heat to be a miracle.

I love you....

The mind won't separate memory and present if the weight is right.

Stages turn into roofs when air goes thin.

My hands stop.

I don't tell them to.

They pause like animals when they hear something nameless in brush. Left floats over nothing. Right hangs relaxed, thumb apart, as if mid-sentence and the sentence has walked away.

Silence hits hard enough to make a sound of its own.

Rooms don't understand at first. Belief comes with a grace period. People assume the music is still happening until the evidence piles up.

A judge tilts his head. Another presses lips flat, the way teachers do when a student has turned two pages by mistake and keeps playing out of fear. Pens hover like insects tired of their own wings.

I'm inside the nothing without air. The thing in my chest becomes a fist. Heat climbs my neck into my scalp. Not shame. Not fear. Each wearing the other's jacket.

The light is a wall that doesn't end.

Start, I tell my hands. Start from the last measure. One-and-two-and-three. Lay the left. Soften the right. Be useful.

The whisper rises through wood into bone. In it: snow static. Ink. The thin, brutal dignity of a girl who says thank you while her life burns because she wants the world not to worry.

I can't play a grave.

The sentence arrives whole and refuses to dissolve back into music.

This isn't an instrument.

It's a headstone with keys. A constant reminder of what was. And never will be again.

A program folds in the back. Loudest thing in the building for a breath. Then murmurs wake. Coughs. The delicate, offended hush of people who paid for a miracle and ended up with a boy.

My eyes blur. Keys become a river. If I blink, the tears might not obey. If they don't, I'll need a new country for my face while I'm still living in it.

Judges aren't cruel. They aren't kind. They are a machine that measures what you do while pretending not to look.

I look into the lights because looking down shows the shape I can't command. The burn makes the edge of vision grainy. The ceiling leans close. The walls lean away.

My fingers land on my knees. Not steady.

Someone will call it stage fright. Someone else arrogance. Another person a symptom. None of those words have oxygen in them.

I can't do this, not now.

The chair screams when I push it back. Long. Ugly. The kind of sound that sticks.

Gasps bloom across the first rows like a sheet snapped and lifted, then ripple backward.

A judge inches his pen toward paper, as if closeness could explain anything.

I stand. The jacket tightens then lets go. My body sways like a boat learning my weight.

Step.

Another step.

Walking is something you relearn in public.

Bathroom, I think.

Only word that wins its way to the surface.

Bathroom. Cold water. Door. Lock. Air. Or none.

The hall's noise follows me to the wings and sits obediently at the border, like a trained dog who knows what thresholds are sacred.

An usher lifts his hand, then drops it. No script for reaching into a breakdown and becoming useful.

I heard noise as I left murmurs of confusion and outrage. I stepped out

A stagehand checks a cable that doesn't need checking. Work is shelter when the weather turns.

The side corridor light is older. Yellow. After-hours light. My shoes make the tired sound floors make when they want to be left alone.

A poster of last year's winners lines the wall. Ink smiles all the same. I want to fold myself on the carpet until the world stops being a picture.

Bathroom door. Hydraulic hinge. Push. The soft, damp sigh of closing.

Tile. Pale grout. A mirror with too many bulbs above it. A faucet left barely on. The echo of small water in hard space.

I turn the tap hard. I want noise louder than my head.

Water hits the basin honest and mean. I hold my hands in the stream until my skin hurts, then throw a small river into my face.

Cold slides into my collar. The jacket darkens as it drinks. I let it.

Palms on porcelain. I bend until my nose nearly touches the drain. The water talks. I let it say what I can't.

Breath returns in broken pieces. Like someone handing back the shards of a cup and expecting me to make a cup again.

Don't go, she said. Different year. Same rooftop. Don't leave me all alone.

I close my eyes and the rooftop returns whether I invited it or not. Snow in my hair. Her breath at my throat. The small, bitter truth: sometimes the only thing you can give is staying, and sometimes even that won't count.

I open my eyes. A boy in a wet tux looks back. Mouth undecided. Older because certain bones are showing. Younger because fear does that to faces.

I'm not here for honesty. I'm hunting something survivable. The mirror doesn't sell it.

Behind the wall, the hall settles into the kind of quiet that happens when a noise arrives no one knows where to file. Competitions run on clocks that ignore weather.

Relief, not insult.

Let the world keep time.

I've lost mine.

I shut the tap. The blood in my ears becomes a small machine. I count because counting carves. One two three four. Again. One two three. Softer.

The cold dries on my skin. Cloth surrenders to air. My hands hang empty. I don't trust them with anything right now.

I dried my hands with a paper dispenser and looked myself in the mirror

Ugh... this was terrible... what was everyone gonna say..?

Damn it.....

Chapter Text

The Auditorium was filled with murmur's and confused chatter.

Head Judge Junzo Ibata's chair shrieks against the floor.

"Preposterous!" he barks, chin tucked, cheeks flushed the color of overripe plums. "This is blasphemy against the competition!"

He is small and thickset, the kind of man who makes a table feel smaller by leaning on it. His cuff bites into his wrist as he slams his palm over the rubric. Pages flutter. Pens hop. The brass nameplate skates and clinks against the wood.

Around him, the other judges exchange glances like small notes passed under a door. One clears his throat and finds nothing worth saying. Another lowers her eyes to the score sheet and writes a line that isn't a word. A younger adjudicator, all angles and caution, whispers, "Should we pause...?" and receives only Ibata's glare, a wordless order to stand firm while the roof shakes.

Murmurs ripple from the front rows and drift back, thinning as they go. No one claps. No one moves to leave. It isn't over, not exactly. It has simply fallen apart in a way the handbook doesn't cover.

Ibata drags in a breath and rearranges his features into procedure. "Mark it," he says, each syllable clipped, final. "Disqualification. Walkout mid-performance. Irreverent conduct."

A pen hesitates above the line, then obeys. The word sits on the page like a dropped weight.

Ibata sets his hands flat, fingers splayed as if steadying a boat. Under the table, one toe taps an angry metronome against the concrete.

He looks out over the hall as if the boy might still be on stage to hear him and be shamed by the sight of a man's authority. But the bench is empty. The light makes an empty oval on the black lid. The air has not decided what to be.

Somewhere near the back, a program folds in half with the slow crackle of a twig underfoot. A woman rises, sits again. A teenager in the aisle leans to whisper and freezes mid-lean when the usher's eyes cut sideways. No one wants to be the first to move, because the first to move might be wrong about what just happened.

Ibata exhales through his nose, a little cloud of contempt that no one will see as mercy. "Next competitor," he says into the microphone, and his voice turns flat with habit. The announcement goes nowhere. It drifts up into the gridwork and disappears.

—

I stare at the stage even after the light slides off it. It doesn't make sense. He was playing. Cold and perfect, yes—the old tone I hate, the one that lands like frost on glass—but still, he was playing.

What happened?

I feel the question ping and ping again against the softest places in my chest and fail to make a shape. The crowd is breathing again in those small, ragged ways that say, We don't understand, but we are embarrassed to admit it. There's a taste of metal at the back of my tongue.

No one around us speaks loud enough to count as speaking. Tsubaki sits with her arms locked over her stomach, as if she has to hold the pieces of herself together by force. Watari's program is bent at a hard angle where his knuckles tightened without him noticing. On the stage, the mic stands, useless and spearlike.

Music is supposed to be fun, I told him. It's supposed to be a place where air moves and you can breathe in it.

Was I wrong?

I thought if I pressed just enough, if I picked the right dress and the right words and I smiled a certain way, he might let the music touch him somewhere that didn't hurt. But I put him on this path. I told him to enter. I spun the pencil on the desk and laughed when it chose the piece for him, as if the universe was a bowl of candy you can reach into twice.

He collapsed under pressure. And I put him there.

"Kousei..." I hear my own voice and don't recognize it. It's small and frayed at the edges. I stand because the chair feels like a trap. The floor tips, only a little, only inside my head. I could push through the aisle right now. I could run for the side door and find him and press my palm to his cheek and say the thing that might make the shaking stop.

I stay put because the usher is watching and because Tsubaki's hand is on my sleeve before I can brush past her. She doesn't squeeze. She doesn't have to. Her grip says, Don't break our shape in front of all these people. Watari glances from me to the stage and back again, a boy trying to count, trying to build a logical bridge in a fog.

"I—" I begin, and stop. The word sorry comes up and I swallow it before it can show itself.

Is this... my fault?

The strange answer that rises in me is maybe. The second, truer answer right behind it is it doesn't matter whose fault it is if he's hurting.

A dark knot tied in my stomach beside the other one already there. Kousei was hurt, he had real problems.

He did this for me.... He said he did. how is she supposed to be okay with that? Did he have no motivation at all..?

I say nothing else. My right hand feels trembly, but I don't look at it. I breathe through my nose until the tide goes out.

—

The bathroom door dumps me into a thin yellow corridor that smells like lemon and old carpet. My jacket is back in the garment bag, the tux folded to a line of shadows on my forearm. My shirts No Life is Enough in stubborn block letters and I don't have the energy to argue with it.

People glance at me and look away. They do the double-take that says, Is that the boy? Some are pity, some are eager, some are a little hungry the way people get when they watch other people break and would like to be closer to the breaking. I don't offer them anything they can keep.

At the corner, a group peels apart and reveals Junzo Ibata moving like a storm with four umbrellas trying to keep up. He is shorter than he looks from the table. He carries his authority like a backpack full of rocks.

We meet in the middle of the hallway because there is nowhere else to go. His gaze lands on my shirt, then my face. It reads nothing and decides I am a sign he didn't approve.

"A competition," he growls, each syllable bitten off, "is a sacred garden of music."

I tip my head a fraction to suggest I am listening.

"It is not," he continues, "a place where one decides to give up and—" he gestures at the space in front of me as if the air remembers my shape "—cause a scene."

His eyes expect my flinch. I don't offer it. I don't offer anger either. The feeling I have is something heavier and much quieter. If I put it down, it will leave a dent in the floor.

I shrug once. "Whoops?"

The word is light enough to float. It doesn't reach him. He reddens from collar to hairline, the color pouring up like a tide. His posse gathers him up with their eyes and their soft "Sir?" and "Shall we?" and the hall carries them away in a tight clump of disapproval.

"Disgraceful!" he throws back over his shoulder without turning.

I watch the space where he was as if his shape might leave a noise behind. It doesn't. The carpet is the same beige. The light is still bad. The wall still has that framed poster of three kids from five years ago holding cheap bouquets and trying to look like winners in a book.

"Ugh he has always been a moody old fart..."

A voice

Then a smell finds me—stale smoke threaded with perfume—and the sharp report of a heel that doesn't apologize for itself.

"Yo," says a voice I haven't heard in two years in this life and more than that in the other. "Mediocre boy."

I turn slowly because I want the moment to be exactly what it is before I touch it.

Hiroko Seto stands there with a cigarette pinched unlit between her fingers, as if she had a mind to go outside and forgot. Her short hair is tucked behind one ear, the other side falling forward in a way that says I don't care and means I made it do that. A girl is at her hip—yellow hair in a stubborn bob, serious mouth, eyes that skim the world like they've already seen the part that matters and are checking to see if it changed.

Hiroko looks me up and down in one sweep that notices everything and judges nothing. "You got taller," she says. "Barely."

"What are you doing here?" I ask, but it comes out like, What year is it? What version of us is this?

"Came to watch a mess," she says with a half-smile that shows no teeth. "Got my wish."

For her, this is an old student she hasn't seen since he vanished from lessons. A boy with potential who slipped out a side door. For me, she is the person who, in a life she hasn't lived yet, found me in a room where the curtains were always drawn and said, I'm staying. Whether you like it or not. She is the woman I shut out when staying hurt because anything that kept me alive hurt, and I'm still embarrassed about how long it took to open the door again.

You saved me once, I think. You don't even know how much. Not yet. Maybe never.

She lifts her hand, and I expect a scold, a tap on the forehead, some old-woman gesture she's too young to earn. Instead she steps in and wraps both arms around me with no warm-up.

The hallway gasps.

"That's Hiroko Seto," someone whispers to the left. "She's hugging that boy." A phone tilts, thinks better of it, straightens again when the usher's gaze lands hard.

I go rigid for a heartbeat because my body doesn't trust sudden comfort. Then I breathe and my ribs make room. The top of her head smells like cigarette paper and some citrusy shampoo. The fabric of her shirt is soft under my chin. I remember a couch in a different apartment where I fell asleep with my forehead pressed to her shoulder while she pretended not to notice because if she noticed I would have to say out loud that I needed it.

"You're lying," she says into my shirt, voice low and flat so only I can hear. "You look like crap. You are not fine."

I make a sound that might be a laugh and might be a can't-help-it exhale. "You smell like cigarettes." Was it bad that he could use one?

"And you," she says, releasing me and giving my cheek a small, rude pinch, "smell like avoidance."

The little girl steps out from behind her sleeve, the way small moons step out from behind bigger ones. She stares at my shirt with the solemnity of a judge and then at my face. "Your shirt is wrong," she says.

"It's aspirational," I offer.

She considers this. "You look sad."

"I'm working on it," I say, and mean both of us.

Hiroko follows my gaze when it slips past her shoulder to the glass door at the end of the corridor. On the other side, three faces are pressed into existence—Kaori's, Tsubaki's, Watari's—all intention and no nerve. They are trying not to stare and failing. They are trying not to be intimidated and failing. Their hands are doing too much. Their mouths are set in that half-ready shape that says, We will come in if we are invited. Don't make us brave alone.

"Your friends," Hiroko says, amused, "are glaring at me."

"They're shy," I say.

"They're glaring."

"Same thing."

She flicks the dead cigarette with a fingernail. Somewhere to our left, the murmur builds a notch: "Is that her?... that's really her... she hugged him, did you see?... he was the one who walked off—" It grows a second head: "My mom has all her CDs... she used to play with—" "—hey, keep your voice down, the usher—"

Hiroko ignores them the way professionals ignore weather. "You going to check the results?"

"Why?" I ask. "They disqualified me. I got up and left. Not exactly pageantry."

She laughs once and slaps my shoulder, not hard, but not gentle. "Not every day you see a kid do that," she says. "Still. Go look. It's important to stare at other people's names in neat lines and remember that life goes on." She squints at me. "Also important to keep your enemies close."

"I don't have enemies," I say. "I have... people with strong opinions."

"Mm. You have avoidance," she repeats, poking lightly at my sternum with two fingers and then tugging on the hem of my ridiculous shirt. "I'll allow this for today. After that I'm finding a pair of scissors."

"You always threaten violence when you're being affectionate," I say.

She tips her head and smiles like a cat deciding it might not kill the bird after all. Her arm drapes across my shoulders with an ease that makes my throat do the dangerous thing. The little girl watches us both as if we're a duet she's trying to hear from far away.

"So," Hiroko says, casual as a thrown coin, "which girl do you like?"

I am not surprised that she asks. I am surprised that the answer is in my mouth without me having to dig for it.

"The blonde one..."I say, so soft she almost doesn't catch it.

Her eyebrows climb. There it is—the slyness, the satisfaction at catching me out where I didn't think I could be caught. She lifts a hand and ruffles my hair like I am still eleven and have not snapped in half and put myself back together twice. "Your piano," she says, "sounded like a desperate love."

I try to look offended. It comes out as a smile that knows it has been seen through.

"It reveals things you don't know you're telling," she finishes, and there's a note under the note that says, Don't make me drag it out of you. I will. I'm good at that.

I glance at the glass again. Kaori doesn't move when I find her, but something in her eyes does. She looks like she is prepared to ask a question and accept a lie and carry both in the same hand. Tsubaki is trying to hide the fact that she is chewing her lip. Watari is trying to look casual and looks like a person trying to look casual.

Hiroko follows my glance and huffs a little laugh. "Go on," she says. "Let them stop pretending to be furniture."

"I'll walk you out," I say, and regret it because I don't want her to leave and because I hate that wanting.

She shakes her head. "We're ghosts," she says lightly. "For today. I came to say 'Yo, mediocre boy,' and to remind you that if you lie to me again I'll throw a shoe. Consider both things accomplished." She nudges her daughter. "Say bye to the sad boy."

"Goodbye, sad boy," the girl says solemnly, as if attempting a spell. "Don't be."

"I'll put it on my calendar," I tell her.

Hiroko steps back and, for one beat, looks at me with the kind of softness you don't give in public unless you have decided to pay the price. It makes the part of my chest that has been clamped down start to think about opening. "Prepare yourself," she says, turning on her heel with a click. "We'll see you soon."

She leaves a wake of whispers—She looked right at him... why does she know him... did you hear what she called him...—and the smell of smoke that isn't smoke but the ghost of it in the fabric of her coat.

I lift my hand without meaning to, the way you might lift it toward a warm lamp in winter, and then let it fall.

The hallway is still ugly. The poster is still smug. The floor is still a terrible color. But I can breathe without counting. That feels like theft and also like permission.

I turn toward the door where my friends stand and try to decide what shape my face should be when I open it. A smile would be a lie. A frown would be a performance. Honesty would be an admission I am not ready to make in a corridor where anyone can watch.

The handle is cool in my palm. I push. The door swings in on a hush of air and their eyes meet mine and there is no place to hide in any of it.

—

Kaori's eyes find mine first. Steady. Tsubaki's mouth is a hard line she can't keep flat. Watari tries for casual and ends up worried.

"Kousei..." Kaori says, soft enough to be private. "What happened...?"

I hate that look. It doesn't fit any of them. It never did and never will.

"It's nothing," I hear myself say. "I— I just... felt really off all of a sudden. Nothing much..."

She doesn't believe me. I see it land in the set of her mouth. She draws breath to speak—

"ARIMA!"

The shout hits like a thrown stick. Heads turn. Takeshi barrels toward us, shoulders forward, jaw hot. Emi is a step behind, arms folded, gaze locked—confused more than angry.

Takeshi walks up to me heatedly

Takeshi stops too close. "What were you doing up there!?" His voice snags. "You... you just gave up! And left! Why? That— that performance— it was so messed up..."

I look at him. The heat rolling off him makes the cold behind my ribs louder.

"I'm sorry, Takeshi..." My voice is tired. "I guess I'm just not feeling well."

He stares, like the apology is a trick. Emi's eyes go from me to Kaori to me again. She says nothing. She's measuring.

"You can't.... You can't just.." He mutters

I can feel Kaori's worry behind me like a hand between my shoulder blades. I don't turn.

Takeshi opens his mouth; no words arrive. His shoulders wind down a notch. He glances at Emi; she only lifts her chin.

I make it easier for all of us.

"You two are the best pianists I've ever seen," I say. "Don't ever think otherwise." I say with a tired forced smile. I had nothing against these two and I didn't want to make a scene.

They both blink. Takeshi's hands unclench. Emi's mouth opens, then shuts, the reply shelved.

I turn to my friends. "Let's leave, guys. I'm tired."

Tsubaki exhales like she was underwater. Watari gives Takeshi a small later nod. Kaori steps to my side.

We peel away. The door hushes closed behind us. Night air meets our faces like cool cloth.

The city is lit up in squares and strips—windows, signs, a vending machine humming blue. Streetlights pour gold on the sidewalk. The sky is dark. A moth knocks itself silly against a bulb over the awning.

No one talks. Our steps sort into a rhythm. Breath shows pale and disappears.

Tsubaki breaks first. She always does. "Are you sure you're okay?" She looks at the pavement, like maybe the answer will be written there.

"Yeah," I say. "Just a little off."

Watari tries to lighten. He bumps my arm. "Stage nerves hit everyone once, right? Even prodigies. I read that on a cereal box."

"Mm." No shape to the sound.

Kaori walks on my other side. She doesn't prod and is strangely mute. She watches my face like it's a score, reading what I don't have the notes for.

We pass a convenience store. Fluorescent light spills across the sidewalk. The clerk yawns under the buzz. A dog trots past in a sweater it hates. The world is comfortable ignoring us.

Watari tries again. "Was it the piece? The, uh... Chopin wrong-note one?"

A train wakes under the street and pulls itself along, iron on iron, a low thunder that makes the railings chatter. The ground hums through our soles. The noise is big enough to hide behind. I let it.

When it fades, Tsubaki offers me an out. "If you're sick, you don't push," she says, like this is simple. "You rest."

"I'll rest."

Kaori's attention doesn't waver. It sits with me. It makes me want to be better than I am and also makes me feel seen in a way that scares me.

"Skip the results," Watari says quickly. "We'll check online. Later. Tomorrow."

"Yeah," Tsubaki adds. "No reason to go back."

"It's fine," I say. "Let's just walk."

We pass a little park. Chains squeal at the ends of swings. Far off, someone laughs under a streetlight. A scooter buzzes through the intersection and is gone.

Tsubaki peeks over. "Kousei," she says, careful. "If you don't want to do competitions, you don't have to... You know that, right?"

Kaori's shoulders tense. She shoots me a complicated sidelong glance With her typical... mystical look

I let the quiet sit between us.

"I know," I say, because it lets everyone keep moving.

We keep moving.

The neighborhood narrows. Wires drape low. Welcome mats. Curtains. Dinner smells that make you guess at other people's lives. Neon kanji twitches three blocks away, partly broken, still trying.

Watari spots a trio of girls in crisp uniforms and forgets to worry for half a second. "Cute," he mutters, then remembers the day, coughs, studies a tree. Tsubaki rolls her eyes with her whole head.

We reach the corner where lines split. Watari peels off left. Kaori goes two streets down. Me and Tsubaki, one block more.

"Text when you're home.... I have an errand to run for my mom" Tsubaki says to everyone, and then again with her eyes to me.

"Okay." I nodded looking In her worried eyes.

Watari lifts a hand for a half-hug, aborts, claps my shoulder instead. "Ramen soon. My treat. By which I mean Mom's, but I'll pretend."

"Sure." I nodded

They both give me one more lingering look before looking at each other and stepping away.

"Eat something..." Tsubaki says as her last words

They go. I pretend not to watch them look back.

Me and Kaori are shrouded by silence.

...

We walk the last block without talking. A cat traces a fence top like it owns the hour. A bicycle bell rings twice and fades.

We stop at her corner. She turns to say what she always says. Her mouth opens and she looks me in the eyes.

I move before she does.

I step in and pull her in and hold on.

It isn't a careful hug. It isn't a polite one you trade like tickets at a door. It's both arms, too tight, breath held too long. It's the kind of hold you use when you feel the ground tilt and you don't trust your legs.

She freezes for a beat—surprised—then her hands find my back and press, steady, sure. The wool at her shoulder is cool from night air; her hair smells like shampoo and wind. I lean my forehead into the place where her collar meets skin and stay there. My jaw shakes once. I try to swallow it. I can't.

I just wanted to hold her. Warm. Alive.

"Kousei," she says into my shoulder, soft and even, as if we're the only two people in the city. "I'm here."

The words land clean. I breathe them in like air.

"I'm... sorry," I whisper. My voice mistes against her scarf. "I couldn't— it felt like I couldn't breathe and then everything—" The sentence breaks in my hands.

"Then breathe here," she murmurs. One hand slides to the middle of my back, drawing small circles that tell my ribs what to do. "No clock. No stage. Just us. Right here."

A sound comes out of me that might be a laugh if it didn't hurt. "I messed it up."

"You didn't mess it up," she says. She leans back half an inch so she can see my face, but her hands don't leave my coat. Her eyes don't flinch. "You stopped when it hurt. That's allowed."

"I saw—" The rest slams into a wall. I shake my head. "I'm sorry."

"I know." No drama, just fact. She touches her forehead to mine. The streetlight paints a thin line of gold across her cheek. "I'm not going anywhere."

"I don't want to make you worry," I say. It comes out small.

"Too late." The corner of her mouth lifts—not a joke, just warmth. "But it's a kind I can carry."

Silence lives for a moment and doesn't feel empty. Distant tires hiss on damp road. Somewhere a bicycle bell rings twice and fades. I realize I'm gripping the back of her coat like I'm afraid she'll vanish if I loosen my hands, and I don't loosen them.

"You're not a machine," she adds, quieter. "You're allowed to be human onstage. You're allowed to walk away."

"Everyone was watching," I whisper.

"Then they watched a person," she says, firm and gentle at once. "Lucky them."

My eyes sting. She brushes a thumb beneath one of them, quick and ordinary, like she learned not to make a big deal of this.

"Say it again," I ask before I can stop myself. "Please."

"I'm here," she repeats, the same calm weight in the words. "I'm right here."

I close my eyes and match my breathing to hers. In, slow; out, slower. Again. The air stops fighting me.

"I... I keep hearing things from before," I admit, the words scraping on the way out. "Old things. They won't let go." Old memories of you

"Then listen to me now," she says. "Let the old things be loud if they want. I'll be louder."

I huff a broken laugh. "You don't have to—"

"I want to," she says, cutting me off gently. "You can lean. I won't snap."

"Are you sure?" The question is stupid and I ask it anyway.

"Yes." She squeezes the back of my shirt. "And when it's bad—call me. Text me. Stand outside my window and hum scales. I'll come down. We'll count breaths like this and be boring together until it passes."

I heard the words yet again

'I love you'

A tremor runs through me. I hate that she can feel it and I'm grateful she can feel it.

"I don't know how to be okay," I say, so quiet I barely hear it myself.

"You don't have to know tonight," she answers. "Tonight you just have to stand here and let me be on your side."

My throat jumps. "Promise you won't leave?"

"I'm not leaving..."she says immediately. "Not here. Not.... now." A beat. "And tomorrow, if the air goes heavy, we'll tackle tomorrow when it comes."

I nod against her shoulder. The motion is as much yes as I can manage.

"You were brave," she adds, even softer. "Not because it felt brave. Because it didn't."

"I didn't win anything," I say.

"You won a reason to try again later," she says. "On your terms."

I don't trust my voice, so I just hold her tighter. The shake eases by degrees. The night sounds come back in: a car turning, the streetlight's low hum, our two breaths learning each other's pace.

"We'll figure it out," she says, palms warm through the cloth. "Both of us."

"Okay...," I manage.

We stand like that longer than is normal on a street corner. A car passes and blinks its turn signal at us like we're in the way of its story. The streetlight hums overhead. My heartbeat pulls itself back into a rhythm that belongs to living people.

I let go first because if I don't, I won't. I step back half a pace. She stays close enough that the space between us is still warm.

"Get some rest," I say, and I mean it like a wish I can't afford to lose.

"I should be telling you that." Her voice is steady; she has put the mess into a box to open later. "Goodnight, Kousei..."

"Night...."

She gives me a deep lingering look before slowly walking backwards... then turning around breaking eye contact

She turns down her street. I watch her until she's shadow and then not. The air rushes back into the space she was. I put my hands in my pockets and walk into my own dark.

...

Oh well..... Back home and to work

—

The bell over the bakery door gives a small, tired ring. Night has pushed its face against the glass; our shop window returns my reflection mixed with trays and labels. The heat inside fogs my glasses and the world goes soft at the edges.

"Welcome ba—oh!" Mom looks up from wrapping tomorrow's croissants. "Kaori."

Dad peeks out from behind the espresso machine, wiping down steel. The place smells like sugar, butter, and a little bit of closing time. "How was it?" he asks, then too fast, "How was Kousei's performance?"

I unwind my scarf. "Interesting," I say brightly, like a sticker slapped on something cracked.

Mom's head tilts. She hears the wrong note. "Hmm?"

"Interesting," I repeat, softer. "Long story."

Dad tries again. "He did well?" Pride ready in his voice for a boy who isn't his. "Our piano boy."

"He..." I let the word run out of air. "He did something."

They share a look that means Don't dig while she's still standing up. Mom slides a small paper bag across. "Take these. Melon pan," she says. "For studying. Or not studying."

"Thanks." I tuck it under my arm, slip past the cases, and into the house. The shop sounds flatten behind the door. Our hallway is real in the way fluorescent isn't—shoes lined up, the slightly crooked picture we still haven't fixed, the thin lamp glow along the floor.

My room holds the shade of night that makes edges gentler. I set my case down, miss the stand by an inch, correct by feel. The bed is made with the tight corners I make when I want to remind myself I can still make some things neat.

A letter waits on my desk. The envelope is crisp, the font official in a way that feels like it will try to live longer than me. Towa Music Competition Executive Committee. My name printed cleanly.

I pick it up but don't open it. The paper is heavier than regular. I turn it. Turn it back. It feels like holding a door no one's opened yet.

I sit on the bed with it in my hand. The day runs backward through me—the bench under a hot circle of light, the way the music stopped mid-breath, the hall not knowing what to do with its hands. A hallway. A stupid shirt. A boy saying Whoops? to a man who doesn't know anything about grief. A woman who smelled like smoke and daylight wrapping arms around him like she already knew how.

At the corner, he hugged me like he'd fall without it.

The thought lands in my chest and sits there like a small, warm weight.

Music is supposed to be fun, I tell the ceiling that reflects nothing back. Freeing. Air that moves.

Was I wrong?

Maybe that's the wrong question. Maybe the right one is How do I make it gentler for him?

He was fine when they were together on stage..

The letter waits for an answer I don't have. My body decides ahead of me. I tip sideways and fall face-first onto the blanket. The envelope slides next to my cheek. Paper has a smell if you're close enough to it—ink and something like dust.

"Interesting," I whisper into the pillow, a silly word for a hard day. "Interesting."

Sleep takes me in the way night does through a half-closed curtain: slowly, then all at once. The letter stays by my face like a quiet flag I'm too tired to raise.

Chapter Text

Morning still has that thin taste of metal when I stop in front of Arima's house. The street is awake in a quiet way—delivery scooters, a neighbor watering concrete as if it were a stubborn plant, crows arguing about nothing. My daughter shades her eyes and looks up at the second-floor window like she expects a face to appear there and shake its head at us.

"Are you sure he's home?" she asks, voice small but crisp, already suspicious of the day.

"He's home," I say. "He goes nowhere when he hurts."

I press the doorbell. The chime warbles inside, off-key, as if the wire is tired. We wait. Nothing. I ring again. I knock, the polite way, then the less polite way that gets landlords involved. Still nothing.

My daughter watches me the way children watch adults who are about to break a rule. "Maybe he's sleeping?" she offers, careful.

"He is always sleeping or never sleeping," I mutter. "Same result."

I call his name. "Arima!"

Silence, fat and unhelpful.

The knob turns under my hand with the soft shrug of a house that hasn't been locked in a while. The door opens three centimeters, then six, then gives up and swings wide on a long, complaining hinge.

My daughter's hand finds my coat. "Mom..."

"Stay by me," I say, and we step into stale air.

It smells like dust, paper, something sweet gone flat, and the faint ghost of detergent that didn't make it all the way through a load. The entry rug has worn a path from door to hall. Shoes sit in a crooked line like they were told to behave and refused.

The living room is a low tide of things. Sheet music spills across the coffee table and onto the couch, the floor, the chair with the wounded arm. A notebook lies open on the cushion, spine broken, pages filled with little black notes and the pencil ghosts of notes that didn't make the cut. Next to it: a different notebook, smaller, full of blocky English letters and numbers strung together in ways that belong in labs, not living rooms. Margins crammed with arrows. Chemical names. Unpronounceable syllables. There are printouts, too—journal articles, a grant template someone abandoned halfway through paragraph two, a flow chart with five steps circled and three crossed out.

My mouth presses itself into a line it knows well. "Idiot," I say under my breath, and I don't mean it unkindly.

My daughter touches the corner of a page with a single careful finger. "Is this music?"

"It's something he thinks is more important than sleep," I say. "Which makes it dangerous." I couldn't help but notice the content. Nothing music related... all complicated words and science... jeez what was this kid up to?

We move deeper. The kitchen is two plates in the sink and a fork that jumped ship. A pot on the stove with the lid on sideways and a ghost of rice starch clinging to the rim. Chopsticks balanced in a way that says they're waiting for someone to come back and pretend they didn't forget them there. The trash is tied but not taken out. A calendar hangs blank except for three boxes: a competition date already scratched over, a doctor's appointment with no time scribbled next to it, and a word I don't like in red.

My daughter wrinkles her nose. "It smells like... old tea."

"He drinks it until it has no courage left," I say, opening the hallway door.

The farther you go, the quieter houses get. We pass the bathroom with its light left on. The mirror is fogged along the bottom edge, as if the last face that looked into it breathed and ran. Another stack of papers waits on a low bookcase. I scan them without meaning to and feel the back of my neck tighten. More formulas. More plans. Someone has been at war here without leaving the house.

I raise my voice. "Arima! Enough. You answer, or I drag you into daylight by your ankles!"

Nothing. That's when worry jumps, impatient with itself, straight into fear.

I don't knock on the music room door. I plant my heel and kick like the hinge owes me money. It slaps the wall and the echo rebounds into my teeth.

"Kousei!"

He's on the floor. For a half-breath, the world narrows until I can fit it in my palm. Then he moves.

His back lifts, his shoulders unstick from the rug, and he sits up in a slow, clumsy arc like he's underwater. His glasses are missing. His eyes find the light and don't like it. The expression there is a wound with manners: hollow, exhausted, not sure whether it's supposed to apologize.

"Oh," he says, and the voice isn't much more than a scrape. "Hiroko." He rubs his eyes

There are notebooks all around him—one under his hip, two at his ribs, three like an outline where his head must have been. A pencil has tattooed a faint black line along his forearm. The shirt he wore yesterday has curled at the collar; the stubborn block letters across his chest look as tired as he does. His socks are mismatched in the way of boys who believe covering the feet is binary.

I grimace because otherwise I will say something I can't unsay. "Get up."

He blinks like that is a complex instruction.

My daughter hovers in the doorway, her mouth a small, worried line. She takes him in with the efficient cruelty of children who don't have time to lie to themselves yet. She stays quiet.

I cross the room, squat, and put two fingers on his cheek. Then I pinch, hard.

"Gyah!" He recoils like a cat who trusted the wrong hand. The noise has more life in it than the rest of him.

"I've been calling and calling," I say, letting go only when I feel the heat of his skin under my fingertips. "Your phone is a tombstone. Do you not know how to answer a person who cares whether you're dead?"

He rubs his cheek, staring at me like I have offended the physics of the world. "Cut me some slack," he mutters. "I was sleepy."

"There are twelve sleeping positions and none of them are 'face down on staff paper.'" I point at his shirt. "And you are still wearing yesterday."

He looks down as if the shirt surprised him by clinging. "Yeah."

My hands find my hips. They do it often. "Bath. Now."

He doesn't move. It isn't defiance. It's a system restart that hasn't finished booting.

"Get up," I repeat, flat. "You smell like a boy who tried to out-stare a problem and lost."

He stares at me instead. It is unsettling, the way his eyes seem older than his face. Not wise. Just... used up in a place the mirror won't catch.

"What," I ask, because his gaze has a question in it and he is too polite to ask it out loud.

He keeps looking. It's a look that makes me feel how long the day can be.

I move to the window, slide it open with a clack, and lean into the cold. The cigarette has been behind my ear since the doorbell. I flick the lighter; the flame leaps as if it's happy to be necessary. The first pull tastes like old habits and worse ideas. I blow the smoke outside because the house is sad enough without it.

I glance back. He's still watching me like I'm the only thing in the room that makes sense.

"What," I say again, sharper. "Go take a damn shower. Don't make me bathe you like I used to."

He doesn't smile. "Can I have a cigarette?"

The laugh jumps out of me, but it has no humor in it. I turn, full, and give him the most incredulous look I have given any child since the one I gave birth to once put my concert heels on the dog.

"You want.... what?" I grit out

"A cigarette," he repeats, perfectly level, as if he's requesting a metronome. Almost as if he was just a middle aged businessman.

"You are fourteen years old," I say. "You can have hot water and soap. You cannot have fire and cancer."

Was he serious?

He blinks again, like the number surprised him. For a second something raw flickers behind the tired. It goes as quickly as it came.

"Oh.... Yeah.."

I couldn't stop the glare. This kid was good at making me worry, especially now.

"You can't smoke Kousei" I said firmly not angry. "Bath," I say, softer now because the anger is just scaffolding and the house knows it. "Please..."

He nods. It's small, but it's a nod. He pushes his hands into the rug to stand and winces as if the world weighs more than usual today. He gets to his feet, sways, catches himself on the bench like he meant to do that.

He looks at me, and I wish I could take the weight from his eyes and hold it while he showers. I can't. I point down the hall like the villain in a children's book. "Go."

He goes.

My daughter releases a breath I didn't know she was holding. She sidles up to me and slides her hand into mine, the way she did when she was little and crowded rooms were oceans.

"Is he okay?" she asks.

"No," I say, honest and rough. "But he will be closer after a bath."

I stub the cigarette out against the cold sill and watch the smoke lift away like it has somewhere better to be. I look down at the notebooks on the floor and the notes on the table and the papers everywhere and think, Is this music, or is it a different kind of weather with the same threat of storm?

I straighten. I will not leave him alone with this house again. Not for a while. It's like a tomb.

"Come on," I say to my daughter, forcing my voice into something that sounds like a plan. "We'll make tea he won't drink and food he'll pretend to taste. Then we'll go through these piles and stack them like a person lives here."

She nods solemnly, relieved by tasks. We start gathering pages as if paper could be convinced to behave.

Behind the closed bathroom door, the pipes rattle awake. It is the most beautiful sound I have heard all morning.

She remembers a boy broken but with innocence. She remembers hugging as he cried repeating the mantra that the relationship between him and his mother was her fault. It was. She had unleashed the nightmare of the piano on him in such terrible circumstances.

This was not the boy I once knew. But it was. Same face, hair, voice, everything. I'm honeslty a little fearful to see the full extent of damage to this boy..

"What happened to this boy," I think but do not say, "and how do I give some of it back?"

I don't have an answer. I have hot water and a cigarette I didn't finish and an afternoon I am prepared to spend stubbornly.

It will do.

⸻

The lab looks like a person tried to turn a submarine into a library and gave up halfway. Everything hums at a pitch you only notice when you're very tired. I am very tired.

I flip the page on the clipboard and hate the new page as much as the last. Mice do not care how much you want them to behave. Cells, even less. The incubator ticks softly to itself like an old clock; the shaker does its idiot dance; the freezer coughs every twenty minutes like a smoker who swears they're quitting.

The photo of Aya watches me from the corner of the desk—black hair pinned back, impatient smile, the one that said Are we done here so life can continue? She would hate this picture frame and tell me to put the photo somewhere less tragic. I have not.

The door opens without the drama of a person who wants to be noticed. The Arima boy slips in around the handle, makes himself small without shrinking. He has the kind of face that is easy to underestimate until he looks up.

He looks up. The eyes are wrong for his age. They have the low-battery light that grief turns on and never lets you switch off.

He was an anomaly.

"You're late," I say, because it is my job to make truth sound like an insult.

He glances at the wall clock and frowns like it betrayed him. "Sorry," he says, and it isn't a performance.

"Sit." I point at the stool the way one points at a misbehaving dog. He sits, opens a notebook, already on a page where I left him three days ago. The handwriting is small, precise, irritated with itself.

We do not waste time with how-are-yous. They are landmines in rooms where science pretends to be an answer to questions it cannot parse. I take a breath and deliver the news as if it is weather and not a prayer.

"It's coming along," I say. "Shockingly well."

His head lifts a fraction. That is the only gesture he allows himself.

"Vector stability held through the stress assay," I continue. "Expression looks cleaner than last week. The off-targets we were worried about are stubborn, but they are not multiplying. I want to say weeks to animal trials. A month if I am conservative and the gods want to amuse themselves."

He does not smile. He writes: weeks/maybe month. "And if the animals don't die horribly," he says, dry, "what then?"

"Then I submit nine different forms to nine different people who have made an art of saying no, and if they say yes, we discuss human trials."

"When?" he says, too fast to be calm.

"Two to three months," I say, and wait for the sigh.

It arrives. It is not dramatic. It is a sound of air leaving a boy who has been holding it for a year.

"Months," he says.

"Months," I repeat. "If the mouse data sings instead of screaming. If the ethics board remembers that the point of saving lives is to save lives. If the company lending us half this equipment doesn't decide we're a waste of free PR."

He nods. He does the math. The math is cruel and simple and sits on his face like a new scar. He writes 2-3 months, then underlines it twice as if that could make time behave.

"And if everything goes right," he says. "Can the people who need it get it immediately?"

I rub the bridge of my nose until sparks flicker behind my eyelids. "Compassionate use exists," I say. "So does the fear of being the person who approved a drug that killed someone. Bureaucracy is a religion. It has many gods. But yes—if the data is clean and we can argue that doing nothing is a slower death—some patients can receive it early."

He is quiet. I can see the list in his head: names, most of them the same name.

"Do not push the clock so hard you break it," I say, surprising both of us by using a voice that has outlived my wife. "It will not move faster, and you will."

He looks at me like he knows exactly what that sentence cost. He has done the archaeology on people before; he knows a ruin when he sees one.

"I can work with months," he says, and he means it the way a soldier means an order he hates. "If a rational opinion gives me that... I can work with that."

"I did not say rational," I grunt. "I said conservative. Rationality left this building when I married a woman who believed soup could cure anything." The memory lands with its usual weight and its usual mercy. "She was wrong about soup," I add. "She was right about everything else."

He watches the photo without letting his eyes quite settle on it. "Thank you," he says, and manages not to make it sound like he thinks it means anything.

"Don't thank me yet," I say. "There is still plenty of time for everything to collapse in a way that makes us look like we were arrogant and stupid instead of desperate and careful."

He presses his mouth flat. "We're not arrogant."

"We're desperate," I agree. "Careful would be nice. Try careful."

We move to the bench. We talk in words that would kill poetry—promoters, titers, transduction, degradation. He asks good questions in a voice that fails to hide its tremor. He listens the way some people pray. He takes notes like a person trying to make sure a stranger can finish the job if he dies midway.

At some point the coffee machine coughs itself awake and offers a smell that can only be described as contractual obligation. I pour us both a cup and watch him pretend it helps.

"You look like you haven't slept," I say. He never does "Do you need a bed or a brick?"

"Neither," he says. "I need data."

"You need a brain that can read it," I counter. "Go stand by the freezer for five minutes. It'll knock you awake or remind you you're mortal. Both are useful."

He obeys, which I respect more than I say. While his back is to me I let myself look at him the way I don't when he's facing forward: a boy balancing a war on his shoulders like it's homework. The angle of his neck is wrong. The posture says there's a weight that won't come off even if he sits down.

Aya would tell me not to be cruel to him. She would tell me to feed him soup and make him lie on the sofa with a blanket and a scolding. She would be right. She is not here...

He returns from the freezer pale and more awake. I hand him a stack of printouts and a red pen. "Circle anything that makes you nervous," I say. "Then we'll decide which nerves are worth keeping."

He smirks, barely. "All of them."

"Choose three," I say. "The rest you can store in your spleen."

He bends over the papers and begins. I return to the bench and pretend to be the kind of man who knows how to shepherd miracles.

I do not say out loud the thought that keeps getting louder while the shaker hums and the incubator breathes: This boy is throwing himself into the same hell I walked through. The difference is he might actually win...

"Months," he murmurs once more, as if saying it will make the word a place he can stand.

"Months," I say back, and make it sound like a promise because sometimes lying to time is the only way to make it move.

We work until the lights look tired. When he leaves, he thanks me again without using the word, and I pretend I didn't hear it. After the door shuts, I lay my palm on the photo frame. Aya smiles like I have once again done something she would approve of and make fun of me for in the same breath.

"Don't look at me like that," I tell her. "I am being careful."

The incubator ticks. The shaker dances. Outside, the afternoon has the color of old paper. I sit down and start writing an email to a man who will not read it unless I use every synonym for urgent I can find.

If the gods want to amuse themselves, I hope they take up bowling instead.

⸻

The letter is heavier than it should be. Paper shouldn't have a pulse.

I sit at my desk with the invitation in my hands and pretend the lamp is warm enough to soften the words. Gala Concert looks like it belongs to someone else's life—curly font, polite flourish, the kind of ink that refuses to smear even when your thumb presses too hard.

It's a concert to commemorate the competition and wish the winners and runners-up luck in their music careers. It's also an excuse for adults to dress up and clap at the right times. I know how these nights feel: the stage dressed in flowers that look like they cost too much, the air scrubbed to the edge of sterile, the polite coughs between pieces like punctuation. The smiles you practice because you're supposed to.

We dropped out last time. I can still see the email I didn't answer, the polite calls that arrived with the same number and were turned into silence. He wouldn't budge. He was ice and I didn't have enough sun.

Maihou was different. I barely got him through the door and onto the bench. Then the music stopped and he stood and walked away and the hall didn't know what to do with its hands. I didn't either.

My eyes burn when I think about the way he looked afterward. That hollow that doesn't belong in a boy's face. That tired like he's been awake for years. That stare like he's already building a future where no one has to watch him break.

She hated it. It felt like it was all just making him worse. It wasn't supposed to be getting worse. It was supposed to be better.

The invitation edges dig into my fingers. I press harder and then stop because the paper will crease and then it will be a different kind of true.

I think about Towa. The first place. The way being beside him made everything feel less like a job and more like breathing. He was okay then, I tell myself. He was okay because he was with me.

The thought's edges are sharp. I don't like the shape of it. I don't want to be the only door he thinks is real. Doors stick. Doors jam. Doors get painted shut. If he keeps pushing all his weight against me, one day something will give and it won't be the house.

I set the letter down and flex my right hand. The wrist complains in a small, mean way. The tremor is sleepy tonight, but it's there, like a cat that has found a windowsill and dares you to make it move. I roll the joint, left to right, until the ache slides into background noise.

He always looks so miserable, I think, and then I hate the word because miserable is something adults say when they have the time to be dramatic. He looks like a person who is carrying something too heavy for his arms and insists that all he needs is better form.

I didn't realize it at the corner when he hugged me like he was trying not to fall off the world. Not fully. I only felt how warm he was, and the way his breath didn't want to coordinate with itself, and the way he asked me to say the same small words twice because repetition is a kind of medicine.

I'm here.

I said it again. He calmed. He let go because I did not. I went home and pretended not to be scared.

The letter sits on the desk like a dare. I know what it asks: a duet. The program lists pairs the way menus list dishes you don't deserve. I know how people will look at us if we walk out there together. Like a story they want to read in one sitting. Like children who learned to be ghosts and then forgot how to go back to bodies.

He won't want to. The piano must be a headstone to him some days. Other days it's a door he doesn't trust. Asking him to play is asking him to stand on the place where he broke and test the floor again.

But I keep thinking about his eyes when he looked at me without trying to hide it. About how the music is a thing that belongs to him even when it hurts him. About how sometimes you have to go back to the room where the air went strange and teach it how to behave.

I wanted to play with him at least one more time.

One more time, I think. Just one wish. Just this.

I pick up the letter again. The paper is cool, stubborn. I smooth the edge with my thumb and feel the slight tremble travel through my hand into it. The ache nudges my wrist like it wants attention and I tell it, Not now, not yet, please.

I think of walking to his house, knocking, waiting, being let in or breaking in if he forgets how doors work again. I think of his shirt with the stupid words and his eyes that won't lie for the mirror and the way he said I messed it up like he was confessing a crime instead of asking for a hug.

He needs to get over this somehow, I tell myself, and the word somehow tastes like uncertainty and sugar. He needs to face it. Not because the world wants him to. Because he is a pianist even when he is pretending not to be.

I hold the letter to my chest like a violin I don't know how to play. I close my eyes and let the room be quiet around me. It's possible to want too many things at once. I know that. I want him to heal. I want the piano to stop being a ghost. I want my hands to behave. I want a night where the stage is just wood and the bench is just a seat and the music is a friend who doesn't ask for blood.

"Okay," I say to the lamp, because it looks like it needs reassurance. "Okay. One more time."

I set the letter down, smooth, precise, because control is a small mercy. I slide under the blanket and let my body remember how to be heavy. My right hand rests on the quilt; the tremor flirts and then settles. The invitation lies beside the pillow like a small white animal that will still be there in the morning.

I stare at the ceiling until the pattern of the plaster turns into something that refuses to be named. When sleep comes, it does it the way elevators do—slowly, with a small hitch, then all at once. The letter does not move. Neither does the feeling in my chest.

One more time, I think, and let the dark finish the sentence for me.

Chapter Text

The rooftop has this slow-breathing quiet I don't get anywhere else. The city hum is far enough away to soften, the fence rattles when the wind remembers it, and the sky is a wide blank I can pour my head into. I lie back on the warm concrete with a boxed juice sweating in my hand, straw bent at an angle it doesn't like. Tsubaki is cross-legged near the door, a manga balanced on her knees, lips moving along with the sound effects like she's chewing them. Watari leans against the fence, laughing into his phone at something a girl said, the kind of laugh he keeps just for that.

Summer break might as well be a finish line painted on the horizon. Once we cross it, I can sleep like a person again. I can block real hours for the lab and not stitch them together from the leftover edge pieces of days. No competitions. No rooms full of people waiting to decide if what you just did mattered.

I take a long pull on the juice. It tastes like sugar and permission.

The door slams open hard enough to bounce off the stopper.

"Nein! There is no rest for us!"

God damn it.

Kaori comes out like the rooftop forgot to invite her to a party and she decided to host it anyway. She holds an envelope above her head like a trophy. Her hair is a little wild from the stairs. Her cheeks glow like they caught a piece of the sky on the way up.

Watari hangs up mid-laugh. "Uh—hey?"

Tsubaki jolts, manga wobbling in her hands. "Could you not?"

I prop myself up on my elbows and stare at the envelope. It's that off-white, expensive paper that makes you feel judged for touching it. My stomach tightens on instinct.

"Towa Hall," Kaori announces, as if the words need the air to hear them. "Two days ago, an invitation from the office."

Watari whistles. "Towa? The place you two had that earlier competition?"

I keep my face still. The word Towa is a small, cold hand on the back of my neck. Maihou reaches up from wherever it lives and tugs at my sleeve.

Kaori strides into the middle of us and flips the flap with a snap. "The Gala Concert," she declares. "A special concert to commemorate the whole season, to wish winners and runners-up luck in their music careers. And—" she points the envelope at my chest like it's a judge's gavel "—we've been invited at the sponsor's recommendation. Me and you."

Watari grins. "So it's like an exhibition game?"

Kaori swings her arm toward him, finger-gun. "One hundred points!"

Tsubaki's mouth pulls sideways. It's the face she makes when she wants to be happy for me and can't quite make herself ignore history. "Do you... want to?"

I look at the envelope. The roof tilts a fraction. The straw in my juice squeaks when I bite it without meaning to.

Kaori sees the shift in me. For a heartbeat her eyebrows draw together, but then she straightens, turns the brightness up half a click. "It's not a competition, Arima. No judges. No points. Just music. Just... a chance to play together on a real stage, and wave to the people who believed in us." She smiles in that way that tries to lure you onto safer ground. "We made first in prelims, remember? We were invited because we were good."

There's that word again. We.

I set the juice down and scrape my palm across my face. "You both saw what happened last time," I say, keeping my voice soft so it doesn't break. "Do you really think anyone wants me up there again?"

Watari opens his mouth. Closes it. "I mean... lots of prodigies crash and burn once. It's kind of a rite of passage? Right? Like, uh—" he flails in the thin air where examples should be "—Mozart probably had a cold once."

Tsubaki shoots him a look that could peel paint. Then she turns back to me, worry tucked into the corners of her mouth. "We can say no," she says quickly. "We can always say no."

Kaori flinches at that word like it bit her. "I'm not asking for forever. I'm asking for this." She lifts the envelope higher, like maybe the sun can bless it into being less sharp. "It's a chance to make the stage ours. To make them listen for the right reasons."

I want to tell her the stage doesn't belong to anyone. It rents itself out to whoever pays with hours and blood that month.

Instead I say, "It's an exhibition, you said?"

"Yes," she says, fast. "Yes. A friendly. A celebration. Low stakes." Then she smiles, and the smile is guilty of hiding teeth. "High sound."

"Low stakes," I repeat, tasting the lie I'm supposed to swallow.

"No judges," she says again, and that part is shaped like a promise.

I lean back on my hands and stare at the sky so I don't have to look into the reflection of myself in her eyes. "I... don't know if it's a good idea."

Her knuckles tighten on the envelope. She takes one step closer, then stops herself like she just remembered I'm a skittish animal. "You won't be alone," she says. "I'll be there. We'll be there."

Tsubaki looks down at her manga because it's easier than watching my face. Watari runs a palm over the fence wire like he's smoothing something that won't smooth.

I line up reasons in my mouth. You saw me stop. You saw me stand up and leave. You heard the room breathe like it couldn't decide whether to be angry or frightened. You watched me fail, and I am tired of rehearsing the moment where I watch it happen again. None of them sound like reasons when I imagine saying them out loud.

Kaori chews her lip once, then makes the decision she came here to make. She slides a hand into her tote and pulls out a small pink shape.

The bunny blinks in the sun with its sewn-on eyes. One ear lists, the way it does. It's the same stupid plush I handed to her weeks ago in this timeline; it's the same stupid plush I handed her months too late in the last one.

She holds it up between us. "Look at me, Mr. Bunny," she says softly, putting a silly voice on the words that doesn't quite hide the way her throat tightens. "You got him for me, Kousei."

My mouth opens. Nothing arrives.

"When we were a duet," she goes on, eyes not leaving mine, "I felt on top of the world." She hugs the bunny against her chest. "You can redeem yourself for Maihou in this."

God, no. The thought hits bone. That wasn't the point. It's not about redemption. It's not about a neat line you can draw with a marker from a broken night to a clean one and call it even.

I rub both hands down my face until the skin warms. The roof is suddenly too bright. A bus rolls through the street below and pushes a wedge of sound up between us.

Tsubaki lifts her chin. "Kaori," she says, careful, "maybe don't—"

Kaori doesn't stop. She never does when she thinks the path is the right one. "You don't have to prove anything to anyone," she says, and somehow makes the words rhyme with prove it anyway. "Just... come back to the stage with me. Let's do it together."

Watari tries to help, because that's what he does when he is out of depth. "The sponsors requested you two. That never happens. It's like fate or... or marketing with good taste." He smiles wide. "The return of the ultimate duo."

I'm not the person who gets to make fate jokes.

Kaori waits. It's not a silence that demands. It's the kind that holds a small animal in its hands and doesn't close its fingers until it has to.

I keep thinking about a hospital room in a life that will happen again, about an empty chair next to a piano bench, about a program with both our names on it and a stage I walked onto alone because I had no choice. I keep thinking about how easy it would be to say no, and how I have never been able to say no to her when she looks at me like this, like the world could be kind if we went at it together hard enough.

I exhale through my nose. The sound is smaller than the decision.

"...Fine," I say, voice thin. "We'll do it."

Kaori's smile bursts out of her like light escaping a lid. "Yes!"

Watari whoops, pumps the air like a boy at a soccer match. "Let's go! Gala time!"

Tsubaki's relief is complicated. It crosses her face and leaves a bruise behind. "Okay," she says. "Okay."

Kaori tucks the bunny back into her bag like a secret she might need again. She steps forward, impulsive, like she wants to throw her arms around me, then stops herself because she can see the way I'm holding together with string. Her hand hovers in the space between us, then falls. "We'll make a plan," she says briskly, which is how she handles feeling too much. "Schedule, pieces, rehearsal time, everything. We'll make it gentle."

The word gentle almost makes me laugh. It comes out as a breath that might be a sound. "Yeah."

"Great," Watari says, clapping once as if meetings appear when you summon them. "We'll, uh, be your... team. Snacks. Water. Security detail."

Tsubaki rolls her eyes without malice. "You faint at the sight of sheet music."

"Only when it has more than four sharps," he argues, wounded. "Which is illegal, by the way."

Kaori steps backward toward the door, already shifting into motion. "I'll text you later," she says to me, then to both of them, "and you two—help me bully him into resting. If he shows up to rehearsal looking like a ghost, I will haunt him harder."

They salute like idiots. It helps.

When the door shuts behind her, the rooftop exhales with us. Watari wanders back to his phone, already composing texts that make no sense. Tsubaki pretends to read, then doesn't. I pick up my juice and take a sip. It tasted better ten minutes ago.

I lay back down and stare at the sky until the pale blue looks like paper I could write a different life on. It doesn't bend.

—

Hiroko finds me after school because of course she does. She has a talent for arriving exactly at the point in a day when I think no one will. The kid with the yellow hair is with her, her hand snagged in Hiroko's jacket pocket like a hook.

We take the corner table at a café that pretends it isn't loud by hanging too many plants near the ceiling. Hiroko orders coffee and then looks at it like it owes her back rent. The kid orders melon soda and watches the bubbles with professional suspicion.

"I didn't think you'd ever go back to piano," Hiroko says as soon as the drinks land. She taps ash into a saucer instead of lighting anything because the waiter already told her no, twice.

"Neither did I," I say, tasting the way the words fit in my mouth.

"So how come?" she says, eyes narrow, not unkind. She turns the saucer under her finger. Ceramic sings.

I stare into the coffee I didn't order and let silence be a shape between us for a few beats. The kid tugs my sleeve like she is checking whether I'm real.

"I'm doing it for someone," I say finally.

Hiroko arches an eyebrow. "Someone who?"

I think about saying the name out loud, about letting it occupy the space between us the way it occupies every other space in my head. Instead I look at the condensation on the outside of the melon soda glass and the way the straw bends. "One day in April," I say, and my voice goes softer on its own, "I met a strange violinist."

Hiroko snorts. "They're all strange."

"This one dragged me to the stage," I say, and the corner of my mouth betrays me by lifting. "She showed me something I hadn't seen before."

"Fun?" Hiroko says, mock-innocent.

"Air," I say. The smile leaves without me asking it to. I rub my face with both hands and feel the day on my skin like dust. "But the piano—" I pause, because I know how she feels about people who say the next thing I'm going to say.

"Go on," she says, not gently.

"The piano hates me." The words land between the cups like small stones. "It scorns me. It's a gravestone with a name on it."

Hiroko's mouth flattens. The kid frowns like I just told her the sky is a door and it isn't.

"Thank you," I add, because if I don't say it now it will grow too big to carry. "For sticking with my cursed family." I try to make a smile for it. It comes out hollow but true. "You made the piano bearable. You made it all bearable"

...

Hiroko's eyes shine in a way she will deny. She pushes her chair back a centimeter like distance could stop feelings from arriving. Then she stands up and steps around the table, and before I can decide what to do with my hands, she puts her arms around me.

It's not the kind of hug people do in public. It's the kind you save for after storms, for rooms where curtains have been drawn too long. I freeze because I always do when comfort arrives without a receipt. Then I let my hands find the back of her jacket and hold. She smells like cigarette paper and lemon hand soap. The fabric under my chin is soft from too many washes. I close my eyes because it makes the world stop insisting on itself for a second.

"You're not cursed," she says into my shoulder, voice small and fierce. "Don't ever say that." She repeats "Never"

I tighten my grip. I don't agree. I don't argue. There are some true things you can't leave in the air where other people can crowd around them.

She squeezes once more and steps back, pushing my hair out of my eyes with a rough knuckle like I'm fourteen again and trying to hide behind bangs. She doesn't sit. She stands there, arms crossed, looking at me like I'm a puzzle and also a cat she's decided to adopt against her better judgment.

Her daughter reaches across the table very gravely and slides the melon soda toward me. "You can have some," she says, as if I've been promoted.

"Thank you," I say solemnly, and take a sip. It tastes like sugar and artificial green and something like being allowed.

Hiroko nods at the coffee. "Drink," she orders. "Eat later. Shower at some point this century. When's the gala?"

I blink. "You know about—"

She rolls her eyes. "Please. People are already buzzing about the duo. The internet exists. Also, I'm nosy and a musician ."

"Soon," I say. "Soon enough to feel like it's tomorrow."

She hums, the way she does when she's decided she's going to be in charge and is rehearsing which weapons to pull off the wall first. "Good," she says. "We'll need time to make you look un-dead. And to find a piano that doesn't smell like failure."

"Those exist?"

"In rooms where I have opinions," she says, smug.

I let the sound that might be a laugh scrape out of me. It's rusty. It still counts.

Hiroko sits again, finally, and pokes at the ashless cigarette on the saucer with the same disapproval she uses on my posture. "You sure about this?" she asks, not unkindly. "The stage? With her?"

"No," I say honestly. "But I said yes." Yet again

Her eyes soften. "That counts."

I nod, because if I don't, my head will do it on its own and that's undignified. We drink bad coffee and good soda and let the plants pretend they are absorbing whatever we can't say out loud. Outside, the afternoon decides to be warm on purpose. Inside, I keep my hands around the cup even after it goes cold, because sometimes you hold onto things for the shape of them, not the heat.

When we leave, Hiroko thumps my shoulder with the flat of her palm. "Practice," she says. "Eat. Sleep. I will hunt you down if you do none of these."

"I believe you," I say.

"You should," she says, and smirks. "Mediocre boy."

I watch them walk away—Hiroko's heel clacking out a steady rhythm, her daughter hopping every other tile like she's solving a puzzle with her feet. The street feels less like a corridor and more like a place people live.

I turn toward home with the faint outline of a plan sitting in my chest like a cautious bird. It doesn't sing. It doesn't leave. It's enough for now.

——

Evening takes the bridge by degrees. First the heat lets go of the railing, then the river cools the air just enough to taste. Streetlights blink to life like shy eyes. My shoes thrum the boards. Hers do, too. We've been walking side by side for a while without saying much. It's not uncomfortable, just heavy in the way clouds are heavy before they decide what kind of weather they want to be.

I said yes. I said we'd do the gala. Again. The word still feels unreal in my mouth, like I borrowed it from someone braver and forgot to return it. The closer we get to night, the more the yes pulls at me. Practice with her. They weren't even gonna be able to play together...

Kaori leans on the rail and looks out over the water. The river moves like it knows secrets and refuses to say them out loud. Down below, the brush on the banks has grown tall and careless. Little green lights stitch themselves on and off between the stems.

She doesn't look at me when she finally speaks. "Kousei," she says, almost a whisper. "Do you seriously... not want to play again?"

I keep my eyes on the ripples beneath us. "I don't know," I say, and even I can hear how tired it sounds."I said yeah didn't I?"

She huffs a breath that could be a laugh if it had more air in it. "That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have that isn't a lie."

She pushes away from the rail. For a second I think she's going to scold me, or pout, or turn back toward town and leave me to my weather. Instead she swings a leg over the edge, hops down to the shoulder slope, and sinks into the knee-high grass like it invited her. "Come on," she says, and her voice is lighter now. "Look."

I follow because I always do. The bank is soft and a little damp. Stems scrape my shins. Fireflies lift when we disturb them and hang in the air a second before deciding where to blink next. It looks like somebody is stitching the dark back together with green thread.

"Pretty, right?" she says, turning a slow circle with her palms open like she's ready to catch the night itself.

I don't trust myself to answer, so I nod. A little light drifts close to my face, brightens like it recognizes me, then winks out and reappears by her shoulder as if it changed its mind.

She reaches with easy hands and cups one without closing too tight. "Got you," she murmurs, bringing her fingers together like she's holding a secret. The insect pulses in her palms—dim, bright, dim again. "Ba-dump," she says, matching her voice to it. "Ba-dump. Like a heartbeat." She looks up at me. "This is the light of life."

Deja vu comes down so fast I have to shift my feet to keep my balance. Another river, another spring, another sentence said in almost the same shape. The world doubles a second and then merges, imperfectly, the way a bad film reel slides in front of the projector and stutters before it catches.

She pretends her hands are a microphone and pushes them toward my mouth. "Testing, testing. Mr. Arima," she says in her announcer voice that's just a shade too dramatic to be anything but charming, "what are your thoughts on your first competition after such a long time?"

I stare at her. She beams at me like she can pull an answer out of my throat with her eyes. The firefly pulses between us, patient.

"I don't belong there," I say.

She blinks. "Huh? What does that even mean?"

"The people there," I say, and the words start lining up once they find a way through my teeth. "They love the piano. They have these clean dreams. An actual drive. They want to be heard, to get better, to... to be chosen." I swallow. The river sounds bigger all of a sudden. "Me? I'm none of that."

She drops the pretend microphone a little. "That's not true."

"It is," I say. The honesty tastes like metal. "I go up there because I can't keep running forever. Because I have to face it. Because you asked." I look past her shoulder so I won't have to watch her face change. "Not because I want to be there."

A small silence opens between us. The bright speck in her hands keeps pulsing like it refuses to take a hint.

"You used to want it..." she says softly.

"Did I?" I shrug, and it feels like pulling a blanket over something broken. "I used to do it because my mother wanted it. After that... I did it because it was the only language I had left. Then it turned into a headstone and I forgot how to talk."

She bites her lower lip. In the half-light, her hair falls forward and shadows her eyes. "You weren't a headstone at Towa," she says, and there's heat under the words now. "You were a hurricane and then a sunrise. People stood up because they couldn't help it. You remember that, right?"

I remember the hall, the way it held us like a pair of hands that didn't want to drop anything. I remember her bow brushing my arm when we stood together. I remember thinking, If this is the last time, fine, let it be this bright. I don't say any of that. I just rub a palm over my face and watch the lights lift and fall over the river like thoughts I can't keep.

"I said yes," I say. "I'm going to play. I just... don't know what that says about me anymore."

She studies me like she's looking for a switch I accidentally turned off. "It says you're brave," she says.

"It says I'm foolish," I say back.

"Those can be the same thing," she counters.

I almost smile. Almost.

She takes a breath, changes tact the way she does when the first path gets muddy. "Okay," she says. "Then don't think about who you're supposed to be when you're on a stage. Think about this." She lifts her hand, peels her fingers apart just enough to let the firefly's glow leak through. "Ba-dump. That little push that says, 'I'm here.' Play for that."

"What if that light goes out?"

"Then you played for it while it was here," she says, as if the math is simple, as if the fear isn't shaped like a month spent next to a hospital bed pretending to be hopeful. "You already did the hardest part, Kousei. You turned around. You stopped running."

I breathe out through my nose. The air leaves me like I've been keeping it for someone else.

We stand in the grass like that for a while, letting the insects redraw the borders of night. Somewhere a bicycle bell rings twice and fades. A dog yips and goes quiet. The river keeps talking to the stones in a voice meant for them alone.

She glances at me sidelong. "Can I ask you something?"

"You already are."

"What was holding you together?" she asks. "At Maihou. On stage. In the hall after. What kept you from... you know." She doesn't finish the sentence. She doesn't have to. We both hear the missing words.

I answer before I can think myself out of it. "You were."

The world goes even quieter. She stops blinking, like her body forgot how.

It isn't a dramatic line. It's just the truest one. When I think about all the days I stayed upright because I didn't want her to see me fall apart, and all the nights I slept at all because she told me to and sat on the phone for an hour while I didn't speak... the sentence is a simple tally, not poetry.

Her mouth opens, closes. She swallows. The green light paints the edges of her lashes and the tip of her nose.

"Don't do that," she says finally, and her voice shakes once on the way out. "Don't... hang yourself on me like that...."

"I'm not—"

She shakes her head again, harder. "I mean, I— I want to help. Of course I do. But you can't—" She looks down at her hand like it just remembered it's holding an insect. Her words drop to a whisper that wasn't meant for me.

"You know.... I'm not always going to be around to help you...."

It hits me with the accuracy of a knife thrown by someone who never misses. My body knows the line before my mind does. Another spring, another evening, another version of her with the same brightness and the same shadow stitched underneath. The exact sentence, hardly changed. A warning disguised as a kindness you can't argue with.

Everything inside me goes still. Not dramatic—just the way ponds go still when the wind takes a breath.

She looks up and sees it happen to my face. Her eyes widen. "Kousei?"

My throat is paper. I force it to bend. "I heard you."

"I didn't mean—" She stops. Starts again, softer. "I meant... you have to want this for you. If it's just for me, if I'm the only glue you've got... what happens when I—" She cuts herself off like she bit her tongue.

"You don't have to finish that," I say.

She nods. Her mouth pulls to one side like she doesn't trust it.

I don't tell her that in the worst part of my head, I planned for the absence of her. That I built my days out of work and sleep and nothing while she was busy teaching me how not to be a statue. That I came back from an ending I never convinced myself was the last one. That even with all that, one sentence from her can still freeze me in place like I'm fourteen and someone turned the light off.

She opens her hand slowly. The firefly hesitates, brightens once more as if to make a point, then lifts into the air and goes where the others are. We track it a few beats until it becomes just another flicker in the thousands. Her palm looks suddenly empty and very human.

"I don't want to scare you," she says.

"You don't," I lie, and the lie is an attempt at kindness. "You just... reminded me."

"Of what?"

"Of the part where I don't get to keep anything," I say, and immediately wish I could eat the words back. They hang there between us like a broken note that won't stop ringing.

She steps once, just enough to close the gap the sentence opened. "You get to keep what you make," she says, firm again. "We'll make something. For the gala. For us. And if it turns out the world can't hold it, then we'll let it go and make another thing anyway. That's how this works."

I stare at her. She stares back, steady. It's unfair how good she is at being sunlight and the warning about sunlight at the same time.

"What are we even going to play?" I ask, because practical questions are safer. "It's a gala. They'll expect... something." He knew already. Kreisler's Loves Sorrow.

She brightens, grateful for the turn. "We can choose something that breathes. Not the kind of piece that tries to chop your hands off. Something with a spine but also air." She looks away at the river, thinks, then back. "We can decide together. And we'll rehearse gentle. If it hurts, we stop. If the room gets thin, we open a window. We'll make rules like that."

"You can't open a window in a hall."

"Fine. We'll open me." She thumps her chest with a fist, then winces because it was harder than she meant. "I can be a window."

That almost gets me. The smile. The way she makes fun of herself to make me remember laughing is allowed. I let a piece of it through. It feels like a tooth I don't trust but am grateful for anyway.

"And if I stop?" I ask, the corner of my mouth flattening. "If I freeze. If the past decides to run the show."

"Then you look at me," she says, like she's telling me where the fire extinguisher is. "Not the keys. Not the light. Me. I'll pull a face. Or I'll nod. Or I'll breathe loud like an elephant. Whatever works. And if none of that works, we leave. Together. No disappearing alone. No getting swallowed by a bathroom. We go somewhere with bad coffee and better bread and wait for our bones to remember how to be bones."

I close my eyes because if I don't, they might do something rude. "Okay." The only thing he will be doing is looking at you in a hospital bed.

"Okay," she echoes.

We climb back up to the bridge slowly, because climbing slowly feels kinder. The wood feels warmer under my heels now that there's a plan, even if the plan is mostly her being stubborn and me agreeing to be dragged.

Halfway across, she bumps her shoulder into mine. It's not an accident. "Hey," she says.

"Hey," I answer.

"Thank you," she says, "for saying yes."

"Thanks," I say, "for making me."

She snorts. "I prefer 'convincing.'"

"You bullied me with a stuffed animal."

"It was extremely effective."

"Terrifying," I agree.

We stand at the middle and watch a train slide over the far trestle, windows bright rectangles, people inside going home to lives that don't have this much music or this much fear, or maybe they do and they just look better at pretending. The rumble carries across the water and under our shoes and out into the parts of the city that don't care what two teenagers decide on a bridge.

I feel her hand close to mine on the railing. Not touching. Close enough for the air between our knuckles to learn something.

"I'm going to mess up," I say, and it's almost a warning, almost a plea.

"Probably," she says. "Me, too."

"I'm going to be scared."

"Me, too."

"I'm going to look at you too much."

She lets out a sound like a laugh that tripped on a stone. "Good."

"You'll get mad."

"I'll pretend I'm not," she says, then adds, honest, "and then I'll stop pretending."

I breathe. The night breathes back.

She takes her phone out, thumbs a note open, and starts typing with her face very serious. "Rehearsal schedule," she says. "Snacks. Breaks. Pieces to try. Window plan." She shows me the list like a teacher proud of a chalkboard. "Look at that. Control."

"Do you think you can schedule a nervous system?" I ask.

"I can schedule yours," she says, and grins, and the grin is reckless and exactly what I need to see. Then she softens. "We'll make them listen," she says, almost to the river. "Together."

I look out at the thread of water, then back at her. The fireflies are thinner on the bridge, but one drifts up anyway and hangs between our faces for a second like it has a message and forgot it. I think about Hiroko's arms around me. About the way the lab hums. About the way a room can turn into a coffin or a church depending on which sentence you believe.

"Okay," I say one more time, because sometimes saying it multiple times is the only way to make it true. "Together."

She tucks the phone away, lifts her arms, and stretches like a cat that just remembered it owns the day. "Walk me home?"

"Always," I say, and the word doesn't scare me like I thought it would.

We go. The city unspools in front of us. Streetlights lift, one by one, like ushers showing us to our seats. Somewhere behind us, a tiny green light does its best to be seen and then stops trying and then tries again.

Chapter Text

I set the metronome on the lid and never touch it. Its red eye stays dark, judgment implied. Kaori's bow is already up, the violin braced under her chin, and the first phrase of Kreisler's "Love's Sorrow" spills out like warm tea poured a little too fast. She leans into the slide like she's showing the note how to sigh.

"Make it sing!"she says without looking at me. "Sing, Arima! Elegance!" Kaori's voice cut through the room sharp

I come in exactly on the breath between her words—no theatrics, no extra sugar. The left hand lays the path, the right hand trims it clean. I keep the pedal thin, just enough to gather the edges without turning them to fog.

She stops. "No," she snaps , the word crisp enough to chip, a flushed glare. "You're putting a ceiling on it!"

I look at the keys a Kaori shapes migraine forming. "I'm keeping you from crashing into the chandelier."

"Who's crashing?" She sets the violin on her shoulder again, tight smile. "You. You're stomping on the melody like you're trying to prove the accompanist exists."

"I'm not an accompanist," I say before I can stop myself. It comes out too sharp. "I'm the piano."

"You're a brick wall."

"And you're playing like you're trying to upstage the piano," I shoot back. "It's not my fault."

She plants her bow tip on the stand, the carbon fiber ticking the wood like a scolding finger. "It is when you refuse to breathe with me."

A thud on glass makes us both glance up. Watari is mashed against the outside window, hands cupped around his face like binoculars. Behind him, a pack of classmates and his team members stacks itself into a nosy totem pole.

"Ohhh," someone outside sings, delighted. "They're arguing again."

Kaori flips the stand so the music faces me. "Start four before letter B," she says. "No ice. Melt. Think of sorrow that still has manners."

"Thinking," I mutter. "So hard I can hear the clichés."

She glares. "Play."

I do. This time I warm the attack a fraction and let the middle of the chord bloom. The harmony carries a shoulder's worth of weight and offers it to her line rather than wrestling it away. She answers immediately, the bow hair leaning, the vibrato wide and human. For six bars we listen like we mean it.

Then I adjust the left-hand voicing to keep the bass from swallowing her—tiny change, obvious to a person like me, invisible to a room. She stops cold.

"That." She points at my fingers. "That thing. You pinch the phrase at the top, like you're afraid it'll fall."

"It falls when you lean on it like that," I say. "You're skating. The floor still exists."

She huffs, then plays the same bar alone, making the slide a little later, the arrival a little warmer. "It's not skating. It's singing while remembering your spine."

"And if I sing, you accuse me of syrup," I say. "If I structure, you accuse me of murder. Pick a crime."

She narrows her eyes, the kind of narrow that means I am one sentence from a thrown eraser. "The crime is boring me."

"The crime is confusing elegance with indulgence."

We stare at each other over the stand, the printed slurs and accents between us like a tiny court transcript. In the glass, Watari mouths a dramatic "whoa" and the crowd behind him leans as one organism, hungry for any sign of a winner.

I go first. "Again," I say, and set my hands, and this time I follow her breath before she takes it. The chord enters with a softness that invites your ear inside, and she catches it and shapes a phrase that could pass for regret if you were the kind of person who liked labeling feelings you don't own.

We make it through a page like that—me erring toward air, her erring toward bone. When we stop, it's because the quiet is full, not because we lost it.

She lowers the violin but doesn't relax her jaw. "Better," she says grudgingly. "But you're still... careful. Cold"

"Which saves you when you chase the horizon," I say. "I like you more when you don't turn the last note into a wedding dress."

Her mouth twitches. "I like you more when you're not a metronome with a moral code."

"Wow," Watari says through the glass, voice muffled. "Poetry."

Kaori snaps her head toward the window. "Get out of here!"

The crowd scatters badly—half tripping, half laughing, the way pigeons pretend they were leaving anyway. Watari stays stubbornly plastered to the glass. "Break time?" he mimes, tapping his wrist.

"No," we both answer aloud.

He thumbs up and vanishes.

Kaori rolls her shoulders, impatience clicking in her joints. "Again from the top."

"We've been on this for an hour," I say, rubbing the bridge of my nose.

"Then we're probably close," she says. "The last stretch always feels like that."

I don't say what's in my head—that I know what the last stretch feels like in more ways than one. That underneath the warm fight and the ridiculous audience and the lit window, there's a clock in me nobody else hears. It runs too fast whenever she lifts that violin. I can almost hear the exact bar in the exact rehearsal where her breath will snag and the room will lean and all of this will go tilting.

In my mind there's still the program from a life that didn't happen this time: her name next to mine, and then a sudden absence, and a kid with a crush and a grudge. I will be forced to play alone again. The one thing I didn't want. He would be playing while Kaori sat in a room with a bandaged head and a wish to be performing instead.

"Arima," Kaori says, and the way she says my name tells me I let the silence last too long. "What?" " What's with the face?"

"Nothing," I lie. "Again."

We play. We fight inside the music and outside of it and between notes, and in the middle of the friction there's the clean click of something aligning for a few seconds at a time. It would be easier if it were just bad. It would be easier if she were wrong and I were right. Instead it's this: two people who know each other's shadows well enough to stand in them and still get burned.

At some point she throws her free hand in the air. "Why are you so stubborn?"

"Because you're reckless," I say, more tired than sharp. "Somebody has to put railings on your bridges."

"Railings," she repeats, disgusted. "It's a waltz, not a crosswalk."

I close the lid halfway and rest my wrists there, knuckles pale. "You want a partner who dissolves when you shine," I say. "I won't do it."

Her eyes flash. "No!"she says, and the fury is clean, "I want a partner who'll sing with me like he's not afraid he'll vanish!"

The room goes very quiet. Even the hallway hushes, like the building just remembered it has ears. I look down so I don't have to show my face. When I breathe out, it fogs the lacquer a little and my reflection fuzzes into a stranger.

She's panting, a tiny, shallow saw of air coming and going. She doesn't apologize. She steps closer to the stand and flips the page with a finger, the gesture smaller than the sentence she just said.

Jeez Has Kaori always been this demanding?

"From C," she says, calmer. "Together."

We make it to the end of the movement on that shaky truce. It sounds like two people building a bridge with different blueprints and still meeting in the middle, bewildered and a little proud.

The bell sounds faintly down the hall. She drops her arms and stretches, bow hand high, tendons bright at her wrist. "Again after class," she says, already packing the violin like it's a wild animal that happens to love her.

"Sure," I say, even though what I want to say is don't run, don't push, don't disappear on me today of all days.

We lock the room. Outside, the corridor has emptied into a dull hum. Watari reappears like he never left, already walking backward in front of us. "Great show," he says. "I laughed, I cried, I wanted my money back."

"Get a life," Kaori says without heat.

Watari leans in. "Lunch?" he asks me.

"Later," I say. "I've got... something."

"What something?" Kaori asks immediately.

"Errand," I say.

She studies my face like she can hear the gears grinding behind my eyes. "Don't flake on the second session."

"I won't."

I watch her go, bag bouncing against her leg, hair catching the light, the snatches of a tune humming at her mouth like a private joke. The clock in my chest ticks a little louder. I hate it. I'm grateful for it. I want it to be wrong.

—

The lanterns look like they're breathing. Red, then orange, then red again as people shoulder past and the paper skins flex. The air is sesame oil and sugar and the faint chemical halo of novelty toys. A kid tugs on a rubber mask that won't quite be a fox and keeps laughing anyway.

Hiroko walks like someone who has decided the night owes her something. She is in a plain yukata she's pretending not to know looks good on her. Her daughter—hair a stubborn yellow bob, eyes serious as a librarian's—is glued to her side with one hand and holds my wrist with the other, like I might float away if she lets go.

"You look worse in festival light," Hiroko says, not bothering to be kind about it. "Usually it tricks people."

"Good evening to you, too," I say.

She buys three sticks of yakitori and hands me one without asking. "Eat."

I do. The salt hits my tongue and the meat tastes like a decision I didn't have to make. Her daughter peers up at me as if she's checking for a pulse. "You blink slow," she announces, as if reporting a weather condition.

"I'm conserving energy," I tell her.

We drift past goldfish in plastic tubs, water slapping lazy against blue tarps. Someone misses a ping-pong ball toss and cheers anyway. A group of boys in matching happi coats practices a drum pattern on their thighs, getting it wrong and right and wrong again. Above it all, somewhere, a flute tries to be brave.

Hiroko doesn't touch her stick. She watches me chew like she's counting. "You said yes to the gala," she says finally, as if we've been talking about nothing else all along.

"Mm."

"That wasn't a question." She flicks the skewer toward a game stall like it can puncture the night. "Why now?"

I could say because a girl asked me and I am incapable of refusing her when she's lit from the inside with the idea. I could say because the person I was when I left the stage at Maihou is not someone I am willing to remain. I could say because I am running out of the kind of time you can waste.

Instead I say, "Do you ever feel like you don't get to pick the thing that pulls you?"

Hiroko's mouth tilts. "Every day."

"It's not really about me." I toe a gravel divot in the dirt. "It doesn't feel like it, anyway."

She watches the crowd move around us, finds the spaces between bodies like she's reading a score. "That's a pretty way to hide," she says.

I flinch because she's not wrong. "Maybe."

She tosses her untouched skewer to a teenage boy who looks at it like someone handed him a winning lottery ticket and then runs away before she can change her mind. When she turns back, her face is clean of jokes.

"Let me teach you," she says.

The words are simple and heavy at once. They drop between us like a stone in shallow water, splash proportional to the size of the circle in my chest that they hit.

I look at her. She looks right back, and in her eyes I see none of the smugness she likes to use when she catches me out. I see worry and a kind of angry care that has nowhere else to go.

"I mean it," she says. "Not the old way. Not scales until your hands forget they're meat. I'll stand behind you like a wall so the wind can push and not knock you over. We'll shape it until it's yours. I'll take the hits first."

Her daughter looks up at her, surprised by the softness she's hearing. I know what I'm seeing, too. This isn't professional. This is a person swinging a door wide that she usually guards with a dog.

I swallow. The yakitori salt sits like a stone at the back of my tongue. "Thank you," I say, and my voice is already the apology. "But I don't know about piano anymore."

Hiroko doesn't blink.

"It may be time for something new.." I add, and I hate the way it sounds like a line I read somewhere to make a breakup feel like a graduation.

For a second the lantern light makes her look like a painting. Then her expression tilts into something like a sad smile and she says, very gently, "I see."

Her daughter's fingers tighten on my wrist, then loosen, as if she understood something and wishes she didn't.

We move again because standing still makes people bump you. Hiroko buys a paper fan she doesn't need and waves it once like a white flag. She shoves it into my free hand. "You'll need that," she says, not specifying for what.

"Air?" I ask.

"Excuses," she says.

I try to smile. It shows up only halfway. "I thought you approved of unconventional youth."

"I approve of youth that doesn't set itself on fire just to see if the room looks prettier in the dark," she says, and then smirks like she didn't say something that landed too close to true.

We stop at the edge of the green where kids are trying to learn how to keep the sparklers from dying too fast. I watch the little orange-bellied lights circle and sputter and fail and get revived by a frantic breath and fail again, and I feel the shape of what she offered me and what I refused settle into my ribs like a new shelf that might hold something if I'm careful.

"Hey," Hiroko says, because she has mercy after all, "you're buying the next thing. My generosity has limits."

"What am I buying?"

"Canelés," she says, deadpan, and when I snort she punches my arm lightly, like maybe my laugh was the thing she was trying to purchase all along.

Part 2

The road home is mostly downhill, so I let the bike coast and my legs rest while Kaori perches on the rack behind me, hands light at my waist like she's testing how much trust the air can hold.

"Faster," she says, because she can't help herself.

"Wind resistance," I say. "Physics."

"You're just slow, Arima."

"You're just bossy."

She laughs, and I feel it through my spine more than I hear it. The night has that summer softness that makes streetlights look like they're wearing halos. Cicadas chant somewhere we aren't. Houses slide past in quiet rectangles. We hit a patch of gravel and she tightens her fingers for one second, then loosens, and I pretend I didn't notice.

Two blocks from the river she tips her chin toward the sky. "The stars are pretty tonight," she says. "It's like they're speaking to us."

Deja vu opens its hand and I step right into the old shape. The line lands in the same place in my chest it always does. For a heartbeat I can see two versions of this street layered over each other like paper held up to the light.

I'm not a singer. My voice is flat and a little tired, but it finds the first notes anyway. "Twinkle, twinkle..."

Her body goes still with surprise; then she laughs, delighted, little sparks on the air. "Oh-ho," she says, and slips in under me, easy. "Little star..."

We sing too quietly for anyone else to hear. We miss more notes than we hit. It doesn't matter. Under the thin spread of stars the world shrinks to the circle of light our bike throws and the cadence of our voices pretending to be braver than they are. For a minute we're kids and the future is a long hallway with all the doors open.

At the corner by the vending machines she hums the last line against my back and rests her cheek between my shoulder blades. It steals some of my balance. I don't tell her to sit up. I don't say anything at all.

We turn onto the street with the bakery.

"Wait here," she says, already hopping off. "Don't move."

"Tempting," I say, which is not the same as promising. The doorbells jingle her inside. Warm light spills out and drags the smell of butter with it. The glass is fogged with the day. I could leave. If I push down on the pedal now, the street will take me and the night will fold over the empty space where I was and nobody would know how close I came to staying.

The inner door opens and a shape fills it like a mountain learned to walk. Mr. Miyazono blots out half the shop. He's even bigger in person than the memory that belongs to a life where everyone ended the same way. Broad shoulders, forearms thick from lifting dough and trays and who knows what else. For two heartbeats he tries to wear a scary face. It doesn't fit him.

Kaori's Father

His eyes find me. Recognition snaps into place like a lid on a jar. "Arima.. kun?"

My mouth goes dry. "Good evening," I say, as if formality can slow time down.

He breaks into a grin that could power a small town. "Well, if it isn't Arima-kun!" In two strides he's out on the sidewalk and his arm is around my shoulders and I'm a twig under a friendly bear. "You got taller," he says, then squeezes like he's testing the claim. "Barely."

"Dad," Kaori says from behind him, resigned, "you're going to snap him in half."

"You think with how many baguettes I lift," he says proudly, and squeezes again to prove whatever point baguettes can make.

"Please," I manage. "Mercy."

The inner door swings again and a woman with a flour-smudge on her cheek appears balancing a tray with one hand and a towel with the other. Her eyes spot mine in recognition. Then "Oh, Arima-kun!" she says, as if she's been expecting me all day. "Come in, come in. You must be starving. You look starving. He looks starving, doesn't he?" She doesn't wait for an answer. She's already turned and is fussing with empty plates like a magician preparing to produce rabbits.

They pull me in like tide. The shop is half-closed and still humming. Glass cases blink with the last rounds of the day. The air tastes sweet and warm. My shoes squeak a little on the clean floor, apologizing for themselves.

"Sit," Mrs. Miyazono says, as if there were any chance I wouldn't. She plants me at the dining table behind the counter and starts building a small mountain. Canelés, their burnt-sugar shells glossy like lacquer. Melon pan. A wedge of something delicate and layered. A savory roll that smells like cheese pretending to be a meal. A rice ball appears out of nowhere and into Kaori's hand, who bites it like she's been waiting since breakfast.

Mr. Miyazono plops into the chair opposite me and rests his forearms on the table like he's about to negotiate a treaty. "We used to go to your concerts, you know," he says, cheerful. "When you were little. With the slick hair and the small jacket? Your mother would bow and you would bow and my wife would cry and I would pretend I wasn't."

"I didn't cry," Mrs. Miyazono says, wiping at the ghost of a mascara line with her towel. "Much."

"Every time," he says, fond, and then turns back to me with the same fondness, like I'm a cake that came out level. "You can't just stop playing in the middle of a performance, though."

I freeze with a canelé halfway to my mouth.

"It's like flushing all your effort down the drain," he says, not cruelly, just like he's discussing weather. He pantomimes turning a faucet handle. "Pwoosh."

Mrs. Miyazono nods, serious as a judge. "Like spoiling a perfect sponge cake because your cream tastes like crap," she says. "All that work. Pfft." She throws imaginary cream over her shoulder with flawless form.

I swallow a laugh before it betrays me. "Duly noted," I say, because what else do you say when two people who smell like sugar scold you for ruining desserts.

They both lift an index finger at the same time.

"But," says Mr. Miyazono, grinning.

"But," says Mrs. Miyazono, brighter still.

"Unconventional youth," he declares, as if he invented the category. "I love it!"

"It's all the same once it's in your stomach, right?" she says, pleased with herself.

"That's not how cake works," Kaori says around a mouthful of rice.

"It's exactly how cake works," her mother counters. "Ingredients, heart, maybe a mistake or two—eat and be happy."

Mr. Miyazono reaches across and thumps my shoulder, this time more gently. "Don't let the old men at the table tell you what music is," he says. "They sit. They judge. You live."

I bow my head a little because a full bow would be too much and because if I look him in the eye right now something will crack. "Thank you very much," I say. The words feel too small for the size of their kitchen, their table, their ridiculous generosity.

"Eat," Mrs. Miyazono insists, shoving the canelé closer until it's a moral imperative. "We're testing a new recipe. Tell me if it has enough rum."

"Mom," Kaori says, scandalized and delighted. "He's fourteen."

"So are canelés," she says, which makes no sense and is perfect.

I bite. The shell gives with a satisfying crackle and the inside is custard and air. For a second the part of my mouth that does work goes quiet and the part that just wants to be alive wakes up. I nod before I've finished chewing. "It's... really good."

"Ha!" She claps once, triumphant. "See? Artist approved."

We talk about nothing heavy. They pull stories off shelves and set them on the table like more plates. Mr. Miyazono tells me about the customer who tried to return a baguette because it was "too French." Mrs. Miyazono tells me how she once dropped an entire sheet of choux buns and saved two—"the bravest two"—and how they tasted better because they knew what loss was. Kaori throws in little bits, her feet tucked under her chair, eyes bright.

The whole time I can feel the outline of a room that looks nothing like this one stuck in my chest. Dust and silence and a piano that keeps its own weather. The contrast hurts and heals in the same breath. I sit in the middle of it and try not to give myself away.

When we finally stand, there's a paper bag in my hand I don't remember agreeing to. "For breakfast," Mrs. Miyazono says, as if I eat those. "And lunch. And something sweet for after, because life is hard and people are stupid."

"Mom," Kaori says again, and the second "mom" is softer.

We step out into the night. The bell does its tired ring. The street is the same as we left it, but the air feels warmer, like the bakery exhaled all over the block.

Behind us, I hear Mr. Miyazono murmur, not quite quiet enough, "So that boy is Arima-kun."

"He's a nice boy," Mrs. Miyazono says. There's a pause that holds more than a sigh. "But those eyes."

"Yeah," he says.

Kaori links her fingers through the strap of my bag and tugs me toward the corner. "Don't get a big head," she says lightly. "They feed every stray that wanders in."

"I'm not a stray," I say.

"You are exactly a stray," she says, and bumps my shoulder with hers.

We're supposed to go home after that. It's late and the heat is a little sticky and the sidewalks are filling with the kind of quiet that means families are finishing dishes and turning off lights. Instead the night takes a left. Watari texts a pin, Tsubaki says "we're not going in, just near," and somehow we're ducking through a gap in a chain-link fence with a bag of snacks and a box of cheap sparklers.

The pool is the municipal kind—rectangle, blue tiles, still water holding a flat version of the sky. We sit on the concrete lip with our feet nowhere near the surface and pass a lighter like contraband. Nao, Tsubaki's friend from the next class over, is here too; she rolls her eyes at everything we say and then laughs anyway like she can't help herself.

Watari snaps a sparkler alive and whips it through the air like a sword. "Behold," he says. "I create the sun."

"You create the number one reason we're going to get kicked out," Tsubaki says, but she lights hers off his anyway and draws careful circles like she's tracing a halo around someone's head.

Kaori strikes one and holds it vertical, patient, watching the first orange bloom catch and then collapse into the fizzy hiss that means yes, now. She brings it close to her face and it paints gold across her cheeks. When she laughs the sparks look like they're joining in.

Nao sits beside me and leans back on her palms, eyes on the sky. "If we get caught, I'm blaming Watari," she says.

Watari salutes with a burning stick. "I accept this destiny."

"Destinies don't accept you," Tsubaki says. "You accept them." She draws a wobbly star and pretends she meant it to wobble.

I light mine. The first seconds are always too bright, and then it settles into a steady hiss and starts eating itself. I watch it burn down toward my fingers. It's beautiful and a little rude, the way it won't slow no matter how much you want it to.

Across from me Kaori and Watari are laughing at something I missed, their sparklers accidentally crossing so the sparks swap paths. Her hair catches a few stray points of light and keeps them for a second longer than it should. She looks alive in the exact way that hurts to look at for too long.

I think of her parents, of the big hand clapping my shoulder, of the lecture about cakes that turn into solace halfway through. I think of Hiroko under lanterns, the offer I turned down because the honesty hurt less than the hope. I think of the clock I don't want and how loud it gets when the world goes quiet.

Tsubaki sits down next to me hard enough to make the concrete thunk. "Hey," she says.

"Hey."

"You okay?"

I look at her sparkler. It's almost gone, a stubborn glow chewing through the last stub of wire. I look up at the stars so I'll have someplace to put my eyes. "Yeah," I say, and my voice is steady enough to pass. "I'm okay."

She doesn't believe me; I can feel it. But she doesn't call me on it. She knocks her shoulder into mine once, a gentle check that says I see you, idiot, and then holds her dying sparkler out to light a new one off mine.

We keep going like that—burn and light, burn and light—until our box is empty and the night smells like spent fireworks and chlorine. Watari tells a story about a coach who thinks pasta is a performance-enhancing drug. Nao admits she can't whistle and then does, perfectly, to prove she can't. Tsubaki insists the constellations look like badly drawn animals and refuses to be convinced otherwise. Kaori sings two lines of an old song and then refuses to sing the third just to drive me crazy.

We don't touch the water. We don't talk about the gala. We don't talk about Maihou or parents or labs or the way I left a teaching offer on a table like it was a napkin. We talk about nothing because nothing is the only thing light enough to hold right now.

When the last sparkler curls into black wire we sit with our hands on our knees like we're waiting for something to tell us to stand. Nobody does. Eventually we pull ourselves up and climb back through the fence and promise not to text about this in case someone's mom has counterintelligence.

On the walk home Kaori drifts closer than usual. Not touching—just there, in step. It's small and it's everything. At her corner she turns and salutes me with two fingers like a soldier who never learned the rules. "See you tomorrow," she says.

"Yeah," I say. I want to say something else. I don't.

She goes. I go. The night holds all our shapes for a while and then lets them go the way sparklers do—bright, brief, smoke in the air long after the heat is gone. I tuck the paper bag of pastries tighter under my arm like proof of something I can't name and keep walking until the street forgets to be kind and I remember how to be alone.

Chapter Text

The banner over the glass doors reads like a promise the night can't keep. Gold script, soft floodlights, the kind of glossy program you don't fold because it would feel like a sin. People move in little currents—families with flowers, students clutching cases to their chests like life jackets, teachers practicing their neutral faces.

Hiroko checks her watch for the fifth time in one minute. "Twenty-five," she says, voice flat so it won't turn into something else. "We have twenty-five minutes."

Tsubaki's arms are crossed so hard it looks like she's holding her own ribs together. "The competition already started," she says, glancing at the entrance and then down the street and then back at the entrance as if the building will change its answer. "Why isn't Kao-chan here yet?"

Watari has his phone plastered to his ear, motioning apology as he paces. "C'mon, c'mon, pick up," he mutters, then switches to speaker and the hollow ring rattles out into the night. No voice on the other end. He cuts, redials, runs a hand through his hair and makes it worse.

I keep my hands in my pockets because if I take them out they might shake and I don't feel like sharing that with the air. I already know where she is. The knowledge sits in me like a stone I swallowed wrong: white hospital room, bandage slanting across her hairline, wrist tape from an IV she swears she doesn't need, insisting she's fine while the nurse lifts an eyebrow and tightens the monitor strap. The image is so exact it has weight. It drags at me every time my eyes go to the empty space by the curb, every time someone in a yellow dress rounds the corner and turns into not-her.

"She's late," Tsubaki says again, like the word late can be hammered into a useful shape if you hit it enough.

Watari thumbs the call button one more time. "She'll pick up," he says, trying on a grin he doesn't own. It slips. He looks at me for a second, like maybe I can make the phone behave. I give him nothing. If I say it out loud, the picture in my head will break the surface and drown this nice door and these nice lights and everyone standing under them.

Hiroko steps in so fast Watari takes a stutter step back. She plants her hands on his shoulders. "Keep calling," she tells him. Her eyes are bright in a way that could be anger and could be fear. "Over and over. Don't stop."

He straightens, seizes the order like a life raft. "Yes, onee-sama!!" he says, loud enough that someone turns. He doesn't even realize he said it until Tsubaki snorts and Hiroko's mouth twitches. It doesn't become a smile.

Hiroko turns to me. "You and I are going inside," she says. "If we can get them to push her to the end, we can make it work."

A cough of laughter tries to escape my throat and I swallow it down before it offends the sidewalk. "They won't," I say, and it sounds too calm, like someone reporting a weather forecast that already happened.

"Maybe," she says. "Maybe not. Gala programs are looser. Sponsors like stories." She hooks a thumb toward the doors. "Come on."

Tsubaki catches my sleeve with two fingers. "Text us," she says. There's too much inside the two words—worry, instruction, a plea not to make them invisible to whatever happens next.

Watari's call goes to voicemail again. He presses redial like the button owes him money.

The lobby is all quiet carpet and echo. Someone practiced the art of making sound feel expensive here. A student in a dress that hitches when she breathes stands near the desk, pinching the skin of her finger and letting it spring back, rehearsal for something else. A poster with neat headshots smiles at the exact center of the bulletin board. Kaori's picture is there, too, a girl caught mid-laugh. I don't look long.

Backstage is narrower, older. The paint on the baseboards is new, pretending the hallways aren't tired underneath. Performers drift in small clusters, pretending not to evaluate each other. Doors with small windows bloom and shut. From somewhere a warm-up scale snakes under a door and dies when someone remembers where they are.

Hiroko spots the man with the clipboard like a hawk spots a mouse. He is exactly the man his clipboard says he is—pressed pants, efficient smile, three pens clipped with a ceremony usually reserved for medals.

"Excuse me," she says, and the word has edges. "We're performer number fifteen. There's an issue. Our violinist is running late. We'd like to move our slot to the end of the program."

"I'm sorry," he says automatically, even before she finishes. You can tell the apology is an instrument he's had practice with. "We do try to accommodate delays, but the gala runs on a tight timeline—"

Hiroko leans in and sets the full weight of her professional smile on the table between them. "She's five minutes away," she lies, smooth as lacquer. "Traffic."

I feel the lie hit my chest and slide off. In my head Kaori presses the heel of her hand to the dressing on her temple and tells the nurse she needs five more minutes and the nurse says no, and the Five slips into a ditch and becomes Forty because the body doesn't know how to keep promises.

The clipboard man's smile struggles and then reasserts itself. "If she arrives during the slot, we can try to... but pushing to the end requires the other performers' consent, and we are... very full tonight. I hope you understand."

"She's the invited feature," Hiroko says. "It's a sponsor's recommendation. If we ask nicely, they'll forgive the shuffling."

A door down the hall opens on a tired hinge. The clipboard man brightens in relief. "Ah, Mikke-kun," he says, mispronouncing it in the cheerful way adults mispronounce names when they want to pretend familiarity. "Perfect timing."

The boy pauses in the doorway with the solemnity of someone who has spent a long time practicing his entrance. He's tidy in a starched way that looks painful, hair tamed with water, the half-grown height that promises he'll be taller next year and resents the current fact. Violin case slung over one shoulder. His eyes flick to me and then to Hiroko and, for a second, he looks exactly his age.

"Miike-kun is the final performer in the middle school division," the clipboard man says, turning a page and pretending the page is the world. "We were just discussing a small... adjustment."

Hiroko pivots, professional charm resetting itself like a mask. "Miike-kun," she says, warmth manufactured but not entirely false. "Would you be willing to switch? Our violinist got held up. If you'd play before us, we could give her a few minutes."

He blinks at her, then at me, and something slides across his face I recognize too well—calculation that learned to wear admiration's jacket. "Who is it?" he asks, voice steady but too high.

"Kaori Miyazono," Hiroko says.

Sigh.... Oh boy...

His eyes widen. He doesn't manage to hide the flash of recognition. It's not just the name. It's the videos. It's the way other kids talk about her in practice rooms and hallways—like a wildfire you're not sure you want to get close to and can't stop walking toward.

I think for one useless second that this is where kindness lives—that he'll grin and shrug and say "sure" because stories like accommodating someone else look good in the mirror. Then the other thing steps in, the thing that plays scales faster when someone leaves the room and imagines applause that belongs to somebody else, the thing that doesn't know how to make a difference between want and deserve.

"The last performer," he says, slow, tasting it, "the star of this concert... is going to be me."

The clipboard man's posture says excellent, a problem solved by someone else's vanity. Hiroko's smile holds the exact same shape for half a breath and then loses two degrees of temperature. "Right," she says, almost a whisper. "Of course. It was unreasonable to ask."

"We'll just have to cancel her performance," the clipboard man adds, and checks a box with the relief of a man who has moved one sticky item from one column to another.

"Yeah," I say. My mouth does it before the rest of me votes. The word lands like a pebble dropped down a well.

Miike shifts the case strap and finds courage in the clipboard's approval. "A-anyway," he says, and stumbles over the stutter like he meant it, "it's her fault for being late. On a day like this." His chin lifts because that felt good and the next thing will feel better. "She thinks she's special just because people like her. She thinks she can come late..." He glances at me, as if I will help him make the shape of the insult. I don't. He finds the rest himself. "What she... what she played wasn't music."

My breath lands where a laugh would if I were a different person. Hiroko's head snaps, and for a second she looks taller than she is. "You watch your mouth," she says, the politeness gone clean out of it. "You uppity little brat."

The clipboard man inhales, scandal blooming like a rash. The hallway shifts, tiny murmurs like the lift of bird wings. A violist down the corridor pretends to be invisible and fails.

I put my hand on Hiroko's shoulder before her temper takes us both into a place I'll regret later. Her muscle tight under my palm—anger stacked on worry stacked on the kind of love that knows what it's worth.

Miike holds my gaze because he thinks he has to and because he wants to know if it hurts. I step forward one small step and, before I can change my mind, I lift my hand and flick his forehead with one finger.

It isn't hard. It's the kind of flick you give a friend who won't stop talking in class. It makes a tiny sound. He jerks back like I broke something and claps a hand to the spot. "Ow!" His eyes shine in a stupid way that makes me realize, too late, that some part of me wanted to make him cry and some other part of me wants to apologize for everything that isn't mine.

Hiroko blinks at me like I grew a second head. I don't touch people. I don't touch children. I don't... do that. I step half a pace back and the ridiculousness of the act deflates me in the exact proportion I wanted it to inflate him.

"Music's beauty is in the eye of the beholder," I say, because I need a sentence to cover the fact that I just assaulted a minor with the lightest violence possible. "I think what she plays is the most beautiful thing ever."

It comes out too even. Too gentle for the shape of what's underneath. Images of Kaori choose this moment to stack themselves in a neat and awful column: Kaori on a stage pulling sound out of air like it was hiding just for her; Kaori on a rooftop with snow in her hair telling me not to go; Kaori in a hospital bed pressing her palm to gauze like it offends her and laughing and saying she's fine, she's fine, don't make that face.

Miike lowers his hand and scowls. He wants to say something better, sharper. He can't find it. The clipboard man opens his mouth to recite a policy about violence, then closes it because the policy isn't written to cover a flick and because Hiroko Seto is standing here and he knows her and his job requires liking her more than he likes being right.

I let out a breath that drains whatever performance I had left. "Oh well," I say, and shrug in a way that infuriates exactly the people who need infuriating. "Guess we came for nothing." I stretch my arms

Hiroko's face turns toward me, everything in it rearranging to make room for the sentence. "You won't play...?" Her voice is lower than I've heard it in years, softer in a way that has less to do with me than with the picture she carries around of a boy she's been trying to protect from himself.

"It's a duet ," I say. "Not point without her."

The last time, in the other version of this night, I sat under the lights and did it anyway. I played clean and cold and perfect while some kid—was his name this one? some other one?—sawed a line next to me like he could bully the piece into letting him belong. People clapped because that's what they came here to do, and I went home and lay awake and stared at a ceiling that didn't know my name. I will not do it again. I will not practice grief in public for the sake of a program that will be thrown away on the way out.

Hiroko opens her mouth. There are a dozen arguments waiting on her tongue—professionalism, reputation, responsibility. They all die there. She closes her mouth. She nods once, tiny, like her neck is under a weight. "Okay," she says.

I take out my phone. Watari has sent three more missed calls and one text overflowing with exclamation points that are pretending to be bravery. I write: **Cancelled. Going home. We'll see her tomorrow.** A dot appears, disappears. Then: **ok. we'll meet you outside.** A second later, Tsubaki: **...thanks for telling us.** And then: **she's gonna yell at us for visiting with no snacks.** I type: **bring the melon pan** and watch the dots chase their tails and vanish.

I pocket the phone. The clipboard man makes a sound that might be relief and might be indigestion. He checks another box because boxes are what he has.

"So... that's it?" Hiroko says. The corridor smells like dust and perfume. She looks at me like I am a decision she doesn't want to respect and has decided to anyway.

"That's it," I say.

We turn. The hallway extends in a politely lit line toward the lobby. A girl in a blue dress holds a bow like she forgot how for a second and then remembers. Two cellists argue about a part under their breath and pretend they aren't when the staffer walks by. A mother adjusts her son's tie and he makes a face that says he's too old for this and also please don't stop.

Behind us, I can feel Miike watching, the clipboard man trying to figure out if he should apologize and deciding against it, the shape of the program reshuffling itself so it won't show gaps when someone checks it later. In front of us, the door.

Outside, the night has leaned in closer to the building. Watari is on the steps with his phone held in both hands like he can warm it into working. Tsubaki is pretending not to scan every new person who appears, then failing and scanning them anyway. When they see us, their faces try to become the right shape in a hurry.

"Well?" Watari asks, because he can't help it.

"Cancelled," I say, and the word lands softer out here, like it knows the sky won't echo it back.

Tsubaki blows out a breath she didn't know she was holding. "We'll go see her tomorrow," she says, as if saying it makes it an appointment the universe is required to put on its calendar.

"Yeah," I say. The picture of the hospital room tugs again, hard enough to make me stumble inside my bones. I don't tell them I already know the color of the room, the sound the monitor makes when it remembers it's on, the way her smile will widen when we walk in to make space for our worry and hide the part that's tired. I don't tell them any of it. I keep my hands in my pockets and my face on the simple setting.

Hiroko looks up at the banner with the gold script and then past it, to where the night starts being honest again. "Let's go," she says.

We leave the building the way shadows leave a room when someone opens a door: quietly, all at once, not looking back, the noise we brought with us falling to the floor behind us and staying there.

—

The lab always smells like somebody cleaned it five minutes ago and then apologized for not cleaning it better. White walls. Humming machines. The faint, polite beep of a centrifuge that hates being ignored. Under the hood, a thin halo of airflow bends the corners of a sticky note that says DO NOT BREATHE ON SCIENCE in Saitou's handwriting.

He's already there when I come in, sleeves rolled, hair a stubborn gray that refuses symmetry. He doesn't look up right away; he finishes labeling a rack with the slow care of a man who has learned the expensive way what happens when you trust memory. Then he sets the Sharpie down and eyes me over his glasses.

"You look like a spring someone wound and then forgot," he says.

"You don't even know the half of it," I say, taking my place at the bench. Gloves. Notes. The ordinary ritual that tries to convince your head to show up.

He grunts. "And?"

"Almost played in a music competition."

The pipette in his hand pauses mid-air. "...You play music."

"Yup," I say. "Piano."

We let that live where it lands. He doesn't give me the I never would have guessed speech or the Play something for us sometime grin people offer when they're trying to fold art into small talk. He just nods once like it explains some line in my face he couldn't name before and passes me the rack.

We work. It's a quiet kind of choreography—the click of tips, the soft aspirate, the tiny, satisfied push. Two bodies sharing the same map without stepping on each other. Beyond the glass, the city does its uninteresting noon. In here, the world shrinks to the width of a tube.

"Skyclars," he says, shifting topics the way you step around a puddle. "The last batch held up through the stress test."

"At thirty-seven?" I ask.

"And forty," he says. "Didn't like forty-two. That's okay. Nobody likes forty-two." He flips his notebook to the right page, the margins a battlefield of arrows and crossed-out numbers. "Stability looks... good. Better than I thought we'd get this week."

"Near a finished product," I say, and the words show their teeth when I say them out loud.

He nods, not triumphant, just accepting. "Near. Then—trials." He ticks them off with the pipette like a metronome. "Animals first. Then humans. Paperwork, ethics review, more paperwork, a committee that thinks we should reinvent patience, some statisticians who hate joy. If this line holds"—he taps the graph—"we'll be looking at access in... two months for anyone who's allowed to be first."

Two months. The number lands in my chest and rings, not loud, but deep. In the building where Kaori is lying awake and pretending not to be, two months is a room with the windows taped shut. I set the rack down before my hand can tell on me.

He watches my face like he's reading a gauge. "It's the fastest I can say without lying," he adds. "I could say one. It would be a pretty sentence. It would be wrong."

"I know," I say. I do. Science isn't a piano you can force with will and caffeine and shame. It has its own time, its own nerves. You rush it and it punishes the people you tried to save.

Saitou leans his hip against the bench, folds his arms. "You're not sleeping."

I pretend to check a label. "I'm sleeping. Just... not efficiently."

"Uh-huh." He doesn't bother rolling his eyes. "Your uncle said you were stubborn. He left out self-immolating."

"My uncle likes me better when I'm a project," I say, and it makes him snort despite himself.

He goes back to the notebook, then stops. "I need you here in one piece," he says, matter-of-fact. "Not for me. For the work. For her." He doesn't say the name because we both know it. "Don't break yourself trying to carry time on your back. It won't help you lift."

"I'll sleep," I say. It sounds like a promise because I want it to.

We fall into the hum again. He scribbles; I pipette. The laminar hood sings its white noise. In the rack, a row of vials stands at attention like a parade of small, stubborn chances.

When the run ends, we label and seal and tuck the future into cold metal. He closes the door with the small gentleness he saves for machines that have been kind. "If the animal data looks like I think it will," he says, "I'll start pushing the committee on compassionate access for your...friend."

"Thank you." I echo

He lifts a shoulder. "I can't promise a miracle. I can promise annoying emails."

"That's almost better," I say.

He eyes me. "Eat something today."

"Define 'something.'"

"Food," he says. "Not envy or guilt. You kids are addicted to those."

I pull off my gloves. They snap like a period. "I'll bring melon pan to the hospital," I say. "She'll yell if we show up empty-handed."

"That sounds like a person I would have liked," he says, and goes back to his graphs before the sentence can make either of us sentimental.

I step out into a hallway that smells like coffee and floor polish and stand there for a second with the cold of the minus-eighty still on my skin. Two months, he said. If everything behaves. If luck decides we deserve it. If—

Just hold on, I think, and the thought has the shape of a prayer I don't believe in. Just hold on.

—

The last bell of the day has a lazy sound in summer, like even the building knows it's on borrowed time. Doors slap open. Shoes squeak. Someone yells that they're free and someone else yells that they're not, because exam retakes haunt those who underestimate algebra.

I cut through the wave and end up by the bike rack under the plane trees that shed a new layer of pollen every time you breathe wrong. The air tastes like sun and chalk. Across the yard a chorus of kendo shouts from the gym starts up, all spirit, no rhythm.

Watari appears at speed, shirt untucked like it's a philosophy, phone in his hand like it fused there. "Arima," he says, skidding to a stop. "You look like you wrestled a bear and lost."

"I wrestled a spreadsheet," I say. "It was a draw."

He peeks into my bag. "Snacks?"

"Working on it."

Tsubaki arrives walking, not running, which is how you know she's worried. Bat bag on her shoulder. Hair up with a tie that doesn't match her uniform because she never cares about that and never will. She looks at me like I'm a test result she wants to argue with. "You okay?"

"Define 'okay,'" I say, and immediately regret borrowing Saitou's material.

She snorts despite herself. "Bring something she likes," she says, pragmatic. "Onigiri, melon pan, those weird jelly cups she pretends not to like and then eats all of."

"Copy," Watari says, already typing into his Notes app like we're planning a heist. "Also, flowers? Or is that too—" He gestures vaguely. "Room-mom-ish."

"Don't bring lilies," Tsubaki says. "Rooms shouldn't smell like funerals."

He pales. "Right. Right. No lilies. Sunflowers? Those are happy. They look like they're shouting."

"She'll throw them at you," I say, and it feels good to say something ordinary, something with the shape of a joke, even if the laugh comes out thin.

We get the snacks because not getting them would be a sin with witnesses. The lady at the bakery recognizes me and piles more than I ask for into a bag with a smile that says she knows exactly where we're going and what bags like this are for. She tucks in an extra canelé like it's a prescription. "For courage," she says, and winks at Tsubaki as if the courage might have to be shared.

Watari buys three bottles of tea and then stares at them like they might explode. "Do hospitals let you drink tea?" he asks.

"They let you be a person," Tsubaki says. "Usually."

We don't talk much on the way. The sidewalks are their usual argument of bikes and feet. The sun hangs lower, turning every piece of glass into something that wants to blind you. I walk the bike instead of riding it because moving too fast feels disrespectful, and because when I sit on a seat and put my feet on pedals, my body tries to be nineteen steps ahead of my head.

At the corner by the station, Watari points without looking like he practiced it. "We'll go up the back street," he says. "Less traffic. Fewer people."

He's right. The shortcut smells like detergent and air conditioning and the faint, clean iron of laundry hanging to dry. Someone's radio plays a pop song that doesn't know how to be sad even when it tries. A cat yawns at us from a low wall like it's exhausted by our drama.

Tsubaki falls in step beside me until our shoulders almost bump. She doesn't look over. "You tell your mom where you're going?" she asks Watari, because it's easier to use his name to ask me the question.

"Texted," he says, and then laughs. "She sent five hearts and a thumbs-up and then asked if we had enough bus money. We are not taking a bus, Mom."

"Text them when we get there," Tsubaki says. It's to him and also to me and also to herself. She is a person who makes lists when the world starts to tilt.

"Okay," he says.

The hospital shows up all at once like buildings do when you've been thinking about them too hard—the kind of modern box that wants to look like it isn't tired by being glass. Automatic doors. A kaleidoscope of polite signs. People moving in the particular way people move in places where everybody is either waiting or pretending not to be.

We stop a minute on the sidewalk because rushing the last five steps feels like daring fate to trip you. Watari looks at the bag as if a melon pan can hold a shield up. Tsubaki shoves a hand into her skirt pocket like she's about to hit a ball out of the park just to prove she can.

"You ready?" she asks. It's soft. It's a hand on the small of the back.

"Yeah," I say. My voice behaves.

Inside, the air has that thin-clean cold that makes you aware of your skin as a border. The elevator gives us a reflection we don't need—three kids trying to look older, trying to look smaller, trying to look like they belong in a place where everything is labeled and nothing is certain.

On the way up, a nurse steps in with a stack of charts and a smile tired enough to be true. A kid with a stuffed dinosaur comes in after her and stands on his father's shoes. The doors open. We spill out with the rest.

We turn down a corridor I already know. Left, then right. There's a machine at the intersection that beeps in a rhythm that could be music if you didn't know better. The floor is too clean to squeak. The letters on the wall are too clean to lie.

Tsubaki takes a breath like she's about to say something brave and then decides we can be brave without naming it. Watari shifts the bag to his left hand because his right is shaking and this is the way to lie that works best.

I lift my hand toward the doorframe with the nameplate I've been trying not to picture all day. Stop it halfway. Let it fall.

"Okay," I say. It is not a plan. It is the smallest sentence big enough for the moment.

We step in.

Chapter Text

The door swings inward on a soft scrape, and her voice meets us before the antiseptic smell does.

"Come in," Kaori says.

There she is..

She's sitting upright, two hospital pillows trying to make her look taller than the blankets make her feel. A white bandage crosses her hair like a too-tight ribbon. Paler—so pale the pink in her lips looks painted on. The smile she gives us is small and patient, the kind that asks us to help it pretend this room isn't the kind that keeps people.

"What'd you bring me?" she adds, tipping her head, playing at spoiled.

Tsubaki slips in first, clutching a pastel box like a courier on a mission. "Pastries," she says, trying for bright and almost getting there. "Fig tart. Canelés."

Watari squeezes in past me with a grin that wobbles at the edges. "And me. Did you miss me?"

"A little," Kaori says. "Like... the size of a melon pan."

I close the door gently until it clicks. The room seals around us with that hospital hush that makes small noises louder—the crinkle of paper, the whisper of curtains.

She's smaller against the sheets. I can't tell if it's the light or the white or the way the gown tries to erase her shape. There's a coil of clear tubing like a lazy snake, an IV taped neat at the bend of her arm. The pink bunny plush I gave her earlier in the spring leans against her hip, bead eyes unblinking.

"Fit as a fiddle," Kaori announces, lifting her free hand like a toast. "Totally fine. I'm just in here for more testing. That's all."

Tsubaki's mouth twitches. "Testing," she echoes.

"Mm-hm. Since I bonked my head, they're poking and prodding. Brain scans. Lights. They make you follow a finger and you want to bite it. All very impressive." She continues " last time we figured I could skip a few scans, we're gonna take it slow this time"

Watari stage-whispers, "She's making it sound like an amusement park."

"It's not," Kaori admits, and then, lighter: "But we're pretending today, okay?"

I don't say anything. It wouldn't help to say I can count the hours on her face. The part of me that does math on other people's bodies starts to measure the distance between what she says and what the room says. I tell that part to sit in the corner and be quiet.

"Anyway," she says, eying the box the way a raccoon eyes a treasure bag, "what'd you bring me?"

"Food," Tsubaki says, relieved to have a task. She opens the lid; a sweet smell pushes back the lemon-clean of the room. "Fig tart. The bakery lady put extra fruit because she's in love with you."

"Who isn't?" Watari says too fast, then laughs at himself to make the too-fast sound intentional.

Kaori wiggles her fingers. "Fork, please. I need to taste life."

Tsubaki passes it with a flourish. Kaori cuts too big a bite and chews like a chipmunk, puffing her cheeks, closing her eyes like this is a minor epiphany. "Mmm. Medicine," she says. "Write that down, nurse," she adds to the wall, like the building is taking notes.

Tsubaki laughs, real for a second. She fixes the napkin on Kaori's lap, brushing crumbs away like she can brush away anything else that doesn't belong here.

"And," Watari says, squaring up like a magician about to pull a second dove from a hat, "these."

He unzips his backpack and produces a stack of books that makes the mattress dip: hardcovers, dog-eared paperbacks, scores with cracked spines. The pile lands with a soft thump against Kaori's thighs.

"Wha—" Tsubaki blinks. "Watari. Are these all from the school library?"

He attempts innocence and falls short. "I did a public service. I liberated knowledge. She's stuck in here—she needs stuff to read or she'll memorize the wallpaper."

"You didn't even check them out, did you?" Tsubaki demands. "There are cards. Systems. You can't just—"

"Eh? no I just took them"

Kaori flips a cover. The pocket in the back peeks out, the little card with its grid of stamped dates like a ladder you can climb back to the hands before yours. She doesn't read the names yet. She just touches the paper, then the edge of the book, like she might warm it by holding.

"Thank you," she says, "I'll read half a page and fall asleep on it, but thank you."

Watari puts a hand over his heart. "Your intellectual growth is my personal project."

"You just like praise," Tsubaki mutters—affectionate muttering, the old kind.

Kaori watches us while we watch her, measuring how well she's keeping the air the right temperature. Her smile wobbles once, barely, then steadies.

"So," Watari says, trying to pick a path. "You scared us."

"I scared myself," Kaori says cheerfully, because she will not let the floor drop under the sentence. She lifts the fork and mimics a wobble. "Very elegant. Then boom, ow. The blood went like—" She opens her fingers, letting an imaginary spray erupt. "Psshhhhh! Dramatic. Zero stars. Would not recommend."

"Kaori," Tsubaki says, scandalized and relieved at the same time.

"What? It's true. I was disgusted." She wrinkles her nose, cute in a way that hides the ache for half a second. "Mom and Dad freaked out. They got me here in, like, two seconds. Then doctors and lights and questions and... here we are." She spreads her fingers. "A suite with a view." The view is the neighboring wing's windows.

"How are you feeling?" Tsubaki asks. Safe question. The one that pretends it has a simple answer.

Kaori taps the fork against her teeth, thinking. "Tired," she says finally. "But good-tired, like after a festival where you ate too much and danced badly." She taps her temple. "And a bit headachy. But they say I get a fancy picture of my brain. If they find nothing, I'm suing."

"You can't sue them for not finding something," Tsubaki says.

"Watch me."

The joke lands. For a blink, the room feels like a hallway outside our classrooms, chatter covering the floor like a rug. I let the sound wash over me and try to relax my hands. They stay tight. I look anywhere but the tape at her arm.

She catches me anyway. She always does.

"What's that face?" she asks, too light to be an accusation, too direct to ignore. "The one where you're doing math on my soul."

"I'm not," I say. I squeeze the words into a shape that passes as a joke. "Math and I aren't speaking."

"Liar," she says, gentle. She closes her eyes for another fig-bite epiphany and exhales through her nose like it helps keep the room where she wants it.

There's a knock; a nurse glides in with the practiced quiet of people who stand at doors for a living. Twenties, hair clipped back, a little cartoon pin to make kids smile. "How are we doing?" she asks, pluralizing us into her into we.

"Perfect," Kaori says. "I'm fixing your budget by ordering the whole pastry case."

"You'd be surprised how many pastry-related miracles I've seen," the nurse says dryly. She checks the IV, marks the chart, adjusts the flow. "Ten more minutes on this one. Then a break."

"See?" Kaori says when the nurse leaves, like she's won a point. "Just testing."

We talk about small things. It's the only way to do big things sometimes—walk around them until they're less impossible. Watari complains his coach called his penalty kick "lucky." Tsubaki groans about the copy machine jamming only for her. I tell a story about the cat by the bike racks that pretends to belong to everyone. None of it is important. All of it is.

When the machine beeps politely, the nurse returns, switches the bag, smooths the edge of the blanket like tucking order into a mess. Kaori watches with a sudden seriousness, then grins at us as the nurse leaves, as if to say See? Still me.

Visiting hour is generous until it isn't. The nurse glances at the clock on her way past and says nothing, which is how you know time is short.

"We should let you rest," Tsubaki says, and the sentence looks wrong wearing her voice. She wants to argue with the clock.

"I am resting," Kaori says, patting the mattress. "This bed and I are dating."

"Gross," Watari says, stretching with an exaggerated groan. "Okay. We'll come back tomorrow with contraband and fan mail."

"Bring good pens," Kaori orders. "I want to draw mustaches on the compliments."

Tsubaki leans in to fix a strand near the bandage without touching the bandage—a move you only learn on someone you've known since six. "Text if you need anything," she says, quieter. "We're not far."

"I know," Kaori says, looking up at her like there's a joke she could make and choosing not to. "Thanks."

Watari nudges the pastry box into perfect reach like a mother bird arranging twigs. "Doctor's orders," he says.

"Doctor Who?" Kaori asks.

"Me." He points both thumbs at his chest.

She snorts. "Quack."

I hover by the bed because the door has turned into a cliff. The others move toward it; my feet don't.

"I'm gonna visit a lot," I hear myself say, too raw, too fast. "Okay? That's... that's not a problem, right?" He will not make the mistakes of the past. Absolutely not.

Watari blinks. Tsubaki's eyes flick to my face and away like she's protecting something. Kaori's hand stills on the blanket. For a half second, the smile slips. Then she finds it again and tucks it on.

"Y-yeah," she says, softer than the room. "Obviously. Visit a lot."

"Okay," I say, and don't know where to put my hands, so I put them in my pockets. "Okay."

We leave like people backing away from a shrine—bodies bowing even if our heads don't. Watari waves too much. Tsubaki tucks a corner of the sheet like the last thing she can fix should be fixed. At the door I look back. Kaori lifts the fork like a little flag.

"See you," she says.

"See you."

I look at her one last time. She gives me a brave smile. I smile back.

We walk off down the corridor

—

Inside, the quiet lands like a glove. Kaori sets the fork down, leans back, lets the smile soften. The books sit in a tidy stack. She draws the top one onto her lap.

There's the white pocket in the back, the little card. She looks at the stamped dates, the careful handwriting of strangers, then at the names: one at the top, in blue ink. Another below. Then: Kousei Arima, in the same hand she's seen on Post-its and lunch lids.

She rubs her thumb over the letters. The paper doesn't change, but something warm moves under her ribs. Her mouth pulls into a small private smile that belongs to no one else.

A knock; the nurse again, timing her entrance to Kaori's breath. "Kaori-chan," she says, gentle with the -chan. "Ready for more IV?"

Kaori sets the book aside on the hill of blankets, turns her face toward the drip. "Yeah," she says, tired but even. "I’m ready."

—-

The air outside was warm

At lunch I'm staring at my phone like it told a joke and refused to explain the punchline.

"Oh," I say, around a mouthful of rice.

Nao leans over my tray. "What do you mean, 'oh'? With you it's either 'what,' 'ugh,' or 'I will end you.' Show me."

I flatten the phone on the table so she can't see the screen. Making your best friend work for information is one of life's small joys. "Text from senpai."

"Saitou-sama?" Her eyebrows jump. "You haven't broken up yet?"

I jab her with a chopstick—not hard, just enough to make a point. "Of course not."

"Why not?"

"Why not...? It's not like I suddenly hate him." I spear a piece of pickled radish like it personally offended me. "He's nice."

"Nice," Nao repeats, every syllable a little courtroom verdict. "Do you like him?"

I don't answer right away. I lift my bento lid like a different answer might be hiding under the tamagoyaki. "I always admired him," I say finally. "He's steady. He shows up. He's good at what he does. It's simple."

"Mm-hm." That sound means she's about to move a chess piece I forgot was on the board. "So... what about Arima-kun?"

The rice nearly goes down the wrong pipe. I cough once, thump my chest, laugh too loudly so the heat in my face sounds like part of the joke. "Why would you bring Kousei into this?"

"Because it's a question." She blinks innocently. "Do you like him?"

I freeze. Kouseis face comes through my mind. she remembered him a small embarrassed boy. And she thought of Kousei now. Different. The eyes were two different people.

I swat her shoulder with the back of my hand. "Ha ha!,hilarious!," I say in the voice I use when I'm absolutely not okay. I shovel rice in to dam the conversation. Chew, swallow. "Kousei is more like a little brother," I declare, and I can feel the sentence harden into a wall between me and something I'm not ready to look at.

"There it is," Nao says, leaning back. "The little-brother claim." She continued " the Cookie-cutter. Excuse I'm so tired of it." She points a chopstick at my nose with disturbing accuracy. "Are you convincing me? Or yourself?"

I glare the way a pitcher glares before throwing a fastball through a window. She zips her mouth with two fingers and mimes throwing away the key.

The glare melts. My eyes drop to the little octopus sausage my mom tucked into the corner, and something under my ribs gives. "I'm worried about him," I admit, without looking up. "That's all."

Nao's teasing falls out of her voice. "Yeah?"

"It doesn't feel like he's present anymore," I say. "Like I'm talking to someone through glass. His mouth moves. I know the words. But there's a layer in between. He smiles and it doesn't... reach." I notice I've torn my napkin into white confetti. "I can't stop worrying."

Nao nods slowly. "He does look rough," she says. "For whatever that's worth."

"It's worth something," I say. "I just don't know what to do with it."

She steals a strip of egg with raccoon delicacy. "He'll be okay," she says—the line you say when you don't know the shape of a problem. "We'll bully him into okay."

I snort. "I've been bullying him into okay since we were eight." My phone lights: Festival tonight? from Saitou. My thumbs type Yeah before my brain catches up. I add a smiley I don't entirely feel and put the phone face down.

"Date?" Nao grins.

"Not a date," I say automatically, then softer, "Maybe a date."

"Send me a yukata pic or I will perish."

"Drama queen," I tell her, but the corner of my mouth tips up all the same.

The cicadas sing slowly

——

The festival strings warm moons down the street. Paper lanterns sway, stalls elbow each other for space, and the air is a loud argument between grill smoke, batter, and syrupy shaved ice. Kids bustle past with clacking plastic masks. Somewhere a taiko pattern tugs at people's pulses.

I smooth a wrinkle only I can see on my yukata—dark blue with white flowers that look like they'll blow off if I breathe too hard. Two stubborn clips hold my hair up and are already plotting their escape. Festivals make you feel too dressed up and not dressed up enough at the same time. It's a talent.

"You're really tan," I blurt when Saitou appears with two cans of tea and a grin.

He checks his forearm and laughs. "Soccer. Also, the sun is a bully."

"Fight it," I say, deadpan.

"Tried. It won." He hands me a tea and looks at my face like he just found a thought he used to like. "You look... pretty," he says, ears going faintly pink.

"Thanks." I try not to show how much it lands. Kousei would never say that, my brain mutters without permission, and I scold myself for dragging one boy into the square where another is standing.

We drift into the stream of people. The takoyaki stall hisses; the vendor flips the little golden spheres so fast it looks like a trick. "Two," Saitou orders, and the vendor winks like a man giving a discount to a cute couple whether or not we've discussed that word.

We walk while eating, juggling skewers and napkins, trying not to scorch our tongues. "Hot," I say through a bite. He nods with cheeks full—international language for I burned my mouth but it was worth it.

By the goldfish scooping, small kids negotiate with physics—paper nets dissolving, faces falling and then lighting back up when the vendor slips a fish into a bag anyway. Saitou points at a boy with his mask on the back of his head. "That was me," he says. "I always picked the sad-looking ones."

"Why?"

"Felt like they deserved a second chance."

I roll my eyes but the sentence warms me toward him in a way I don't resist.

We try the ring toss and each land one wonky throw. Neither of us wants the prize. At the edge of the temple grounds, the noise fades to a pleasant blur. Fireflies stitch electric stitches in the bushes. I let the quiet rub at the part of my mind that's been buzzing all day.

"Thanks for coming," he says, a little shy.

"Thanks for asking." The night wraps around me like a friendly towel. Somewhere in my head Nao is still demanding a yukata photo so she doesn't perish. I make a mental note to oblige.

We stop at the wooden plaques. I take the stubby pencil and stare at the blank wood. What do I write? That Kousei sleeps without looking like he's searching for the off switch? That Kaori's scans find nothing, nothing, nothing? That the brain in me can rest for five minutes without feeling like I've failed someone?

Saitou doesn't ask. He writes his own wish and hangs it where the others clack softly when the air moves. I write something short and chicken-scratch it so no one can read it unless they're a detective.

"See?" I tell myself as we walk again, adjusting the sleeve that keeps sliding. "Kousei would never say something like that." He wouldn't call me pretty in front of a skewer stand. He wouldn't put a hand on my back to guide me past a kid with a sparkler like it's the most normal thing in the world. He would never—

Would never, or hasn't?

His face comes back to mind. Tired half lidded smile. Ruggered appearance like he never took a second to himself. A stare that can make you feel funny.

I shake it off. Saitou tells a story about his coach tripping over a cone; I laugh and mean it. Lantern halos hover over the street. The night looks like all the summers we promised ourselves when we were little and didn't know what the word worry could do to a person.

Under the glow, the image of a white room sits like a stone in shallow water. I don't pick it up. I let the stream run around it.

"More takoyaki?" he asks, hopeful.

"Always," I say, because normal is also a way you love people.

We walk back toward the stall with two empty cans and a comfortable silence. I tilt my face to the lights, to batter and sauce and smoke, and let myself just be in it. For one neat square of time, I stop counting. And later, at my window, I'll probably stare at a slice of sky and wonder if Kousei is sleeping or watching shadows move across his ceiling. I'll be annoyed that I'm wondering, and annoyed at myself for being annoyed. I'll put my phone face-down and refuse to text Are you okay? because that will make it worse.

But right now, Saitou drops a too-hot takoyaki and pretends he meant to, and I laugh, and I don't feel guilty for the length of that laugh.

——

I stand in front of Kaori's hospital room.

I hated this hospital. I always felt despair here. Pain. This was a tomb.

I put my hand out

I knock so lightly it could be the air conditioner clicking on. No answer. I ease the door a few centimeters and say, "Hello?"

Something paper-bound flicks at my face.

"Kyaaa!" Kaori shrieks.

The notebook slaps my cheek and pinwheels to the floor like a stunned bird. She's got both hands over her mouth, eyes huge over the white bandage. "Oh—oh no—it's just you," she says, voice dropping three keys at once. "You were so quiet! I thought you were some—some—pervert!"

I step inside, shut the door with my heel, and stoop to pick up the notebook. My hands are shaking. Calm down. Don't spook her. I set it on the rolling tray, lean over, and gently pinch both her cheeks between forefinger and thumb.

"Ow—ow—ow—I said I was sorry!" she protests, cheeks flushing when I let go.

A breath escapes me—more air than laugh—and sit next to her on the bed. She scoots an inch, ceremonial space-making, and the pink bunny tumbles; she props it back with a small, automatic pat.

"So restless," she says, narrowing her eyes like a detective. "It's suspicious."

"Hospitals aren't my forte," I mutter.

"Shocking," she deadpans, the right corner of her mouth tugging up.

She's paler than yesterday, and smaller. The bandage curves around her hairline; a faint shadow bruises her temple where skin meets cotton. The IV line traces from the crook of her elbow to the clear moon on the pole. Her fingers—warm-looking, soft-looking—rest on the blanket. I want to hold them and not let go for a week. Don't be weird. Breathe.

"Watari-kun was just here," she says, like we're keeping a ledger. "He made me promise to read at least three of the fourteen books he stacked on my lap. He also said he's very handsome and would I please confirm it to the nurses."

"Bold," I say. "Assuming they can read delusion."

She snorts; the sound is small and perfect. Then her head tilts. "We missed the gala," she says softly.

"Yeah," I say, because I can't say I knew we would.

"All that practice." Her gaze falls to the sheet like thread count is important. "And you didn't even want to in the first place. I wasted your time."

"Don't," I say, too quickly.

"It's true," she insists, the insistence trembling. "You were doing me a favor and I couldn't even show up. I pushed and pushed and then I—" Her free hand sketches a little broken circle, as if the word collapse won't fit in her mouth. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

I stare at the notebook's bent corner to collect myself. If I look at her eyes I'll break. When I do look, they're shining and fixed on anything that isn't me.

My hand moves before my brain votes. I set it over hers. Her fingers go still under mine, and something unclenches in my chest so hard it almost hurts.

"You didn't waste anything," I say, voice rough. "And I didn't do you a favor. I wanted to be there because you were there."

She risks a glance up. The shine tips and spills. She turns away, embarrassed by her own tears like crying is a rude noise. I tighten my grip like that can keep the shaking in place.

"We'll play again together," I say, and the words come out like a vow I've already written somewhere else. "I swear on my life."

She blinks fast. "Don't swear big like that," she whispers. "You always do that. It scares me."

"I know," I say. I'm the idiot who throws forever across a river and then jumps in after it. "I'm doing it anyway. We'll do it again, Kaori. I swear." My throat narrows; the last swear scrapes coming out. "I swear."

Her mouth trembles. "Okay," she says, tiny. "Okay."

I lean forward before the rest of me can object and fold her into my arms. It isn't careful; it's both arms and a go-still and breath I forget to take. My cheek finds the curve of the bandage; I adjust by instinct so I don't press it. She makes a small surprised sound, then buries her face against my shoulder and clutches back like I'm not allowed to leave. Please don't let go first. Please don't.

"Sorry," I murmur into her hair, which smells like hospital soap and something gentler that refuses to be erased. "I—sorry."

"For what?" she asks, words flattening against my jacket.

"For... being me," I say, and want to bite the sentence back.

"Idiot," she says, so tender the word works like gauze. "Don't apologize for holding me when I need it."

I don't let go. If I do I will count the distance until I can hold her again. The IV pump clicks under its breath. The monitor draws the small, steady doodle of staying. Her breath stutters, then lines up with mine, small aftershocks tapering. I feel the warmth of her ear through my shirt and want to stay exactly like this until morning. I could sleep in this chair. I could—Stop. Don't scare her.

After a while she speaks into my shoulder. "Were you very mad?" she asks. "When I didn't show. I kept looking at the clock and saying 'I'll make it, I'll make it,' and then the room tilted and the floor came up and—" She breathes, tries again. "Were you mad?"

I let the question sit so I won't lie. "No," I say quietly. "I was... not surprised."

She draws back half an inch to read my face. "Not surprised?" There's no accusation—just the need to see what I'm carrying.

"You've been running hot for a while," I say. "I could feel the edges. Sometimes you sprint at a wall and pretend it's a finish line." I try a smile and don't quite make it. "Sometimes you make it. Sometimes you don't."

"That's very poetic for a boy who hates metaphors," she says, a little amused despite herself.

"I hate bad ones," I say. "That one's okay."

"Mm." She sniffs, swipes the heel of her hand under one eye. "You didn't play alone, right?"

I shake my head. "No."

"Ok." Relief flickers, small and fierce. "I know you could have. I just... I don't want you to have to."

"You're allowed to want that," I say, and I mean I didn't want to, not without you, not again, never again.

Her gaze slides to the bunny. I follow. The bead eyes stare past us, accusing no one. Two bunnies, two springs, two versions of my hands offering something soft to a girl who makes loud things gentle. I can't carry both memories at once, so I do the only thing I can: I adjust the bunny so it faces us, like a witness I'm inviting on purpose.

"You name him?" I ask.

"Mr. Bunny," she says, dead serious.

"Creative."

"I was tired."

I let myself smile. "He looks like he knows secrets."

"He does," she says. A beat. "He knows you're nicer than you pretend."

"Slander…”

She leans into me again—half-hug, half-lean. My arm finds her shoulders without asking permission. Don't leave. Don't move. "Thank you for the books," she says lightly, as if paying a small debt that matters a lot. "I saw your name on the card."

"Watari took the credit," I say.

"He always does. It's part of his charm." She hesitates. "I like when your name shows up in my room."

Something in my chest knocks and sits down. Keep breathing.

A soft knock; the nurse edges in with a practiced smile. "Sorry to interrupt. Just a quick check."

We loosen but don't separate. The nurse checks tape, counts pulse, consults the pump. "Any pain?"

"Just from being scolded by my friend," Kaori says, cutting her eyes at me.

"Documented," the nurse says dryly, jotting like she might. "One more bag after this, then nap or book club." She winks and slips out. The door leans shut on her quiet.

Alone again in the circle of machine sound, I exhale like I'd been holding a plank. Kaori tilts her head, studying me.

"Hey," she says softer. "You didn't look at me when you first came in."

"I did," I say, then amend, "Not for long."

"Why?"

A joke rises and I let it die. "Because sometimes when I look at you I see... too much," I say. "And if I see all of it I forget how to breathe."

Her face doesn't go pity-soft or brave-hard. It goes steady. "Okay," she says. "Then look a little at a time."

I do, because she asks: the bandage's clean edge; the curve of her cheek; the stubborn humor staged at her mouth even when her eyes are tired; the pulse at her wrist under tape. Square by square so I won't drown.

"You'll visit a lot?" she asks—echoing my own awkward promise from yesterday, but easy now, like permission is a blanket she can pull to her chin.

"Yeah," I say. "A lot. Every day if they let me. If they don't, I'll sit in the hall like a stray cat."

She laughs through her nose. "You'll get adopted."

"By the vending machine," I say. "We'll be very happy together."

"And if I'm boring and just sleep?"

"I'll guard your sleep from dangerous librarians."

"And if I'm cranky and say mean things?"

"I'll bring a lawyer."

"And if I'm..." She searches for a word that isn't pretty enough to say. "If I'm not very brave that day?"

I squeeze her hand. "I have extra," I say. I don't, but I'll make it.

She swallows—the kind that resets a person. "Okay."

We let silence be something warm. I count the seconds like beads because the counting keeps me here and not two months from now, or two years ago, or on a rooftop in another life. Every so often she asks a nothing question—"What color was the sky when you walked over?" "Do you think the bike-rack cat misses us?"—and I answer like the world depends on accuracy. Maybe it does.

Eventually I stand. The chair legs make the shy screech I hate. My hands don't want to leave her hand. "I'll come tomorrow," I say, and the sentence doesn't wobble.

"I'll be here," she says, making it sound like a plan we invented together.

At the door, I turn because leaving without one more look feels like stepping off something without checking the drop. "Kaori?"

"Hm?"

"We'll play again," I say—less oath now, more calendar entry I will carve into stone. "Together."

She lifts Mr. Bunny and makes his bead eyes nod solemnly. "The committee accepts," she says, then softer, "I want that."

"Me too," I say. Don't hug her again. If you do, you won't leave. I put my hand on the door, take it off, put it back. "Text me if you need anything. Or if you don't. Or if you're bored. Or if you want to hear about the cat. Or if—"

"Kousei," she says, smiling. "I'll text."

"Right." I clear my throat. "Right."

The hallway air is colder and flatter. I breathe it anyway like practice. On the way to the stairs I pull out my phone, type Etude later? Something we can sing through, then delete it because plans are not promises and I already made one. Another message: I'll be back after school. Don't let Mr. Bunny bully you. I send that one.

I take the stairs. Moving is easier than standing. Outside, afternoon shakes down toward evening. I tilt my face up to the pale slice of sky the buildings allow, and the same thought returns, stubborn and bright: We'll do it again. I swear. I fold it up and put it in my pocket like something I can touch with my hand when the light goes weird.

The wind outside hits my face

Chapter Text

I'm the one yelling first.

"Line up! Heavy-hitter training starts now! No whining!"

The beach is hot enough to cook an egg. The sand eats our ankles. A few kids groan and pretend to faint. Someone asks if we can swim instead. I plant my hands on my hips and point at the water like it's the enemy.

"No swimming until we run the drills! Legs! Backs! If you want to hit home runs, you train!"

They groan louder. I ignore them and start counting. "One—two—knees higher, Sora! You, stop dragging your feet!"

Kousei stands off to the side, half in shadow from a lazy pine, a popsicle melting down his fingers. He looks like he wandered into the wrong story.

"Arima!" I bark. "You too!"

He doesn't even blink. "Why should I? I don't even play baseball."

The kids snort. I march over, grab his wrist, and tug. He resists without moving. He's the calmest little brick in the world.

"This is strength training," I say. "It's for life."

He licks his popsicle. "Pianists sit."

"Pianists use legs and backs, genius," I shoot back. "Pedals? Stamina? Ever heard of those?"

He thinks about it like I gave him homework. Then his eyes slide down to my feet in the sand. He studies them a second too long.

"Big," he says.

I blink. "What?"

"You've got big feet."

The heat rushes to my face so fast my ears ring. "Wha—excuse me?!"

He blinks, all innocent. "You'll trip over them one day."

The world narrows to a dot. I grab the nearest pebble and fling it. He ducks; it plops into a soft patch and disappears. He takes two neat steps backward, like a cat avoiding a puddle.

"Arima!" I shriek, half fury, half laughter bursting out of me before I can stop it. "Come back here so I can kill you!"

He turns and runs, popsicle still in hand, long skinny legs kicking sand. The pack of kids who were dying a minute ago are suddenly full of life. "Get him! Get him!" They stampede after us. I'm in front, hair sticking to my cheeks, heart banging, shouting his name like a threat and a promise.

—

The beach folds itself into the next summer and the next, until it's only a taste in the air when the cicadas wake up. My hands remember the weight of a bat, the slap of a ball in my palm. My legs remember running after a boy who would rather disappear than be caught.

I make a mud ball that shines like a pearl when it dries. "I'll show Kousei," I say, proud, and then his mother calls him in for scales before I get the chance. I wait on the curb until the sun slides down and the mud ball cools in my hands. He comes out with tired eyes and sheet music folded too neatly. "Sorry," he says, like he's reading it off a page. I say it's fine. I don't mean it.

Another day I learn how to throw a sinker. I knock on his door with the ball in my fist. The neighbor says, "He's practicing." The word sits like a stone in my throat. I throw the sinker against the wall alone until my arm aches and I don't feel mad anymore, just hollow.

At school his desk is empty on days with red circles on the calendar. "Competition." "Practice." "Lesson." In choir I press my hands over my ears when the piano starts, just for a second, just enough to take the edge off the sound that steals my friend away.

"Stupid music," I mutter into my sleeve. "I hate it."

It's not true. I hate being left behind.

—

I'm brought back to the present.

We're under the big tree at lunch. The sky is yellow like old paper. The shade is soft, and the air buzzes. I sit cross-legged with my bento in my lap. Across from me, Kousei leans back against the bark, arms crossed, eyes closed like he's decided the world can wait its turn.

His glasses aren't on today. Without them his face looks different. Sharper bones, longer eyelashes, a mouth that keeps trying not to frown. For exactly one second I think, He looks kind of cool. I shake my head hard enough to make my ponytail brush my shoulder.

Absolutely not. Not thinking that. Illegal thought.

His uniform is chaos. Tie loose, top button undone, collar wilted funny on one side. There's a coffee stain on the front, the color of old dirt. I have to physically stop my hands from grabbing him by the shirt and dragging him to a sink. He'd wash it wrong. He always does.

He's not eating. He's just sitting there, breathing like it's a job.

"Oi," I say.

He answers with a lazy "Mm?" like a cat that heard you from the next room and decided to ignore it.

"It's still school time. Don't go to sleep."

He doesn't open his eyes. I lean forward and poke his chest with my chopsticks. "Up."

He exhales a long, put-upon sigh, and finally his eyelids lift. The blue of his eyes catches me off guard. There's always been blue there, but lately it holds weight—like a deep pool with cold at the bottom. When he looks at me, I feel something twitch in my stomach and I get mad at myself for feeling it.

"What," he says, not unkind, just tired like the word had to climb a hill to get out.

"Why aren't you eating?"

"Not hungry."

"Right. And what did you eat today?"

He pauses. His mouth opens. " I uh..." he stops, mouth Closes. Guilty silence says enough.

"Exactly." I shove my bento across the grass, stopping it with a thumb so it doesn't flip. "Eat it, idiot. We're sharing."

He looks at my face, trying to see if I'm kidding. I am not kidding.

He presses his lips together. "I'm fine."

"You're not. Eat."

"It's your lunch."

"And you're going to put it in your mouth," I say, as if talking to a feral animal. "Chopsticks. Now."

He holds my stare for three beats. Then the fight leaks out of him. He picks up the spare chopsticks tucked under the lid and breaks them apart with a soft snap. The sound makes something in my chest unclench.

He takes a cautious bite, like food might bite back. Rice, pickled plum, tamagoyaki. His shoulders loosen a little. He doesn't say anything, but he doesn't stop either.

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. My own chopsticks find their rhythm again. We eat in the kind of quiet that isn't uncomfortable. Wind pushes the leaves above us. Somewhere on the field a whistle shrills and a group of boys groans in chorus.

Up close I can see the small things I always notice and pretend I don't. The faint bruise-colored smudges under his eyes. The way his hair doesn't quite obey at the back. The nick on his knuckle that wasn't there last week. He's thinner than he should be. I file all of it away under Keep an Eye On and take another bite to hide my worry.

He pauses, glances at the coffee stain like he's surprised it exists. "When did that happen?" he mutters to himself.

"Second period," I say. "You bumped into Mori-sensei's mug."

He considers this. "Huh..."

"You're welcome for the reminder," I say, rolling my eyes so I don't roll him.

He huffs something that might be a laugh if it grew up.

I study his face when he looks down. Without the glasses, the lines of it show more. He looks older. Not 'grown up' older—tired older. Like someone pulled nights out of him and didn't put mornings back. The thought makes my skin prickle.

"You can't keep skipping breakfast," I say, trying to make it casual and failing. "And you need to bring a spare shirt if you're going to live like a raccoon."

He makes a small, guilty sound. "I'll wash it."

"You'll ruin it," I say automatically. "Give it to me."

He shoots me a sideways look. "You're not my mom."

"Thank goodness," I say, stabbing a piece of sausage. "If I were, you'd be in a full-body bib."

The corner of his mouth lifts—barely—but it lifts. I pretend not to see and shove the bento a little closer so he has to keep going.

We lapse into quiet again. The kind I like. His breathing evens out. A breeze sneaks under my collar and cools the sweat that's gathered there. For a second the world shrinks to this patch of grass, these dumb cicadas, his stupid face chewing my lunch.

It would be so easy to believe it could always be like this. Easy to forget the piano, the hospital smell that sometimes clings to him now, the heavy blue in his eyes. Easy to forget the way it felt to chase him and the way it feels now when I can't catch what he's looking at even when I'm right here.

He stops to sneeze—a quiet, polite little sound—and blinks at the sun as if the sky offended him. His hair falls into his eyes. Reflex moves me before thought. I lean forward, brush it aside with two fingers, and then freeze, heat racing up my neck. He blinks at me, surprised.

"Bug," I lie quickly, tapping his forehead with my chopsticks to make it a joke. "Idiot."

He scrunches his nose and pushes my chopsticks away, and I laugh because it's either that or say something I don't know how to take back.

I settle my back against the bark again and look up through the leaves. The sunlight breaks into messy coins and drops them all over us. I listen to him eat. I listen to the bell in the distance that means nothing for another five minutes. I listen to the memory of small footprints in sand walking next to mine.

I think: He's still Kousei.

I also think: He isn't watching out for himself. So I'll watch for him.

I don't say either of those out loud. I say, "You're washing that shirt after school or I'm doing it." And when he groans, I smile so he can't see it.

I wish, in a place behind my ribs I don't let anyone touch, that this could be enough. The tree, the lunch, the sun, his mouth chewing and not frowning. The world small. The world easy.

"Next time bring dessert," I add, just to make the moment ordinary.

He flicks me the tiniest look. "Bossy."

"Hungry," I correct, and nudge the bento back into his hands. "Eat."

—

The soccer field shimmers in the late afternoon, heat lifting off it in waves. Grass clippings stick to socks, water bottles roll under benches, and a whistle shrieks somewhere near midfield. Watari drops onto the concrete by the chain-link fence like a puppet with its strings cut, legs stretched, hair sweat-damp, juice box straw between his teeth.

"Forget about it," he says around the straw, eyes half-closed at the sky.

"If I could forget it, I wouldn't be talking to you," Nao replies.

She stands on the other side of the fence, fingers looped through the wire, the shadow of the mesh laying a diamond pattern across her forearms. Bag slung crossbody. The look she gets when she's done tolerating everybody's nonsense.

Watari snorts a laugh. "I'm not interested in girls who won't fall for me," he says, dark chuckle, lazy grin.

"Huh," Nao says, eyebrows lifting. "That's... actually kind of refreshing." Beat. "And delusional."

He salutes her with the juice box. "Both can be true."

"It's Tsubaki."

Watari leans his head back against the fence, the smile easing a little at the corners. "Of course it is."

"She's wound up," Nao says. "More than usual."

"Tsubaki's a baby," Watari says, but there isn't malice in it. "Tell her she's wrong and she sulks and gets all defiant. Especially if it's about Arima." He folds the empty carton in half with one hand, thoughtful now. "Things get... complicated."

Nao's mouth goes flat. "Agreed," she says, and hates agreeing. "But I want to see her smile, not grind her teeth to dust."

Watari squints at the sun. "Arima's been... funny lately. Might be why."

"Funny?" Nao frowns.

"Like he went from shy-guy to... I dunno." Watari twirls the dead juice box straw between his fingers, looking for a word. "Intense. Focused. The kind of quiet that has teeth." He taps his chest with the straw, smirking again out of habit. "And trust me, I know intense people. Especially girls."

Nao rolls her eyes. "Please rest."

He shrugs. "I'm serious, though. He's different."

"He didn't show up to second period for three days," Nao says. "The class we have together."

Watari blinks, the play-acting sliding off his face. "What?"

"Three days," Nao repeats. "When he finally came, the teacher dug into him hard. He just stood there and took it." She watches Watari's reaction closely. "I thought you knew."

Watari looks down at the juice box in his hand like it might explain something. "I didn't," he says. Lighter than the frown pinching his brow. "He's been... busy, I guess."

"Busy where?" Nao asks. "Under that tree with Tsubaki? In the infirmary? In the clouds?"

Watari's grin returns, but it has a crack in it now. "Jealous?"

"Nauseated," Nao says. "There's a difference."

He laughs, real this time, then scrubs a hand through his hair and lets his head thunk back against the fence. Beyond the wire, his teammates shout, the ball skitters out of bounds, and the coach's whistle cuts the air with two sharp blasts. Practice resets.

"Tsubaki keeps saying he's like a little brother," Nao adds finally. "It's her favorite excuse."

Watari huffs. "Yeah. She's been using that line since elementary school."

"You think she's trying to convince us, or herself?"

He looks through the fence at the field, like the answer might be hiding out by the penalty box. "Both," he says, for once not sugarcoating it. "Maybe neither."

Nao makes a noncommittal sound, which in Nao means she agrees and hates it. "She worries about him," she says. "A lot. Too much."

"Yeah," Watari says softly. "A lot a lot."

They let the words hang. On the field, someone whoops. A gull carves a lazy white line across the sky, indifferent.

"Arima used to be easy to read," Watari says after a beat. "He'd duck, he'd dodge. You always knew he was trying not to take up space. Now he's... showing up, but it's like he's not all there when he does." He glances at Nao, asking permission to be serious on purpose. "Makes you want to keep a hand on his shoulder so he doesn't walk into traffic."

Nao nods once. "Tsubaki's trying," she says. "She acts like it's about lunch boxes and coffee stains, but she's keeping him from falling through the floor."

"That's her style," Watari says, small and fond.. " He's probably just worried about his sweetheart Kao-"

"WATARI! LET'S GO!"

He winces as he's cut off, he shakes his head, pops up to a crouch. "Duty calls," he says, grabbing his bag, the grin snapping back into place like a mask that knows its job. "Hey—good talk."

"Text Tsubaki after practice," Nao says. "Even if it's dumb."

"Everything I text is dumb," he says brightly, backing away. "It's my brand."

"Unfortunately."

He jogs toward the sideline, then slows, half-turns. For a second the brightness slips, and there's a flicker of the same unsettled line she's seen in Tsubaki all week.

"You'll tell me if you hear... anything?" he asks, not defining it.

"If I hear anything, I'll scream it at you from across campus."

He laughs, relief folded into it, and takes off. The fence rattles when the ball smacks against it nearby. Nao doesn't flinch. She stands long enough for the shadow of the mesh to slide off her arms and onto the ground. Then she turns, tugging her bag higher, mouth set.

—

The morning feels tilted before I even close my front door.

Air like water waiting to boil. Street empty in that too-empty way, no buses, no chatter, just the sound of my own shoes scraping the pavement and the strap of my bag whispering against my shoulder. I breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth. It should calm me. It doesn't.

However a few weird things kept happening today.

A soda can comes spinning out of nowhere and cuts across my toes like a little silver fish.

I catch myself before I trip. The clack of my heel on concrete echoes more than it should. I pivot and scan the street. Nothing. No giggling kids. No neighbor leaning out to say sorry. Just a breeze nosing at a plastic bag caught in a hedge.

"...Right," I say to nobody, and nudge the can with my shoe into a drain. The world blinks once and keeps going.

Half a block later an old dog behind a wire gate explodes into barking so loud my ribs jolt. The fence rattles with his whole body. He bares his teeth like he's been waiting all morning for someone to aim them at.

"Good morning to you too," I mutter. He hurls himself at the metal until it screams a little; I stare back until he remembers he's old and the bark turns to hoarse complaint. When I step away, it picks up again, like the noise has to follow me.

A rubber ball smacks the back of my head. It has a small bunny in the middle

"...Oi," I say, very calmly, to the empty air. I lift the ball with two fingers and hold it up. Neon green. The kind you get from a gacha machine outside a supermarket. "Who did that?"

Silence.

I toss it once, catch it, let it bounce into the gutter. I look up and down the street again. Curtains sit very still. A cicada starts up in a tree like a broken alarm and forgets its own rhythm halfway through.

A bike comes out of the side alley like it's trying to erase me from the world and misses my shoulder by a breath. Wind slaps my cheek. I turn, ready to say something that would get me sent to the office, but all I catch is a school jacket flapping and a flash of back wheel. The bike goes down the street.

My forehead knits so tight I can feel the pulse in it. I keep walking. My brain tries to laugh it off. Maybe the universe woke up bored. Maybe this is karma for being an idiot yesterday, or the day before that, or last year.

The last corner before the school gate is the one with the little florist on the ground floor and the cursed balcony that always looks like it's thinking about falling. I step into the shadow it throws and my skin goes cold all at once, like I've just remembered something too late.

Step right.

I obey the thought before I have time to decide it. A flowerpot punches the pavement where my toe would have been.

Pot and Clay explodes. Soil blooms up my leg, peppering my shin, dark flecks on my socks. A murdered petunia rolls near my heel like it wants to apologize.

I stare at the crater. The hair on my arms decides to learn a new language.

"Okay!," I say with a tick mark on my forehead. "Who did that?!" Louder this time.

A window above squeaks. Silence swallows it.

I listen hard for laughter. There isn't any. There's just my own breath and the far-off grind of the cleaning truck turning the corner. The feeling that someone is playing tag with me from a different century sits down on my shoulders and refuses to get off.

I shake my head and keep moving. Dirt spills out of my cuff with every step. At the gate, the guard gives me a look that says, I don't want to know, and I salute him with a face that says, Me neither.

Inside, the entryway smells like wet rubber and disinfectant. Rows of metal cubbies click as hands open and close them, pairs of shoes trade places with pairs of slippers, laughter tosses itself up and then falls. I timed it wrong: there's a gap in the flow and I'm in it. No Tsubaki to scold me for looking like I lost a fight with a coffee machine. No Watari to spill sports tape everywhere and call it a personality.

I bend, pull out my indoor shoes, and as I'm untying the outdoor pair, I feel the stare. Not the sharp one, the bureaucratic one.

"Arima."

I straighten. Guidance counselor. Tie perfect. Hair never moves. Clipboard a part of their body like a third arm evolved sometime in the eighties. Their voice is the tone that begins report cards and ends daydreams.

"Yes, sensei?"

"Have you decided?" They don't clarify what. They never have to. "High school. Your career plan." The pen hovers, ready to trap whatever I say in little boxes that will follow me for three years.

Career plan.

The phrase drops into my chest and rings there like a coin hitting a bowl.

I look down at my socks. There's dirt on them from a dead petunia. It seems important to memorize that, the exact pattern of it. My mouth opens and nothing comes out. My shoulders remember how to hunch.

"Arima?" the counselor prompts, gentler. I hear the subtext: You are a good student, or you used to be. You are slipping. I need something to write in this box that makes me feel like you are less likely to vanish.

My brain does what it always does when something hurts: it tries to split in two.

On one side: piano. Black and white, the firm kindness of keys, the weight of the lid, the smell of polish that clings to your sleeves. The stage light that makes your skin feel borrowed. The old cold that crawls out of the sound and sits on your knee and asks you to play like you're alone at a funeral. The love that lives there too, whether I want it to or not. Kaori's bow slicing the air. Her hair catching the light and pretending it's made of gold.

On the other side: lab light. Not warm either, but honest. Glass that needs your hands to be steady. Numbers that answer the same question the same way twice if you've asked it right. Machines that hum because you fed them questions. The barrel of a centrifuge clicking home. The soft thup of a pipette returning to rest like a cat laying its head on your hand. The way night feels inside a lab—wide, and alone, and purposeful.

I stand there holding my shoes like a kid who doesn't know what feet are for anymore.

What do you want to be?

The true answer is, I wanted to be the person who made sure she didn't die. That's not an occupation they put on pamphlets.

In another life, I found language for that. I didn't plan a title. I planned results. I learned how to live in fluorescent and caffeine and white noise until my eyes forgot sleep on purpose. I named things that had only numbers. I lifted lids on problems older than me. I made a tiny part of the world quieter for the people who were bleeding. Some of those people never knew my name. I didn't need them to.

I cured more than one thing. That feels like bragging when it was just triage with a calendar. Rare things that hid in small villages. Common things that killed loudly every day. Things with names that sound like clumsy spells. Things so new they only had case numbers and the sound of parents not breathing right.

And every time I wrote a result, every time a trial turned a corner, every time a graph finally bent the right way, there was one shape in the back of my mind walking down a hospital hall with a bouquet she'd pretend wasn't for her.

Kaori. Every miracle was just me practicing on strangers to get ready for you.

"Arima?" The counselor again. The pen's shadow falls like a metronome across the clipboard.

I think about Skyclars. How close it is. The way the timeline will fight me no matter how hard I push. Animal trials first. Then people. Then proof all the way down to silence. Two months feels like a joke when your heart notices every hour.

I think about the hospital room. Bandage around her head like someone tried to keep the light in and didn't know how. The way she smiled when Watari dumped the stack of books he pretended he checked out. The way the IV line trembled when she laughed too hard.

I think about a theater full of people clapping for someone else while I sat in a bathroom and let a faucet talk over the noise in my head. I think about a piano as a headstone you can push sound through. I think about the relief in deciding I didn't have to bleed that way today.

A long, stupid, helpful breath finds me. I put the indoor shoes on and straighten up like the motion can decide me.

"Science," I hear myself say. The word tastes like water. "Medicine, sensei."

The counselor's eyebrows lift. Surprise first. Then something softer. Relief, maybe. They nod and write it down like that makes it true.

"You'll need to review science high schools," they say, already in motion. "There are several strong programs. I have pamphlets. And we can discuss preparatory coursework for—"

"Okay," I say. My voice is calmer than I expected. "Thank you."

We trade the small bows people trade when they've completed a ritual. The counselor moves on; the pen clicks. I tuck my outdoor shoes into the cubby and close the metal door. The sound is neat. Finished.

In the hallway, students ripple past. Someone laughs too loud. Someone bumps my shoulder and says sorry without looking. I start walking and my body feels a fraction heavier, which is how relief pretends to be something else before it settles into the right name.

This doesn't mean I'm done with the piano. It can't. That would be like taking out a rib and expecting to stand up straight. It lives in my hands whether I sit at the bench or not. It lives in the way I count my steps. It lives in the way I listen when the air hums.

But a piano can't stop a body from losing itself cell by cell. Sound can hold a person. It can't hold back a disease like a door.

The lab can. The lab is a different kind of stage. You don't get applause there. You get numbers. You get answers that don't care if you cried while you made them.

How many people could I help if I stop pretending my life is just a question about one girl and start admitting I already know how to write other people's answers? How many other parents wouldn't have to wake up and learn the names of machines their children are attached to? How many kids wouldn't have to have bandages that make them look like someone tried to fix a thing that shouldn't have broken?

If I keep what I know folded up in my chest because I'm tired or scared or because music is prettier, it's not just cowardice. It's theft.

The classroom door is half open. Voices peel out of it and stick to the hall. I stop before I go in and put my hand on the frame until the wood remembers I'm here.

"I'll save you," I say, quietly enough that the sentence belongs to me. "No matter what it costs."

It isn't a vow made at a piano. It isn't romantic. It isn't even brave. It's a logistics problem with blood in it. It's me telling the part of me that wants to run that it can walk later, after.

I push the door. Desks scrape. A few heads turn. Someone says my name like they're testing if I still answer to it. I do.

At my seat, I drop my bag, slip into the chair, and let the scrape of the legs be the sound that starts this version of the day. Dirt from a dead flower falls off my sock and freckles the floor. I brush at it with my shoe until it makes a little comet and disappears under my desk.

On the board the teacher has written three dates and a question mark. On my notebook I write one word in the top corner where no one will see it unless they're trying to be me.

Science.

The bell rings. The room snaps to attention, then relaxes into the ritual of listening. I let my pen cap roll under my thumb. It clicks twice, a soft metronome only I can hear.

I don't look out the window. If I do, I'll see a sky the color of yesterday's promise and I don't have time to argue with that. Not today. Today I keep my eyes on the board and pretend the future is a line I can follow without tripping.

Outside, somewhere, a dog barks again. This time I don't flinch.

Chapter Text

I wasn't snooping. I was... standing by the fire-drill notice outside the guidance office, definitely reading it with my eyes and absolutely not using my ears like satellite dishes.

"Have you decided on a career plan, Arima?"

A soft pause. Then Kousei's voice, calm like a weather report: "Science. Medicine."

The corner of the notice crumpled under my thumb. Science..? Medicine..?

Not piano. Not "liberal arts." Not even the polite "undecided." Since when did he keep a lab coat hidden under that crooked uniform? The most I've ever seen him dissect is a pencil.

Through the glass I caught a slice of the room: the teacher nodding; a pen scratching; Kousei standing straight, hands at his sides, expression steady in that way he gets when the floor inside him is tilted but he refuses to show it. He looked... okay. Also far away—like part of him was listening to someone only he could hear.

Relief arrived first, quick and cool. Good. Get away from the thing that keeps cutting you. Leave the metronome, the judges with tiny handwriting, the rooms that made you gray around the edges. Pick anything else.

But confusion shouldered in right after. Why the opposite of music? Why the world with white lights and beeping machines and forms in triplicate? He's never said, "I want to be a doctor." He's never cheered in chemistry. Goggles make him complain. When did this seed get planted? Did it sprout overnight, or has it been growing in the dark while I wasn't looking?

The door clicked. I flattened the paper like that would iron my face too. He stepped out with those careful steps of his—quiet enough to not wake a hallway. He passed my patch of wall without seeing me. For two heartbeats I saw his eyes clearly: intense and tired, like storm glass. He's been wearing that look a lot lately.

He turned the corner. The teacher called another name. The hallway buzzed on like nothing had rerouted my brain.

I should have been happy. I told myself to be happy. See? He's not choosing the thing that hurt him. He's not sliding back under anyone's ghost. We can celebrate. I'll drag him to the family restaurant, order too many parfaits, take pictures until he glares.

Except.. the relief wouldn't settle unless it could grab an explanation, and the explanations I reached for made my stomach small. Is it the life he's lived? All those disinfectant hallways, results, checkups, the way machines own the air? If you grow up under that sky, maybe you want to learn the weather. Maybe this is him deciding to fight back in a language that listens. That makes sense. And it makes me weirdly mad too, because it's so like him to decide something heavy and then carry it alone.

No—that's not fair. He didn't say why. He just said what. I'm the one stuffing reasons into the quiet.

I thought of last weekend and winced. Saitou-senpai took me for shaved ice near the station. He told me I looked nice in yukata, and I said "thanks" like an adult for maybe three minutes. Then I started talking about Kousei. I didn't notice until I looked up and saw that patient smile Saitou does, the one that's kind and a little far away, like he's gently moving a fragile thing down from a high shelf. He never said "can we not," never made me feel dumb. He just asked if I wanted another syrup flavor and pretended my face wasn't burning.

I wanted to apologize, and also crawl under the table, and also order the blue one and start over. Instead I made a sunburn joke. He laughed. He always laughs. He deserves someone whose mouth doesn't default to "Arima, Arima, Arima."

I leaned my head back against the wall. The tiny window over the doors showed a swatch of sky: flat yellow, heat sitting on the town like a heavy cat. Somewhere a ball thumped. Someone laughed. The day refused to notice my tiny crisis.

Okay. So he's not choosing piano. That's good, right? Less hurting. Fewer nights I want to smash metronomes. But it also felt like watching a bird hop down from a branch and just...walk. Normally. He can walk. He'll be good at it. He's good at whatever he decides to learn. Still, I've always pictured him flying—on his own terms, not anyone else's.

I ran through snapshots in my head, as if one of them would explain this: little Kousei in a too-big blazer, flat bangs, hands swallowed by sleeve cuffs; Kousei in middle school with his hair finally arguing back and the way he stands like he's apologizing to air; Kousei at the riverbank counting stones because I made him; Kousei on that stage with the circle of light and the cold sound I hate; Kousei lately, eyes like a storm he keeps inside his skull.

His mom. I don't like thinking about her. I like even less the way her shadow sometimes sits on his shoulder and changes his shape. But right now, it wasn't one person I thought of—it was the whole weather pattern of his life. Maybe he's not running from music. Maybe he's turning toward something else. Maybe he's tired of being the instrument and wants to be the hands or something like that.

And then there's Ka— I stop the name before it forms. It's not about one person. It's about all the hospital rooms we've drawn maps through in our heads, all the "she's fine" we've said with smiles too wide. If you live with that long enough, "medicine" stops being a job and starts being a verb.

I still wanted to shake him and say, Explain it to me. Let me in. I still wanted to grab his sleeve and drag him somewhere with air and ask the questions I practice and never ask: Are you okay? What are you really chasing? Where do I fit if you leave music behind?

I don't even know when "music" became a place I thought we all lived in together. He and I. And her. And even Watari, orbiting with his jokes. Maybe I've been imagining a house that never existed, and now I'm mad that he's walking out of a door that was only in my head.

The bell rang. The hallway jolted. A first-year sprinted past with his tie over his shoulder like a flag. A teacher yelled about walking feet. I smoothed the notice I'd mangled and pretended to read it one more time so I could pretend I wasn't waiting for my heart to catch up.

At lunch we were under the camphor tree again, I didn't ask any of it. He was asleep yet again against the trunk, arms folded, mouth barely open, uniform rumpled, faint remnants of a coffee stain where only I would notice. No glasses—so his face looked different, older and younger at once. Peaceful and exhausted. The leaves ticked in the heat. The sun pressed down.

I sat on the roots and opened my bento as quietly as the clasps would allow. After a minute he made a small sound in his throat and blinked at me like he was remembering how to wear his face. The questions lined up behind my teeth and then marched right off a cliff.

I shoved the box toward him until it tapped his sleeve. "Eat." I told him.

He did. That was the whole conversation, and somehow it felt like enough for the length of a lunch period.

Later, when I remembered the guidance office and the sky and the way my stomach had felt too small, I told the warm air what I hadn't told him. "You're so confusing, Kousei. But... fine. I'll keep up."

I don't know if I can. I don't know if I want him to keep walking or if I want to push him back up into the branches. I don't know where I'm supposed to stand if he chooses a hallway with white coats instead of a stage with hot lights. I only know this: I'm not letting him walk it alone. Even if he tries to.

Science. Medicine.

Okay. Then I'll learn that weather, too.

———

The lab hums like a tired refrigerator. Fluorescents press the afternoon flat. Notes and printouts are taped everywhere, curling at the corners. Whiteboard math we keep not erasing sits like a dare. The steel table is cool under my forearms. A small pill near my elbow catches a thin line of light—Skyclars, blue and green color, pretending to be ordinary.

Saitou flips a clipboard page with his thumb and makes the sound he makes when numbers line up. "Rabbits: clean." Flip. "Frogs: clean." Flip. "Felines—blood markers stable, motor tests improved." He taps a column. "Canines... cleaner than expected."

The incubator ticks as it corrects half a degree. Alcohol wipes, warm plastic, stale coffee—that's the room's smell. The centrifuge light blinks three times and settles, like always. I could draw this layout from memory now, right down to the notch in the linoleum near the sink.

"They keep behaving," he says, dry on purpose, as if that will stop hope from getting ideas. "It's almost suspicious."

"Almost," I say. Suspicion is for people with time.

He scribbles the date, circles two numbers. His eyes slide to me, then to the vial. "You said you had that meeting today," he adds, like he's fishing in calm water. "Career plans."

"Yeah." I look at the vial, not him. "I put science. Medicine."

He doesn't react for a second, then his shoulders let go half an inch. "Good," he says. "The world needs people like you."

Praise used to arrive with a score attached. Ninety-eight, first prize, excellent control. It didn't touch me; it went through me to someone else. This lands. It sits there. I don't know where to put it. "Thanks," I say, and the word feels new in my mouth.

He turns the clipboard around and taps the top line—our initials, the batch tag. Skyclars. We wrote the name on a sticky note months ago and never upgraded it. "If the board doesn't get cute," he says, "we could be cleared for a small human cohort in a few weeks. Maybe a month. With these animal data, I can make a strong case."

Weeks. Maybe a month. The numbers drop into my stomach like stones. I pull off a glove and toss it toward the bin. It kisses the rim and skids under the counter. Of course it does.

"We should apply now," I say. It comes out too fast. "We've done rabbits, frogs, cats, dogs. We repeated dosing. We re-ran panels. You walked every line with me. It's clean, Saitou. It's—" I stop before I say perfect.

"Nothing is perfect," he says automatically, but his eyes are still on the vial.

"Perfect enough," I push. "Perfect enough to stop waiting while people—" The word I almost say catches. I swallow it and the room tilts for a second.

He studies me. He's good at it. He's looked at grief long enough to make it blink first. His wife's photo sits on the filing cabinet, turned slightly toward the wall like a candle in a draft.

"If we rush to humans and anything looks wrong," he says, quieter, "we don't just lose a week. We lose trust. Funding. Time we can't buy back."

"Time we can't buy back anyway." My voice frays, then holds. "You said it yourself—data like this doesn't show up often. You can convince them. Your name opens doors mine doesn't."

He exhales, long. I can see him weighing two kinds of failure: the kind the world writes down, and the kind that lives in your bones. The incubator ticks again. Down the hall, a cart squeaks, pauses, squeaks.

"Tomorrow," he says at last. "I'll submit to the ethics board and the hospital partners. We'll request an early-start protocol. I'll add compassionate-use language. It won't be fast—nothing is—but I'll push."

Relief doesn't feel like fireworks. It feels like a fist unclenching enough to let blood back into the fingers. "Thank you," I say, and I mean more than you know.

He isn't done. "You also need to be ready for the part where the answer is no," he says. "Or the part where it's yes and the first human result is messy. You don't get to come apart. Not here."

"I know." I do. I already came apart once this week under a hot light. The pieces found each other again. Maybe they'll keep doing that. Maybe that's my only trick.

He sets the clipboard down and leans on the table, palms flat. "You're fourteen you know ," he says, half to me, half to the air.

"So?" I want to ask what age has to do with molecules, with math, with clocks that don't care. Instead I watch the vial throw back its thin line of light.

"Eat before you fall over." He opens the lab fridge, pulls out an onigiri, and tosses it without looking. I catch it because my hands remember how even when my head doesn't. " Just Becuase your an anamoly doesn't mean your not human, take better care of yourself"

"For the record," he adds, eyes on the old desktop while a template loads, "you don't have to pretend you're not scared. Being scared and being ready aren't opposites."

I strip the plastic and bite. Rice, salt, sea. "I'm not scared," I lie, because the fear I have isn't sharp; it's heavy. "I'm impatient."

He grunts. In his language, that's approval. The keyboard clacks too loud for the room.

When the food is gone, I wash my hands and hang the lab coat back on its hook. I stand next to the steel like a soldier at a river. The vial is right there: ordinary and impossible.

"Tomorrow," Saitou repeats, not looking up. "Go home. Or go...wherever you go."

I nod. Hospital, my head supplies. The word is a room now. West window. Two chairs, one that knows my shape. A beeping that learned to whisper.

At the door I look back. Saitou's face is a lit rectangle above a field of forms. He's already three boxes ahead. "Thanks," I say again.

"Don't thank me yet, kid," he says, and the corner of his mouth tilts like he might, one day.

The hallway smells like someone mopped and then got tired. I pass the animal room and the autoclave and the cabinet with labels that shout three times. My reflection keeps pace in the glass: thin, tired, school uniform under a lab badge like a bad joke.

Outside, the evening air is warm and soft. My phone buzzes once—nothing urgent. I tuck it away. My feet already know which way to turn. Toward disinfectant and soft-voiced nurses. Toward a window that catches late light. Toward a person I won't name to anyone, whose time feels like it's shrinking while the world insists on moving at its own speed.

Hold on, I tell the empty sky. Please hold on.

———

I cut across the station square toward the hospital, the kind of late afternoon that glues your collar to your neck. The brick path is warm through the soles of my shoes. She hasn't been at school all term. The empty chair in homeroom has learned to make its own gravity. I go anyway. Sit, listen, collect seconds I missed last time.

Something cold bursts against the back of my head.

I stop. Water snakes down my neck and hides under my shirt. A thin arc drips off my ear. I turn slowly. Vending machine hum. A salaryman with a dead face. A pair of elementary schoolers herding a kickball. No one holding a balloon. Just a red rubber band lying there like a clue that doesn't care if it's found.

"Very funny....," I tell the air, and keep walking.  The feeling of Deja vu didn't stop

The zelkova at the corner throws a patch of shade big enough to matter. I step into it, grateful—and my heel kisses metal. A bucket, tipped on its side, skates under my foot. My balance does the panicked math that keeps noses from breaking. I windmill, grab the tree, and hiss a breath through my teeth as the bucket rattles away in triumph.

A Tick mark on my forehead . I look up into the leaves. "Oi," I bark. "Who's—"

A laugh emits through the area then, a tiny intake of breath answers me. A high, girlish squeak. Then the sound a branch makes when it stops being a branch and starts being an exit.

"Kya—!"

Oh yeah.... that's what I forgot

Nagi

I have just enough time to put my arms out. Her small body drops like a sack of summer air and collides with my chest. We go down together, elbows and bark and breath leaving my lungs in a flat shape.

I blink water out of my lashes. She's across me at an awkward angle, hair falling across her cheek in clean, blunt bangs. Two red bear hair clips grin from either side of her head, cheerful and unhelpful. Her hands are curled like she meant to catch the sky and forgot how. A black cat materializes by the roots, blinks once at our heap, and vanishes under a fence as if it has paperwork to file elsewhere.

déjà vu slots the photo into the right folder. Right. This is where we meet again.

"Freaking idiot," I tell the canopy, gently. I shift, get an arm under her knees and another at her back, and stand. She's light in the way small, determined people are—more momentum than mass. The bucket bumps my ankle like it wants to finish the job.

Hiroko's building is four blocks if you're not carrying anyone. I am. My arms complain by block two and negotiate a truce by block three.

The door opens before I knock twice. "Yo—" Hiroko stops mid-greeting when the picture resolves: me, damp, bucket handle hooked at my wrist; a girl with bears in her hair, limp in my arms. An unlit cigarette is pinched between two fingers, the kind of habit you hold like punctuation. Surprise crosses her face so fast it looks like wind.

"Are you collecting strays now?" she says, but it comes out more curious than sharp.

"She fell," I say. "From the tree."

"That's Not Helping your case." She said with a raised brow

Hiroko steps aside, mouth chewing on the unlit filter like it can give answers. The entry smells like tea and the ghost of smoke. Koharu peeks around her leg—yellow hair, serious mouth. Her eyes travel from the bear clips to the bucket to my shirt and back, and she pronounces, "Mess."

"Put her on the futon," Hiroko says, voice finding a level again. She cracks the window, perches the cigarette on the sill like she might remember to light it later, and moves with a quick, neat competence that admits worry without dramatizing it.

I lay the girl down. Her lashes flutter like they're thinking about work. A beat. Then she bolts upright, sits too straight, and presses thumb and forefinger to her chin, playing innocent with a stagey face that would be annoying if it weren't so transparent.

"Where am I?" she asks, eyes wide enough to squeak.

"Living room," I say. "Welcome to the land of the living ."

Her gaze clicks to Hiroko blinks and explodes. "Y—You're Hiroko Seto-sensei?!"

Hiroko blinks once. The shape of her mouth does something between a smirk and a brace. "That's what my bills say."

The girl launches forward on her knees until she's shin-to-shin with Hiroko and clamps both hands around Hiroko's like prayer. The red bear clips glare up at us like witnesses. "Please let me be your student!"

Hiroko glances sideways at me, as if to confirm this is, in fact, her life now. I lift both palms. Not my script.

"Names," Hiroko says, trying for dry but not quite landing it. "Start with those."

The girl bows so fast one bear clip leaps for freedom and lands in her lap. "I'm Nagi Aizato! First-year in the music division at Kurumigaoka—piano major. I've admired you for a long time—your recordings with—um—I just—please, please, please teach me!"

Koharu edges closer, evaluating. "She's loud," she tells me, as if I hadn't noticed.

"This is sudden," Hiroko says, and now the shake shows—subtle, in the way her fingers hover over Nagi's as if they might pull away or pull in. "And not entirely polite to your school teachers." She studies the girl's face, the bright engine of it, the undercurrent of fear that lives in real ambition. "How how about this?"

" Make me want to teach you." She points at the piano. "Then I'll see if your worth it"

Nagi eyes widens but she nods." I understand" she said more seriously.

Nagi spins to the upright like a compass snapping to north, scoots onto the bench, flexes her fingers, and inhales like she's about to jump into winter water.

She was about to start

"Wait," I say.

She freezes, hands hovering a centimeter above the keys, and looks back at me, confused. I step in, capture both of her cheeks between my fingers, and pull.

Her voice jumps two octaves. "Ow!-ow!-what are you!—"

"You hit me with a water balloon," I say, stretching until she looks like an indignant goldfish. "You set a bucket trap. You fell on me out of a tree." I continued " Oh yeah let's not forget about the pot! And cans!"

"I'm—ow—sorry!" she squeaks, eyes instantly glossing—real or eyedrops; the jury's out. "The bucket wasn't for you! And the balloon was just a little—ow—test!" Her cheeks were very malleable.

"Test failed." I let go. Her cheeks stay round a beat too long, then snap back. Hiroko coughs into her knuckles to smother a laugh she'd deny later. Koharu nods once, the gravity of justice served.

Nagi glowers up at me, red bears scowling in solidarity. "You're mean," she mutters, rubbing, then sets her shoulders and turns back to the keys. Determination clicks back into place. She breathes, drops her hands, and chooses Chopin.

Etude Op. 25, No. 5. "Wrong-Note." Of course

Hiroko perked up. It was the same song I played... Tried to play for the Maihou.

Her opening is clean; the consonants in her touch make the dissonance read as wit instead of accident. Wrist loose enough. Forearm not cheating the line. The left hand lays a sensible floor. She keeps the tempo tight without suffocating it. Kurumigaoka written all over the knuckles—tidy, quick, educated.

And then the hollow shows up on cue. The inner voices don't get to talk; she irons the middle to a shine that hides the grain. When the figure returns, she adds pressure instead of depth, as if louder were the same as closer. Two left-hand corners wobble like a table with a shorter leg. The pedal's dry by a thumb-width. Clarity's nice. Breath is better. She gives me ninety and keeps the ten that would make it feel like a person and not a trick.

I lean against the doorframe and let the two timelines line up—the one where I know this kid like my own patience and the one where she's a stranger who is, in alarming detail, exactly herself. In that other life we learned to breathe at the same time again. We laughed at wrong notes until they stopped being wrong and started being ours. The room tilts a degree and settles.

She vaults the last run. Lands the chord true. Freezes palms-on-wood until the ring stops having places to go. Then she turns, a small grin breaking through her trying-to-be-cool face—70% joy, 30% please say it.

Koharu claps with sparkly eyes. "Wow so nice!" she pronounces.

Hiroko stands slowly, as if testing her legs, and walks two steps toward the bench. The unlit cigarette sits on the sill behind her like a witness. She rests a knuckle on the fallboard and taps, thoughtful. "That's Kurumigaoka for you..." A breath. "Hands and head both working. Good wit on top"

Hiroko puts a finger on her mouth.. Nagi watched intently, suddenly she smiled. "Okay, can you start coming next week?" Hiroko said holding a finger up

Nagi's eyes flood. Tears bead at the rim—too shiny, too fast. The bears glare up at us from her lap like red witnesses. She bows so hard her forehead nearly headbutts the fallboard. "Th—thank you! I'll work so hard! I'll—"

"Stop before you promise me your soul," Hiroko says, something almost like relief exhaling out of her. She points with her chin at the calendar pinned to the fridge with a magnet that says NO CHOPIN BEFORE COFFEE. "Next week. Bring ears."

Nagi nods so hard a bear clip finally gives up and tumbles onto the tatami. "Yes!"

Hiroko turns to me then, the decision already written in the angle of her eyebrows. The shaken edge from earlier is still there, but it's turned into resolve. "And you," she says, like it's the second half of a sentence I should have heard already. "Help teach her."

The first answer in my throat is no. My mouth edits. "Why me?" I continue. " At this point I suck ass at the piano I may be worse than her"

"Because you heard what she missed," she says simply. "And you know how to make people find it. Because you pretend you don't care when you do. You got first in Towa easily you have all the skills... Also—" she gives me a teacher look she hasn't earned but wears well "—watch your language."

"Fine, I'll help" I say.  I suppose I did bring her to Hiroko so that's the least  I can do. Hopefully she doesn't want much dedication from me though I didn't have time for that.

"Good" she says. The corner of her mouth twitches. The unlit cigarette on the sill watches us both like a little gray judge.

Nagi peers between us, blinking fast, the bears in her lap upside down and scandalized. "I—I'll bring snacks?" she offers, as if this tips the scale.

"Snacks are important for art," Koharu says with priestly gravity.

The hospital tugs at me from the west like a tide. If I leave now, the room will still be warm with the kind of light that makes her hair look like something you apologize to and then forgive. I should go.

But déjà vu has hands, and they're on my shoulders now, steadying, not stopping. The last time I said yes to Nagi, I got back pieces of myself I thought were permanently filed under Do Not Touch. We mocked, we worked, we performed until the stage felt like a place you could breathe again. I owe that version of us something. Maybe this version too.

"I'll try. Don't complain if my input is useless." I say

Hiroko lets out a small breath she didn't give herself permission to hold. "I won't need to."

Nagi bows again, so low her bear clips kiss the keys. "Thank you, Sensei! Thank you, Arima-san! I won't let you—"

"Start by not dropping pots and buckets," I say, already stepping toward the door.

She flushes to the ears. "Y—yes!"

"Go," Hiroko says to me, softer now, the shaken part melted into care. "Wherever you go."

"Yeah," I say. The word covers more ground than it should.

On the landing the air is warmer than inside. I touch the rail; the metal holds the day's heat like a memory. A crow complains from the electric line. Somewhere a bicycle bell rings twice. I think of a vial on a steel table and a form that says tomorrow. Of a window that faces west and a chair that knows my shape. Of a girl with bear clips and a joke of a Chopin that still manages to say something true.

The street opens. I keep walking.

—————

The corridor hums like a giant refrigerator, all white light and polished floor that doubles me into a ghost. I pad along in hospital slippers, palms brushing the cool rail as I go. The IV pole isn't with me tonight—small victory—so I swing my arms a little and sing nothing-words under my breath, the kind you make up when you're bored in a bakery.

"Ele, ele... canelé," I whisper, and imagine the burnished sugar crust cracking under my teeth. Mom says the syrup should smell like caramel just at the edge of bitter; Dad says that edge is where the magic is. The word edge tastes good in my mouth. It tastes like stages and bright circles of light and the moment before a down-bow.

I take three careful steps and pretend they're onstage steps, the kind that make the audience lean in before you've even tuned. If I squint, the corridor could almost be a backstage hallway—dim, chilled, a current of nerves moving through it. If I really squint, the silver strip of fluorescent catches a dust-mote just so, like the bow-hair catching a single filament of sound.

I think of him. I think of Kousei the way you think of a song that's been stuck all day, even when you're trying to hum something else. He visits more than anyone now; even more than Mom and Dad. He slips in after school, after practice, after the end of the day when the city winds down, and he just... sits. Sometimes he brings books he swears Watari picked, and the library card betrays him—someone else's name first, then Arima in clean letters underneath. Sometimes he doesn't bring anything at all. He takes the vinyl chair by my bed, or even sits beside me, eyes half-lidded like he's listening to a piece only he can hear.

I wanted to tell him to go home. Sometimes I did. He would say, "In a minute," and then the minute became an hour, and the hour became a nurse peeking in and pretending not to be surprised he was still there. When he finally leaves, the chair sighs like it's grateful. My chest does something similar and I hate that it does.

"See?" I tell the empty hall, lifting my chin like a kid showing off a healed scab. "I can still walk, Kousei."

My right foot shuffles forward. The slipper squeaks. I can almost feel the bow in my hand, the old thrill starting in my shoulders, the way music makes the rest of the world scoot back a little to give you room.

Then my legs leave me.

It's not dramatic, not at first. Just a momentary misfire, like a light flicking once before it burns out. The floor tilts; my knee buckles; the rail is a river rushing away from my fingers. I'm sitting before I realize I'm falling. The cold seeps through the thin hospital gown at once. Both slippers have flown off. They stare at me, open-mouthed.

"Huh?" My voice is small. "What...?"

I try again. I clamp the rail with both hands and push, the way you lift a heavy window. My forearms shake; my knees limp like wet paper. I get a few inches off the floor, enough to think there we go, and then the connection is gone—like someone unplugged me. I slump back down. Air leaves my lungs, a soft, embarrassing sound.

Not now. Please, not now...

I hook my heels under me and drag. The skin on my shins squeaks against the polished wax. My heartbeat staggers. Sweat prickles at my scalp where the bandage meets hair. I press my shoulder to the wall and try to climb it, as if friction alone could turn me into a person again.

"Stand up," I tell my body. It comes out more breath than words.

The hallway pretends not to hear. It smells like lemon cleaner and sleep.

I bring my fists down on my thighs—tap first, then harder. "Stand up," I say again, louder. "Stand up." Tears are hot on my face before I can be brave about it. They fall and stick my hair to my cheeks.

"You're my legs," I choke, voice breaking into jagged pieces. "You're my legs, aren't you?! Stand up!"

The words echo down the corridor and come back smaller. I pound again, not because I believe pain will fix whatever is misfiring in there, but because it feels like doing something, and doing nothing feels like drowning.

Kousei would sprint if he heard me. He would take corners badly and skid the last few feet and say my name like it could hold me together. I don't want him to see. I don't want anyone to see, but especially not him. He's already carrying too much—whatever invisible cargo he picked up somewhere between yesterday and today and refuses to put down. He thinks he's hiding it; he's not. The shadows under his eyes are beginning to look permanent, like the kind you chisel into statues to make them look thoughtful.

I'm thinking of him even in this situation.

I hate that thought. I hate the part of it where he invades my thoughts so easily.. it was scary

"Stand. Up!" I press my heels to the floor and push hard. For a second I'm vertical—trembling, but upright—palms flat on the rail, chin tucked. The world swings. Black freckles sparkle at the edges of my vision. I take a breath I hope is steady enough to pass for one. My right knee buckles. I fold in half and go down hard, hip catching first, elbow second. A bolt of pain lances up my arm. I swear and then apologize to the empty space.

"Aaaagh—" It bursts out of me before I can bite it down. The sound ricochets off the walls and keeps going long after I stop making it.

I stay on the floor. The tiles are cool. If I close my eyes, they could be the quiet surface of a lake and I could float here, easy, as long as I don't move. I press my forehead to the crook of my arm and count my breaths like I'm back in a practice room timing long tones.

This is not the first time. It won't be the last. There are good days—days I can walk laps, days I can sit up without the world going soft at the edges, days I can laugh without the laugh turning into a cough. Then there are There are days like this. The trick is to stack the good ones into a wall and pretend it can hold back the tide.

I picture Mr. Bunny waiting on my pillow, ears bent, one eye slightly squished where I slept on him. I picture Kousei's profile in the visitor's chair, the way he looks smaller when he thinks I'm not watching, like the shape of the room is too big for him and he's trying to fit anyway. I picture his hands—the way they tremble a little now when he threads his fingers through mine, as if he's measuring the distance between what he can fix and what he can't.

He told me we'd play again. He said it like a vow, like a rope he was throwing across a canyon. I caught it because what else do you do with a promise like that? I wrapped it around my wrist and tied a knot. Tonight, lying on the floor with slippers pointing their soft, accusing mouths at me, I tug at the rope and feel it tug back. Somewhere out there, he's awake. I don't know how I know. I just do. Maybe he's staring at a page full of numbers that might someday turn into a music with a name I can't pronounce. Maybe he's walking under streetlights, counting cracks in the pavement to make the world feel ordered. Maybe he's standing outside the hospital door, deciding if he should come in or give me the dignity of quiet.

A nurse's cart squeaks at the far end of the hall. I drag the back of my hand across my face and leave it wet. I swallow, then push my palms against the floor. My arms shake, but they work. I scoot one hip, then the other, until my shoulder can rest against the wall again. The metal rail is cold and kind. I haul myself up the way you climb out of a pool—slow, stubborn, ugly.

When my knees finally lock, I stare at my traitor legs and try to smile at them, like you do with children who have just scared you half to death. "Okay," I whisper. "Okay. We'll try again tomorrow."

I don't pick up the song. I don't have the breath for it. I shuffle back toward my room, one hand sliding along the rail, the other pressed to the spot where my heartbeat feels a little too fast. Mr. Bunny will be there when I reach the bed. If I'm lucky, the chair will be occupied by a boy who doesn't know how to stop showing up.

"Just a little longer," I tell the corridor, the ceiling, the future. "Just hold a little longer."

Chapter Text

After last bell the building exhales—cleats squeak from the field, a whistle snaps, Tsubaki's trapped in extra class, and I've got a couple hours before the lesson Hiroko drafted me into. I point myself toward the bakery for canelés and citrus tarts, then the hospital. Sit with Kaori until the room forgets it's a room.

That what the plan today was. and it was becoming an everyday multiple times a day plan.

I round the corner by the zelkova trees and stop.

Then I see I freeze.

Kaori..

She's there under the leaves in her spring uniform and cardigan, ribbon losing a fight with her hair, face pale but lit by a stubborn half-smile as she follows two birds skimming the sky. She feels me watching and turns—blush first, smile after.

"You," she says, pointing like she caught me. "You were coming to see me, weren't you?"

Guilty as charged

"Maybe," I say, because yes feels too naked.

She marches up and pokes my chest. "Maybe?"she mimics, hands on hips. "See? All okay now."

Okay doesn't fit on her. She's holding herself upright with string and a dare. I want to fold her into me and keep the wind off. My bag strap digs into my shoulder. So I do the next best thing and start carrying early.

"Where's Watari-kun?" she asks, peeking around me like he might fall out of the tree. "I wanted to ambush him."

"Practice," I say. "You get me."

She grins. "I'll manage. Especially with that big bag." She says with a sinister grin that made me scared for my poor underdeveloped shoulders.

We slide into the autumn sale together. The street has its own weather—paper flags, bad speakers, sugar and oil in the air. Kaori ricochets from stall to stall and I trail close, half a step behind, close enough to catch her elbow if she tilts, closer when the crowd presses. I don't let anyone slide between us.

"Teddy bears," she declares, elbow-deep in soft fur. "This one's begging."

"It's demanding rent," I mutter, already holding two sacks.

Then pens with cat heads. Then clips. Then a scarf she holds to her throat, making a face in a window and then at me. A skewer of something hot gets shoved into my hand. "Eat now," she orders. "It's happiest hot."

"It's fried..."

"It's love."

Every time she reaches for a bag I lean away. "I've got it," I say, until it's a rhythm. I walk watching the tiny stutters in her pace, the way she pauses before a curb. When she looks back, I'm already looking.

The loudspeaker cuts in, too cheerful for the words. Lost child—pink shoes, yellow hairband, answers to Momo. Kaori goes still beside me. No drama, just: "Let's find her."

We spot Momo folded small beside a vending machine, fingers gripping her own wrist like it's a rope. Kaori drops to a knee, voice warm sugar. "Hey. Too big out here, huh?" She says softly,A tiny nod responds . "Hold my hand. Squeeze as hard as you want. I won't let go." The girl latches on like a person grabbing a railing on a ferry.

We move slow through the stalls. Kaori shields with her body without making a show of it. When the mother appears—eyes frantic, shoes loud—she folds her daughter up and cries the kind of cry that wrinkles air. Kaori waves away thanks like she's allergic, and we slide back into the stream.

"She squeezed so hard," Kaori says after a block. "Like if she loosened one finger, she'd disappear." She glances at me, mouth slanting. "You shouldn't make your mom and dad cry..."

She says it like a joke, but it isn't. She's made hers cry more than any room should hold. She knows. I say nothing. I shift the bags higher and let our shoulders touch.

Inside the bakery I grab the canelés and her citrus tarts. She claps silently when she sees the box. "Bribery," she says.

"Yup" I answer.

We make it two shops before I say, too casual, "No bag today, huh."

It lands. Goosebumps ripple up her arms. Her fingers fidget—index to thumb, thumb to index—and her voice climbs half a step. "I—I forgot it."

"You forgot it..," I echo, soft.

"Yup. At school." The word school comes out quieter. Her eyes flick away and back, trying to hold the smile in place.

I look at the uniform, cardigan sleeves pulled long, blue tracing just under the skin where veins lie closer now. I don't push. I don't tease. The bags bite into my palms and I want to set all of them down and pick her up instead.

She watches my face like she's waiting for judgment and trying to laugh first.

I open my mouth to say We can go later, or It's okay, or any other small lie that keeps her from spending what little she has left on this walk—

She beats me to it.

"Let's go get it," Kaori says.

—

The studio keeps the last of the day like an old teacup keeps heat—thin, a little chipped, still warm. Dust swims in the single bar of light that sneaks past the blind and lays itself across the upright. Koharu's on the rug with her crayons (knees apart, tongue peeking out at the corner of her mouth), working very hard at a sky full of round, lemon–drop stars.

On the bench sits Nagi, back too straight for comfort, red bear hair clips biting into glossy bangs. Her heel taps the underside of the bench—tap, tap, tap—like a little woodpecker hunting a hollow spot.

"Sensei," she says, trying for neutral and landing on sharp. "He's late."

"Mm." I nudge the ashtray closer to the window and crack it with two fingers. "And don't kick my piano. It bruises."

Her heel freezes, then resumes—softer. "The lesson should have started ages ago." A glance at the clock. "If you were a tough teacher, you'd cancel him. A good performance comes from a good mentality. Last–minute cancellations—"

"—are part of having a life," I say. I check my phone again. A photo from Arima stares back: a neat white box of canelés, the glaze dark as lacquer. Along with it, his text: running late. might not make it. I'd answered: Souvenir or don't come back. Nothing since. I turn the phone face–down.

Nagi Aizato smooths her skirt with the palms of both hands. The bear clips catch the light when she lifts her head. "Seto–sensei," she presses, "he's totally irresponsible. A serious musician wouldn't do this."

"You're not angry he's late," I say. "You're angry he's late to you."

The words land; she blinks, bristles, then sets her chin. "I'm your fan," she says. "That's why I'm here, not because of—"

"—Arima," I supply for her, calmly. "Sit. Breathe." I lean a hip against the lid and watch the smoke drift like a thought I won't keep. "You're not the girl I met at school, Aizato. Back then you bowed so low I thought you'd fold in half. Today you're all clocks and rules. Was that bow an act?"

Her mouth tightens. "N–no. I'm serious. And he isn't." The heel taps once, hard. "He doesn't even seem to care..."

" He does care" I say blowing a puff of smoke. "He just doesn't act like it"

Koharu crawls closer, holding her paper up with both hands. "Look," she announces. "Stars over a piano."

"Perfect," I tell her, and mean it. Then, to Nagi, with the same evenness I save for hard truths: "Listen carefully. I'll say this once, because you're here."

She stills.

"Don't hurt him." I let the sentence sit. "No tugging for sport. No pushing him onto a stage to prove you can. No experiments where you pull at the seam to see when it tears. If you want proximity, you bring care. Not claws."

She swallows, looks down at her hands, then back up at me with something like stubborn honesty. "I do want to be near him," she says. "Because when you play, Seto–sensei, it doesn't sound safe. It sounds like you mean it. I want to learn that. And... he's the first person my age who makes the piano feel like it's got weather in it."

I let my mouth soften. "All right," I say. "Then start by knowing where he is." I tap the phone with a fingernail. "Wanna know what he filled out his on career form?."

"Huh?" Her eyes flicker in confusion—why would a career form matter in a piano room?

"He chose science," I say. "Medicine."

Silence, thick and complete. The bear clips throw back two small wounds of red.

"What....?," she says. Not a question—just the floor tilting under the word.

"STEM," I repeat. "The lab, not the stage. He didn't even write 'music' on the line."

"He can't—" She bites the word in half. Starts again, smaller. "But he can't... he's so good at it... he cant just..." she said grabbing gritting out

I shrugged tiredly " Kousei refuses to learn or even compete. Said it was time for something new."  While it hurt I understand it. I could say I understand it better than anyone else

She flinches, then steadies. "So he hates the piano that much...."

"He hates what the piano became," I say, and hear the gravel in my throat that shows up when the truth is heavy. "Except when he plays with a certain girl." I roll my eyes to blunt the softness. "Then he forgets to hate it."

Nagi's face does the calculus: someone who matters... "His girlfriend?" she asks, too fast, then looks like she wishes the word back.

"It's a long story," I say. "Not yours to hold."

She folds her arms, then unfolds them because the pose looks childish and she knows it. "So I came here for you," she says carefully, "but if I stay, I have to... what? Pretend I don't see him?"

"No." I lift my hand and count off, slow. "If you stay, you respect his path. You don't try to yank him back to your idea of what's holy. You don't prank him—no balloons, no buckets, no 'accidental' flowerpots from windows. You don't ambush him before or after lessons. You don't talk competitions unless he brings it up. And if you see him fold in on himself, you stop. Music doesn't matter more than a person's insides staying where they belong." I let that hang. "That's the price of being near him here."

Her throat works frustration and a thousands thoughts, then... "I... understand." The words aren't loud, but they're true.

"Good." I pick up Koharu's drawing when she slides it onto my knee. Thick crayon lines: the black block of piano; stick–Nagi and stick–Kousei shoulder to shoulder on the bench; me beside them, too tall and smiling in a way I don't recognize; above us a sky of yellow dots. Koharu is on the piano. But in the corner, Koharu has added a fifth figure—a hint of a dress and golden hair, no face.

"Who's that?" I ask.

Koharu beams. "The person he plays for," she says. "You can't see her unless you already know."

My throat does a small, private thing. I set the picture carefully on the lid and pretend to adjust the lamp so I don't have to let the kid watch my face. The familiar blonde I saw at the Towa flashes through my head.

Nagi studies the drawing. The toughness slips off like a coat that didn't fit. "I'll bring it back next time," she tells Koharu, solemn.

"Next time," I echo, meeting her eyes again. "And hear me, Aizato. I'm not using you to drag him to a bench. I let you in here because you might give him something back—curiosity, not judgment; a mirror that isn't a headstone; a way to hear sound that isn't a courtroom. If you can't do that, we stop now."

She nods—once, real. "I can."

"Then we try again when he breathes easier." I flip the phone, glance at the dead screen, set it face–down again. "He's not skipping you to be cruel. He's with someone who needs him more than my metronome does."

Koharu scoots up beside the bench, star–sheet hugged to her chest like a program. "Can I sit here?" she asks.

"Only if you don't kick my piano," I say. "It holds grudges." She giggles and tucks her feet under the rung.

Nagi looks at the door one more time as if it might change its mind. It doesn't. Somewhere across town a boy is choosing to be human instead of on time. I've learned to call that progress and to defend it with my teeth.

"All right," I say, softer. "No scales today. Talk instead. Tell me what you want from me that your school can't give."

She thinks longer than I expected. "The truth," she says finally. "Even if I don't like it."

"Deal," I say. "And my truth today is this: don't turn him into a project. He's not your redemption arc. He's a kid who wrote science on a form and meant it." I tap the fallboard, then her bear clip, gentle. "Cute armor. Keep it if it helps. But remember: protection is something you do, not just something you wear."

She breathes in, steady now. "Yes, Sensei."

We let the room breathe with us. Outside, a bicycle bell apologizes to the street, twice. The light thins toward evening. Koharu adds one last star to the corner of her drawing and whispers, just for herself, "Next time."

__

We cut through the side gate together. The latch clicks soft behind us, the kind of sound that stays inside the yard and doesn't bother the street. Evening's already in the windows. Classrooms hold their rectangles of dimness like fish tanks after the lights go off—same shapes, different water.

I've been here at night before—too many times, really—sneaking in and out of music rooms when I didn't want to meet anybody's eyes in daylight. The building wears the hour the way a tired kid wears a too-big hoodie: sleeves dragging, shoulders swallowed. Kaori slips her hand along the rail as we climb; I keep half a step behind, my free hand ready and pretending it isn't.

A thought I don't want opens its eyes anyway

this could be the last time she walks these halls as a student, and the stairwell suddenly feels like it's keeping a secret from me.

"Dark," she says lightly, like she's making conversation with the night.

"Mm." I hear the breath in the word. It's thinner than she means it to be.

On the landing, the motion sensor wakes a strip of fluorescent with a buzz that feels like it's chewing the air. She squints and laughs at the same time—too bright, too fast—then blinks until the edges stop vibrating.

We pass the trophy case. Dust filaments in the glass like the trophies are growing their own winter. Somebody won something here last year, the year before, forever. Kids with faces too sure, kids with faces not sure enough. I used to be a face in glass. I still am, if you squint at the memories the right way. I look away first.

"Which room?" I ask.

"Homeroom," she says, pointing with two fingers like a conductor who's certain the orchestra will follow. "Second floor."

We walk. Her steps sound soft on the vinyl, mine heavier around the bags. I could set them down. I don't. I want the weight. It keeps my thoughts from floating too far ahead and too far back at the same time.

She peeks into my homeroom as we pass. "You in there tomorrow?" she asks.

"Probably not," I say, and it's the truth and it isn't. Probably the lab after school. Probably the other life I'm building with Saitou where everything is clean and nothing is simple.

Kaori hums a note that pretends to agree. At the end of the corridor she pauses by the music room door and presses her palm to it like she's checking for a fever. "Later," she tells the wood, and smiles like it's a private joke.

Homeroom is unlocked; it always is at night, like the building trusts teenagers more after hours. The motion sensor coughs on; the chalkboard catches a flare and then settles into its grayer self. Desks sit in polite rows, all the bored doodles and pencil dents turned into one big texture. Kaori goes straight to the last row by the windows and rests her hand on a desk where someone has carved SHIHO RYOTA in letters as determined as a marching band.

She drifts along the row, fingertips tracing wood and graffiti, the slow pace of someone rehearsing a goodbye she refuses to say out loud.
The thought sits beside me and won't move: if this is her last school night, I have to memorize her memorizing it.

"So, Goldilocks?" I say, because teasing is easier than panic. "Don't see a bag."

She stands there for a moment with her fingers on the carved name like touching the gouges will tell her a story. Then she turns around. The smile is still on her mouth; it's just... less.

"My bag," she says, tapping her index fingers together, "isn't at school."

I knew. I knew when she said "Let's go get it," and the word let's tried too hard. I knew when she didn't have a strap mark on her shoulder. Still, the knowing lands heavy, like the bags on my hands suddenly decided to be the truth instead of things.

"Oh," I say, useless.

"They only let me out for today," she goes on, and her voice does this careful thing, soft around the edges so it doesn't scratch either of us. "I just... really wanted to come. To... walk. To look." She half-laughs at herself without any meanness. "To pretend."

The word pretend is a little knife. I feel it slide in where I keep the old life and the rules that failed us there. She turns back to the desks and walks slow along the row, brushing the edge of each with her fingers like she's counting, like they're rosary beads for a religion that worships ordinary days.

I put the bags down on the windowsill because I suddenly hate them. The silence in the room isn't actually silent. The building hums. The city murmurs through the glass. Kaori breathes. I hear all of it too much.

"Hey," she says after a while, stopping by the window. The night outside has darkened into the first real version of itself. Streetlights make their quiet circles. Somewhere a bike bell apologizes to nobody. She doesn't look at me when she asks, "Can you forget it?"

"Forget what?"

She keeps her eyes on the glass, where our shapes sit side by side like two kids in a postcard. "This girl. The one who helped a lost child with you, who snuck out of the hospital, who explored school at night with you. Can you forget her?"

My throat closes. It's not dramatic. It's just a body choosing not to let certain sounds out because it knows they'll hurt both of us. I have to swallow twice before words unlock.

"No," I say. The voice isn't big, but it doesn't waver. "Every memory with you... will never be forgotten. Not to my dying day."

She turns. For a heartbeat her mouth makes a small O, as if the air decided to push back into the shape words make when they're real. Then the smile that follows is tired and warm and braver than it has any right to be. You could live a life under that kind of smile and not run out of weather.

She shifts her weight to step closer and the room tilts for her. It's small—just a slip—but her hand shoots out and finds the window frame. I'm moving before my head finishes the thought. My right hand catches her wrist; my left lands at her waist where fabric gives to warmth, and for a second my body learns again that things can be saved just by being held.

"Easy," I say. "Easy..."

"I'm okay." She tries to make it a joke and almost does. "Just a little tired."

"Mm." I don't take my hands away until I feel the steadiness come back through her bones. When I let go, my palms remember the shape of her even as air moves in.

She inhales the way you do when you want a moment to be over and to last longer than anything. "We should go," she says softly—and under it, what I hear: before the school has to become a memory I leave you inside of.

We go.

The night is softer outside than inside. Cool air does that—turns walls back into air. I wheel a school bike out from the rack and fumble for the rear light; it sputters to life like an old man waking from a nap. Kaori watches me from the curb with her hands clasped at her stomach, like she's holding the day in place there.

"Where'd you get the bike?" she asks as I steady it with a hand on the seat.

"School," I say. "They let me borrow it."

She tilts her head like a curious bird. "Probably not good to put two people on a school bicycle," she murmurs. "We'll be in trouble if they find out."

"Then we won't let them find out."

That gets me the small laugh I wanted. She swings one leg over, slowly, careful of the skirt, careful of everything. I feel the brief brush of her knee against my hip and then her hands settle around my middle and her cheek fits against my shoulder like a memory finding its old spot.

"I'm sorry," she says into the cotton. The words warm through the fabric. "I made you miss your piano lesson."

"Priorities," I say.

"Hehe... idiot," she answers, and I can feel the smile in the way the word touches my back.

We push off. Tires hum. The chain clicks a little because school bikes always do. The city unspools itself under us in small pieces—a convenience store with its perfect, cruel light; a cat deciding the road is its bed and then changing its mind; a vending machine that makes everything feel lonelier by being so helpful. Her arms tighten when I lean into a turn even though it's not sharp. I exaggerate the next shift just to feel that hold again and immediately hate myself for wanting anything and do it anyway.

"This day wasn't wasted," she says after a while.

"No."

"It was wonderful," she goes on, as if the word is a dare. "We went shopping, and we ate croquettes together, and we helped a little girl. And now a boy is taking me home on a bike." She lifts her face and I feel the cool of night replace the warmth of her breath. "And the stars are twinkling so bright."

I look up because she's looking up. The sky has already opened more than I realized while we were still inside pretending rooms can hold you. Little white nothings pricked into a color that refuses to be black or blue or any word that thinks it owns it.

Then the first one moves.

A line of light draws itself through the dark so fast the word star has to scramble to keep up. Then another. Then three, like someone flicked a brush at the edge of the sky and paint decided to fall in straight lines.

We go quiet. Not the afraid quiet. The kind that makes room.

The road is empty enough to let me coast. The bike answers the lack of pedaling by becoming something that knows how to glide. Her hands tighten; I feel the press of her fingers knit under my ribs. Her forehead rests flat against my shoulder now, no pretense. The warmth soaks through until I can't tell if the heat belongs to her or me or the motion.

I feel it then—the damp. Just a small circle at first, right where my shirt clings above the seam of my shoulder. One wet coin of a feeling. It spreads the way truth does when you stop trying to pretend it's something else. I don't say anything. My own eyes sting in a way that says don't be brave for someone else's comfort and I choose, for once, to listen.

We ride under falling stars like two thieves stealing a better night from a world that didn't plan to give it. She sniffs a small, apologetic sound and then another. It isn't loud. It doesn't need to be. I adjust my grip, not because the bike needs it, but because I need to do something with my hands that isn't turn around and hold her too hard and stop moving forever.

It would all be okay

I Swear

Chapter Text

I sit on the shrine steps and pretend the stone doesn't hurt. The cicadas won't shut up. A breeze pulls at the red bear clips in my hair and makes the paper streamers at the torii whisper. I dig the heel of my sneaker into the lip of the step and grind. If the step could feel it, it would say "ow." Good. Something should.

I ran out in the middle of the lesson. I know that was dramatic. I also don't care.

"Again," he'd said. "Not like that. Here—listen."

Then he took my right-hand figure and played it with one hand, lazy and exact, the way you might fix a ribbon on a child's hair. My face got hot. My hands are small. I can't help that. He didn't even look angry. That was the worst part. He looked... tired. Like he wanted to be anywhere else. Like correcting me was another chore on a list he didn't make.

Stupid Kousei. Stupid dead-fish eyes. Stupid long fingers that don't get stuck on the black keys. Stupid silent daydreamer face.

I came to you to knock you off that dusty throne in Takeshi's head, and you won't even sit in it. What is the point of revenge if the target won't care? What am I supposed to aim at—your back while you walk away..?

I stare at my hands and flatten them on my skirt. The lines on my fingers look like cracks in a dried riverbed. I can play fast. I can be clean. I can push. I can even be musical. I can. But when he says "not like that," the notes I was proud of turn thin. My chest feels empty, and I want to shout at him until he says "fine, it's fine," just so I can breathe again.

Footsteps scrape the stone below. I don't look. I can smell it before I see it—sweet, warm, a little smoky. Of course.

"You're late," I say to the air, because I am not giving him the satisfaction of seeing me look first.

"Nagi," he says, like a question he already knows the answer to. "I'm sorry. I... I'm not the best teacher."

I whirl around just enough to give him a side-eye and a scoff. He stands two steps down, a paper bag in one hand, the other hand free and empty. His shirt is wrinkled. His collar is wrong. He forgot his glasses again, which is infuriating because it means those dull blue eyes of his are somehow clearer. He looks like he slept in a different century and dragged himself here.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I say. "You can play with one hand, but your mouth can't say 'good job' even once?"

He lifts the bag a little, almost embarrassed. "Tribute," he says. "Stone-roasted sweet potatoes. Beni Azuma. Still hot."

Does he think he can buy me with a potato? I raise my chin. "Do you... think you can buy me with a potato?"

"It's a very good potato," he says, dead serious, as if this is a fact from a textbook. "Please eat it anyway. I was wrong to be sharp."

I want to keep being mad. I really do. But the smell climbs up and curls into my nose, and my stomach makes a tiny sound that betrays me. I snatch the bag, like I'm saving it from him, not taking it. The paper is hot. I juggle it from palm to palm, then nestle it in my skirt and tear the seam of the bag open with two fingers.

Steam floats up. The skin is spotty purple, the flesh bright gold. I tear a chunk and bite.

It is soft. It is sweet. It is everything a potato can be and more. I hate him.

"Mmm.." I say before I can stop myself, and want to fall down the steps and die.

He chuckles. It's a low, tired sound that somehow makes my neck want to prickle. "I thought you'd like it."

"Shut up," I say around another bite, because my mouth has decided to betray me twice.

He sits one step below me, not close, not far. He doesn't look up into my face; he looks out across the shrine yard. The stone foxes on their pedestals are chipped on the ears. The rope is fraying. A kid laughs somewhere, chasing a bug with a net. The evening is soft and sticky.

"You come here a lot," he says.

"It's peaceful," I say. "He used to play with me here."

"Your hero.." he says, not a question.

I nod, chew, swallow. I peel the skin with my thumb and set the strip aside on the step, neat. "He started piano first. I copied him. He was always ahead. I'm always behind. That's how time works for us."

"Do you want to catch up?" he asks, simple.

"Yes," I say, and the word comes out too fast, like it tripped.

I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around them. The bear clips tug. I stare at my socks. "He doesn't look my way much. Not really. He's... busy. With someone else."

He's quiet. Not empty quiet. The kind that makes room.

"So," I say, and my voice steadies because it has to, "I'll make him look. I'll play well enough that he has to. I'll be good enough that he can't pretend I'm a kid. I'll use the piano to stand in front of him and make him see me."

Why am I telling you this? You, of all people? The one who sits in the middle of his sky like a star he pretends he doesn't notice?

"It's a selfish motive," I say quickly, like I can disarm it if I label it first. "Impure. I know."

"Mm," he says. He tips his head back and looks at the leaves, the small squares of sky between them. "I'm a mess," he adds, and it almost sounds like a joke at his own expense. "Not one to judge anyone's heart."

I put my hand over my mouth to push a laugh back, but it slips out anyway. "Hehe... You're ridiculous," I say. "Tribute potato. 'I'm a mess.' What kind of teacher are you?"

He lifts one shoulder, a tiny shrug. "The kind who doesn't know what he's doing," he says. "But I'm trying."

I look down at his hair. It's a bit too long. He should cut it. I hate that noticing that makes me want to smooth it down. My anger has holes in it I didn't see before.

"Arima-sensei," I say before I can stop the word, because I hate that it fits. "Are you in love with anyone?"

Silence. The cicadas keep screaming. A crow caws once and is done.

He lowers his chin and looks at me. He doesn't pretend he didn't hear. He doesn't tease. He just looks, like he's checking if I really want to know.

"I am," he says.

The potato in my hand stops being interesting. "What's she like..?"

He thinks for a second, and the thinking looks like hurt, which I am not ready for.

"Blonde," he says. "Violinist. Slightly violent."

"Slightly," I say, because I can hear the joke begging.

"Very," he corrects softly. The corner of his mouth moves. "Demanding."

His eyes go darker. Not dramatic. Just a shade the sky turns a few minutes before it realizes it has to be night.

"Frail," he says, and that word sits down between us like a new person. "Fleeting."

Who says that? Who puts those words next to a person they love? I feel my spine pull tight. My fingers crumple the bag. The steam doesn't feel warm anymore. Fleeting is a mean word. It's a word for things that go before you can hold them. It's a word for butterflies and summer and... other things.

"Beautiful," he adds, and it's not the type of beautiful people say when they mean "pretty." It's the kind of beautiful you say when you're talking about the first time you saw the ocean and realized it could drown you. "Scary," he adds, as if he owes me the last piece.

I should say something sharp. I should roll my eyes and say, "Wow, great, you fell for a dangerous girl, how original." I should stand up and tell him he's dramatic and childish and he deserves the headache if he insists on loving a storm.

He gives me an out instead. "Trust me," he says, with that quiet that keeps making room. "The less you know, the better it is."

He smiles. It's small and tired and... not fake, exactly. It's the kind of smile that has to climb over something sharp to reach his face.

I hate that it makes my chest feel tight. I hate that I want to ask him if he ate lunch. I hate that I want to tell him not to go wherever he's going because he looks like a strand of string someone pulled too hard.

He puts his hand on the step, pushes himself to his feet, and stretches until his back makes a small sound. "I have someone to visit," he says, like he's telling me the weather.

"Her," I say. Not a question.

He nods.

"You'll be okay?" he asks. "Getting home."

"I'm not a child," I snap, which is what a child says.

He nods again, like he expected that answer and likes it anyway. He takes the bag from my bad hand and puts it back in my good one because I crushed the top and the steam is leaking. "Eat the rest," he says. "Sugar helps after a fight."

"This wasn't a fight," I say.

"It was for you," he says, and he doesn't make it mean.

He turns to go. The blue of evening is thicker now. The shrine lamps click on one by one and paint little circles on the stone. His steps are slow but not dragging. He moves like someone who has to keep moving or else thinking will catch him and make a mess.

I want to say something. "Don't give up." "Stop teaching me like a ghost." "If you're going to leave piano, leave loudly, not like this." "If you're going to love her, don't say fleeting again because I'm going to scream."

Instead I say nothing. I watch his back go down the steps and past the foxes. The cicadas sing. The paper streamers whisper. A moth bumps the lamp and then calms down and sits in the warm.

I look at the potato bag in my hand. It's stupid that a potato can make a truce. It's stupid that a boy I wanted to crush can make me worry. It's stupid that I don't hate him as much as I did this morning.

I take another bite while it's still hot. I chew slowly. I tell myself it's just the sugar. I tell myself I hate him. I tell myself a lot of things. The shrine listens and says nothing back.

__

The room smells like lemon and warm plastic. Afternoon light pools on the blanket. The bunny plush leans on Kaori's shoulder like a tiny guard. The IV taps every few breaths—soft clicks marking time I hate.

"Where is it?" she says, eyes bright, already teasing. "Canelé. You promised."

"They were sold out," I say. Too flat. Too fast.

She gasps like I confessed treason and flings a slipper. It thumps my chest. I catch the second one mid-air. "Assault," I deadpan. "Ten to life."

The door slides wide. Watari barges in with boxes stacked to his chin, Tsubaki with napkins, Nao with clinking drinks. The room warms. Kaori points at Watari like he's prime minister.

"Behold! A man who keeps promises."

I almost smile. Watari flips a lid. Sugar air rushes out.

"Melon pan, éclairs, cream puffs, and—drumroll—the last canelé on earth."

Her outrage melts to reverence. She reaches like he's holding a star. I look away. I went to three shops first. Also somewhere I can't tell her about. Two clocks are running; only one is visible.

Nao taps a straw against her lip and says, too light, "Speaking of promises... how's the first-year middle schooler you're teaching?"

A coin of silence drops into the room and rings.

Kaori's smile tightens. "The what?" Voice sweet. Not her eyes.

Tsubaki blinks at me. "Teaching... who? Since when? You didn't tell me. Don't you usually ask me about this stuff?"

Watari's grin widens like it's TV. "Arima, are you poaching the future? Am I complicit?"

I roll a shoulder. Aim for casual. Miss. "Hiroko roped me into helping someone," I say. "A first-year. It's not—"

"Not what?" Kaori cuts in. "Not a secret unless someone blurts it out?"

Nao winces. "Oh— I didn't know—"

"It isn't," I say, which isn't an explanation. "It's nothing. I'm just... helping."

"With piano," Kaori repeats. "You had time for that."

The IV ticks. The bunny stares. Something brittle forms under my ribs.

"You promised me," she says, calm in the way that hurts worse than shouting. "You promised we'd play again. That you'd try. That you wouldn't run."

"I'm not—" I start.

She laughs once, joyless. "You're always not doing the thing you're doing. Do you hear yourself? 'I'm not' is your favorite sentence."

"It's a kid," I say. "Hiroko asked. That's all Kaori ."

"So you had time," she says, "for a kid. For a first-year girl. But not to—what? Practice? Breathe? Be who you are?"

Watari raises both hands like a ref. Tsubaki shifts closer to the rail and stays quiet, holding in things she knows she can't say for me.

"I'm doing enough," I say. The closest safe piece of the truth.

"Enough?" Her mouth trembles. "There are kids who practice until their noses bleed, Kousei. Kids who live at the piano because it's how they exist. And you—" She swallows. "I hate your tired eyes."

My throat closes. I want to tell her about the pill, the trial forms, the schedule grinding forward. About choosing time where she can't see it. But opening that door means cutting her with the blade that's been living in me.

"Don't you dare waste your life," she whispers. "Don't you dare waste what makes you you. Before you know it, time—" Her voice fractures. "It runs out."

The words land like a small, honest break I can't fix.

Kaori was crying..

"I—" She rubs at one eye with the heel of her hand. "Sorry. I got weird. Forget it. You know me. Loud. I don't mean things."

No one believes her. Not even the bunny.

"I'm trying," I say, quiet. It sounds weak. "I am."

She looks at me over the rim of a juice Nao slides into her hand. Her eyes are wet but holding. If I breathe wrong, it will flood.

"Okay," she says finally, so soft I almost miss it. "Then... okay."

Watari says something about dessert to scare the heaviness off. Tsubaki nudges the tray closer. People move, the way people do when there's nothing useful to say. The IV taps. The light shifts.

I hook two fingers over the bed rail and stay there so I don't drift. I watch the tiny bruise at the bend of her elbow, the neat tape holding the IV, the way her hands steady when she lifts the fork. I watch her mouth try to be brave, and her eyes fail at it, and her smile reassemble itself because that's what she does for other people.

The sugar smell is warm. The room is full. I am here, two steps away, useless and necessary at the same time.

And as she laughs at some dumb thing Watari says, I feel it—clean and heavy:

I am crushed under how much I can't tell her, and how much I still owe her, and how little time either of us has to get this right.

—

The lab is too bright.

Fluorescents buzz like a tame swarm overhead, steady as a metronome I can't shut off. Benches wiped to a surgical shine. Laptops breathing warm air. On the steel cart: orange-capped bottles and blister packs of Skyclars, film-coated tablets lined like tiny moons. The cardboard sleeves look harmless—dosage grids printed neat, safety leaflets folded into patient-friendly origami.

My jacket still smells like hospital soap. I didn't realize until I set my backpack down and the scent climbed my throat. Kaori's room, the thin click of her IV, the way her smile cracked and held—those things are still on me like dust.

Saitou doesn't say hello. He points at the monitor, glasses low on his nose. "Day seven uploads finished."

I step to his shoulder. Graphs step upward in cautious little stairs. Ambulation scores tick better. Handwriting samples—digitized loops and lines—smooth by a fraction. Tremor plots thin. Nothing dramatic. All the right kinds of boring.

"Side effects?" I ask.

He flips a page on his clipboard. "Nausea in two, one day each. Mild fever in three, resolved with rest. One headache. No drops in liver enzymes. Kidney function steady. No flags on QT. Vitals... unremarkable." He says the last word like a prayer. "So far, so good."

So far, so good. It lands in my chest like a coin I can't spend.

I stare at the blister pack nearest me. Eight tablets left in the card. Ten already gone, if the log is right. The chalk-white discs catch a sliver of light and pretend to be answers.

"She told me not to waste my life," I say. I don't say her name. The room already knows it.

Saitou glances over. His face folds softer for a beat. "How did she look?"

"Bright," I say. The word comes out wrong. "Bright and... tired. She was trying not to shake."

He nods once and turns back to the screen, making it easier for me to breathe. "We're past first week in Cohort A and B," he says. "If these plots hold another several days, we'll have the skeleton of a safety dossier worth showing to nervous people."

"Nervous people with stamps," I say.

"Exactly." He taps the clipboard with his pen, a slow metronome. "And before you ask—yes. I'm drafting the expanded access petition tonight. Compassionate use, limited slots, narrow inclusion. It's thin ice with seven days of human data, but I'll argue risk versus benefit till my throat gives out."

My fingers curl around the bench edge. "Thank you."

He lifts a hand like he's stopping a dog from jumping. "Don't thank me yet. The board will ask for longer observation. Late-onset effects, immunologic weirdness, off-target issues—those ghosts don't show up on day seven just because we glare at the calendar."

"I know." I do. Knowing does nothing to the clock in my head. "But if this keeps up—"

"If," he says gently, "then the next 'if' gets easier."

He scrolls through the patient notes. Each line has a number where a name should be, a little container for a person I want to meet. Patient 03: walking distance +12%. Patient 07: handwriting legibility improved. Each entry a small brightness that doesn't reach the room where a girl with a bunny plush told me she hates my tired eyes.

"I want this to be over," I say. Voice even, because if it isn't it will break. "I want to wake up and not choose which fear to work on."

Saitou sets the clipboard down, palms flat. "Honest sentence," he says. "Keep those. They make fewer messes."

He returns to the data, the ritual of it. "Cohort A shows consistent improvement in ataxia scales—SARA, ICARS—nothing huge, but not noise. Cohort B mirrors it. Cohort C is slower, but trending. Endocrine and hepatic panels are boring. My favorite adjective. Frataxin expression..." He squints, then tilts his head. "There's the faintest uptick in PBMC assays. Could be assay drift. Could be the leading edge of mechanism. We need more points before we claim a syllable."

"More points," I echo. More days. The fluorescent hum is louder than any piano in my bones.

"Enlarge the cohort," I say. "Now. Two more sites. If we can steal staff from that oncology trial on hold, we can stand them up fast. Add remote monitoring so the board can watch in real time. Less excuse to stall."

He doesn't say yes out of habit. He thinks—jaw working, eyes gone far away. "Two sites is plausible," he says at last. "I can call in two favors I've been hoarding. Remote monitoring—yes. If we onboard the platform, the ethics people can peek whenever they like instead of waiting for batch PDFs." He rubs his brow with his thumb. "It will cost us favors, Arima. The kind you can only spend once."

"Spend them," I say. "I'll do the grunt work. Night uploads, sample runs, anything that makes us faster without being stupid."

He snorts. "You already live here at night. I find your labels in racks at three a.m. like I'm collaborating with a ghost."

I don't tell him I like the lab then. The world is smaller. The noise in my head becomes a thing I can put on a shelf.

He picks the clipboard back up and signs the bottom of a form. "All right. We push. I'll queue the petitions. You write idiot-proof protocols for the new sites and harmonize the sampling windows so the monitors have nothing to peck at."

"Done."

I stare at the blister pack until the little tablets blur. The memory lands clean: her voice catching, that single sentence that cut, the way she recovered and made it a joke so no one would drown.

"She had a moment," I say. "It passed."

He hears everything I didn't say. "Then let's earn all the moments that come after."

We work in tandem. He drafts the cover letter to the safety board, threading the needle between caution and urgency. I start building the protocol addendum: dosing windows, pill counts, home temperature logs, call trees for any side effect that wants to pretend it matters. I default to neat—tables, indents, deadlines tight enough to sting. The printer ticks a new page to the tray with small, tidy sounds. If I listen hard enough, it almost sounds like time cooperating.

My phone buzzes once on the bench, a tremor against the steel. Instinct outpaces restraint; I flip it over. No new messages. I lock it and set it face-down, as if that can keep the truth from looking back.

"Eat," Saitou says, not looking up.

"I had half a melon pan."

"Eat the other half."

I tear the plastic with my teeth, chew without tasting. Sweetness sticks in my throat. Hospital soap sneaks in again and pushes it down. I wash it with cold coffee gone sour in the pot. I deserve it.

The door opens; one of the research nurses leans in, hair netted, eyes tired but awake. "Cohort B check-ins completed," she says. "Two patients reported better sleep. No new side effects."

"Thank you," Saitou says. He waits until the door settles. "Better sleep," he repeats to me. "That's not in any primary endpoint. It matters anyway."

I nod. I think of the way Kaori curled around her pillow last night and pretended her eyelids weren't heavy. There is a shape to hope and a shape to denial, and sometimes they rhyme.

Saitou finishes the draft and pushes the keyboard back like a finished measure. "I'll send the pre-read tonight. We'll schedule the board call for Friday. If they don't stall, we open the next tier Monday." He pulls off his glasses, pinches the bridge of his nose. "If they do stall, I call people whose birthdays I forgot for ten years and remind them I know exactly where their skeletons hum."

"Violence," I say.

"Diplomacy," he corrects. "Seasoned."

I look at the pill card again. Eight tiny moons. A week in people's bodies with no monsters showing up to claim ownership. An almost-nothing that could become a something large enough to move a life.

"What if it keeps working?" I ask. It comes out almost like prayer. "What if we get to four weeks and it's still boring in all the right ways?"

"Then," he says, and the word warms something in the air, "we stop whispering. We move to a larger cohort, fast. We ask for expanded access in earnest. We accept praise we didn't have time to want. And we keep our heads, because that's how you keep a good thing from breaking."

I nod. My hands find each other and knot. For a second I see the corridor outside her room, the slant of afternoon light on the floor, the way she looked at me and said don't waste your life like she could feel the secret I'm carrying.

"I'm going to the hospital after logs," I say.

"Good." He caps his pen, slides it under the clipboard clip, neat as a ritual. "Tell her... no. Don't tell her anything yet. Not 'encouraging.' Not 'maybe.' Just tell her you'll be back tomorrow."

"I will." It's the one thing I can promise without lying.

We finish the uploads. I QC the timestamps, chase a stubborn error that isn't an error, just a computer pretending to be capricious. He prints the petition draft and signs it with a quick, practical flourish. The hum keeps time for both of us.

At the door, I pause and look back. The blister packs sit under the light, quiet as teacups. Behind them, the graphs wait to be convinced they're truth and not just neat drawings.

"Arima," Saitou says, not looking up, as if he can feel the way I'm standing, "we're not far."

"I know," I say. The words feel like a handhold.

In the hall, the brightness drops a shade. The world smells like disinfectant and paper. I zip my jacket and start walking. My feet move because hers are tired. My hands are steady because hers shook. The tablets are small and the nights are long and the clock is a cruel instrument, but for the first time in a long time the line I'm playing doesn't feel like a funeral piece.

It feels like something that wants to live.

—

The hallway hums like a refrigerator trying to sound alive. Fluorescent light runs in tired strips along the ceiling, and somewhere down the floor a vending machine coughs coins back at a kid who gave up. I keep walking. Every step sounds too loud, like the building wants me to be gentler with it. My hands are empty. I usually bring something—canelé, melon pan, a book with a dumb title just so she can roast me—but tonight I forgot. Or maybe I didn't forget. Maybe I rushed. I just wanted to get here before the feeling in my chest could talk me out of it.

Her door is half-open. I push with two fingers.

The first thing I see isn't Kaori. It's the wheelchair parked by the bed like a patient dog. My stomach pulls tight. I don't want to make meaning out of metal and rubber, but it makes meaning out of itself. Proof. I look away before it can finish its sentence.

She's by the window. Moonlight paints her cheekbones thin and clean; the city makes a soft, faraway noise through the glass. She turns at the click of the hinge and smiles like she's been waiting to exhale.

"Hi.." she says.

"Hey..." My voice drops a key to match the room.

"Where's my tribute?" Her mouth tilts. "I accept only the finest pastries, Arima-kun."

"I forgot," I say, then shake my head. "No, that's not it. I... just came."

"Just came," she echoes, pretending to weigh the phrase in her hand. "Hmm. Acceptable."

I cross to the bed and sit on the edge, close enough that her blanket brushes my knee. She doesn't move away. Up close the pallor is sharper. Her lashes tremble when she blinks, like they're tired too. The IV line climbs the pole behind her, clear as fishing line. I focus on her face. If I look anywhere else, the future tries to talk.

"You came because you were worried," she says lightly, as if reading a weather report.

"Worried isn't the right word." I take her hand before I can overthink it. Her skin is cool; my hand feels like it might bruise it. "I couldn't stop thinking about you."

"Ah." She lets the sound out on a breath. "You always say the simple version."

"It's the true one."

I can't help cataloging her. The indentation at the base of her throat where the blanket doesn't reach. The tiny nick on her nail where the polish chipped. The full stop of a freckle under her ear. This is what my silence usually is: not nothing, but memorizing. I'm greedy with details. If I blink too long, I'm scared I'll miss something that proves she was here.

"I feel like if I look away, you'll disappear," I say, because pretending otherwise in this light feels like lying.

She smiles, the kind that slips at the edges. "You're strange. You come every day and half the time you don't talk. Just sit there with those eyes like... like a puppy who solved a crime and is waiting for praise."

"Then I'll be a puppy," I say. "As long as I get to stay."

Her thumb twitches against my palm. That small movement hits like a bell. She studies me. The mischief is there, but underneath it is the part of her I hate to see—the tiredness nobody else gets close enough to notice. She's been trying to keep her brightness perfect and it's fraying. I want to tape it back together with both hands. I want to trade places with anything in her that hurts.

"You're warmer than anybody," she says softly. "It's ridiculous."

"I like you accusing me of warmth." I try to make it a joke. It comes out honest.

"But it scares me," she adds. Her eyes flick, not to the wheelchair—I refuse to look at it—but to the window, to the dark. "You don't realize how much you're giving up."

I don't look away. "I don't care."

She hums, like she doesn't believe me but she wants to. The moonlight shifts along the wall. Somewhere a cart rattles past and fades. The world keeps happening, but in here it narrows to a bed, a chair, two hands.

She tries to keep it easy. "What's the news, mister? School? Gossip? Did Watari collect more girlfriends like stamps? Did Tsubaki scold you for breathing wrong?"

I could tell her about Watari's latest disasters, or how Tsubaki made me eat half her bento under a tree like I was a kindergartner who couldn't be trusted with autonomy. I could tell her about Nagi's tiny bear hair clips and how she pretended not to cry when she nailed a passage she thought she hated. I could tell her about lab notes in a pocket I washed by mistake and how I rewrote them from memory on the train. Word counts. Vials. Pill coats. The word "Skyclars" stuck to the inside of my skull like gum.

I say none of it. I push our joined hands a little closer to me and anchor them there.

"Everything is better when I'm here," I say.

Her eyes shine. "Flatterer."

"It's not flattery if it's obvious."

She laughs, the small kind that doesn't use lungs. The sound puts cracks in my chest and makes air get in. She looks at me again the way people look at old photos: fond, a little sad, like she's checking for proof of something she almost remembers.

"You keep doing this," she murmurs. "Holding on so tight."

"Because I can't let you go," I say, no stutter. "Not now. Not ever."

Her "oh" is almost silent. She glances down at our hands, then back at me as if measuring whether I know what I just promised. I do. I have no idea how to survive it. Both can be true.

"You know I'm... weird lately," she says, and her smile pulls thin. "Laughing and crying and scaring my parents and then saying it's nothing five minutes later. I keep making people worry. I hate that."

"You're allowed to be weird," I say. "You're allowed to be anything."

"That's very permissive of you," she says, but the tease lands soft. She exhales, a small, careful thing. "Sometimes I feel like if I stop talking, I'll fade out. Like the quiet is a tide and I'll go with it."

"I'll hold you," I say, the words out before I can make them prettier. "Even if you stop talking. Especially if you stop."

She closes her eyes for a beat like she's letting that sentence sit where it can do some work. When she opens them, the guard is down in a way that punches me harder than the wheelchair did. She's letting me see the part that isn't performing bravery for anyone.

"Do you ever think," she says, "that time is silly?"

"All the time."

"That it's like... a room you can't leave, so you draw pictures on the wall to make it feel like yours?" She looks past me, through me. "I drew so many pictures. I don't want the nurse to wipe them off."

I could say we'll make more pictures tomorrow. I could say I'm working on a pill whose name sounds like a sky that opens. I could say wait. Please wait. But begging makes the ground move, and I need the ground to stay still.

"You won't be erased," I say. "Not from me."

"That's a very dramatic promise," she whispers.

"It's the simple version."

We lapse into the kind of quiet that's not empty. Her breath goes in and out, careful. I match it without meaning to. Outside, a siren tests a note and decides against it. The city is always the same and never is.

"Look at me," she says.

I do.

Her pupils are wide from light that isn't bright enough. The blue around them looks like dusk. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and misses; it falls forward again on purpose. She is pale, tired, stubborn, beautiful, terrifying. She is the axis my map is built on. I don't say that. I think it so loudly I'm sure she hears it anyway.

"You're always here," she says. "You look at me like you're trying to learn a secret, but you never ask the question."

"What question?"

She watches me a long time. It feels like she's writing something on my face with her eyes and needs to get it right.

"Why I want you to stay so badly," she says at last. "Why I'm selfish about it."

"I don't need reasons," I say. "You say stay, I stay."

"That's dangerous." There's warmth in it. There's warning too.

"I'm aware..."

The corner of her mouth lifts. It's so small you could miss it if you were a less greedy person. She leans back into the pillow, never breaking eye contact. The room tilts toward her. The chair, the pole, the blue light on the monitor—everything else is scenery.

"Okay," she says, breathing in. The inhale is thin, like silk pulling through a ring. "Then I'm going to be selfish."

"I'm ready," I tell her, and my hand tightens around hers because I can't help proving it with something my mouth can't.

She swallows. Her throat moves like a violin string about to be touched. The night seems to press its ear against our door.

"Kousei..."she says, and my name sounds like a chord I've known since I was a kid and still can't play without shaking.

Her next Words crash into me

"Want to Commit double Suicide with me?"

Chapter Text

I don't look away this time.

Her question is still in the air. It feels like a string pulled tight between us. If I breathe wrong, it might snap.

Kaori sits small in the bed, the blanket tucked under her knees. The cheap hospital light makes her look made of paper. There's a faint shine on her lip where she's been biting it. The monitor behind her ticks a soft metronome that doesn't match any song I know.

I take her hand.

It's cool, dry, patient. The tape on her IV crinkles when she shifts.

"Yes...." It comes out soft

Her eyes widen. The word lands. I hear it echo off the window, the floor, the hollow of my chest.

"I'll do it with you... But not yet," I add, and my voice shakes. "Please... wait."

She blinks. It's almost a flinch. "Wait?" The smile she puts on is careful, like she's trying not to scare me. "For what, Kousei?"

"For me," I say. "For a few things I have to do." I breathe once. "For us."

The room goes very quiet. Even the hallway outside seems to hold its breath.

Her fingers twitch in mine. "You keep saying that," she murmurs. "Just a little longer. Just one more minute. You're terrible at clocks."

"I know." I let out something that's supposed to be a laugh and isn't. "I know."

I could tell her about white tablets. About charts with tiny rising lines. About a lab that smells like metal and soap and hope. About signatures and stamps and timeframes I want to strangle into moving faster.

I don't. She doesn't know that part of me. Not yet. Maybe never.

So I hold on to the one thing I can say.

"Wait with me," I whisper. "Stay. Please..."

She studies me. Her eyes are glassy but steady. "You're serious."

"I am." I squeeze her hand like it's a rope over a cliff. "If it... if it doesn't work out—" The words are sand in my mouth. "If it really doesn't, then... yes. I'll go wherever you go. I won't make you walk into the dark alone."

The sentence leaves a tremor behind it.

"But not yet," I repeat, softer. "Not yet."

Her breath hitches. "You would really...?"

"Yes."

For a second, neither of us moves. The beeping behind her counts tiny pieces of us away.

She swallows. Her voice is gentler now, but it has an edge. "You're selfish," she says. "Dragging me forward. Making me hesitate."

"Yeah." I drop my head and laugh once through my nose. "I'm the worst."

Her thumb moves. Barely there. It slides along the ridge of my knuckle like a promise she isn't ready to name.

"What do you need to do?" she asks quietly.

I look at her and lie without lying. "I need more mornings with you." I search her face. "I need to learn the way your hair gets caught in your scarf and how you fix it without a mirror. I need to know how many stairs you skip when you're in a hurry. I need the dumb way you say 'ta-da' when you hand me bread you didn't pay for."

She snorts, but her mouth trembles.

"I need to walk you home without talking," I say. "And talk to you without walking. I need to hear you play again. Even if it's two notes. Even if you have to stop because you're tired. I need to stand next to you and be the person who passes the water and the towel and the chair. I need to make it to the part where we get bored together and complain about the same TV show."

Her eyes brim with tears. "You're painting such tiny things.." she whispers.

"They're the only real ones," I say.

I move closer on the bed. I put our joined hands against my chest so she can feel it. Beat. Beat. Beat. Proof.

"Feel that?" I ask. "It's yours. It's been yours for a long time."

She stares at our hands. "You're going to make me cry..."she says, already crying.

"Too late," I say, because my face is wet and my throat hurts and the words keep tripping over each other.

I lean in. Careful of the IV. Careful of the blanket. I put my forehead against hers.

Her skin is cool. Mine is hot. The difference makes something inside me break open.

"I'm sorry," I say. "For today. For all the days that look like today. I'm trying. I swear I'm trying."

"I know," she breathes. The words land right between us. "I see it."

I don't mean to hug her. My body decides. My arms go around her and I pull her to me, slow, gentle, then tighter when she lets me. She fits wrong because of the chair, and right because she's Kaori.

Her chin bumps my collarbone. Her hands find the back of my shirt and fist there, small and strong. I hear the little wet sound she makes when she tries not to sob and fails.

"You can hate me later," I murmur into her hair. "For being selfish. For asking for more time. For not letting you be brave by yourself. I'll take it. I'll take all of it. Just—" I swallow. "Just stay a little longer."

"Kousei," she says, and my name breaks in the middle like a dropped glass. She presses her face into my shoulder. "I don't want to leave you."

Something bright and painful squeezes behind my ribs. "Then don't," I say, useless and hopeful at once.

"I'm scared," she admits, so soft I almost miss it.

"I know." I hold her tighter. "Me too."

We breathe together. It takes a few tries to sync. We miss and then find it. The monitor argues with us and then gives up and keeps its own time.

After a while, she pulls back half an inch. Her lashes are wet. There's a red crescent on her cheek where the blanket edge was pressing. "You said you'd go with me," she says, like she's testing the shape of the promise.

"If there's no other road," I answer. I make myself say it clean. "If every door is locked. If the world keeps saying no. I won't let you go alone."

She swallows "And until then?"

"Until then," I say, "I'm going to be unbearable."

Her laugh is a hiccup. "You already are."

"I'm going to show up at bad hours," I go on. "With bread and stupid jokes and too much tea. I'm going to take you outside when you shouldn't go and bring the outside in when you can't. I'm going to be annoying about water and sleep and medicine you hate. I'm going to make you roll your eyes so hard it counts as exercise."

She sniffles. "That's a plan?"

"It's a life plan."

Her fingers creep up the front of my shirt and pinch. Not hard. Just enough to say I'm still here. "You big idiot," she whispers.

I nod. "Yeah."

She looks past me, toward the window. Night presses its face to the glass. The city is a handful of coins spilled on black cloth. "I wanted to ask you this because I didn't want to be alone," she says, and the honesty is soft and brutal. "But I also... I didn't want to trap you."

"You didn't," I say. "I walked in."

Her eyes come back to mine. We hold each other there.

"Wait with me," I say again, because I need to hear it as much as she does. "Please."

"Okay," she whispers.

The word is tiny. It fills the room. It goes into my lungs with the next breath and sits there, warm.

We let the rest of it fall away. The chair. The light. The beeping. The heavy blanket. The cold metal rail of the bed. The smell of alcohol swabs. The clipboard with boxes. All of it fades to a dim edge.

What stays is her hand under mine and the weight of her head against my shoulder when she leans back in. I press my cheek to the top of her hair. It smells like hospital shampoo and her.

We cry until it gets quiet again. Not dramatic. Not the kind of crying that makes a scene. Just the kind that happens when you're too tired to be brave and too stubborn to let go.

"Tell me something good," she says suddenly, voice gummy and small.

"Mm." I think. "I saw a cat on the way here. He ignored me completely. That means I'm trustworthy."

"That's not how cats work," she says into my shoulder.

"Exactly," I say. "That's why it's good."

She hums. "One more."

"I... memorized the pattern on your curtain," I say. "It's little blue leaves. Every fourth one is upside down."

She pulls back enough to squint at me. "You counted my curtain?"

"Obviously."

"You're a maniac," she says, but there's a smile trying to live at the corners of her mouth.

I let myself smile back. "I'm your maniac."

She blushes at that. Her eyes soften. She reaches up and wipes under one of mine with her thumb, the way you'd wipe sugar from a child's face. "You shouldn't cry more than me," she mutters.

"Trade you," I say. "I'll take two of yours for one of mine."

"That's a bad deal."

"I'm terrible at deals."

She leans in again and I wrap myself around her again. It's quiet enough to hear her swallow. Quiet enough to hear the IV drip whisper to itself. Quiet enough to hear the tiny, stubborn rhythm in my chest knock against her knuckles.

"Just a little longer," I say into the space between us.

"Just a little," she echoes.

I nod against her hair. I don't let go. Not yet. Not now. Not while there's anything left to hold.

Chapter Text

It's been 2 long weeks....

The lab is quieter than it's been in months—no timers barking, no centrifuge squeal—just the freezer hum and the soft tick of a wall clock that only matters again today.

Saitou stands under the tired fluorescent, riffling a stack of stamped forms like they might evaporate if he holds them too loosely. His shoulders look older, but his hands are steady.

"We did it, kid," he says, still looking at the papers.

My throat tightens. "Did it?"

"Skyclars." He taps the header with a fingernail. "Unanimous approval. Prioritized distribution. The manufacturing slot opens Monday. Mass production starts next week."

Next week.

I brace a palm on the stainless bench until the cold leaks into my skin. Air goes thin for a second, then floods back.

"You're sure?" I ask, and I hate the way it sounds: small.

"I'm reading it." He flips another page. "Emergency procurement, hospital-first rollout, then specialty clinics, then wider dispensing as supply ramps. It's not a memo. It's happening."

I glance past him at the row of dummy bottles on the far bench—white caps, tamper bands, the draft label with the crooked logo we never fixed because it felt superstitious to tidy what wasn't real. Today it looks real enough to touch.

I swallow. "So... next week people actually start."

"People actually start," he echoes, deadpan. Then, softer, "It buys time."

"I know." I let my hand fall. "It's enough to matter."

He watches me for a beat that's longer than habit, then clears his throat and goes procedural. "Distribution will be chaotic at first. Committees. Lists. Complaints. We keep our heads down and feed data to the right places. If the safety profile looks like it did in Phase I/II, the curve steepens fast."

I nod. "We'll log everything. Real-world outcomes, tolerability, dose adherence, all of it."

He smirks. "I'll make a scientist out of you yet."

The other bench—the messy one—pulls me like gravity. Not the tidy pill line, but the place where the real fight lives: organoids under humid domes, protein blots drying on a rack, a 96-well plate glowing like a tiny city. A graph with a hesitant upward bend that we keep pretending not to love.

"We don't stop," I say to the dishes, to the notes, to him. "This"—I nod at the approvals—"buys us time and credibility. We cash both."

"We already are," he says, joining me at the dome. "Stabilization markers keep holding. Repair signaling might be peeking through the noise. I'm not saying it out loud yet."

"You just did," I say.

He snorts. "In this room doesn't count."

We lean over the dome like two people peering into a crib. Fine neurites thread across the gel, searching. Two weeks ago they sagged into mush by day five. We're at day eleven. Not victory. Direction.

"Vector dosing," I say, pointing at the notebook. "The low-mid range looks like the sweet spot. Anything higher and the microglia wake up cranky."

"Good," he says. "We need cranky sleeping through the whole show. And we'll need a second PCR rig with this cadence. I'll requisition it."

I let the word good unclench something behind my ribs. "The damage panel from Tuesday—axon retention is tracking. If that holds in vivo..."

"If it holds," he repeats, encouraging and corrective at once. "You know the list. Stability, immune crosstalk, delivery. One mountain at a time."

"Then we climb faster." I stop, take a breath, modulate. "Faster, not reckless."

"Better." He taps the side of the dome. "Skyclars bought us a reputation we can spend. The same administrators who underlined 'overstated potential?' are now asking how big a team we want. Trust is a resource. Don't waste it."

I glance at the approvals again. "We pre-stage the patient materials," I say, brain already running. "Blister cards, dosing logs, the plain-language side-effect sheet—the honest one, not the legal one. A hotline with a human, not a menu."

"Write the copy," he says. "I'll carve the budget. And we start in-hospital. No 'my cousin shipped me a bottle off the internet' nonsense on day one."

"In-hospital," I repeat. "By the book."

He slides his glasses up and rubs his eyes with the back of one gloved hand. "You look like you lost a fight with a week."

"I did," I say. "It was close."

He doesn't ask to what. He doesn't have to. "Then pace yourself," he says instead. "Sandwich, nap, electrolyte, something not coffee. You can't sprint the whole marathon."

"I can try."

He huffs. "You're impossible."

"And you're here at dawn and past midnight," I shoot back.

"That's because I'm old and slow." He tilts his head at the dome. "But I'm stubborn. Which wins more races than speed."

Silence, but not the empty kind. The freezer hum sounds like a metronome we finally hear again. I rest my fingers on the bench and feel the fine vibration of the building.

"So," he says, business returning to his voice, "rollout. Hospital pharmacies will receive first. Our job is to make their job idiot-proof. Dosing guide for clinicians. Interactions. Triage criteria summarized in words a human can read. And daily data pulls—anonymized, but fast."

"On it," I say. "I'll draft tonight."

"Draft now," he corrects, then softens. "After you eat."

I nod, half smile, and fail to hide a yawn. He pretends not to see it.

"Also," he adds, "no personal courier fantasies. You're not running bottles across town. It comes through channels. Clean chain of custody, hospital oversight, documentation. We don't lose this on a technicality."

"I know." I lift my hands in surrender. "No heroics. I'm not touching a production bottle."

"Good." He studies me a second. "You were going to, if I didn't say it."

"Probably," I admit.

He grunts something that might be a laugh. "Honesty. Another scarce resource."

I step to the whiteboard and pull the cap off a dead marker. Of course. I find a live one, and the chemical smell snaps everything into focus. I write in block letters: SKYCLARS ROLLOUT—WEEK 1. Under it, a list blooms: Clinician one-pager. Patient-friendly insert. Monitoring cadence. Hotline staffing. Data pipeline. Beside it I scrawl: CURE—next milestones: vector optimization, immune dampening, long-window in vivo.

He comes up beside me and adds QC lot verification in a tight, neat hand, then underlines no off-protocol dosing so hard the board squeaks.

We stand there looking at the board like it's a map we could fold and take with us. For the first time in a long time, the road doesn't look like fog.

He hesitates. "You staying to draft?"

"I'll eat. Then draft." I glance toward the couch under a pile of lab coats. "Then maybe twenty minutes of not existing."

"An extravagant plan," he says dryly. "Try twelve."

I almost smile. It feels like borrowing a face from an earlier life. "Twelve, then."

He moves off to the office bay to make the call. I turn back to the bench. A crooked dummy bottle has drifted out of line. I straighten it without thinking. Superstition disguised as tidiness. My fingers linger on the cap a second longer than they need to, feeling the ridges.

This is not the finish line. It's the gunshot at the start.

I set the bottle down and pull a fresh notebook toward me, the good paper that doesn't bleed through. I print the date in the corner and write the first sentence of the clinician one-pager like I'm talking to a person, not a committee: Skyclars is a once-daily oral therapy designed to slow functional decline in FA. Then a second line I can live with: Start in-hospital. Monitor vitals and tolerance. Call us if anything feels off—even if it seems small.

The pen warms in my hand. The lab feels bigger.

Saitou's voice filters from the office—flat, professional, answering questions I can guess: logistics, dosing, stock arrival, patient selection. He pauses. "Yes," he says, and his tone shifts a fraction warmer, "there is reason to be cautiously optimistic."

Cautiously optimistic. The phrase lands right. Not hope without brakes. Not fear without light.

I flip the page and sketch the data pipeline: ward → pharmacy → our secure server → nightly review. Under it I write no leaks and circle it twice. Trust was hard to win. I won't lose it to a screenshot.

A long breath leaves me. For the first time in too long, it doesn't shake at the end.

We didn't save the world, not today. We made it harder for the worst thing to happen fast. We bought days that stack into weeks. We earned enough belief to keep pushing on the thing that matters most.

"Arima," Saitou calls from the doorway, pocketing his phone. "They're ready to coordinate. Send your drafts when you've got them."

"On it," I say, and mean right now.

He lingers, then gives me a look that's half warning, half pride. "Good work."

"Yours too."

He snorts like that's illegal, then disappears back into the office.

I roll my shoulders, cap the pen, uncap it again. The clock ticks. The freezer hums. The city outside does what it always does. I set my eyes on the page and keep writing.

—

Watari knew Kousei had garnered quite the reputation.

By third period the whole school knows when Kousei shows up and when he disappears. You can feel it in the hall noise, like a wave that lifts and drops with his name. Teachers sigh the way adults sigh when they don't want to say "problem." Kids whisper "zombie boy" like it's a joke but I can hear the worry in it. They don't mean he's creepy. They mean he looks like he's fading.

They're not wrong.

He used to slide around the edges of things—quiet, polite, the kid you forget is still in the room until the piano opens its mouth. Now he's this... intense line cutting through the day. Either he's there with eyes like high beams, or he's gone. No middle. He'll drift in for homeroom, stare through roll call, then vanish before lunch. I'll ask Tsubaki if she saw him and she'll lift a hand like, yeah, for five minutes, then poof. It's like the wind keeps picking him up and setting him down someplace we can't go.

Absence after absence. That's what eats at me. Not because I'm the model student or anything—my report card is held together by corner kicks and charm—but if you stack enough zeros, they don't care how many goals you score. Grades and futures are numbers here. That stupid attendance board in the office might as well be a heart monitor. Every time a teacher slaps another pink slip under "Arima, Kousei," I feel a little beep flatten out.

At practice my coach is yelling about marking the back post and I'm nodding like I'm listening, but I'm clocking the empty spot on the sideline where Kousei used to show up sometimes with a canned coffee and a blank stare. He'd sit, hunched, like he was trying to make himself smaller, and then Tsubaki would drag him off by the sleeve because the sunset was "doing something." Now he doesn't even pretend. He just ghosts.

What does he even do all day? Easy answer: he's at the hospital. Every free period, every lunch, after school, nights. The security guard knows him by name. The nurse at the desk smiles a tired smile when he clicks the door open. If I text, he replies hours later with "sorry, was with her" like there's no world outside that room.

There's also the other thing. The suspicious thing. The one he doesn't talk about. He'll go tight around the eyes and say, "I've got work," like that explains anything. Work? Since when? I've known him forever and he has never said that word like it belongs to him. I've tried to joke it out of him—"Secret girlfriend number two?"—and he just blinks like he didn't hear me. Tsubaki pretends not to be curious, which means she is. Hiroko-san is absolutely curious in that heavy, quiet way she has, the one that makes you feel like you're about to get graded.

I keep thinking about the day me and Tsubaki walked into Kaori's room and stopped dead. Two minutes earlier, we were arguing over which fruit tart to bring, and then we open the door and—boom—lovebirds. The spiky-haired violinist and the zombie boy, curled up on top of the blanket, just... asleep. Her cheek tucked under his chin. His arm around her like he forgot where his body ends. I choked on air. Tsubaki made this tiny sound like a kettle that just learned to whistle. I stage-whispered, "Dang Kousei... Do they have no shame?" and then imagined her parents coming in with flowers and dying on the spot.

I wanted to laugh. I did laugh. But I also stood there with this weird ache in my chest because I've never seen him hold onto anything that hard. Kousei used to look at the ground like it was safer to love that. Now he looks at her and it's like he finally decided to gamble.

And the gamble is killing him. That's how it looks from the outside. He's not eating right. He's not sleeping. He shows up to second period once in a blue moon and when he does, he sags in his chair like he's borrowing a spine. The teacher calls on him and he answers with that calm, flat voice that makes everyone pretend they weren't staring at the bags under his eyes. Then he's gone again, like a bad magic trick.

People notice. They can't help it. Tsubaki notices the most. She watches him the way you watch a pot that keeps boiling over—hands ready, eyes tired. She jokes at him, nudges him, shoves bento into his hands, gets mad when he won't chew. She says he's an idiot. It's how she says "don't disappear." Hiroko-san notices too. She asked him about Kousei.. Teachers notice. Even the strict ones soften when they say his name now, like someone told them to be careful with it.

At lunch the guys keep asking me what's up. They think I know because I'm supposedly his best friend. Maybe I am. I don't know anymore. He feels beyond best friends lately. He feels like a person who decided to live on a different street. I say "He's fine" because that's what you say when you're not fine and you need the room to breathe. I say "He's busy" because busy sounds better than breaking.

Someone taped a paper ghost to his locker after the Maihou mess: two dot eyes, a wobbly smile, "Boo" in bubble letters. It was dumb and harmless, but I ripped it down anyway. Didn't know why until later. It's easy to make him into a story. The prodigy. The disappointment. The robot. The ghost. None of those words help him pass math.

I catch myself keeping score on him now. Did he eat at lunch? Did he sleep five hours last night? Did he answer when I said his name, or did he look through me like the light was wrong? I don't like that I'm keeping score. But once you start, you can't stop. Maybe that's what love looks like from the outside: terrible statistics.

The part that messes with me is how shameless he's gotten. Not in a gross way. In a no-more-hiding way. Timid Kousei would have died before taking a nap in a hospital bed with a girl in front of two friends and a machine that beeps. This Kousei tucks her hair behind her ear and doesn't care if I see it. Timid Kousei mumbled. This one looks people in the eye and says, "I'm tired," like it's not a crime. He's still quiet, but it's a different quiet. A hard quiet. The kind those soldiers have in movies after the battle.

I joked once, "You're different," and he said, "Yeah," and that was it. No apology. No explanation. Just yeah, like he had to spend all his words somewhere else and there weren't any left for me.

Sometimes I want to shake him and tell him to pace himself. Take a day off from saving the world or whatever he's doing with that secret "work." Go to three classes in a row. Eat noodles with me and complain about the ref at last weekend's match. Be a person. Then I think about the way Kaori smiles when he walks in and the way his shoulders finally stop trying to touch his ears, and I shut up.

Here's the math that scares me: the more he gives to her and to that invisible project of his, the less he saves for everything else. And "everything else" includes a report card, a recommendation letter, an entrance exam, a future with student discounts and bad part-time jobs and a life that does not require miracles. He's always been down in the dumps, sure. But this is different. He's digging. On purpose. Maybe because he thinks there's treasure. Maybe because he thinks there's no other way out.

After practice I sit on the bleachers with a juice box because I'm a child and also because I left my water bottle somewhere dumb, and I watch the sky go orange over the gym roof. The team messes around on the far side of the field. I check my phone. No message from him. Tsubaki texts me a single dot, which is her way of saying "say something" without admitting she needs me to. I send back a dot. We're very emotionally mature.

I want everyone to end up okay. That's the simple version. Kaori back on her feet, complaining about metronomes and shoving sugar into our hands. Tsubaki yelling about my first touch and throwing a ball at my head. Me, not blowing it on the pitch and not blowing it with... I don't know, whoever decides to put up with me. And Kousei—sleeping, eating, laughing at something dumb I said because I timed it right for once.

If I look honest at what I see, though? It's like watching a candle burn at both ends. It's pretty. It's bright. And it doesn't last. I keep hoping I'm wrong. I keep hoping there's a trick ending where the wax grows back.

Tomorrow, second period, I'll turn my head toward the door when it slides open. Everyone will. We can't help it. We're all watching him now. Tsubaki. Hiroko-san. The teachers with their pens and their soft voices. Me with my stupid juice box.

If he shows, I'll raise my chin like, hey. If he doesn't, I'll pretend I didn't notice. And after school I'll lace my cleats, run until my lungs hurt, and try not to think about a boy who keeps choosing the hardest road and calling it nothing.

I laugh out loud for no reason, and the guy next to me gives me a look. Whatever. I finish the juice, crush the box, and toss it toward the bin. Miss by a mile. Figures. I get up to pick it out of the grass, because even clowns get one thing right a day, and I tell myself that tomorrow I'm going to drag Kousei to class by the collar if I have to. He'll blink at me. I'll grin back. We'll pretend this is normal.

It's not. But that's okay. We'll fake it until it is.

—

I knew he was gone before Hiroko-sensei closed the score.

She didn't even sigh this time. Just tapped the page with her nail and said, "That's enough for today. You're not here, Arima." Then,softer, "We'll pick up tomorrow."

He nodded like the word enough had weight. He started packing the way tired people pack: metronome, pencil, the corner of the score he almost folded by mistake, hands pausing a second too long over nothing. No excuses. No fuss. Just that hollowed-out face and the way his eyes never really stuck to anything in the room. Like sound was happening in a place I couldn't get to, and he was half there already.

I didn't say a thing. I watched his back. Even the jacket looked tired.

When the door clicked, I counted three beats and then made an excuse to Hiroko about having something to do. I then slipped after him.

The hallway smelled like old wood and tobacco—Hiroko-sensei must've cracked a window. Evening was getting into everything. The light had that pale orange edge that makes dust look like slow snow. He moved down the stairs with his shoulder a notch lower than usual, one hand on the rail as if it mattered.

I told myself I was following to mock him later. "Sensei, did losing to your own student finally break you?" Easy. Clean. Practiced.

My feet didn't believe me.

He didn't notice me at first. He turned the corner, shoes soft on the tile, and the door breathed us into the street. The air outside had changed—cooler, sweeter. Somewhere, someone was cooking onions. A vending machine hummed like a tame spaceship. The sky was a thin blue bowl you could see the metal through.

"Hey," I called, a little too loud. "Sensei. Don't ignore your student."

He stopped. Looked back over his shoulder. Those same tired eyes. That little half-smile he uses when he's trying not to scare people.

"I wasn't ignoring you," he said. "I thought you wanted to get away from me."

"Tch." I bounced down the last step, hair clips crooked, a bear on each side of my head judging him. "You wish. You walk weird when you're alone. Like you're carrying groceries but forgot the bag."

He actually glanced at his hands like he might find milk there. "That's... vivid."

"Yeah, I'm talented. Keep up."

I slipped past him to the sidewalk so he'd have to fall into step. He did. Not quite beside me. Half a pace behind, like the idea of equal ground made him shy.

We didn't talk at first. Outside sounds stitched themselves together: the soft clack of a bike pedal, a dog's muffled bark, the cicadas warming their throats. He put his hands in his pockets and stared at the slice of sky between the wires.

"You're walking to the station?" I asked, pretending it was just logistics.

He shook his head. "A little farther."

"Visiting someone," I said, more like a fact than a question.

He didn't answer. He didn't have to. I'd seen him check the time twice during the lesson, both times like the clock might bite his fingers.

We hit the corner by the tiny park with the two swings and the chipped slide. The swings looked lonely, their chains black with the kind of rust that rubs off on hands. Someone had left a juice box on the bench. The carton had that crumpled mouth shape of something sucked dry.

I veered in without warning. "Break," I ordered, kicking a toe into the dust under the nearest swing. "Sit. You looked like you were melting on the staircase. It was embarrassing."

He followed me in with that small-oh look he gets when he realizes I'm going to do what I want whether or not he approves. He dropped onto the other swing. The chain gave a gentle eeeenk I could feel in my teeth. For a second it felt like we were the only two people on the planet allowed to move.

"I'm not melting," he said.

"You're a puddle with hair."

"Artistic."

"Don't slouch," I snapped, because if I didn't needle him, I'd go soft. "You always tell me about weight and line and then you sit like you're ninety. Straighten up."

He straightened. It fixed almost nothing and still helped.

We rocked the swings a little. Not enough to lift off. Just enough to get the chains talking to each other.

"So," I said, looking at the slide instead of his face, "in the end I totally impressed them."

His head turned. I could feel it.

"At school," I went on. "Mock rep. The accompanist dragged the tempo like they were hauling a suitcase up a hill. I hauled them back. Full body. Wrist soft, elbow heavy. The judge with the weird eyebrows actually blinked when I doubled the left-hand weight in bar twenty-one, on purpose."

He smiled. A real one. Small. It moved something under his eyes that had been too still for weeks.

"Ah!" I pointed with both hands before my brain could stop me. "You smiled! Finally."

He ducked like I'd thrown something. "Don't make it rare and I won't notice," he said.

"Don't be boring and I won't have to work this hard," I shot back, which was dangerously close to flirting, so I scuffed my shoe on the dirt to fix it.

We let the quiet return. The swings answered the breeze. A train murmured far away.

"I'm sorry if I'm worrying you," he said after a while.

"Hah? Worry? Me?" The laugh came out too fast. "Don't flatter yourself. I just don't want to waste good critique time on a zombie."

He nodded like that made perfect sense and also like it didn't touch him at all. His hands tightened on the chains and then loosened again. The motion left gray on his fingers.

"Don't, though," he said, voice easy, almost light. "Worry, I mean. I'll be okay. Whether it's in a few weeks... or months... or years..."

The words landed wrong in my stomach. They were too tidy. Too measured. Like he'd practiced them alone and was testing how they felt out loud.

I kicked the dirt. "That's a weird way to say you're fine."

He lifted a shoulder. "Maybe."

"What does that even mean?" I wanted to follow it, pry it open, but the look on his face made me swallow the tools. He wasn't offering the kind of truth you can poke without breaking it.

We swung a little more. The blue over the slide went faint with evening. A moth bumped itself silly against the park light.

"I told you to fix bar nine," he said, sudden as a dropped coin.

"You told me to fix the way I think bar nine," I corrected. "Which is rude and also accurate." I squinted at him. "Your head was somewhere else the whole time, though."

"It wandered." He smiled without teeth. "I'm trying to train it."

"Put it on a leash."

"Working on it."

He looked different when he smiled. Not less tired. Just more like the tired had somewhere to sit.

I studied his profile without being obvious about it. The shadows under his eyes were deeper than they had any right to be at fourteen. His mouth had a cut on one side from where he'd probably worried it during a scale. His hair fell in that annoying way that would be cool if he were anyone else.

"You're bad at being a person," I blurted, because kindness makes me itchy. "You know that, right? Like. Eat. Sleep. Basic human patch notes."

He laughed, quick and quiet. "I'll patch."

"Good. Or I'll tell Hiroko-sensei you're unteachable and she'll finally throw a shoe..."

"She's threatened."

"I'll help her aim."

We both smiled at the exact same time. It made the park brighter.

"You're going to win," I announced, because saying it out loud forced the world to arrange itself. "At my next school rep. I mean. I'll win. You'll... look from the audience and pretend you're not proud."

"I'll be very proud," he said, and it had no sugar in it. Just a clean line.

Heat flickered in my chest. I kicked harder, lifting two inches, three. The chain sang.

Idiot Kousei...

"Are you going to be late?" I asked, when the swing slowed again.

He checked the time without really looking at the numbers. "I always am," he said. Not bragging. Not sorry. Just a thing the day had decided.

I wanted to ask where he was going, and who, and why it made his voice go soft at the edges. I wanted to say if you vanish, I'll be mad forever. I wanted to say you don't get to be a ghost when I need you to be a wall.

Instead, I shoved his shoulder with my foot. "Fix your posture for real or I'm telling Hiroko you sat like a shrimp at the park."

"Rude," he said, but he straightened again, this time finding the place where the chain didn't rattle. He looked up into the stupid fragile sky. "Thanks."

"For what?" I snapped, because my face felt hot and that was illegal.

"For following," he said. "For making noise."

I rolled my eyes so hard the bears on my clips probably spun. "You're welcome, I guess."

He stood, brushing dust off his pants like it mattered. "Don't be late next time."

"Don't you be late," I echoed. "If you ditch me again, I'll key your metronome."

"I'd like to see you try."

"Oh, I'll try."

He lifted two fingers in that tired little salute and headed toward the path. He didn't look back. I hated that I watched anyway.

The park light clicked fully on. The moth kept battering itself against brightness. The swing creaked under me, a small animal breathing. I wrapped my hands tighter around the chains until the rust printed on my palms.

He's not my enemy. He's not even a rival. He's a cracked cup, and for reasons that make no sense I want to keep pouring water in.

Fine. I'll do it my way. I'll practice until my wrists remember without being told. I'll put weight where it lives instead of where I wish it lived. I'll make a sound he can't ignore even when his head is somewhere else.

And next lesson, if he drifts, I'll yank him back by his hoodie. If he slouches, I'll kick his shin. If he says weeks, months, years in that careful voice again, I'll make a noise so loud the sky drops it.

I hopped off the swing and brushed dirt from my knees. The stairs out of the park felt familiar, like a line I'd finally learned how to play. I headed home, already hearing bar nine the way he wanted it, and—fine—bar nine the way I wanted it too.

Chapter Text

The banners hit me first—too bright for a "concert," too cheerful. Paper lanterns bobbed against early evening, and kids in half-costumes rushed past with trays of taiyaki. Somewhere on the lawn a brass trio was butchering the Mario theme in bear heads. This was Kurumigaoka's "concert," apparently. Not the black-suits-and-stiff-spines kind. More like a festival that accidentally swallowed a recital.

Watari whistled low. "This is incredible. They've got yakisoba. They've got idol penlights. They've got... is that a saxophonist dressed as a bear?"

I pinched the sleeve of his jacket and tugged him toward the entrance. "We are here to listen. Not to eat everything that smells like soy sauce."

"We can multitask," he said, already craning for the food stalls. "You know, I'm starting to think music might be fun."

I rolled my eyes so hard I saw my own ponytail. He grinned and nudged me with his shoulder and I let myself laugh, even though my nerves were jittery. Kousei had asked us to come. Not the usual "come if you want," either. He'd actually texted: Please be there. It felt like he'd dropped a stone in my chest and left me to hold it, warm and heavy.

Inside the hall, the lobby didn't match the noise outside—cool air, polished floor, kids in uniforms glued to their phones, a signboard that said Welcome to the Kurumigaoka Music Festival in bubbly letters with doodled eighth notes. A girl in a panda kigurumi handed me a program and a glowstick. I gave the glowstick to Watari; he bowed like he'd been gifted a diamond.

"Hey," he said, low. "Don't look now, but Takeshi Aiza, two o'clock."

I looked anyway. There he was near the far wall, arms folded, hair neat, the permanent line between his brows sharpened by the lobby lights. Alone. Which meant Emi was probably somewhere else, saving her face for the stage or not coming at all. I pulled Watari by the wrist toward the doors as if we had seats reserved in a better life.

We found a row about five back from the middle. The hall itself felt fresh, new wood and clean lines, the stage framed by those curtains that are too red to be real. Down front, I recognized Hiroko Seto—hair tucked behind one ear, expression unreadable. A little girl with yellow hair swung her legs beside her like a pendulum counting down to something.

I sank into my chair and let the seat swallow some of my nerves. The program said the acts would be... varied. Xylophone quartet. Two-piano five-hands medley. Percussion ensemble. Solo piano—several. Violin and piano. A capella. Somewhere someone had drawn a doodle of a ghost playing a clarinet. I tried not to imagine what that sounded like.

Watari leaned in. "You think Kousei asked us here because he's nervous for his student?"

"Student," I repeated, testing the word on my tongue. "He said he's helping a first-year... girl."

"First year huh?" he said,

I nodded, pretending it wasn't weird to feel the surprise like a little throb of pain. It wasn't pain. Just... unfamiliar.

The lights dimmed a notch. Conversation folded down to a soft hum. The MC—a kid in a cape and a tiny top hat—took the mic and welcomed us in a voice that squeaked once and made everyone cheer for the squeak. First up: the xylophone quartet. Four mascots waddled onstage, mallets in paw-hands. Someone behind us whispered, "This is the best day of my life," and then the first clunking, joyful notes fell into the hall like marbles.

It was silly, and it was... nice. The sound wasn't good, not in the achieve-a-score way. But enthusiasm has a pitch, and they nailed it. I clapped and felt my own face soften, and somewhere in that softening there was still the stone Kousei had left me. He'd changed so much these last months that sometimes I felt like I was trying to hold a friend who'd turned into fog.

Another act. Two girls in cat ears did a four-hands arrangement and almost fell off the bench laughing when they bumped elbows, which made the room laugh with them. The percussion ensemble wore festival happi coats and played trash cans like they'd trained for it.

A seat two rows ahead stood up and sat down again. Hiroko didn't move. The little girl beside her had her glowstick off, then on, then off, like practicing breathing.

When the MC called a name I didn't recognize, then "piano," my back straightened on reflex. The stage emptied. A minute stretched. Another. The door on the side opened and closed—a slim figure peeking out, then ducking back in. We waited. My hands found each other in my lap and laced tight.

I thought of the text: Please be there.

I thought of Kousei's face lately—tired, fierce, empty, overflowing, all at once. Sometimes he looked like he was made out of glass. Sometimes like he had no face at all. Sometimes like he'd peeled his face off and offered it to someone else to wear because they needed it more.

"Hey," Watari murmured, and I realized my jaw was set. I tried to relax it. The red curtain held still. The piano lid caught light like a black lake. Out in the lobby a door thumped and echoed.

Then the side door opened and a girl stepped onstage, uniform pressed, hair clipped back with... little red bears? She walked like the floor was made of thin ice. She reached the bench, bowed—too stiff, too fast—and sat with her hands in her lap for a breath longer than looked comfortable. Then she set her fingers and breathed the way we were all supposed to breathe.

The first few notes trembled. The fifth didn't. The eighth cracked open a space big enough to stand in.

Somewhere in the row ahead, a boy leaned forward, elbows on knees, not blinking. Takeshi. His profile didn't move, but the air around him did. Behind me, Watari forgot how to lean back.

The girl—Nagi, the program whispered—found her stride in the second phrase. Not perfect. Human. Fierce like someone who had built a cage out of scales and then learned how to open the door from the inside. I felt pride that wasn't mine stand up in my chest like a person.

I looked for Kousei and didn't see him. Of course I didn't. He was probably where he always is lately—backstage in some corner of a hallway, holding himself together with one hand and someone else with the other...

The piece gathered itself and went. The audience forgot to laugh. I forgot to breathe. Watari didn't make a joke for an entire three minutes, which has to be a record. When she landed, she held the last note like a hand offered and then taken back with care. Silence. And then applause that felt surprised at itself, then certain.

I clapped until it stung. The little girl near Hiroko jumped up and shouted, "Yay!" The top hat MC ran out, flushed, and almost tripped on the mic cable.

"Not bad," Watari said, as if the world needed his rating to continue.

"Shut up," I said, smiling.

I imagined Kousei somewhere I couldn't see, eyes darker than air, the ghost of a smile peeking like the sun behind a building. He'd asked us to come. We were here. For once, the shape of that sentence made sense.

—

Backstage air always smells like dust and paint. It settles on your tongue if you open your mouth to breathe and I was breathing wrong. Too shallow, too fast. Nagi paced a five-step loop on a strip of scuffed floor between a stand of risers and a costume rack with a headless panda slumped over it like it had died of joy. She kept rubbing her fingertips against each other like she was washing her hands without water.

"Hey," I said.

She didn't jump. She flinched, then pretended she hadn't. "You're late," she said. Her voice was a half-octave too high.

"I've been here," I lied. I wasn't good at lying and she knew it. I let the truth out in a smaller voice. "I was listening to the trash can symphony in the lobby."

Her brows made a little knot, then untied themselves without permission. "They were good," she said, and then realized we were talking and pressed her lips into a line.

I sat on the edge of a folded riser and looked at the floor, or looked through it. A tuning A drifted through the wall from somewhere. Someone laughed in a hallway; it broke on the corner and came to us as shards.

Nagi held her music in both hands like a passport. "I'm going to mess up," she said, fast, like pushing the words over the line would keep them from sticking. "Everyone's watching. My brother. Sensei. You." She winced at her own emphasis. "It's a festival but it isn't. You know?"

"I know," I said. I do. I know too well.

Her eyes looked huge with fear and the red bear clips looked ridiculous and perfect. I wanted to hand her some of the weight I carry, not to make her heavier, but because sometimes it steadies you to hold something that won't blow away.

"This is a festival," I said, soft. "You're not on trial. No one's going to tally your soul into a rubric and post the score on the door."

"That's exactly what festivals are," she said, but even her sass sounded thin with nerves.

"Play," I said. "And if you fall, you get up. If your hands shake, fine. Let them shake and play anyway. No matter what happens, Hiroko and I are still proud of you."

She blinked like she'd been slapped. "Proud?"

I shrugged. "Yeah. That word."

Her chin trembled once, the kind of tremble your body does when it wants to refuse a kindness and can't. "I don't want to let you down," she said. It came out more like a vow than a fear.

"You won't," I said. "You couldn't."

The xylophone bears came offstage sweating. One took the head off and revealed a tomato-red face and hair plastered to a forehead. He waved the mallets at Nagi in solidarity. She attempted a smile and it looked like pulling a heavy drawer that finally slides.

"You told me not to think about perfection," she said. "But how do I stop? My hands only know how to chase it."

"I don't know...." I said, honest. "I've been trying to stop chasing it my whole life."

She stared like I'd confessed something she wasn't sure I was allowed to confess.

From the wings I could see the outline of the audience—the glow of screens half-hidden, the slow flicker of someone's fan. I was used to the geometry of rooms. I've been mapping where to stand since I was small enough that a bench felt tall. This room was warm with breathing. It felt... kinder than most.

"Look," I said, and tilted my head toward the curtains. "See that gap?"

She leaned. Through the smear between fabric and wall, a mixed parade: a kid in a cape, someone adjusting a mic stand, a teacher counting on their fingers, and in the fourth row—a shape I know too well not to feel it before I see it. Tsubaki. Next to her, Watari. Tsubaki's shoulders were drawn in and set, always ready to catch or to bump. Watari's head was tilted, grin smoothed down to curiosity. It put a little heat in my sternum that I didn't have a box for. I asked them to come. They came.

Nagi followed my gaze elsewhere. "That's my brother," she whispered, so soft I almost missed it. Across the aisle: Takeshi—a line of attention.

"You want him to hear you," I said.

"I want him to see me," she corrected. "It's not the same thing."

"Hm." I wished I had a line for that. I wished I had a hundred lines. My brain is good at making cures. It's bad at making comfort.

The MC's voice bubbled through the speakers. "Next up... piano... first-year... Aizato Nagi!"

Her hands went cold in the air like a bird shocked out of flight.

"Breathe," I said. "In. Out."

She did. Then did it again like a person practicing living.

"Nagi," I said, when she'd finished the second breath. She looked at me. "No matter what happens under those lights—when you walk back here, you're still you. That's the deal."

She pinched her lips together and nodded once, hard. "Okay," she whispered. Then she walked.

I watched her take the stage like it was a cliff path. The hall's air changed—subtle, like someone opening a window in another room. She bowed, clumsy and sincere, and sat. I couldn't see her face, just the angle of her shoulders, the lift of her wrists.

The first notes shook. I felt my own fingers twitch in sympathy. Then, as if a gear slipped and clicked, she steadied. Not into flat calm—into motion. She chose speed that belonged to her hands, not to a metronome or a teacher's throat. The left hand kept a floor the right could run across without tripping. Little stumbles became little dances. A run bloomed where a run lives. It was messy like weather, and the room liked it.

I let myself sit back a fraction. I had wanted to hold the bench under her with my bones. I didn't need to.

Takeshi didn't move. Inside not moving, he changed. I know that look: the surprise that hurts because it asks you to rewrite a story you thought was true.

Nagi hit the last shape like someone stepping onto dry land after a long swim. The hall paused—half a beat of what now—and then clapped itself open. She bowed again—too fast, again—and ran off like the applause might chase her and ask for an autograph.

She came around the corner, cheeks hot, hair escaping the bear clips, eyes glassy; then she saw my face and her chin lifted like she remembered how she wanted this story to go.

"You were fine," I said.

"Fine," she echoed, teary and insulted in a single word.

"Okay," I allowed, "you were really good."

She sniffed and shoved her score at me like I'd asked for it. "Don't say it like that," she mumbled. "Like you can't help it."

"I can't," I said, and ruffled her hair because sometimes your hands do what your mouth can't. She yelped and swatted at me but didn't step back.

"Sensei," she said, and then, softer, "Kousei."

I nodded. She looked like she might cry, and then she didn't. It's a hard skill.

"Go say hi to your brother," I said.

She made a face. "Later."

"Go," I repeated.

She rolled her eyes like a girl who will always roll her eyes and went. I watched the back of her head bob through the corridor, the red bears bright like a dare.

I leaned against the riser and let the room pour through me. The silly acts kept happening in the big space. Outside, the festival buzzed like summer had decided to come early. My phone buzzed once: You see her? from Tsubaki. I typed back: Yeah. She did great. A beat later: Good. Another beat: We're proud of her—and I wasn't sure if she meant Nagi or me or all of us, so I let the message land where it wanted.

My limbs felt heavy in the way they do when you stop bracing. I closed my eyes for three seconds and let a picture try to form—blonde hair under a tree, a fist-sized smile, a voice pretending not to tremble. I opened my eyes before the picture could turn into a room with a bed.

The panda costume was slumped in a chair like it had fainted. I was tempted to sit beside it and faint, too. Instead I exhaled and found Hiroko across the corridor, watching me with that sideways softness she only uses when she thinks I'll miss it.

I shrugged like everything was nothing. She lifted one eyebrow like she could see the knot I keep under my ribs and was making sure it didn't pull too tight. Between us, the air said: We did a small good thing today.

That would have to be enough for this hour.

I turned back toward the stage door because people always leave pianos alone between acts and I hate the way they look when they're alone. The hall swallowed another round of applause and somewhere inside it, there was the sound of a younger girl learning how to keep her balance in a room that was rooting for her to fall and get up and bow anyway.

I let the sound find me. Then I went to find her again.

__

I pour two fingers and watch the amber climb the glass like a slow sunrise. It smells like oak and honey and something that bites if you breathe too deep. I don't drink much—never really did, not even when everything went black the first time—but tonight feels like a night that needs a small, private ritual. I earned one safe mistake.

The apartment is dark except for the desk lamp. The cone of light makes a little island on the wood: notebook, pen, the corner of a printout I've read so many times I could recite the margins. Outside, the city is a low hush—the occasional car, a neighbor's laugh swallowed by the hallway. Inside, the second hand on the wall clock clears its throat once a second and won't stop.

Tomorrow, Skyclairs moves from approval to distribution.

I say it in my head and the words still don't fit. It's like trying to pick up a piano with two fingers—no matter how you try to grip it, the weight is wrong. Tomorrow hospitals will sign for cases. Pharmacies will get instructions. Priority lists will populate, and Kaori's name will sit near the top because it has to. "Priority patients." For once, the world remembered to make a list with her on it.

I take a sip. Heat spreads in the chest, and my shoulders unclench half a notch.

I think about the last two weeks like they were one breath: Saitou's blunt emails, the committee's questions, the safety board's stare, the trial data lined up in neat little rows like good students. Minimal adverse effects. Biomarkers trending right. Language that sounds so sterile you could put it in a museum and nobody would catch fire. It moved because it was safe to move. It moved because Saitou put his name in front of mine and because I had every answer ready and because luck finally stopped looking away when I spoke.

I keep catching myself waiting for the trap. For someone to say "We miscounted" or "We misread" or "A form is missing." The brain learns not to trust light. It learns the shape of "almost."

Another sip. Smaller. I'm not trying to burn the house down from the inside.

If this were the old track, the one where the story never changed, right about now someone would be saying the word surgery in a bright room and calling it hope. It wasn't. It was a last step off a dark stairwell. In this track, there's a pill. Not a cure, not salvation, but an instrument I can tune. It buys months—maybe more. It buys space around breath. It buys chance.

And I have never had more time with her than I do right now.

The thought lands and sits there like a bird that might fly if I move too fast. More time. A phrase so simple it makes me want to laugh and punch a wall at once. I didn't plan this far. I planned as far as don't let her die. I planned as far as keep her here. I didn't plan the hours after the hours after, the small stupid ones where you argue over pastry flavors or she falls asleep mid-sentence and you don't want to move because the weight on your shoulder finally feels like your own life.

I tip the glass, watch the surface tilt.

The cure isn't off the table; it's the table. Skyclairs is the steadying hand. The thing that stops the bleeding long enough to stitch. But the cure—the real one, the one that doesn't just slow the fire but rebuilds the house—that's still out ahead, a silhouette that keeps changing as I get closer. Stop the degeneration. Regenerate what's been lost. Nerve tissue is a bastard. It takes without apology and returns only under threats you can't ethically make. I've been here before in a different decade with worse tools and no time. This world is kinder, or I am meaner. Maybe both.

My phone screen lights for the hundredth time with nothing on it. Habit. I turn it face down.

I should open my textbook. I should look at the schedule for the exams. My attendance looks like a weather map where the storm never leaves the coastline. Teachers press their fingers together and ask me if music is "distracting" me, like that's the worst sin a boy could confess to. The only thing that keeps the floor from opening under me is that tests are just puzzles and I'm good at puzzles. Classwork, though—group projects, participation boxes, "share your thoughts"—I'm failing the part of school where you have to be seen.

I pour the rest of the glass back into my mouth and let it sit there a second before I swallow. The warmth makes the room feel less like a museum.

Nagi played well. I didn't sit next to her this time. No reckless, shared-bench duet to spark rumors and turn a school into a theater. I clapped from the aisle and let her own hands own the keys. She didn't need me there. That hurt in a nice way. Hiroko watched me while she watched Nagi and somehow did both with the same acuity, the way only mothers and predators do. "You're somewhere else," she said later, voice soft around the edges of the cigarette. "Get sleep. Don't turn yourself into a ghost again." As if sleep were a door I could just open.

I top off the glass, then reconsider and set the bottle down. Enough.

If tomorrow goes the way the numbers say it will, Kaori won't have to hear "surgery" in that bright room. A doctor with kind eyes will talk about a pill and priority protocols and start dates. He'll say things like "stabilization" and "slow improvement" in the careful tone people use when they are trying not to offer too much hope and accidentally offer a lot. She'll smile with a mouth that pretends it isn't tired. Her parents will grip each other's hands under the table, fingers white at the knuckles, and breathe like people who just remembered how. The word dangerous won't be invited into the room. The word necessary will finally be on my side.

I close my eyes and see her in the rooftop light again, a different year painted over this one. "I'm scared," she said, and I said something stupid and brave because I thought that's what men are supposed to offer. This time I get to hand her a timeline instead of a promise. This time I get to say wait and have wait mean something.

I didn't tell her about the medicine. I told her "yes, but wait." I told her I needed to do a few things first. I left the part where I built those things out of my bones. I hate secrets, but I hate giving someone hope on credit even more. If it breaks, I'd rather it break on me first.

The glass sweats a little circle onto the desk. I wipe it with the side of my palm.

Someone is going to ask me what my "career plan" is again next week. Science. Medicine. I said it out loud to a teacher today and his eyebrows went up like a cartoon. The rumor factory will blow smoke: the piano boy going straight. The accompaniment to a life is changing key. Tsubaki will hear it and pretend she didn't, then ask me anyway, then tell me she's proud and then ask me if I've eaten. Watari will say something dumb and warm and call it support. Hiroko will grunt like she predicted it before I did. Kaori—Kaori will keep calling me a pianist as if that word is a tether. Maybe she's right. Maybe I can be both for as long as I have to be both.

I flex my fingers and feel the faint sting across the knuckles where the keys left little ghosts earlier in the week. You don't stop being what you were just because you added a job title. Some languages you never forget.

The clock catches my eye. It's later than I intended to let it be. I picture someone barging in—Tsubaki with a lecture, Watari with snacks, Hiroko with a shoe—and me with a glass I don't usually hold. I'm not ashamed. I just don't want to explain. Not tonight. Tonight is for the quiet I never get and the victory I don't know how to celebrate.

I set the glass in the sink and run water until the smell thins. My reflection in the window looks like someone else wearing my posture: shoulders slumped, hair stubborn, eyes too old for the room they're in. If Skyclairs works like the numbers say, I'll get to watch those eyes see her stand up without help again. Maybe not run. Maybe not dance yet. But stand. Take steps she didn't borrow. That picture alone could redecorate my skull.

Don't get ahead of yourself, I think. Numbers. Timelines. Protocols. The cure still waits on a farther hill, and I still have to do the climb. Nerve regeneration is not impressed by anyone's feelings. It doesn't care that I have a deadline made of a person I love. It will take the time it takes.

But tomorrow... tomorrow is a start that isn't pretend.

I turn off the lamp. The room dissolves into outlines. From the bedroom, my phone hums once—an automated alert I set weeks ago just to hear it: "Distribution—Phase 1." I let the sound happen and don't move.

I stand there in the dark and imagine handing the future a different pen. I imagine the look on her face when a doctor uses the word maintenance instead of emergency. I imagine the ordinary cruelty of a better day: a line, a pill cup, a nurse with practiced hands, paperwork, boredom. I pray for boredom. I'd worship it if I could.

"Hang on," I say to the empty room, to the night, to all the versions of her that trusted me and didn't know it. "Just a little longer."

The second hand keeps clearing its throat. Tomorrow keeps coming anyway.

Chapter Text

The room smells like alcohol swabs and a sweet, tired kind of soap. There is always a curtain pulled back halfway, never fully open. The blinds are up just enough to let the afternoon look in without touching anything. A monitor glows to my left, green lines making hills out of my heart. The hum is steady. The cuff has left an imprint on my upper arm from this morning's vitals; if I press, I can feel where the edge bit into me.

Mom sits close, on the visitor chair that squeaks when you shift. Dad stands, then sits, then stands again, hands rubbing together like he is trying to warm them. They both have their bakery smell clinging to their sleeves—butter, sugar, a shadow of cinnamon. It comforts and makes me feel far away at the same time.

The door opens with a soft magnet click. The doctor enters, older than the room, with the careful energy people bring to fragile places. White coat, sensible shoes, folder under his arm. He doesn't smile first. He looks at me, not through me, and that is something I notice.

"Good afternoon," he says. His voice is dry and even. "May I sit?"

We nod. He takes the second visitor chair and sets the folder on his knee. He looks at the monitor for one second, then back to my face.

"I want to review where we are," he says. "And then talk about next steps."

I nod again. My mouth is dry. My tongue finds the sore where I bit it yesterday when the nurse adjusted the IV. Mom's hands fold on her lap. Dad's tapping stops.

The doctor lifts a page. "Your diagnosis is confirmed Frederich's Ataxia. Your clinical picture has progressed faster than we normally see at your age." He doesn't say "wheelchair," but the chair is at the foot of my bed, folded, a punctuation mark waiting to be used. "Your recent fall was consistent with fatigue and orthostatic changes. The scan shows no intracranial bleeding. The bandage is precautionary while the laceration heals."

I touch the edge of the wrap at my temple the way you test a loose tooth. It's tender. I say, "Okay." My voice comes out thinner than I planned.

He continues. "Standard of care has traditionally been symptomatic support. Physical therapy. Nutrition. Monitoring the heart and endocrine system. Some centers considered aggressive procedures." A pause. "In your case, I do not recommend surgery. The risk profile is not acceptable."

Mom lets out a breath like she has been under water for a count of ten. Dad's jaw moves, once.

The doctor smooths the page with his thumb. "However," he says, and his eyes shift from the paper to me again. "There is something new. It has completed review and received approval for priority distribution. It is indicated for severe cases like yours."

I feel a small, clean silence inside my head. It's the kind of space that opens when a door in a hallway swings and you wonder what's behind it.

"What is it?" I ask.

"A pill," he says. "Oral therapy. The trade name is Skyclairs." He lets the name sit. "The mechanism is targeted toward mitochondrial function and oxidative stress pathways relevant in Frederich's Ataxia. In plain terms: it aims to slow or halt progression, and in some patients we are observing functional improvements—stability, coordination, stamina."

The words are simple. They feel heavy anyway. Pill sounds like something you can hold. Surgery sounds like something that happens to you. Time stretches and contracts at the same time.

Mom leans forward. "Is it safe?"

"So far," he says. "In the data we have, adverse effects have been minimal and manageable. Fatigue, mild gastrointestinal upset, transient headaches. We monitor liver enzymes. Thus far, the benefit-to-risk profile is strongly in favor of using it, especially in patients with rapid progression."

Dad's voice is careful. "Would she qualify now?"

"Yes." He doesn't hesitate. "You are in the priority group. We have a pathway to initiate immediately."

Immediately. The word is a door that opens onto another door. I feel my fingers curl under the blanket and press the sheet. I am aware of my legs. A buzzing line down the right calf that comes and goes. The way my left foot doesn't quite obey when I ask it to flex. The memory of the floor rushing up last week. The sound the blood made in my ear when it hit my cheekbone. I can't stop the picture; I can decide how long I look at it. I look away.

"What about surgery?" Dad asks. It comes out like a reflex born from older conversations.

The doctor shakes his head once. "It should not be on the table." He says it plainly. "Not until we've given this medication a proper trial. To be direct: surgery is not an option I would consider at this time. Skyclairs should be first, and early."

Mom's hands cover her mouth for a breath. When she lowers them, her smile is wet and shaky. "Thank you," she says. She says it twice, quieter the second time.

He nods, as if accepting thanks is not the point. "We will start with a titration schedule," he goes on. "Low dose, increased to target over two to three weeks. We'll draw baseline labs today and schedule follow-up in clinic each week for the first month. We'll assess gait, coordination, fatigue, and any side effects."

"I'm in the hospital now," I say. It sounds obvious, but I'm asking something under it: will I stay?

"You can start as an inpatient," he says. "We'll observe the first doses. If tolerated, we'll transition you to home with instructions, follow-up, and a number you can call any hour." He looks at me, not my parents. "You won't do this alone."

My throat tightens for no medical reason. I nod, short.

He turns a page. "Expectation setting," he says. "I want to be clear. We are seeing stabilization and improvement in many patients. We are not calling it a cure. The goal is to slow the disease and give you back function where possible. The degree of improvement varies. We measure progress over weeks and months, not days. That can be frustrating. It is also honest."

Honest is good. Honest hurts less later. I think of walking down the hospital corridor and singing quietly to keep the walls from listening. I think of sitting on the floor when my legs wouldn't answer and being so angry at them for not wanting to be legs anymore. I think of the way Kousei looked at me then, the fight in his eyes like a hand reaching through glass. I don't let the thought finish. I put it back in its box.

Mom reaches for my hand and squeezes without shaking. "If it gives you time," she says, looking at me like I am five and also an adult, "we will take it."

Dad clears his throat. "What do you need from us?"

"Consent," the doctor says, lifting a single sheet. "And your attention to the dosing schedule. Food interactions are minimal. We'll coordinate with physical therapy to take advantage of any gains in stamina or balance. The earlier we pair movement with medication, the better the outcomes we're seeing."

He holds out the form. Mom looks at Dad. Dad looks at me.

"It's your body," Dad says. His voice cracks in the middle and steadies. "We follow your lead."

There are moments when the room becomes a photograph. The light, the angle of a hand, a pen about to write. I can feel that before this sentence is finished, this image will be added to the shelf where I keep things I will not let erode. I take the clipboard. The paper is heavier than a normal sheet. The line for my name is long. The pen is the kind that scratches a little. I sign.

The doctor nods. "We'll begin today," he says. He stands, smooths his coat, and does a small bow of his head that feels like respect, not ceremony. "A nurse will be in shortly to start labs and the first dose. Ask any question at any time."

He leaves. The door closes softly. The room exhales.

Mom wipes her cheek with her knuckle and laughs without sound. "A pill," she says, like she is afraid if she says it louder it will change shape.

Dad sits at the foot of the bed and finally stops moving. He looks at the wheelchair and then turns it so the folded arms face the wall, like you might turn a picture that is too much to look at for the moment.

I stare at my hands. The nails are short. The half-moons are pale. There is a faint tremor in my right ring finger that only I would notice because I am watching for it. I curl my fingers and uncurl them. I imagine holding something small and warm, like a firefly. I imagine it glowing even when it seems too dim to matter.

"Kaori," Mom says. "How do you feel?"

"Hungry," I say. It is partly true and partly code for I don't want to cry right now. She laughs and covers her mouth again. Dad laughs once, like a cough that remembered it could be a laugh.

The nurse comes in with a tray—vials, labels, a new cuff, a small paper cup with the first dose, a printed sheet with bullet points. She checks my name and birthday, twice. She ties the tourniquet, finds the vein on the second try. I watch the blood fill the tube and think, That is me, traveling. The pill sits in the cup, ordinary and decisive.

"Water?" she asks.

"Yes, please."

I put the pill on my tongue. It tastes like nothing. I swallow. The cup is cool against my lip. The nurse smiles in the way people do when they are careful not to own your moment. "We'll keep an eye on you," she says. "If you feel anything strange—headache, nausea—press the call button."

"Okay."

When she leaves, the room is itself again. The monitor hills go on. The blinds keep pretending it's gentle outside. Mom reaches for the pastry bag she brought and pulls out a melon pan like a magic trick.

"Only if your stomach is ready," she says.

"I'll try," I say. I break off a corner and let it sit on my tongue for a second. It tastes like home, and then like the hospital again because now everything does. I eat it anyway.

Time is still a moving thing. The pill is a small stone thrown into it. The ripples have not reached me yet. They will.

I think of school hallways and chalk dust and the way desks get warm under your forearms by third period. I think of music rooms and a boy with tired eyes who keeps showing up and pretending he's not tired so I won't have to be brave alone. I think of stairs, and ramps, and a line on the floor where I will put my foot down and then another foot and measure what it means to move forward.

Mom squeezes my hand again. Dad looks up and catches my eye. He nods like we are in agreement about something we haven't said out loud.

"Okay," I say, to them, to the room, to the small pill making its quiet way toward whatever it will do. "Let's see."

—

Koharu's crayons are the loudest thing in the room.

She's on the rug with her legs kicked back, tongue peeking from the corner of her mouth, grinding red into a sun that definitely asked to be yellow. The living room smells like polish and old scores and the hint of smoke I pretend not to track in from the balcony. I lean one hip against the piano and listen to Nagi test the keys like she's afraid of waking something that bites.

"Lighter," I say, and she obeys—good wrist, small hand, sound thinned until it's ribbon, not rope. The piece isn't the point. The touch is.

Yesterday's applause is still in her eyes. So is the fear. Jazzed nerves, the kind that make kids talk too fast. She's not talking now. She watches my face in the shine on the fallboard and tries to read what I won't write.

He looks dead. That's the sentence that's been stomping around my skull since last night. The boy. My boy. Fourteen going on forty-five, posture like he never actually stands up all the way anymore. He used to run in here; now he arrives like a tide coming in after a bad storm.

Yesterday when he drifted past my door to drop off something for Koharu, the wind carried a whisper of whiskey with him. First time I've smelled that on him. Or really any kid that young for that matter.Not much, not sloppy. Just enough to put a film over my throat. He doesn't even look like he takes the time to wake up anymore, just peels himself off the last thing he did and stumbles into the next.

I used to rant to him about the men I dated. The flaky ones. The ones who thought a gig was a personality. He'd sit at the edge of the couch with his knees together and his hands folded and the kind of serious, hungry attention only motherless boys give. I'd say, "Don't be like that." He'd nod like I'd asked him to practice a scale.

Now I look at him and think, There you are. A teenage version of the wrecks I used to throw out. Shady eyes. A schedule built like a trap. A girlfriend he orbits so tight he's turned into a moon.

"Sensei?" Nagi says, soft. She's stopped playing. The ribbon hangs in the air and then disappears. She has those little bear clips in again. Red. They tilt with her head when she's trying to look brave.

"Hm."

"Will... Arima-sensei be competing at Maihou?" She asks like a civilian peeking into a temple: careful, guilty to even want to know. "It's only a few weeks, right?"

I grind a half-cigarette out in the saucer and don't bother with a lecture about the piano lid being a bad ashtray. "He hasn't mentioned it," I say. It comes out flatter than I mean. "Not once."

She blinks. There's a part of her that can't imagine ignoring a mountain and calling it a hill. "But... isn't it important?"

"It used to be," I say, and if my voice has an edge, it's mine to sand later. "Don't hit the piano." She pulls her hand back before it lands another nervous tap.

He's avoiding anything that could steal seconds from his little watchlist. Avoiding the word competition the way smokers avoid the word cancer. He smiles when he has to, answers questions when cornered, pops a perfect test out like a vending machine so teachers leave him alone, and then turns his face away and you can see the vacancy behind the glass. The kid is smart. Too smart. A deceptive little liar when he wants to be. He's learned how to be missing while standing right in front of you.

Koharu has started humming. Off-key. My fault. I hum, too. Her sun gets another red layer and becomes a wound.

"Play," I tell Nagi, because the room needs something better than my head. "Something that doesn't prove anything."

She chooses a prelude and treats it like a rumor she's not sure she should repeat. The sound slips around the furniture and the framed photos and catches on the cracked spine of a Czerny, old friend and ex-convict. I watch her left hand—how the thumb tucks, whether the wrist stays supple on the turn. It does. She's quick. She's careful in the exact places that matter and careless in a few that will make her interesting if she survives herself.

"How was I yesterday?" she asks without turning. It's a child's question disguised as professional interest.

"Fine," I say, and then I hear how cruel that is and add, "Good. You did the thing you promised the piece. You didn't show off." She exhales enough to move a hair in front of her ear. "And you didn't break when the room told you who it was."

She nods. Then, tentative: "Arima-sensei was out of it...."

"That's not about you." I fish a lighter from my pocket, flip it, close it again. Fidget, not addiction. The balcony is five steps away. I stay put. "Don't build a religion out of someone else's absence."

"Oh." She sounds like maybe she was halfway through writing a prayer book.

The Maihou flyer is folded under a Bach Inventions book on the side table. Bright paper, bright promises. I think about picking it up and hearing my own voice ask the question I've been avoiding. Are you entering. Are you planning. Are you going to act like the person we taught you to be or the stranger you're trying on. I don't. Every time I try to steer him back to this river, he looks at me like I've asked him to help bury a body.

"He can play as perfectly as a seasoned pro," I say, mostly to myself. "He could walk into that hall and make the judges feel like they remembered how to breathe. And he'd do it from three rooms away."

Nagi stops. The last chord floats and lands. "You think he hates it," she says. Not really a question.

"I think he hates what it did to him. And for him. And because of him." I lean my shoulder deeper into the piano. "When your relationship with something is built under a whip, you have to break your back to stand up straight in front of it."

She turns on the bench and looks at me with that careful, fox-bright face. "Then why do you still...?" She gestures around the room, around me, at the smoke, the scores, the kid on the floor drawing our little family like the world is a simple shape. Why do you still chase him with it, she means. Why did you put me in his path.

"Because sometimes the thing that broke you is the only thing that can teach you how to heal." I say it before I can decide whether I believe it today. "And because I've watched the piano keep people alive. Not happy. Not always. But alive."

Hiroko Seto, patron saint of stubborn instruments.

She ducks her head. Her bear clips glint. "I want to ask him about Maihou," she whispers. "But I think he'll just... pretend he didn't hear me."

"Smart," I say. "You're learning."

I collect the lighter and cross to the balcony. Slide the door with a care that keeps Koharu from looking up. The evening air is cold enough to make the back of my throat grateful. I light up and let the first drag fill the space between thinking and saying. Somewhere two floors down, a couple argues about takeout with the weary intimacy of people who always end up eating the same thing anyway.

He's fourteen. Fourteen. And yesterday, if I'm not inventing it, his sweatshirt carried the ghost of a bar I used to haunt—oak and sugar and proof. Not much. Not the sloppy kind. Just the kind you drink when you need a ritual, when your hands need to hold something heavier than a phone. The smell made a quiet little anger rise up in me—the old kind, shaped like men with instruments and lies. I smashed that anger down because he isn't them and because I'm supposed to be better by now.

He used to come to me with paper cuts from turning pages too fast. Then he came to me with eyes that had learned how to go empty on command. Now he comes to me in flashes, and if I blink I miss him. Innocence, then pain, now this practiced hollow. And yet... lately, something else has crept in. A thin thread of up. Sometimes when he says her name the light moves under the skin of his face like a fish under ice. Sometimes he walks like he remembers gravity is a thing you can play with. Still... a thread doesn't make a rope.

I go back in and snap the lighter closed. Nagi has started again on her own, something brighter to clean the air. She looks over, half-expecting the shoe.

"You were good yesterday," I tell her again, because it bears repeating and because she needs to hear something that isn't about him. "And you'll be better next week. Work the inner voice in that passage; you're letting it starve."

She nods, already adjusting her hand, hungry to be corrected. I watch her mouth the way teenagers do when they're solving a puzzle out loud.

"Sensei?" she says after a minute. "If Maihou matters and he's... that good... why won't he go?"

Because he's done. Because he's busy building a life that doesn't admit witnesses. Because the piano holds a mirror he can't afford to look into right now. Because he is trying not to be owned by something that used to own him. Pick a reason, kid. They all hurt.

"He's changed," I say. It's the safest truth. "For the worse, mostly. He's..." I search for a word that isn't melodramatic. "... somewhere else."

"Because of his girlfriend?" Nagi's voice is level. Not jealous. Cataloging.

"Because he's fourteen and living through something, and he decided to carry the building by himself." I meet her eyes in the fallboard again. "He was always going to be too much of an adult when no one was looking."

Koharu has switched to blue. The sun is now a planet and all of us are dots. She hums louder. "Look!" she commands without looking up. "We're all together."

I look. She's given Nagi the biggest smile. Kousei is a stick with hair drawn too carefully. I feel my throat go strange.

"He's looked a little better lately," I hear myself say, almost defensively. "Bit more up." The next words don't need lungs to exist. But still.

Nagi turns on the bench and sits sideways, knees together, hands folded—exactly the way he used to sit when he was little and I told him stories about the road. "Do you think he'll ever... come back?" she asks.

"To piano?"

"To... himself," she says.

I take the question like a stone and weigh it. The easy answer is a lie. The hard answer is a wound. I choose the only one I can live with. "If he does," I say, "it won't be because someone dragged him. It'll be because he decided to walk."

She nods as if that's the lesson she came for.

"Keep playing," I add, because talk is cheap. "Maihou isn't the only stage in the world. But it's a good one to practice for."

She sets her fingers and begins again, this time with a little stubbornness in the line, which is what I wanted all along.

I watch her hands and hear his in them—the part of his touch that survives even in kids he doesn't mean to teach. I think about calling him and asking him if he's sleeping, if he's eating, if he remembers how to pretend for strangers. I don't. He'll answer in that tired, polite voice and tell me not to worry, which is exactly the wrong thing to say to me.

I fish the flyer out from under the Inventions and flatten it with my palm. The bright paper grins up at me, alive with dates and promises. "A few weeks," I say to no one.

He hasn't brought it up once.

He could play it perfectly.

He might not show up at all.

I tuck the flyer back under Bach and let Nagi's careful, bright sound hold the room together. For now.

—

I hear the melodica before I see her.

Thin notes slip through the stairwell door—airy and a little reedy, like a whistle trying to be brave. The roof is bright with winter light and a wind that tastes like disinfectant. The safety rail throws long lines across the concrete. Laundry from the pediatric ward flaps on a cord someone strung between vents, colors snapping like flags in a wind too clean to belong to the outside world.

Kaori sits on the bench near the edge. The wheelchair waits a step behind her like a shadow that learned to park itself. She's bundled in a cardigan that's almost too big, sleeves rolled twice. A little boy in a dinosaur tee holds the melodica's tube to his mouth, cheeks puffed, while Kaori's fingers walk the keys. A smaller girl stands on tiptoe beside her, clapping when she thinks the song ends and clapping when it doesn't, just in case.

"Good breath," Kaori tells the boy, gentle. "Don't explode."

He tries not to laugh into the tube and produces a honk that makes all three of them crack up. The laugh costs her color; it always does now. She's paler than yesterday. But the smile is real.

My feet slow. For a second I just stand there, letting the picture land: her hands still sure, pressing plastic keys because a bow is too heavy and the angle for a shoulder rest wouldn't hold. In the other life, I spent so much time inside my own storm that I kept missing scenes like this—small, ordinary, holy. I was always a half step away, watching the shape of the moment instead of being in it.

Not this time.

She spots me, and something warm stitches through her face. "Hi..." she says, like she's been waiting all morning to use the word.

"Hi..." It comes out warmer than I planned. I don't look at the wheelchair. I look at her. I hold her eyes.

The little girl points at me. "Is he your boyfriend?"

Kaori's mouth flattens into a fake-serious line. "No," she says, then tips her head. "Definitely not... He's a villain."

The kids gasp like I grew horns. It's a game, and they want me to lose.

I put a hand to my chest. "Maybe I am," I say. I give them my most tired, suspicious look and lower my voice. "Be careful. I steal snacks."

The boy narrows his eyes at me with great responsibility. "We don't have snacks."

"Then you're safe," I say. "For now."

Kaori tries to hide her smile and fails. A nurse opens the roof door to call the kids back for group time. They wave at her, then at me, and run off, the melodica's tube trailing like a small pale tail. The door swallows their chatter. The laundry snaps twice and settles. Somewhere below us, an elevator dings and dings again.

Silence doesn't feel empty next to her. It feels like a seat we know how to share.

I cross the last steps and sit beside her. The bench is cold through my uniform. Our shoulders touch. She doesn't move away. Up close I see it—the fine shimmer at her temple, the way her breath pauses a fraction too long before each exhale. I slide my hand over hers. Her fingers are cooler than mine. She keeps them still for a heartbeat like she's testing the weight of the contact, then curls them, slow, back around mine.

"Those two are menaces," I say.

"They're my orchestra," she says. "I'm the tyrant conductor."

"Then I guess I'm the villain who carries your baton."

"That's dangerous," she murmurs, pleased.

Wind lifts the ends of her hair. I tuck one piece behind her ear without thinking. In the other life I would have let it tickle her cheek because touching would have felt like breaking a rule I wrote myself. In this one, I don't leave things to chance. I don't leave hair in her eyes. I don't leave words unsaid.

She glances at my hand. "You're warm," she says softly, like she's noting a fact for later.

"Stay there," I say. "I'm good at being a hand warmer."

Her fingers tremble once under mine, a little lightning that she can't hide. The tremor used to scare me because it sounded like a countdown. It still scares me. I don't let go.

"I keep messing up," she says to the rooftops. She looks at the spot where the kids sat like their laughter might still be pooled there. "It's not the violin. My hands feel... clumsy." She mimics a scale with her right hand and shakes her head. "My brain knows what to tell them, and then they take the long way to do it."

"It's still your music," I say. "That's what matters."

She tilts her chin at me. "Even on a melodica?"

"Especially on a melodica," I say. "It tells the truth. No pretty reverb to hide in."

A corner of her mouth folds up. "You're insulting my melodica."

"I'm insulting the instrument for being honest," I say. "I'm grateful you are too."

She goes quiet. The laundry flaps once, twice. The sky is a kind of thin blue hospitals always seem to order in bulk.

"Are you okay?" I ask, because she isn't, not really, but the ritual matters.

She breathes out, a small white flag of condensation. "I'm scared," she says, so softly I almost miss it.

"Me too," I say. The truth sits down between us and behaves.

"I hate that my body keeps... doing this." She looks at her lap. "Everything that used to be automatic, I have to ask permission for. Sometimes it says no. It's like having a friend who keeps forgetting your name."

I squeeze her hand. "Then let me be the one who remembers it for both of you."

Her eyes close a moment. When they open again, there's light in them. Not the old summer kind. A winter light, clean and stubborn. "Villain," she says, "don't leave my side."

"I won't."

The words come out before I can think, and they land so steady I almost don't recognize my own voice. In the other life, everything I said to her felt like it was routed through fear. Now it moves through something else—resolve, maybe, or a kind of shamelessness I got used to by losing too much.

She leans into my shoulder. Weight like a bird that decided the branch would hold. I breathe her in—soap and hospital air and something that still smells like sunshine. I count the rhythm of her breaths without meaning to. I always count now. It's not about numbers. It's about not missing the time we have.

"The doctor said the new pills are starting soon," she says after a while, voice careful. "They explained it like... like putting up scaffolding around a building while you fix it. Not forever. But enough to climb."

I nod. My throat tightens. I keep my face calm because I want her to see calm. Inside, the words are a storm: We're so close. Just hold on. Please hold on. "You always did look good on a climb," I say.

She smiles without looking at me. "I'll make the nurses race me in the hallway."

"They'll file a complaint. 'Patient too fast.'"

"Villain assisted."

"Obviously."

The door thumps open again as someone comes up, then closes quick when they see us and decide to try another roof. The hospital hum wraps around us—the thousand machines that keep the day going. In my head, a different noise tries to push through: the noise of a boy on a stage who stopped playing because a voice from a rooftop in an old winter caught his hands in midair. For a second I taste snow. Then it passes. The taste that remains is the plastic tang of a melodica and the salt of skin.

"You used to look away," Kaori says suddenly, not accusing. "When the heavy things showed up. You used to stare at the floor like the answer was hiding in the scuff marks."

"I know," I say.

"You're not doing that now."

"I don't want to miss anything," I tell her, and it's the simplest thing I've ever said.

She studies my face the way she studies a new piece—not to judge it, but to find where it breathes. "Okay," she says. "Then I won't miss it either."

We sit. We let the quiet make a home over our knees. She turns her hand so our fingers interlock. It feels like a knot in a rope that's been fraying for years finally got tied right.

"Do you remember," she says, almost a laugh in it, "when I called you a Friend A the first time? You looked like you'd swallowed a bee."

"I was trying to play it cool," I say.

"You failed completely."

"I'm getting better at it."

"You are." She nudges my shoulder with her shoulder. "It's annoying."

"You like it."

She doesn't deny it. Her head tips to mine for a second and rests there. The bench creaks like it approves. Down below, a siren starts, fades, is replaced by birds who have decided the city belongs to them again.

I look straight at the wheelchair because not looking won't make it vanish. Then I look back at her. If we only count what's broken, we'll miss what's holding.

"I'm here," I say.

"You're here..." she echoes.

"Even if the wind tries to push me off the edge," I say.

"Then I'll pull you back by your sleeve."

"You have tiny hands."

"They're very determined."

We're both smiling now. It feels strange and perfect and undeserved and exactly ours.

She shifts, winces, breathes through it. I adjust so she doesn't have to ask. My arm around her shoulder is an answer to a question she hasn't said out loud. She relaxes under it like the question is satisfied.

From nowhere, the old panic tries to climb up again: if I blink, if I leave, if I think about anything but this, I'll lose it. I let it come. I let it pass. I'm not leaving.

She draws a small circle on the back of my hand with her thumb, absent and tender. "Stay until the cold wins," she says. "Then stay a little longer."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Villain.." she says again, quieter, softer, like the word has changed jobs and now means something useful, "don't ever leave my side."

"I won't," I say, and mean it with a steadiness that feels like a promise I finally learned how to keep.