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.