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.