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.