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