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.
Warning: This story will be quite long