I fall asleep on the roof without meaning to.
Warm sun. A square of shade from the stairwell cube. Wind moving the wire on the safety fence so it clicks like a soft metronome. I tell myself I'll close my eyes for one minute. The minute opens and becomes a room.
In the room there's a tiny upright with a smiley sticker on middle C. A child sits beside me with legs that don't reach the floor and claps on the wrong beats with perfect confidence. Kaori is there with her violin tucked under her chin, but she isn't playing yet. She's singing the simple tune about the star, voice light and close, like breath on glass. The words turn the air kind. The melody is so easy it feels like it was in my bones before I had bones.
"Twinkle-Twinkle little star~" Kaoris soft voice hit his ears
Hiroko stands in the doorway with crossed arms and a mouth that pretends to be stern. She pushed us into this—"go help, you two, music is a language, teach it out loud"—and now she watches like she's grading us for warmth instead of skill. Kaori winks at the child and counts them in again. I put my hand over the child's clapping hands, guide them soft-slow-soft-slow, and let the left hand mark a small bed of chords under Kaori's voice. Notes like round stones in shallow water. Clear. Shining a little.
"How I wonder what you are~"
Kaori's laugh breaks between phrases when the child tosses a flourish at the end of a line that doesn't need one. She accepts it anyway. "Good choice," she says, like the music wrote itself just to please them. She sings again, not loud, but whole, and I play small so her voice stays the center. It's the kind of moment that makes time sit down and behave.
Then something shifts.
The sticker face on middle C goes flat. The air in the room thins. The window light goes from gold to bleach. Kaori keeps singing, but the sound starts to come through water. The child claps a beat late; their hands echo; the echo runs past me. I try to bring the chords closer, to pin the rhythm in place. A tick cuts through the space, too clean to be a noise in the room. It's the roof fence. It's the day. It's that steady tap inside my head that says move.
Kaori's voice walks backward away from me. I reach. My fingers brush only air. The upright becomes a rectangle of light. Hiroko's shadow folds smaller and smaller until it is a coin on the floor. The child smiles and claps proudly for the wrong reason.
The tick is loud now.
I open my eyes.
Sky. Blue so white at the middle I have to squint. The concrete is warm through my shirt. My eyes are wet; the wind licks the tears sideways and cool. I blink hard and a face fills the space above me so fast my heart stutters.
Kaori.
She's close enough that I can see the tiny fleck of gold in her left iris that only shows when the sun gets it right. Her mouth is pressed tight. Her brows are up in the middle and down at the edges. Anger and worry elbowing each other.
"Where were you?" she says, all at once. "I looked for you all through lunch. The Towa is tomorrow, piano man. We needed to practice."
I push up on my elbows. The blood rush leaves my head in a quick wave. The fence clicks. The roof hums. My throat feels thick with the dream I lost on the way out.
"I'm—" The word scratches. I clear it. "I'm sorry. I closed my eyes for a minute."
"Your 'minute' has been half an hour." She points at my face without touching it. "You were crying."
The air stings the tracks under my eyes. I wipe them with the heel of my hand like I can erase the proof. "Dream," I say. "It doesn't matter."
"It matters when you vanish," she says. "I checked the practice rooms. I checked the halls. I checked the cafeteria twice. I ran around like an idiot while you were up here becoming a ghost."
I drag myself up to sitting. My bag is a lumpy pillow under my head. I set it upright. My body wants to lie back down. I make it sit up straighter instead.
"You look like a zombie," she goes on. "Did you stay up again?"
A small, guilty silence. I try to pretend it's not silence by adjusting the strap on my bag.
"Notes," I say finally. "I had to finish some—"
She doesn't let me finish. "Notes don't win a competition. People do. People with blood in their faces."
"I'll be fine by tomorrow."
"That is not how 'fine' works." She breathes in like she's counting to four and deciding whether to continue on five. She chooses six. "Do you know how hard it was to get us into Towa? We were a late entry, Kousei. The list was closing. I asked the clerk to give us five minutes and she gave me one. I promised we were ready. I promised my partner would show up, on time, awake." Her jaw shifts. "Don't make me look like a liar."
The word late clicks in my chest like the fence wire clicks in the wind. She has already moved so many pieces I didn't see. She already fought for the door so all I'd have to do is walk through it. I look at her and behind the anger I see the edge of the push it took. Not tantrum. Not charm. Will. She chose this and dragged the world an inch to make room.
"I'm sorry," I say again, better. "I should have told you where I was going."
"You should have been where you said you'd be." The words land sharp. Then she exhales, and the edge dulls a fraction. "I was worried that you..." She doesn't finish that sentence. She folds it and puts it somewhere behind her eyes. "Next time, text."
"Right." I pat my pocket like the phone might answer for me. It stays a lump. "I will."
She studies my face, less anger now, more measuring. "Did you eat?" she says.
I think of the apple at my sink and the crackers on the counter from yesterday and the way Tsubaki bumped my shoulder on the way to school this morning and told me, low, that I was going to crack if I didn't start sleeping like a person again. I think of how I nodded and said, "I will," and then didn't.
"Not yet," I admit.
"Of course not." The line twitching in her cheek smooths out. "You'll eat after school. And you'll drink water that isn't coffee pretending. And you will meet me in the music room when the final bell rings. The very second it rings."
I nod. The nod feels like a small bow and a small promise at once. My chest is tight and lighter at the same time—a strange combination I'm starting to know too well.
She glances at the stairwell. "Lunch is over," she says. "I needed you then. I'm still mad about that. But we'll use after school. We'll run the opening. We'll set the corners. I'll try not to speed up unless you deserve it." Her mouth tips like she might smile and then decides not to give me that yet. "Tomorrow we walk out together."
"Tomorrow," I say. The word lands inside like a stake I can tie a line to.
For a beat we say nothing. Sky. Fence. The distant megaphone at the field saying something nobody ever listens to. In the quiet, another memory shoulders through, old and too bright. Another hallway. Another year. Her hand at her mouth, eyes bright with tears she tried to swallow, asking me to play with her. Begging, then laughing at herself for begging, then begging again like she couldn't help it. I thought it was all about getting me back on stage, about music being the cure for my particular broken. I didn't understand what else she had under her skin, what she was keeping steady by sheer force of joy. I gave her a boy made of dense fog and apology when she was holding herself together with smiling and bravery and pain.
The guilt settles where the tightness already is. It fits too well.
Kaori watches me as if she can see that shift happen, though I don't let any sound out with it. "Where did you just go?" she says, softer.
"Back," I say. "Forward. I don't know." I pull the strap of my bag over my shoulder because it's something to do with my hands that looks like moving. "I'm here now."
"You better be," she says, but it lands different, less scold, more anchor. "I signed us up because I know what happens when you're really here." She rubs her thumb against the violin callus at the base of her first finger, a small, thoughtless move. "Don't make me drag you."
"You did drag me," I say, and can't help the half-smile that comes. "All over the building."
She gives me a flat look. "Do not get cute. You're still in trouble."
"Understood."
Her eyes soften, finally. "Good." She tips her head, the way she does when she's about to mark the downbeat. "Stand up."
I stand. My legs argue for one second; then they decide to agree. The sun has moved far enough that the edge of shade reaches our shoes and makes a thin black strip that looks like a tightrope. She stands inside it without looking down.
"Drink," she says, and shoves a small bottle into my hand from her bag. "All of it."
I drink. It tastes like cheap plastic and the inside of a cloud. It helps anyway.
"Eat something after class," she says. "Not crackers."
"Tsubaki said the same thing this morning," I say. "She told me I was going to break if I kept this up."
"She's right." Kaori slants a look toward the field where a whistle blows and that same wind carries the cheer. "I need you intact."
"I will be," I say. The metronome in my head clicks once, faint. Not now. Later. Work, then rest. But also: show up.
She steps closer, close enough to flick my forehead with her finger, gentle. "No vanishing. If you need to sleep, sleep where I can find you."
"That's a strange rule," I say.
"It's my rule," she says. "We keep each other in sight now. Tomorrow isn't big enough to waste any of it."
"Agreed."
She looks like she wants to say more and can't decide which more to choose. Her jaw works once. She lets it go. "Bell in two," she says instead. "Come down. Class now, practice after. And—" Her eyes narrow again, but there's humor underneath it. "—wash your face unless you plan to go to math looking like you watched a tragic drama at lunch."
"I did," I say. "In my head."
She fails at not smiling. It is small, bright at the center. "Idiot," she says, but it's soft. She turns toward the door.
I follow. The stairwell is cool and smells like concrete that remembers rain. Our footsteps knock a tidy rhythm on the steps. My body feels like it's trying to balance two weights on one shoulder and discovering it can, if it pays attention to where the weight sits.
Half a flight down she stops and turns back, looking up at me. I stop two steps above. We are level.
"Listen," she says. "I know I yelled. I'll probably yell again. I'm not sorry about that. I need you awake. I need you with me." She holds my eyes steady. "I fought for the late entry because I want this with you, not later with a stranger. So don't make me fight you too."
The apology I gave her a minute ago wasn't enough for this. I find another one, heavier but cleaner.
"I'm sorry," I say. "I know this means a lot to you... I'll put my full heart into it too Kaori"
She blinks, slow. The steps are a little too narrow for what I want to say to sit on them without falling, but I try anyway. "I see you," I add. "Now."
A breath catches in her throat so quietly I would miss it if I was not looking for small catches. She puts her hand on the rail and gives it a short, decisive pat, like she's sealing something in place.
"Good," she says. The word is almost a whisper, then firmer. "Good."
The bell goes. The sound cuts the stairwell into pieces and then tapes them back together badly. She steps down one; I step down two; we fall into the same pace though our legs choose different lengths.
On the first-floor landing, before the door, she reaches out and takes my sleeve like she did at the music room yesterday. A touch, not a hold. "After school," she says. "Don't be late."
"I won't," I say.
Her mouth quirks. "You say that like you know you mean it."
"I do."
"Okay." She lets go. "Then I'll see you first."
"First," I repeat.
She pushes the door with her shoulder. Noise rushes in and folds around us: running feet, locker doors, the brief, sharp cheer of someone winning something that doesn't matter. Kaori steps out into it like it's air she owns. I step into it like it's a wave I can manage if I keep my balance.
She looks over once as we split toward our different classrooms, only enough to make sure I'm moving. I lift the bottle she gave me in a small salute. She shakes her head at me and turns away.
My face is clean now. My eyes still feel raw. The metronome in my head sets a slow, patient beat. I let it stay. I will move to it, not be moved by it.
I slide into my seat as the teacher clears his throat. Lines on the board organize themselves into a kind of order I can copy. My pen obeys. My mind wants to run loops around the roof, the late entry, tomorrow's door. I keep it on a short leash.
At the edge of my vision, the window squares glare. Sky. Light. The memory of a child clapping the wrong beats with full faith. Kaori's voice riding the simple line and making it feel like the first song anyone ever sang. The way she stood over me, angry because she'd run through every room looking for me and time was small, and the way that anger carried a second edge that was not anger at all.
I breathe in. Out. The day steadies. The promise sits where I left it.
After school. First.
I can do that. Tomorrow we walk on stage together. Tonight I will try to choose the kind of work that makes tomorrow real, not just busy. No more vanishing. No more giving her the foggy version of me while she pretends the sun is easy.
The teacher calls a name that is not mine. Someone answers. My hand keeps moving. The beat holds. The bell will come again. I will move when it tells me to. And when I do, it will be toward her.
After the last bell, the music room smells like polish and warm dust. We take the Saint-Saëns from the top, one clean run to settle the edges. Kaori's sound is bright and lean; she leans into the corners like she trusts me to lay the floor early. I do. When she throws a little spark over the run, I keep the harmony flat and steady so the spark shows. We finish together, the cadence full. Silence after. Good silence.
"That's the last one," she says, fiddling the fine tuner a hair and then leaving it alone. "Save the rest for tomorrow."
"Agreed," I say, and I mean it. The metronome inside clicks slow and patient. For once, it isn't scolding.
We pack up. She snaps the latches in two quick beats; I close the fallboard without letting it click. By the door, she touches my sleeve, just once—habit now, like we're checking each other in. Then we step out.
Watari and Tsubaki are waiting by the shoe lockers like they were pretending not to wait. Watari swings his bag in wide arcs that make teachers nervous; Tsubaki has her hands in her pockets and a look that could scold a train into braking.
"There you are," Watari says, as if we were the late ones to his own party. "How's the thunder duo? Did the saints approve?"
"Saint-Saëns approved," Kaori says, deadpan. "Committees are still deliberating."
Tsubaki looks me up and down, unimpressed. "You still look like a zombie."
"Zombies don't play Saint-Saëns," I say.
"They try," Watari says. "But they drag the tempo."
Kaori points between them. "You two: audience, tomorrow. Front row. Loud clapping on the right beats."
Watari salutes with two fingers. "I was born to clap on the right beats."
"That's a lie," Tsubaki says.
He gasps. "Slander! I am rhythm itself."
"Rhythm itself tripped over the stairs this morning," she says, then tips her chin at me, quieter. "Eat dinner. Don't argue."
We fall into step, four across until the hallway squeezes us into twos. Outside the air is soft again, evening smoothing the light. The field whistle cuts short; the soccer team has drained into the locker room and brag. Students pour out in eddies. Shoes thump. Bike bells chirp like small birds.
Kaori walks just ahead, excited enough that her words come one notch faster than usual. "The program starts at two," she tells them. "We're not first but we're early. So be early." She points at Watari. "Don't get distracted by handing out your autograph."
"I only sign jerseys," he says, then adds, "unless it's a violin case," and ducks the playful swat she sends at his shoulder.
Tsubaki glances at Kaori. "You already signed them up?" She knows the answer, but she wants me to hear it again.
"We're on the list," Kaori says, with a flash of teeth that means victory, not humor. "Tomorrow's a good day to hear us."
Watari whistles low. "Our girl hustled."
"Obviously," Kaori says, a little proud, a little daring anyone to say she shouldn't have. "Tomorrow's a good day."
"Then we'll hear you," Tsubaki says. She bumps my arm with her elbow, not hard. "If he manages to show up upright."
"I'll be upright," I say.
"Hmm." She doesn't argue. She doesn't agree. She keeps walking, chin tipped like she's measuring the distance to tomorrow in meters and mouthfuls.
We cut past the vending machines. A can trapped halfway in a coil watches us like a sad eye. Watari shakes the unit; it refuses to be bribed by muscle. He promises revenge and jogs back to catch up. The four of us spill onto the main street together.
"Do we get a preview?" Watari asks. "Like, hum a bar so I can brag properly."
"Buy a ticket," Kaori says.
"It's free."
"Then buy me bread," she says. "Melon pan improves with altitude. Everyone knows this."
"Science," I add.
Tsubaki points at my face without looking. "Scientist, eat something green."
"Bread is green," Watari says. "If you leave it long enough."
Tsubaki gives him a flat look. "I will end you."
He throws his hands up in surrender and then grins at Kaori. "I'll be loud. Promise."
Kaori nods, pleased in the way of someone building a very particular kind of scaffolding around a day. "Good. I want the hall to feel like it's breathing with us."
We pass the gate. Watari's bike is chained near the end of the rack. He hops the last two steps, lands messy, recovers like it was style. "My chariot awaits," he declares. "I go to prepare my voice for applause."
"Don't strain anything," Tsubaki says.
"Jealousy is an ugly cologne," he says, and then points two fingers at me like they're a camera focus. "Don't make her drag you, Kousei."
"Don't encourage him," Tsubaki mutters.
Watari beams and launches himself into traffic with the kind of luck that looks like skill. He peels off, a bright line moving away.
The three of us keep on. Kaori kicks a leaf into a small spiral. She's buzzing, but it's a tight, neat buzz, like a string tuned to pitch. If she's tired, she puts it where I can't see it. I swing my bag strap higher on my shoulder and make sure I'm still at her pace.
At the corner where she cuts toward her street, she stops and turns to face us. The sun puts a pale edge on her hair. The case pulls at her hand; she switches hands without looking, a practiced move. She takes me in, then Tsubaki, then back to me again, like we're a checklist.
"Tomorrow," she says, and it folds all the light around the word. "You better not make me drag you there, Kousei. I want everyone to hear our symphony."
I nod. The promise I made on the stairs this afternoon clicks into place again, stronger. "You won't have to drag me."
She holds my eyes one second longer, testing the words for weight. Whatever she sees is enough. She softens. "Text me when you get home," she says, like she's not going to sleep until the bubble on her screen pops up with my name.
"I will."
She flicks a look at Tsubaki, a quick thanks without saying it. Tsubaki tips her chin back, the closest she comes to a salute. Kaori's mouth curves. Then she steps backward, two small steps, and turns toward her street.
"Don't be late," she calls over her shoulder, because a bit can't die if she's still enjoying it.
"I won't," I call back.
She lifts one hand like she's catching a note and slides into the side street, light on her heels, humming something I can't make out. The sound thins and disappears into the late day.
The street is quieter immediately, like the mix turned her channel down. Tsubaki and I stand there a breath too long, then start walking again. We don't have to talk about which way. We've been splitting the same block since we were small enough to watch our feet while we did it.
She lets the jokes sit for half a minute, then she nudges me with her shoulder. "You didn't look like a zombie just now," she says. "That's new."
"I drank water," I say. "Kaori ordered me to."
"Good." She's quiet for three steps. "Are you sure about this?" The words aren't sharp. They feel like she checked them for splinters before handing them to me. "The competition. Tomorrow. It's a lot."
"I'm sure."
She nods once. Another three steps. "Don't push yourself too hard." The way she says it shifts the air around us, the same air that used to get too thin for me when I thought about stepping on stage. She doesn't say anything else. She doesn't have to. I hear the old name the warning carries without her saying it.
"I know," I say. I keep my eyes on the line of shadow drawn by the guardrail, where the black starts and the light stops. "It's different now."
She looks up at me like she's calibrating a meter. "Different how?"
"I'm not alone," I say. "And I'm not running from the thing. I'm running to it."
Her mouth does a small movement that isn't quite a smile. "Poetic," she says. "Gross."
We both laugh, soft. The kind that loosens something in the chest without shaking anything important. She kicks a pebble into the gutter. It makes the same small rattle coins make when you're not careful.
"Text me when you get inside your house," she says, copying Kaori without admitting it. "And eat food somebody would call dinner, not 'snack I upgraded by lying.'"
"Yes, coach."
"And sleep," she adds. "At least some."
"At least some," I echo.
She doesn't roll her eyes. She looks ahead at our block like she could move the buildings apart with her shoulders if she needed to. "If you feel weird," she says, and stops there, like the rest of that sentence is a trap we both know too well. "Just... don't be alone with it."
"I won't," I say. I want to say I'm not leaving anyone alone with anything either. I leave it inside. She would hear too much in it and chase it, and I don't have the right words ready.
We pass the park where the low bar lives. The boy from earlier is gone. The bar is only a bar again. The sun makes a stained-glass window out of the chain-link. Our building shows up like it always has, three scuffed steps and the scent of somebody else's dinner drifting down the stairwell.
We stop where we always stop, at the little seam between our doors. The paint is peeling in different patterns; hers looks like a map, mine like notes falling off a staff. She tilts her head toward mine.
"Don't make me come bang on your door at midnight," she says.
"You would."
"I would," she says, and that's the end of that debate. She takes a half-step back. "Good luck, piano hands."
"Thanks," I say. "Good cheering."
She gives me a look that says she didn't need the assignment. Then she keys her lock and slips inside, and her door clicks in that way I've heard a thousand times, always the same tiny squeak at the end.
My door sticks like it always does. I lean my shoulder into it, then I'm in. The apartment holds the day I left pressed inside it—air and light stalled in place, the faint smell of soap and tea. I drop my bag onto the chair that stopped being a chair a long time ago. The room sighs. I match it without meaning to.
I sit. The wood of the seat is warm from the late sun. The metronome in my head taps once, not loud, just there.
I should sleep. Tomorrow matters.
There's more work to do.
I look at the notebook on the table. The pen is exactly where I left it, waiting like a small, patient animal. The calendar grid I drew last night stares back with boxes I meant to fill before today got in the way. The laptop lid is shut, glare sliding along it like water.
I rub my eyes with the heels of my hands until stars crowd the dark behind them. Then I lower my hands and reach for the notes.