In a distant memory…
My head was fuzzy…
I told Watari I'd go the other way.
He didn't argue. He just looked at me for a second like he wanted to say something and couldn't find the handle for it. Then he shoved his hands into his pockets and said he'd text me later. We split at the corner. His footsteps faded quick. Mine didn't. I wasn't really stepping—more like dragging myself forward through a blank hallway that just happened to be a street.
It wasn't raining. The sky was a flat kind of evening, like someone had erased the color and left the outline. Cars hissed past on wet-looking asphalt that wasn't wet. Store lights came on one by one. People moved around me in little streams, and I kept going because stopping would mean I had to feel everything at once.
I could still hear the hospital door slam in my head. The nurse's face. Her hands up, firm but soft. "Please go home for today." The bed shaking. Kaori's voice turned to static. The word doctor over and over. Then nothing but the door, hard and final.
I turned down a side road without thinking, the way your body goes back to old routes when your mind is fried. That's when I saw it.
A shape in the lane, small and wrong in all that gray. Not moving. Not curled like sleep. Just laid out, like the street had pushed it flat. A white patch and a black patch and the rest an ugly brown that matched the road too well.
A car rolled past slow and swerved around it. Another did the same. No one stopped. I stepped off the curb before I knew I was doing it. Horns didn't sound. Feet didn't speed up. The world just made room the way it does when it doesn't care.
Up close, the cat's sides were moving. Shallow, like a paper bag breathing. Its eyes were open and cloudy. Blood made a dark fan under the head and a line down the front paw. One ear was torn like a crumpled ticket. It didn't hiss. It didn't try to get away. It just watched me with that big, hurt animal look that asks a question without words.
"It's okay," I heard myself say, voice low and steady, like I was someone who knew what to do. "It's okay. I've got you."
I slid my hands under it, careful as I could. The fur was sticky in places. Warm in a way that made my stomach flip. The body was heavier than it looked. When I lifted, the head lolled to the side, and a thin sound came out—more breath than voice. I tucked it in closer, like a baby, because it felt wrong to let anything dangle.
There's a vet two blocks south. I only knew that because Mom used to point at the sign when we passed it and say, "If you ever find a hurt animal, you go there." I hadn't thought about that in years. The glass door still had the little paw-print decal. The waiting room had posters with happy dogs and clean cats on them, all big eyes and dumb smiles.
The woman at the desk stood when she saw me. Her mouth opened like she was about to ask a question, but when she looked down and saw the red on my shirt and hands, she just reached for the wall phone behind her.
"Emergency," she said into it. "We've got one."
A door swung open fast, and a man in scrubs stepped out, gray hair messed up, glasses hanging from his collar. He held out his arms. "Here," he said, calm and quick. "We'll take it."
"I'll carry him," I said, without meaning to argue, and followed him through anyway. The room we went into smelled like alcohol and metal. A bright lamp came on over a steel table. The vet slid his hands under mine and transferred the cat the way you move someone sleeping so they don't wake up. Gentle, deliberate.
"Name?" he asked the woman, but it wasn't to me. She said something. He nodded. "Hit by a car," he said, mostly to himself, eyes running over the body like a scanner. "Okay. Okay."
I stood there with my hands held away from my shirt because there was blood on them and I didn't want it to go anywhere else. I stared at the cat's chest. It kept rising. It kept falling. That was the whole universe for a second.
"Can you wait outside?" the woman asked me quietly. Her voice was the kind people use on the edge of a cliff—soft, like the wrong sound might knock you over.
"I'll stay," I said. "I want to stay."
She looked at the vet. He looked at me over the top of his glasses, then back down. "He can stay," he said. "Just stand back there."
They moved like people who do this a lot. Hands to drawers, packs torn open, gauze, a small syringe, a clip on the paw. The vet's mouth pressed into a thin line. The cat didn't fight the mask when they put it near the nose. Didn't fight anything.
Minutes stretched and snapped, stretched and snapped. The vet's eyes kept darting to a little screen. The woman kept handing him things before he asked. The lamp made a hot circle on the metal.
I tried not to think about the hospital hallway. I failed. I tried not to think about how this was the same feeling, just smaller. I failed at that too.
At some point the vet let out a breath. I didn't hear the words. I saw his shoulders go down and his chin come up like a person finishing a sentence they've said too many times.
The woman glanced at me, then back at him. He nodded. She stepped closer to me until I could see the tiny freckles on her nose.
"We did what we could," she said, slow and careful. "He was very brave."
My throat closed. "Is he—"
She didn't make me finish. She shook her head once.
I stared at the table. The breathing wasn't there anymore. The body on the metal looked smaller, like the light had pushed it flat. The ear still had that tear. The fur still had that ugly brown. But whatever made it look at me was gone.
"Do you... have anyone we can call?" she asked, like she'd said that line a hundred different ways to a hundred different people.
"No," I said. It came out too fast. "It's not mine. I just... found him."
She nodded, like that made sense. "Thank you for bringing him," she said. "It mattered."
I wanted to laugh. It felt crazy in my chest. I pressed my hands together so hard my knuckles hurt. The blood on them stuck palm to palm and made a little string when I pulled them apart again.
"We can handle things from here," the vet said, not unkind. "If you'd like to wash up, there's a sink down the hall."
I looked at the cat one more time. The eyes had clouded all the way now. The little white patch near the nose was flat and neat, like paint. I walked to the sink and ran the water. It came out too cold. I scrubbed. The pink went down the drain. It felt like a magic trick where the magician shows you an empty hat and you know there used to be a rabbit but you can't prove it. My hands looked clean when I was done. They didn't feel clean.
"Thanks," I said, and I'm not sure who I said it to. I left before either of them had to tell me to.
Outside, the evening had slipped a little darker. The traffic noise came back all at once. A bike bell dinged. Someone laughed far away. I walked without choosing where. The container store, the pharmacy, the bus stop, the alley with the soda machine that eats your coins. I kept my eyes on my shoes because everything else looked like a lie.
A park showed up at the end of the block, the one with the low fountain and the ugly statue of a duck. I sat on the fountain edge and stared at the water. It was clear enough to see my hands in it, wavy and thin. I dipped them in. The cold cut up into my wrists. I rubbed at the skin like there was something there I could get off if I just tried harder. The water went cloudy around my fingers and then clear again, fast, like it had decided not to take anything from me.
Someone's kid ran past me with a plastic sword. The kid's mom said, "Slow down," like a reflex. A dog barked at a leaf. The world kept moving like it had made up its mind a long time ago.
If you asked me, I would say I did the right things. I picked him up. I went to the place that was supposed to fix things. I stood there. I waited. I washed my hands like they told me. I said thank you because that's what you say when people help you.
And still.
I looked down at my fingers spread in the water and saw nothing on them. Not blood. Not proof. Not even a tremble. Just ten clean lines attached to a person who keeps showing up a little too late.
In the hospital I couldn't do anything but stare at a door that wouldn't open. On the street I couldn't do anything but lift what was left. In a room full of bright light and smart hands, I couldn't do anything at all.
It felt like the sum of my life pressed into one small, dumb moment: I always arrive with empty hands, and I always leave with them cleaner than they should be.
I pulled them out of the water and watched the last drops fall. They hit the surface and disappeared without ripples, like they'd never been mine. I pressed my palms together, hard, until I felt the bones grind.
"I couldn't save you," I said, but it wasn't just to the cat. It wasn't just to Kaori. It was to every note I ever played perfectly while the person next to me fell apart. It was to the boy I used to be and the one who kept failing at being anything else.
The wind shifted. A plastic bag scraped across the ground and got stuck on the bench leg. The fountain pump hummed like a tired throat.
I waited for something to rise up—anger, a plan, a promise. Nothing did. Just a flat space where the feeling should be.
After a while I stood. My shirt had a brown-red patch near the hem that hadn't washed out. I pressed it with my fingers. It was dry now. It would fade in the laundry like it had never happened.
I started walking again because that's what my body knows how to do when my mind is empty: move. The street lights came on in a row. I didn't look up.
I kept thinking one thought, small and simple and heavy as a stone I couldn't set down:
If everything I touch breaks anyway, what am I even for?
__
I come back to myself on a hard floor.
…
Bad memories
Fluorescent lights buzz. The hallway smells like polish and paper. A voice in the distance calls a number I don't catch, and doors breathe open and shut. The Maihou building has the kind of clean that makes you sit straighter even when you're on the ground. I'm not sure how long I've been here. My back is against a wall. My number tag is pinned a little crooked to my jacket. In my lap: a clear box with three egg-sandwich pieces, the cheap kind with the soft bread and the neat cuts.
I'm late to all of this. I know it. Hiroko knows it. Nagi definitely knows it. Everyone around me looks like they planned for this day for months. I signed up because Kaori asked me to. Not with pressure. Not with tears. She asked the way she asks for a window to be opened when the room gets too warm—like it would make breathing easier. For her. For me. For something between us I don't have a name for.
So I said yes. I'm here because of that yes. That's the whole reason. It's enough and not enough.
I open the box and eat a bite. The bread is cool. The egg is a little sweet. I swallow and it sits in my stomach like a small stone. I realize I'm hungry anyway and take another bite.
Shoes stop in front of me.
I look up. Emi Igawa is there, arms folded, chin tilted down, eyes sharp. She looks like the judges carved her out of a rulebook. Straight back. Simple dress that somehow looks daring on her. A pendant. Hair neat. Expression not neat at all.
"You," she says, like the word tastes strange.
"Me," I say.
She keeps staring. I can feel a speech loading behind her eyes: something about coming back to a stage I left, something about how music isn't a toy to drop and pick up, something about ghosts and promises. I don't want to hear it. Not because she's wrong. Because I don't have a good answer.
"Want one?" I ask instead, and lift the box.
Her mouth opens. Shuts. "What?"
"Sandwich." I hold it a little closer. "There are three. I can't eat three."
She looks at me like I offered her my pulse. Then her stomach makes a small noise that echoes way louder than it should in a quiet hall. A few people turn their heads. Her ears go pink. She grabs a piece like it offends her and sits down next to me because standing there would be worse.
We eat without talking at first. The building breathes around us. I take small bites to make it last. She takes a test bite, then a real one. The edge leaves her shoulders a notch.
"...It's good," she says, like she's surprised food can be good.
"Less mayo than most places," I say. "They use salt so the egg tastes sweeter."
She gives me a side-eye. "You reviewed a sandwich."
"I was thinking out loud."
"Don't do that. It's weird."
"I get told that a lot."
She chews. The second bite goes faster. I'm the one who breaks the lull this time.
"You look ready."
"Of course I'm ready," she says, a little too fast. Then, quieter: "I think so."
"You always looked ready," I say. "Even when we were kids."
She looks at me full on now. "And you always looked like you were from another planet."
"Still am," I say. "Transit visa."
Her mouth fights a smile and loses. It's small but it's there. She glances at my tag, then my face again.
"Why are you here, Arima?" she asks. Not mean. Just straight. "You left."
The truth is easy and hard at the same time. "Someone asked me to come."
Her eyes widened
"Someone important?"
"Yeah..."
She studies me. She can tell I'm not going to explain. She flips the empty sandwich wrapper between her fingers, thinking.
"You know.. I hated you," she says.
"I noticed."
"I wanted to crush you so badly I forgot why I liked playing. That's stupid, right?"
"No... it's not.. It happens."
She looks at the stage door at the far end of the hall, the one with the little red light over it that blinks when the next player is almost up. "I think I remember now," she says. "Why I like it."
"Good," I say. And I mean it.
The bathroom door down the hall opens with a soft click. Takeshi Aiza walks out, one hand over his stomach, hair still perfect somehow despite the color in his face being wrong. He pulls the door shut and breathes out like whatever happened in there owes him money. When he turns, he sees us. He blinks like he's walked into the wrong building.
"You two are..." His voice trails off.
"Sitting," Emi says, deadpan.
I hold up the box. One piece left. "Want one?"
He points to himself. "I just—" He nods toward the bathroom. "You sure?"
"It'll help," I say.
He hesitates. The thing with Takeshi is that hesitating looks like a challenge. He finally nods and comes over. He takes the sandwich, then doesn't sit right away. He studies me like the program changed songs.
"You're really here," he says.
"So are you," I say.
He sinks down on my other side, keeping a small, formal distance like the floor has printed lines. He takes a bite and his face smooths out a little. The hall doesn't feel so tall anymore.
"Thanks," he says.
"Don't mention it."
He swallows. "I, uh... I just puked."
"I heard," I say. "Echoes."
Emi snorts. He shoots her a look. She raises a brow back. It should be tense. It isn't. We're three kids on a hallway floor, sharing a plastic box. The noise of the competition hums behind the walls: chairs, whispers, shoes, the hush before applause, the applause itself. We sit in the quiet space between those sounds.
Takeshi wipes his hand on a napkin and balls it up. "I was thinking about leaving music for a while," he says to nobody and both of us. "Between you and me, I mean. It felt... I don't know. Empty? Like I kept running late to a train I wasn't sure I even wanted to catch."
"Mm," I say.
"But then I thought I'd regret it," he adds quickly, like he's worried the corridor will notice. "Not trying, I mean."
"Regret is loud," Emi says.
"Yeah." He looks at me. "What about you?"
"I'm here because someone important asked," I say again, because it's the whole map. "That's enough for today."
He watches my face. I can tell he wants to say something like good, or welcome back, or don't do this halfway. He doesn't. He just nods. That nod makes my chest feel heavy and light at once.
An assistant steps into the hall and checks a clipboard. "Number Eight—Aiza Takeshi. Please stand by in the wings."
Takeshi breathes in and stands. His shoes make a soft clack when he pushes off the wall. He straightens his jacket and smooths the front with the back of his hand. For a second his fingers clench, then relax.
He looks at us. "I wish I had a cool line to say now," he admits, and it's so honest I almost laugh.
"We don't need lines," Emi says.
He smiles, small and clean. "Right. We talk with our music."
He turns and starts down the hall. The floor's shine pulls his shape long, then shorter, then into the corner.
I lean back against the wall again. My head taps the paint. My eyes close and the inside of my eyelids are red because of the lights. I think of Kaori's voice when she said Please. Not pleading. More like handing me something small and true. I think of how the bracelet knot felt under my thumb after I left the hospital room. I think of the cat I didn't save, the sink where I scrubbed my hands, the empty feeling that followed me home like a shadow.
"You're quiet," Emi says.
"I'm saving noise," I say.
"For the stage?"
"For a person," I answer before I can stop myself.
She lets that sit. For once, she doesn't try to break it open. A door somewhere thumps softly. The building shifts.
"You'll play well," she says eventually. It isn't flattery. It sounds like an observation.
"I don't know about that," I say. "But I'll play."
She nods. "Good enough."
We sit there and listen to the murmur behind the doors. The applause for the person before Takeshi. The hush while the stage changes. A voice like a bow drawn across a string: "Number Eight, Aiza Takeshi."
Takeshi gets up and turns to us.
He puts his hands in his pockets and smiles at me and Emi
"We talk...." He continued " With our music"
He gave us a last smile and went down the hall
Huh... he said something cool again
I picture his hands on the keys. I picture him breathing out, counting in, setting his weight. I picture the first note cutting the air and making it new.
Emi pulls her knees closer and rests her chin there. "You came back like a ghost," she says, not looking at me. "But maybe ghosts can still touch things."
"I'm not sure what I am yet," I say. "I'll let you know."
"I'll wait," she says simply.
We don't talk after that. We don't have to. The sound from the hall spills under the door and lays itself over our feet. It feels like standing on the shore of something big. I look down at the empty sandwich box and think, stupidly, that I should have brought four.
The piece on stage ends. The applause is warm and long. The assistant appears again, scanning the list, pencil tapping the margin. I know how this works. My number will be called later. I'll stand up. I'll walk the same corridor Takeshi did. I'll sit at the bench that is both friend and stranger. I'll put my hands down and try to speak in the one language that ever made sense between us.
Footsteps return. Takeshi rounds the corner, not looking at us, eyes still somewhere inside the music he just made. He passes, then pauses, and glances back over his shoulder.
"Hey," he says.
We both look up.
He gives a small nod that means I did it, and maybe your turn, and maybe thanks for the sandwich, all at once. Then he heads toward the other end of the hall where his teacher will meet him, where the next thing will happen, where the day keeps going whether he wants it to or not.
I watch him go. My chest is tight and calm. Emi bumps my shoulder with hers, just once, a small, human thing that doesn't need words.
I don't know if I want this life. I don't know if it wants me. I do know one thing: Kaori asked me to try. So I will.
For now, that's enough.
——
The hallway hums with voices.
The air feels lighter now that it's over. The pianos have gone quiet. No more footsteps, no more applause, no more judges' pens scratching like small hammers. Just the echo of it all — faint, lingering, refusing to leave.
Someone near the front says, "They're posting it!" and a dozen heads turn at once.
I stay where I am, a few steps back from the crowd. The others rush in, shoes scuffing the polished floor, shoulders bumping. The white paper goes up on the board with a soft click.
Emi's somewhere in front. Takeshi too. I can tell from their posture even without seeing their faces — that tightness in their backs, the way their shoulders lift when they're waiting for their name. I don't move. I just watch.
The murmur starts small. Then a few gasps. Then quiet.
I step forward finally, slow, because I already know what I'll see.
The names are printed in neat, black letters.
Aiza, Takeshi.
Igawa, Emi.
Honma, Naomi.
Arima, Kousei.
Takanashi, Shōma.
Komatsu, Sana.
There it is. My name.
I say it in my head, not out loud — Arima, Kousei. Like it belongs to someone else.
Emi exhales sharply beside me, the kind of breath that's been waiting all day. Takeshi's hand curls into a small, quiet fist. Around us, a few of the younger competitors whisper congratulations or disappointment. I don't say anything. I don't feel much of anything.
It's strange.
Two years ago, this would've been everything.
Now, it just feels... distant.
I look at the board again. The way the names sit together. The same people.
It feels like I've seen this before — the same hallway, the same nervous smiles, the same light slanting through the window.
And I realize I have.
Back then, I didn't care much for any of them.
I was too busy chasing the sound of my mother's metronome, too wrapped up in the silence that came after she stopped it. Emi used to glare at me from across the stage like she wanted to tear me apart note by note. Takeshi pushed himself until he was sick trying to keep up. I never looked back at either of them. I was too far inside my own noise.
Funny. I thought things would change.
Even now, after everything — after Kaori, after music went from a burden to a heartbeat and back again — I'm still standing here, reading my name on a list like it's proof I exist.
They're still here too. Same rivals. Same stage.
Maybe that's all this world ever is.
A loop that plays in a slightly different key each time.
I glance at Takeshi and Emi. They're not looking at me. They don't need to.
They've found their own reasons to play. Maybe that's why it feels different now — not better, just quieter.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, a flash of memory stirs — a faint image of the three of us sitting apart in the waiting room years ago. No one spoke. The silence back then was heavier, sharp with pride and nerves. Now it's softer. Familiar. Maybe that's the only thing that's really changed.
Someone behind me says, "Arima made it too."
The words brush past me like wind. I don't react.
I think of Kaori.
Her laugh. The sound of her voice when she said "You'll play again, right?"
Her smile when the doctors told her she had more time. Not a miracle, not a cure — just time. Two years maybe. Maybe more. A gift I didn't deserve but still got to share.
I imagine her somewhere under that same sky right now, walking slow, hair moving in the wind. Maybe she's humming something. Maybe she already knows the results.
I look back at the board one more time.
My name looks the same as it did years ago, printed on cold paper, pinned to a wall.
It shouldn't mean anything.
But it does.
A small, quiet reminder that the boy who once drowned in silence is still here — still playing, even if he doesn't know why.
I take a slow breath and step back from the crowd. The others move closer, talking, laughing softly, alive in a way only musicians can be after the storm ends. I don't join them. I don't need to.
Maybe some things never change.
Maybe that's okay.
I slip my hands into my pockets and turn toward the exit. The hallway light hits the edge of the paper, making the ink glimmer faintly.
Friends.
The word doesn't sting this time. It just echoes — small, distant, warm....
.....
I'm so tired..
I want to see Kaori...