After a silent walk where Kazuha tried to avoid my gaze, we had finally arrived.
Once we stepped inside, the familiar scent of roasted coffee beans and sweet pastries enveloped us, a brief, comforting shield against the raw morning. The café was quiet, a few patrons lost in laptops or books, their muted presence a stark contrast to the turmoil inside me.
Ayaka-San immediately greeted us upon seeing our silent entrance.
"Oh! Fumihiro, Kazuha! You're here again! I knew you couldn't resist my special Vanilla-Shake!" She said, warmly.
"Good morning, Ayaka-San." Kazuha and I said in unison. This actually surprised me, and we looked at each other for an instant before moving our gaze somewhere else. She was blushing.
"Oh? What's happening here~?" Ayaka teased.
"N-Nothing. We just passed by the music shop. I wanted to buy some stuff to write down some music." I replied.
"Oh, got it-" Ayaka-San said, interrupted by a customer who called her from one of the tables. She sighed before giving us a warm smile. "Well, take a seat wherever you want. I must deal with some 'bad' customers now. I'll come right away, give me a second." She said, before walking away from us. "Yeah! Wait! I'm coming!" she said out loud.
Then, Kazuha and I finally looked at each other.
"S-So, wanna sit?" I asked, unsure of what to say.
Kazuha silently nodded her head.
Then, we found a small table near the window, secluded from the rest.
I slumped into the chair, feeling the weight of the past few hours settle in my bones.
Kazuha sat opposite me, her movements stiff, her hands clasped in her lap as if to hold herself together.
She looked at the menu, but her eyes weren't reading. She was staring at the colorful pictures, a shield against the conversation we both knew was coming.
I couldn't bear the tension.
"Kazuha," I began, my voice quiet but firm enough to cut through the heavy silence.
She flinched slightly. Her eyes darted from the laminated menu to meet mine, wide and filled with a guilt she didn't deserve to carry.
"I'm sorry," she blurted out before I could add another word. Her voice was trembling, stripping away any trace of her usual confident demeanor.
"I really shouldn't have played. I... I didn't mean to trigger whatever happened to you in there. I just got lost in the moment. It had been so long since I last held a bow, and my hands just..."
"Kazuha, stop," I interrupted gently. I offered a small, reassuring smile, though I knew it probably looked as tired as I felt. "You didn't do anything wrong. You played... beautifully."
A faint blush returned to her pale cheeks, but the deep worry in her eyes didn't fade.
"But we need to talk about what just happened," I continued, leaning slightly over the small wooden table. I kept my voice low so nobody else in the café could hear us. "That melody you played."
Her breath hitched. She instinctively pulled the menu closer to her chest, as if using it as a physical barrier against my words.
"That song... is called 'Lonely'," I said, watching her reaction carefully. "My father used to play it to me when I was a kid, and it also became the backbone of the very first piece I ever composed on the piano. But here is the thing, Kazuha: I have never played it for anyone except Ema. I never wrote the sheet music for it. It only existed in my head and in my house. And...," I swallowed some saliva, "...only my father knew about it."
The café's background noise—the grinding of espresso beans, the distant laughter of the other customers—seemed to dissolve into static. The world had shrunk down to just our table.
"How do you know that song?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper, yet heavy with the ghosts of my fragmented memories. "And why did Mr. Nakamura speak to us as if... as if we shared a past I can't remember?"
Kazuha looked down at her lap. Her hands were gripping her faded hoodie so tightly that her knuckles were stark white. For a long, agonizing moment, she said nothing. The silence between us wasn't just awkward anymore; it felt like standing on the edge of a cliff.
When she finally looked up, a single tear had escaped her eye, tracing a shining path down her tired face.
"Because, Fumihiro..." her voice broke, fragile like glass about to shatter. "Because you didn't write that melody alone..."
My breath caught in my throat. The words hung in the air between us, heavy and impossible. My mind raced, trying to grasp the meaning behind that single, devastating sentence.
"What... what do you mean?" I stammered, leaning closer, my heart pounding in my chest. "If I didn't write it alone, then who—"
"Alright, you two! Have you decided what to order?"
The sudden, cheerful voice of Ayaka-San shattered the heavy atmosphere like a dropped plate. I almost jumped in my seat, the question dying on my lips as I snapped my head toward her.
Kazuha blinked rapidly, pulling herself back from the edge of tears and looking up at the older woman as if she had just been pulled from deep water.
"Ah... yes," I managed to say, quickly clearing my throat and trying to push the storm of questions away for a moment. "I'll have the special Vanilla-Shake, please."
"Me too, please," Kazuha added, her voice still a bit shaky. "A Vanilla-Shake."
Ayaka-San paused, her pen hovering over her small notepad. Her cheerful smile softened slightly as her perceptive eyes darted between Kazuha and me. We were terrible at hiding things, and the suffocating aura surrounding our table was undeniably obvious.
"Coming right up," Ayaka-San said, but she didn't leave immediately. Instead, she leaned in slightly, resting a hand on her hip. "You know, Kazuha-Chan... seeing him all serious and brooding like this makes him look like a tough, mysterious guy, but don't let him fool you."
"H-Huh?" Kazuha murmured, confused by the sudden change of topic.
"Ayaka-San, please..." I sighed, rubbing my temples, already knowing where this was going.
"One time, right at this very table, he was trying to look so cool and mature while reading a thick book," Ayaka-San continued, ignoring my plea, her eyes sparkling with mischief. "But he completely missed his mouth with his glass and spilled an entire extra-large lemonade all over his school uniform! You should have seen him trying to dry himself with those tiny paper napkins. He looked like a panicked wet cat!"
Kazuha stared at her for a second, then a genuine, soft giggle escaped her lips. The sound was incredibly refreshing, a stark contrast to the despair I had seen in her eyes just moments before.
"H-Hey, the glass was slippery!" I protested, feeling the heat rise to my cheeks, but I couldn't help the small smile tugging at the corner of my mouth.
Ayaka-San laughed, a bright, melodic sound that filled the air. As I looked at her radiant smile and the way she effortlessly lifted the heavy blanket of tension, a strange realization hit me.
Her presence... it felt incredibly familiar, but in a different way. It wasn't just her kindness; it was this warm, comforting, almost 'angelic' aura she radiated. It was the same feeling I had when Evangeline was around to cheer me up. The resemblance in the way they could light up a room and make all my worries vanish was uncanny, almost magical. A pure, gentle light that chased the shadows away.
"Alright, I'll go get those shakes. Try to smile a bit more, Fumihiro! It suits you better," Ayaka-San winked before turning around and humming a happy tune as she walked back to the counter.
Her intervention had worked like a charm. The suffocating pressure in my chest had eased considerably. Kazuha's shoulders dropped as she finally relaxed against the backrest of her chair, the ghost of a smile still lingering on her face.
We spent the next five minutes in a comfortable, quiet calm. The oppressive silence had transformed into a peaceful shared relief, giving both of us the time to properly breathe and process the morning's events without rushing.
Our conversation moved to a totally different one.
"Here we are! Two special Vanilla-Shakes for my favorite customers! Ayaka-San announced cheerfully, returning to our table and placing the tall, frosty glasses in front of us. "Enjoy!"
She gave us one last warm smile before walking away to attend to other customers.
The silence returned, but thanks to Ayaka-San's intervention, the suffocating pressure had lifted. It was just a quiet, waiting atmosphere now. I took a sip of the sweet, cold shake, feeling it soothe my dry throat and clear my lingering headache just a little bit more.
I looked at Kazuha. She was staring at her glass, looking incredibly small inside her oversized hoodie.
"So," I began, keeping my voice soft so I wouldn't shatter the fragile peace we had just found. "Before... everything that happened at the music shop. You texted me because you wanted to talk about something, right?"
Kazuha stiffened. Her hand, which was reaching for the straw, froze mid-air.
She slowly lowered her hand and wrapped both palms around the frosted glass. I could see her knuckles turning white from the pressure. She stared into the thick vanilla swirl as if she were trying to read the future in it.
I watched her carefully. Her chest rose and fell in a jagged, uneven rhythm.
Then, she opened her mouth, her lips parting slightly as if a heavy confession was resting right on the tip of her tongue. Her eyes, framed by those dark circles of exhaustion, darted up to meet mine.
For a fleeting second, I saw a storm in her gaze. I saw the desperate urge to scream something that was tearing her apart from the inside. She looked at my pale face, at the way my shoulders were still slightly slumped from the mental breakdown I had suffered in the music shop.
She stared at my weakness, and the storm in her eyes suddenly died, replaced by a profound, agonizing hesitation. She looked like someone standing on the edge of a cliff, ready to jump, only to step back at the very last second.
She swallowed hard, closing her eyes for a long moment. When she opened them again, she let out a long, shaky breath.
"Sorry," she muttered, forcing a weak smile and raising a hand to rub her temples. "I'm just... my brain is completely fried from the night shift. I'm trembling a bit. I'm more exhausted than I thought."
"It's okay. You don't have to force yourself," I reassured her gently. "If you want to go home and sleep, we can do this another time."
"No, it's fine. Really." She paused, her gaze dropping to the wooden table before meeting mine with a renewed, albeit fragile, composure. "I just... I wanted to talk to you about school."
"School?" I repeated, genuinely surprised. With all the chaos going on with Ema and my own mind, my academic life was the absolute last thing I expected her to bring up.
"Yeah," Kazuha nodded, taking a small sip of her shake, probably to buy herself some time and wet her dry throat. "I've been thinking about it a lot lately. Staying locked away and constantly working... it isn't helping me. I think... I think I'm going to come back to school. I've gained enough money to resist until next semester."
"That's amazing, Kazuha," I said, feeling a genuine smile finally break through the heavy clouds in my mind. "But... which school?"
"Well, at the Akiyama High School. I used to go there before I started working." She said, her voice returning to normal.
My eyes widened.
"R-Really? That's my school! It would be amazing to see you there, you know!" I said.
A spark of real warmth returned to her eyes, and for a second, the heavy exhaustion seemed to fade away. She offered a small, sincere smile, taking another sip of her vanilla shake. The oppressive tension from the music shop had finally completely dissipated, replaced by a comfortable, almost normal high-school vibe.
"T-Thanks, Fumihiro," she murmured, looking down at her cup, a faint blush dusting her cheeks. "I just hope I'm not too far behind with the lessons, though." She chuckled a little.
"Don't worry about it. I think that professors are gonna help if you explain to them the situation," I said, but something suddenly moved my attention away.
Bzzzt. Bzzzt.
The sudden, violent vibration of my phone against the wooden table cut me off.
I glanced down at the illuminated screen, and my blood instantly ran cold.
New Message: Ema.
My thumb hovered over the screen. I hesitated for a fraction of a second, a knot of pure dread tightening in my stomach, before I tapped the notification. It was a single line of text, accompanied by an image.
"Why are you smiling at her like that? Did you replace me so easily?"
My breath hitched. The photo wasn't an old picture or a selfie. It was a picture of Kazuha and me, sitting at this exact table. Taken from the outside. Right now.
My heart hammered against my ribs as I slowly, almost mechanically, turned my head to look out the café window next to us.
Across the street, partially hidden in the shadow of a large oak tree, stood Ema.
Her hair was slightly messy, and her head was tilted at an unnatural angle, almost broken. She wasn't moving. She was standing there like a statue, her phone gripped tightly in one hand, staring directly at me through the glass with wide, lifeless eyes.
When she saw me looking at her, she didn't look away. Instead, she just kept staring at me...