Chapter XXVII - Something Worth Breaking For (IV)

The folder in my hands felt lighter than it should have, as if my newfound resolve had somehow altered its physical properties.

For the first time in longer than I could remember, I knew exactly what I needed to do.

The bell signaling the end of third period rang. The sound barely registered through the white hot noise of my rage. I didn't wait for Sawabe-sensei to dismiss us. Neither did I wait for the usual shuffle of papers and scrape of chairs. Especially did I not wait for Midou's wrathful gaze to find me again.

I simply gathered my things and left, moving with a purpose that felt foreign to my body after so many months of drifting. The hallway was beginning to fill with students anticipating lunch, but I navigated through them like water around stones, barely conscious of their presence.

My feet carried me up staircases, down corridors, past classrooms where teachers were still wrapping up their lessons. The gauze on my face drew curious glances, but the intensity of my expression must have discouraged questions.

I was grateful for the reprieve.

The old wing stretched before me, its corridors quieter, less trafficked than the main building. Dust motes danced in shafts of light from high windows, lending the space an otherworldly quality—as if I'd stepped through some threshold into a place where time moved differently.

I saw a familiar sign.

"FOUR SYMBOLS CLUB — CHAMBER OF CELESTIAL HARMONY"

And beneath it, in Akise's distinctive scrawl.

"Non-club members will be smitten by divine retribution ☆"

My hand hesitated on the door handle, the weight of memory suddenly pressing down like extra gravity. The last time I'd stood here, I'd said unforgivable things. I'd trampled everything Akise valued, everything he'd built to keep us both tethered to something beyond the monotony of school life.

And yet, here I was, drawn back like a compass finding north.

I slid the door open, wincing at the familiar creak of neglected hinges. The room beyond was exactly as we'd left it—streamers still hanging from the ceiling in their elaborate patterns, posters covering the walls, desks pushed together to form what Akise called the "command table." The melon bread he'd been eating that day was gone, but otherwise, it seemed as though time had stopped the moment I'd stormed out. A museum display preserving a single, frozen moment of foolishness and broken trust.

Akise wasn't here. I hadn't expected him to be; despite being lunchtime, I utterly sullied the atmosphere of the room the last time we were here together.

In the corner, draped in a cloth that had once been white but was now gray with dust and age, stood the piano.

I approached it slowly, feeling as though I were moving through water. With each step, the emotion that had propelled me here—that sharp, bright rage—seemed to recede, leaving uncertainty in its wake. By the time I reached the instrument, my hands were trembling slightly.

I hadn't touched a piano in five years.

Not since the day my mother was buried.

The dust cloth came away with a single tug and released a cloud of particles that caught the midday light filtering through the windows. I coughed, waving away the worst of it, and found myself staring at a relic of another life. It was an upright Yamaha, with wood finish dulled with age but still bearing a quiet dignity. I ran my fingers over the fallboard, feeling the smooth lacquer beneath years of accumulated dust. With a careful motion, I lifted it to reveal the keys—ivory yellowed with time, a few chipped at the edges, but intact.

I pulled out the bench, its legs scraping against the floor. The wood groaned as I sat, and for a long moment, I simply stared at the keyboard. The ivory keys gleamed softly in the diffuse light, and the ebony keys were like portals to a darker realm.

Then, slowly, I placed my right hand on the keys. My fingers found their positions through muscle memory I'd thought long forgotten. Middle C felt like coming home and stepping into hostile territory simultaneously.

I pressed the key.

The note rang out, slightly flat from years of neglect, yet pure in its simple declaration: I am here. I have always been here. I am waiting.

Something twisted in my chest—grief or joy or some emotion that existed at the intersection of the two.

I added another note, then another. They formed like questions.

Before I could second-guess myself, I began the opening measures of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy"—the piece my mother had taught me that afternoon so long ago, when dust motes had danced above a different piano in a different room, with different hands guiding mine.

Listen to what you're playing. Really listen.

Her voice echoed in my memory as my fingers moved across the keys, finding the melody by instinct rather than conscious thought. The notes came hesitantly at first, my technique rusty and uncertain. But as I continued, the door inside me that had been sealed shut was slowly creaking open.

You don't need to see the keys. You need to feel them.

I closed my eyes, surrendering to the memory, to the music.

And then it happened.

The precise moment was impossible to pinpoint. One instant I was playing a simple melody, reconnecting with a skill long abandoned. The next, I was drowning in a tide of memory so vivid it seemed to be happening all around me.

My mother at the piano, her fingers dancing across the keys with a grace that seemed supernatural to my child's eyes.

Her laugh when I hit a wrong note, kind and encouraging rather than mocking.

The recital where I'd played Ode to Joy for an audience for the first time, my legs dangling from the bench, my tongue caught between my teeth in concentration.

The hospital room where she lay, skin pale against white sheets, the beep of monitors replacing the rhythm of the music she once made.

The phone call coming at 4:17 AM exactly.

The funeral, where rain pelted the mourners' umbrellas with a sound like fingers tapping impatiently on piano keys.

My father's face, twisted with grief and fury, staring at the grand piano in our living room as if it were the instrument of her death rather than her joy.

His voice, slurred with whiskey.

"If you ever touch those keys again, I'll burn the damn thing."

And later, much later, watching from my bedroom window as movers took the piano away, my father claiming it was being stored, though we both knew he'd sold it to pay for his drinking.

And then, finally.

"Shouma, pack your things, we're moving to the other side of the city."

The memories crashed over me in incessant waves until my fingers faltered on the keys and the melody dissolved into discord. A single tear tracked down my cheek, followed by another, then another, until I was bawling uncontrollably.

My shoulders shook with the force of my sobs, each heave like a punch to the gut.

For the first time in years, I mourned not only my mother, but the boy I had once been. A boy who had known love, had felt music flow through him like blood in veins.

I mourned the loss of that innocence.

The truth was the matter was, I was broken.

I was shattered in places that couldn't be fixed with determination alone. My resolve, which had seemed so steel-forged and unbreakable in the council room, was as fragile as spun glass when confronted with the true weight of what I'd lost.

The earth-splitting sword of rage was nothing more than a glowstick in a bright summer day.

"Kagami...?"

The sharper sword, like a blade of light cutting through my despair, was her voice. It was rough, but tentative, as if afraid of breaking whatever tenuous hold I still had on sanity.

Minazuki Serena stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the hallway light.