Chapter XLIII - The Sonata You Played Without Looking At Me (IIII)

The sheet music for "Echi Perduti" lay beside me on the bench, a reminder of something I had both longed for and dreaded. My fingers twitched involuntarily as muscle memory awakening after years of deliberate suppression.

She glanced at me, then away, a curious vulnerability in her profile. Her fingers fidgeted with the hem of her skirt, a nervous gesture I'd never seen from her before.

"If you're really thankful... you could start by not calling me Minazuki-san all the time."

"H-huh?!"

"Idiota, do you really have to make that stupid face every time?!" she growled, her cheeks flushing red. "It's just a name. Do I have to write you a formal request to use it?"

"N-no, of course not. It's just... we've never really talked about it before."

"We're talking now," she said firmly. "I don't want you to call me by my family name. I don't want to be defined by their legacy anymore. So..." She trailed off, an uncertainty in her expression that seemed wholly out of place.

"Serena," I said quietly, trying out the unfamiliar shape of the word on my tongue.

She nodded once, still not meeting my eyes, the blush deepening against her pale skin.

"I could play it for you."

She looked up sharply. "What?"

"'Echi Perduti.' I could play it. For you. If you want."

"Kagami—"

"You would be the first person I've played for since my mother died. I haven't played for anyone in five years. But I'd play for you."

"...W-Why... why me? Why would you possibly do that?"

"Because, you saved me."

There was no reason other than that.

"Kagami... Shouma, you don't have to—"

"I want to. I need to."

I turned on the piano bench to face the instrument that had, for five years, represented everything I'd lost and everything I'd refused to acknowledge. The fallboard was still raised from when I'd touched the keys days ago, abandoning the attempt as memories overwhelmed me. The ivory gleamed dully in the fading light, some keys yellowed with age, others chipped at the edges like forgotten tombstones.

I placed the sheet music on the stand.

I could feel Serena watching me, her presence a force at my back, but I didn't turn to look at her. Couldn't. This moment was too fragile, too raw to bear the weight of eye contact.

My fingers found the opening chord—G minor, melancholy and shadowed. The notes rang out discordantly, the piano woefully out of tune from years of neglect. I winced, immediately withdrawing my hands as if the keys had burned me.

"I'm sorry. It sounds terrible."

"It's not you. The piano hasn't been tuned in years."

I tried again, attempting to adjust to the instrument's warped tonality, but my fingers felt stiff and uncooperative. The melody emerged halting and disjointed, lacking the flow that had once come so naturally.

My technique, rusty from years of disuse, betrayed me at every turn. Notes that should have sung with clarity fell flat and lifeless beneath my uncertain touch.

A mistake in the third measure. A fumbled transition in the fifth. By the seventh, I was ready to admit defeat. My perfectionist's ear was unable to bear the discrepancy between what I heard in my head and what emerged from the dying piano.

I stopped, hands hovering above the keys, frustration and shame coiling in my chest.

Even in a moment like this... I can't play for someone else. Even her...

"I'm sorry." The apology tasted bitter in my mouth. "It's been too long. I've forgotten how to even..."

Serena rose from her place on the floor and came to stand beside me. In my peripheral vision, I could see her scarlet hair catching the last of the sunset's light.

"Look at me," she said.

Her hands pulled my face towards her.

I expected to find frustration or disappointment mirroring my own.

Instead, I found her smiling.

A genuine, unguarded smile that transformed her entire face, softening the sharp angles and lighting her eyes from within.

"You're playing again," she said simply. "After five years. Did you think it would come back perfectly the first time?"

"I-I wanted it to be right. For you."

Her smile, now blush, only deepened at that.

"Idiota. I couldn't care less if it's right. I only care that you're trying... even if it's for someone like me."

"Serena..."

All my life, I had equated worth with perfection, believing I needed to be flawless to be valued. Yet here was Serena, finding meaning in the attempt rather than the execution.

Seeing beauty in the broken effort rather than demanding perfection.

Unbidden, my mother's voice echoed through my memory, clear as if she were standing beside me:

"When we perform, as much as we do it for the audience—for the people out there who are hurting, who are searching, or who just want to be taken away from their lives for a moment... your composition is also your tale. It is the voice of your heart, and you can speak through the piano to connect yourself to the audience. As long as you're playing with enough feeling, anyone will hear and feel the same thing you are feeling. Anyone will know and understand the pain you are in, and the joy that you wish to express."

Music wasn't about perfection—it never had been.

It was about connection.

About reaching across the void that separated one soul from another and finding a bridge. Transcending the boundaries that kept us isolated within our own experiences.

Cultural boundaries.

Linguistic barriers.

The walls we build to protect ourselves from pain.

Music cut through all of it, creating a nexus where understanding could exist without words.

This was what my mother had tried to teach me. What I had forgotten in my grief. What Serena, in her own wounded way, had been showing me since that first night on the rooftop when her voice reached me at my darkest moment.

I took a deep breath, positioning my hands once more above the yellowed keys.

"Play," Serena said quietly, the word both instruction and permission.

And I did.

This time, I didn't focus on the out-of-tune notes or my technical imperfections. I played the way my mother had taught me, eyes closed, feeling rather than thinking. I let the music flow through me like water finding its natural path, notes connecting to the next with organically.

The melody of "Echi Perduti" unfolded beneath my fingers, melancholy yet strangely hopeful. I stumbled occasionally, missed notes here and there, but the emotional core of the piece remained intact. It was the voice of my heart speaking through my fingers, telling a story of loss and longing and the fragile possibility of connection.

And then, something miraculous happened.

Serena began to sing.

Her voice rose above the piano's uneven tones, pure and clear and achingly beautiful. No formal introduction, no practiced entry—she simply joined the music as if she had always been part of it, as if we had rehearsed this a thousand times before.

Nell'ombra dei giorni passati,

Dove il silenzio respira bugie,

Cammino tra voci spezzate,

Echi perduti, promesse svanite.

In the shadow of days past, where silence breathes lies, I walk among broken voices, lost echoes, vanished promises.

I didn't need to understand the Italian lyrics to feel their meaning. Her voice conveyed everything. Loneliness. Regret. Longing for connection.

Ogni parola che non ho detto,

Si dissolve come fumo nel vento,

Ed ogni sogno che non hai visto,

È un fuoco spento che brucia lento.

Every word I haven't spoken dissolves like smoke in the wind, and every dream you haven't seen is an extinguished fire burning slowly.

We didn't look at each other. We didn't need to. The music connected us more profoundly than eye contact ever could, creating a space where our souls could speak directly, bypassing the defenses and pretenses that complicated human interaction.

Nel silenzio dei sogni smarriti,

Risuoni in me come un tempo lontano,

Come stelle che cadono mute,

Nel mare del tuo cuore, ormai straniero.

In the silence of lost dreams, you resonate within me like a distant time, like stars falling mutely into the sea of your heart, now foreign.

I thought of my mother, how she would have loved hearing Serena sing, how she would have appreciated the raw emotion in her voice that her own mother had tried to suppress. I thought of all the years I'd spent silencing my own heart, afraid of the pain that authentic feeling might bring. I thought of Akise and Sosuke and Sairenji, each finding their way back to their true selves despite the forces pulling them toward conventional paths.

And I thought of Serena, who had been told her entire life that her greatest gift—her passionate, uncontrolled voice—was a flaw to be corrected rather than a treasure to be cherished.

Conservo il ricordo di un tocco mancato,

Di parole che tremavano sulle labbra,

Come pioggia sospesa nel cielo,

Sul giardino del tuo amore mai nato.

I preserve the memory of a missed touch, of words that trembled on lips, like rain suspended in the sky, over the garden of your love never born.

The room seemed to shrink around us, the outside world receding until there was nothing but the music, nothing but this moment of perfect synchronicity.

Se potessi urlare nel vento,

Ti direi quello che non ho mai osato,

Ma le parole sono lame di vetro,

E io sanguino in silenzio, da solo.

If I could scream into the wind, I would tell you what I never dared, but words are blades of glass, and I bleed in silence, alone.

My fingers moved more confidently now as muscle memory awakened with each phrase. The technical imperfections remained, but they no longer mattered. What mattered was the story we were telling together—a story of pain acknowledged, of barriers crossed, of connections made possible through the universal language of music.

The chorus returned, Serena's voice soaring with newfound freedom. I supported her without overwhelming, creating space for her expression while adding my own voice through the piano.

Nel silenzio dei sogni smarriti,

Risuoni in me come un tempo lontano,

Come stelle che cadono mute,

Nel mare del tuo cuore, ormai straniero.

In the silence of lost dreams, you resonate within me like a distant time, like stars falling mutely into the sea of your heart, now foreign.

As we approached the bridge, something shifted in the emotional texture of her voice—a new vulnerability, a hesitant hope emerging from the melancholy. My playing responded instinctively, the harmonies brightening slightly, creating a foundation for this delicate new sentiment.

Un giorno, forse, canterai il mio nome,

Tra i petali dei fiori che non ho raccolto,

E il vento porterà le mie parole,

Dove tu possa ascoltarle, finalmente.

One day, perhaps, you will sing my name among the petals of flowers I never gathered, and the wind will carry my words where you can finally hear them.

The image these lines evoked—of messages carried by the wind, of feelings finally received after long absence—resonated with perfect clarity. Wasn't this what had happened that night on the rooftop? Serena's voice, carried to me through the evening air, delivering a message of beauty and possibility that had kept me tethered to this world for one more day, and then another, and another.

Lost echoes finally finding their destination.

Nel silenzio dei sogni smarriti,

Risuoni in me come un tempo lontano,

Come stelle che cadono mute,

Nel mare del tuo cuore, ormai straniero.

In the silence of lost dreams, you resonate within me like a distant time, like stars falling mutely into the sea of your heart, now foreign.

Her voice softened as we approached the song's conclusion, the final lines delivered with intimate poignancy, as if they were a secret shared between just the two of us.

Ed io canterò finché l'eco non torna,

Anche se so che non risponderai mai.

And I will sing until the echo returns, even though I know you will never answer.

Finally, I turned on the bench to look at her.

A single tear traced a silvery path down her cheek, catching the last light of day like a diamond.

"Your technique is terrible," she said at last, voice slightly hoarse from singing. "You've gotten rusty."

But she continued to smile as she said it, as if the piece healed her.

"La mia piccola ombra curiosa~"

And I smiled back.

The sonata we played without looking at each other had done what no words could.

It bridged the gap between two broken souls and created something whole.

~Fin~