Chapter 10 Disonence

The rehearsal room echoed with silence.
Not the usual kind—the soft, comfortable hush that had lived between them since the beginning—but a colder, sharper silence. One with edges.
Ren tuned his violin again, even though it was already in perfect pitch. Yui sat at the piano, her fingers still resting on the keys, unmoving.
Neither of them spoke.
The showcase had ended two weeks ago. Their song, Hikari no Melody, still climbed in views. Their classmates smiled more. Teachers asked if they would perform again. Everything on the outside bloomed.
But something between them had shifted.
Fractured.
Unspoken.

---
It had started with a message.
A week earlier, Yui had received a reply on the anonymous music platform they’d uploaded their demo to.
> From: SEN_4U “Are you the same Tachibana who won that regional youth piano award two years ago? If so—wow. You disappeared. What happened to you?”


She stared at the screen, fingers hovering.
She never replied. But she didn’t delete it either.
Later that night, Ren had borrowed her lyric journal—something he’d done countless times before.
But tucked between the pages, he saw the printout of that message.
It wasn’t hidden.
But it wasn’t meant for him either.

---
Ren didn’t ask her about it.
Instead, he asked someone else.
Kaho. Yui’s former classmate. The one who used to play flute before she stopped showing up at club meetings last year.
She frowned. “You didn’t know? Yui had a breakdown after a national performance. Like—stage collapse. Her mom forced her to take a break from music. Said she was ‘too fragile’ to continue.”
Ren blinked. “She told me she just… stopped.”
Kaho shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t want to tell you. Maybe she didn’t trust you enough.”
The words stuck like thorns.
Didn’t trust you enough.

---
Back in the music room, Ren was distant.
He stopped writing his half of their next song. He played slower, colder. He answered Yui’s questions with nods.
She noticed.
Of course she did.
“Did I do something wrong?” she asked, one cloudy afternoon, their usual milk bread untouched on the piano bench.
Ren looked away. “No.”
But the violin in his hands trembled slightly.
She tried again. “Then… what changed?”
His jaw tightened. “You tell me.”
That sentence. That accusation—it wasn’t like him.
Yui blinked, stunned. “I don’t understand.”
Ren stood. “You were already a star. I guess I was just… part of the comeback.”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“I saw the message,” he said. “I know who you were.”
Yui’s face paled. “You think I used you?”
He didn’t answer.
“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to be that girl anymore. I wanted this—us—to be real. Not part of some spotlight.”
Silence.
Then she added, voice cracking, “I thought you understood me.”
Ren flinched. “I thought you trusted me.”
The piano room was too quiet.
Too still.
Yui picked up her bag. “Maybe we were just playing different songs all along.”
And then she left.
Ren stood there, alone, with a violin in his hand and an ache in his chest.

---
That night, Ren didn’t play.
For the first time in months, the strings stayed silent. His apartment felt like it had shrunk. Like everything warm had drained away with her footsteps.
He opened her lyric journal again. The one she forgot to take.
Inside, on the last page, he found something new.
Scrawled in her looping handwriting:
> “This next song is for you, Ren. Not for anyone else. Just you. Because… I think I’ve fallen for you.”


His heart clenched.
He had been wrong.
So wrong.

---
Meanwhile, Yui sat on the bus to her grandmother’s countryside home, her head leaning against the cold window. She had left without saying goodbye to anyone.
Her phone buzzed, but she didn’t check it.
She watched the lights blur past.
And she whispered to herself, “He never even asked why.”