Chapter 15 A room without music

The first snow of the season fell silently over Minato like a whispered goodbye. Flakes clung to rusting fences and piled atop bicycle seats abandoned outside the school gates. The music room was empty now. The air had changed—too still, too hollow.
Ren Amamiya sat at the piano bench alone. He hadn’t brought his violin in days.
It had been three weeks since Yui left.
Three weeks since her parents whisked her away to Kyoto for treatment.
Three weeks since the note she left behind: a folded piece of paper tucked inside his sheet music book.
_"Don’t stop playing, okay? Not even if it hurts. Because the music will remember for us both."
I promise to come back. When the sakura return, so will I._
Ren read those words every morning like prayer.
But the silence in the music room was loud.

---
He tried to write. To compose. But without her voice, the melodies slipped through his fingers like water. His days passed with mechanical rhythm: school, home, sleep, repeat. The only constant was the ache behind his ribcage and the phantom echo of her laugh in empty hallways.
He hadn’t told anyone.
Not about how empty it all felt now.
Not even when Rin asked if he was okay.
Not even when Mr. Sakamoto gently offered, "You can talk to me, you know."
Ren simply nodded. Smiled. Walked away.
Because the only person he wanted to talk to was gone.

---
One night, unable to sleep, he climbed the stairs to the school rooftop. The air bit at his cheeks. He wore only a sweater, his hands buried in his pockets.
Below, the town shimmered in quiet lights. Above, a field of frozen stars blinked back.
Ren pulled out his phone. The message thread with Yui was still pinned to the top. Dozens of unsent drafts lingered in his notes—things he wanted to tell her but never could.
Finally, he typed:
> It's snowing here. First time without you.


He didn’t send it.
Instead, he looked up at the stars and whispered, "Did you hear that, Yui?"
His voice cracked like thin ice.

---
Over winter break, the school remained open for club activities. Ren wandered into the music room one day, unsure why. The windows were frosted. The piano keys were cold under his fingers. But he sat down anyway.
He didn’t play a song. Just a note. Then another.
And slowly, a melody began to form.
It wasn’t beautiful.
It wasn’t polished.
But it was honest.
And when he finally stopped, he realized something had shifted. Not healed. But opened.
The silence hadn’t left. But it no longer felt like an enemy.
It felt like Yui, still sitting beside him, waiting to hear what came next.

---
That night, Ren opened her journal—the one she left behind by accident. It still smelled faintly of milk bread and ink. On the last page, in faded pencil, were the lyrics to a song she never showed him:
> "If I leave before the spring arrives, Will you play our song beneath the cherry sky? I’ll be listening, even from far away, In every note your heart dares to play."


He closed the book gently.
And smiled for the first time in days.
Because spring was coming.
And so was she.