In the silence, I hear a sharp breath from the back of the hall. It is my mother. She is crying. I have never heard my mother cry before. It sounds like a cracked cello string. Ugly. Real.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw my violin case onto the Yamanote Line tracks and watch the trains turn it to splinters. But I just looked out the window at the flashing billboards and said, “I will fix it.” ichika matsumoto pov
I play the sound of the train tracks at 5:47 AM. The hollow rhythm of waiting. I play the sound of my mother’s silence after a perfect run. I play the whisper of my classmates, the soft rustle of Tanaka’s paperback pages, the imagined warmth of a hand I have never held. In the silence, I hear a sharp breath
