The Tuner with Broken Fingers and the Pianist Who Admired Him
In the city of Sonare, where every street hums with melody, Fujisaki Minato lives a quiet life as a piano tuner—his once-brilliant career as a concert pianist shattered eight years ago when his right hand froze onstage at the height of the national competition. Now he pours everything into caring for the instruments of others, hiding the tremors in his fingers and the memory of the performance that destroyed him.
Then he hears the name Kiryu Kanade.
A nineteen-year-old prodigy on the verge of
The Tuner with Broken Fingers and the Pianist Who Admired Him - Broken Fingers and a Break in the Rainy Season
His right hand spasmed again.
Fujisaki Minato stopped the hand that held the tuning hammer and let out a quiet breath. An afternoon of clear sky in the rainy season. Through the shopfront of Fujisaki Instruments, facing the instrument dealers' street in the East Ward, damp air drifted in, carrying with it a scent that was somehow nostalgic. Leaving the lid of an old Steinway open, Minato stared at his right hand, which had gone still. His index and middle fingers trembled in small, involuntary shivers—as though they were still trying to play something.
Fool, he thought. It's been eight years already.
He murmured it inwardly and closed his left hand lightly around his right wrist. The trembling did not stop at once. The sensation in his fingers was dull, and only the tips were strangely cold. That this hand had once produced thousands of notes—he could no longer believe it himself.
Sonare, the city of tonality. How long had it been since he came to this town? Minato gazed vaguely up at the sky visible from the shopfront. Through a break in the thick clouds, a thin light fell. The rain had let up, but the air was still heavy, and puddles lingered here and there on the asphalt.
Fujisaki Instruments stood almost at the center of the instrument dealers' street in Sonare's East Ward. More than thirty shops—instrument stores, repair shops, sheet-music dealers—lined the block, and on holidays the street bustled with music conservatory students and music lovers. Minato worked here as a tuner. A certified professional holding the national "Tonal Accreditation," he tuned and serviced pianos. The world called such people "craftsmen who support the performer's sound from within." The annual income ran somewhere between three and eight million yen. Not a glamorous trade, but enough to live on.
A tuner exclusively attached to competitions commanded a high salary, but the responsibility was heavy in proportion—naturally, since he shaped the sound that could decide a performer's life. Minato held no such position. A small tuner at a small instrument shop. Some fifty regular customers. That was enough, he had thought. No—that was enough, he had told himself.
Until that day eight years ago.
Minato regripped the hammer. His father's keepsake tuning hammer. The wooden handle had gone dark and glossy with years of use, fitting snugly into his palm. After his father died, only this hammer remained in Minato's hands—like proof that he could not abandon music.
His fingertip touched a string. A faint metallic tremor traveled from finger to arm. Only this sensation was unchanged from long ago. The movement of fingers searching out sound. Straining his ears, distinguishing the slightest deviation. Minato's ears had grown ever sharper over these eight years. In place of being unable to play, only listening remained to him as music.
"Absolute-pitch adjustment technique"—a skill tuners employ, finely adjusting a piano's strings and hammers to produce an acoustic character suited to the performer's idiosyncrasies. It was said to take a minimum of five years to master. Minato had learned this technique not from his father but in the specialized course at the music conservatory. It was the path he had chosen in order to survive after giving up the piano.
But really—
Perhaps he had only wanted to flee from music.
Minato let out a small breath and returned to his tuning work. Today there were two grand pianos to tune. One was a display model in the shop; the other was a job from a regular customer. He had finished one in the morning and was now at work on the second.
From the back of the shop came an employee's voice.
"Minato-san, I'll take the three o'clock delivery here, all right?"
"Yeah, thanks."
Minato answered without turning around. The shop had five employees. The owner had known his father's generation and looked after Minato in all sorts of ways.
Again, the fingers of his right hand trembled.
This time, more strongly than before.
Minato set down the hammer and slowly opened and closed his right hand. The fingers would not obey. It was as though another living thing were thrashing inside his hand.
—Just before finishing a perfect performance.
The memory of that day rose unbidden.
Eight years ago, Arcadia Hall. With twenty-five hundred spectators holding their breath, the twenty-year-old Minato sat at the piano at the center of the stage. The finals of the nation's largest competition, hosted by the Arcadia Music Association. The assigned piece was a fiendishly difficult Liszt. His fingers moved flawlessly. The sound rang out exactly as he willed it.
Only a few measures remained.
His right hand suddenly stopped moving.
His fingers froze as if turned to ice and convulsed above the keyboard. The sound broke off; the hall stirred. Minato tried to continue with his left hand alone, but the piece had already collapsed. Onstage, all he could do was stare at his own right hand.
The diagnosis was "tendinitis from overwork." That was how it was officially announced.
But that was not it.
Minato had gone over that day again and again. The abnormality in his fingers had not been sudden. Since the day before, there had been a faint discomfort. The fingertips touching the keys carried a slight numbness. Perhaps someone had tampered with the piano. No—perhaps with his own fingers.
But there was no proof.
Minato quit the piano. He had no choice but to quit. His right hand never fully healed, and even now it trembled like this from time to time.
—Prodigy withdraws in tears as right hand fails.
He still remembered the newspaper headline from that day.
"...How stupid."
Minato muttered it to no one.
A presence stirred at the shopfront.
"Well, Minato-kun. Muggy today, isn't it."
An elderly regular came into the shop with a newspaper in one hand. A small man with white hair who showed his face almost every day. His name was Sasaki, if Minato recalled. He could not play the piano, but he loved to listen to music, and it was his daily routine to browse the display models and chat about this and that.
"Hello. You're early today."
Minato gave a slight bow.
"Well, this rain makes walking about impossible. Say—did you see it? Today's paper."
With that, the old man spread the newspaper and held it out before Minato. Minato stopped his hands and glanced at it. A large photograph of a young man filled the page.
"There's an amazing kid in this year's competition. Look, this one. Nineteen years old and through to the finals, they say. Kiryu Kanade-kun. Still a conservatory student, but apparently he plays well enough to put the pros to shame."
—Kiryu, Kanade.
The instant he heard that name, Minato's right hand gave a violent twitch.
The hand holding the hammer shook faintly. The old man, unaware, kept talking.
"Maybe this kid will take the championship this year. They say he took up the piano after being moved by a certain performance he heard as a small child. Who that performer was—well, the article doesn't say."
Minato could not answer.
Kiryu Kanade. Minato knew that name. No—more than knew it; he had heard his playing several times. On television, on streams. Young, yet his sound was sharp—and somehow precarious. A boy whose playing held a strange power to draw in an audience.
If that were all, he would be just one more young pianist.
But there was another reason Minato reacted to this name.
"...Is that so."
That was all Minato finally managed before returning to his tuning. The old man seemed to have more to say, but seeing Minato's state, he quickly switched to another topic.
"By the way, has Saeki-san not come by yet today?"
"She came this morning. Bought coffee beans and went home."
"Ah, is that so. Missed her again, did I. What a shame."
The old man laughed.
Café Dolce. A small coffee shop on a corner of the instrument dealers' street, whose owner, Saeki Fumi, was a former pianist. Seventy-eight years old, yet her back was straight, and every morning she stopped by this shop to buy coffee beans. She had been close to Minato's father as well, and was one of the few people who had known Minato since he was small.
After the old man left, Minato could not move his hands for a while.
Kiryu Kanade.
The name would not leave his head.
Why, now, of all times.
Minato shook his head and resumed tuning.
—It's nothing.
So he told himself.
A little past four in the afternoon, the bell at the shop entrance rang out lightly.
"My, Minato-kun. You look pale today."
It was Saeki Fumi. White hair neatly gathered in a short cut. Gentle brown eyes. Her small frame—barely five feet tall—drawn straight up as always, she came into the shop.
"Fumi-san. Welcome."
Minato looked up and made a smile.
"You came this morning too, but—did something happen?"
Fumi stared hard at Minato's face. Her eyes were sharp, belying her seventy-eight years. The eyes of a former pianist who had stood onstage for many years. She sensed the movements of the heart as keenly as changes in sound.
"Nothing, really."
Minato shook his head.
"Lies. You've been a poor liar since you were small."
Fumi said it with a small laugh.
"...Did you see today's paper?"
Minato spoke after a slight pause.
"Ah, the article about Kiryu Kanade-kun. I saw it. A remarkable child has appeared, hasn't he."
Fumi leaned against the shop counter and narrowed her eyes as if in fond recollection.
"I've heard that boy play, you know. On television, a while back. Young, but his sound is straight and fearless. He reminded me of someone from long ago."
Minato said nothing.
"Minato-kun."
Fumi's voice suddenly grew quiet.
"There are still people who want to hear your sound."
The words pierced deep into Minato's chest.
"...I can't play anymore."
Minato answered with a made-up smile.
"It isn't that you can't. It's that you don't."
Fumi stated it quietly, leaving no room for argument.
Minato could say nothing.
"I don't know what you think of your own sound. But listen—don't forget that there are people your sound has saved."
Having said only that, Fumi took a bag of coffee beans as usual.
"I'll take this. I'll leave the money here."
"...Thank you."
Minato bowed his head.
Fumi left the shop. Watching her back as she went, Minato turned her words over and over.
—There are people your sound has saved.
He knew that.
Because he knew it, it hurt.
How many people had he disappointed by being unable to play? How many people had he robbed of music? Minato understood that better than anyone.
Fumi's words remained in his chest like a small thorn.
Closing time was drawing near.
The employees went home, and Minato was left alone in the shop. He stood before a small work desk at the back and opened a drawer.
Inside lay a single yellowed newspaper clipping.
—Prodigy withdraws in tears as right hand fails.
It was the article reporting the Arcadia finals incident eight years ago. For some reason, Minato had never been able to throw it away. He had tried many times. But each time, his hand stopped.
This was the record of the day his life ended.
So that he would not forget that it had ended.
Or was it because he wanted to believe it had not ended?
Minato picked up the clipping and gazed at it for a while. The paper was dry, the creases worn thin. The self in the photograph was still twenty, his face full of hope.
"...How stupid."
The second time today he had said it.
Minato put the clipping back in the drawer and let out a deep breath.
Then—
With a jingle, the bell at the shop entrance rang.
Minato raised his head.
In the backlight of dusk, a young man stood in the doorway.
He wore a backpack and was out of breath. His thin shirt was damp with sweat, his black hair disheveled. Late teens, perhaps. He might have been a university student.
The young man was looking straight at Minato.
The intensity of those eyes made Minato catch his breath for an instant.
"—You're Fujisaki Minato-san, aren't you."
The young
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