Mio sat with her knees drawn up to her chest in the room with curtains drawn shut. Curled up on the bed, she'd lost track of how many hours had passed. She felt the vibrations of alarms. But she couldn't get up. Her body felt heavy, and the floor seemed impossibly far away. On the table, there was a single convenience store rice ball. She hadn't restocked anything since the day she'd run from Kanade's workshop. Looking at the vinyl packaging, she thought about eating it. But her hand wouldn't move. Before she realized it, she was touching her phone. She couldn't stop herself. She unlocked it. An app opened. Again, those words came flowing in. ——Shiraishi Mio is finished. ——A deaf person has no right to stand on a stage. ——Just disabled people licking each other's wounds. She'd read it all. She'd read it all. Every time she read, she'd put the phone down. But within ten minutes, her hand would reach for it again. As if she couldn't stop hurting herself. One word after another piled up in her chest, and with each one, something inside her was scraped away. (Was the time I spent with Kanade really just escapism?) Naoto's words mixed with the comments. Playing at music. A talent like that shouldn't be left to rot in a place like this. The sensation of vibration reaching her body that first day in Kanade's workshop—had she really felt that? Or was it a phantom born from her inability to accept a world without sound, from her desperate need to cling to someone? She didn't know anymore. ◇ A little past noon, vibration reached the soles of her feet. The knock on the front door traveled through the floorboards. Mio couldn't move from the sofa. The knocking continued. Three times. Four times. Then she heard the sound of something being slipped through the gap in the door. Mio dragged her heavy body toward the entrance. On the floor lay a white business card. Kirishima Naoto. Stella Promotion. Mio put her eye to the door scope. Naoto stood in the hallway, wearing a gray coat, his mouth moving toward the door. His voice didn't reach through the door——didn't reach, and that fact pierced Mio's chest anew. But she could read his lips. She'd been reading them for so long. After hesitating for a moment, Mio opened the door just a few centimeters, keeping the chain lock on. Cold November air seeped through the gap. Naoto saw Mio's face and began moving his lips. ——Only I can protect you. Amber eyes looked at her from beyond the gap. There was a feverish light in them. Something like obsession. ——Forget about that tuner. He doesn't have the power to understand your world. The metal chain was cold. Mio found herself gripping it unconsciously with her fingertips. ——If you come back to the entertainment industry, I'll create a place for you anywhere. A stage suits you. Mio opened her mouth once, about to respond. For two years, her body remembered moving in response to this man's words. Reflexively. But——she stopped. ——You're not yourself anywhere but on a stage. Those words echoed in her head. (Not yourself.) Naoto had always been like this. He'd kept saying that only Shiraishi Mio on the stage was real. Even after she'd lost her hearing, it was always the same. He was saying that the version of herself outside the stage had no value. He called it responsibility. He called it love. Mio said nothing. Naoto's expression changed. Something like faint panic flickered across his amber eyes, as if he'd understood something. Still, his mouth kept moving. But Mio stopped reading. She pushed the door gently. The chain rattled. Naoto's face disappeared from the gap in the door. After a while, another business card was slipped through the gap. Then the vibrations in the hallway faded into the distance. Mio leaned her back against the door and slowly sank to the floor. ◇ She didn't know how long she sat like that. When she came to, her hand was in her coat pocket. The cold sensation of metal. Small, thin, always the same temperature. Her mother's ear cuff. Ever since she'd decided to attach it to her left ear, it had been with her constantly. On days she went to the workshop, on days she curled up in her room in Tamachi Ward, she'd never taken it off. Mio held it in her palm and looked at it. Shiraishi Sae. She called her mother's name in her mind. She'd died when Mio was twelve. Not in Furkawa Town, not in Tamachi Ward, but in a much smaller town, in a much smaller live house, where she'd done solo performances. A place that would be packed with twenty customers. But her mother had always sung in that small box with genuine joy. Mio thought she'd come to love music because she'd fallen asleep on her mother's lap. During guitar practice, the vibrations of the instrument had passed through Mio's body. The vibrations of her voice too. Her body remembered that warmth. That was her first experience with music. The day Mio debuted, her mother was already gone. Inside the ear cuff was her mother's final recording data. Mio knew this. She'd known it and carried it with her all along. Before she'd lost her hearing two years ago, she'd listened to it many times. She'd heard the voice. She'd heard the sound of the solo performance. She'd heard her mother's voice. Now——she couldn't hear it. Since the day her cochlear nerve had been damaged, that recording data was sealed away forever. It was inside the metal, but it didn't reach Mio. Her mother's final song didn't reach only her. Music had been her only connection to her mother, and that connection had been destroyed along with her ears. Naoto's words——"not yourself"——and that fact slowly mixed together inside her body. Something collapsed. Mio cried out loud. It was completely different from how she'd cried after running from the workshop in Episode 4. Back then, she'd still been holding something back. But now there was nothing left to hold back. The time in Kanade's workshop, the warmth of Kanade's fingertips, the ache in her chest when she'd become aware of her romantic feelings for Kanade——it all mixed together and overflowed. The guilt of having hurt him, the anger of having her feelings denied, the fact that she would never hear her mother's voice again——all of it shook her body together. On the floor of the entrance, Mio cried. She didn't know if her voice was coming out or not. ◇ That same Monday, in Tachibana Tuning Workshop in Furkawa Town, Kanade had been working on tuning jobs since morning. He checked the strings of an upright piano. He corrected the out-of-tune pitch with precision. His fingers tapped the keys, his ears listened to the sound. It was the same work as always. But his hand movements were slightly slower than usual. During the lunch break, he went to the café "Komadori" on Kawasemi Street. Genzou Fujii silently set down a blend coffee for him. Kanade drank half and left the rest. He could tell from the vibration and change in air that Genzou had sensed something and tried to say something to him. But Kanade had nothing he could put into words. He only conveyed his thanks and returned to the workshop. The workshop phone rang several times in the afternoon. Each time he answered, there was silence. Kanade stood in front of the grand piano. He placed both hands on the keys where Mio had last touched them. The texture of the wood surface transmitted to his fingertips. The place where Mio's hands had last touched. His rational mind understood——there was no way the warmth could still be there. Days had passed. Wood doesn't retain body heat. It was physically impossible. But he couldn't take his hands away. (There was nothing I could do that day.) He'd heard everything Naoto had said beyond the door to Mio. "A blind tuner." "Just escapism." Kanade hadn't been able to talk back. When Mio had gone outside and Naoto's words remained in the workshop. When Mio had told him "I won't come anymore" and run away, he hadn't been able to chase after her. Running at full speed through a world without light, down an unfamiliar path——that was overwhelmingly impossible for Kanade. (Maybe my existence was the barrier standing in front of Mio.) That thought spiraled in the darkness of the workshop. If coming here had hurt Mio, then maybe Kanade's very existence had been increasing her suffering. But at the same time, there was a sensation that wouldn't fade. The movement of Mio's lips that he'd read through touch. The weight in her voice when she'd said, "My world without sound is not beautiful." The temperature of the tears he'd felt on her cheek. The change in Mio's face when he'd told her, "Your emotions are vibrating." Kanade wanted to be by Mio's side. He hadn't sorted out what that was with the word "love." But he wanted to feel this person's voice again——not voice. He wanted to feel this person's vibration again. Every time Mio came to the workshop, the air in it changed. That change wasn't there anymore. On the keys, Kanade's fingers moved slightly. He didn't produce any sound. He was just touching them. ◇ It was deep night. Mio, exhausted from crying, crawled from the entrance floor to her bed. She lay down without pulling the blanket over herself. Only the glow of her phone screen lit the dark room. In her hand, she still held her mother's ear cuff. For a long time, she held it up in front of her face. She shone her phone's light on it. A small, oval piece of metal. A thin chain attached to the left side. Simple design, but looking closely, the inner workwork was slightly complex. Mio traced the inner edge of the ear cuff with her fingertip. Smooth metal——it should have been. She stopped. There was something there. When she pressed her nail against it, there were finely detailed patterns arranged at regular intervals. There were indentations. Mio sat up. She shone her phone's light inside the ear cuff and strained her eyes. (This is——) Microscopic electronic components were embedded in the inner metal. Tiny, precise elements, multiple of them. Mio's mouth began to form words, then stopped. Vibration transducers. Her mother had modified this ear cuff. It wasn't just a piece of jewelry. It was a device designed to transmit vibration. The words Kanade had taught her began to sound in her head. Low sounds reach the chest, medium sounds reach the entire palm, high sounds reach the fingertips——the vibration that had come through the piano's soundboard. Music received not through the ears but through the body. And her mother's modified ear cuff had vibration transducers embedded in the place where it touched the ear. In her mind, two things overlapped into one. (Mother.) Mio held the ear cuff in both hands against her chest. What had her mother known? Had she foreseen that her daughter would one day lose her hearing? Or, as a musician, had she understood that sound and vibration were the same thing, and left it in this form? She didn't know which. She didn't know, but this ear cuff containing her mother's final recording data was pointing in the same direction as Kanade's vibration conduction method. She'd thought it was impossible to hear. She'd thought it was sealed away forever. But——if Kanade were there. If Kanade's technique and these vibration transducers existed together. Mio's hands were trembling. Her face after crying still wasn't dry. Naoto's words, the SNS comments, three days of isolation——none of it was resolved. How terrifying it was to go to Kanade's workshop. How terrifying it was that she might hurt him again. And yet Mio kept her eyes open, clutching the ear cuff to her chest. Forty minutes by train to Furkawa Town. She still didn't know if her legs could move. But now, for the first time, she had a reason to go.