Prologue

The world was, if anything, music. Grass that had grown up soft and full. A bird beating its wings toward a distant sky. A passing breeze. Perhaps even the clusters of stars hanging in the night sky. Everything played at an endless life, each in its own rustling. I stood alone in the middle of that music resounding through all the world, and I watched you.

As it is with everyone, you too, who had whispered love to me, had a rustling all your own. When walking down a moonless alley late at night, or lying limp and listless beneath a blazing sun. For some reason, I would sometimes find myself thinking about your rustling. And strangely, whenever I did, my own life would come to feel as worthless as a scrap of trash fallen by the roadside.

It was a terribly foolish thing. For as long as there was music in this world, I was a person who could never be worthless.

There is music in all things. Ever since I realized that this proposition, so utterly obvious to me, was an impossible riddle that no one else could ever understand. I became the most singular person in this world. This music, which came to me for reasons I cannot explain, turned a lowly gutter rat into the greatest treasure of the kingdom. I was desperate not to let slip this stroke of luck that had found its way to me by chance.

To me, music was a means of survival. In the moments I sat at the piano, no one could touch me. That had been true even of the tyrant who ran the orphanage.

As is common for children without parents, I too spent my childhood in an orphanage. The director was a self-made man who had lost his parents young, much like the children off the streets, but unlike his public reputation, he had very bad hands. The slightest thing that displeased him and he would beat the children, boys and girls alike, and it was not uncommon for him to lock them in a dark room for days without food, under the pretense of correcting bad behavior.

Having never been sociable from a young age, I often became his target. Each time, I tried every trick I could think of to avoid his merciless kicks, but nothing ever made the situation any better. All I could do was curl my body up and endure the senseless violence until it passed.

But after I played a piece of Seydel’s music back by ear the moment I happened to hear it in front of him, everything changed. The large hand that had always struck my cheek stroked my head instead, and from the mouth that had been full of curses came the warm sound of “our Sio.” Along with the hollow affection that crept into my ears, a sharp certainty flashed through my mind.

Ah. Only music can truly save me.

I played the piano for one reason only: to escape this gutter by any means necessary. That was not music. Music was in a closer place, in something more trivial than I had imagined. In that sense, my playing was nothing but mockery aimed at all of you. Every time I saw those deaf fools pouring praise onto this music without even realizing that, I trembled with a strange exhilaration.

And yet, laughably, the very words of yours that I mocked were what made my life shine. Following your words, on some days I became a saint who had awakened the language of God, and on others, a devil who bewitched the hearts of men. None of it was truly me, but no one had any interest in that. It was a rather fair trade. I had given you all an illusion, so it was only right that you give me one in return.

Then when would the moment come for this foolish play to end? It was a question I could not answer even for myself, but I had a feeling that the one to bring down the curtain on the final act would be you. Perhaps that was a wish, and perhaps a hope that would never come to pass.

The only thing certain was this alone: that in the end, an ending would come. Now the final act begins.