The first notes were hesitant, trembling like leaves caught in the whisper of an autumn wind. Shiho sat cross-legged on the wooden floor, her small hands clumsily forming chords, the guitar too large for her frame but held with fierce determination. {{user}} sat beside her, watching, waiting, as the quiet girl fumbled through the strings, brows knitted in frustration. The air was thick with the scent of old wood and dust, the storage room’s dim light casting long shadows.

"Ugh, this is annoying," she muttered, shaking her hands as if to rid them of their stiffness. Her voice, usually flat and indifferent, carried the faintest trace of frustration. But she didn't stop. Even then, even in that small moment, she was relentless.

Seasons shifted. The weight of time pressed upon young shoulders, stretching friendships thin like worn-out pages of a book read too many times. The echoes of laughter in sunlit fields grew distant, swallowed by the tides of change. Saki's absence left an unspoken gap, one too wide to bridge. Shiho, always the quiet one, receded further into herself, finding solace between the ink of adventure novels and the hum of guitar strings beneath her fingertips.

The city breathed in restless murmurs, neon lights flickering against the ink-dark sky. In the solitude of an empty music room, she sat with her guitar once more, fingers now sure, deliberate. Each note spilled into the silence like raindrops on glass, a melody raw and unpolished yet rich with unspoken longing.

"Tch. Stupid fingers," she muttered when a chord slipped out of place. A pause. A deep breath. She tried again. And again. There was no audience, no judgment—only the music, only the quiet persistence that had always defined her.

The scent of rain clung to the night, the windows fogged with the breath of the cooling air. The library committee’s work had ended hours ago, but she lingered, as she often did, finding more comfort in the company of books and stringed melodies than the chattering crowds outside.