I left their apartment building and walked slowly to the car park. It was dark now and the temperature had dropped. The windscreen had fogged up so I drove back carefully, while other drivers beeped at me to speed up.

Back at the shop the shutters were closed on the ground floor but lights were still on upstairs. It wasn’t so late, but on days when there were no piano lessons the shop closed at six thirty. I hoped no one else was lingering after hours.

I walked in through the service entrance and trudged upstairs, the two cases weighing me down. Expecting no one else to be there, I opened the door and found that, today of all days, Mr Itadori was still around. He had on one of the jackets he wore on visits, so I assumed he’d just returned from a client. I couldn’t look him in the face; there was so much I wanted to learn from him, but I felt so hopeless. More than ever I felt there was probably nothing Mr Itadori could teach someone like me.

‘Good evening, Tomura,’ he said, looking up from some papers.

I responded in a weak mumble; I seemed incapable of holding it together.

‘Is something wrong?’

‘Mr Itadori.’ I tried to keep my voice from shaking. ‘What should I do to be good at tuning?’

I realized immediately what a stupid question it was. I was nowhere near good – I couldn’t even master the basics. The rule was to spend six months shadowing a more experienced tuner and learning from him, but I’d broken that. I recalled the legend of Orpheus who’d looked behind him at the last moment, sending his dead wife back to the underworld. Had he really been just a few steps from the world of the living?

‘An excellent question, Tomura,’ Mr Itadori said gravely. He looked as though he was pondering this deeply.

The original sound he had produced so long ago in the school gym suddenly floated into my memory. The first piano sounds I’d ever heard. I was still searching to hear them again, but I hadn’t come any closer. Maybe I’d never be able to. I trembled with a sort of fear – the kind you feel when you first set foot into a dense forest.

‘What should I do?’ I said.

To which Mr Itadori replied, ‘If you don’t mind?’ He held out a tuning hammer. ‘Do you fancy using this?’

I grasped the handle. It was heavier than expected but fitted my hand perfectly.

‘A gift.’

I was taken aback and must have looked doubtful.

‘Don’t you need it?’ he asked.

‘Oh yes! I really do,’ I replied. The forest might be deep but I knew in that moment I had no plans to turn back. ‘It looks really easy to use.’