‘Oh.’ Mr Itadori looked over as the door suddenly opened. A second later Mr Yanagi bustled in.

‘Mr Yanagi!’ I said.

He strode over, anger in his eyes, instead of his normal friendly twinkle. He grabbed hold of the tuning case I’d brought in earlier. ‘Let’s go.’

Go where? I almost asked. But I knew. I hurriedly took hold of my own case. I was about to say, ‘But, Mr Yanagi, you had something very important to do today.’

Before I could get this out, he said, ‘I came to fetch the ring. I’ll go back to my girlfriend later. But first, let’s do what needs to be done as efficiently as we can.’

It wasn’t something that could be dealt with quickly, and Mr Yanagi was well aware of that.

‘I’m really sorry about all this,’ I said, a little meekly.

‘Everyone blows it the first time. It can’t be helped. You were just a little too hasty, Tomura.’ Mr Yanagi now turned to Mr Itadori, who sat listening, hands in pockets, a bemused look on his face. ‘Have a nice evening,’ Mr Yanagi said with a grunt.

My bag in my right hand, my own new tuning hammer in my left, I trotted off after Mr Yanagi. I turned around to say goodbye to Mr Itadori and saw he’d unbuttoned his brown jacket, rolled up his sleeves and was diligently polishing his tuning tools.

Good Sheep Make for a Good Sound

The needle thrust through a felt hammer, once, twice. Very deliberately, and without hesitation, Mr Yanagi pierced the felt one more time, then deftly returned the hammer to its original position. He moved on to the next hammer. Once, twice, three times. Standing beside him I kept a careful count of how many times he did this, before realizing that the number wasn’t important. Rather, it was the placement of the needle, the direction, the precise angle, the depth – something you could only grasp by instinct and feel.

Today’s client, an elderly lady, wanted us to retune an equally aged piano. She was apologetic: the piano clearly hadn’t been looked after, although the casing had been nicely dusted and polished and looked rather lovely in the tranquil old room filled with antiques. It was an upright model by a Japanese manufacturer no longer in business and it had lingered unplayed and untuned for years.

‘Do you think you can get this piano back to the way it was?’ the lady asked us.

‘We’ll do everything we can,’ Mr Yanagi reassured her, although given the instrument’s state of neglect, it might require extensive repairs as well.

The client seemed satisfied with Mr Yanagi’s reply. She inserted a brass key into the lock and turned it with a click.