I understood now why they’d asked me to come along. Kazune had wanted to show me her resolve. The confidence she had as she took the very first step. I could almost picture her right foot raised. A small stride with the tip of her toes firmly pointed towards the future, in line with a path that only she could see. And as she lowered her foot, it led straight on to the horizon.

Back when I lived in the mountains I saw something really strange once. It was the same time of year as now and I was returning home from a friend’s house one night. I sensed something shining, and on the very edge of the forest saw a tree that was glittering in the darkness. I couldn’t understand it and approached timidly to take a closer look. A wispy light was lodged in the thin branches of an elm tree, twinkling and sparkling. I had no idea what kind of phenomenon might have produced this. It was beautiful – almost frighteningly so – and it wasn’t just this one tree. Faint light was glinting on the branches of other nearby trees as well. But that one elm was special, too bright simply to be a reflection of the moonlight. It wasn’t ice frozen on the branches, or what mountain people call ‘diamond dust’ – a cloud of small ice crystals.

Even now I wonder what caused that effect. As I listened to Kazune play, the shimmering glow of the sparkling tree that night filled my mind’s eye like some phantom festival.

‘I’m so happy for her,’ Mr Yanagi said, repeating the sentiment I don’t know how many times.

This wasn’t a one-off miracle, I was sure of it. The pure beauty of her touch as a pianist wasn’t something that just happened. And I knew that trees were sparkling tonight, too, somewhere off in the mountains.

About ten days later the twins came over to the shop, just as we were in the midst of preparing our auditorium for a small weekend recital.

‘Wow, this brings back so many memories,’ Yuni said excitedly. ‘We often used to perform here when we were little.’

They’d both started learning piano as children on our youngsters’ piano course.

‘Is that the Sakura twins?’ Mr Akino said, finishing his tuning and catching sight of the girls.

‘It’s been so long,’ the girls said.

‘Look how tall you’ve grown. Yuni – and Kazune, right? I never used to be able to tell you apart.’

Mr Akino studied each of the twins in turn. Quite some time ago, apparently, Mr Yanagi had taken over tuning the Sakuras’ piano in place of Mr Akino. As a rule, we tried to have only one tuner in charge of each piano, but sometimes circumstances would change and a different tuner would take over.

‘Since you’re here, could we ask you to play something?’ Mr Akino asked.