“Itsuki?” Rishia went with him. Then he started talking to the musicians. One of them went over to their spare instruments and proceeded to hand one to Itsuki. It wasn’t a guitar or a violin, or even a ukulele, but something similar, and crystal-tipped. Itsuki plucked a few things, checking the sound they made.

“Here we go,” he said. Then, insanely, he started to play it. He just joined right in accompaniment to the song Filo was singing. It didn’t sound out of place at all. In fact, he expanded the breadth of the music—while both song and music had previously just been background noise to brighten the mood, now everyone present naturally started to give it their full attention. Filo already had a great singing voice, and the synergy of all of the elements created a scene people were unable to turn away from.

Filo, too, had looked a bit taken aback by the sudden interloper at first, but soon she started to sing along with a smile on her face. Even I had to admit that he had a pretty good sense of rhythm. The song that Filo had been ad-libbing soon ended. And after only a beat, Itsuki immediately started to play a different piece.

This one I had heard before somewhere. It was likely a piece of classical music. So Itsuki could play after all. The very first time I saw him, I’d thought he looked like a piano player or something like that.

“The bow guy is incredible!” Filo said, offering her informed opinion on Itsuki’s playing now that her singing was finished. Melty could play pretty well herself, and I’d seen her assisting Filo’s singing during the festival. Itsuki was at least as good—no, maybe better than she had been. Even as I pondered his playing, he finished the classical piece and moved onto something a bit more rhythmical. If I had to place it, I would have thought it was the opening to some anime or game.

A moment later, a strange light started to glow across the venue, creating an illusory scene centered around Itsuki. The other musicians tried to also take up the music, perhaps not wanting to be shown up too much. But their attempts produced nothing but a brief cacophony of noise. As though warning them off, the light turned into little spikes and flicked out close to them. The only one who seemed allowed to harmonize—the only one who could—was Filo.

I’d listened a lot to Filo’s singing, Melty’s playing, and the playing of other musicians, but when ranking Itsuki’s current performance, it would be much faster to count down from the top.

“He’s pretty good,” I eventually said.

“Indeed. Better than some national musicians, I bet.”

“This is quite something,” Glass murmured, obviously impressed. “He isn’t imbuing any magic in his playing, and yet he is triggering magic.”