Thursday, 1:30PM. They arrive at the relay junction corridor at the warmest part of the day — the point the annotated score calls closest to layer alignment, a note Gu-ship-pal made six weeks ago without knowing what it meant. He plays the relay junction section. The corridor does what the corridor does: sound arrives in layers, each frequency settling into a different surface before the next one finds its place. Sujin stands three meters back and listens without playing. When he finishes she says nothing. Then: now walk.
They leave the relay junction and walk toward the processing floor without speaking. The walk takes eleven minutes. He does not play. She does not play. He carries the annotated score under his arm, folded, not opened.
At the processing floor she takes out her instrument and plays the circle-question-mark phrase from the second movement — the annotation that said: some other building. 8.4m ceiling, unused since 2019. The phrase holds the way it held when she first played it alone. It sustains. The room does not just receive the sound; it returns it as something larger. Three times she plays it. On the third he hears what she is describing.
Afterward he opens his notebook and writes the decision. The score is not one piece played in two buildings. It is a score about the walk between them. The relay junction and the processing floor are phrases; the walk is the movement that connects them. He draws a new notation on the map — a line between the two circles with a rest symbol in the middle. The duration of the walk is part of the composition. He does not know the duration yet. He will walk it again and time it. The walk between is the third instrument.
Sujin asks: how long is it? He says: eleven minutes today. She says: the piece is different every time.