A piano that won't play becomes the perfect mirror for a boy suffocating under his father's shadow. Shuuhei's shame, not at failing, but at discovering he's been performing someone else's dreams his whole life, cracks open in that forest, and the film never looks away from that wound. The soundtrack doesn't score the moment; it becomes Shuuhei's confession, the sound he couldn't make until he stopped trying to be perfect.

Shuuhei Amamiya, a fifth grader who has taken strict piano lessons since early childhood, moves from Tokyo to the countryside because his grandmother is in poor health. He hopes to become a pianist like his famous father. At his new elementary school a bully dares him to play a piano in the forest that supposedly makes no sound. His classmate Kai Ichinose, a troublemaker from a rough part of town, leads him to the hidden instrument and claims it as his own. Shuuhei cannot get a note out of it, but Kai plays it beautifully even though he cannot read music. The two boys become close friends and rivals while Kai begins learning piano properly. The film mixes drama, comedy and music.