Alice recalls a bouncer’s instruction to "follow the music" and struggles through Boston’s overwhelming soundscape, frustrated by the ambiguity. She tries to parse the competing noises and eventually isolates the faint sound of an organ and choir, tracing it to a nearby church.

Hesitant at the threshold, Alice tests whether religious space or symbols will harm her and discovers they do not; she enters safely and listens to the choir. The music evokes memories of childhood church visits with her family and a tender moment with her sister Catherine (Catty), who traced promises on Alice’s palm.

Realizing the choir is not the music she is meant to find, Alice slips out a side door into the church’s small grave garden. As soon as she steps onto the grass among the headstones, her body weakens drastically: her limbs go numb, her skin grays, panic floods her, and a deathlike lethargy tries to pull her down.

In the midst of the collapse, Alice hears Catty’s voice in her mind urging her to get up. Fixating on the garden gate, she drags herself upright by a tombstone, staggers across to the gate, forces it open, and escapes to the street. There, her lungs briefly inflate and her heart gives a single beat, color returning to her skin. She recognizes graveyards as dangerous to her, unlike churches or holy symbols.

Angry and rattled, Alice vents by kicking a trash can and then sits to steady herself. She resists the urge to give up and go back to the dorm, aware that repeating the day would be unbearable. She deliberately relaxes and opens her senses to the city’s sounds without fighting them.

Amid the wash of noise, Alice finally detects a distinct piano melody, bell-like and out of step with the city’s din. Hope returns, and she rises to pursue the new song.