Golden Melody

Golden Melody (黄金のメロディ) is a short story that is part of an anthology of short stories based on the Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan series. It was written by Ballad Kitaguni (北國 ばらっど) and published by Shueisha. Golden Melody was included with the November 2021 issue of Ultra Jump in commemoration of the second season of the TV drama.

One man's meeting with Rohan leads to the destruction of a village, and a loss of humanity.

Summary
Twenty-year-old Rohan Kishibe meets an audiophile named Kyomei Isaka (伊坂 恭明 Isaka Kyomei), owner of the audio appliance store Sakamochi Record in Sakamochi Town of T Prefecture. When Rohan first met him, Kyomei was a lazy teenager who was not at all business savvy and took pleasure in showing his superiority towards people over his audio equipment.

Seven years later Kyoka Izumi hands Rohan a postcard addressed to him from Kyomei, inviting him to meet at Sakamochi Record at exactly four PM next week. Having done some research on the town beforehand, Kyoka tells Rohan that its population has been rapidly declining for years, seemingly starting around the time that Rohan had visited Kyomei.

When the two of them arrive, they are surprised to see that there are no signs of life whatsoever in this town. Even though they were well aware by now that the population had decreased over the last seven years, it seems as if all the life here was evacuated rather quickly.

Eventually they come closer to the Sakamochi Record store and hear a strange sound and are then approached by a monster that looks to be made up of audio equipment. It has a speaker for a head and wires made up its body.

The monster grabbed Kyoka, who began to scream, but instead of wailing like you might think a human would, she began emitting this wonderful music and began dancing.