Tokyo: Who would still fall in love after being spoiled?

Chapter 115 The Last Day Before the Obon Festival

-50000 points

[Skill Upgrade: Trumpet Playing Lv.5]

In the days leading up to the Obon Festival, Inoue resumed his daily morning exercise routine at the riverside park, but instead of exercising, he played the trumpet.

He did have some physical exercise, running the entire distance from the old residential area to the park. Once there, he would catch his breath and then, standing on the steps where he had once jumped into the river, he would play the duet melody from "Tomorrow's Spring."

He practiced this part secretly by himself, playing the instrument for a while in the park every morning before going to school and every evening after leaving school.

With the Lv.5 trumpet playing that he had spent a lot of points to obtain, it was not difficult for him to analyze the music score from a melody without missing any details.

It's a pity that he was unable to record the melody played by Amano alone at that time, and the melody played by the trumpet section members of the Hayami Orchestra still lacked something.

He could only enrich the melody according to his understanding and add the fragments of Amano's playing that he could still remember in his mind, and portray it in a cheerful or free manner.

On the morning of the 12th, he met the dog that had often barked at him before. It seemed that its owner had not tied the chain to the parallel bars properly, and the dog ran to the steps where he was standing to enter the water.

This time the dog stopped barking and squatted on the steps to listen to him play the trumpet. When he finished, it wagged its tail and shouted a few times like applause.

Woof! Woof! These calls attracted a man sitting on a park bench, looking at his phone, who rushed over and apologized profusely.

The dog was reluctant to leave, and the owner had no choice but to sit with it by the stairs until the dog had practiced the trumpet twenty times every morning and put it back into the trumpet case before reluctantly leaving.

"This trumpet...will participate in the competition, right?" The man asked him before saying goodbye as he walked up the gentle slope from the park to the street.

"After the Ullambana Festival, on the 18th, there will be a charity performance with the wind band." He thought for a moment and said.

"You play it very well..." the man exclaimed and asked for the address.

He told the man the address.

"Let Lingzi bring Erduo to your charity performance." The man touched the dog's head and explained to him with a smile, "Lingzi is my wife, and Erduo is the dog's name."

"Woof woof——!"

"I really don't have time, so I can only watch the video... Will the charity performance be posted online?"

"Maybe." He had never considered this question.

But the shopping mall provided the venue for them to perform charity shows in order to promote themselves. From this perspective, there is no reason not to post the video online for secondary dissemination.

After saying goodbye to the man and the ears, he carried the trumpet box and headed to school.

The next day is the Obon Festival, so the wind band will take a break from practice for three days. We will resume practice after the Obon Festival.

He booked a flight from Tokyo to Tottori at 8 p.m. and packed a simple baggage in advance—daily necessities, a change of clothes, and a book he had picked up from the shelf—in a suitcase that just fit the aircraft's checked baggage regulations.

I asked Takeda, and he said he wanted to take a train to experience the feeling of traveling on a long-distance train. He would depart from the early morning of the 13th, and would go for a day of fun without going with him, and then return to Tokyo to watch the fireworks festival before the Obon Festival.

I also made an agreement with him that if he didn't come back on the 15th, I would use my mobile phone to record the fireworks on the Sumida River and send it to him so that he would be envious.

I asked Amano the same question, but only asked him for an address.

I didn't tell him whether I had time, whether we could go together, when we would go and when we would come back... I didn't tell him anything.

He didn't ask any more questions and just thought it was a polite refusal.

On the way from Riverside Park to Kita-Sakura High School, the girl who had chatted with him and added him on Line the day he took the train to Wassei High School sent him a friend request again.

He thought of Erduo, who had just promised to go to the charity performance, agreed to the application and also sent the date, time and address of the charity performance.

The girl said she would definitely go to see it and asked him to stay for a few more days as a friend.

I also asked him if he wanted to watch the fireworks together during the Obon Festival.

He said he had already promised other girls and declined.

"Hey, Inoue." In front of the gate of Kitakura High School, a tall boy with slightly curly hair ran over from the other side and waved to him.

He was also carrying a black box on his back, which was a little bigger than the one he was carrying - it contained a trombone.

"Good morning, Ah-yi." After spending a few days together, this person successfully brought him into the boys' communication circle of the Beiying Wind Band.

After all, there are no more than ten boys in the entire wind band, and some of them are taciturn.

As Ah-yi had said when he spoke to him, only with him could they barely fit in two mahjong tables during the training camp.

"Do you want to go to the Ullambana Festival together?" As they entered the school gate, A'an walked side by side with him.

"You want to be with me? Not looking for a girl?" he asked back.

"I was rejected... I was told that I had already accepted someone else's invitation."

"Pitiful."

"What's pitiful? It's a girl! And I can guess who it is." Ah-yi raised her voice a little.

"Is that so..." He thought about it and found that he could guess what the situation was, but it might not be accurate.

"so--"

"I booked a flight back home, but it's a no-go."

"Ah! Come back after the Ullambana Festival is over?" Ah-yi wailed.

"Why don't you ask the other boys?"

"Takashi is going with his family, Saigawa is going with his girlfriend, and everyone else has an appointment too..."

"How pitiful." He expressed deep sympathy.

"By the way," Ah-yi lowered her voice as she walked into the school building and changed into her indoor shoes, "isn't Nishimura in your class? Why don't you two chat? Don't you know each other?"

"I've spoken a few words, but they're not familiar."

"subtle……"

"Did Nishimura tell you about me?" Walking through the corridor from the school building to the club building, the sound of Tamura's trumpet gradually became clearer.

I can hear it every morning when I walk through the corridor.

"I talked about you with Suzuka, and Suzuka asked me to ask."

"Bullmaster..." He recalled his performance in Class C and his communication with Nishimura, and didn't understand what they wanted to talk to him about.

"That's indeed what the Minister said..." Ah-yi sighed as he followed his words.

This is completely different from the club directors of clubs that focus on personal development, such as painting and piano, not to mention those clubs that don’t even know whether they meet the minimum number of members required to establish a club.

The leader of the wind band has too many things to take care of.

There are meetings every day. Each section has a group leader, and the department head and group leader also have separate meetings.

If a club member disagrees with the advisor's decision, she needs to convey it, and she also has to deal with conflicts between members of the wind band...

No wonder he always looked listless whenever he saw Suzuka, unless he was standing in front of the podium presiding over discussions or guiding tuning.

"After today's ensemble practice, I'll go ask Nishimura-san."

"Oh."

I went up to the top floor, threw the trumpet box into the trumpet classroom, and walked into the trumpet band with A'an.

Bluebird, the oboe player, was already practicing with the music, occasionally playing a melody and jotting down a few words in her sheet music. The classroom was quiet, save for a few other girls like Bluebird, each sitting in their own designated spot, memorizing the music.

But that doesn't mean that the other members haven't arrived yet. A considerable number of them habitually find a corner on campus where they won't disturb others and practice for a while before the morning meeting begins.

He put down the music book, took the trumpet, and walked out of the classroom.

Tamura's practice place is on a suspended corridor that is staggered in height from the corridor on the first floor.

The corridor connects the school building and the third floor of the community building.

From the fourth floor, you can walk onto the open-air corridor on the top of the corridor, which is equipped with guardrails on both sides, but the door leading to the side of the school building is locked - the third floor of the club building has home economics, handicrafts, and experimental classrooms, and the fourth floor only has the wind band, empty classrooms, and a utility room.

The open-air aisle scene is very popular among the members of the wind band. When Tamura sits in the trumpet classroom to practice, he often sees many flutists, French horn players and others standing in the same position to practice.

But during this time in the early morning, this place belongs to Tiancun.

He held the trumpet and waited at a distance for Tamura to stop playing and come a few steps closer.

"Play bars 55 to 67 of "Tomorrow Spring" once." Tamura looked at him and said.

He waited a moment.

"Thank you." Tamura stared at him for a few seconds and added.

Satisfied, he raised his trumpet.

He would play the piano once in front of Tamura, then listen to her play it again, and he would point out any problems, and they would repeat this process - most of the time he and Tamura spent together was spent repeating this process.

Every time he listens to him play, Tamura can indeed make progress.

This girl with long black hair has excellent sensitivity and perception in playing the instrument. She can quickly grasp the key points and highlights of a melody, and can play it wholeheartedly based on her own understanding.

In his spare time, he watched many ensemble videos of bands participating in wind instrument competitions, focusing on the trumpet parts.

Few of them can play the flute better than Tamura.

If we put aside his personal factors and judge his trumpet playing level from an objective perspective, he may be more skilled than Amano.

"One hundred and thirteen to one hundred and seventeen..."

"Mr. Tamura, can you play the piano?" He interrupted Tamura's rhythm in the gap between the two loops and asked suddenly.

"I recognize the musical scale." Tamura thought for a moment and shook his head.

"What a pity..." After listening to Amano's trumpet performance, he would think of her from time to time during practice.

Piano, trumpet, and composition - he looked up the encyclopedia, and badminton was because he had no idea how to play it, not because Amano was so good at the time - he couldn't even serve.

Although they are both in the field of music, it is really exaggerated that he is better than most of his peers in each of them.

"Why is it a pity?"

"If you can also play the piano, you can let me study your palms. Maybe I can discover some secrets about how to stimulate human potential."

"Palmistry?"

"Nothing..." He shook his head, picked up the trumpet again, and accompanied Tamura into the next practice cycle.

He seemed to understand why Amano grabbed his hand and looked at it again and again, and started making those inexplicable observations from the next day.

We even ate the same bread for breakfast, the same lunch, and asked him about his plans after school in the evening...

And they're distributing butter bread at the welfare home—I see…

"Inoue-san?"

"what's up?"

"Wrong."

"Ah... Let me blow it again."

After the morning meeting ended and before the practice of the project song began, he took the time to send a message to Amano -

[Inoue: Eating butter bread for breakfast doesn't improve your talent, it just makes you gain weight.]
"Girlfriend?" Asukai next to him suddenly spoke.

"What girlfriend?" He put away his phone.

"This is the first time I've seen you send a message in such a hurry, and it's almost Obon Festival. Your expression is a bit disgusting..."

"No."

"Tsk——" Asukai didn't believe it at all.

He simply stopped explaining.

When the consultant announced a twenty-minute break, he took out his cell phone and found that Amano had replied to him half an hour ago.

[Amano: It seems to be working.]
Baffling.

[Inoue: How does it work?]
[Amano: Inoue-san finally understood what I was observing today, and has taken another step towards evolving into Homo sapiens. Congratulations.]
"Chatting again? She's really not your girlfriend?" Asukai discovered something more interesting today, so she slipped out of the classroom during the break to chat with her friends.

"Can't you see it yourself?" he asked.

"I wouldn't peek into other people's conversations," Asukai said disdainfully. "The gossip you hear indirectly is the more interesting."

"Okay, okay... just take it as it is." He said perfunctorily and was hit on the head in retaliation.

It's really lawless. I don't know who is the leader of the trumpet section of the Beiying Wind Ensemble.

[Inoue: What about Amano-san, who lost to me twice? Ape-like man?]
[Amano: You can take it as it is.]
"..."

"Uh... Captain Inoue? What are you suddenly looking for? Are you suffering from some terminal illness that you can't survive without medicine? Ugh—don't die here, go to the corridor outside the classroom to find medicine..."

"So noisy." He searched for any corners on his body where small electronic devices might be hidden, and Asuai took the opportunity to make fun of him, chattering non-stop.

The words he had just said perfunctorily to Asuka were received on Line in the blink of an eye. It was hard not to wonder if Amano had attached a small eavesdropping device to him while he was not paying attention, in order to observe his daily life in more detail.

It’s really scary... such deep scheming.

"Hey...so what are you looking for? You've already searched this left pocket three times."

"Bug." He ended up finding nothing and could only look at the other people around him, passing over Tamura who was hard to suspect, and pointing directly at Asukai who had always had a lot of opinions about him.

"Bugging device?"

"I suspect the girl I was just chatting with planted a bug on me, but they didn't find it," he said seriously. "So now I'm starting to suspect you were the one who tipped me off."

"Hey! What does this have to do with me?" Asukai complained, "I don't even know who you're talking to!"

"Who knows..." He said in a sarcastic tone, imitating Asuai's previous tone.

"Ah! I think you're just trying to frame me! You're using this kind of tactics just because you're upset with me! How despicable!"

Asukai started shouting and screaming like this.

Tamura couldn't help but sigh.

He got his revenge and stopped teasing Asuai. He stood up and walked out of the wind band classroom.

(End of this chapter)