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

Chapter 36 Let’s imagine their future while on a date
After returning to his room from the mustache staff room, he checked Line again a few hours later and received a message that he should not miss.

[Sakurai: That's right! Kimura-san and Kato-san both passed the preliminary round.]
[Sakurai: Now I can focus on practicing the piano piece for the official competition.]
So Xiao Shi was the first choice? Then wouldn't the extra 3,000 points he spent on upgrading his performance have been wasted?

He should have thought of it earlier, after all it was a competition for the high school group.

It's understandable that the shortest piece in a small competition is three minutes long, but how could a competition with hundreds of people participating in the preliminary rounds allow contestants to leave the stage early after playing for only two or three minutes in the main competition...

[Inoue: Is it too late to start practicing now?]
[Sakurai: No way! I started practicing in the spring, at the beginning of this semester.]
[Sakurai: It's just that for this competition, the preliminary repertoire wasn't announced until two weeks beforehand, giving the contestants a limited two weeks to practice before taking the assessment.]
[Inoue: If I happen to draw something I've practiced...]
[Sakurai: That's just good luck~]
[Sakurai: Fortunately, the rules of most competitions are still normal—as long as the sponsors and organizers don't have some sudden inspiration.]
He calculated in his mind how many bowls of Family Ramen he could buy with 3,000 points.

You can eat it every night for a whole year and still not spend all the money.

[Inoue: What is Kimura-san's piano piece for the official competition?]
[Sakurai: Polonaise in F-sharp minor]
[Inoue: Got it. ]
[Sakurai: Kimura-san studied this piece with Igarashi-sensei for quite some time.]
[Sakurai: If Inoue-san isn't familiar with it, there's no need to force yourself... It would be a huge help to have a tuner adjust the piano in the hobby club classroom.]
The phone screen displayed a message that Sakurai was thinking about him.

The product purchase page popped up in front of him after the system completed the valuation.

At this moment, he had a clearer understanding of the difficulty of the task of "helping Amano teach."

Related products:

Polonaise in F-sharp minor, Op. 44, Piano Performance – 5000 points (Proficient) / 12000 points (Fully Mastered)

[Points balance: 2500 points]

Just the performance at level 3 alone is already priced at the price of Xiao Shi's level 5.

If everything went smoothly, he could complete tomorrow's mission, which would only be enough to buy the fully mastered piece of music...

[Inoue: Just in case.]
[Inoue: Kimura-san chose this song for both the preliminary and final rounds?]
[Sakurai: Only someone as freakish as Sou-chan would prepare a piece of music of this difficulty for both the preliminary and final rounds, right?]
He typed the song title into Google and scanned the performance records with audio and video to see the length of the song.

Depending on the treatment, the performance duration ranges from seven and a half minutes to twelve minutes.

Then find a piano competition to be held on the weekend after next, and the maximum time limit is 10 minutes.

Judging from Kimura's level of rhythm handling when playing Xiao Shi, there is not only a risk of overtime, but also the possibility of the whole piece collapsing because of his desire to catch up with the lagging rhythm.

I hope that the knowledge that Igarashi taught Kimura before he was hospitalized was enough, and that she still remembers it all...

When I woke up early in the morning on the weekend, the sky was gloomy, there was no wind, and the air was so stuffy that it was hard to breathe.

Takeda bought bread early and still insisted on taking him to the park for a run.

In the last half lap, it finally started to rain.

Cool raindrops fell scattering like an advance guard, landing on collars, on treetops, on the caterpillar-like amusement facilities arranged in a semicircle, and on the once calm river surface...

In just ten seconds, the main combat forces followed closely behind and came pouring in.

Soon everything in the park was wet, including him and Takeda.

"What a nice rain!" Instead of being soaked, Takeda's mood was ruined. Instead, he cheered happily and ran faster.

She ran uphill, past the bench, past the crabapple tree, completing the final half lap before stopping in front of the bench where they had left their belongings. She grabbed the umbrella she'd brought in case of rain, opened it with a swish, and took a step closer to him, draping it over their heads.

"Rain! I haven't seen it for a long time. I thought there was no rainy season this year!" Takeda happily turned the umbrella.

He opened his umbrella, and Takeda ignored him and ran to the open space where he usually practiced breathing, turning around twice in the rain with the umbrella.

"Like rain?" he couldn't help asking.

"I like it very much! Don't you like it?" Takeda stopped.

“I like snow.”

"I like Xue, too, but I can't see her now." Takeda's hair was soaked, and her bangs clung limply to her smooth forehead. Her shirt and pleated skirt were both dark, so even if they got wet, her underwear wouldn't show through.

He picked up the messenger bag that Takeda had abandoned on the bench, crossed the runway and walked to Takeda's side.

"A lot of people find it troublesome to get rid of mold during the rainy season, but I absolutely love it," Takeda said as he took the messenger bag and walked toward the park exit. "Getting rid of mold is just general cleaning, so how much trouble can it be? It only rains every two or three days for one month each year."

"Sometimes clothes won't dry properly, right?" He didn't have a good impression of the rainy season.

"We have an iron, and if that doesn't work, there's a dryer. There's always a way!" Takeda disagreed.

"There is always a way." He repeated it in Takeda's tone, and couldn't help but feel admiration.

If he had even half of Takeda's energy, he wouldn't be considered by the system as just wasting his time.

"What?! Don't imitate my way of talking." Takeda turned around, walked backwards, looked at him and ordered.

"Okay..." He gave in and changed the subject. "So, Takeda-san, I'll follow your instructions today. But it's raining heavily now, where are we going?"

"There's no need to worry about that!" Takeda turned back, still walking ahead of him with a brisk pace. "I've already figured out where to go and what to do. It doesn't matter how heavy the rain is."

"It doesn't matter if it rains heavily?" he asked.

"It doesn't matter if there is another strong wind and blows down all the trees in Tokyo!" Takeda turned around again, looked at him, and couldn't help smiling.

Afterwards, the two of them each held an umbrella and braved the heavy rain, with Takeda leading the way and him following behind.

I was led into an old residential area where most of the shops were closed.

"I've been here many times," Takeda said, looking around from under his umbrella. "This area is far from the trains, the noisy tracks, and there's no large construction like apartment buildings around. It's definitely a good place to rent."

“…” He fell silent.

From this perspective, it seems that Takeda had already made the plan to share the house as early as the first time he heard that he was planning to move out of the boarding house.

(End of this chapter)