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

Chapter 42: The Proxy War Between Psychopaths Is About to Begin
The lights in the piano hobby room were on, but there was no sound of piano.

All I could hear was someone practicing a certain melody over and over next door.

"No piano practice?"

He walked into the classroom and saw Kimura sitting by the window, holding a music sheet in his hand, wearing headphones in one ear, and muttering to himself.

Hearing his voice, she took off her headphones, shifted her gaze from the music sheet, looked up at him, and frowned.

"Isn't the second half your piano practice time?"

"I'm not here." He sat down in front of the piano and opened the lid. "You can leave the piano idle like this...where's the momentum you used to scold me for wasting my time?"

“A waste of time…?”

"So," he took out his phone, looked up and gave Kimura a polite smile, his words merciless, "that hard work you put on before was just for show, right?"

"No... No!" Kimura stood up from his chair and gritted his teeth, "And——"

"Money." He stretched out a hand and interrupted Kimura.

“…” Kimura handed over a 500 yen note and six 100 yen notes.

He reached out to take it and waved to it, meaning "You can go now."

After the silence lasted for a moment, footsteps towards the door were heard behind him.

He turned on the recording on his mobile phone, placed it on the piano stand, and before Kimura stepped out of the room, he played the first measure of the core statement of the Polonaise in F-sharp minor.

The footsteps stopped.

The melody continues to climb, from loose to tight, from weak to strong, expanding the interval, density, arc and thickness, and continuously improving the pitch range to the final peak.

Constantly forming thoughtful questioning motives and issuing indignant accusations.

He had not yet read the background of the composition of this piece of music, and had no idea who or what this accusation was directed at, but Lv.5's performance memory still allowed him to express this theme accurately.

From the 35th bar onwards, he thickened the harmony part in his right hand by an octave, and used a solid sixth-degree chord in his left hand, playing a stormy descending chromatic scale at the end of the phrase.

Reproduce the theme structure and raise the question again in a more intense and high-spirited manner.

Kimura unknowingly returned from the door and stood silently beside the piano.

The piano sound gradually progressed. Based on the first reappearance, he changed the rhythm of his left hand, interlacing it with the rhythm of his right hand, and presented the theme for the third time.

The exposition comes to an end, an interlude is played, and the piece transitions to the middle part.

This 326-bar piece is naturally much more complex than the previous etude in terms of the emotions it contains, the images and stories told through the notes.

Although it is called "dance music", the melody is extremely majestic and passionate, but it is not like a marching song that only charges and inspires.

From the middle section starting from bar 127, a melodious and graceful singing melody is played more than once, appearing repeatedly, blending into the mood of hard work and struggle, which is memorable.

As the last paragraph came to an end, the piano club suddenly fell into silence.

He took out his phone and pressed the pause button, and the recording time froze at nine minutes and twenty-four seconds.

Excluding the time it takes to put down and lift his fingers to pick up the phone, it would take about nine minutes and twenty seconds to play the entire song according to the rhythm he just played.

Would it be better if it were faster?

At a small competition over the weekend, he overheard other contestants discussing that, assuming no mistakes were made, the overall pace was also an important criterion for scoring.

"Why..." Kimura, who hadn't spoken for a long time, lowered his head, his voice trembling, "Why did you play...why did you play this song? Why this one?"

"Is there a problem?" He saved the recording and sent it to Takeda, asking without raising his head.

After learning at noon that he could play the piano and had won first place in a competition, Takeda insisted on hearing him play a piece. If he didn't record a new piece and send it to her, she would skip her extracurricular training and come to the piano club to cause trouble.

"You knew I'd chosen this piece for the competition, right? You came here just to teach me a lesson, right?"

Kimura clenched his fists and asked with his head down, as if he was on the verge of losing control of his emotions.

"How long do you think it will take me to practice this piece to this level..." He watched the audio upload progress bar quickly load from 0% to 100%, put down his phone, pressed a few accents casually, and looked at Kimura, "A few days? A week or two? A few months? I knew you when I was practicing this piece, and I knew you were going to use this piece in the competition? You think too highly of yourself..."

"I..." Kimura opened his mouth and was speechless.

After a long while, he continued, "To be able to play at this level, you must have a piano at home, right? You must have a great piano teacher teaching you, right?! Why would you hire a tuner to fix a piano that's been broken at school just because you don't have one? How is that possible?!"

She raised her head and stared straight into his eyes, her eyes slightly red and tears welling up in the corners of her drooping eyes.

"At least it's not because of you." He spread his hands helplessly, hinting, "That girl next door, will she be participating in the same competition as you?"

Fortunately, Kimura didn't know that his hometown was in the countryside of Tottori, where the train would be delayed for half an hour because of a deer or a hare, and he didn't know that he had been living in a boarding house since coming to Tokyo.

Otherwise, it is hard to imagine what her mental state would be like.

"...Kato?" Kimura was stunned by the question, and his emotions, which were on the verge of collapse, fell back down.

"Who cares who she is... is she going to participate in the competition?"

"Yes……"

"That's all." It was past six o'clock, and he stood up and prepared to leave.

"What..." Kimura stared at his actions in a daze, then suddenly came to his senses, reached out and grabbed his sleeve.

"Any more questions?" He stopped and turned around to look at Kimura.

"Play it again..." She squeezed out the characters from between her teeth and whispered.

"What?" He was a little surprised.

According to him, Kimura would hesitate for at least one night, and only muster up the courage to ask him when he heard him playing the piano again tomorrow afternoon.

"Play it again!" she shouted.

"...Want to learn?" He smiled noncommittally.

"You want me to get a higher ranking than Kato in the competition, right?" Kimura gritted his teeth. "It doesn't matter who I am or who Kato is. You just want to prove that Amano is not as good as you, right?"

"so?"

"Teach me." Kimura finally raised his head and looked at him straight.

The tears that had just been rolling in the corners of her eyes slipped down without her knowing when, leaving two tear marks, and her face turned red with shame.

There was a look of desperation in his eyes.

"Why?" he asked.

"Otherwise, I would definitely rank lower than Kato in the competition," she replied.

"Who asked this..." He still remembered the piano music on the Amano stage and the cheers and applause that resounded throughout the concert hall.

"I want to ask,"

He couldn't help but look into Kimura's eyes, wanting to see even a trace of something similar to what was contained in Amano's piano playing in her eyes.

"Why did you play this piece?"

(End of this chapter)