“A pot of wine among the flowers, drinking alone with no companion; raising my cup to ask the azure sky, what year is this tonight? With the sound of firecrackers, another year is gone, spring breeze…”
Xia Yu tapped Kong Hanyue on the head and looked at her, “Speak in a way people understand.”
“We are a small, nearly extinct school, the Hua School, there’s no ‘jian’.”
Kong Hanyue began her explanation earnestly: “The Southern School is relatively unique in musical scales, with shifting tones, mostly lyrical pieces. The Northern School often uses the middle finger for pressing strings, with long glissando intervals, producing a lingering and melodious sound.”
“What about the Hua School then?” Xia Yu asked.
“A lot of techniques,” Kong Hanyue replied.
Seeing Xia Yu’s puzzled expression, Kong Hanyue continued, “That means many techniques. I won’t even mention the fast four dots, plucking with two strings, or lifting the string; there are even more difficult ones.”
“…Is it because there are too many techniques that nobody learns this school anymore?” Xia Yu already understood the situation.
“The techniques can be learned with effort. What’s more critical is that too many techniques distract one’s focus, leading to poor rhythm control. Only those who practice diligently or are exceptionally talented can master it. Plus, there are those jealous of us who spread rumors that we focus too much on showy skills rather than emotions!” Kong Hanyue said angrily.
After hearing this, Xia Yu already had thoughts of switching schools.
But he just thought about it.
“Let’s move on to the next piece.”
Xia Yu stayed with Kong Hanyue until ten o’clock at night, then took the last subway train back home.
“Big brother, you’re back?”
As soon as he entered the house, Xia Yu saw Youxue. The girl was sitting on the sofa watching TV.
There wasn’t much worth watching on TV; she was waiting for Xia Yu.
Regarding his outing in the evening, Xia Yu used the excuse of practicing for the competition.
“Go to sleep, no need to wait for me.”
After Youxue entered her room, Xia Yu put down his backpack and went to the bathroom.
He finished washing in five minutes, turned off the lights, and went back to his bedroom.
Five minutes later, Youxue opened her bedroom door, tiptoed to the bathroom, and sniffed Xia Yu’s coat.
“Perfume smell!”
…
On Saturday, Xia Yu woke up at eight o’clock, finished washing up, and logged into An Siyao’s body at 9:30.
Now, he already had 4,700 game points; it was time to continue learning piano.
He used the 4,700 game points to buy nine double experience cards, leaving 380 remaining.
“Are we going to continue learning ‘Praise the Sun’ today?” An Siyao asked.
“Yeah.” Xia Yu lifted the piano lid and began practicing.
“Praise the Sun” was a relatively rebellious piece. Its feature was that it was slow—very slow.
But slowness wasn’t easy to grasp. Just like riding a bicycle, the slower it goes, the harder it is to balance. Similarly, playing slowly makes it harder to maintain balance.
At ten times the speed, with only an hour left until the eight-hour session ended, Xia Yu finally completed the entire piece.
After practicing for another half hour, Xia Yu stopped using the remaining half hour of the experience card, closed the piano lid, and went to the bedroom.
The remaining time was supposed to be for chatting with An Siyao.
But neither of them liked small talk. The topics they were interested in had already been exhausted over the past many days, so today, unusually, they fell into silence.
Since there was nothing much to talk about, they decided not to force conversation; doing so would only add pressure.
Letting out a yawn, Xia Yu opened An Siyao’s laptop and started browsing randomly.
He was looking at funny netizens’ memes on the forum when suddenly a pop-up window appeared below.
Even the upper class couldn’t deal with these pop-up windows?
Xia Yu moved the mouse to the top right corner of the pop-up and glanced at it. It turned out not to be an advertisement but a news pop-up.
His index finger was about to click when he noticed another intriguing headline.
“The First District-wide High School Musical Instrument Competition Has Officially Been Scheduled for November”
It was the same as what the principal had said before: the competition would start in November and the finals would be in December.
The schedule wasn’t tight; there was still some time left, so no problem.
While Xia Yu was using An Siyao’s body, although An Siyao couldn’t control it, she could still receive the same sensory feedback as Xia Yu experienced.
Therefore, after Xia Yu briefly glanced at the competition headline, An Siyao also saw it.
“Are you interested in the musical instrument competition?” the girl asked.
Xia Yu thought for a second. Since he had glanced at it, it would be hard to deny and say he wasn’t interested.
“A little,” Xia Yu said.
“Will you participate?” An Siyao asked again.
“I can’t participate,” Xia Yu lied.
An Siyao didn’t suspect him. In her mind, the Xia Yu who could pressure the maid leader and remain calm in front of several strong guys couldn’t possibly still be a high school student.
“If I participate, can you see me?” she said.
“???”
Quietly removing his expectation of winning first place, Xia Yu casually said, “I can watch the replay, I hope this video can be preserved for ten years.”
“Eh, are you from ten years in the future?” An Siyao was surprised.
“Yeah.”
“What am I like in the future?”
“I died in a plane crash five years ago.”
“How could it be like this!” An Siyao was very upset.
She tried to save herself: “I haven’t died yet, so I can change the future, right? I won’t take planes anymore in the future!”
“That’s a good idea.”
After a few perfunctory words, Xia Yu inwardly blamed himself for not being able to resist looking at that news and also reflected on his prepared disguise to see if there was anything inappropriate.
He couldn’t let An Siyao not participate in the competition; that would be too deliberate.
After a minute, An Siyao’s voice rang out again: “You were just kidding me, right?”
“You just realized that?” Xia Yu expressed surprise.
“Don’t always bully me!” the girl protested weakly.
“Actually, I’m from a parallel world,” Xia Yu added.
“I don’t know which one is true,” An Siyao had already given up thinking, “Anyway, if I participate in that competition, you can see me, right?”
“Now I can already see you,” Xia Yu said.
“That’s not the same.” What An Siyao wanted was for Xia Yu to look at her with his real eyes.
After confirming that Xia Yu could see her, she decided to participate in this competition.
Xia Yu hesitated for a moment but didn’t say anything else.
In fact, he also wanted to meet this little silly girl in reality.
If she made it to the finals, they would definitely meet.
His disguise was well-prepared, wouldn’t draw attention, and posed very low risk.
Just that first place was completely out of the question.
But first place was too conspicuous anyway, so it was better not to aim for it.
At 5:30 PM, Xia Yu returned to his own body, and at this time, Tuoguan Yu had already finished his part-time job.
Taking out his phone, Xia Yu checked the date.
It was September 26th now, and there was only a month left until November.
After changing clothes in the locker room, Xia Yu walked toward Kong Hanyue’s house.
On the subway, due to the pushing from people behind, a boy about his age bumped into him.
“Sorry,” the boy said politely.
“It’s okay,” Xia Yu nodded, watching the boy sit down in an empty seat in the adjacent carriage.
He felt the boy looked somewhat familiar but couldn’t recall where he had seen him before.
Zhong Yunze, sitting in the neighboring carriage, didn’t recognize Xia Yu at all. He glanced at his phone and smiled.
Coming home suddenly, his mother would surely be very surprised.
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