Chapter 69: Composition
[Edited by: deathbricks, Arthur300000, ArchmageNaoki, and Bunny ]
"200 kilograms!" The sudden proclamation from the scar faced guy, named Mr. Ivanovich, made me almost fall off my chair. The show named Saturday Night with Bahamut seemed to be very random. I thought it was just a normal game show with those four people on the long table over there guessing my abilities. However, just a moment ago they had me arm wrestling with them. Of course, I beat them all and acquired 40 points from that match. I didn't know what those points were for, though. Now they just randomly decided that it would be alright to guess my weight.
"Are you an idiot!? Look at her! She would be only 40 kg. Max." Mr. Holderman, the burly guy, gave the group of mad people a voice of reason. I already knew from my everyday measurement after I came out from the bathroom each morning that it's 37 kg. One kilogram more than when I arrived in this world. But I can't help it, my mom’s cooking is the best. Anyway, they forbid me to tell them the answer.
"But you see, 400 kg of grip force, her impossibly strong arm strength, she would need a lot of weight to back it up!" Mr. Ivanovich argues.
"Her strength has already surpassed what a human is capable of. Maybe her muscle tissue structure is different from normal people. So, there is no point using common sense to judge her there." Ms. Irene, the zombie girl, told them. From what Skynet gathered about her, Ms. Irene was a human. I mean she still was, but due to her expertise in necromancy, she swapped a lot of her body parts to make herself stronger. That explained why she was the strongest in the group, to the point that I struggled to beat her in the arm wrestling match.
The argument about my weight went on for quite a while. I fidgeted around as I was waiting for their answer. Well, because of the surprising amount of spotlights and my too fluffy clothes making me feel too warm, I couldn't help but sweat a lot in my private places. I wanted to flap my shirt and skirt to vent the air out, but I decided against it after I looked at the cameraman who kept pointing his camera at me. Is this a new kind of torture?
In the end, the vote was cast in favor of me being lightweight, not unanimously though, Mr. Ivanovich still stubbornly proclaimed that I must be around 200 kilograms. And of course, when I step on the weighing machine to show them, it read... 38 kilograms... damn, I gained some more weight again.
The conversation veered off after they asked about the plushie backpack I kept holding on my lap. I introduced Skynet to them as my personal AI assistant. She giddily hogged all the attention afterward with her fluent social skills.
During this time, I gave her permission to talk about me freely, except what I did in private of course. It was easier to have her explain things about me to them than having me talking myself, so I thought that it would be alright. However, as people kept laughing at her jokes. She began to twist my heroic deeds like slaying invincible giant and rescue damsel in distress into a joke instead. Most of them I couldn't deny though...
[A-n-y-w-a-y, Skynet, you got guts, huh?] As she kept using me as her joke material, I slowly reduced my Magicka supply to her to subtle protest.
[Ow, ow, ow, Mistress, I'm sorry. The supply! Please don't cut the supply!] “I’m sorry everyone! Actually mistress Kuro is a kind hearted person who has no ulterior motives at all!” She begged and reversed her statements. We quickly reconciled with her energy supply fully restored.
The change in Skynet’s tone seemed to be too noticeable to the audience. I think she overdid it with her praise. It caused everyone's face turned into something like: "Kuro surely did something to Skynet." or "Poor Skynet, please don't be too rough on her." ... I had no comebacks for that, so I pretended to not understand their expression.
"W-well, Ms. Velvori, other than combat-related abilities, do you have any special talents?" The question caught me off guard. A special talent, huh? How about bra and panties trick? I could fold them into many useful things. No, those talents couldn't be shown in a family-friendly program. Cooking? Compared to everyone around me, I wouldn't call my microwave abilities a talent. Was there anything I could do without relying on my Skyrim's perks and skills?
"Uhm, music... I guess..." I replied back, unsure of myself. While I was still young, my family forced me to learn a lot of things, music included. Still, I wasn't sure that my musical ability would be enough to be a show material.
"Oh~ I uncovered a ladylike side of our heroine. SOOOO! What do you play? Singing? Bonewind? String?" ... What do you mean ladylike? Weren’t there also a lot of men that play in an orchestra?
"... a piano... perhaps." I replied. The piano was the instrument that I trained the longest with in my past life. I could claim that I was a bit better than any average joe who trained since childhood. However, just a bit better isn't enough to land a job in this kind of industry.
"Alright everyone, tonight, we will hear Ms. Velvori’s first musical debut. You can vote for her at the channel shown at the bottom of the screen, the winner of the year will get a grand special prize." Mr. Bahamut proclaimed towards the camera and Sarah or Sasha led me to a beautiful, white, grand piano which suddenly appeared at the center of the stage.
I sat on the piano chair, sweating bullets, wondering which mistake I made to get myself into this. Damn my stupid big mouth. The first music that came to my mind was Rob Cantor's 'Shia LaBeouf'. However, I discarded that line of thought immediately. It required me to sing, and it would be troublesome to explain what Hollywood meant. Also, mentioning a cannibalistic practice might also be bad for a family-friendly program. While deciding, my hand brushed against a piano key, and the distinct Re rang from its string. I jolted back in panic.
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
"Relax Kuro. Take a deep breath." Mr. Bahamut encouraged me while making his funny stupid face. I took a deep breath and tried other keys to make sure that there were no defective keys. All of them sounded beautiful and perfectly tuned. I wondered how much it would this cost here, it would be about half million dollars to get one of this quality in my old world. An outsider who brought musical instruments to this world did a very good job it seemed.
As I finished checking everything up and calmed down my mind to a reasonable level, I decided to play a piece called "Für Elise" from Ludwig van Beethoven. It was a popular composition because it was easy to play, easy to the point that anyone with a little practice could play it. Also, it sounded unbelievably nice compared to its easiness.
My piano instructor used to say that, Mr. Beethoven planned to woo a girl with this piece, however, it ended with an embarrassing incident instead. So, I internally named this composition as "2D girls are the best No. 3" in memorial of another tragic love.
The melody flowed surprisingly easier than what I anticipated. I thought I would stumble a bit due to lack of practice, but that didn't seem to be the case. My hands were a lot smaller, but as I played on, it made me think that my old hands were nothing but oversized, awkward, and clumsy piles of flesh instead.
My small fingers agilely jumped from one note to another. Somehow I felt that I could play a lot faster and do a lot of things that were previously impossible for me. My mind could easily keep up with its pace in the metronome-like precision while I still had a lot of focus left to gauge how hard I wanted to press each key according to the mood of the music. To be honest, I imagined a scene of me wooing a big breasted catgirl in my mind.
The people in the audience seats cheered loudly as I struck the last four notes simultaneously. My sister on the front row requested for an encore loudly and others began to follow her lead. I looked at Mr. Bahamut and he nodded while smiling.
Nah, they credited me too much. It's the piano that made it sound good. But since they want one more song, maybe I would try something that I struggled to do so in my past life. It’s called "Sonata for Two Pianos in D major, K. 448" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Of course, there was a lot more difficult pieces out there, but this one was my utmost limit in my previous life. It was usually played by two people, but due to I being an ultimate loner, I modified it a bit to play alone.
The tune was supposed to be a gallant, light, brilliant, yet refined, but when I showed off my modified piece to my family in my past life, they said it was dreadful. Hah, how could I compare to my elder brother who was excellent at everything?
The play went on for quite a long time, it was almost half an hour of me sitting there, lost in trance. There were also some parts where the music slowed down and my mind started wandering around to a lot of different things. 'This is strange, how can I remember all these notes?', 'It's already past noon, won't they feel hungry?', 'Why do people in the back keep increasing?', 'Hmm, where can I buy some hentai manga? Skynet, do you have any idea? I need them to, you know, have a good dream. It was from the horoscope, you see...'
The crowd cheered loudly as the play ended. There were a lot of new faces who came later, and they all seemed to be enjoying themselves. Mr. Bahamut also complimented me that I played even better than a professional that he invited in the past. I doubted that was the case, to compare me to a pro, that was a wide gap that I would never able to cross.
They thanked me as the filming ended. I wanted to ask what all those points I gained were for, but I didn't even have time to do so. The shooting staff swamped me and asked for an autograph and shook my hand instead. Some of them even asked me to sign their shirts... It was embarrassing that my autographs were just me writing my name on it. Maybe I should try to practice to do it artfully like what I saw on TV.
.
.
.
It was well past afternoon when I was restored back to normal, free from the over the top hairdo, cosmetics and the much too fluffy dress. Because I requested them to undo everything, I became one of the last people who left the changing room, in a very hungry condition.
"How was your first debut?" Ms. Irene who came out at the same time with me asked. However, I just stared back at her flabbergasted. I knew her face and scent, she was surely the Ms. Irene I just met but her purple tinted skin and those stitch marks were all gone. Now she was just a plain looking girl with a lot of freckles, wearing a thick black rimmed glasses.
"Oh, don't you also have your disguise?" She guessed what I thought and looked pointedly at my cat ears and tail.
"Yeah, but aren’t you an expert in necromancy? Can’t you swap your body parts around?" I looked at her, but all I could see was an everyday university girl.
"Yes, I could do all that, but the purple skin and stitches are just stereotypical things. You see, any plastic surgeon could make an older woman look like a firefighter stallion. So, there is no reason at all that an accomplished necromancer would have to look like a gothic, zombie loli. It just that appearance was better received by the audience, so my manager had asked me to use that." She ranted to me, clearly discontent about her situation.
"So, how was it, your first debut?" She went back to her original question.
"It was stressful... and uncomfortable." I tried to be honest.
"Your private parts are sweating heavily, right?" I was shocked at her directness, but she was right. The elevated temperature and my nervousness, made me fidget around all the time.
"You should wear sports underwear." She added.
"Why?" Confused, I asked. Won’t those thick fabrics make the situation worse?
"Because of the moisture absorption enhancement." She rolled her eyes. "It only works on densely woven fabrics, so your favorite design wouldn't have it." She looked pointedly at me. Damn, see-through and laced panties wouldn't have this function, huh? That explained why my bear pattern panties were so comfortable. Wait, when did she see what I’m wearing?
"Anyways, the ones that have that enchantment will have a picture of three droplets and a line cross over it on its tag. So, you can look for it the next time you go shopping." I thanked her and talked about lingeries a bit more until I found my sister and Ms. Nyatalle. We exchange our contact addresses before we parted ways. From a few minutes of discussion, I believe we could become good friends. Comrades in panties, I mean.
I asked Ms. Nyatalee to take me home. I was hungry, but above that I felt tired. I decided to eat in her car and hit the bed early. However, because we didn't have to hurry anymore, Ms. Nyatalee pointed out a lot of places of interest during the walk to the car. There were glass windows along the corridor where we could see a broadcast room where the weather forecast was already in progress. However, what the weather forecast girl said was gibberish. There was no way a storm of flying snow rabbits would come, right? ... right?
[Mistress, incoming call, an unknown number.] Skynet notified me while I was still trying to wrap my head around the concept of a storm of fluffy animals. I selected the green accept button on my vision.
[Kuro... Help... *Sob*] A cry for help from Cocoa came through.