Chương 18: 018

Closing the door behind him and stashing the sketchbook inside his shoulder bag he went straight towards the music room this time around.

It was already nearly 17:15 pm. He had to hurry to get some practicing done before the building closed

Sure, the school building was open until 20:00 pm on weekdays. But he was sure enough about not wanting to stay until then.

At least his schedule today slowly would come close to a finish.

1 hour of French, 1 hour of Math. 2 horrifying hours of Science, and 2 hours of a rather lax computer science class before having a break for an hour sure kept him busy.

The two other hours of classes were not even noticed at first until he spent a little more than an hour in the art room.

He could feel some tiredness accumulating inside him. His body slowly wanted to take a break that refilled its batteries. Maybe not purely physical but his mind was nearly drained.

But the moment he was finally inside the music room, let him feel a little bit refreshed. Now he could really relax a little bit until the day would come to an end.

Luckily not every day was jam-packed with so many lectures. Otherwise, he would really question his endurance in keeping this up.

There was still homework and shit to worry about after all as well. And his own stuff he was doing on the side notes...

He wondered about why life is so tiring when you aim for greatness. Well, he was crying about spilled milk.

Not taking his surroundings much into consideration, he went straight to a certain spot on the small stage that was built inside the room.

There he shook his head free from negative thoughts as soon as he sat down and touched the surface of a familiar instrument he grabbed from its resting space.

The guitar in his embrace, an electric one mind you, soon started to softly ring out in a melodious symphony.

Since he mostly ignored everything around him, Jack didn't even notice how the others close by suddenly stared at him when he performed his play.

He didn't even notice the female music teacher had tried talking to him at first.

But when she just saw him being so concentrated on his own task and performing so well with the instrument, she just let him be and watched on.

Not that she could talk back much by the loudness of the guitar that was strengthened by the amplifier now.

Jack just started to play a calming lofi song to relax and drown himself in music. It was also a way to get used to the guitar as well.

His fingers started to hurt a little at the start when pressing down the chords but that pain soon numbed down and his flow became better until he started to play different songs.

The first melody he managed to perform near-perfectly without much hassle was called *Prisoner - Old Song From My Childhood*.

It was another relaxing song and when he finished this song, he saw a microphone stand and found out its power was turned on.

So taking this opportunity he stood up from the chair, strapped the guitar around his body, and started to play in another beat while approaching the mic.

When reaching a certain point of his new melody he even started to sing as well.

"We passed upon the stairs~~"

"We spoke of was and when~~"

"Although I wasn't there~~"

"Oh no, not me~~"

After finishing this iconic song he breathed out and closed his eyes for a moment before reopening them and seeing the students all look at him with wide eyes.

Jack chuckled which went through the microphone as well.

"Well, looks like I went a little bit overboard. Hi there, everyone. I hope I wasn't too bad of a singer."

[After collecting real experiences of Host's old skill with a guitar, a reevaluation of your skill occurred. Guitar skill updated to 27/50. Singing increased by 6. Please proceed with other instruments as well.]

Jack's corner of the mouth twitched lightly with a wry smile. So doing air guitar was just a shitty way to reproduce a skill, go figure.

But that his singing was still that bad, annoyed him greatly. At least it became an expert-level singing now. It was still a far stretch to reach a sellable voice, though.

Not to mention that his guitar skill was only in the masterful range. Hopefully, his guitar skill overshadowed most of his bad singing in the first place.

Come to think, it made it rather weird knowing that his drawing skill was on an extraordinary level. Looks like the zone moment was not something to joke about.

And it clearly meant something to reach 30 points in a skill....The painting sure must have been a great one then.

'Actually, I think I blanked out a little bit when painting it. Why are there so many moments of zoning out when I expect it the least? Make it happen when I do music, please.'

What he didn't expect now was someone actually clapping their hands. That brought Jack looking over to a woman with a heavy shade of brown skin.

She had dark brown hair styled into a cornrow at the top that ended in a loose ponytail at the back of her head.

Her body was well endowed in both chest and waist sections. Clearly, the most desirable proportions for an African American woman like her, to say the least.

"Well, done in your performance. You carried yourself really well with that raspy voice. A splendid interpretation of the last song as well. Though next time please include your fellow students in it as well, alright?" The woman said with a big grin.

"Right, we should introduce ourselves. I'm Melody Dewitt. The teacher here in the music class. You are probably the student a lot of people talk about. Looks like some rumors are warranted?"

Jack raised a brow. Are those rumors starting to get even worse the longer he stayed here? He nodded to her words anyway.

"Right, I'm called Jack Frost, Ms. Dewitt. And I will keep it in mind to include the others in my next performance. I was just a little bit too focused on this. I guess I had to let out some stress somehow."

Then he walked back to place the guitar back on its stand.

"No, no, keep going." Melody saw him wanting to stop and just waved him on. "Here, let's make this a little bit fun. Tyrone get on the drums, Annie you take the keyboard, and Julia you get the bass."

Three other students came forward to the stage and manned the corresponding instruments.

What surprised him was that Annie was actually in the music club. Surprise, surprise. She seemed to have a sort of musical vein.

The other two students were an African American guy that totally screamed ghetto from his clothing style and a black-haired girl that looked rather normal. Go figure when you compare the one with the other.

'Could that be one of the rappers? Looks like on at least. But he is using the drums?' Jack just made his own conclusions at that point.

Ms. Dewitt then went ahead and rummaged inside her desk.

"Ah, here it is. I hope you can read notes, Jack." Ms. Dewitt came back and placed some papers in front of him on a note stand and also did the same for the others.

Jack just looked at the notes and struck some of them to figure out what song this was. Surprisingly he knew exactly what this was after a short try.

"No problem here. But why is the song name not on the paper and how come there are some new parts?" He asked nonchalantly while staring at the notes.

"It's actually a little bit of a revisioned version of the song that I readjusted on a sidenote. I didn't put the name on it since I'm not sure if it deserves to be named after the original. There was no keyboardist in the original after all. And I nearly forgot. Do you need the lyrics?" Ms. Dewitt chuckled lightly and asked him before she went down to give them space.

"Nah, I will manage. Alright then...and 1 and 2...1, 2, 3" Jack looked at the others that were to perform with him and started it all with a simple beat to let the others also adjust their speeds.

Surprisingly the keyboard part was new to Jack but it fit right into the song.

Looks like his music teacher ain't half bad to improvise and add new stuff to existing songs. Not that it was hard but some songs just didn't mash well with certain sounds.

"Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha~ Thunder...thunder... thunder....thunder!"

The makeshift band that was thrown together performed actually very well considering they played together for the first time.

And this song was the first real trial of pain for Jack since it involved getting into those pitches with his voice.