Chapter 71 71 - Suspicious look
The song was written very quickly, but I didn't want to send it to Selena right away.
If I sent her such a good song just a few minutes after she told me the story I needed to do, it would look very strange.
So I would leave it until tomorrow or the next day.
"Noah, Dad asked if we wanted to go to a restaurant for lunch!" Ethan excitedly entered the room.
Surprised, I nodded. Even though I liked cooking with my mom, it was great to have a day to rest and eat different food with a different flavor.
"Yes, we will." I smiled back. "I'll just take a shower then."
But when I got up to take a shower, Ethan stopped me. "Olivia's in the bathroom..."
Hearing that, my stomach rumbled and I sat back down on the bed.
"How long has she been in the bathroom?" I asked.
"Five minutes..." He replied.
Hearing that made me feel even more desperate and my stomach rumbled even more.
I always showered before her when I got back from training, but now that I woke up a little later on the weekend, I remembered why the old Noah didn't like to shower after Liv, because she took too long...
Since she had just entered the bathroom and didn't come out until she was completely dressed, I had an hour to spare until the bathroom was empty...
"Hey Champ, do you want to learn a song I thought of for you to play?" I asked Ethan about an idea that had popped into my head.
I was trying to think of a song to teach him to play on the ukulele, and I was debating between two songs, Over The Rainbow or Toxic.
While Toxic was a very good song, the words BoyWithUke used in the lyrics were too difficult for Ethan, so I thought Over The Rainbow would be a better choice.
"Really?!" Ethan asked excitedly. "Yeah, I want to learn!"
Picking up his ukulele, I began to play the melody of Over The Rainbow.
Since it was a simple song, the melody was also very simple. The biggest difficulty for Ethan would be the part where he had to sing the song, because while his talent for playing the ukulele was very high, I didn't know about his singing talent.
??????
Somewhere over the rainbow...
Way up high...
And the dreams you dream...
Once in a lullaby, oh...
??????
As I sang the beginning of the song, I saw Ethan smile.
Not only were the lyrics simple, but they fit him very well, with things he knows and things he could have written himself.
??????
Somewhere over the rainbow...
Bluebirds fly...
And the dreams you dream...
Dreams really do come true-ooh-ooh...
Someday I'll wish upon a star...
Wake up where the clouds are far behind me...
Where troubles melt like lemon drops...
High above the chimney tops, that's where...
You'll find me, oh...
??????
The sparkle in his eyes when he heard the lyrics made me smile back.
Unlike Toxic, which had lyrics complaining about how the singer's friends weren't real and that he didn't like friends like them, Over the Rainbow was a song about good things, so it was a much lighter and sweeter mood for Ethan.
After I'd finished playing the song, Ethan automatically came over to take the ukulele out of my hand and start playing as well.
Even without me explaining to him how to play the song, I looked at his little fingers and realized that even though he was struggling, he was on the right track to learning the song without me teaching him.
Of course, he saw my fingers and what notes I was using when I played, but just being able to do it on his own without me explaining every detail made me proud.
"Before you start practicing, let's go down to the basement." I said, making him nod and run down to the basement with the ukulele in his hand. "Watch the stairs!" I yelled.
As I walked through the living room, my father was sitting on the sofa watching a program about football.
"Good morning, Dad." I said as I walked by.
"Hey Champ, how was the show last night?" He asked looking at me excitedly.
"It was very good! We made $480 for the night and the audience loved it. From what Selena said, it won't be long before I go from being a Rank E artist to a Rank D artist, because some Rank D artists are having a hard time playing right after me." I laughed, causing him to nod proudly.
Come to think of it, it had been a while since I'd checked the popularity rankings.
When I arrived in the basement, Ethan was already practicing the ukulele, trying to sing the chorus of the song, which was the only part he remembered, and I pulled out my phone to check the rankings.
The last time I looked was shortly after I climbed to rank E, where I was in the top 50k of rank E, which wasn't so bad since there were more than hundreds of thousands of people in rank E.
What got me so high in such a short period of time was The Lazy Song, which grew non-stop and raised my rank at the same rate.
Now that Boyfriend Live has been released, I expected my rank to be even higher, but when I looked at the rank, I was shocked.
[BlackVelvet - 11,736th Rank E].
I was almost in the top 10k of Rank E!
Although it doesn't sound like much, I had passed almost 40k people in just a few weeks, which was an absurd growth!
The higher I got in the rankings, the harder it was to climb, but it really started to get hard after rank D, because now in rank E, the majority were still new musicians who hadn't been in the industry for more than 3 years, or older artists who were losing their popularity.
Turning my attention to Ethan, I began to help him with lyrics and how to improve his ukulele playing with my Teach skill, which increased his learning speed even more.
[Teach Lv 26
Effect: When teaching other people, as long as you know what you're teaching and what you intend to teach, the person has a 26% greater chance of understanding what you're explaining and increases the speed of learning that content by 26% during that learning session].
Not only did the skill give me the experience of someone who has been teaching for four and a half years, or 54 months if you count each level of the skill, which already brought the quality of my teaching to the level of a professional instructor, but it also gave Ethan a very powerful learning buff that increased his learning speed by 26%.
Now calculate that with his high talent for ukulele, the speed at which he improved was staggering.
Even for Sing, who wasn't as talented, the speed at which he learned was also very fast.
While we were practicing, Olivia finally finished getting ready and I went to take my shower, leaving Ethan to practice longer.
Since my shower was faster, I was ready in a few minutes.
Ethan was quick too, so we went out for lunch at a Chinese restaurant that had just opened.
The place was very nice, with nice decor, and the price wasn't expensive either.
As we ate and talked, I began to feel a strange sensation.
It was as if something was watching me.
When I looked around, I couldn't see anything, but the strange feeling didn't go away.
Even when I talked to my family, I still felt that something strange was there, and the feeling didn't go away...
After a while my family also realized that something was wrong and came to ask me if everything was all right.
"Everything is fine, I just have a strange feeling..." I said, trying to pretend that nothing was wrong.
[+1 WIS]
When I realized that my skill had also increased, I became even more alarmed.
If I felt something was wrong and my skill increased by one level, it only showed that I was right.
As my Wisdom gained another point, the feeling became clearer, as if a sixth sense within me was beeping stronger and stronger.
What is going on here?' I asked myself as I looked in a certain direction.
To my surprise, when I looked in that direction, I saw a pair of eyes staring at me in shock before looking away to hide it.
But confirming that there was indeed someone looking at me, I began to stare to understand who it was.
As far as I could see, it was a girl who was also eating with her family.
In her group were her, her younger sister who looked a bit familiar, her father and her mother.
As I looked in that direction, Ethan noticed my gaze and saw the girl's little sister staring at me.
"Isabella!" He yelled as he waved his hand.
Hearing Ethan's call, the little girl looked around in confusion, but when she saw Ethan, she broke into a big smile and came running toward us.