Chapter 8: Older Brother

When Olivia left the room, a notification appeared in front of me.

[New Skill Unlocked]

[Hearth Voice Lv1

Effect: When you sing something that resonates with your heart, you increase the chance that the listener's heart will resonate with your song by 1%; this value is doubled for targets who have experienced something similar to the lyrics, as well as doubling the effect of resonating with the lyrics].

Looking at the effect of this skill, Olivia probably fell under the effect of this skill, and from her reaction, it also doubled the effect of the song's resonance on her...

Remembering how fragile she was, with so many tears in her eyes, the little bit of anger I'd felt towards her over the past few days for how she'd acted evaporated.

I know her attitude wasn't great, but I could see that maybe it was her way of defending herself, that she was crying like that, that her arrogant, narcissistic facade was hiding a very broken heart.

But my song opened up that defense and exposed that fragile, broken heart.

I stopped my cell phone from recording, leaving it to edit this song later, now I had to go and help Olivia.

Using the sleeve of my shirt to dry my tears, I walked slowly toward her room, looking around to make sure she wasn't anywhere.

When I arrived at her room, my mother was there, holding a basket of clothes with one arm while raising her other arm to knock on the door.

But her raised hand never touched the door and hung there for at least 30 seconds until I decided to intervene.

"Let me talk to her..." I said in a low voice, scaring her a little, but when she saw me, and especially when she saw my red eyes, her doubts arose.

"What happened, Noah? I think I saw her crying..." She asked worriedly.

Shaking my head, I know the last thing she wants to do right now is talk to my mom, but their relationship is something I can help her deal with slowly in the future.

Picking up my phone, I found the recording of the song I'd just made and handed it to her.

"She heard me sing a song I wrote...listen to this and I think you'll understand."

As she took the phone from my hand, the confusion on her face was obvious, but she trusted me and left with my phone in her hand while I went to her room to listen to the song.

-Knock Knock-

I knocked on her bedroom door, leaning against it to try to hear something inside.

Her room was silent for a few seconds until I heard a question.

"Did you give her the recording of the song to listen to?"

I could hear a kind of fear and anticipation in her voice.

"Yes, it will be good if she understands what the lyrics mean." I said in a low voice.

The room was silent for a few more seconds until I heard the sound of the door unlocking and someone running into the room.

Slowly opening the door, I saw Olivia huddled under the covers of the bed, covering her head, probably very embarrassed.

"Why did you give her that?! What am I going to do?" She asked a little anxiously.

I sat down next to her on the bed, put my hand where her head was and began to stroke it lightly.2

"You know it's for the best, even if it's hard to face it, but if she knows that what she's doing is hurting you, she'll be able to get better, won't she?" I said in the calmest voice I could muster.

She was silent for a few more seconds until she suddenly asked. "Since when?"

"What?" I was confused.

"Since when have you been watching me write this song?" She asked in a slightly offended tone, but it was good news that she didn't shy away from my hand stroking her head.

"I wasn't watching you to write a song, it was just that this week I was putting together the pieces of what was going on and I didn't know what to do with it... to try and start something I decided to put it into a song." I tried to explain it with the first thing that came to mind.

With her silence, maybe it worked?

"Do you think I'm wrong?" She asked softly, with an uncertain tone.

"It depends." I replied immediately, making her look a little offended and confused.

As she tried to dodge my hand, she asked angrily. "What did I do wrong?"

Laughing at the way she squirmed on the bed to avoid my hand like an offended kitten, I replied. "I know it was a way for you to defend yourself, but it hurt me a little the way you treated me, and I think Ethan felt it too for a while, because he was a little afraid to play with you."

Hearing this, Olivia, who was squirming to get away from my hand on the bed, froze.

"I'm sorry..." She said softly after a moment of thought. "But do you think I was wrong in the way I treated her?"

Taking advantage of her pause, I went back to stroking her head.

"A little." I said.

"Even in the way she treats me?" She asked, offended.

"That's why I said you're a little wrong. I can give you reason to be angry about everything that's happened, but there are better ways to deal with her than to provoke her further. Even if her means aren't the best, in her mind she's doing her best to make sure nothing bad happens to you..." I said calmly so that she wouldn't feel insulted.

"Even making me learn that stupid violin?!" She asked angrily. "Your music saw that, she didn't make me learn it because it would be good for me, but because it was something she wanted to do!"

Listening to her vent, I just continued caressing her in silence for a few seconds.

"Did she ever tell you why she wanted you to learn the violin?" I asked.

"No..." She answered a little uncertainly.

"You know, I don't know why either, but according to my logic, if she made you learn the violin because she missed a great opportunity in the past because she wasn't that good at it, do you think that from her point of view, making you learn it is for your own good?" I asked in the same tone I had used with Ethan.2

Listening to my logic, Olivia remained silent as she continued to curl up under the covers.

I just stood there with her in silence, letting her think and calm down a bit.

"Thank you..." She said in a very quiet tone.

"No problem, I'm your older brother, remember? If you need help, just talk to me." I said as I stood up from her bed, making the hole my weight had made slowly return to what it was before.

"You know..." She poked her head out from under the covers and said as I left the room.

I stopped to look at her, waiting for her to finish what she was about to say.

"I like you better like this..." She said before covering herself again and hiding.5

I smiled, feeling something very good in my chest.

Not only was I very happy, since I think this was the first sincere thank you I'd heard from someone important to me in both of my lives, but I also felt another part of me very happy, probably the little bit that was left of the other Noah.

When I went into my room, I noticed some drops of water on the floor going towards my desk, there was my cell phone, and on the floor, I assumed they might have been tears.2

Seeing that she left my phone before I got back, she probably doesn't want to talk yet, and I think I've done my part enough, so I just picked up my phone and transferred the song to my computer.

The way I wanted to release the song was to keep it in acoustic mode, even to give as much of an impression as possible that this is something homemade.

The image I want is that of an indie musician just starting out, as that will probably be much more appealing to my image.

An indie musician has much more of the intimacy that a musician with a big structure lacks.

Even if I had the confidence to learn enough editing in a few days to make my music sound studio-ready, I didn't want to.

But I could have spent a few hours learning how to edit... I thought as I looked at the program and didn't really understand how it worked.

Fortunately, with System, it was easy to learn with a few tutorials on YouTube.1

In just one hour, I had already leveled my new skill to Lv 4.

[Music Editing Lv 4

Effect: +4% easier to understand and apply music editing concepts, +4% more likely that your audience will like your edit].

Over the past few days, this has been one of the things I've been trying to understand about the system.

When Skill said that there was a +4% chance that someone would like something I did, it wouldn't make them completely like my work and become my fan, but it's more like the person recognizing the quality of it.

Just like a normal person doesn't like to listen to opera, it's undeniable that an opera singer's voice is very good, even if she's not singing a song that the listener doesn't like.2

Of course, if I can maximize all the skills and make a person like every little detail of the music, the likelihood of that person actually liking the music as a whole is very high, but as long as there's one little thing that the person doesn't like, that's probably enough to make them dislike the music even if they like everything else.

But I didn't worry about that, having a good voice, good playing and good lyrics is already a huge advantage for social media musicians, and with my [Heart Voice] skill, my advantage is even bigger!

With the song finally edited, I thought it best not to post this today.

If I ask Olivia's opinion about it, she'll probably accept it and it'll look less like I just chose the song to make a hit, right?

So aside from that, I decided to make two pieces of artwork.

One artwork I sold on the Internet to the Furrys, who surprisingly had already increased my Twipper profile to 3,000 followers in the last few days.1

Due to the high demand, the artwork I'd promised to do today had sold for a whopping $100!

Just like the girl from my school in the other world, I had already managed to sell the artwork for a very high price!

[Digital Illustration Lv 301

With Digital Illustration, you get better 30% faster, and you have a 30% higher chance of other people liking your art].

My Digital Illustration skill is already at Lv 30, which is fantastic, but I felt something new now.

The time it takes to level up the skill has increased.

I used to level up at least 1 level a day, but today I didn't manage to level up that much.

When I looked at the quality of the WereTiger I made, I knew that I had reached a very high level in this style of drawing, but I was still miles away from the artists who worked in game art in my previous world, so my theory is that at level 30, it's as if I've completed the basic level to become competent in this skill, and from there I'll start training to get to a really professional point.

If I were to decide which would be better according to this theory, it would be that instead of releasing my music now, since my [Singing] and [Guitar] are at level 20 and 24 respectively, I would wait until the two skills reach level 30, but there was one thing I considered.

Since I want to go the indie artist route, starting out as someone who already sings perfectly might hurt me more than help me, so having one or two songs recorded before level 30 of these skills will be very good in the long run.

So that's what I decided to do, I recorded Numb with [Sing Lv 20] and I intend to record the next song when it reaches Lv 25.

Looking at the raw file, I knew that this song wouldn't be very nice to show my parents before submitting, so I just decided to save it and let Olivia know about the submission tomorrow.

[New Mission Unlocked].

////NunuNote/////

Every 1k Power Stones = 1 Extra Chapter :)1

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