Progress was slow.
Or rather, Konrad felt like he went backwards.
Even as their trio walked towards the music store.
While he no longer needed magic tricks to play the basics, he couldn't advance beyond them, either. No more shortcuts, in fact, all the previous ones kept coming back to bite him.
If there was a new chord, he had to learn it.
A new picking technique? Practice it all day.
A brand new song? The easier it seemed, the trickier it got.
And once the initial enthusiasm gave way to frustration—
The magic essence he recovered dropped a lot, too.
A duet with Yuki-san netted him a hundred mana early on. When the feeling of success and their emotions aligned, everything seemed perfect.
In comparison, the first practice with the four of them would only give him fifty points.
Strumming alone on his borrowed acoustic? Almost nothing now.
And the longer he tried, the worse those numbers got.
At first, he suspected it was because of the dragoness, because, well—
She sucked.
"How are they doing it?!" Kaede moaned, her phone playing the latest song they needed to learn. "Are there, like, two drummers in this? Feels like I'd need a separate brain for every limb."
"Told you that drumming's not as easy as it looks," Konrad scolded her, though—
She did her best.
Not everyone had it as easy as he did. While drilling on acoustic was nowhere near the same, at least he had the opportunity to practice at home.
Kaede couldn't take a full drum kit with her. She bought a pair of drumsticks, but—
"They'll kick me out of the dorm if I keep drumming on every surface," she mumbled. And yeah, she did that in school, too. "Can I try a different instrument? We need a bassist, right?"
"Then we'd need a new drummer instead," Konrad pointed out. "Wanna start from scratch?"
The girl moaned louder than her phone.
Midori-kun smirked.
"You can't replace years of practice with enthusiasm alone," he said. "No shortcuts to talent."
Which was rich, coming from him.
Not that he could afford to buy a synth, but he didn't need one. Or practice in general.
Anything Yuki-san threw at him, the Demon Lord could play after hearing it once.
Like a machine—
Which was a problem. He was good, but somehow soulless.
Whenever he joined practice, Konrad's recovery dropped more than when Kaede fumbled something. It wasn't some weird syphon or an unexplainable resonance, either.
He nailed every note, kept the rhythm, but everything was hollow. Mechanical. Emotionless.
And for someone who understood the basic theory better than either of them—
The Demon Lord couldn't seem to jump that hurdle.
Not even after the third day of their joint practice.
And as much as Konrad hoped this would change while grabbing the store's doorknob, he had no illusions. A little bell chimed, and he expected Yuki's enthusiasm to wash them away, but—
"Halstad-kun? On your day off?"
This time, Sorakumo-san greeted them.
The owner, not his weirdo daughter.
"I hope Yuki-chan didn't promise you extra shifts. I can't afford that," he said, his face smiling, but his eyes did not. "We're so deep in the red, might even start collecting entrance fees now."
That joke felt a bit exaggerated, but a chill ran down Konrad's spine.
He suspected the store wasn't exactly bustling. But if it closed, where would they practice?
This was the only place with access to instruments, and—
"Where's Yuki-san?" he asked, realising what he was missing.
She ran the store alone the entire week. The last time he saw her father was on Sunday.
"Ah, she's, um, she had an appointment. Don't worry about it," the owner said, waving him off.
But the way his face shifted—that artificial smile crumbled, and he averted their eyes.
Not that the others paid any attention.
"Mind if I try those drums?" Kaede squeezed past the door, unbothered by the mood change.
Midori-kun didn't even ask.
He walked up to his favorite keyboard, turning it on as if he owned the place.
"Oh, are you guys Yuki-chan's new friends?" Sorakumo-san asked, blinking twice.
"Uh, something like that," Konrad said, the last one near the entrance and still fidgeting. "She challenged her old band to a duel or something, and, um—she recruited us of all people."
The whole situation still felt surreal, but teleporting between worlds did, too.
"Right, right, she told me," the owner's face brightened up again, more honest this time.
He waved Konrad closer, his voice dropping to a whisper.
"Her mood has changed a lot these days," he claimed, but once Kaede began to torture the drums, it was hard to hear the rest. "Please take good care of my daughter, Halstadt-kun."
"Huh? Um, sure," Konrad mumbled.
It felt like he missed some words there, but practice had started, with or without him.
He hooked his favorite guitar up to an amp, too, and—
Sorakumo-san's smile froze as soon as they attempted the latest song.
"You guys ever done this before?" he asked, scratching his temples.
Were they actually that bad?!
"I'm a complete beginner," Kaede chirped.
Her tone was way too bright for someone who murdered the rhythm again.
The Demon Lord only shrugged, muttering something like "I've got some experience."
Konrad didn't even know what to say for a moment.
"Yuki-san taught me a little," he admitted in the end. "And I've no idea why she challenged her band with us, but, um, do we suck that bad?"
As if to answer his own question, his fingers cramped over a difficult chord.
He felt like the more he learned, the less he knew.
"Ah, for beginners? This isn't that terrible," Sorakumo-san said, but there was that forced smile again. "Hard to play without a solid rhythm. Drums and bass are the soul of every band."
Great. Then half of their soul was missing, and the other half was—
"Tadaima," a zombie entered the store with a moan, and everyone froze. "Oh, Immigrant band?"
Before Yuki-san's eyes lit up, Konrad couldn't even recognize her.
She wore regular clothes. Her coat was white, not black, and her piercings were missing.
The hair was still the same messy style, but the entire air around her was different.
Like when he entered the store for the first time, and she acted like a corpse.
Wait. Was that her normal?!
This was what her father meant by her mood changing lately?
"Sorry, I'm late," she said with a grin before glaring at Sorakumo-san. "Hope you didn't say anything weird while I was gone. You keep freaking all my friends out, Oto-san."
"I did not," the shopkeeper scoffed, but his ears turned red.
And when his gaze met Konrad's—
Did he actually miss something important in the cacophony earlier?
"Anyway, I'm here now. Go upstairs," Yuki-san bossed her father around. "We'll be loud and terrible, so run while you can." She might have meant that as a joke, but it hit right home.
"Oh, I could give you some advice," the Oto-san offered, seeming a little desperate to stay.
The emo girl shrugged, taking off her coat and tiptoeing to reach a hanger.
Her long sleeve rode up, and that's when Konrad noticed them.
The dozens—if not hundreds—of tiny cuts all along her forearms.