The four-beat countdown vanished from the screen. The scrolling vertical line began its steady march across the blank audio track.
I didn't start strumming immediately. I let the deep, filtered thump of the percussion track breathe for a couple of bars, filling the absolute silence of the isolation field. It sounded like a heavy, anxious heartbeat echoing inside an empty room.
Then, my right hand moved.
Pluck. Buzz. Slide.
The weeping acoustic melody entered the mix. The slight string buzz I had intentionally left on the frets cut through the air with a gritty, sharp edge. It was uncomfortable. It was raw.
I leaned into the microphone, my chest expanding smoothly as Stable Breath kicked in.
"I'm tired of being what you want me to be," I sang, keeping my voice low, almost a gravelly whisper. "Feeling so faithless, lost under the surface."
The response from the system didn't wait.
[Singing Lv 18 -> Lv 19]
[Active Skill Triggered: Emotional Resonance]
The air inside the room grew noticeably colder. In my past life, I had spent decades pretending to be okay, taking whatever scrap jobs the entertainment industry threw at me, wearing a fake smile until I forgot what my real face looked like. And this body? The original Kuroda Ren had literally worked his own heart to a stop trying to carry the weight of a broken family while everyone else just watched.
The lyrics weren't just lines from an old rock band anymore. They were our shared reality.
"Don't know what you're expecting of me," I continued, letting my tone grow heavier, the volume building as I pressed down on the acoustic strings with more force. "Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes."
The melody began to swell. The transition from the verse to the pre-chorus needed to feel like a dam cracking under immense water pressure.
"Caught in the undertow, just caught in the undertow," I belted, pushing the sound from my chest up into my throat, letting the natural grit of my vocal cords bleed into the microphone.
[Singing Lv 19 -> Lv 20 (MAX)]
[Skill Evolving: Intermediate Singing Lv 1]
My voice didn't crack. The vocal lozenges kept my throat perfectly lubricated, allowing me to hit the transition seamlessly. I could feel the control I had over my own air—it was precise, mathematical, yet completely fueled by raw anger.
"Every step that I take is another mistake to you!"
I slammed my palm against the guitar body, shifting into a massive, driving strumming pattern for the chorus. The acoustic guitar was screaming now, the heavy gauge strings vibrating violently against the wood.
"I've become so numb, I can't feel you there!"
I opened my throat entirely, letting out a raw, distorted rock rasp that filled the entire isolation field. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't the polished, pitch-corrected pop that dominated the charts of this empty world. It was a guttural release of years of bottled-up frustration.
"Become so tired, so much more aware! I'm becoming this, all I want to do, is be more like me and be less like you!"
Tears pricked the corners of my eyes, but my pitch remained dead center. The system was smoothing out the technical imperfections, but the sheer velocity of the emotion was all me. I was completely lost in it. I forgot about the levels on the screen. I forgot about the laptop fan. I forgot about the summer break.
I just sang.
By the time I hit the bridge, my hands were moving entirely on instinct.
"And I know... I may end up failing too," I sang, dropping the volume back down to a strained, breathless whisper, the contrast hitting like a physical blow after the loud chorus. "But I know... you were just like me with someone disappointed in you!"
The realization in those lyrics hit hard. I thought of the old man's vision of my past father—a man broken by his own tragedy, taking his weakness out on a child. Cycles of disappointment. Cycles of pain.
I wouldn't repeat them. Not in this life.
With one final, massive push, I threw everything left in my lungs into the final chorus, my voice soaring into a high, gritty belt that practically threatened to clip the digital audio meters on the screen.
"I've become so numb!"
The final acoustic chord rang out, vibrating deeply before slowly fading into the absolute silence of the system barrier.
I stood there, gripping the neck of the guitar, my chest heaving rapidly as I stared at the screen. The audio waveforms were a beautiful, jagged mess of pure energy.
Click.
I pressed stop.
The isolation field instantly dropped, and the normal, quiet hum of the night—the distant crickets outside the window—returned to the room.
[Recording Complete]
[Track Quality Evaluated: A-Grade]
[System Note: A masterpiece of raw emotion. The digital file has been automatically optimized for compression without losing dynamic range.]
[Level Up!]
[Name: Kuroda Ren]
[Level: 05]
[Free Stat Points: 5]
I let out a long, shaky breath, a slow smile creeping onto my face as I wiped a stray tear from my cheek. My throat felt perfectly fine, the passive skills resetting the fatigue almost instantly.
I leaned back in the creaking desk chair, staring at the completed audio file named Numb_Final.wav.
'Yeah,' I thought, my heart rate finally settling back down to a steady, calm rhythm. 'That's exactly how it was supposed to sound.'