Maybe I Actually Have Talent
The cure for my cursed gift for dance—so hopeless that calling me a klutz still felt generous—was simple enough. I would buy a dance-related ability with points. A truly simple, straightforward method.
Conveniently, I hadn't had any reason to spend points since the appearance upgrade, so they'd been quietly piling up again. My current balance sat at 535 points. That was enough to purchase a single Level 3 ability, and a Level 3 ought to put me roughly on the level of the kids who showed off their dancing at the talent portion of a school retreat.
Of course, I'd still have to practice.
An ability, to put it plainly, is talent—and, along with that, a concept that upgrades the total amount of skill you can actually bring to bear. I could acquire a talent for dance, but nobody busts out a Rolling routine from a state of knowing nothing. For the choreography and the pathways across the floor, I'd still need to watch music videos and singers' stages and drill them over and over.
They must have thought I was a joke. This time I'm going to show them properly.
Once I bought the ability, practicing at home with a music video on loop would be more than enough. That alone would shed the old two-left-feet image, and the viewers would recall the old tale of mulberry fields turned to open sea and be mildly astonished. But my pride, already dropped into the abyss, would not be satisfied with that much. I was going to display such overwhelming skill that I wrung a hundredfold apology out of every last viewer. To that end, I intended to get a good deal more serious.
If I'm doing this anyway, Rolling doesn't have to be the end of it. Learning several dances would give me material for reactions later, and it'd help.
A new challenge. I steeled myself and decided to enroll at a famous dance academy.
K-pop was currently sweeping the entire world in a fever of popularity. Thanks to that, the number of boys and girls dreaming of becoming idols had exploded, and academies teaching song and dance to that very crowd had sprung up like bamboo shoots after rain.
Whether I ought to call it luck or not, there was a place about three bus stops from home that was decent in scale and had respectable reviews, so I decided to register. It was an academy that handled a vocal track as well as dance, but I only needed to learn what I'd come to learn, so that was hardly a problem.
There was, however, one annoying thing. The person they called the director was relentlessly persistent.
"Why give up so easily? It isn't too late. With a face this blessed... honestly, shaving a few years off your age is common in this industry. Knock it down to about twenty-one and debut, and I bet nobody would even notice."
"Ahaha! No, look—I have no intention of becoming an idol. I keep telling you, I just came to learn a little dance."
"I know some people over at Roel Entertainment. I can get you in directly as a trainee. And not just any trainee—close to a debut team!"
"Keep this up and I'm transferring academies."
Only after I went so far as the final ultimatum—that I would take my business elsewhere—did the director finally quiet down a little.
At any rate, I signed up for a three-month course. Out came my credit card, making a rare appearance. Until this month's YouTube revenue landed, the household budget was tight.
"All right, let's start with the most basic steps. Here we go. One, two, three, four!"
I was placed in Class E, the lowest tier. Class E was essentially for complete beginners just starting out in dance. Looking around, people around my age were hard to find; most of them looked like upper-elementary kids or middle schoolers.
Floor-to-ceiling mirrors packed the front wall, and before them the Class E instructor demonstrated. Behind me, the director watched with eyes brimming with expectation.
Seriously, what was this? Eyes that full of hope only made me feel the pressure.
"......"
"......"
Today's class came to an end. The director's eyes, which had sparkled right up until the lesson began, had gone considerably dark. She tossed out a line meant as comfort.
"Ah, well... if you go the ballad route, you only really need to manage about gesture-level movement, so let's do our best, okay?"
No—I said I have no plans to debut. And why had the idol pitch been abandoned all of a sudden?
I believe you are already perfectly well aware of the reason.
You stay out of this!
Just you wait. Once I gathered a few more points, I would make every one of them regret it.
The lineup for the extra clause the viewers had tacked on was confirmed: Soldier, Lac, and Clemoomoo. When I relayed the contents of the penalty I had to carry out, Lac and Clemoomoo accepted readily. Soldier hesitated quite a bit at first, but after I pressed a few more times, he nodded.
Still—if I only did what the viewers demanded, I'd end up just another ordinary streamer! So I added one more item on top. Eye tracking. A technology that tracks the position or movement of a person's gaze; for a while, the eye-tracking challenge had even been a trend. The three of them would have to watch my Rolling dance video with eye tracking switched on. The picture that came out of it would probably be far more entertaining than anything the viewers had imagined.
Of course, for the moment I still hadn't even escaped being a klutz.
"This is really strange. Your sense of rhythm is decent enough, but the moment the song starts and you try to move, your upper body and your lower body go off and do their own thing."
"......"
Day two of instruction. Utter humiliation. Today the director only watched the beginning, then vanished on the spot. I hadn't asked to be born with two left feet. Wasn't everyone being a little too harsh?
I'd wanted to confirm even a little improvement made by my own power, but I was giving up now. Adding the points I'd gathered from yesterday's broadcast, the total came to 585. Time to set up at least some abilities.
I shall display the list.
A banquet of countless abilities. Every one of them looked delicious; my mouth watered. If I acquired them all, I could rise to a class of my own in dance, with no one left who could compete. But without the points, they were nothing but a picture of a feast—beautiful, and entirely out of reach.
Soothing that regret, I took the Helper's recommendations and narrowed the field to a few abilities that would help the most.
The most representative things—sense of rhythm, expressiveness, and the like—I already held as a Level 3 and a Level 2 in the singing-related category, so those were sufficient. Of course, singing and dancing are plainly different fields, so they couldn't complement each other perfectly. Even so, it wasn't worth pouring fresh points into that direction from scratch.
Which ones would be good?
Out of a truly vast variety of abilities, this was the list the Helper had recommended using me as the baseline.
Smooth Steps was, simply put, footwork. In dance, I think the most important thing is the lower body. Even when the upper body is resting, the lower body is usually in constant motion. In that sense, it was an ability worth a close look.
Crisp Movements, Precise Choreo Accents... those are good too, but.
If a movement has snap to it, it tends to make you look like a better dancer than you actually are. Isn't it mostly the same in martial arts, and in other fields that use the body? When the motion is big and looks powerful, it just seems like there's something there. Precise Choreo Accents was a similar concept, with only a slight difference. Popular songs usually come with a trendy dance or a signature move, don't they? This ability made those standout core accents even more attractive, and better at bringing out their original flavor. A finishing move for the highlight, you might say.
For someone lacking across the board like me, though, it was also a bit of a chicken rib—tempting, and not quite worth the cost. Impact comes from carrying a whole song's choreography and then landing one heavy hit, bang! If I kept dancing in a neither-here-nor-there, unremarkable way and only nailed a single short move, would that really leave a deep impression? So in the present situation, short on points, it was an ability I had no choice but to set aside.
Sensual Dance Lines was, literally, an ability that made the lines of a dance pretty. Like Smooth Steps, it could raise the average score of my dancing, so I wanted it.
Next was Enhanced Mastery, which let you pick up choreography and learn difficult moves quickly. Pass on that one too. I wasn't a professional dancer, and I only needed to know the routines I'd show now and then as an event. I didn't need an ability like this. Even if it took time, I could learn them slowly, one by one.
And last, Natural Transitions. This one mattered too. It cultivated a natural feel, free of awkwardness, in the links between each movement and in every part unfolded on a stage. You needed that natural feeling if the people watching were going to stay immersed and focus all the harder.
Will you make your decision?
Yeah. I'll learn all three.
A total of 480 points was consumed. Once more points piled up, I would upgrade them further.
With that short break for raising my abilities over, I rejoined the class.
"Oh! That was excellent. Yes! Just like that."
I worked through the most basic steps with a flash of footwork. My upper and lower body, which until now had only ever fallen out of sync with each other, locked together and moved in exact time, and the arm motion extending from my shoulder drew a sensual line.
The Class E instructor's face went slack with shock. For a moment she even abandoned the other students and began checking, one by one, everything I had learned over the past two days.
"Yes, right there—turn just a little and stretch that hand out! That's it! That's exactly how you do it. Wow, what on earth happened? Up until a minute ago you couldn't follow at all. But now you're..."
As if she couldn't make sense of it, the instructor's face creased hard. She was someone who professionally taught people how to use their bodies, and she knew I had been working hard all this time. Even so, there had been no progress, and she had quietly given up inside—then suddenly something happened that did not fit inside her common sense.
But what could I do? This, too, was the Goddess's power.
After a brief commotion, class proceeded as usual. And the next day, I skipped ahead into Class D.