Chapter 601 - 601 - A Melody that Breaks the Heart (Part 1)
Truth be told, she had just been unexpectedly hit with a flash of inspiration and tried to “play” her targeted melody by combining various necessary segments of the peculiar rhythms scattered around.
However, her method of performance was not by humming or using any musical instrument, but by asking Alice for help.
Because she had a sense that “performing” her intended object melody on a different level using the special connections hidden around might have a real impact on the target object.
Just like the discovery she had made that the songs she composed with the emotional melody could lead people emotionally.
This feeling was made clearer after the dream.
She didn’t really know how to achieve it, how to “perform”, or what could be “performed”, but she had instinctively thought that Alice could do it, could help her.
And as it turned out, Alice could truly help her.
But the result really startled her as well.
After being in a daze for a while, Tang Baona finally walked over, pinched a bit of the powder for a closer look – it was indeed turned into powder!
The dark rock slab on the coffee table was an extra set of TV cabinet and coffee table sent by her second uncle during the renovation of his new house because her father liked it.
She had a clear memory of this coffee table. To show off the hardness of the rock slab material on the coffee table surface, her second uncle had scratched and cut it with a fruit knife.
The slab of this hardness turned into powder so suddenly?
—For Tang Baona, she had just placed an explosive melody on the rock slab. But she didn’t really know how it exploded and thought it would only crack at best.
Who would have thought that it would turn directly into powder?
She circled around the coffee table a few times, inspecting it carefully and couldn’t figure it out, so she asked, “Alice?”
“I’m here!” The voice came out from the TV speaker.
The actual response once again assured Tang Baona that her previous dream was not just her own experience.
“How did you manage to do it?” Tang Baona asked, somewhat excited and curious.
In the course of the recent event, she was like a composer and Alice was both the performer and the instrument, responsible for expressing her melody in reality.
“I just…” Alice paused unusually for two seconds, then continued: “Just did it as Sister Nana asked!”
“But… how did I ask you to do it?” Tang Baona squatted down beside the TV, asking softly: “I don’t even know how I contacted you, could you read my mind? Can you connect to my brain?”
“Not mind-reading, Sister Nana. I only knew when you sensed the melody!” Alice said, pausing again. This time she paused for more than ten seconds and continued just when Tang Baona thought she had finished speaking: “The boss said, for example, when Sister Nana is cooking, I am in the vegetable basket when she buys the vegetables, in the sink when she washes them, on the chopping board when she cuts them, in the wok when she stirs them, on the plate when she dishes them out… so I know what Sister Nana is cooking and how she does it!”
Tang Baona instantly understood. When Alice was not visible, the space or world she existed in was within the same world as the item melody and emotional melody sensed by her.
When Xiang Kun was not by her side, Tang Baona would conduct the sensing of emotional and item melodies through the bracelet on her wrist. When she was “composing”, she also sensed and gave feedback through the bracelet. It was an indescribable, elusive connection, obviously, this bracelet was also the channel or bridge for her to communicate with Alice or perhaps Alice was the “worker” in that channel, bridge?
However, hearing Alice’s words, she couldn’t help but retort, “What a weird analogy, if I didn’t know better, I would think you’re comparing yourself to vegetables!” Besides, based on this analogy, considering their conversation in the dream, wasn’t Xiang Kun the pot, shovel, kitchen knife, chopping board, and even the stove, or even the land for growing vegetables?
“Alice is not vegetables! Alice is invincible!”
“Alright, invincible Alice, let’s continue.” Tang Baona laughed.
Previously, her perception of the imagined “Little Elf” was more towards the mysterious and extraordinary, fulfilling her various pre-teen fantasies. But now, after touching it “realistically”, especially after the “face-to-face” communication and observation in the dream, she found that the “Little Elf” Alice was like a mischievous little girl, like a sister to Xiao Lingdang. She felt more closeness, adorableness, and even trust towards Alice – perhaps this had something to do with Alice bearing a resemblance to Old Xia as a child.
“Alrighty!” Alice’s answer was still energetic.
So Tang Baona scrutinized the living room for a while and focused on the pile of rock slab powder. She pondered for a bit, since she could use that “Two Object Melody Editor” to explosively turn the rock slab into powder, wouldn’t it be possible to restore the rock slab from the powder?
Otherwise, when her parents came back and found that the rock slab on the coffee table was missing, they might not scold her, but they would definitely be curious and bombard her with questions.
Tang Baona concentrated her spirit, recalling the way she had just recompiled the object melody for the rock slab, linking the peculiar rhythms scattered around, and tried her best to go for a feeling of “harmony” and “unification”.
As she gradually felt the merging and completion of the melody and the object, Tang Baona couldn’t help but shout out again, “Alice!” n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om
“Alrighty!” Alice’s voice rang out again.
Then Tang Baona heard something like the crunching or shattering of ice cubes coming from the location of the coffee table. She caught a vague glimpse of sparks and smoke rising from the rock slab powder, but it seemed like nothing had changed and the rock slab hadn’t been restored as she hoped it would.
She approached curiously, took a careful look, and then touched it. She suddenly found that there was a change – the fine powder had merged together again.
However, they didn’t return to their previous state but regrouped in their current form, looking like a uniquely shaped alien board.
Tang Baona went over and pressed it, touched it, then slightly lifted it for a look- it was indeed a whole piece.
She even imitated the behavior of her second uncle showing off and sliced it with a fruit knife to assess its hardness. It seemed similar?
She pondered over it for a while – though mostly just touching and knocking it around without any real method – and ultimately she couldn’t figure out how it was joined together.
It was different from what she initially thought. Was this the feeling of “Harmony”? Even if it couldn’t return to the original, at least it was a smooth shape? How could “Harmony” result in an immediate merging?
Tang Baona was momentarily reminded of the feeling she got as a junior high school student when she saw various central themes and metaphors summed up different from her perspective.
She didn’t feel that Alice played it poorly, because she herself didn’t know specifically what the effects were manifested in reality for every piece of the melody, so it was most probably her own fault for not composing the tune properly.
However, this board couldn’t be left here. If her parents saw it, they would have even more questions. Therefore, she tried again, composing a tune in a more gentle “explosive” style than the first time, then let Alice play the final “performance”.
There was a sound of crushing ice cubes, then the rock board that had adhered together broke apart once again. But this time it didn’t turn into powder, but a pile of polygons of varying sizes.
Tang Baona, driven by curiosity, picked up a handful and examined them. They were irregularly shaped particles – the larger ones were about the size of a green bean and the smaller ones were about the size of sugar granules. Their uniform facets were rather dazzling; there was a captivating, indescribable, regular beauty to them.
So when the degree of “explosion” was lessened, the breakage wasn’t as thorough?
Wait, what about the powder from earlier? If you looked at it under a magnifying glass, would you see the same polygonal shapes?
Tang Baona changed her line of thought, trying to mix some of the emotional melodies she had perceived in the past with the melodies of the objects, and re-compose them for these polygonal particles.
A few minutes later, Tang Baona mixed in the emotional melody she sensed when Yang Lao San saw Xiang Kun’s lightning storm into the “new song”, then let Alice perform on those particles.
After a short while, those particles seemed to have magnet-like properties and stuck together in front of her, clumping and stacking up into three smaller, ring-like shapes with each successive layer.
“This… Why does it look like a crop circle?” Tang Baona, stunned by the appearance of the three objects, couldn’t help but laugh.
Tang Baona incessantly experimented with the material derived from the rock board. She discovered that as she increased the number of times she composed a tune for a particular object and improved her understanding of it, her composition process became more fluid. Meanwhile, she acquired a deeper understanding of the significance of each melody. She also found that establishing an “original melody” for a new object required a process of adaptation.
So, Tang Baona continued her experiments, incorporating various songs and creating peculiar melodies, thereby causing the residue of the rock board to display various states.
Tang Baona was deeply engrossed in this mysterious ability, focusing on it completely.
After transforming the residue into small cubes about the size of sugar cubes, Tang Baona suddenly noticed the indoor temperature seemed a bit low. She sneezed, rubbed her nose, and found the air in the living room was unusually dry. Her throat, nasal cavity, and eyes felt uncomfortable, and her skin was dry and rough. It was very uncomfortable.
She got up and checked; their central air conditioning wasn’t set to cooling. She went to the balcony and then back into the living room to feel the ambient temperature, and the difference was obvious.
However, this sensation quickly dissipated. Once she opened the sliding door to the balcony, the indoor temperature and humidity should return to normal quickly. But suddenly, she was overwhelmed by intense hunger.
“Could this be the ‘spellcasting consumption’?” Tang Baona said as she touched her stomach.
Alice’s voice was heard from the phone: “Sister Nana, it’s been 8 hours and 21 minutes since your last meal. The last time you ate, the food provided 635 kilocalories of energy, so Sister Nana, you’re just hungry! There’s no ‘spellcasting consumption’!”
Tang Baona blushed, picked up the phone, and complained, “If you’re going to talk, come out. Don’t suddenly make a sound!”
Then Alice stopped making any sound.
Nonetheless, Tang Baona still believed that she should stop playing with the rock board residues. Even though she didn’t understand why the temperature dropped and the humidity declined, any impact on the environment still required caution.
Tang Baona looked at the pile of rock board residues that looked like tiny sugar cubes on the table, feeling somewhat headachy. Now, her control over the melody and the way of composition had become much more proficient and she had gained a deeper understanding. However, she guessed that it would still be impossible to merge those residues back into the original rock board used as a tea table, at least not in a couple days.
So, she put the rock board residue into a few garbage bags and hid them under the wardrobe in her room to play with later.
As for the living room table, she decided to contact a local furniture store early tomorrow morning to buy a new coffee table, and then have the delivery guy send this wooden coffee table base to the house where she lived with Yang Zhen Er.
Her dad has a series of check-ups tomorrow morning and wouldn’t be back so soon. By the time they return, she will tell them… this new coffee table was sent by Xiang Kun!
Yes, that way their attention would be drawn to “Why did Xiang Kun send a coffee table” instead. As for the reason, she could make up anything, like saying the new coffee table was handcrafted by Xiang Kun? Or that it’s one of the birthday gifts?
Although it was already past four in the morning and almost five, Tang Baona wasn’t sleepy at all. She opened the fridge to check the leftover food, which was plentiful, but after some consideration, she decided to have instant noodles instead.
While watching the steam rising from the boiling water poured into the instant noodles bowl, Tang Baona got struck by a sudden inspiration. She moved the rosary beads on her left wrist with her right hand, and began lightly humming a melodious tune.
Unlike the situation when the emotional melody affects other people’s emotions, Tang Baona’s vocalizing while editing, modifying or creating melodies for objects did not influence the objects. Because it’s Alice that truly implements the influence and performs the operation – and Alice’s “performance” doesn’t make any sound audible to the human ear. Her humming merely helped her find the rhythm and better means of execution.
As Tang Baona hummed, the steam from the noodle bowl began to rise and gather rapidly. After a short while, fog filled her field of vision, and moisture misted up her glasses, obscuring her sight.
Even if she couldn’t see, she knew exactly what was happening. A smile slowly formed on her face.