Private Finished Keyboard Cats

Off in a corner of the student lounge, there was a small piano. It had been there for quite a while, as long as most of the students there could remember, and yet very rarely did anyone play it. If not for the janitors occasionally paying some attention to it, it would be gathering dust.

This would be the second time Ganymede was going to try playing it. The first time was in the middle of the night, when barely anyone else was around to hear, and the night students were largely in class. But still, the experience left him mortified. Half a year without playing, and he had lost his touch.

Today would be different.

He had a different audience this time: mostly daytime students and dormitory residents after their classes. A few people acknowledged the little cat boy sitting down at the old piano, looking up from their books as the bench slid against the floor.

When the boy started playing a song by Chopin, he started turning heads.

It must have sounded pleasant to the untrained ear, and maybe even impressive. But to Ganymede, it sounded wrong. The piano sounded wrong. He missed a few notes. His face turned a little red, but he kept on playing, not looking at his audience.

Maybe this was a mistake...

@Bijou

As he played the last notes, Gany turned around to see how people were reacting to it. But the first thing he saw as he turned around was a catgirl, standing not at all far away from him. She seemed more captivated by his performance than anyone else. She gave Gany a fluttery feeling that he couldn't really put words to. Moreover, she was pretty.

Smiling had become his default expression, so he was smiling up at her, and he gave her a pleasant "How do you do?" He was oddly nervous.

Sweetpea bowed! Almost nobody else did that here!

Ganymede understood why she was gesturing towards her wrist, especially when he saw the serial number. She was a NEK0. He was starting to understand why someone would be shy about that. He answered by wordlessly pulling up his own jacket sleeve to flash his own serial number. It kind of felt cool doing that, almost. They were in a secret club, bound together by shared experiences. Even though that experience was abject slavery - it still carried a sense of belonging, the feeling that someone else understood something important about them. You couldn't discount that.

"I'm Ganymede. Nice to meet you!" He stood up and returned her bow with a bow of his own, grinning a little bit wider.

"I'm sure you could learn it." He would add the next part in an obscure old Chinese dialect that virtually nobody spoke anymore: "And if we are of the same kind, you may learn too fast for most teachers."

The old vampire who his master hired to teach him was always shocked at how fast Ganymede made progress. He'd been teaching for centuries, but he hadn't met many students quite like Ganymede - like a NEK0.

Now Sweetpea was speaking in Japanese. Gany supposed he could get behind that from this point on. He just used that dialect of Chinese so very few people would understand them, since Sweetpea seemed to want to keep her species a secret.

"I learned piano at my master's home," he said, in Japanese now. "I wasn't able to practice in... my second home, so I'm glad I get to do it again. It took me two or three years to learn to play this well." It felt weird, referring to the trading post as his 'second home;' but presumably Sweetpea would know what he meant. He didn't want to call it by its name or its label. That had been the darkest chapter in his life so far.

Ganymede had a lot of trouble relating to the other people here. Some of this was his fear of trying, and making a fool of himself - but with the other NEK0s he already knew he could connect. And Sweetpea was much closer to Ganymede's size than the others he knew, so it was probably less socially awkward for them to be friends.

"Would you like me to play another song? You can sit next to me so you can watch how I do it." He remembered learning a few subtle things by watching other people play, even when he was inexperienced. Perhaps it could help Sweetpea too - or perhaps it would just confuse her, but he liked the idea of her sitting next to him, and being impressed by him, whether or not it was educational.

He smiled at Sweetpea, thinking about which song he wanted to play. And he was reminded of a song by Liszt that made him feel warm and happy inside. That was the kind of music he wanted to play now.

So he played that song. He sometimes needed to slide across the bench, leaning into Sweetpea just a little bit as he reached for the highest notes. He began to wonder if this was a weird song to choose, if he was being romantic and weird, but he let himself get losf in fhe music and stop thinking about it.

When it was done, he would look at Sweetpea sitting next to him again, to see how she felt about his performance. He himself knew it wasn't perfect, but maybe the other nek0 didn't notice his mistakes, or care about them.

It was pretty impressive she even remembered the start that well, and could do that much, given how little Sweetpea knew. "I think you're doing great for someome who hasn't practiced!"

Sweetpea's tail curled around him, and he got flustered, but he didn't make any move to get away or move the tail. He liked it, actually. "U-um... It's the one I just played, actually. It's called Liebestraum number 3."

Sweetpea would know that word translated to 'love dream.' Gany gave a bashful smile.

Ganymede just sat next to her and looked over at her for a little bit.

He just knew, in his heart, that there were things she understood about him and he understood about her that very few other people would. And he longed for that. Someone who was - who at least felt to him like one of his people. He longed for - he didn't even know what he wanted from Sweetpea. He didn't think it was romantic love, but...

He just felt so disconnected from everyone. He was holding himself together, but that didn't stop him from feeling like a thing shattered, that needed to be held together to not fall apart. Somehow, Sweetpea felt like a source of relief. Someone he could connect with.

"Um..." How did everyone else do this? Nobody else seemed to have trouble making friends like this. "Do you... want to be friends?" Was that even a normal thing to ask?