SENTIMENTAL OBSESSION

              beg pardon, mister basement dweller?

                               ❛ - a’ight, goblin man ; i’ll check it. - ❜               miu glances to the cement floor of korekiyo’s basement.

                   what in the FUCK is she meant to see.

       Korekiyo flips on the light switch to reveal...

      Rows upon rows of display cases full of... these... things.

                                                『 X:\Sources>bootrec /convo 』

                 "I’m not sure what it would be called. What I really want… Well, my aim is to become a robo-pop star, so I’d want to be able to dance like a pop star?? I’m not sure if there’s any particular name for the style of it… I’ve been working on practicing my vocals, but I really can’t figure out dancing at all.”

                 And by ‘practicing my vocals’, he really meant ‘working on a vocal synthesizer’ since the Professor had never installed any musical aptitude into his AI. He could recognize a song when he heard one of course, but he couldn’t begin to process what made a dance or a piece of music something special, and being fully aware of that limitation in his software haunted him. It was a glaringly machine-like thing to lack; for all his pride in being a robot, being unable to process certain aspects of emotion still haunted him. He wanted to learn to understand feeling and the incalculable aspects of life just as well as any human could. It didn’t make him human — it made him a being with a soul. Surely it was just an oversight on Professor Idabashi’s part to not give him any means to process music…

                 "I really don’t know anything about it, but waltzing is supposed to be…”

                 "… That one’s… Romantic, right?? I mean, from what I’ve seen in movies… So it would, er… That’s the sort of thing that would assist in forming a romantic pair-bond down the line with someone, right?? Maybe that one’s useful to learn…”

                                                             『 X:\Sources> 』

       Waltz, huh?  Korekiyo can’t feign intimate knowledge of pop music, but he thinks he can do something with this that will be helpful for Kiibo.  “Waltz may actually be quite a good choice for your first form of dancing.  It has clear, definite structure that will take away much of the guesswork involved in other forms of dance.”

        He has other hypothesizes as well.  Korekiyo puts the teacup down entirely, wanting to speak with his hands.  “Perhaps it’s not that you can’t figure out dancing, but that no one has taught you in a way that is accessible to your learning style.  Often one is told to simply feel the music, but how is one supposed to do this without the underlying cultural knowledge of what makes up music, and which parts are meant for dancing to?  Microphones meant by humans to pick up on speech are often geared to pick up on the middle pitches of sound where human voices sit, but this leaves out the high and low ranges where most of music is found.  I doubt you’re unable to hear anything I can, but perhaps the base assumption of focusing on the midtones is still there.”

        Korekiyo leans in slightly over the table, a glint in his eyes.  It seems he’s become fascinated by the subject.  “Waltz is quite different from contemporary forms of music because the basic count isn’t decided by the drums, which are usually entirely absent.  Waltz has 3 repeating beats, characterized by a low pitch chord, the higher pitch chord, and then the highest chord.  In the simplest form of waltz dance, each time one of these chords plays, you take a step into what will be a large circle.  As well, waltz has a leading partner and a following partner, so I may lead you until you feel comfortable enough to try doing so yourself.”

           “Gonna show you my beautiful basement, where the concrete floor feels cool to the touch.  I'll turn up the heat if it's too much.  I'll turn on the lightbulb on the wire, turn on the dehumidifier.  I'm serious when I flick this next switch.  Look you in the eye, and I say,”

✕       Korekiyo’s overall build is quite lean, but this is partially because he’s somewhat underweight.  It’s not to the extent of a full blown eating disorder, but he very much avoids eating in front of other people (partially for the obvious reason, partially because he feels self-conscious eating in front of other people, a long-time source of anxiety), which leads to skipping meals when he can’t do it in private.  As well, if it’s a particularly bad day, he sometimes will skip meals to exert a feeling of control over the uncontrollable, that this is his body and he can do whatever he wants with it.

✕       Under his clothes, he’s actually got a lot of visible scars.  The most obvious ones are on his back, and they’re bad enough to concern most people because they’re layered whip scars, from the point in canon where Korekiyo was repeatedly beaten badly enough while on travel to solidify his disassociation from the identity of Sister.  The reason he prefers to keep his shirt on isn’t modesty, but rather so nobody will try to talk to him about the scars.

             "You can dance??”

                 Of course he could dance. It was a perfectly logical outcome — Korekiyo was the Ultimate Anthropologist, and what was dance if not an expression of human culture? The term ‘ethnochoreology’ stood out clear in his memory banks from his brief studies into the history of humanity with the Professor as being a broad subset field of anthropology. It was such a shame, too: as much as he enjoyed researching concepts and checking up on the historic applications of things like dance, his own dancing always wound up turning into the ROBOT DANCE. Was whimsy forever the realm of humans? He wanted to be able to dance freely, too. It’d certainly help out with his dreams of becoming a robo-pop star…

                 “Would you… Be able to teach me how to dance, too??”

                                                             『 X:\Sources> 』

        Korekiyo can’t help but be pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic reaction to what was a fairly mindless comment made over tea.  He hadn’t taken Kiibo as the dancing type at first glance, but it makes sense if he thinks about it more closely.  Perhaps they have an interest in humans in common, at least to some extent.

         “Yes, I took dance as a child for some time.  Nothing particularly scandalous, just the international style of ballroom dance.  Waltz, foxtrot, that sort of thing.”  He knows he has a reputation amongst the other students as somewhat of a wallflower, but observation isn’t the only important part of learning, after all.

@doutaiishin​​ 💔 ‘ᵈ ᶠᵒʳ ᵃ ˢᵗᵃʳᵗᵉʳ

      ᴺᵃᵍᶤᵗᵒ ᵏᶰᵉʷ ᶤᶰ ʰᶤˢ ʰᵉᵃʳᵗ ᵗʰᵃᵗ ʰᵉ ᵈᶤᵈ ᶰᵒᵗ ᵇᵉˡᵒᶰᵍ; ᵗʰᵃᵗ ʰᵉ ʷᵃˢ ᶰᵒᵗ ᵒᶰᵉ ᵒᶠ ᵗʰᵉˢᵉ ᵇᵘʳᶰᶤᶰᵍ ˢʸᵐᵇᵒˡˢ ᵒᶠ ʰᵒᵖᵉˑ Though he hoped he could at least be useful to them. He did not mind becoming a stepping stone to their greatness. Excited for another day with his immaculate classmate, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have one or two things up his sleeves to have their hope shines brighter. He entered what he thought was an empty classroom. Only to find it occupied, ah, how unlucky. His plan would have to wait. “Pardon trash like me. I did not mean to disturb you. “’

     Korekiyo looks up immediately when he hears someone enter the classroom, one bandaged hand delicately placing a bookmark in a recent issue of  HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory.  ...What an odd looking person.  More than the other’s messy white hair or any other more trivial physical detail, the thing that draws Korekiyo’s interest is the look in his eye.  He looks rather ill, miserable in a way that’s uncomfortably familiar.  Is he in love?

(doing the "write" thing)

         In the past, he’s generally not interacted much with the underclassmen at Hope’s Peak.  Korekiyo is far from unaware that many people find him unnerving- least of all people younger than him.  He respects that, and it’s not as if he has any emotional need to terrorize the second years more than necessary.

       However, this particular girl has caught his eye a bit, despite the fact that she isn’t particularly... maidenly.  No, this isn’t related to Sister, but rather a personal interest.  He’d heard that they were getting a princess from Novoselic in the year under him, but he hadn’t had the ability to speak to her until now.  He remembers the place vividly; fascinating wildlife, even more fascinating culture revolving around it.

        It’s a late afternoon, Saturday; most students would be getting ready for their full day off tomorrow, but alas, Hope’s Peak never sleeps, and so neither does Korekiyo.  He’s used to conducting interviews, he would never have gotten this far if he didn’t have a keen eye for people, but he can’t help but feel a bit out of place in a room full of stacked expensive cosmetics, and more notably, no interviewee.

         Korekiyo checks his phone.  It is now 6:48 pm.  They were supposed to meet up at 6.  Though Korekiyo would pride himself on his composure, he’s thoroughly into the ‘thinking of 8 letter words and then writing their letters down in alphabetical order’ part of the waiting experience.  He’s halfway through ‘otogenic’ when he hears footsteps and flips the piece of paper over.