9 Nine - Definitely suited for a stage career

"Stacey? Hello? Stacey, are you all right?"

Someone patted her shoulder and gave her a light shake. Stacey blinked at the unfamiliar face for a moment. Where was she? What was she doing? Who was this person again?

Stacey stared at the person still trying to bring her attention back to what was meant to be going on. Her mind felt slow and a bit sluggish. It took a long moment for the dots to reconnect and bring her back online. Strange. It felt like she had fallen asleep just now. What had happened?

Oh. Right. This was Mindy. One of the main writers or something for this weird variety show program for trainees or something.

Stacey looked at her own fingers and then the piano. Then she looked at Mindy. Had she really just had a long sleep? Or had that dream just now actually not been a dream?

People were staring at her strangely. She was staring at her own fingers strangely.

"Did I - did I just play something?" she ventured, frowning at her fingers and the keyboard.

"Yes!" Mindy almost yelled. "Darling, that was magnificent! I've never heard that piece before, but I have to say, you're a real treasure aren't you? You haven't been having us on, have you? You aren't pulling anything over us? You said you had no talents."

"I didn't. Don't. I didn't think I did - could. I played the piano?" Stacey filtered what she was about to say and changed it to something more fitting to her current situation while her brain came up to speed, "I can - I can play the piano?"

She felt as incredulous as the stunned boys in the corner looked. From the lingering music still floating in her ears - if she wasn't wrong, she had just played her old recital piece perfectly.

"Wow," Stacey whispered almost to herself. Muscle memory was sure amazing. To still be able to play that piece despite her lack of practice for so many years... Scratch that. To be able to play that difficult piece perfectly without any practice after so many years - that was amazing. Awesome and amazing.

"You've had some sort of training before," Mindy whooped, looking beside herself with joy and hugging Stacey. "We've really found a gem here. You are definitely suited for a stage career."

"Mindy, calm down and come back to your seat," Landen ordered. "Stacey, are you all right?"

Still feeling like she was floating on fluffy clouds, Stacey swivelled around on the piano stool to face the producer. Slowly, she nodded, still glancing between her hands and the piano every now and then. She could barely believe that she could still play anything.

"Do you want to play or try anything else? Maybe try playing and singing at the same time? Artists who can sing while playing an instrument tend to do better than others who only do one or the other."

Stacey looked at the piano and remembered something she had done for a school camp once. She might not be able to do all the tricks she had showed off then, but that was a fun song that should still go down well here. She should still be able to pull the singing and playing at the very least.

There were a few mistakes and wrong notes but that wasn't that surprising since it had been so many years since she had last performed this piece. Primary school had been a long time ago now. Honestly, Stacey was surprised that she could even remember this much.

"All right," Landen's smile wasn't any less, but it had lost some of its luster during that performance. She supposed it hadn't been a good performance and felt herself flushing with embarrassment. Singing and playing at the same time was hard. "Something for you to work on. Not bad, considering you don't remember anything from before."

"She's going to make a marvelous dolly," Mindy squealed, unable to sit still.

Dolly? What did that mean? She wasn't a doll for playing with. It must be a bit of jargon.

And Landen's expression and tone of voice - was he doubting her? Doubting that she hadn't really lost her memories and that this was just a sneaky ploy on her part to get more attention? Stacey flinched inwardly and then hardened her resolve. Whatever. She would roll with the punches. Making her dredge up these old memories and things… and finding out that she could still do some of this stuff… it'd make anyone doubt a so-called amnesiac like her. Even she would doubt herself if she was one of them looking on.

They tried acting and well… Stacey figured making the room fall silent was a good sign. Nobody said anything about her performance, so she wasn't sure whether it was a great success or a disastrous failure. She couldn't tell from their expressions. Hopefully it was passable and not a complete failure.

Then they discovered that she could probably dance if she had some classes. Stacey tried to follow the lead of a choreographer. Her flexibility from her younger days in gymnastics gave her an added bonus here, although Stacey hadn't bothered to try stretches or any of her old routines. It was much the same with fighting and stunt work. She didn't know anything about them but her skills might be able to reach a reasonable level if she had classes. She hadn't showed a great talent for comedy but Landen had said that such things could be trained too.

Apparently her young looks and infectious smile, as well as talent with the piano were enough to make a start with.

Stacey had previously thought that she was just another ordinary customer service worker and here she was discovering old talents. Maybe getting into this program was a good thing for her. It was certainly expanding her understanding of herself. She could rediscover herself here and grow as her own person. Come out from the shadows.

Stacey wasn't so sure about the entire nation being able to see her face and her 'story' being broadcast for everyone to see, but at least no one she knew was here. There would be no one to refute any of the stories once it had been uploaded and published. She supposed it wouldn't hurt to just going with things for now since this place seemed to be an entire new world with a completely different system of doing things. There was a lot to learn.