Chapter 4

Longjia was seventeen years old, and when he accompanied his friends in Beicheng for the interview, the staff somehow persuaded him, and he was recruited on the spot.

When the judges asked him, they realized that he hadn’t even received the registration form, so they gave him a blank form. When he filled it in, they immediately put four stamps on it.

He jokingly told that to Huoren, but his tone was very natural. He wasn’t showing off.

“I was gifted with the gift of art. Although I wanted to go abroad to learn acting beforehand, I came here figuring it wouldn’t be too bad to give it a try.”

Huoren went to the next office to register his name with him and realized that Longjia didn’t even bring his backpack.

“Aren’t you going to stay here for the night?”

“I don’t even want to stay for dinner.” Young master Long threw his head back, “I’ll wait for my driver to pick me up. Are you coming?”

“No,” said Houren, stopping for a moment. “What do you think… tomorrow’s topic is?”

“I could even guess the ones for the day after tomorrow.” Longjia fixed his hairstyle on the glass wall, as if he were talking about something unimportant: “Dance, vocal, acting — those three.”

Dancing needed appropriate physical strength as a foundation. Running five kilometers was just a simple teaser.

Huoren, who spent his free time reading books, never knew about such things before.

“Are they still asking for acting?”

“Mn, it’s not like it’s enough to just dance and sing.” Longjia looked at him sideways, as if he (L) were his(H) qianbei. [1]

“Where did you learn all this?”

“I learned it from…” Longjia thought, “Go to a few concerts and sit in the front row.”

After finishing this sentence, his friend finished jumping and grabbed his backpack, then ran towards them while greeting him.

After saying goodbye to the two of them, Huoren sought out a staff member to lend him a skipping rope until six in the afternoon, and then followed the crowd to the cafeteria.

He ate three bowls of rice without saying a single word.

The next day, there were only 300 people left, and the screening effectiveness was very good.

Most people didn’t have enough energy and thought it was too long and tedious for someone to jump until 5:30 and complete the number of jumps. They just gave up, pulled off the rope, and called the company “fucking sick” as they left.

The new examiner was also an assistant professor, and after briefly introducing himself, he turned on six high-definition LCD displays at the training site, with different things showing on the left and the right sides.

On the left was a staff, while music played on the right.

“The questions on the exam are optional, and you can change them halfway.” The assistant professor stood on the platform with a deep and powerful voice: “On the left side, the score shown is to be memorized and then written by heart. If you have an accuracy rate of at least 95%, you can come, sign, and leave — but you only have one chance.”

“If you choose the right side, you must choose a band frequency with a pitch identical to one of the hundred audio frequencies given, and just like before, you can leave right after.”

“The deadline is until three in the afternoon. It will be considered null if you don’t present your papers.”

The trainees began to disperse.

Huoren stood in the middle. He didn’t see the little redhead and the young man who were playing with the MP4 yesterday, so he guessed that they had probably been discarded.

He went right first.

A group of people bent down to listen carefully to the speaker.

The audio wasn’t a piece of music, it was just a constant and meaningless hum.

“This test is to get the perfect pitch,” someone muttered, “A mortal like me should go left.”

Some people nodded in agreement and followed him as they surrendered.

Huoren didn’t find a pattern after taking some time to listen, so he turned to go left.

When he heard the two ‘familiar’ notes[2], he was relieved to hear it, and went right out of curiosity to see the problem.

There were already many people around the screen on the left, speaking loudly.

“It’s K330, Mozart’s first movement in Piano Sonata No.10 in C major!“

“Shit, I still haven’t learned piano!”

There were also people who were amateurs and were in a confusing situation.

“Guys, help me, how is the staff made? What are the lines? ”

“If you haven’t studied staves, how would you sing songs. Get away, idiot!”

“Hey, boy, you can’t sing without knowing the basics.”

Huoren stood to the far side and looked at the staff. His mind was like a copy machine that had the image with the right answer.

He didn’t rush to deliver the paper and continued to observe the different ways other people had answered the question.

Some people had never studied music theory before. In high school, they slept during music class. Now, they took a photo with their mobile phone and began counting the position and the number of notes.

Others studied at a musical elementary school. Now, they were humming the tune unconsciously. They sang twice to get the details of the staff, and then went to the assistant teacher to get a blank sheet.

Today, Longjia was almost late and was now helping his friends with the sheet.

He saw Huoren from a distance and greeted him while smiling.

Huoren returned the smile. He looked at the big screen again, picked up his backpack, and went to the answering area.

“You can hum, but keep your voice low and don’t disturb the people next to you.” Some of the staff patrolled the table as if they were examiners: “Don’t check your phone, look at the camera here.”

Huoren picked up a sheet and then looked at the exam paper strangely.

He had answered papers from the provincial exam and papers from a national competition, but never had he answered papers with the questions on a staff.

The young man remained stunned for a while, thinking that his life was like a wild dog that begun to run around everywhere. He decided to simply make the staff.

When he opened his eyes, the four images he had just seen were instantly enlarged, each note in a clear position.[3]

Just follow the instructions and complete it, it wasn’t difficult.

He was the eleventh to deliver the paper.

“Maximum score,” said the assistant professor with a smile. He stamped the paper and asked, “How long have you been studying piano? You have good basic skills.”

“I have never learned,” Huoren told the truth.

“You’ve never studied it?! Really?!”

He was just about to open his mouth when he saw Longjia sitting in the distance, waving his hand and raising his legs while drinking juice.

“That boy is number one again,” whispered the assistant professor. “He looks like he’s rich, all the watches he wears are Chopard.”

…Wasn’t Chopin a pianist?[4]

He answered briefly, signed, and left.

“You are very fast,” Longjia said as he smiled and handed him a bottle of mango juice. “Just before leaving, give it a try.”

Huoren wasn’t used to dealing with this type of familiarity, but he drank it obediently.

He was growing with an instinctive desire for fat and sugar.

“My friend must be on his knees on this round. He’s probably about to cry right about now.” Longjia yawned and said, “Today’s audition was singing! I’m sure tomorrow will be acting.”

Huoren circled the mango juice with his hands and rubbed his fingers against the smooth glass bottle.

“You… want to be an idol?”

His TV was broken for many years, so it felt weird to say the word. [5]

“It sounds like fun, so why not try it out.,” said Longjia. “If you fail, just take the TOEFL test[6]. It doesn’t matter.”

“If you haven’t learned to act, I will teach you a very useful method.” The boy approached him and lowered his voice: “You must find the most unforgettable memory you have in your heart and empathize with it.”

Huoren did not expect that he would take the initiative to help himself[7], and he confirmed the details: “It doesn’t matter what the memory is?”

“Yes. If you think about it, the others won’t know.” Longjia blinked and smiled: “I guarantee it will be useful to you.”

~

The young master disappeared at noon and never returned to the dormitory during nighttime, presumably because he hated the conditions there.

Huoren couldn’t resist it and added an extra apple to his dinner. His stomach was about to sing praises.

When everyone met again on the third day, there were only 80 people left.

Yesterday, the training site was filled with wails like ghosts and howls like wolves. Even the cleaners were upset. [8]

Huoren couldn’t sleep well at night and had to listen to the two people in the upper bunk bed talking until one in the morning.

After a while, someone got an accuracy rate of just 94%, so he had to kneel down and beg for mercy.

Then later on, someone was caught cheating in a group, so the staff members had to drag him out with a mop.

There were a lot of swear words, and dialects from all regions could be heard.

“Today is the third day and the final round of selection.”

Aya was wearing an elegant black coat with a beautiful cheetah waist.

“Today’s assessment is to do a performance, and the topic is very simple.”

“Sing a song and cry before you’re done.”

She paused for a moment, seeing the people below in complete silence, and added: “There are only 50 places in total, and it’s on a first-come, first-served basis. Who’s coming?”

Longjia was the first to raise his hand “Me.”

Everyone was used to the talented trainee and quietly moved to the side.

Huoren watched Longjia go up on the stage and heard someone from behind speaking badly of him.

“Being rich must be great, isn’t he basically asking the teacher to make him pass?”

The performance was unexpectedly perfect.

Aya was very impressed with the trainee, and after finishing the form, she asked, “Who’s next?”

Huoren held up his hand.

It was the third round, he had nothing to fear on that topic.

He took the microphone and chose the song “It is better not to forget” by Mei Heng that he sang in the preliminary interview.

Then the beat of the prelude sounded, and it didn’t have a symbol. [9]

While waiting for the first line of letters to light up on the screen, his tears had already trickled down, and two streams of water flowed over his face, as if he was ready from the start.

If the pockets of the trainee’s backpacks hadn’t been checked beforehand, Aya would have thought he would have used eyedrops.

She was stunned for a long time and turned off the accompaniment when she raised her hand.

“It’s… a very emotional song for you, isn’t it?”

Huoren wiped away his tears, checked his note on the form, and went straight to the bathroom to wash his face.

The boy reflected in the mirror looked cold, and the drops of water on his nose and cheeks fell incessantly.

He wiped his face and didn’t come out until after a while.

It wasn’t emotional, he just had the ability to cry without having any actual feelings.

His father started drinking alcohol four years ago and would start hitting anyone if he drank too much.

The police came too, but it didn’t matter. Every time they tried, nothing worked.

The man looked like a dog in the eyes of strangers, and when he got home, he liked to see people cry.

First, his mother was beaten to tears. Later, his mother died in a car accident, so he started hitting him with a hanger.

He had no other place to study, so he became more adept at crying. In the end, he no longer had feelings and could cope with the tears falling two by two. When the man left while saying various insults, he would wipe away his tears to continue reading.

The bathroom was empty, only the lonely sound of water accompanied him.

“Huoren.” He looked at himself in the mirror, as if his mother had called him.

He heard that when he was born, his grandfather insisted on naming him Ran, hoping he would burn like fire.

When his mother talked about it, her face was full of shame.

“You were born in such a home and are destined to suffer greatly.”

“I called you Ren because you have to be a sharp edge.” [10]

“You have to be sharp to survive alone.”

“Huoren.”

He looked at himself in the mirror, his eyes were cold.

“This is the last time you cry.”

[1] Qianbei – Senior, the Chinese equivalent to Sunbae (Korean) and Senpai (Japanese)

[2] I’m not 100% sure because it literally says symbols of time, so I thought it was musical notes.

[3] This was happening in his mind, please don’t think he’s crazy lmao.

[4] Chopin and Chopard (萧邦) are written the same in Chinese, and that’s why Huoren confuses the brand with the musician.

[5] Basically he felt weird saying the word “idol” as he hasn’t watched an idol show or anything like that in a long time because his TV was broken.

[6] Not sure. Maybe he recommended Huoren to pass an English test to try overseas.

[7] What Huoren meant is that he doesn’t worry about himself that much, but this time he does (because he really wants to be a trainee), so he even asked Longjia to give him the details (so he knows exactly what to do). Someone please give him a hug, ah;;;;

[8]To wail like ghosts and howl like wolves – It is an idiom that means crying / complaining excessively.

[9]Symbol as the symbol that appears when you’re going to sing in a karaoke.

[10]Ren (刃) – Edge of a blade. And well, if anyone is interested: Ran (燃) – to burn, to ignite.