Mar. 3rd, 2023 at 2:48 PM
5.
Yan Jin still changed the lyrics I wrote without permission while recording, but I didn’t stop him.
Since his improvisation was actually sang well, even though I had a great number of objections subjectively, based on the objective aesthetics and professionalism, I had no choice but to accept it.
He couldn’t write songs, at most he would mechanically copy and fill in a few words according to the correct format, but he was still particularly fond of challenging me, as if contradicting me was his only joy.
I would usually remain silent at a time like this, cooly watching from the sidelines and refusing to add to the drama.
After finishing recording his vocals and my strings, we hooked our arms around each other’s shoulders in front of our producer and left the studio smiling, planning on going our separate ways.
“What are you doing when you get back?” As the lift moved down, he took the initiative to talk to me — I didn’t think he would talk to me at first, so I was stunned.
“Practice.” I answered briefly.
“Oh.” He answered, “I’m going on a date.”
“I didn’t ask you.” I said.
“You didn’t have to ask,” He winked at me and spoke with a bright smile, “I just wanted to show off.”
Do you think anyone cares?
I ignored him, the lift doors opened, and I walked straight out. Suddenly, I heard the din of a restless crowd coming from the doorway.
We weren’t strangers to this movement, it was the fans who would occasionally come to visit.
We’d seen this many times before, there wouldn’t be many of them and they’d be very orderly and courteous, obediently cooperating with the security guards and conscientiously standing on both sides of the road. They’d give us flowers or handwritten letters, I would open and read every one of them, and Yan Jin would read half and throw the rest away, saying an ordinary person’s energy was limited, so he was leaving it up to fate.
So, given the circumstances, he and I gave each other a tacit glance and quickly got into our roles like it was a conditioned reflex.
In the end, we’d known each other for so many years that, even if we didn’t want to admit it, saying we “knew each other through and through” was true. I knew him all too well, just the same as he knew me.
As we turned the corner of the corridor into the lounge, he automatically leaned close to my side, hopping with a lively, cheery and silly look to try to draw my attention, and asked, “You’re really not jealous?”
“Jealous?”
We were far enough away that people couldn’t hear what we were really talking about. I could see someone raising their phone to take a picture out of the corner of my eye, but I had dealt with this kind of scene so many times that I had already developed immunity to other people’s cameras, so I also turned to look at him and smiled calmly, “What do you have that’s worth me getting jealous over?”
Looks? Voice? Innate condition? Or even luck?
Think again, brother.
Simply looking at you puts me in a bad mood.
“I don’t know either, why are you always angry at me?”
Yan Jin was half a head taller than me, he mischievously extended out a hand while talking and flicked his finger at the centre of my forehead using a bit of force. I was caught completely off guard, and let out a “hiss” of pain.
He laughed, and the fans outside the door laughed with him, their laughs making my veins twitch.
“I just know that making you angry makes me very happy.”
6.
Yan Qin’s “date”, who didn’t know the real situation, fell through, he said it would be troublesome to be found out in case there was an obsessive fan following his car. As a result, he decided to come back home with me at the last minute, acting as if nothing had happened today.
“Can’t be helped, I lost a major item of entertainment today.” He spread his hands out helplessly, “I’ll just have to casually pass the time.”
We took a photo with our fans before getting in the car, and after getting into the car we sat on opposite sides, turning our faces towards the windows and looking out at the fuzzy street on this cloudy day. The sky seemed like it was about to rain, the clouds were heavy and pale, and the wind was also cold and damp, making me break out in goosebumps as it blew, so I immediately closed the wide-open window.
I didn’t care about Yan Jin’s side.
I called the manager and asked her to sort out the gifts the fans gave us. I had to repeat my words a few times because Yan Jin was playing a mobile game with the sound on speaker next to me, and the muddled sounds of crashing and shouting were a terrible nuisance.
“Yeah, got it. Yan Jin? Yan Jin didn’t go out tonight, nothing happened, he wasn’t photographed. Huh? You’re asking me to ask who? I don’t know which girlfriend it is either…”
I was fed up with him. I abruptly stretched out my hand in front of his face to press the button to close the window as a few dense raindrops swept inside, and he suddenly let out a shriek.
“No! I’m dead!”
I applauded him with a blank face, “Congrats, the carry will hold a funeral.”
It turns out I blocked his screen when I closed the window just now, and he’d been sniped by someone. The game screen blurred and dimmed, and he threw away his phone and turned towards me, knocking against me, “You’re the worst, Chi Sheng! You don’t have a conscience! You’re cold and ruthless and making trouble for no reason!”
“You’re the best, you have a conscience, you’re loyal, reasonable and dependable, and something’s wrong with you.”
Inside the cramped car, I pressed my hand against his face and pushed him away, then I put the phone back to my hear and finished talking to the manager, ending with, “You heard it, Yan Jin is dead, you worked hard to take care of him for so many years, let’s just hope there’s no trash in heaven.”
“……”
Yan Jin had his mouth covered by me, so he cursed me while biting me, “I’m gonna leak your nudes on Weibo!”
I laughed coldly as I took my hand back, “I’m going to hire someone to go on Douban and tear you down so hard you won’t even have underpants left.”
“Do it, I dare you.”
“…Wait a second, when did you take naked photos of me? Yan Jin, do you have any shame?”
“If we die, we die together, no one will think about it.”
His 1.8m tall frame made an unreasonable scene, jumping around like a grasshopper. The driver familiar with us was a person that had seen large spectacles, but couldn’t continue watching right now, or perhaps he was so used to it that he was numb to it, so he silently raised the partition screen between the front and back seats.
After making a ruckus all the way home, he sneezed and went upstairs by himself, and I wasn’t planning on inviting him to my place either. The two if us had complied with the company’s plan of living in the upper and lower floors of a flat —— and this was already the biggest concession we’d make. Originally, they had wanted to arrange for us to live in the same villa so they could film short videos of us interacting to give to the marketing team from time to time, but, unsurprisingly, they were met with Yan Jin’s and my vehement resistance and forceful refusal.
I know that “queerbaiting” is the trend now, and that photos of Yan Jin and I are often shared by a fan site whose name is an abbreviation to a crowd of people waiting to be fed, but I don’t know what they’re so excited about.
I just think that, if the two of us really break up, have a falling out, and never interact with each other until our deaths, will that group of simple and delicate girls be especially broken-hearted?
A gentleman shouldn’t make girls feel sad.
