Chapter 40 It’s Not I Singing the Song—the Song Singing Me!
At Fang Qiu’s words, Zhu Benzheng, Sun Hao, and Zhou Xiaotian actually felt relieved.
Based on their knowledge about Fang Qiu, he would never do anything he was not sure of.
“It was so when he came on stage during the blackout of the Mid-Autumn Festival gala.”
“So was the offhand performance at the Start-of-Term Ceremony!”
“This time it has to be the same!”
“Otherwise, he wouldn’t have chosen this song.”
Yesterday, after his roommates went back to the dormitory and heard Fang Qiu tell them the story of his unprepared show, they found themselves in a cold sweat.
And they all fell to their hands and knees in front of Fang Qiu, who was talented enough to have no fears.
“Fang Qiu already dared to take such a risky task and was confident about it.”
“This time it won’t get any worse!”
At the Acupuncture Association.
Jiang Miaoyu’s tightly furrowed brows loosened slightly at this time.
In the middle of the sports ground, Li Qingshi nodded at Fang Qiu, and then said, “Now I’ll leave the stage to student Fang.”
Then, he pointed out the staff at the side of the stage to Fang Qiu, implying that that man would take care of the music, before stepping off the stage.
Fang Qiu took a deep breath. With everyone’s eyes locked on him, he raised the microphone.
“In fact, singing is not hard at all. Having a good voice and a basic sense of tone will do.”
Fang Qiu opened his mouth to speak.
Those words made the audience mystified.
“What is he doing?”
“He didn’t sing but start to talk?”
Li Qingshi was perplexed as well.
“What’s Fang Qiu getting at?”
“Actually, singing is also quite difficult, because you not only want to sing nicely but movingly. You want to strike the heartstrings of your audience and arouse resonance. That’s rather difficult.”
Ignoring the others, Fang Qiu launched into a monologue. “However, that isn’t the hardest part. A bit of emotion and singing techniques will do.”
Saying so, Fang Qiu looked at Li Qingshi and went on with a smile, “The most difficult part is to let the song sing you instead of you singing the song.”
“As Lu Xiangshan—a philosopher from the Southern Song Dynasty—once said, it’s the Six Classics that interpret me, not the reverse. And so is singing.”
“When some people sing, they themselves are easily absorbed in the song, fully immersed in the conscious realm the song conceived.”
“Their singing might be beautiful.”
“But the song won’t blend in them.”
“Nor will it blend in the audience. Thus, it’s a pity.”
Every word Fang Qiu just said pounded on Li Qingshi’s heart.
His face instantly darkened.
He knew Fang Qiu was saying those remarks to him, mocking him ignorant of the real singing art!
What annoyed him most was that he had heard the same theory from his vocal music teacher, so he could not retort.
But he did not believe that Fang Qiu could achieve it.
“To sing a song, one should not just sing it but let the song sing himself? Easy talking, but why don’t you try it first!”
The crowd did not fully catch Fang Qiu’s meaning. Jiang Miaoyu started to ponder over Fang Qiu’s remarks, feeling it quite abstruse, unable to grasp the gist for the time being.
Especially for the saying of Lu Xiangshan, she never heard of it before.
With the crowding gazing at him blankly, Fang Qiu nodded at the staff.
The staff caught his hint and made an “OK” gesture, and then played the music.
As the music sounded, everyone braced themselves up—they were eager to see how on earth Fang Qiu’s singing could differ from Li Qingshi’s.
However, the moment the music fluttered out, Fang Qiu’s temperament suddenly altered, rendering him a more energetic and sanguine young man.
“I want,
You to stay by my side.
I want,
To watch you do your makeup.
Here arrived the evening breeze,
Which tickled my heart, oh, my girl,
I’m far from home, staring at the moon.
...”
As he opened his mouth to sing, all the audience were amazed. They gaped at Fang Qiu in shock.
The song was still the same song, and the melody was still the same melody.
But it made them feel that Fang Qiu was not just singing.
He was confiding in all of them.
He was not singing. Instead, he was talking!
This discovery made many people speechless. “Could someone possibly sing like this?”
“But it does sound fantastic.”
“At least it has more earnest emotion than Li Qingshi’s purely beautiful version.”
“Gift you, this beautiful dress.
Watch you, put on makeup before the mirror.
The night is so tense,
Time goes so slow, oh, my girl.
Where are you, watching the sunrise.
......”
When he finished this part, everyone was stupified.
Including Li Qingshi!
Through Li Qingshi’s singing, all the people knew this was a song expressing a man’s longing for his beloved girl while he was far away from his hometown.
But now.
Fang Qiu even conveyed a youth’s expectations and yearning for the love to come.
With just the same song, the same tune, Fang Qiu expressed a whole different feeling.
Stunned!
Everyone was truly stunned.
They just had to say it was beautiful!
Jiang Miaoyu stared at Fang Qiu in astonishment. She seemed to have gripped the meaning of Fang Qiu’s previous remarks.
“One should sing a song that suits his age.”
“One should sing a song that suits his mood!”
“Apparently, the man in this song had endured much more which we, the youth, have not yet experienced.”
“The sentiment of witnessing vicissitudes is something we can’t understand.”
“We can only imagine it, try to imitate it.”
“Thus, though Li Qingshi had the flawless singing skills, there is one crucial problem in his singing—he can only pretend he has all the feelings!”
“He hopes to express such feelings that should not belong to a boy at his age in the first place.”
“So it is impossible!”
“Accordingly, the audience only found his singing sad and beautiful. Some sentimental people would even feel it touching. However, most of them merely thought it a nice song.”
“But Fang Qiu’s is different.”
“He communicates the yearning and pursuit for love that is natural for their ages.”
“Well, this is just like what he said. It’s not he singing the song, it’s the song singing him!”
“Awesome!”
“Freaking awesome!”
At this moment, Jiang Miaoyu had a high opinion of Fang Qiu.
At first, she only thought Fang Qiu was merely good at singing, but she never expected his singing to be at such a high level.
Li Qingshi also considered all this, his eyes rounded in disbelief.
He could not bring himself to believe that Fang Qiu’s singing truly reached the phase that his vocal music teacher had been pursuing!
Nor could he pluck the courage to acknowledge that someone younger than him was also more talented than him in singing!
He could not believe it. He would not believe it!
He told himself all this was an illusion.
“Right, it’s an illusion!”
He needed to hear the whole thing to see whether Fang Qiu was truly competent and well-trained!
He wanted to verify with his own eyes that Fang Qiu was just bragging!
“It is the night to blame, which is wildly stirring.
It is the guitar to blame, which sounds too gloomy.
Oh, I want to sing,
And miss you silently, my girl.
Where are you, watching the sunrise.
...”
After Fang Qiu got over this part, everyone was engrossed in the song.
They seemed to have not been listening to a song but their own thoughts.
They were all holding their own fantasies and expectations for future love, but they were also grumbling that why the matchmaker god had not let their love arrive in a speedy way.
So they complained to heaven and earth, to the night and to the guitar, blaming them for the delayed arrival of their love.
“My girl, where are you on earth?”
“I want to give you new dresses.”
“I also want to help you do your makeup.”
“But the thing is, where are you?”
The entire sports ground was now shrouded by a youthful and romantic atmosphere. The sorrow that enveloped the place a moment ago was replaced by expectations for love.
No one applauded.
It was not because they thought less of the singing.
It was because they simply forgot to do so.
They even appeared to have tuned out the singing and thoroughly immersed in their own fantasies and visions.
And they felt Fang Qiu was not singing at all, instead, he was voicing their thoughts.
These words were their heartfelt wishes!
If they were singing the song, they would want to do it like this.
For them, the word “beautiful” was not enough to describe the singing now—it had gone far beyond the beautiful range.
This song was not just a feast to their ears anymore, but a journey of the soul.
Fang Qiu’s singing brought them to wander in their own feelings and wishes.
Let them have a taste of youth, a taste of love.
“It is the night to blame, which is wildly stirring.
It is the guitar to blame, which sounds too gloomy.
Oh, I want to sing,
And miss you silently, my girl.
Where are you, watching the sunrise.
...”
Once again, everyone’s emotions triggered by the music were about to burst.
“Where is my love that I’ve yearned for so long?”
At this point, a girl’s voice suddenly flowed out of the sound system.
“Go to the corners of the world,
To look for my soulmate.
I sing while my darling plays the music,
We are of one mind.
...”
The song was like a good rain after a long drought, allowing them to hear the response of their beloved ones.
It was also like a gust of refreshing wind, which silenced them.
They felt the ease of mind.
“Seems that this voice is telling me there is someone waiting for me from the future.”
“No matter how long it will take, I’ll keep searching for her. Even if I have to go to every corner of the world, I shall find her.”
“Although I feel hopeful, I still want to complain why I can’t find her sooner.”
“It is the night to blame, which is wildly stirring.
It is the guitar to blame, which sounds too gloomy.
Oh, I want to sing,
And miss you silently, my girl.
Where are you, watching the sunrise.
...
After the grumbling came a deep confession of love.
“No matter when I can finally find you, I’ll keep you by my side, and grow old with you together.”
“I want to comb your hair and do your makeup, making you the most gorgeous lady in the world...”
“I want,
You to stay by my side.
I want,
To watch you do your makeup.
Here arrived the evening breeze,
Tickled my heart,
My girl.
...”
When the song finished, the scene was utterly silent.
Everyone was held spellbound in their own thoughts and could not extricate themselves easily.
The first one to come to his senses was Li Qingshi.
Despite his huge effort to resist the desire woken by Fang Qiu’s singing, he still let it get the better of his sanity.
But because of his resistance, he was the first one to come round.
As he recovered his senses, he happened to meet the eyes of Fang Qiu, who had just finished the last line.
He instantly let out a sneer.
But Fang Qiu gave a smile, and then snapped his fingers in front of the microphone.
“Snap!”
All the people woke up from their sweet dream.
They looked dazed for a second, and then immediately became sober.
Deafening applause swept through the sports ground!
“This is what a f*cking good singing should be. He made me want to sing along with him!”
“Beautiful is no longer enough to conclude it. All I can say is it’s wonderful! Really wonderful!”
“Comparing to Fang Qiu’s singing, the song Li Qingshi just performed is total rubbish, isn’t it?”
“Exactly. This is the real singing. F*ck, how I wish I can listen to it once more!”
...
All of them were carried away by the surge of emotions the song incurred, so temporarily they found no words could express their feelings except for the most primitive but powerful swearing.
Zhu Benzheng, Sun Hao, and Zhou Xiaotian applauded frenetically. When they heard the comments around, they flushed scarlet.
“Bravo!”
“The youngest is too bravo!”
“This dude has definitely been hiding his true colors. And he has hidden them so well, that’s not cool!”
“But since he outperformed Li Qingshi this time, I shall let him off the hook!”
Li Qingshi’s face hardened horribly as he heard the murmurs from the audience.
He knew he already lost in the singing competition.
No matter it was based on the murmurs of the crowd or his genuine comment in his mind, he reached only one conclusion.
Fang Qiu had defeated him thoroughly.
In the field of singing, he was truly inferior to Fang Qiu.
“But this doesn’t matter, the game has just begun!”
“We just got started. I have a lot of talents in store, which are more than enough to suppress Fang Qiu!”
However, it was evident that Fang Qiu had no intention to let him off. Now that Li Qingshi had tried to humiliate him with despicable means, if he did not fight back, he would not be Fang Qiu.
“Just show me whatever move you have!”
Fang Qiu stared at Li Qingshi icily. He pointed a finger at Li Qingshi and said in a booming voice, “You dumped trash into my dormitory, deliberately reported my dormitory to the supervisor, and took my chance to sing a song with Jiang Miaoyu at the Start-of-Term Ceremony on purpose. This time, you used statements containing sly hints to force me to have a singing contest with you. Now that the contest already starts, let it go on without stop!”
“Display whatever move you have!”
“I, Fang Qiu, will take them all!”
The scene was extremely quiet.
Everyone was appalled by Fang Qiu’s overbearing declaration.
“Holy crap!”
“What’s happening?”
“Dumping trash into his dormitory, and took his chance to sing at the Start-of-Term Ceremony?”
Just now, all of them saw that Li Qingshi did corner Fang Qiu with deliberately conceived words, leaving Fang Qiu no options other than accepting his challenge. They all saw his move clearly and understood what he did perfectly.
“But what about the first two accusations?”
“It looks like there are a lot going on behind the scenes, doesn’t it?”
However, the most astonishing part was that Fang Qiu was not afraid of openly going against Li Qingshi at all.
“He is the president of the student union of the School of Chinese Medicine, to which Fang Qiu belongs.”
“But Fang Qiu just threw down the gauntlet to him in public.”
“He is going to stir up serious trouble!”