ROSE & GUN
Student, student, wait a minute!
Lu Ling stopped in her tracks, took off the earbud from her left ear, and turned around in a bit of a daze—a short-haired girl was jogging toward her.
The girl wore a khaki and red pinstripe wide-check shirt as an inner layer, with a deep blue jacket unzipped over it. Her lower half consisted of dark green wide-leg pants and silver sneakers. She rested her hands on her knees, her chest heaving, then looked up. Behind her black-rimmed glasses, her eyes—physiologically reddened from running so fast—shone exceptionally bright in the night.
The two spoke almost simultaneously:
“Are you Chu Xiao?”
“Student, you’re from Class 3 of the First Middle School, right? Are you interested in being my lead singer?”
Lu Ling was stunned. She nodded first, then hurriedly shook her head.
Chu Xiao still looked at her with burning eyes. The band merchandise badge pinned to the strap of her black canvas bag happened to be at shoulder height, creating a strange sort of resonance between them.
In the distant venue, the band’s concert was still ongoing.
Lu Ling subconsciously assumed they had both ended this long-awaited performance early for the same reason—hearing this band’s songs live in person, they surprisingly lacked the intense emotion found in the earbuds.
This wasn’t the meaning of a live performance, and certainly not what Lu Ling imagined music to be.
Realizing the other girl was also looking at her, Lu Ling instinctively hid her right hand behind her back, concealing the bruises on her wrist that had not yet faded.
She knew Chu Xiao; she had been deeply impressed by the name since the first day of school—the freshman class roster was arranged by entrance exam ranking, and Chu Xiao was number one.
During military training, the formations of their two classes happened to be adjacent. The Chu Xiao standing in the ranks then was different from the popular image of an elite student; Chu Xiao was quiet.
While standing at attention under the scorching sun, she wouldn’t make eye contact with those around her. During the breaks, she would just silently drink water under a tree—she did indeed often wear headphones.
So, she hadn’t been listening to English back then.
Lu Ling looked at Chu Xiao again. She was a head shorter than Lu Ling, and her black-rimmed glasses took up half her face.
The wind blew; she took off her glasses and brushed away the hair caught in her eyelashes, exposing her features—previously hidden by the glasses—completely to the night.
On her small face, every feature was distinct.
She was as exquisite as a doll.
Her eyes were bright, like a little lion returning from a romp.
“…During the concert, I was sitting directly below you. I heard you when you sang along,” Chu Xiao gazed at her, her voice losing its initial excitement and returning to the quiet, introverted impression Lu Ling had of her over the past seven days.
“You sing exceptionally well. I think you’re better than the one on stage.”
“Ah?”
Lu Ling instinctively started to wave her hand in dismissal, but as their eyes met, she realized Chu Xiao wasn’t just flattering her to achieve a goal. Her raised hand dropped back down—
Music. She loved music.
On the long road of drifting from house to house, when she and her mother were squeezed into the back of a truck as neighbors to suitcases, the driver would play car music. Little Lu Ling would watch the driver—whose face was grim from fatigue—slowly relax through the music, returning to his original kind and easygoing self. Music was like magic.
Those troubles she couldn’t tell Lu Ye, music always had a way of resolving.
However, none of this was a sufficient factor for her to accept Chu Xiao’s invitation.
She was fifteen then, a high school student. The primary task of that stage of her life was the college entrance exam.
But—
“What is your band called?”
Chu Xiao stood up straight, her tone calm: “ROSE & GUN.”
“Only missing a lead singer?”
Chu Xiao corrected: “There is only a lead singer.”
“Huh?”
Chu Xiao didn’t feel embarrassed; she added with a candid expression, “If you agree.”
—In that moment, she thought of someone.
“Um…” Lu Ling hesitated for a moment and asked tentatively, “What if I don’t agree?”
Chu Xiao shrugged without any burden, pointed to herself, and said easily, “Then there’s still only one drummer. For now.”
Rustle—
The evening breeze lightly brushed the treetops, bringing down a shower of pinkish-white cherry blossoms.
The wind stopped. Chu Xiao shook her head, shaking the petals off her body. A few pink-and-white petals slid down her shoulder and sneaked into her canvas bag, one of them landing on the forehead of a magazine model peeking out from the bag.
Following Lu Ling’s gaze, Chu Xiao took out the magazine: “You like reading this magazine too?”
The model, who had previously only shown one eye, was now fully revealed to Lu Ling—it was her; she hadn’t mistaken the person.
How could she mistake her?
Lin Que.
She had actually seen the fifteen-year-old Lin Que on a spring night in April, on the cover of the music magazine she loved most—the one she used to secretly fantasize about appearing on.
On the cover, Lin Que’s short hair was similar to Chu Xiao’s.
The difference was that hers was a bolder, above-the-eyebrow fringe.
On her collarbone and chest were the sun-faded letters “NEVER MIND.” Under the smoky eye makeup, her bright black eyes stared straight into the camera, like a hunting leopard.
Lu Ling looked directly at her, feeling like prey being watched; the feeling was truly not great.
Yet she couldn’t bear to look away.
In the chaos of adolescence, how could someone be so beautiful?
The hand Lu Ling held the magazine with dropped weakly. The “thank you” at the tip of her tongue changed to “Okay.”
Chu Xiao was slightly stunned. After coming to her senses, a smile instantly blossomed, and she excitedly hugged Lu Ling—that was a rare moment in Lu Ling’s memory where Chu Xiao actually matched being “fifteen years old.”
She was embraced by Chu Xiao and smiled along with her, but her gaze remained fixed on the magazine cover, on Lin Que’s face.
This magazine was published by the S Company’s music department. The cover models were either their artists or artists about to be launched—Lin Que?
On the cover, Lin Que’s face turned into a cold, gleaming blade.
Lin Que was someone who was tone-deaf.
During a choir competition in the third grade of elementary school, Lin Que stood beside her and was caught by the teacher for lip-syncing.
Despite repeated questioning, she wouldn’t say why until the teacher said that if she continued with that attitude, her position could only be at the very edge of the formation—a place where the lights would definitely not reach.
She instinctively looked at her, and Lin Que looked at her too.
She watched her; Lin Que’s lips tightened and then relaxed. Finally, Lin Que looked away, the tips of her ears flushing with a shy red. She spoke very quickly in a low voice: “I sing out of tune.”
The teacher was puzzled: “You can do it if you put your heart into it. You can’t just make a sound. This is a group activity.”
Lin Que’s patience was exhausted. She raised her voice, throwing caution to the wind: “It’s a problem with my ears, not my mouth. My not making a sound and not throwing everyone else off is my greatest contribution to this group activity. And,” Lin Que stood up straight, looking up at the teacher with a candid expression, “contributing beauty.”
“Having a beautiful person standing in the middle makes everyone look beautiful.”
Lin Que knew better than anyone that she was beautiful; it was an unquestionable objective fact. Even though the teacher, a symbol of authority, was provoked, she ultimately did not move her to the edge.
And the fact that Lin Que had a problem with her ears was a thing of great contrast to Lu Ling.
—So, Lin Que also had things she wasn’t good at.
But so what if she wasn’t good at it?
It was as if, back then, those bright black eyes under the smoky makeup were looking straight at her, like a provocation, silently saying: “See, I’m still one step ahead of you.”
In her earbuds, that favorite melody became noisy and irritating.
She was at an age for dreaming then, a time when she dared to turn dreams into reality—she accepted Chu Xiao’s invitation and became the lead singer. She would also be on this cover, with a glamorous image, holding music strong enough to move a ten-thousand-person arena, with more confidence, more positivity, far surpassing Lin Que.
Later, the class commissary for studies, Bei Shiyi, joined as the band’s keyboardist. A year later, a bassist joined. The members of ROSE & GUN were finally finalized. In July of the same year, they released their debut song “Midsummer Unfinished,” and in August, Lu Ling received her first livehouse performance invitation.
As for the cover models on that magazine, the new ones replaced the old. Lin Que’s appearance was like that shower of cherry blossoms scattered in the spring night; she did not debut as a musician and never appeared in that magazine again.
After the last performance before the college entrance exam, as they walked out of the backstage, someone stopped her and Chu Xiao, handing them a business card: “I am the head of the New Talent Development Section of S Company’s music department.”
She looked at Chu Xiao.
Chu Xiao didn’t look at her, as if intentionally ignoring her gaze, her fingers tightly pinching a corner of the business card.
She knew Chu Xiao’s choice.
Of the four-person band, only she and Bei Shiyi were left in the end.
That performance, which was supposed to be the last before the college entrance exam, became the final performance of ROSE & GUN. Chu Xiao did not take the exam and signed with S Company. Lu Ling finished her last exam and walked out of the testing center. Upon turning on her phone, the first push notification was: S Company’s New Female Solo Debut.
Bei Shiyi glanced at her phone, let out a breath, tore open a popsicle wrapper, and handed it to her. Before she could deliberate over words of comfort, Lu Ling turned her head, her eyes burning: “Shiyi, do you still want to sing?”
“Singing… isn’t it very simple?” Bei Shiyi didn’t answer directly. Lu Ling stubbornly broke through the layer of pretense: “You know I don’t mean it that way.”
“Shiyi,” Lu Ling said word by word, “I still want to sing.”
“Sing my own songs. My songs are better than all of theirs, aren’t they?”
Bei Shiyi gazed at her for a long time. The orange-flavored popsicle slowly melted, the juice running down the stick, condensing into a full bead on her reddened fingertip before continuing downward—“Drip—”
A broken pearl, falling into the radiant sunlight.
“Okay.”
FEVER, LURING, SHIYI,
Born in the sun.
“…And now? Do you still want to sing lately?”
At the top of the chat box: Shiyi.
It was currently two in the afternoon on the other side of the ocean. Before “Wild Berries Growth,” Bei Shiyi had already received an offer.
Lu Ling had cut all her links with LURING, except for Shiyi.
And now, Lu Ling looked at the last sentence of the thirty-second voice-to-text message: “And now? Do you still want to sing lately?” Her finger hovered over the keyboard before she finally turned off the screen.
She had been in the room all day; she couldn’t keep slacking off.
Lu Ling put on her mask and took a deep breath. At the moment she pushed open the door, Ren Hui’s excited and cheerful voice came from the living room downstairs—“OK! Confess!”
Lin Que’s eyebrows arched slightly, as if she had sensed something. She glanced toward the stairs out of the corner of her eye.
“Xiao Lin, please begin your confession!”