Three days before the Christmas break, the textbook research class held its final presentation session, marking the approaching end of the semester.
Two days earlier, Rong Ting had received the PDF version forwarded by Ran Jiu, which was already quite polished.
She was taken aback and wanted to offer some compensation, but Ran Jiu declined.
She shared the PDF in the group chat, but aside from Wan Sang, who nitpicked and offered unsolicited advice for a while, no one else spoke up. Later, seeing that no one responded, Wan Sang had no choice but to save face by saying, “Well, given the tight schedule, it’s not bad. Let’s go with this.”
During their group’s presentation, Rong Ting was scheduled to speak last. Wan Sang went up first and talked at length for half an hour, constantly exchanging glances with the teaching assistant and making small gestures throughout.
The teaching assistant’s expression shifted from encouragement to visible impatience, obvious to everyone.
As a result, the speaking time for the students afterward was significantly compressed. Rong Ting immediately cut a large portion of her script, condensing it to within five minutes. The groups that followed also complained after their presentations, grumbling in the group chat about the lack of time.
Later, the teaching assistant also sent a message: “I hope all students cooperate well with their group members, discuss the timing before the presentation, and avoid taking up others’ time.”
Suddenly, a message appeared below from someone named Zhang Ling, who wasn’t in their class. Judging by her year, she seemed to be a senior student.
“Additional note: Don’t drag down the entire group’s progress and steal others’ spotlight.”
Wan Sang, being sensitive, immediately took it personally and started arguing fiercely with the other person.
The teaching assistant had to temporarily remove both of them from the group chat, adding, “Students, please focus on your presentations. Special cases will be handled accordingly. Avoid conflicts during class or in the group chat.”
After class ended, Rong Ting felt a sense of relief and just wanted to go back to her rented apartment to sleep.
She knew Ran Jiu usually didn’t return at noon, but she still instinctively sent her a message: “Are you coming back for lunch?”
“Junior Rong Ting.”
Hearing someone call her, Rong Ting looked up to see a senior student in a pink dress smiling at her, with loose chestnut curls cascading over her shoulders. She didn’t recognize the person and asked confusedly, “Who are you?”
“Oh, I’m Zhang Ling,” the girl replied, particularly poised and confident. “I think the textbook layout you handled is excellent. Since we need to submit the final version by the end of the semester, could we take a look at yours for reference?”
Generally, such requests for reference are sensitive, akin to indirectly copying homework. However, Rong Ting didn’t have strong group loyalty at the moment, and besides, there wasn’t much to reference in just a textbook layout. Without much thought, she agreed.
The two exchanged WeChat IDs, and Rong Ting only sent her the PDF version.
Wan Sang witnessed this scene and glared at them resentfully before storming off.
In the afternoon, just after Rong Ting woke up, she saw Wan Sang tagging her in the group chat, asking if she had been planning to sabotage her all along and deliberately made her lose face during class. The language was so harsh it was hard to read.
Rong Ting: “I don’t know that senior.”
Wan Sang: “Bullshit! Then why did she suddenly target me??”
Rong Ting: “I thought you’d understand best. Isn’t people’s malice toward others often inexplicable? Maybe she just doesn’t like you.”
This message was genuinely sent when she was calm, but in Wan Sang’s eyes, it was like launching a missile at her.
Furious, Wan Sang posted in the group chat: “Then you can be in a group with her next time.”
Accompanying this was the notification that Rong Ting had been kicked out of the group.
Rong Ting calmly switched pages, then clicked to delete the chat, suddenly feeling the world had become much quieter.
Lately, it seemed Ran Jiu had been very busy, returning home close to midnight each day and leaving early in the morning, so the two of them hardly ever crossed paths.
Rong Ting had originally thought about inviting Ran Jiu and the friends who helped out to a meal when she had time, but because Ran Jiu was so busy, there was simply no opportunity.
On the day she submitted her final assignment, Rong Ting slept until the afternoon. When she woke up at 5 p.m., she noticed that tickets for the Capital City Film Festival, distributed by the school, had been posted in the group chat.
As the previous student council president had said, this was the advantage of being in the capital—if you went back to other places, you likely wouldn’t have such rich cultural resources. Rong Ting deeply agreed, though she didn’t like overly crowded places and preferred visiting the capital’s libraries, museums, and niche art streets.
Besides, every year, the tickets distributed by the school were snatched up in a casual, “Buddha-like” manner, so the chances of getting one were slim.
Sure enough, as soon as the tickets were released this time, they were snatched up by classmates who had been waiting in the group chat.
Bored, she turned off her screen and was about to take another short nap when a message suddenly popped up in the class group chat. This time, besides the film festival tickets, five additional tickets for a Voice Acting Celebration were being offered, first come, first served.
Voice Acting Celebration? Could it be related to Ran Jiu?
In the moment she hesitated, the tickets were already snatched up by those who had raised their hands first.
People in the group chat were already enthusiastically discussing the film festival, while some radio drama and voice acting enthusiasts were talking about voice actors.
Having failed to get anything, Rong Ting lay back down dejectedly, unable to focus on her thesis. She picked up her phone and glanced at it a few times.
It was normal for film festival tickets to be hard to get. After all, the school only had a limited number. But according to the group chat, the Voice Acting Celebration was scheduled to take place at their university, and it was said that many important voice actors from TV dramas would be attending.
Rong Ting knew very little about this field, but there were a few people in her class who were particularly fond of radio dramas and often posted about them on social media.
Occasionally, she would click on the live-stream links shared in their posts. These streams usually didn’t show faces, only voices.
Trained voices catered to various tastes—some were mature and authoritative, some were cute and youthful, some were cool and aloof male voices, and some even imitated cartoon characters, fulfilling people’s fantasies about voices to some extent.
She couldn’t help but wonder: if Ran Jiu were a voice actor, how would her performance voice differ from her real-life voice?
She got up, opened her computer again, and searched for related videos on Bilibili.
Because the event was approaching, many voice acting studios had posted rehearsal videos on the platform. She skimmed through a few of them.
Most voice actors did live streams in pairs, joking around casually, yet the comments flooded the screen with fans cheering excitedly.
Rong Ting skillfully searched for Ran Jiu’s voice acting name, but there were only a handful of videos, many of which were noisy recordings. After searching for a while, she found a solo female voice narration piece that didn’t even credit a voice actor—the title simply read “Xiang Ji Xuan Zhi,” released by the Xiao Canglan Studio.
As the gentle background music began, the narrator’s voice carried fewer fluctuations, with a tone that felt like raindrops tapping gently. Despite its smooth delivery, it was tinged with a faint sense of melancholy.
Rong Ting immediately recognized it as Ran Jiu’s recitation, especially since the audio was close to her natural tone, with less of a performance feel and more of the emotions she inherently carried.
Rong Ting understood the text, but she couldn’t understand her.
Or rather, Ran Jiu herself was like an unsolvable puzzle.
This work was buried among a collection of videos by top-tier voice actors, with over 4,000 comments and two to three thousand favorites.
Rong Ting clicked the favorite button, then followed the Xiao Canglan Studio and several of its voice actors. Finally, her cursor hovered over Ran Jiu’s profile picture for a few moments, but she still didn’t click follow.
To Rong Ting, Ran Jiu was always an elusive mystery—aloof and enigmatic, drawing her gaze unconsciously.
Yet always just out of reach.
Feeling somewhat disheartened, Rong Ting thought to herself, as long as the event was held at the school, even if she couldn’t get a ticket, she could at least stand outside and take a look.
The more she thought about it, the more complicated it seemed. In the end, she simply played the video over and over again.