Lin Yueyue cried in front of the cameras for ten whole minutes.
She cried while expressing her gratitude, and the tears seemed endless.
“Doesn’t anyone have any water for her? I’m really worried there isn’t enough water left in her body to sustain all those tears.”
Gu Tang felt that she had successfully entered the role of the vicious supporting female character.
Rock-and-roll girl Xu Piaopiao, meanwhile, was looking around furtively, her eyes filled with anticipation.
“Why hasn’t anyone tripped her yet?”
“No one’s going to trip her while the cameras are rolling.”
Gu Tang turned Xu Piaopiao’s face away from the cameras.
“Be careful. If they capture your impatient expression while she’s crying, you’ll never be able to clear your name.”
After hearing Gu Tang’s advice, Xu Piaopiao covered her face and squeezed out a sentence through her fingers.
“Tell me when you see someone trip her.”
“Your obsession with this is getting a little excessive…” Gu Tang had even begun to wonder which of the two of them was actually the vicious supporting female character.
After this little episode passed, Gu Tang and Xu Piaopiao, having arrived early to line up, soon found themselves close to the teachers’ booths.
Several girls came out of the booths, none of them looking particularly happy.
“Seems pretty strict,” Gu Tang remarked.
“They probably didn’t expect this many people to sign up, so they have to be stricter.” Xu Piaopiao pointed toward the stadium. “They originally said they’d choose twenty-five out of fifty. Look at this line. There are at least seventy or eighty people.”
“But they only prepared the resources and procedures for twenty-five people in the first place.” Gu Tang’s gaze swept across the girls in the stadium. “There are so many acting students here. Our singing and dancing abilities are probably all about the same, so the teachers must have a hard time choosing.”
The girl standing in line in front of them turned around. She was a cute, round-faced girl from another school who seemed easy to get along with. She had watched Gu Tang and Xu Piaopiao play cards from beginning to end just now.
“Some students from the vocal music department at my school came too.”
Wasn’t that even more terrifying?!
After only a few words, it was already the girl’s turn to enter the booth. The girl who had come out before her still wore a troubled expression.
At last, standing right outside the teachers’ booth, Gu Tang and Xu Piaopiao finally began to feel nervous.
Xu Piaopiao asked Gu Tang, “What song should we sing?”
Gu Tang froze.
“We’re singing together?”
“Of course.” Xu Piaopiao reminded her, “Did you forget? You were the one who said it just now. The two of us are a group, Burning Bass.”
Gu Tang blinked.
She hadn’t forgotten about forming a group at all. It was just that she clearly remembered Xu Piaopiao calling the group “Blood Rock” earlier.
“What should we sing, then?”
Gu Tang decided not to think about the group name anymore.
“‘Sweet Sweet’?”
“That song is way too conservative.” Xu Piaopiao shook her head repeatedly. “We need something more shocking.”
Gu Tang immediately had another ominous feeling.
She even started wondering whether all these ominous premonitions she’d been having lately were because she’d been reincarnated badly or because she’d made the wrong friends.
“Go ahead,” Gu Tang said, giving up on resisting.
“We’ll sing ‘The Blooming Life’!”
Xu Piaopiao’s eyes lit up as soon as she mentioned the song.
“It’s positive and full of energy! If I were a teacher, I’d think, ‘Why is this student so outstanding?’”
Gu Tang pressed her lips together.
She had thought Xu Piaopiao was going to come up with some incredible showstopper. She had even gotten the universal excuse “I don’t know how to sing” ready on the tip of her tongue.
But it was this song.
That excuse was completely useless.
“How should I put it…” Gu Tang said tactfully. “I don’t think I can really bloom like that.”
And it wasn’t that she had anything against the song itself. It was just that using this song as an audition piece for a girl group was incredibly strange.
While the two of them were still debating, the round-faced girl came out of the booth.
She had spent even less time inside than the previous contestant. However, she was beaming with happiness, and it looked like she had been selected.
“Good luck to you two, too!”
“What song did you sing?” Gu Tang immediately asked, hoping to use the answer to talk Xu Piaopiao out of her song choice.
“‘The Blooming Life.’ The teacher said I had a really strong voice, so I got selected.”
The girl smiled sweetly.
Gu Tang turned to Xu Piaopiao and apologized.
Xu Piaopiao: ???
The two entered the room.
There were three teachers inside, two men and one woman. All three had both talent and popularity.
“Hello, teachers. My name is Gu Tang.”
Gu Tang greeted them, her eyes moving across the teachers. She noticed that the youngest one suddenly looked away.
“Hello, teachers. My name is Xu Piaopiao, and our group is called Blazing Guitar!”
Xu Piaopiao had come up with yet another new group name.
The song Xu Piaopiao had originally wanted to sing, “The Blooming Life,” had already been performed by someone else. So the two of them sang the “Sweet Sweet” that Gu Tang had suggested earlier.
It was a song with practically no difficulty to begin with, and their performance was fairly average.
After they finished singing, the only female teacher among the three pointed at Gu Tang.
“Her appearance is simply outstanding.”
She had absolutely no intention of commenting on Gu Tang’s singing.
The female teacher was named Yang Ya. She had also come from a girl group background. With her blonde hair and red lips, she exuded the irresistible charm of a mature woman in every gesture.
“If she stands on stage, she’ll definitely be the center of everyone’s attention.”
“Can you dance?” asked Teacher Chen Xing, who was in charge of dance. He wore a black baseball cap backward and was the youngest of the three, only four years older than Gu Tang and Xu Piaopiao. “Have you received any professional training?”
Sure enough, they had asked about this.
Gu Tang silently cried out inside, Oh no.
“Our school has physical training classes…” Gu Tang answered tactfully.
“Oh, so you haven’t actually studied it.”
Chen Xing was straightforward. He turned to Xu Piaopiao.
“Same for you?”
Xu Piaopiao was even more straightforward than he was.
“Yes.”
She answered with complete confidence.
“Actually, I want to ask Student Xu one question.” Vocal coach Liu Weiwei looked at Xu Piaopiao. “Have you studied bel canto? It’s not very obvious, but your breath support seems to come from…”
He stopped midway.
A girl dressed in such a punk style with smoky eye makeup didn’t exactly seem like the type who would have studied bel canto.
“Yes,” Xu Piaopiao said, maintaining her usual bluntness. “My mother is a bel canto teacher.”
Gu Tang, standing beside her, suddenly turned her head in shock.
“No wonder.” Vocal coach Liu Weiwei looked at the others. “I think she can make it. Her singing foundation is very solid.”
He was the oldest of them all, and the others had no objections.
“I think Gu Tang can make it too,” Female Teacher Yang Ya insisted. “I work with girl groups. A face like hers can absolutely bring in traffic, and her voice isn’t bad either.”
Liu Weiwei didn’t seem particularly interested in Gu Tang’s overly glamorous appearance. He looked somewhat hesitant.
“What do you think, Chen Xing?” Yang Ya asked him. “You’re also in your early twenties. From the perspective of a young audience, don’t you think she’s attractive?”
Chen Xing had barely looked Gu Tang directly in the eye from the beginning. Every time their eyes met, his gaze would immediately wander away.
Now that Yang Ya was pressing him for an answer, his face became slightly flushed, and he had completely lost the imposing tone he’d used earlier when questioning them about whether they’d studied dance.
Yang Ya smiled and waited for his answer.
Chen Xing knew he couldn’t avoid it. He lowered the brim of his cap and smiled somewhat awkwardly at the table in front of him.
“She looks really good. Really, really good. I almost don’t dare to make eye contact with her.”
Chen Xing was so shy that Gu Tang started laughing too, and the sound reached his ears.
Yang Ya noticed that Chen Xing’s ears had turned even redder.
“Gu Tang, stop smiling at Chen Xing. He’s about to explode.”
Gu Tang immediately suppressed her smile.
“All right, then.”
Yang Ya gave the two of them a wink.
“You both passed. But this is only the first step. The real test starts tomorrow. Remember to check your phones for text messages.”
Gu Tang and Xu Piaopiao exchanged a glance, feeling that their luck was simply too good.
They couldn’t be too conspicuous after leaving, so it was only after they had walked out of the stadium that the two finally let out a sigh of relief.
“Your mother teaches bel canto?” Gu Tang had held back that question while they were in front of the teachers. “So, do you actually like rock music?”
“That’s called rebellion.” Xu Piaopiao tossed her hair with the confidence of a Pantene commercial. “Isn’t yours way more exciting? Getting into a girl group just because of your looks, how blissful is that!”
Gu Tang patted her own face.
“This is the first time I’ve ever felt that this face of mine was actually useful. But that Teacher Liu Weiwei didn’t seem to like me very much.”
“He probably likes a face like Lin Yueyue’s.” Xu Piaopiao grinned. “Anyway, we made it. Come on, let’s have a proper feast to celebrate!”
Yang Ya genuinely liked Gu Tang’s face.
Another student had just left the room. Yang Ya rested her chin on her hand and sighed.
“After seeing Gu Tang, none of these other girls look stunning to me anymore.”
“You just like that particular style.” The old-school cadre-like Liu Weiwei chuckled. “I think girls look better when they’re a little more pure and innocent. Gu Tang’s appearance is too striking.”
“I know, I know.” Yang Ya nodded. “We just have different tastes. But look at how relaxed Chen Xing is right now. What other girl could make him turn into such a coward in an instant?”
At this point, Yang Ya became somewhat gleeful.
“Chen Xing, you absolutely have to be strict with Gu Tang later. I have high hopes for her. You are not allowed to go weak in the knees just because she smiles at you, then feel too embarrassed to correct her!”
“I, I’m a professional. Of course I’ll be strict with everyone!” Chen Xing waved his hands, his face beginning to turn red again. “Stop making fun of me!”
Although he was stammering when he spoke, his fingers flew across his phone as he typed a message to his friend.
[Yin Fan Fan Fan Fan!!! Guess what!!! I saw a gorgeous beauty at the girl group audition!!! A! GOR! GEOUS! BEAUTY!]
The repeated exclamation marks represented the full extent of his shock.
In Chen Xing’s mind, when a girl was good-looking, you could say she was pretty, beautiful, or gorgeous. But Gu Tang was beautiful in such an intensely striking way that simply standing there was enough to stun people, and every photograph of her looked like it belonged on a magazine cover.
The only appropriate description was “gorgeous beauty,” accompanied by a string of exclamation marks.
He had even begun worrying about what he would do if Gu Tang couldn’t learn the dance routines later and tried to act cute with him.
As for dancing, he was a professional. He wasn’t the kind of person who lowered his standards just because his students were girls.
But what if Gu Tang fell for him because of his handsomeness and professional skills?
She was so beautiful.
No, he needed to be stricter. Only then could he keep all these female students at a respectful distance.
While he was imagining all sorts of nonsense, his phone vibrated.
Yin Fan had replied.
Only two words.
[Gu Tang.]
It was like a bucket of cold water had fallen from the sky, extinguishing all his excitement and fantasies.
He had merely mentioned that there was a gorgeous beauty at the audition, and Yin Fan already knew it was Gu Tang.
And Gu Tang hadn’t even entered the entertainment industry yet…
There was definitely something going on between these two.
Carrying a sudden urge to show off, along with the desire to let Yin Fan experience the despair he was feeling, Chen Xing unwillingly sent another message.
[She’s going to become my student! I’m so worried she’ll be attracted to my incredible handsomeness and talent!]
Yin Fan’s reply was still brief.
[Take good care of her.]
Damn…
There was definitely something going on between them!
Author’s Note:
Little Theater:
Chen Xing after meeting Gu Tang:
“Woohoo~! I’ve got romantic luck!”
Two minutes of texting with Yin Fan later:
Chen Xing, hugging himself and weeping: “That romantic luck was painfully short-lived.”