Gu Tang herself was still somewhat wary. However, Lin Yueyue was busy maintaining her image in front of the cameras and simply did not have the time to openly go against her. No one seemed to bring up anything the cameras had recorded, either.
The next day’s vocal class went peacefully, as though nothing had happened.
The class was taught by Teacher Liu Weiwei. The very first thing he did after class began was test each student’s control over pitch.
Once again, Lu Yijing was the first to volunteer and take the lead. She performed consistently as usual and was practically recognized by everyone as one of the promising candidates.
Xu Piaopiao had the best singing voice, Lin Yueyue’s timbre was clear and pleasant, while Gu Tang… Gu Tang’s voice was unique.
At first, no one noticed anything unusual. It was Gu Tang herself who vaguely realized something was wrong. Why was there one voice in the group singing that sounded particularly strange and could never blend properly with everyone else?
Then Gu Tang discovered that the quieter she sang, the more harmonious the group’s singing became. The less force she put into her voice, the better the harmony sounded. If she did not sing at all, the harmony was perfect.
Gu Tang, after discovering the truth: …Damn.
At the same time, Teacher Liu Weiwei also noticed that something was wrong. However, what he noticed was not a discordant voice, but… someone slacking off and not singing.
That was a matter of attitude.
The strict and meticulous Teacher Liu stopped playing the keyboard and looked at the girls.
“Everyone, sing a little louder. There will be plenty of time to rest later. Right now, focus completely on singing!”
Yet there was still one person’s voice that failed to come through.
Teacher Liu’s eyes swept across everyone before landing on the already conspicuous Gu Tang.
Gu Tang had her mouth wide open and looked as though she was putting in tremendous effort, yet her throat was not moving at all. She looked like she was performing a silent movie.
…He had almost been fooled by her superb acting.
“Gu Tang, sing a little louder,” Teacher Liu said calmly.
Gu Tang jolted and opened her mouth even wider.
“I told you to make your voice louder, not your mouth bigger,” Liu Weiwei said. He was a serious person by nature and could not stand this kind of attempt to be clever. “Everyone else, stop for now. Let Gu Tang sing by herself.”
Gu Tang cleared her throat and began to sing. Her pitch was fine, and she knew all the lyrics.
“Isn’t your singing pretty good? Why was your voice so quiet during the group singing?” Liu Weiwei asked.
“When I sing in a group…” Gu Tang looked troubled. “My voice is a little strange.”
Liu Weiwei had them do the group singing again, and sure enough, Gu Tang once again became the one with the distinctive voice.
There was no problem when someone sang alone. When two people sang together, each could have their own distinctive sound. But when a whole group sang together, the one whose voice did not blend in became extremely conspicuous.
Under everyone’s gaze, Gu Tang felt like the last remaining hair on a bald man’s head, proudly standing tall against the rain, snow, wind, and frost.
Teacher Liu Weiwei rubbed his chin and offered some advice. “What’s going on with your voice? Can you hold yourself back a little?”
“I was holding back just now.” Gu Tang raised her hand and swore. “After trying it myself, I found that the best result is when I don’t make a sound at all.”
Liu Weiwei shook his head. “Everyone has to sing and dance. It’s impossible to have you just open your mouth without making any sound.”
“Teacher!” Xu Piaopiao backed Gu Tang up. “She always sounds like this when she sings. She’s not doing it on purpose.”
Gu Tang: “…Thanks for sticking up for me.”
There were plenty of long breaks during vocal class. In the middle of it, the assistant director took the contestants in batches to have their photos taken and record videos.
The young female assistant, who was wearing a mask, was also a very straightforward person. She was always smiling when she spoke. “Once you finish dancing this afternoon, you won’t have the energy to deal with all this, so we have to get it done this morning.”
When Gu Tang and Xu Piaopiao entered the room, two stylists were already waiting for them. Both were young women.
Gu Tang obediently sat down, while Xu Piaopiao was more concerned about something else. “Can I keep the smoky eye makeup?”
“You can keep the smoky eyes,” the young stylist said with a light laugh, “but I’m going to hold on to your skull necklace for you temporarily.”
Gu Tang’s stylist was not nearly as easygoing as Xu Piaopiao’s. She looked Gu Tang over, her brows furrowing slightly.
That expression made Gu Tang feel guilty. “Is my makeup really difficult to do?”
“Yes.” The young stylist gave her a deadpan look and said nothing more.
She seemed like a sister with a strong sense of responsibility, so Gu Tang decided to shut up completely.
The makeup artist on Gu Tang’s side finished quickly. Looking at herself in the mirror, Gu Tang deeply felt that this face really was extraordinarily alluring, while she herself was such a plain and unpretentious person. She felt somewhat melancholy.
But the person in the mirror was so beautiful that her melancholy vanished completely under the satisfaction of admiring her own beauty.
“Damn!” Xu Piaopiao’s first reaction upon seeing Gu Tang was to swear. “If I become a rich woman, I’ll keep you as my lover. Just looking at your face every day would make me happy.”
Gu Tang was still completely immersed in her self-admiration, convinced that she was far too beautiful and that no one was worthy of her. With an arrogant and aloof expression, she said, “Who would be lucky enough to have someone as perfect as me?”
Xu Piaopiao continued leisurely, “Actually, I’ve changed my mind about keeping you. I want to make you mute.”
Gu Tang: “Are you really that ruthless?!”
Taking photos was not difficult for Gu Tang and Xu Piaopiao. Before they had even had half a minute to rest, the young assistant pulled them away to shoot an advertisement.
“You two are from the acting department, so we’re giving you the more difficult advertisement,” the young assistant confirmed with them. “No problem, right?”
“No problem!” The two bottom-of-the-class students from the acting department were brimming with confidence.
As Gu Tang and Xu Piaopiao followed the assistant, they saw another group already filming an advertisement. Six youthful girls wearing white pleated skirts stood in front of the camera, with Lu Yijing and Lin Yueyue leading them as they sweetly formed heart shapes with their hands.
“Zhen Shi Mei is the only juice I drink!”
The assistant led Gu Tang and Xu Piaopiao past them separately. It was obvious that they had an important scene to film, which drew a wave of envious looks from the other girls.
Gu Tang and Xu Piaopiao became even more smug. They held their heads high and walked with swagger, as though they did not care what anyone thought.
“Seriously, an advertisement with this kind of difficulty can only be handed to professionals like us. Other people can’t handle it,” Xu Piaopiao bragged.
“Advertisements are nothing to acting majors. We were doing commercials at three and film and television acting at five!” Gu Tang bragged even more outrageously than she did.
When they arrived at the advertisement’s filming location, it was clearly a level above the hastily put-together setup from before. There was even an exquisite, freshly polished little wooden table.
“Is the only difference between the background for our advertisement and the one just now this wooden table?” Gu Tang quietly asked Xu Piaopiao.
“This definitely isn’t an ordinary wooden table,” Xu Piaopiao said with absolute certainty. After seeing the cameraman place two bottles of drinks on the table, she became even more certain. “That’s the little wooden table holding two bottles of Zhen Shi Mei drinks!”
No, the table had not increased in value just because two bottles of drinks had been placed on it.
They were filming a beverage advertisement. One of the shots required the lead to finish an entire bottle in one go and then flash a toothy smile at the camera, completely shattering the two girls’ fantasies of filming some kind of sophisticated commercial.
The shot was so ridiculously stupid that even Gu Tang and Xu Piaopiao, the two bottom-of-the-class students, found it somewhat distasteful.
The young assistant looked at the two of them. “Which one of you is better at drinking water?”
Before Gu Tang could say anything, Xu Piaopiao beat her to it.
“Her! She’s really good at drinking!”
Gu Tang: …
“Great, then Gu Tang, you can do the drinking shot.” The young assistant pulled Gu Tang over to the little table.
As she was being dragged over, Gu Tang shot Xu Piaopiao a murderous look.
Xu Piaopiao merely raised an eyebrow and pretended she had not seen it.
“Piaopiao,” the young assistant called out to Xu Piaopiao. “You come over too.”
The smile that had been waiting to watch the fun on the sidelines disappeared from Xu Piaopiao’s face. She suddenly had a bad feeling.
“Piaopiao, while Gu Tang is drinking, use the fan to fan her and look at her with an expression of admiration. Pay attention, it has to be an extremely admiring gaze!” the assistant emphasized.
Xu Piaopiao took the palm-leaf fan the assistant handed her, then looked at Gu Tang.
Gu Tang gave her a smile that clearly said, “You can’t escape either.”
“I thought about it carefully, and I’m actually pretty good at drinking water too…” Xu Piaopiao casually reached for the drinks on the table.
Should she play the comedic character who gulped down an entire bottle and gave a thumbs-up, or play an equally ridiculous character who was also deliberately over-the-top and required acting skills? Did she even need to think about it? Of course, the one that did not require acting skills would be more enjoyable!
As another academic slacker, Gu Tang saw right through Xu Piaopiao’s intentions. She likewise reached for the bottle without making a fuss and grabbed it firmly.
“Leave the hard work of drinking to me. After all, you said yourself that I can drink a lot. I’m especially suited for this shot.”
Gu Tang tightened her grip on the bottle and refused to let go. She put on an exaggerated, fake smile. Heh, she had never lost a contest of strength before. Even though they were good friends, she absolutely would not go easy on Xu Piaopiao just because of that!
“You just fan her!” the young assistant suddenly spoke up, pointing at Gu Tang. “That fake smile you’re making right now fits the advertiser’s requirements perfectly.”
Gu Tang reminded her, “You clearly said earlier that she needed to look at me with admiration. You just said the word ‘fake’ yourself.”
“It’s fine,” the young assistant said even more frankly. “Everyone knows what we mean. If the title sponsor hadn’t insisted on making this kind of tacky advertisement, we wouldn’t want to film it this way either.”
Xu Piaopiao reminded her, “Assistant Sister, you just said the word ‘tacky.’”
For some reason, the two of them suddenly became deeply concerned about the future of this production team. Could it be that the two of them were actually the most cautious people in the entire production crew?
Filming began.
Gu Tang genuinely never expected that the first advertisement of hers to be broadcast on television would turn out like this:
Xu Piaopiao heroically downed an entire bottle of the drink, wiped away her sweat, and gave a thumbs-up.
“Delicious!”
Gu Tang fanned her with the palm-leaf fan while looking at her with innocent admiration.
“You’re amazing!”
After finishing this shot, both Xu Piaopiao and Gu Tang felt a deep, soul-crushing discomfort and prepared to leave this heartbreaking place.
“Wait!” the young assistant shouted. “Gu Tang, your part isn’t over yet!”
“Huh?” Gu Tang pointed at herself, looking utterly confused. Wasn’t she just a supporting character? What other scenes did she have?
The cameraman placed three more bottles of the drink on the table.
“Next scene, Teacher Chen Xing drinks three bottles of water. Gu Tang, you do the same thing.”
Gu Tang: …
When Chen Xing arrived on set, his expression was just as complicated as Gu Tang and Xu Piaopiao’s. He looked as though he had sacrificed a great deal for the sake of making a living.
The young assistant began directing the scene.
“Okay, Teacher Chen Xing, start drinking. Good. Gu Tang, fan him. Look at Teacher Chen Xing with admiration…”
Gu Tang had only fanned him a few times when Chen Xing’s face grew increasingly red.
Even the assistant noticed that something was wrong.
“Teacher… Are you getting hotter the more she fans you?”
Author’s Note: Mini Theater:
Xu Piaopiao: “Our friendship is as strong as gold…”
Gu Tang: “But our lives are as fragile as paper.”
Assistant Sister, applauding: “Cultured people, cultured people.”
===
Chen Xing, an excellent dance teacher, has sacrificed a lot for the sake of making a living.
…But why did it have to happen in front of Gu Tang???!!!
Chen Xing: “…Although this is really embarrassing, honestly, I’m kind of happy.”
Assistant: “Teacher, please don’t say that. It sounds a little too tragic.”