Chapter 24 Love Letter: Let It Be

If there are no school-organized activities, Zhou Yu's weekends are almost always free; he either spends his time in the library or stays in his dormitory.

As she took out her access card, she replied with one hand: "I should have one."

As soon as I entered the dormitory building, my phone vibrated.

Chen: [Let's have dinner together tonight]

Zhou Yu paused in his steps, stopping in place: "Me and you?"

As soon as the message was sent, Zhou Yu thought he might be overthinking it. He held down the message and pressed it, about to retract it, but the message had already popped up.

Chen: [There are a few more, you've seen them all.]

Zhou loosened his grip and breathed a sigh of relief: "Oh."

Chen Jingchi's next sentence reignited her anger: "Are you disappointed?"

"..."

From his words, Zhou Yu gradually discerned some details. In the past, Chen Jingchi would never have sent her such a message that could easily lead to misunderstandings. She was certain that he did it on purpose.

Her motives are still unclear, but backing down now would play right into his hands. She's still upset about what happened backstage tonight. It's hard to act calm when he's standing in front of her, but sending a text message on your phone doesn't require any acting skills.

Zhou Yu replied: [Is Xu Yue going too?]

Those five words alone were enough to deliver the desired impact. Xu Yue, unaware of the situation, heard a soft chuckle from the back seat and, still on the upper level, remarked, "Looks like he has some free time."

Chen Jingchi saw that he had received a new message on WeChat, and Zhou Yu immediately sent him a cute little emoji of sticking out her tongue.

Seeing his ill-intentioned provocation, I not only had to retaliate, but I also had to get my revenge.

Like a beautiful flower, you have to risk getting pricked by its thorns to pluck it.

Chen Jingchi found the white flag in the emoticon and sent it, indicating surrender.

As soon as An Kejia pushed open the dormitory door, she brought in the clothes that had dried on the balcony and saw Zhou Yu in front of her. She chuckled and said, "Zhou Zhou, it's too obvious. Who are you chatting with and laughing so happily with?"

"Really?" Zhou Yu put his phone on the table. "Maybe I'm just naturally cheerful."

An Kejia gave her a knowing look, shook her head, and just smiled without saying anything.

Fan Xin was removing her makeup when she heard this and looked over: "Why are you back so late? Where have you been?"

Since he had been out for too long, Zhou Yu couldn't find a good excuse, so he simply told the truth: "I went to watch the live stream."

Fan Xin paused for a few seconds before asking, "The live broadcast of tonight's music night?"

Zhou Yu nodded.

"Then you can see Chen Jingchi live?" Fan Xin asked with envy. "I even took some screenshots of song titles for you since you weren't there."

"What song title?" An Kejia didn't understand.

"It's the song title that pops up during the live stream, and Zhou Zhou's name is on it." Fan Xin lowered her head to rinse off the makeup remover on her face. "I'll send it to the group later."

A dozen minutes later, Zhou Yu saw the screenshots sent by Fan Xin. In the three pictures, there were several lines of small text under the song titles, which were hard to read without careful observation.

The lyrics are followed by "Zhou Yu".

The name of the song's production team seemed insignificant compared to the singer's; it would go unnoticed by anyone who wasn't paying attention. Zhou Yu saved all three pictures and said to Fan Xin, "Xin Xin, thank you."

"Oh, no need to thank me, it was just a quick screenshot," Fan Xin said. "You were there on site, didn't you record it?"

"No," Zhou Yu explained, "I was too busy looking at it."

Completely immersed in the performance, Zhou Yu hoped these scenes would remain in her mind forever. When Xu Yue asked her if she would come again next time, Zhou Yu wanted to answer "yes" more than anyone else.

After only one viewing, Zhou experienced mild withdrawal symptoms and didn't want to miss any more.

*

The next day at noon, while eating in the cafeteria, Fan Xin was scrolling through Weibo: "Hey, what did Chen Jingchi retweet? A five-minute video."

An Kejia craned her neck to look: "What? Click to see."

Fan Xin opened the video and placed her phone horizontally on the table. Zhou Yu looked up and saw that Chen Jingchi was holding a microphone with the "Star Future" logo and was wearing the same outfit as in the magazine photos he had posted on Weibo a few days ago. It seemed to be an interview for Star Future's magazine.

The first few questions all revolved around the new album, and Chen Jingchi's answers were all very official. It wasn't until the fourth question that the host made a digression, asking Chen Jingchi what prompted him to fall in love with singing.

Chen Jingchi did not look at the camera. He pondered for a few seconds before speaking: "It was probably in the fifth grade of elementary school. The school formed a choir, and the music teacher asked me to try it out. After I finished singing, she praised me for singing very well. There was probably an element of encouragement in it. From then on, I would ask her for advice whenever I had the chance, such as how to produce sound scientifically and how to control my breath."

Host: "So you had teachers to educate you from a very young age?"

“It wasn’t always like that. After I started junior high school, my family didn’t approve of me learning music.” Chen Jingchi spoke slowly and deliberately, like a casual chat between friends. “I would search for videos of other people teaching how to sing online, and after learning them, I would record the songs I wanted to sing on singing apps. I would listen to each line to see what the problems were, and then correct them the next time I sang them. Although this way of learning was very slow, it was very rewarding.”

When he mentioned "singing software," his words were muted in the video, presumably to avoid any suspicion of advertising.

But the lips were not covered.

"What did he say?" Fan Xin rewound the video a few seconds and watched it again.

“There are only a few singing apps.” An Kejia judged from the lip movements, “Karaoke.”

Fan Xin picked up her phone and scrolled to the comments section of the interview video. Sure enough, she saw in the top comments that someone had exposed Chen Jingchi's karaoke profile.

She clicked on it and burst out laughing: "What? His nickname is 'Don't Send Me Private Messages'? Is this really Chen Jingchi?"

An Kejia took her phone and glanced at it, then laughed, "Have you been harassed? The IP address is correct."

Fan Xin said, "I'll go download a karaoke app and check it out."

Zhou Yu was waiting to see the second half of the interview, but seeing them discussing it, she simply opened Weibo and found the interview video herself.

The next question is, "Netizens say your life is like it's been blessed with good fortune. Do you agree with this statement?"

Chen Jingchi remained noncommittal: "For me, luck probably played a bigger role. I don't think my efforts have reached the point where I can easily get what I want. I hope that one day I can live up to the netizens' evaluation."

Have you ever had moments of self-doubt on your musical journey?

Chen Jingchi nodded: "There are too many. The one I remember most is from a year ago. I managed to get a very precious performance opportunity, but I missed it. I was feeling hopeless at that time."

"Would you be grateful for participating in the previous variety show?"

Hearing this, Chen Jingchi smiled faintly, finally looked at the camera, and said, "Although I withdrew from the competition, I am definitely grateful. But the person I want to thank the most is my friend. I didn't want to go, but he signed me up for the audition."

The next minute was a Polaroid photo signing event for fans. Zhou wanted to exit the video, but then heard Fan Xin exclaim in surprise, "It really is him! He has 100,000 fans!"

An Kejia asked, "Is it him singing? Let's play it and listen."

“He has no works.” Fan Xin looked regretful. “His account was exposed, so he must have deleted them all.”

“No wonder it’s called that,” An Kejia said. “This interview has attracted a lot of attention, and if it’s not deleted, it will become a black history.”

After following her, Fan Xin saw a familiar avatar in her QQ friend list and exclaimed in surprise, "Hey, Zhou Zhou, you've also played karaoke?"

Zhou Yu hummed in agreement: "I've registered before."

On the way back to the dormitory, Zhou Yu kept thinking about what exactly this "opportunity" that Xu Yue and Chen Jingchi had both mentioned was, and why they were both so preoccupied with it.

Based solely on her understanding of him, she has absolutely no clue what to do.

After arriving at the dormitory, Zhou Yu put on his headphones and opened a private photo album in his QQ space.

Zhou Yu hadn't opened this album for a while, and she wouldn't have bothered to look back if Chen Jingchi hadn't mentioned it in an interview today.

The album contains nearly a hundred videos, all of which are videos from Zhou Yu's phone from the second year of junior high school to now. She uploaded them here because she was afraid of losing the files when she changed phones.

To be more specific...

It is a screen recording of all of Chen Jingchi's works posted on KTV.

Before high school, as he mentioned in an interview, Chen Jingchi would release a cover song every few days. At that time, he had not formally learned to sing, and his vocal techniques were far less sophisticated than they are now, and his voice was still immature.

Yet these were the videos Zhou Yu played most often. There was no other reason; the emotion made up for the lack of skill and was enough to move people's hearts.

At that time, she had just transferred to Xianhai School. She overheard her classmates discussing a "street singing duo," and after learning more, she discovered that they were the very people who had deeply moved her that night. Back then, Chen Jingchi was promoting himself by using his real name in karaoke and a selfie as his profile picture, making him easily searchable.

When Zhou Yu followed him, he only had fifty followers, and the first song on his profile page was his cover of The Beatles' "Let It Be".

Music is the most delicate bond connecting emotions. During the most difficult period, in every lonely and sleepless night, Zhou Yu relied on his voice to gradually regain her confidence and emerge from the shadows. He told her in his youthful yet sincere voice that everything would pass.

"When I find myself in times of trouble

Mother Maryes to me

And in my hour of darkness

She is standing right in front of me

Speaking words of wisdom

Let it be

For her, who was feeling lost and helpless at the time, Chen Jingchi was special, unique, and irreplaceable, a figure of equal importance to Mother Mary in the lyrics.

After entering high school and changing his name, Chen Jingchi significantly reduced the frequency of his song releases. Zhou Yu was forced to develop the habit of immediately recording his work after discovering it was deleted just minutes after being posted.

Only in this way can we hear more of his voice.

This habit was maintained for a long time, and the last video was recorded on November 13th of last year.

Zhou Yu scrolled down, but stopped when she saw that the cover featured four people. She clicked on the video, which was recorded on August 10th of last year. She remembered that the song hadn't been deleted immediately after its release and had been kept on Chen Jingchi's work page for a long time.

This is also the only work by Chen Jingchi that features a camera. The footage shows the four members of Tide Echo standing together in a sunny corner of the street, playing this song that is of great significance to Zhou Yu.

In 1968, Paul wrote "Let It Be" as the Beatles were about to break up; it was the band's last single. Coincidentally or unfortunately, it was also the last song ever performed by Tidal Echo.

Watching the video of this song again now, seeing the carefree smiles on the faces of the four people at that time, Zhou Yu couldn't quite describe the feeling in his heart.

They probably never imagined that less than a month later, Echo of the Tide would come to an end, and that the youth they had written together, which had moved so many people, would come to a close.

As the video reached its end, Zhou Yu's gaze shifted downwards, and he suddenly noticed a line of inconspicuous blue text in the description of the work.

[Echoes of the Tide - Let It Be]

[Link][Summer Band Auditions]

She never paid attention to these things when listening to music before; just listening to the sound was enough. This was the first time she had noticed the existence of this link. Zhou Yu clicked on other videos and compared them one by one, discovering that only this video had a link at the bottom.

What is this activity?

She opened the karaoke app, entered the title and searched, and a blue page from the official karaoke website popped up.

[Post your band's performance video and win a chance to record on CCTV!]

[From July 15th to August 30th, submit your work to the event page, fill out the program registration form, and the top 3 scorers will be invited to the live program!]

The event has long since ended, but the top spot on the list below is none other than Chen Jingchi's nickname, "Don't send me private messages."

Zhou stared at his profile picture for a long time, lost in thought.

Why make them endure it for another month?

"There was supposed to be a stage that October. But because we signed up as a band, we couldn't perform solo."

"I had secured a very precious performance opportunity, but I missed it. I was devastated at the time."

All the clues connected. Zhou Yu finally realized just how important that stage was to Chen Jingchi back then. She also finally understood why Chen Jingchi's personality had changed so drastically after that.

At that time, she naively thought that the band's disbandment had been a huge blow to him, but she didn't expect that this was just the fuse.

What he lost was far more valuable than it appeared on the surface.

Being able to perform on CCTV is a distant goal for Chen Jingchi now, let alone for a seventeen-year-old with no resources and only passion.

Zhou Yu couldn't imagine what Chen Jingchi must have felt when he won first place but couldn't enjoy the honor and could only watch the opportunity slip through his fingers. What others considered a stage insignificant was something Chen Jingchi, who valued music above all else, dreamed of.

She inexplicably recalled her first meeting with Chen Jingchi at school, and the cigarette between her fingers.

And the medical records I've seen on my desk.

Only then did she fully understand the struggles and confusion hidden in his lyrics, and realize why the boy who had always accompanied her as she grew up, singing about youthful ideals and with a pure smile, had grown into a serious adult overnight.

-----------------------

Author's Note: *Lyrics reference The Beatles' "Let It Be"

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