Chapter 42 42. That’s when I wanted to start over
When Xie Kang walked into the temporary rehearsal room converted from the utility room, he discovered that one of the original four members of Shen Xifu's band was missing. He looked carefully and found that the boy who played guitar was not there.
Xie Kang asked Shen Xifu: “Is Wang Jun busy today?”
Shen Xifu looked embarrassed, curled her lips, and said, “He won’t come again.”
Xie Kang frowned: "Why?"
“He said that rehearsals every week are too tiring, and he still has cram school to attend, and…” Shen Xifu looked around carefully, and then continued: “Wang Jun said that Teacher Zhuang is too fierce, which makes him very stressed.”
Xie Kang was originally in a bad mood, but when he heard Shen Xifu say this, he couldn't help laughing, thinking that as Zhuang Yongyuan's first disciple, he was treated much better than others.
He asked Shen Xifu seriously, “Do you also think that Teacher Zhuang is too fierce? I’ll go and communicate with him.”
Shen Xifu hesitated to speak, and Xie Kang said, “Just say whatever you want to say.”
“Will Teacher Zhuang listen to you?” Shen Xifu asked.
Xie Kang thought about it and said, "Not necessarily. I'll give it a try. Talented people like them sometimes have strange tempers."
"I think it's okay... He was quite right, and I learned a lot, even though he was a bit too direct."
Xie Kang took a sip of water and asked Shen Xifu: “Do you have a substitute?”
Ana Shen said helplessly: “I’m still looking. There aren’t many people who can play electric guitar. After hearing that you practice several times a week, I don’t want to come even more.”
She said with a worried look on her face, "The performance is next week, I don't know if I can find someone in time."
Xie Kang sighed briefly in his heart. Compared with Wang Jun who quit at the last minute, the former Du Jiahao had become an excellent teammate. Although he always made mistakes in typing, smoked and drank during rehearsal, flirted and swore, and sometimes it was obvious that he had just had a fight with someone, and he didn't even change his clothes, and came to rehearsal covered in dust and with blood at the corners of his mouth, he never missed a session.
"Then you don't have a guitarist today, which will really affect the effectiveness of the group rehearsal." Xie Kang held his chin and thought for a while. He couldn't think of anyone suitable for the time being. He couldn't ask Zhuang Yongyuan himself to play, and he might not be able to easily pay his appearance fee.
Xie Kang was just daydreaming when Shen Xifu suddenly asked him, “Teacher Xie, don’t you know how to play the guitar?”
"Me?" Xie Kang looked at the rented electric guitar with mottled paint on the shelf and was stunned.
“Yes, Teacher Xie, didn’t you play at the music festival? I saw that you played well in the video.” Shen Xifu said eagerly.
"Just okay?"
Shen Xifu didn’t expect that Xie Kang, who was always serious and rigid, would ask such a question. She was also stunned and said awkwardly: “I’m not a professional either…”
"Teacher, you practice regularly, right? Otherwise, how could you play it when you were suddenly called up?"
As Shen Xifu spoke, she suddenly realized, “Oh! I see, you and Teacher Zhuang have discussed this in advance, and there must be such a link!”
Xie Kang waved his hands in denial: "That's not true! We haven't been in touch for a long time."
"Teacher Zhuang is quite brave. What if you don't know how to do it?"
“This song is different.”
"What's the difference?"
"I wrote it myself, and it's different from all the other songs." Xie Kang closed his eyes and could still recall that summer, hunkered down on the second floor of Zhuang Yongyuan's house, or at Echo Music Store, the fan and air conditioner whirring. He'd rehearse each melody, figuring out the right chords, and play it for Zhuang Yongyuan. When Zhuang Yongyuan said something wasn't right, he'd rack his brains to figure out how to change it. Xie Kang had never, and never would, experience a summer like that again. After Li Xiuyu's accident, everything was different.
Shen Xifu's suspicious question interrupted Xie Kang's recollection: "How come you and Teacher Zhuang haven't been in touch for many years? You seem to know each other very well."
"That's just in time for him to come back, and there aren't any other friends here. Once he leaves, we can just stop contacting each other like before." Xie Kang finished speaking, walked over, shouldered his electric guitar, and urged, "Alright, stop chatting, and hurry up and practice."
After playing the prelude, Xie Kang felt a little awkward. It is impossible not to regress after not touching the guitar for six years. After all, the chords of "What Kind of Person" are simple and he is familiar with them. He can handle it at the music festival. In "Thousands of Typhoons", Zhuang Yongyuan wrote a lot of bridges for him to show off his skills. There are many chord changes, and Xie Kang can't react at all. He often plays wrong, misses the beat,
This was still Zhuang Yongyuan's simplified version. Xie Kang felt ashamed and didn't dare to look at the expressions of Shen Xifu and others around him. He also had a better understanding of Wang Jun's retreat halfway.
After playing it down once, Xie Kang said weakly to the others, "Why don't you find someone else?"
"What are you looking for?" Zhuang Yongyuan suddenly pushed the door open and asked.
He noticed at a glance that someone was missing. He then looked at Xie Kang, who was carrying an electric guitar, and said to him impatiently, "What a mess you're playing! Where's the guy who was originally playing guitar?"
“Wang Jun is too busy with tutoring, so he won’t come anymore…” Shen Xifu said nervously, completely different from the relaxed look she had just shown in front of Xie Kang.
"You're not coming just because we've made some progress?" Zhuang Yongyuan's face darkened.
His voice was still a little hoarse, as was Xie Kang's. Last week, after returning from the beach, they both caught a severe cold that night. For a while, they lay in bed unable to speak, let alone meet. Today was their first time seeing each other since that time.
Although Zhuang Yongyuan rejected Shen Xifu's request to be his instructor, he would always come to check on the Guava Seed Band during their rehearsal, saying that he didn't want the songs he wrote to be played randomly by others.
"Are you better from your cold?" Xie Kang asked Zhuang Yongyuan.
Zhuang Yongyuan said angrily, "Don't change the subject. Your playing just now was terrible. Have you regressed so much?"
Xie Kang felt guilty after being scolded and took two steps back. He thought indignantly of Zhuang Yongyuan's other face. He really wanted to say to Zhuang Yongyuan, who didn't even have the slightest bit of face in front of his students, like in the third-level movies, "Zhuang Yongyuan, you don't want others to know what you looked like last night, do you?"
Zhuang Yongyuan was still scolding him: "The string is loose, can't you hear it?" After hearing this, all of Xie Kang's erotic fantasies withered.
As he spoke, he moved closer to Xie Kang and tuned his instrument face to face. The distance was too close, and Xie Kang's heart was pounding. If it weren't in front of his students, he really wanted to hug Zhuang Yongyuan tightly in his arms.
After all, every minute they are together is a countdown.
Zhuang Yongyuan tuned the piano, walked around to check everyone's instruments and posture, then leaned against the old piano with his arms folded and said, "Let's do it again."
Xie Kang nervously pressed the chords under Zhuang Yongyuan's gaze. The sight of Zhuang Yongyuan, even just the sound of his fingers tapping the beat on the back of his hand, or a glimpse of his ankle beneath his trouser leg, made Xie Kang so flustered that he simply closed his eyes.
This time it went much smoother than the last time. Xie Kang tried hard to regain his previous feeling, to forget the long and boring six years in between, and to let the former guitarist return to himself.
Although he had no relevant equipment at all, Xie Kang still heard the beat in his in-ear monitor, beep, beep, beep, beep, as if he was standing on the stage when Lily Heart was still an unknown campus band, performing at compilation shows with double-digit ticket prices, performing at commercial performances in shopping malls where they could only perform a few of their own songs, and performing at bars where few people listened to their songs seriously.
After this round, Xie Kang opened his eyes and Zhuang Yongyuan's face was finally not as gloomy as before.
He saw Zhuang Yongyuan reach into his pocket, frown uncomfortably, and then come out empty-handed. Apparently, the performance he and his students had given Zhuang Yongyuan a break from his craving for a cigarette.
Zhuang Yongyuan asked Xie Kang, "Are you really going to perform on stage then?"
"If you really can't find anyone, I'm the only one who can do it." Xie Kang touched the silver earring hanging on his earlobe. He hadn't gotten used to the feeling of wearing earrings again, and it always felt like there was something foreign in it.
He smiled and asked Zhuang Yongyuan, "Is it okay? Will the original singer approve?"
Zhuang Yongyuan rolled his eyes and said, "Then practice well and don't play like this in front of me."
Next, Zhuang Yongyuan acted in a businesslike manner, pointing fingers at everyone and forcing them to practice over and over again until dark before letting them go. He was also very rude to Xie Kang.
But it was really as Shen Xifu said, Zhuang Yongyuan's guidance was very accurate. After just a few hours, Xie Kang had almost recovered half of his peak level.
After the students had left, Zhuang Yongyuan finally smoked a cigarette. The room was dark, but the orange-red flame of the cigarette was bright, illuminating the rising wisps of milky white smoke.
He was still standing beside the piano, and the smoke looked like the ghost of a deceased friend.
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