Chapter 60
When Xie Kang asked him to go for dinner, Zhuang Yongyuan remembered that some people in Pingnan had the habit of visiting graves on the winter solstice. It was not surprising that he thought of Zhuang Fu today.
But Xie Kang certainly wouldn't mess around in someone else's funeral hall now, and Zhuang Yongyuan had long since given up his suspicions; he was too tired to think about such things. Their personalities were practically opposites, making them a perfect pair, passing the first half of the year.
The meal was plentiful and filled the entire table. Zhuang Yongyuan first stuck his head out of the window to look at the sky.
The sun rises late in winter, and the winter solstice is the darkest time of the night. The skyline is so dark that it is reassuring, and only then did Zhuang Yongyuan sit down at the table.
Xie Kang was still used to peeling shrimp for him. Zhuang Yongyuan knocked the shrimp out of his hand with chopsticks and said, "No need, I can peel it myself."
Xie Kang smiled and said, "Eat mutton."
Zhuang Yongyuan nodded, picked up a piece of mutton, and endured the strong smell as he ate carefully. He had a strange thought: Xie Kang had grown up with this kind of food. His own family had never eaten mutton during the winter solstice.
After eating shrimp and crab, cracking the shells open, the roe oozes out. Omelettes with egg, crispy edges, dipped in sweet and spicy sauce. A bowl of hot abalone and pork ribs, though lightly dressed, makes me feel warmer, and my hands and feet warm.
He and Xie Kang didn't talk much. They were both busy eating, and Xie Kang ate especially much. Zhuang Yongyuan asked curiously, "Didn't you eat at home tonight?"
"I ate it and vomited it again." Xie Kang said, and couldn't wait to bite the ribs again.
Zhuang Yongyuan used scissors to cut the crab claws, peeled out a large piece of white crab meat, put it in a bowl, and was not in a hurry to eat it.
"Zufang." He stared at the crab meat in the bowl and suddenly uttered a sentence in Minnan dialect.
Xie Kang looked up in surprise: "I thought you couldn't speak Minnan dialect anymore."
Zhuang Yongyuan took some paper, wiped his hands, and looked out the window again. There was a ray of light in the sky, and the sky was slowly getting brighter.
"Xie Kang, are you sober now?"
"I'm not drunk, what's wrong?"
Several plates on the table were empty, their greasy sauce glistening at the bottom. Zhuang Yongyuan blinked and said, "I'm glad you're not drunk. I want to tell you something."
"What's up?"
"I've bought my plane ticket and will be leaving on the 1st."
"Back to Shanghai?"
"right."
Xie Kang picked up a piece of cold mutton and said, "I'll drive you to the airport when the time comes."
Zhuang Yongyuan shook his head: "No need, I can just call a taxi."
"Oh, okay." Xie Kang said, and suddenly stood up and walked around, as if looking for something. Zhuang Yongyuan ate the last piece of oyster omelet, and Xie Kang sat back down and said, "By the way, the other two members of Shen Xifu's band have quit."
"What should I do then? Should I stop acting?"
"She still wants to act, so let me find a way for her." Xie Kang shrugged: "What can I do?"
"Why are you just not going to do it?" Zhuang Yongyuan cleared the plates on the table, piled them up and put them in the kitchen sink.
"You're a high school student." Xie Kang came in with the remaining dirty dishes and said, "What do you want to do when you get back? Sue Yan Tong?"
"What are you suing for? Plagiarism or false accusation?"
Xie Kang frowned: "What do you mean by plagiarism?"
Zhuang Yongyuan looked at him doubtfully: "Can't you hear it?"
"I haven't heard their new song. What do you mean by plagiarism?"
What Xie Kang said was true. After returning to Pingnan, he never listened to any independent bands other than Lily Heart. Not only that, he even listened to less music. Occasionally, when he felt it was too quiet, he would play some popular charts.
What surprised Xie Kang was that many of the songs he liked in the past have become popular songs now, and "Too Smart" also has a DJ version.
Last school year, he encountered several students crowded in the corridor to shoot a dance video. The students showed him the video. Several girls in loose school uniforms were swaying their bodies to the beat. Between the DJ's drum beats, he heard the words "I'm guessing what's in your heart."
He instantly thought of many people and events: Zhuang Yongyuan, Lily Lily, and the fact that he was no longer a teenager. He returned the phone to the student and, rarely, offered a casual word: "I know how to play this song."
Zhuang Yongyuan played an album for Xie Kang on his phone, an album released four years ago by the band Yan Tong. The first few songs were Yan Tong's usual styling, a style Xie Kang was quite familiar with. But as they played, he gradually noticed something was amiss.
Smoky Boy is an old band with a mature and stable style, but the second half of this album is an exception, with a lot of innovations in instrumentation and music style.
Others couldn't tell the difference, but Xie Kang recognized it immediately. Several songs in Yan Tong's new album borrowed from Lily Xin's early songs, which were mainly written by herself and Li Xiuyu, and were not included in the album's rough demos.
The sense of déjà vu is strong, this is definitely not a coincidence, but they have only performed these songs in livehouses at most and have not released them to the public.
Xie Kang looked at Zhuang Yongyuan in confusion. Zhuang Yongyuan understood what he meant and said, "A long time ago, I sent those demos to most of the bands I could contact, hoping to get their opinions, including Yan Tong."
He laughed and continued, "They emailed me back, picking apart all the songs and asking me to give them up. I didn't think much of it at the time. They were just student demos. Looking back now, I realize how naive they were."
"Later, Yan Tong released a new album, and I immediately went to listen to it. I listened to it on repeat all night, and only then did I feel certain that our things had been stolen."
Zhuang Yongyuan's tone was calm, but he emphasized the word "we".
"and you……"
"I sent an email to ask, but it was no use, no one responded to me."
Xie Kang said: "I watched the variety show, and you two seemed to have a good relationship on the show."
Zhuang Yongyuan laughed again and said, "It depends half on editing and half on acting."
"Then your withdrawal from the competition had anything to do with Yan Tong?"
Zhuang Yongyuan glanced at Xie Kang and said, "We have a confidentiality agreement. Don't post this online."
The sky was getting brighter and brighter, and they both yawned. Xie Kang took a cigarette, lit it, handed it to Zhuang Yongyuan, then lit one for himself and walked out of the kitchen. The mosaic tiles on the floor were shining brightly in the morning light.
"Tell me, I want to know," he said.
Zhuang Yongyuan looked at their close figures in the mirror and said, "Nothing much. There was a competition at the end, and the song Yan Tong was going to perform was a copy of ours. I was drunk, so I rushed into their hotel room and demanded an explanation."
"Fuck, not only did they use the song you and Li Xiuyu wrote, but they also used it to compete with us." He rarely cursed.
"And then? A fight?"
Zhuang Yongyuan rolled his eyes: "Their lead singer called me Eryizi and Tuerye, I..."
He was silent. Xie Kang pushed him and asked, "Why don't you say anything?"
"I'm afraid you're thinking too much." Zhuang Yongyuan sighed, "I was just drunk at the time, and maybe I was thinking about what happened in junior high school, so... so..."
"Just what?" Xie Kang asked nervously.
"That hotel is weird too. There are no limit switches on the windows. I saw the window was open and the curtains were blowing in the wind. Suddenly I couldn't control myself."
Xie Kang pinched Zhuang Yongyuan's arm and said, "What did you do? Explain it clearly."
Zhuang Yongyuan kissed his cheek and said, "Why are you so nervous? That's all in the past. I'm standing here peacefully now."
"Anyway, I got carried away and jumped out of that window. But there was a small platform outside the window, and I fell on it. I was fine and even woke up. Everyone was sticking their heads out of the window to look at me. It was so embarrassing."
"And you withdrew from the competition?"
"Yeah." Zhuang Yongyuan reached into Xie Kang's pocket for a cigarette and said, "Actually, I still wanted to persevere to the end, but standing on the studio stage, thinking about... thinking about our old songs being stolen by others, I can't do anything about it. We admired them so much during the summer after graduating from high school, and we rode our bikes to Xiamen to see their performance. But I can't sing anymore."
"Isn't this the first time you've been like this?"
"Yeah, but it got better after I withdrew from the competition that time. I didn't expect it to be so serious this time. It's been almost half a year and it still hasn't healed. I'm not really going to have to move behind the scenes, am I?"
As he spoke, he raised his hand to cover Xie Kang's eyes: "Don't look at me like that."
Xie Kang didn't say anything.
Zhuang Yongyuan said, "It's really not as hard as you think. No, just look at my bank card balance and compare it with your pay slip. Feel sorry for yourself."
"I'm going to regret it after seeing this." Xie Kang kissed his chin and was almost burned by his cigarette butt. "You're so rich now. Bring me to Shanghai and support me won't be a problem, right?"
Zhuang Yongyuan turned serious, patted Xie Kang's face, and said, "Don't keep saying that. I'll take it seriously. You used to say you wanted to go with me every day, and I thought you would always be with me."
"I was serious back then." Xie Kang felt an itch in his chest, as if a tiny seedling was trying to poke its way out. He had finally waited, waited for Zhuang Yongyuan to formally confront him about leaving, waited for Zhuang Yongyuan to help him figure out why he had defected.
"Alright, alright, that's all in the past. I won't say any more. Go upstairs and get some sleep before going back to work."
"Going to work..." Xie Kang repeated thoughtfully, and finally asked, "Are you not going to sue Yan Tong?"
"It's very difficult, and I'll offend a lot of people."
Xie Kang understood what he meant when he said it was difficult. Yan Tong's plagiarism was a highly technical reference, not a copy of the original arrangement and lyrics, which did not meet the definition of plagiarism in the regulations.
Zhuang Yongyuan spoke these words with a nonchalant tone, as if the matter had nothing to do with him. Xie Kang's heart began to itch again. He felt the long-lost urge of seventeen or eighteen, singing loudly in the rain while destroying everything around him. But this time, Zhuang Yongyuan had no intention of accompanying him. He had grown up. He was no longer the introverted and sensitive genius he used to be. He was a successful artist. He had many tattoos and piercings on his body, just like he had many scars, but he could mostly cope with them.
He is no longer the sixteen-year-old or twenty-two-year-old Zhuang Yongyuan, but why do I still like him so much?
Zhuang Yongyuan was already halfway up the stairs when Xie Kang heard his footsteps suddenly stop. He then looked down and asked Xie Kang, “By the way, did you say Shen Xifu asked you to help with the New Year’s Day performance?”
"yes."
Zhuang Yongyuan looked a little listless because he was sleepy. He yawned and said, "If you can't do it, let me do it."
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Zufang means good fragrance^ ^
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