Chapter 69 Why should the city be lonely?
The flight from Xiamen to Shanghai is short, and Zhuang Yongyuan was just feeling a little sleepy on the plane when Qi Ji woke him up because the plane was about to land.
He rubbed his eyes and stared out the window at Shanghai, which was getting closer and closer. He had been away for almost half a year, but he still felt familiar with this place.
Having frequently appeared on shows, toured, and attended music festivals over the past few years, the rest of the process has become muscle memory. After landing, Zhuang Yongyuan joined the others in finding a cart and waiting by the turntable for their checked instruments. The oddly shaped bag containing the equipment stood out from the crowd of suitcases, making it easy to spot.
Many people in Shanghai knew Lily Xin, unlike in Pingnan, where she could walk freely on the streets. As he shouldered his guitar case, Zhuang Yongyuan caught a glimpse of someone filming him. He straightened up a bit, not wanting to see photos of himself standing awkwardly on social media later.
Friends from the studio drove two vans to pick up people and equipment. Zhuang Yongyuan, Adian and Feifei squeezed into the second van, holding two boxes of lamps for fear that they would be damaged by the bumpy ride.
The van was still stuffy even with the windows open. Zhuang Yongyuan was hungover and had stayed up all night, so he felt groggy and dizzy, as if he was sitting on a ball of cotton. When he smelled the shengjian that Adian was eating, his stomach started churning.
After finally reaching the studio, loading his belongings into the elevator, and then back into the studio, Zhuang Yongyuan was so exhausted he didn't want to move anymore. Shanghai's winters are much colder than Pingnan's, with temperatures dropping below freezing, damp and freezing. But Zhuang Yongyuan, warmed by the physical labor, didn't particularly notice he was in Shanghai rather than Pingnan.
He lay down on the sofa in the studio, his head still dizzy, as if he was having a fever, and the uneven black surface of the sound-proof foam on the ceiling seemed to be sucking him in.
Lily Xin hasn't been making any songs or performing recently, so there's nothing to do in the studio. Some people have to go home, and some have appointments. They chat for a while and then leave. Zhuang Yongyuan hears the chattering around him gradually becoming sparse. Someone is boiling water, making coffee, and brewing tea. The smell of coffee is very strong at first, but it soon dissipates.
The studio was completely silent, with only the sound of cars passing by on the road outside. The studio was on a low floor, and the chirping of birds in the trees outside could be heard through the half-open window.
Zhuang Yongyuan closed his eyes and fell asleep, but his sleep was restless. His shallow dreams were filled with Pingnan and past events: Wuhe Road, Duoduozi Shaoxiancao, and No. 1 Middle School. When he woke up again, someone had come back and closed the curtains for him, but they weren't very careful, leaving a crack. Zhuang Yongyuan opened his eyes and saw the evening lights coming on outside the window.
Zhuang Yongyuan couldn't stand the silence. Without even glancing at the cover, he just pulled out a random vinyl record and put it on. It happened to be Zhang Xuan's "City." Zhuang Yongyuan listened for a moment, then switched to another disc. The dense, piercing noise of synthesizers filled the studio.
While listening to the song, he made himself a cup of coffee, took out a bag of ice cubes and a bottle of sparkling water from the refrigerator, washed the mug that had not been used for several months, poured the ice cubes into it, then took the mug to the coffee machine to collect the freshly extracted coffee liquid, unscrewed the bottle cap, poured half a cup of sparkling water into it, and walked around the studio while drinking.
Zhuang Yongyuan wrote all of Lily Heart's songs and produced most of them himself, so naturally, there had been little progress on the new album in his absence. His workstation was clean and tidy, a stark reminder of its solitude. He opened his computer and checked several project files. Several half-finished songs had extra copies, sounding like they'd been reworked.
He opened the half-rearranged version of "What Kind of Person" and listened to it. Because it wasn't possible to have Xie Kang record the song at the time, the vocal track used was the version Xie Kang had recorded in high school, a crude recording at Echo Music, with poor sound quality. If you listened closely, you could even hear a suppressed cough that sounded like Li Xiuyu.
The coffee was not stirred evenly and the liquid sank to the bottom of the cup. When Zhuang Yongyuan heard it was almost over, he frowned because of the bitterness of the coffee in the cup.
He glanced down at the thick brown liquid mixed with ice in the glass and drank it all in one gulp. His free hand went to flip through the documents on the work table next to him.
In addition to routine documents such as contracts and reports, there was also a resume pinned with a paper clip on the table. When Zhuang Yongyuan saw the work experience of the resume owner, he remembered that he had thought about finding an agent before returning to Pingnan.
But Zhuang Yongyuan was now feeling uncertain. It wasn't that he was confident he could handle all the band's chores; it was that he wasn't sure if Lily Heart could continue. Sure, they had fame, a catalog, and a good relationship with the members. If they wanted to persevere, it would just be a matter of changing the lead singer. But Zhuang Yongyuan didn't want that. Standing on stage, he felt like his legs were dangling in the air. He'd play the piano by muscle memory, and halfway through, he'd gaze at the frenzied, thronging crowd and drift into a trance. Who was he, and why was he even here? The stage and the livehouse were no longer his joyous place.
If a hasty disbanding of the band wasn't irresponsible to the band members, Zhuang Yongyuan would have made this decision long ago. Lily's name was already remembered by many people, and he had a clear conscience towards Xu Zhen, Li Xiuyu, Du Jiahao, and Xie Kang, the original members.
He fled to Pingnan to avoid making a decision, but still had to come back to face it.
It was getting darker. Zhuang Yongyuan walked from one corner of the studio to another, turned on the projector, found a movie to watch, but he couldn't remember the plot of the movie from the last second.
The door of the studio was opened and someone walked in. For the first few seconds, Zhuang Yongyuan even thought that he was still in Pingnan, on the second floor of the old house. Xie Kang always walked straight to him without saying hello.
When he jumped up from the sofa, the visitor was also startled. Zhuang Yongyuan turned around to look at her. She was a middle-aged woman in her forties or fifties, wearing the uniform of a housekeeping company. Only then did he realize that she was the regular cleaner hired by the studio.
Zhuang Yongyuan stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and apologized to his aunt for scaring her. He continued watching the movie, but the clattering noises of the cleaning staff behind him kept irritating him. Unable to sit still any longer, he simply put on his coat and headed out the door.
Walking the streets at night, Zhuang Yongyuan finally felt the damp chill of Shanghai's winter again. The thin coat he'd worn from Pingnan couldn't keep out the chill that seeped deep into his body. He unconsciously walked in the shadows of the trees on the inner side of the street, avoiding the lights of cars and streetlights, occasionally giving way to people riding shared bicycles. The leaves of the plane trees, withered and yellow in winter, fell a few on him.
Old alley houses lined the road, but at the end stood a brightly lit high-rise office building. A rectangular iron rod jutted out from the windowsills of the alley houses. Zhuang Yongyuan recalled how, when he first arrived in Shanghai, he and Xie Kang had spent a long time speculating about what the rod was for. Xie Kang had said it was a place for adulterers to grab onto when they tried to escape, preventing them from plummeting to their deaths. Zhuang Yongyuan imagined growing plants on the rod to enhance the cityscape. Big city planning is full of details, and decorations could be hung for Christmas and Spring Festival.
Xie Kang laughed at him for wanting everything to look good, and he dared to borrow another fifty yuan to buy new clothes when he only had two hundred yuan left. Zhuang Yongyuan was not convinced and asked Xie Kang how it was possible that every household had someone having an affair. Xie Kang asked confidently, "Isn't that the case with your parents?"
Zhuang Yongyuan thought for a moment and said, "Then your parents aren't like that, are they?"
Xie Kang stretched out his finger and shook it mysteriously: "That's not necessarily true."
He didn't intend to continue, and Zhuang Yongyuan didn't want to press the issue. Later, they asked Adian, a true Shanghainese who grew up in a Shanghai alley, about their respective guesses. When asked which one was right, Adian choked with laughter and coughed for a long time before finally saying, "That's a clothesline!"
Xie Kang was unconvinced. He raised his eyebrows as he spoke, his eyebrow stud flashing behind his hair. “No one hangs clothes there.”
"It's dirty and rusty. Every time I hang it out to dry, I'm afraid it'll fall. No one uses it anymore."
Zhuang Yongyuan shrugged, and Ah Dian continued, "Actually, you're not wrong. Shanghainese people really love beauty, and many of them have affairs."
Zhuang Yongyuan was awakened from his trance by his own laughter. The exterior walls of the old alley houses had been renovated in recent years, and many houses had chosen to remove the old-fashioned clothes drying poles, which were at risk of falling. The roadside shops also replaced their signs with the uniform red background and blue lettering.
The street was still the same, but it looked very different. The street vendors had emptied out. If Xie Kang were to visit Shanghai again, they would hardly be able to buy late-night snacks from street vendors like they did in college: fried noodles in the winter, cold chicken noodles in the summer. The fried noodles stalls always hung with fumes and heat, while the cold chicken noodles stalls had an electric fan blowing on the noodles.
This place is not like Pingnan. There are only two or three kittens on the street at night. The elderly take a walk after dinner, the young people start their nightlife after get off work, and many people walk by talking and laughing.
Many of them are couples, men and women, women and women, men and men, holding hands, even sharing a scarf, walking openly under the street lights.
"Two or three kittens" was his mother Aying's catchphrase. Today, two or three kittens arrived at the shop, and the business was losing money. Zhuang Yongyuan asked her where the kittens were. She picked up Zhuang Yongyuan, who was still in elementary school, ruffled his hair, and said, "The kittens are here."
Zhuang Yongyuan had always wanted a cat, but Zhuang Fu had previously discouraged him. When he lived with Xie Kang in college, Xie Kang worried about taking good care of the cat, so he didn't get one. Later, living on his own and often away for long periods, he felt it wasn't good for the cat, so he decided against it.
When he went out, Zhuang Yongyuan had not decided where to go. After walking for almost an hour, his face was stiff from the cold wind, but he still had not decided where to go, so he walked into Mengtong as usual.
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