She debuted after having a child with a celestial being.

The day after Nine Percent's tour concluded at Shenzhen Bay Sports Center, Xiao He flew back to Beijing.

Before even having a chance to put their luggage back in the guest room of the Shunyi villa, they dragged their suitcases directly to the recording studio.

Liu Yifei was already waiting for him in the studio, standing in front of the microphone stand, wearing monitoring headphones, practicing her voice to herself in the glass.

She was wearing a simple white T-shirt and jeans, her hair was casually tied back, her brows were slightly furrowed, and her lips were opening and closing, silently repeating the shape of a certain melody.

"Sister Sisi, you're here so early?"

Liu Yifei took off her headphones and turned around. She saw him push the door open and come in, and put down the sheet music in her hand.

"Are you tired from touring?"

"To be honest, it's exhausting. If someone were willing to think about me, it might not be so tiring."

"You wish."

"Haha, I slept the whole plane. How's it going on you?"

Xiao He pushed his suitcase to the corner, walked over to her, and picked up the sheet music spread out on the mixing console.

It is the arrangement score for "Mohe Dance Hall". He had already recorded the demo and sent it to Lao Zhou before going to Shenzhen. He marked the key and breath control points for Liu Yifei's female vocal part separately.

He remembers this song very clearly.

The song included in Liu Shuang's first solo album, "1st. Planet," released in 2020, was inspired by an elderly man she met during a field trip to Mohe in late 2019.

The old man danced alone in the dance hall. His wife died in the "May 6th" catastrophic forest fire in the Greater Khingan Mountains in 1987. He never remarried or had children for more than 30 years. He often went to that dance hall to remember his beloved with his dance steps.

Liu Shuang finished writing the first draft of the song on the train and wrote a letter to the old man's deceased wife in the first person.

"If you have time, you'll come and see me, won't you?"

The album did not become popular immediately after its initial release in June 2020. It wasn't until the fall of 2021 that a video of an elderly person dancing alone, accompanied by the song, went viral on a short video platform, garnering over a billion views across the internet within days.

In 2018, Liu Shuang had not yet written this song, and the copyright library was empty.

Xiao He had already registered with both the China Copyright Protection Center and the Music Copyright Society of China.

"Old Zhou said you left the arrangement sheet before you left."

Liu Yifei took a sheet of lyrics covered with notes from the music stand.

"I watched it several times, and every word felt like I was talking to someone who's no longer here. It was so quiet, so painful. But there's one thing I don't understand..."

She looked up at him.

"You said this song isn't about love, but about loss. But the more I sing it, the more it sounds like I'm singing about myself."

Xiao He smiled and said, "That's exactly right. There's an old man in this story who went to dance halls for thirty years after losing his wife, making his longing for her a daily necessity."

Liu Yifei nodded and said, "When I heard that, I remembered something you said to me before. You said you were afraid that I would get used to being a fairy sister and get used to being criticized for acting in movies. You were afraid that you would never dare to cross over into other fields again and that you would not have the courage to climb out of the abyss. Habits themselves are not scary. What is scary is that after you get used to them, you lose your ambition."

Xiao He sat on the mixing console, one leg crossed over the other.

"Yes, always remember, you are the incomparable Liu Yifei. So this song is for you. It's not for you to cry, but for you to sing out what's been weighing on your heart."

"Of course, you may have another identity in the future."

Liu Yifei asked in confusion, "What's your identity?"

"The wife of Xiao He, the most popular idol."

"Would you die if you didn't tease me all day?" Liu Yifei rolled her eyes at Xiao He, too lazy to even bother kicking him anymore.

The recording has begun.

Old Zhou sat behind the mixing console, holding a thermos in his hand, his expression as calm and collected as ever.

Han Yitiao put on his headphones, turned up the volume on Liu Yifei's vocal track, and tapped his fingers lightly on the mixing console.

After the first take, Liu Yifei took off her headphones and frowned.

"The second line of the chorus, 'If you have time, you'll come and see me, right?' I finished the last note, but the transition in the middle seems a bit unstable. Lao Zhou, let's do it again." Lao Zhou didn't say anything, but just pressed the call button to indicate that he should continue.

The second time, Liu Yifei realized that her breathing was off.

"The pause in the first verse, the part where you enter, 'I have never seen the aurora in a village,' is so precise."

On the third listen, "Was I placing the word 'melt' in the chorus too far back? It should be a little earlier."

After the fourth repetition, she didn't take off her headphones. She knew that every note was accurate, every beat was steady, and every breath was cut according to the points marked by Lao Zhou.

But after she finished singing, she remained silent for a long time, so long that Lao Zhou put down his thermos and said something.

"Teacher Liu Yifei, your pitch was better today than ever before. But you didn't close your eyes once while you were singing."

Liu Yifei was stunned.

She looked down at the microphone stand, her eyelashes trembling slightly in the light from the mirror.

Xiao He walked over from beside the mixing console and gently tapped her headphone cord, prompting her to take off the monitor.

"Sis, let's go next door and listen to those few times. Teacher Han, just start playing the first time."

Lao Zhou and Han Dong were left in the mixing room, leaving only the two of them in the recording studio.

Xiao He closed the door, did not turn on the main monitor, but used a pair of small near-field speakers next to him to play back the recordings from the beginning.

After playing it the first time, Liu Yifei looked down at the lyrics sheet.

After playing it a second time, she tapped her fingers lightly on her knees.

On the third time she played the chorus, she suddenly stopped: "Here, the ending note is perfect. But something's not right..."

"Yes. You get it right every time, but every time it's the same as the last. Do you know why?" He sat down in the chair next to her, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

"I'm too nervous."

"It's not that you're nervous. It's that you're too eager to prove yourself."

Liu Yifei turned her head to look at him.

Xiao He didn't flinch, meeting her gaze directly, and continued, "Those people online say your singing isn't good enough, so you just try your best to sing every note accurately. They say your falsetto is weak, so you pinpoint every breath perfectly. Those five times you just performed, every single one of them would have gotten full marks from the music academy examiners. But full marks aren't what we want. What we want isn't a technical score, but for the listeners to remember the people they've been waiting for."

He glanced at the speakers. "Listen."

He played it a fourth time. When it reached the chorus, he paused it.

"You were spot on with that last note. But the most touching part of the original is that slight shakiness at the end, like the voice trembled at the very end and then stopped. It's not because of poor singing skills, but because the voice trembled because of being so choked up. You're not trying to produce a perfect syllable; you're talking to someone who's no longer here."

He turned around, and her knees almost touched his.

"You brat, you can talk all you want, but don't deliberately get close to your older sister." Liu Yifei stepped back.

"How can we sing love songs without standing shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart?"

Xiao He was truly blunt, grabbing Liu Yifei's arm: "Sister, be professional, don't get any ideas about me. We're just talking about music. Old Zhou just said you never closed your eyes. When you were acting, the moment you closed your eyes, the audience knew you were in character. But in the recording studio, there's no camera. Your eyes are the microphone—you have to believe the people on the other end of the microphone before they'll believe you."

Liu Yifei took the lyrics sheet off her lap and stared at the lines of the chorus for a long time.

Then she looked at Xiao He, her voice suddenly becoming very soft, as if she were talking to herself: "When I used to act, the directors always said I held back my emotions too much. Later I thought, 'Let it be, I don't need emotions anyway.' But singing is different. When you sing, your voice is your emotion, so holding back is holding back."

She picked up the listening earpiece next to her.

"I'll try again."

Han Dong restarted the recording.

As soon as the intro started, Liu Yifei suddenly took off her headphones, said to Lao Zhou, "I can use the monitor," then closed her eyes and gently gripped the microphone stand with her fingers.

As the piano prelude unfolds, the strings pour in layer upon layer during the bridge section. She slowly opens her eyes and looks towards the side of the glass.

Xiao He was standing behind Lao Zhou, giving her a thumbs up through the soundproof glass.

A calm and determined smile played on her lips, as if she had known all along that she could do it.

Han Dong slightly turned up the monitor volume behind the mixing console, catching even her breathing. The chorus began.

"If you have time, you'll come and see me. See how the snow ages, and how my eyes melt."

The last syllable of the word "melt" trembled slightly before stopping.

The last line is the quietest in the entire song: "Three thousand miles away, I happened to see you. In the garden, a skirt fluttered in the breeze. Under the lamplight, the morning light was shaken off. In the Mohe ballroom in 1980."

Old Zhou wrote down the recording parameters on the mixing console and said into the microphone, "Yifei, from now on, all live performances of this song must be based on this version. Not a single word is allowed to be changed."

Then he took off his headphones and gave Liu Yifei a thumbs up from behind the glass.

Xiao He stood up from behind the mixing console and walked to the recording studio door. Liu Yifei was taking off her headphones when she saw him come in. She subconsciously raised her hand to wipe the corner of her eye: "This time, the ending note is still a bit unstable."

"That's normal. When people cry, their notes are always a little unsteady at the end. It's not a technical flaw; it's that you finally got into the song. Did you see the heavy snowfall over there just now?"

Liu Yifei looked at him, her eyes still red from the song. She gently placed her headphones on the mixing console, her voice still hoarse: "When you wrote this song, who were you writing about?"

"Give me a kiss, and I'll tell you."

As Xiao He spoke, he leaned his face forward.