I'm in Wuha, and the whole internet is shipping me and Song Yuqi as a couple.

The talent show booth was set up under a sunshade on the left side of the hotel's main entrance, in a secluded location with few people passing by.

Song Yuqi placed the QR code sign on the small table in front of the stall, checked it again to make sure there were no problems, and then turned to look at Jiang Che.

Jiang Che sat on a high stool and tuned the guitar, pressing the strings with his left hand and plucking them twice with his right, producing two clean sounds.

After changing positions, he tried another set of chord progressions.

Song Yuqi stood to the side, clutching an acrylic sign with a QR code printed on it, feeling that she wouldn't make any money by just waiting like this.

"Jiang Che, are we just going to wait here like this?"

She looked around; the guests and tourists at the entrance were hurrying by, and no one was paying any attention to the stalls.

"We need people to come so we can make money, right? Should I go and recruit some?"

Jiang Che looked up at her and saw that she was eager to try, so he placed his hand on the strings.

"What are you planning to do? Stand by the roadside and shout, 'Don't miss out!'"

Song Yuqi glared at him and slammed the sign on the table.

"Then you should come up with a solution. If the two of us just stand here, not even a ghost will come."

Jiang Che didn't reply. He lowered his head, put the capo on the second fret, and swept his fingertips across the strings.

Then he spoke.

As the first note fell, Song Yuqi was bending over and fiddling with the donation box on the table. Upon hearing the singing, she stopped what she was doing.

From Chongqing to Seoul, she had heard Jiang Che sing before, and he had no shortage of opportunities to perform on formal stages.

Those occasions involve mixing consoles, monitor headphones, and a complete stage engineering setup.

Right now, all Jiang Che has is an acoustic guitar and a portable speaker; he hasn't even used a microphone.

He sang "Boundless Oceans, Vast Skies".

As soon as the intro ended, the vocals came in, and Song Yuqi slowly straightened up.

The singing drifted through the sunshade on the roof, spreading towards the hotel entrance in the afternoon heat. The singer's breath was controlled and clear, and there was no hesitation in the transitions between high and low notes.

About five meters in front of the stall, on the sidewalk, a girl dragging a suitcase slowed down, looked back twice to find the source of the sound, and then stopped in place.

A middle-aged couple following behind the girl also slowed down.

Further on, three young men wearing beach shorts stopped and took out their phones.

When singing the chorus, Jiang Che's voice rose with the melody, his chest resonance was fully opened, and the long notes were always steadily held on the beat.

Song Yuqi watched as passersby went from hurrying along to listening intently, and then stopping in their tracks—all within a span of less than thirty seconds.

A minute later, a dozen or so people had gathered in front of the stall.

Some people were recording with their phones, while others placed bags at their feet and swayed to the rhythm with their hands free.

A security guard in a hotel uniform, who was patrolling, stopped when he passed the stall and leaned against a pillar to listen.

As the last note faded, Jiang Che swept out the final chord, and the lingering sound of the acoustic guitar was immediately followed by applause.

By this time, a second row had already formed in front of the stall.

Someone bent down and slipped a 20-yuan bill into the donation box.

"You sang well, please sing another song!"

"That voice is amazing! She could definitely debut if she went on a talent show, right?"

Upon hearing the words "debuting through a talent show," Song Yuqi almost burst out laughing on the spot.

To avoid being recognized and to maintain order at the hotel entrance, the two had concealed themselves thoroughly before leaving the hotel.

Song Yuqi quickly raised the QR code for payment, stood at the edge of the crowd, and waved it at several young people holding up their phones.

Thank you everyone, donations are voluntary; you can donate via QR code or cash!

As soon as she opened her mouth, people immediately turned their attention from Jiang Che to her face.

"A young couple performing together? That's a rare sight these days."

Song Yuqi didn't explain, she just held the sign up even higher, unable to stop smiling.

When she heard others mistake her and Jiang Che for a young couple, she straightened her back a bit.

The man singing while sitting on the high stool is now her boyfriend.

Every time she saw Jiang Che strumming his strings and raising his eyes, her heart would skip a beat.

As more and more people gathered in front of the stall, her palms, holding the acrylic sign, gradually became sweaty.

Jiang Che didn't rest for long before pressing the strings again and starting to play the second piece.

This time it was a slow song, with a gentle melody and a soothing rhythm, taking a completely different path from the rock song just now.

When she sang the second verse, Song Yuqi noticed that a taxi across the pedestrian crossing had rolled down its window.

The driver parked the car on the side of the road and leaned half his body out to look at the stall. The passenger in the back seat also opened the door a crack and stretched out his phone to point at Jiang Che.

Song Yuqi looked down at the donation box, which was already lined with banknotes, mostly ten and twenty yuan notes, with a few fifty yuan notes sandwiched in between.

The mobile payment notification also kept ringing.

She did the math in her head and figured that after singing the two songs, she would earn at least four or five hundred yuan.

After the second song ended, the number of onlookers had increased to thirty or forty.

The open space in front of the sunshade was no longer enough to stand in, so some people retreated to the edge of the flower bed, while others blocked the entrance to the parking lot.

The hotel security guards finally couldn't sit still any longer and rushed over to maintain order.

"Please step back and don't block the passage."

The crowd didn't disperse; instead, some people squeezed to the table and stuffed a hundred-yuan bill into the donation box.

Jiang Che picked up the bottled water and took a sip.

Taking advantage of the break, Song Yuqi walked over and squatted down beside him, leaning closer to ask, "It's almost six hundred, right?"

Jiang Che turned his head to look at her, sweat trickling down his temples and onto his face. He raised his hand to wipe it away.

"not enough."

"Shall we sing two more songs?"

Jiang Che nodded and straightened the guitar again.

As soon as the intro to the third song began, a boy wearing glasses in the crowd suddenly grabbed his companion's arm.

"Doesn't this voice sound familiar?"

His companion turned around, not reacting for a moment.

"Does that sound familiar?"

The boy pointed to the stall, and spoke much faster.

"His voice and singing style, as well as his guitar playing habits, and look at the way he presses the strings with his left hand."

"You don't mean to say...?"

"I'm talking about him."

The boy with glasses held up his phone, zoomed in on Jiang Che's profile, and checked it over and over for three seconds.

He raised his hand to cover his mouth, his eyes wide open.

Holy crap.

The boy turned and grabbed his companion, his fingers trembling.

"Is this Jiang Che?"

"What did you say? Which Jiang Che?"

"Which other Jiang Che could it be! The one with the five woes, the one who wrote the song, the one who dominated the trending searches last night!"

He didn't lower his voice, and several people around him heard him at the same time.

The news spread quickly among the crowd.

Within ten seconds, murmurs arose from all around.

"Jiang Che? The one who's with Song Yuqi?"

"Why is he singing on the street here?"

"Isn't that Song Yuqi holding up the sign next to them?"

More and more eyes were drawn to Song Yuqi; passersby had forgotten about the song and were all focused on recognizing her face peeking out from under her hat.

She moved half a step closer to Jiang Che, and the QR code for receiving payments in her hand swayed along with it.

Jiang Che was singing a long note when his breath control was not affected in the slightest, and the chords in his hands were not messed up.

The crowd was still pushing forward, and several people immediately set up their phones to start a live stream.

The security guard was sweating profusely, and tried to stop the people behind him several times with his arms outstretched, but he still couldn't stop them.

After singing the last note of the third song, Jiang Che took off his guitar, removed his baseball cap, and fanned himself with the brim of the cap.

Without the brim of his hat to shield him, half of his face was completely exposed to the sunlight.

The crowd paused for a moment.

The next second, screams reached the top of the sunshade.

"It really is Jiang Che!"

"Holy crap, it's really her!"

"Song Yuqi is here too; the two of them came together!"

Cheers and the clicking of cell phone shutters mingled together as people in the front row raised their arms high, while those in the back craned their necks to look inside.

Song Yuqi's breathing quickened, and she immediately turned to look at Jiang Che.

Jiang Che was also looking at her.

He turned his hat back up and looked over the bustling crowd, his gaze landing on her face. Her brows were relaxed, and a hint of laziness lingered on her lips.

"Is that enough?"

Song Yuqi paused for a moment, looked down at the donation box, and then opened the payment records on her phone.

When he looked up again, Jiang Che was still sitting in the center of the crowd, his fingers resting on the neck of the violin, showing no sign of panic at being recognized.

From the moment he plucked the first note, all he could think about was earning enough funding.

Song Yuqi couldn't help but laugh, and waved the QR code in front of him twice.

"Sing a couple more songs, I want to go to the island and enjoy the good food and drinks."

She leaned closer to Jiang Che, deliberately dragging out the last syllable of her sentence.

"You don't want me to go hungry right after we officially announced our relationship, do you?"