Amateur talent show? Top mentors are my students.

By 7:20 p.m., the audience seats were already 70% full.

When He Xu slipped into the back of the monitoring station through the work passage, he casually grabbed a black baseball cap from the props group's table and put it on his head.

The brim of his hat was pulled down so low that it almost covered half of his face.

The director glanced at him but didn't say anything.

He Xu sat down next to him, clipped the walkie-talkie to his collar, and focused his gaze on the monitor screen in front of him.

Four split screens were lit up simultaneously, corresponding to the front, left, right and overhead camera positions of the stage, respectively. The screen showed the lighting technicians adjusting the last set of spotlights during the warm-up.

As the audience entered the venue one after another, their voices, mixed with the warm-up music playing in the stadium, seeped in through the cracks in the walls.

It was muffled; through the glass of the monitoring room and with earplugs, I couldn't hear very clearly.

He Xu leaned back in his chair, his hands crossed over his abdomen, a posture completely different from when he was in the players' seat.

Back then, he was the one being shone by the lights; now he sits in the shadows, watching others being shone by the lights.

This feeling is strange.

He has done behind-the-scenes work before.

When choreographing or rehearsing with students, he often stands in the corner of the practice room watching others dance.

But that was a practice room, with three walls and a mirror, a completely different world from the studio.

The studio lights were so bright that the stage floor reflected the light, and the colorful lights of the cheering sticks floated in the darkness of the audience seats, like an inverted starry sky.

"Teacher He," a staff member whispered, "should we turn off the monitor lights? It's easy for people to see you sitting here."

He Xu turned his head to look at him, then pulled his baseball cap down even further: "Can you see?"

"It was too dark to see your face clearly, but the profile of your face... when you looked down at the screen just now, the camera captured it from the front, and when you looked up, it was quite obvious."

He Xu was silent for two seconds, then moved the chair further into the shadows.

"How about this?"

"Much better."

He Xu didn't say anything more and turned his gaze back to the screen.

The stage lights were all in place, the sound team was playing a final sound check, the music in the venue stopped, and the noise from the audience also quieted down considerably.

Shen Yiheng walked out from the side of the stage, the spotlight followed him, and the audience erupted in the first wave of applause and screams.

This was the first time He Xu had watched a performance from behind the monitoring console; the perspective was completely different from when he was on stage.

He used to be the one being watched, standing under the spotlight, unable to see what the people in the audience looked like, only able to hear their voices.

Hearing was amplified, vision was compressed, and the whole world was reduced to a beam of light and a rhythm.

Now he can see everything.

Every movement on the stage, the location of every spotlight, and every camera switch was laid out before him.

He Xu took a deep breath.

The second round of competition has officially begun.

When the first group came on stage, He Xu's hand was already on the talk button of the walkie-talkie.

Before Qi Xunan sang the first line, he spoke first: "Don't rush to zoom in on the fourth camera. Wait until he finishes singing the verse before cutting."

The director paused for a moment, but his hands had already reflexively adjusted the camera position.

Qi Xunan's singing voice flowed from the speakers.

He Xu's gaze darted rapidly between the four split screens, his right hand pressing and releasing the walkie-talkie: "The spotlight on the third chorus is too early, push it back two beats before moving in, add a stop of side lighting, the current focus is on the expression."

"Received." came the response from the lighting team. The color of the stage lights changed in a time that was almost imperceptible to the naked eye.

Before they could finish confirming, He Xu had already switched to another monitoring line.

Instructions were issued one after another, each less than ten seconds apart, the shortest being only three words: "Re-adjust, quickly."

The director sat next to him and initially tried to join the conversation, but then realized he couldn't get a word in edgewise, so he simply shut up and looked at the screen.

He Xu's hat brim was pulled low, but his gaze never left the surveillance camera.

He spoke at a fast pace and in a cold tone, but every sentence he uttered hit the mark perfectly.

The switching of light intensity, the selection of camera positions, and the fine-tuning of movement timing were all arranged in his mind, and he spoke whatever came to mind.

The performance on stage was progressing, but what truly kept the entire show in rhythm was the constant stream of instructions from the person behind the control panel.

When the first group finished singing the chorus, the first wave of screams erupted from the audience—a sudden, rising, and continuous roar.

He Xu glanced down at the camera feed in the audience and saw that several people in the front row had stood up and were taking pictures with their phones.

He didn't speak, but added into the walkie-talkie: "Sound team, turn up the main microphone by two notches. The audience's emotions are building, so don't let the sound be dull."

Qi Xunan on stage happened to hit a high note at that moment.

When the sound system was turned up, the high-pitched sound seemed to bounce off the ground, lingering under the studio dome for two seconds before dissipating.

The screams from the audience rose to another level.

Before the second dance group went on stage, He Xu pressed the walkie-talkie: "Yang Sheng, for the four beats before the drum solo, don't stand so tight, loosen up a couple of stops—it will be more comfortable for the audience to shoot from above."

Yang Sheng heard this sentence in the waiting area.

He glanced down at the markings on his feet and silently adjusted his position by half a step.

Once on stage, the four-beat gathering motion had a little more pause than during the rehearsal.

From an overhead camera position, the visual effect of the formation changes is a level smoother than before.

Someone in the audience exclaimed "Wow!"

He Xu saw all of this.

He picked up the thermos, took a sip of water, and then put it down, without any extra expression.

As the third, fourth, and fifth groups took turns on stage, his instruction density remained consistently high.

"The main light shifted three degrees to the right, and the dancers on the side almost became silhouettes."

"Change the focal length of camera number five. The current composition is too dense, and the audience cannot see the people standing in the back row."

"Sound team, make the drum beats a bit deeper, the reverb is too weak."

Each time a command is given, the effects on the stage change within seconds.

Viewers may not be able to discern the source of those changes—they simply feel that "it looks even better than before," "the lighting in this part is so comfortable," and "this camera angle was perfectly timed."

The stands were completely ablaze.

The light sticks' dots of light connected together, looking like a sea of ​​stars hanging upside down in the darkness when viewed from above.

Some people started singing along, their lip movements clearly visible in the close-up shot, their voices mixing into the speakers and overlapping with the voices of the contestants on stage.

The director couldn't help but remark, "This atmosphere is great!"

He Xu didn't reply, his eyes still fixed on the screen.

As the sixth and seventh groups took to the stage one after another, the audience's emotions were pulled tighter and tighter, as if by an invisible rope.

During this time, He Xu drank about three mouthfuls of hot water. Each time, he would take advantage of the ten or so seconds between the two sets of drinks to unscrew the lid, take a sip, and screw it back on, keeping his eyes glued to the screen the whole time.

The ninth group, the tenth group, the eleventh group—one performance after another came to an end on stage, but the applause and screams from the audience never subsided.

He Xu's instructions gradually transitioned from intensive scheduling to the final stage: "When the last group finishes singing, slowly push the lights across the venue from dim to bright, don't suddenly turn them on, give the audience time to react."

"Switch the camera to an overhead shot to capture the panoramic view, hold the ending pose, and then zoom in for a close-up."

The director kept nodding beside him, not even having time to say "received," and immediately started executing the plan.

As the last group finished performing, the lights in the entire venue slowly turned up from dark to bright, as instructed by He Xu.

The audience erupted in the loudest roar of the night under the light – screams, applause, and whistles mingled together, making the stadium dome vibrate.

Seventy people stood on the stage, panting. Some cried, some laughed, some put their arms around each other's shoulders, and some made heart shapes with their hands towards the audience.

Shen Yiheng walked up from the side of the stage and stood at the very front. He bowed deeply to the audience.

"Thank you everyone for coming to the second performance of 'Absolute Debut'."

He Xu leaned back in his chair behind the monitoring console and finally released his fingers that had been pressing the walkie-talkie.

He looked down at his hands—his fingertips were a little numb, from holding them all night.

He pushed his hat up a bit, picked up his thermos, unscrewed the cap, and took the last sip of water.

"Teacher He, let's do a debriefing—" the director said from the side.

"understood."

He Xu stood up, pressed his hat down again, and turned to leave through the work passage.

The second round of competition has ended.

His scenes in "Absolute Debut" have also come to an end.

-

But He Xu was wrong.

He Xu underestimated the speed of the internet and the eyesight of the audience.

Less than half an hour after the second round ended, a video appeared on Weibo.

The camera was shot from the side of the front row of the audience, and the image was shaky, but it was enough to clearly see the profile of the person behind the monitor.

The black baseball cap was pulled low, but the jawline and brow bone contours were still very distinctive.

The video caption consisted of only one sentence: "Is that He Xu, the guy who withdrew from the competition, behind the monitoring station???"

Ten minutes after it was posted, it was forwarded over 10,000 times.

Twenty minutes later, the hashtag #HeXuReturnsToAbsoluteDebut# climbed into the top ten trending topics.

Forty minutes later, it took first place, followed by a purple "Explosion" sign.

The comment section exploded.

"??? Didn't he withdraw from the competition??? Why is he back???"

"Look closely!! He's directing the lighting and camera positions!! He's not back to be a competitor!! He's back to work!!"

"Someone has revealed that the stage manager was hospitalized with acute appendicitis, and He Xu was brought in as a last-minute replacement!!"

"A rescuer??? How can a choreographer also handle stage management??? What can't he do???"

"I slowly typed out a question mark... Is this person omnipotent? Choreography, teaching, dancing, stage presence—did he divide himself into eight parts and use them for everything?"

He Xu: I am just an ordinary working person.

"Stop making sarcastic remarks. His ear isn't fully healed yet, is it? Why is he back to work? Is he made of iron?"

"He came back to work injured, waaaaaah!!!"

"I cried. He Xu, can't you be kinder to yourself?"