Entertainment: A song that brought his deceased wife back to life.

The sheet music was printed out of the printer at three in the morning. When Luo Qianyu came out of the bedroom rubbing her eyes, Xu Qing was sitting on the study floor, with six or seven crumpled pieces of scrap paper scattered around him, and his pen was still moving.

"Finished writing?"

"Um."

Luo Qianyu squatted down and took the stack of sheet music, still warm from the ink, from his hand.

The first page contains the song title: "Darkness Falls".

She flipped to the second page to look at the arrangement, then to the third page, and then back to the second page.

"Xu Qing."

"explain."

"What about the arrangement?"

That's all.

Luo Qianyu flipped through the three pages twice. A wooden guitar, an old piano, and vocals—that was it. No string orchestra, no multi-track recording, no elaborate soundscape to hide the singer in the background; he had stripped the song down to its bare bones.

"Are you sure this is for fighting the Heavenly King?"

"Sure."

"this one?"

"That's it."

Luo Qianyu stared at the densely packed emotional markings on the sheet music. Xu Qing's handwriting was as ugly as ever, but every breath and every dynamic mark was written with extreme precision.

There's a line of red annotation in the chorus: "[This requires a voice between eight and twenty-three years old. Not technique, but time.]"

Luo Qianyu read the line of text three times.

A voice between eight and twenty-three years old. What the hell?

-

Penguin Music's Class A recording studio.

Luo Qianyu stood in front of the microphone wearing monitoring headphones, while Xu Qing sat behind the mixing console outside the glass window, the cup of coffee in front of him long since cold.

"The seventeenth take," the sound engineer whispered.

Xu Qing's voice came through the earphones: "Try again."

Luo Qianyu took off her headphones and took a deep breath. "Something's not right?"

"In the chorus, when you sing 'Love always makes people cry and feel unsatisfied,' the emotion is right, but you're putting in too much effort."

"I didn't use any force."

"You raised your larynx by half a note, which means you're in control," Xu Qing's voice came from the speakers. "This song can't be controlled."

Luo Qianyu put her headphones back on.

The eighteenth time, start over. The nineteenth time, almost there. The twentieth time, Xu Qing didn't say "start over," but he didn't say it either. Luo Qianyu stood in the recording studio, staring at the line of red annotations on the music stand, her mind a complete mess.

Between the ages of eight and twenty-three—she tried singing with a breathy voice, tried forcing it with her true voice, tried projecting herself into her childhood memories, but every time she sang "The sky is so big, yet I can't see clearly, I feel so lonely," her voice would instinctively pull back in a safe direction. It wasn't that she didn't want to let go, it was that she didn't know what to let go of.

After stumbling and struggling through it three more times, Xu Qing remained silent when the twenty-third time ended. Luo Qianyu took off her headphones and threw them on the music stand, then squatted down and hugged her knees.

The sound engineer glanced back at Xu Qing. Xu Qing stood up, pushed open the door to the control room, and walked into the recording studio.

"I'm not recording anymore."

Luo Qianyu looked up at him, her eyes red-rimmed. "Am I really not up to this song?"

Xu Qing didn't answer, but bent down and pulled her up from the ground.

"Walk."

"Where to?"

"go out."

"The recording hasn't been done yet—"

"go out."

Xu Qing pulled her wrist and walked out. When they passed the control room, he told the sound engineer, "Keep the studio open, we'll be back tonight," and then shoved Luo Qianyu into the passenger seat.

After driving for forty minutes, passing the Third Ring Road and the Fourth Ring Road, Luo Qianyu turned into a narrow alley she had never been to before. At the end of the alley was a peeling iron gate with an old plaque hanging above it—"Spring Sprout Children's Welfare Home".

Luo Qianyu was stunned. "Why did you bring me here?"

Xu Qing had already gotten out of the car and went around to the passenger side to open the door.

"Sing."

The orphanage was small, a two-story building, and the slide in the yard was rusty. A dozen or so children were chasing each other in the yard, the youngest looking only four or five years old, and the oldest no more than ten.

When Xu Qing entered, a middle-aged woman with a ponytail greeted her with a smile that revealed her wrinkled face.

"Teacher Xu! It's been so long!"

"Aunt Wang," Xu Qing actually smiled, "I brought a friend over for a visit."

Luo Qianyu stood at the door, watching Xu Qing being surrounded by a group of children. A little boy grabbed his leg, calling out, "Guitar brother!" Xu Qing squatted down, took out the old guitar with the clownfish sticker from the guitar case he had taken from the car, and the children cheered and formed a circle around him.

"What are you singing?" Xu Qing asked.

"Twinkle Twinkle Little Star!"

"No! Sing that song about flying insects!"

"I want to hear from the little donkey!"

Xu Qing played the first chord and started off casually. The children followed along and sang randomly, their pitch was terrible and their rhythm was completely off, but they were really happy singing.

Luo Qianyu sat on a stone bench in the corner of the courtyard and watched for the entire afternoon.

She watched Xu Qing being spun around by the children, watched him lift a crying little girl high in the air, and watched him use his expensive handmade guitar to accompany a group of tone-deaf children playing the simplest nursery rhymes.

The light of the setting sun poured in from outside the courtyard wall, casting long shadows on everyone.

The children's voices gradually quieted down; some were sleepy, and others were called away by the aunt to wash their hands and eat. The last to leave was the little boy who had hugged Xu Qing's leg. He looked back once, and said in a childish voice, "Brother Guitar, come again next time," before being led by the aunt into the stairwell.

As Luo Qianyu watched the small figure disappear behind the door, she suddenly felt something stuck in her throat. Those children sang without pitch or technique, and some couldn't even remember the lyrics, but every note was clean—so clean that she couldn't remember the last time she sang like that.

Only Xu Qing and Luo Qianyu remained in the courtyard.

In the corner stood an old organ, its lid covered in dust, and two keys were broken. Xu Qing sat down at the organ, and as his fingers touched the keys, the wound on the web of his right hand was pulled slightly as he bent his knuckles, and a small patch of pale red seeped through the edge of the gauze. He didn't frown, but just slightly tilted the angle of his touch.

The prelude to "Darkness Falls" flowed from that broken organ, carrying off-key notes and noises. But that imperfection gave the melody something indescribable—like a song my grandmother used to sing on a summer afternoon when I was little, off-key, but comforting.

Xu Qing played the piano and sang at the same time, her voice very soft, not like she was singing, but more like she was talking to someone.

"The sky is dark, it looks like it's going to rain. The sky is dark, so dark."

Luo Qianyu felt a lump in her throat.

Xu Qing stopped and turned to look at her. The setting sun warmed half of his face, while the other half remained in shadow.

"You don't need to act all weathered," he said. "Just sing about yourself. Sing about that little fish holding an umbrella in the downpour, trying to keep going even when it's covered in mud."

Luo Qianyu stood there, the evening breeze ruffling her hair.

She recalled the two years she was sidelined at Star Emperor, the stolen gigs and the lonely nights, the terror of being forced to work as a hostess, and the fall in the pouring rain that left her knees bleeding, but she still got up and kept running—because if she didn't run, it would be the end, because if she stopped, she would never be able to stand up again.

Her eyes reddened, but she didn't cry.

The organ music was still playing. Luo Qianyu opened her mouth and began to sing along.