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

The night the news was officially announced, Luo Qianyu's Weibo comment section turned into a large-scale funeral scene.

"Bluebird Flying Fish" has officially disbanded, and Luo Qianyu and Xu Qing have joined the initial lineup of "I Am a Singer" as independent singers.

Within ten minutes of the announcement being released, three trending topics on social media exploded.

#Luo Qianyu's Solo Flight: Must-Have Pick in the First Round#

#What's left of Luo Qianyu without the bright moon and gentle breeze?#

#Xu Qing has finally gotten rid of her burden#

The comments section was filled with sarcastic and sarcastic remarks.

[Hilarious! Without Xu Qing, Luo Qianyu is practically a karaoke performer; she's definitely going to be eliminated in the first round.]

To be honest, 90% of the credit for "Darkness Falls" going to fame goes to the arrangement and the piano.

[Xu Qing has finally figured it out. Carrying noobs in ranked matches is just too tiring. I'm rooting for Xu Qing this time.]

Luo Qianyu scrolled through all the comments from beginning to end, without missing a single one.

After she finished scrolling, she locked her phone and tossed it onto the coffee table.

Xu Qing sat next to her reading a book, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye.

"Did you cry?"

Who cried?

Luo Qianyu raised her head, her eyes were dry, and the corners of her mouth even curved upwards slightly.

"I'm thinking about who I should eliminate in the first round."

Xu Qing turned a page of the book but didn't reply.

The more stubborn a person is, the less at ease they are inside.

But Luo Qianyu really didn't cry this time.

She just lingered on the sofa for a while, then stood up, went to the balcony, and took out her running shoes.

"Wake me up at 5:30 tomorrow morning."

Xu Qing glanced at the clock on the wall. It was 12:17 a.m.

"What are you going to do?"

"running."

"5:30?"

"Too early?" Luo Qianyu placed her running shoes side by side in the entryway and bent down to fiddle with them for a bit.

"You should go too."

Xu Qing closed the book.

"I?"

"You think I'm the only one practicing?" Luo Qianyu turned to look at him, her expression conveying the message, "This is non-negotiable."

"If my lung capacity isn't large enough, I won't be able to hit high notes. Starting tomorrow, running, swimming, and breath-holding are all essential."

"What does your pre-match training have to do with me?"

"You are my producer, and also my rival." Luo Qianyu's voice suddenly hardened. "If you don't practice with me, I won't win comfortably when the time comes."

"Luo Qianyu, do you even believe that excuse yourself?"

"Believe it or not, you have to get up." Luo Qianyu walked towards the bedroom, turning back to say this as she reached the door.

"If you think 5:30 is too early, you can change it to 5:00."

Xu Qing watched her figure disappear behind the door.

I simply couldn't continue reading the book.

-

At 5:29 a.m. the next morning, before Xu Qing's alarm clock rang, Luo Qianyu was already dressed in her sportswear and standing by the bed.

"rise."

Xu Qing opened one eye.

"Didn't you sleep all night?"

"I woke up at four o'clock." Luo Qianyu kicked the bed leg with her toe. "Stop dawdling."

On the riverbank running track outside the Third Ring Road, it was not yet fully light, and the streetlights were still on.

Luo Qianyu ran ahead, with Xu Qing following behind, their sneakers thumping on the rubber track.

After running two kilometers, Luo Qianyu's breathing became rapid.

"Inhale through your nose," Xu Qing said from behind.

"I know."

Your mouth is open.

Luo Qianyu snapped her mouth shut and took a deep breath through her nose.

Five kilometers. Luo Qianyu slowed down, but didn't stop.

On the way back, Luo Qianyu was too tired to walk and had to hang from the roadside railing, panting.

Xu Qing handed him a bottle of water.

"Tomorrow we'll increase it to six kilometers."

Luo Qianyu drank half a bottle of water and gasped for breath for ten seconds.

"Add it if you want."

In the afternoon, at the indoor swimming pool of a nearby fitness center.

Luo Qianyu changed into a black sports swimsuit and stood by the pool to warm up.

Xu Qing sat on a bench by the pool, making annotations while flipping through the sheet music for her song "Bubble".

"Aren't you coming down?"

Xu Qing flicked the pen in her hand. "I'll watch you swim from the shore."

"No way." Luo Qianyu put her hands on her hips. "You have to get down too. I'm not motivated to breathe alone."

What kind of motivation do you need to swim?

"We need a timer."

"Mobile phones can keep time."

"The phone is cold."

Xu Qing stared at her for three seconds.

Then he resignedly stood up, put the sheet music away, and took off his T-shirt.

Luo Qianyu glanced at his abdominal muscles and quickly looked away.

"What are you thinking about?" Xu Qing walked past her and went into the water.

I want you dead.

In the swimming pool, Luo Qianyu lay on the surface of the water, holding her breath. Xu Qing was keeping time beside her.

The first time, it took forty-three seconds.

The second time, forty-eight seconds.

The third time, at fifty-five seconds, Luo Qianyu suddenly looked up, splashing water onto half of Xu Qing's face.

"Is that enough?"

"There's a section in your chorus where you can't breathe for six consecutive measures. With your current lung capacity, you'll have to stop by the fifth measure."

Luo Qianyu wiped the water off her face.

"How many seconds will it take?"

"At least seventy."

"seventy??"

"So we'll continue tomorrow."

Starting from the third day, Luo Qianyu's schedule changed to a five-kilometer run plus a sprint in the morning, meticulous attention to detail in the recording studio in the morning, breath-holding training in the pool in the afternoon, and Xu Qing correcting her singing technique when she got home in the evening.

After a long day, Luo Qianyu lay on the sofa, looking as if she had been pulled out of a washing machine.

"Xu Qing."

"Um."

"Are you suggesting I enter a singing competition or a triathlon?"

Is there a difference?

"There's a huge difference. At least with a triathlon, you finish the race and that's it. But with this, you're adding an extra dose of mental torture every day."

Xu Qing brought her a bowl of freshly cooked white fungus soup.

"I drank it. It soothes my throat."

Luo Qianyu took it and slurped it down twice.

"Is your song 'Those Fleeting Years' finalized?"

"almost."

"You made me sing 'Bubble,' and I still haven't mastered the switching between my true and falsetto voices in the chorus. You, on the other hand, chose a comfortable little ballad to practice with."

"Who told you that 'The Fleeting Years' is a pleasant song to sing?"

"Isn't that much more comfortable than 'Bubble'? Were you deliberately torturing me with that high note in 'Bubble'?"

Xu Qing took the spoon from her hand.

"If you can sing 'Bubble' to the level I want, no one on this stage can eliminate you."

Luo Qianyu pouted.

"What level do you want?"

"We'll talk about it in the recording studio tomorrow."

-

Penguin Music's Class A recording studio.

There are still three days until the first recording session.

Luo Qianyu stood in front of the microphone, wearing monitoring headphones. On the music stand in front of her was the sheet music for "Bubble," with Xu Qing marking more than a dozen places in red pen in the chorus.

In the control room, Xu Qing sat behind the mixing console, her coffee having been replaced three times, all of it now cold.

"The fourteenth take," the sound engineer whispered.

Xu Qing's voice came through the earphones.

"Let's start over."

Luo Qianyu took off her headphones, rested her hands on the music stand, and shrugged her shoulders.

Over the intercom, Xu Qing continued, "In the line 'bubbles under the sunlight,' you entered the falsetto position half a beat too late. The switch from true voice to falsetto should be completed on the word 'bubble,' not 'foam.'"

"I tried," Luo Qianyu said in a muffled voice. "My throat tightened as soon as I got to that spot, and the more I tried to go up, the more stuck I felt."

"Because you're afraid."

"I'm not afraid."

"Your body is scared," Xu Qing's voice came from the speaker. "You're thinking, 'I might not be able to reach this note,' so your throat is locking up prematurely."

Luo Qianyu gripped the earphone cord, squeezing and loosening it repeatedly.

The fifteenth time, still no luck.

The sixteenth time was a little better, but the last line of the chorus was a letdown.

On the seventeenth time, Xu Qing pressed pause.

The door to the control room opened.

Xu Qing walked into the recording studio, where Luo Qianyu was squatting in the corner with her face buried in her arms.

"Is it not working?" Her voice was muffled. "Without you playing the piano beside me, can I really manage to sing a song all by myself?"

Xu Qing walked behind her and squatted down.

Two arms wrapped around her from behind, encircling her completely.

Luo Qianyu didn't move.

"Your throat is fine." Xu Qing's voice was close to her ear, very soft, but every word was clear.

"Your lung capacity has been sufficient for the past few days. What you lack isn't air, but an outlet."

"What exit?"

"When you sing high notes, you tend to push the notes upwards towards the top of your head. But the chorus of 'Bubble' doesn't require you to push the notes upwards. You need to sink the notes downwards."

Luo Qianyu's shoulders were still twitching.

"Where will it sink?"

"Sink to where it hurts the most." Xu Qing's palm was placed on her back, pressing on a certain spot. "Here. You've been running and swimming for a week, it's opened up here. You're just afraid to use it."

"It's not that I'm afraid—"

"Then sing now."

"What?"

"Just sing like this. No headphones, no accompaniment, just your own voice."

Luo Qianyu's breathing paused for a moment.

Xu Qing's arm didn't loosen, and his entire weight leaned against her back.

Luo Qianyu closed her eyes and opened her mouth.

"The bubbles in the sunlight are colorful."

The sound traveled outward from the bottom of her chest, and as it passed the spot where Xu Qing was pressing, she felt something crack.

"Just like me, who was deceived, I am happy—"

A falsetto came in.

It wasn't the kind of sound that floated upwards; it was the kind that fell downwards. The sound was so soft it was almost shattering, but each note landed steadily where it was supposed to.

Behind the glass window of the control room, the sound engineer's hand remained on the fader for a long time.

When Luo Qianyu sang the last line, her voice stopped.

It wasn't that I didn't have enough breath, it was that tears came first.

Xu Qing tightened her arms around him from behind.

"Passed."

Luo Qianyu turned around and grabbed his collar.

"You're doing this again."

"What set?"

"You scolded me again and then hugged me. How many times has this happened? Can't you come up with something new?"

Xu Qing looked at her, her face streaked with tears, still arguing with him, and his lips twitched slightly.

"No need to replace it. It works well."

Luo Qianyu punched him in the shoulder. It wasn't a very strong punch.

Did I record that last take?

Xu Qing tilted her head and asked a question to the control room.

The sound engineer gave a thumbs up.

Luo Qianyu wiped her face, her nose was red, her cheeks were puffed out, her voice was still trembling, but her eyes were bright.

"Let's do it one more time."

"No need. That's enough."

"I can do even better."

Xu Qing looked at her.

three seconds.

"Okay. Let's do it again."