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

The curve of his lips was chilling to the bone, but his eyes were frighteningly bright.

"Who made that rule? Who said that if you're on top of the mountain, you have to climb even higher?"

He held her shoulders, helping her lean on him, and spoke slowly and deliberately.

"I can crush them all with my bass voice."

Luo Qianyu stared at him blankly, her eyes blurred with tears, but his pale and tired face suddenly became more dazzling than any stage under the spotlight.

She reached out and grabbed his sleeve, gripping it tightly.

"...Are you serious?"

"When have you ever seen me make a bad promise?"

Xu Qing glanced down at her hand gripping her sleeve—her knuckles were white, and her nails were digging deep into the fabric.

He pried her hands apart, interlocked their fingers, and pulled her out of the bathroom.

"Go to sleep. Starting tomorrow, you're not allowed to speak a single word."

"What if I'm hungry—"

"Write a note."

"Then how come I want to curse you—"

"Write a note."

"Xu Qing!"

"This is the last sentence. If I say it again, I'll deduct your dinner."

He dragged Luo Qianyu into the bedroom and tucked her into the blankets.

She lay on the pillow, her swollen, red eyes fixed on Xu Qing's back.

He walked to the door and paused.

He didn't turn around.

"Three days. Give me three days."

The door closed.

Luo Qianyu heard his footsteps pass through the corridor and disappear in the direction of the study, followed by the click of the study door lock closing.

She buried her face in the pillow and stopped crying.

Because she suddenly remembered something.

The last time Xu Qing locked himself in his study for "three days," he wrote something called "We Are The World."

The city lights outside the window reflected on the ceiling, blurring into a warm halo.

Luo Qianyu closed her eyes.

My throat hurts.

The malice of the world is still waiting for her in her phone.

The diagnosis report about my vocal cords was like a knife hanging over my head.

But the warmth from when his fingers were intertwined still lingered in her palm.

enough.

......

When Luo Qianyu woke up, the study door was still closed.

A warm yellow light shone through the end of the corridor.

She walked barefoot across the wooden floor and saw a bowl of warm white fungus soup on the coffee table, with a note next to it.

Xu Qing's handwriting was appallingly messy—"Finish drinking. Don't speak."

Luo Qianyu picked up the bowl and took two sips. The white fungus was stewed until soft and tender, with just the right amount of sweetness. It was obviously not freshly cooked; it must have been specially heated up sometime in the early morning.

She put the bowl down, picked up the note, flipped it over, and scratched a line on it with her fingernail.

There is no pen.

She went back to her bedroom, found an eyebrow pencil, and wrote three words on the back of a sticky note: "What time is it?"

He held up the note and knocked on the study door.

The door opened a crack from the inside.

Xu Qing's face appeared behind the crack in the door. The blood vessels in his eyes were even more prominent than the night before, but his spirits were strangely high.

He glanced at the note and reached out to snatch the eyebrow pencil from her hand.

"Write with this? Are you planning to draw a map on my face?"

Luo Qianyu opened her mouth to retort, but as soon as her vocal cords vibrated, she felt a tearing pain. She instinctively covered her throat, and her face instantly contorted in pain.

Xu Qing's expression changed.

He opened the door, pulled her into the study, sat her down in a chair, and pulled a pencil and a stack of white paper from a drawer, slapping them down in front of her.

"From now on, if you want to say something, write it on a note, but don't utter a single word."

Luo Qianyu took the pencil, quickly wrote a line of text, and pushed it over.

"Where's my phone?"

Xu Qing pushed the stack of notes back and pointed to the rightmost drawer of the desk, where a small brass lock she had never seen before was hanging.

"Confiscated."

Luo Qianyu's eyes widened instantly, her pencil almost piercing the paper—"Why did you confiscate my phone?!"

The three exclamation marks took up half a page.

Xu Qing turned the paper over and wrote:

"First, you'll get angry after reading the comments. Second, getting angry makes you want to swear. Third, swearing requires speaking out. Fourth, speaking out damages your vocal cords. Fifth, damaged vocal cords end your singing career. Conclusion: Cell phones are the root of all evil."

Luo Qianyu stared at the five logical chains, her lips twitching with anger, but she couldn't find a single word to refute them.

She changed the paper, drew a crooked pig's head, wrote "Xu Qing" under it, and pushed it over.

Xu Qing looked at it for three seconds, then picked up a pencil and drew an even uglier one next to the pig's head, labeling it "Luo Qianyu".

The two stared at each other on the paper for half a minute.

Then Xu Qing removed the pig's head paper and replaced it with an exaggeratedly thick stack of musical notation.

The song title on the cover made Luo Qianyu's pupils contract sharply—

"got windy"

But it wasn't the version she was familiar with.

The key signature was pulled down by almost six degrees, and the originally soaring melody became somber and melancholic, like an undercurrent slowly flowing at the bottom of a riverbed.

The arrangement only has three elements: cello, acoustic guitar, and vocals.

Luo Qianyu flipped through the pages one by one, as if she were looking at a completely unfamiliar work.

All the high notes that needed to be hit in the original song have disappeared, replaced by a large number of vocal fry markings, chest resonance markings, and ornamentation in the very low register.

She turned to the chorus, her brows furrowing more and more tightly.

The pencil scratched across the paper: "There's no climax at all, it's too bland! The audience will fall asleep if the chorus is this low!!"

Xu Qing took the note, read it for two seconds, and then wrote a reply.

Her handwriting was even more illegible than hers.

The six words struck the paper with such force that they seemed to penetrate the paper itself.

"The highest level of burst is restraint."

Luo Qianyu was stunned.

Xu Qing put down his pencil, grabbed a sheet of white paper, and began to write—this time he wrote slowly, each stroke like a portrait being carved on a stone tablet.

"High notes are for venting. You push your emotions to the limit and unleash them for everyone to see. It feels great, but it dissipates afterward."

"Lower volume is storytelling. You sink the emotion down, down to the very bones, let it suffocate in the listener's chest. It can't escape. It still hurts when they sleep."

"You proved it once with your high notes in 'Bubble.' This time, you're proving it a second time with your low notes."

Luo Qianyu held the note in her hand, her knuckles turning slightly white.

Instead of writing any rebuttal, she turned to the first page of the musical staff, pointed to the fry note markings in the third measure, and drew a big question mark in the blank space.

Xu Qing stood up and walked behind her.

"The location for the vocal fry isn't in the throat, it's here."

He bent down and placed his palms on either side of her ribs from behind.

Luo Qianyu froze, and her pencil clattered to the ground.

"relax."

Xu Qing's voice was extremely low, vibrating just three centimeters behind her ear, "Feel how my chest is moving when I speak."