I Didn't Request a Song

Lin Yang turned on Bluetooth. While she waited for it to connect to the TV, she casually—though not entirely casually—glanced at the apps on Xu Zhitong’s phone.

To her surprise, she saw Weibo and IG on it.

She had searched those two apps for every keyword she could think of before: phone numbers, Xu Zhitong’s usual English ID, songs she liked, her birthday, the abbreviation of her name... all kinds of combinations.

She hadn’t found a single account.

Back in middle school, Xu Zhitong hadn’t used social media. Since she couldn’t find anything then, Lin Yang had assumed the present-day Xu Zhitong still didn’t use it either.

But those two apps were sitting conspicuously on the second page of her phone, obviously opened often.

Lin Yang paused, then naturally opened them. Since time was limited, she couldn’t read through anything on the spot, so she opened the profile pages to check the IDs.

Xu Zhitong was right behind her; Lin Yang’s heartbeat sped up a little. She took out her own phone and wrote the IDs down, planning to search them when she got home.

After noting them, she cleared the recent records and connected the screen mirroring.

She turned back to the hospital bed with a calm expression. “What do you want to watch?”

Xu Zhitong started making requests. “Let’s look at the livestream app first. You said I’d be livestreaming in a few days, and I’ve never done it before... I’m so scared I’ll mess up.”

Lin Yang gave a quiet hum. “It’s fine. Just think of livestreaming as chatting with a bunch of friends. Keep your usual state, then learn a little livestream slang; you’ll get the hang of it quickly.”

A few years ago, Xu Zhitong’s singing videos had suddenly blown up, and she had started livestreaming too. She had been shy at first, but after only a few streams, she could already chat with fans and thank them for gifts with ease.

She sang well, looked good, and had a generous, likable personality. Even as just a singing streamer who never really broke into a bigger circle, her career had always been moving uphill.

Xu Zhitong misunderstood her meaning. “Haven’t I gotten a little more mature after eight years? You should consider me more. Just yesterday I was still scrambling to finish National Day homework...”

Lin Yang fell silent for a moment. “You’re fine. In private, you do seem more mature, but when you’re livestreaming and facing fans, you need to be more outgoing, more talkative.”

Xu Zhitong looked blank. “What does more outgoing mean? Do I need to date my fans?”

“...The letter e. I mean you can understand it as being more extroverted, more talkative.”

After a pause, Lin Yang comforted her. “I’ll teach you how to watch livestream replays later. Every one of your streams has fan-uploaded recordings on video sites. You just need to get a feel for your own style.”

Lin Yang opened the home page of the Yinfu app. Xu Zhitong’s account was called SleepyBlueZZZ.

1.212 million followers; a mid-tier internet celebrity on Yinfu. The profile picture was a side profile of her by a window at night, lit only by a soft blue atmosphere lamp.

Her jawline was sharp, her nose bridge high, her eye sockets deep; she sat somewhere between brooding and aloof. The silver cross earring on her lobe stood out vividly.

At first glance, Xu Zhitong thought it looked pretty cool.

On the second glance, she had the strange thought that the style was somewhat similar to Lin Yang’s microblog avatar.

She had over a hundred posts, basically all singing clips, with the occasional vlog or a hand-dance video with special effects.

Lin Yang played a few of the more popular ones for her.

Xu Zhitong was surprised. “Wow, I can actually sing operatic vocal lines now... But my singing voice is a little rougher than before, and I haven’t heard a lot of these songs?”

Lin Yang gathered her long hair, clearly familiar with everything about Xu Zhitong’s livestreams. “You’ve been singing more, so your voice is indeed a little rougher than before, but you did see a doctor and take medicine.”

“Many of Yinfu’s popular songs are new releases from the past few years. You can learn them when you have time; a lot of old songs have become popular again too. Before your memory comes back, if you’re worried about slipping up on stream, sing more and talk less.”

She opened the profile bio. “This account is your main manager. Her page has your playlist; just listen according to that.”

Xu Zhitong nodded hard.

Her best friend really was reliable.

Ever since they met in middle school, she had felt an instant connection with Lin Yang and shamelessly latched onto her, adding contact info, becoming best friends, clinging to her like a lifeline. Turns out it had all been useful.

Xu Zhitong had always believed that the less trouble the better. To put it bluntly, she was lazy to the core.

In first year of high school, Lin Yang was the class monitor, and Xu Zhitong, as the English rep, made her help collect homework and quiz vocabulary every day.

The whole class couldn’t stand it. When Xu Zhitong quizzed vocabulary, she’d go easy on people; if they pleaded a little, she’d let them pass. Lin Yang, on the other hand, wouldn’t. She treated everyone equally, cold-faced and strict.

The friends Xu Zhitong got along well with complained to her, saying that if she kept making Lin Yang help quiz vocabulary, they’d report her to the English teacher for neglecting her duties.

Xu Zhitong blinked and said, “Okay, but isn’t Yangbao that strict? She goes easy on me. Aren’t you misunderstanding her?”

By second year, not a single person voted for Xu Zhitong to stay as English rep anymore, and sure enough, she got booted.

There were countless other things like that. Xu Zhitong was smart, but she loved slacking off too much; if someone handled things for her, she didn’t want to bother. Her mother could nag her eight hundred times a day for that personality, and only Lin Yang ever indulged her.

Xu Zhitong thought livestreaming must be the same. Lin Yang seemed to know everything about her streams, so before she lost her memory, Lin Yang must have been helping her.

Trustingly, she said, “Yangbao, thank goodness I’ve had you all these years. Otherwise, what would I have done?”

Her voice was full of dependence. Lin Yang’s hand on the screen paused, and she didn’t look back at Xu Zhitong.

Sunlight filtered through the hospital curtains and fell across her somewhat pale, beautiful face, leaving a strangely distant stillness behind, as if she weren’t really here.

Lin Yang said, “I’ll be with you, but you also need to study and understand things over the next few days. After all, I can’t appear on camera or speak; this livestream is yours alone.”

Her tone was a little colder. Xu Zhitong froze, looking at her, and for some reason felt a little disappointed.

The video kept scrolling and happened to land on a familiar song.

It was the song Xu Zhitong had chosen for the finals of the high school campus singing contest in her first year.

Lin Yang: “...Try singing it.”

Xu Zhitong listened once to the video of her twenty-five-year-old self singing the verse. The background was dim, her voice a little hoarse, carrying an indescribable feeling.

She pressed her lips together, her mood suddenly turning strange.

When Lin Yang hit pause, Xu Zhitong sang it once too. After finishing, she stared at Lin Yang, waiting for her evaluation.

Lin Yang said, “It’s fine. Your vocal style and tone before and after the car accident didn’t change at all. No problem.”

Every word was affirming, though her tone was a little flat.

Xu Zhitong had just started to feel unhappy when she suddenly noticed that the video had been posted on Lin Yang’s birthday.

Her eyes lit up. “This video was posted on your birthday.”

Lin Yang: “...Mm. It was the date of the singing contest finals.”

Xu Zhitong had joined that campus singing contest in her first year because of Lin Yang. Back then, Lin Yang had only just joined student council and was about to host that year’s contest. To show up for her best friend, Xu Zhitong had signed up excitedly.

For more than ten years before that, she had never discovered any singing talent of her own; she only liked humming to herself.

In the end, she cut through the competition all the way to the finals. The final happened to fall on Lin Yang’s birthday, so she chose this song. She was very good at singing emotionally rich songs, and when the vote results came in, she won first place as expected.

When she accepted the award, she took the microphone and, on stage, generously sang Lin Yang a birthday song, saying, “Happy birthday to my best friend, and to our most beautiful and capable host here, Student Lin Yang.”

Everyone in the hall was singing Happy Birthday together, and Lin Yang, who usually didn’t like drawing attention to herself, had been smiling especially brightly then.

Xu Zhitong liked showing how close she was to Lin Yang. She took the phone, opened the comments, and figured Lin Yang must have commented to wish her a happy birthday.

But when she opened them, she found it hard to understand.

The fans were all writing long, emotional posts, saying things like how SleepyBlue had come step by step from a campus stage years ago to stand before them now.

The attached picture was actually a blurry long shot of her standing on the campus singing contest stage back then.

How did they get that??? Xu Zhitong didn’t even know the school had recorded the performance.

If she’d known there was a video, she would have asked for it and saved it herself; after all, both she and Lin Yang were on that stage.

There were even stranger comments, saying this was SleepyBaby commemorating her first performance, and that on an important day some people had better not come looking for trouble [kindly smile].

Xu Zhitong scrolled for a while, then accidentally flipped to the next post: she was singing a slightly sexy English song, with breathy sounds that made her feel embarrassed.

Panicking, she hit pause and opened the comments to cover it up.

But once she pulled up the comments, she understood even less. What on earth was this supposed to mean? “You sang it beautifully, I just changed into a new pair of underwear...?” What did underwear have to do with anything? “Thanks for everyone’s love. I’m the author’s girlfriend; I helped film the video and choose the song. We’re just an ordinary little couple, very lucky to have found each other and very happy. Please pay attention to the comment boundaries, thank you. Though she’ll try hard to clarify that it’s not true, my mouth is on my body, so if I say it is, then it is. If you want to be too, you can say it like me [heart]”

Author’s reply: I’m begging you.

Huh? She has a girlfriend?

Xu Zhitong didn’t believe it and clicked into the person’s profile, only to find that they didn’t follow each other. The face in the fan’s video was someone she didn’t recognize at all, with no sense of familiarity whatsoever.

How strange. She went back to the comments.

“I personally think this kind of voice is the hardest to listen to. If the streamer doesn’t agree, you can call me and scold me [hug].”

“AI is so advanced now. There was obviously a leash in the frame; how did it get P’d away?”

“SleepyBaby, do you want my WeChat?” [kiss]

Author’s reply: Hello, if I gave it to you, what would you use?

“Wife, spouse, mommy, master...?”

Xu Zhitong’s face was practically burning.

Lin Yang reached over and turned off the comments for her. “They’re joking. That’s how they show they like you.”

Xu Zhitong wasn’t used to it and said softly, “They all joke like this?” The boundaries were so wide.

The seventeen-year-old Xu Zhitong was still just a high school student with a rich after-school life, only allowed to use her phone on weekends, and whose online activities were limited to gaming and reading novels.

Lin Yang said calmly, “Just spend more time online and get familiar with it. These memes aren’t hard to understand. You can do it.”

She knew Xu Zhitong adapted quickly.

“Okay,” Xu Zhitong steadied herself, then couldn’t help saying, “Yangbao, thanks for always staying by my side.”

Lin Yang lowered her eyes and glanced again at the Yinfu account projected on the TV.

Ever since she’d become an adult, her memory had never been very good. Yet over the past nine years, she could always remember that day, on the auditorium stage, the look on Xu Zhitong’s face as she smiled brightly at her while singing.

Letting Xu Zhitong join the campus singing contest had also been one of those things she had often thought of over the years as something that could have “not happened.”

Without that singing competition, Xu Zhitong would never have discovered her talent, never have stumbled into becoming a streamer, gotten used to the internet, become a minor online celebrity, and earned a lot of money.

And Lin Yang herself would never, over all these years, have been separated by an ocean and by the internet, envying and resenting how many people liked Xu Zhitong; how they could express their affection for her without restraint and even receive Xu Zhitong’s response.

She would even think that if Xu Zhitong had never gone through all that, if she were just an ordinary college student with an ordinary job.

If Xu Zhitong were more ordinary, with Lin Yang’s status, how could it be impossible to reconnect with her after returning to the country, using some means?

Every time she thought of that, Lin Yang felt a little self-directed disgust mixed with pain.

But she also enjoyed that pain.

Including right now.

From the moment she discovered Xu Zhitong had lost her memory until now.

Lin Yang had tacitly accepted Xu Zhitong’s dependence.

She had tacitly accepted that the seventeen-year-old Xu Zhitong believed that she and Lin Yang would still be best friends all the way to twenty-five.

She had also tacitly accepted that Xu Zhitong’s life over these years had included her.

How could voyeurism not count as involvement?

Thinking this, Lin Yang felt a wave of nausea.

She endured the ache of self-disgust and looked at the living, breathing Xu Zhitong in front of her, whose eyes held only her. In the end, she still couldn’t refuse even this brief temptation.

“...Mm.”

Author’s Note:

It’s semi-alternate-universe, so I didn’t put the song titles in the main text. If you’re interested in the song choice:

"The Walking Fish" — Xu Jiaying

TL Note:

Hey guys, now that we get into the livestreaming, I want to make a few things clear: Her streamer name is SleepyBlue (困蓝 Kun Lan), so you might see some viewers call her "kl" for short.