Peeking

“Does it bother you that you can’t smile freely?”

After thinking for a long moment, Wei Zhiyu only asked that softly.

“Not before. Now, a little.”

Yu Mao’s unfocused gaze gradually came to rest on Wei Zhiyu. A faint light gathered in her eyes.

“I think I wouldn’t be afraid of a dead person, but I still can’t smile. I don’t understand. Do you?”

She looked into Wei Zhiyu’s eyes, and there was even a hint of hope between her brows, as if she were searching for an answer.

Wei Zhiyu certainly knew why. It was the kind of mental illness people often talked about online. Even if she couldn’t be one hundred percent certain, she was at least eighty or ninety percent sure.

She should have nodded, but her neck felt stiff; a dull blockage rose in her throat, and the corners of her eyes stung.

“Have you seen a psychologist?”

Yuan Li couldn’t sit still any longer. She stood up and walked over, breaking the stiff silence.

Yu Mao nodded. As if something had just come back to her, a trace of faint displeasure surfaced in her eyes. “The doctor couldn’t help me.”

After hearing her story and her request, they would only advise her to pull back some of the feelings she’d invested in Nan Changgeng, pay more attention to herself, and then write out a stack of white tablets for her.

Then they would look at her with pity and helplessness, sighing and shaking their heads.

Whether she had taken those pills or not... she didn’t remember. In any case, they’d been completely useless. Yet the doctor seemed unable to understand her resistance and kept taking her back for follow-up appointments again and again; each time, the result was the same: no sign of improvement.

In the mouths of people who knew her, she was a complete mental case.

Yu Mao herself didn’t have any awareness that she was sick. She only felt that something was missing from her life, and that she was a little less than human.

Before coming to meet Nan Changgeng, her problem had never been a burden to her. Lacking deeper thought and foresight was perhaps part of what made up that missing piece of her life.

“... ”

The group study ended in a low, dispirited silence.

Yu Mao realized they were no help either, so she turned and left without saying another word.

The door opened and shut with a soft click.

Yuan Li hesitated as if she had something to say, but in the end she still didn’t call after her.

No one knew where Yu Mao had gone.

The group activity was over, but they couldn’t force her to stay.

It was still early; everyone had to remain in the practice room to keep learning the song. But the atmosphere had already grown heavy and dull, and it was hard to return to how it had been before.

People scattered in twos and threes, occupying different corners. Only after a long while did singing begin to sound intermittently in the room, soft and broken.

Yirui An sat on the floor, legs crossed, dejectedly picking at her fingers.

She’d had a very good impression of Yu Mao and had been badly shaken by what happened to her; she couldn’t hold back her sadness.

Yuan Li wasn’t in the mood to practice either. She took her lyric sheet and sat beside her, silently reading and memorizing the words.

Wei Zhiyu looked around, let out a soundless sigh, and walked to the electronic keyboard. She began to play this inspirational song, trying to use the music to smooth out the ripples in her heart.

Xu Yang folded her arms, tipped her head back against the mirror, and stared blankly out the window across from her. No one knew what she was thinking.

She stood there in a daze for a long time, then suddenly dropped her arms and turned to leave the room as well.

Yuan Li noticed her leaving, then thought of Yu Mao, whose whereabouts were unknown. After hesitating for a moment, she got up and followed.

She was just going to the restroom, and while she was there, she could check whether Yu Mao was up to anything.

At the very least, they were roommates; she should show a little more concern.

Xu Yang and Yuan Li arrived in the restroom almost one after the other.

But the distracted Xu Yang didn’t notice anyone following behind her. Xiao Feixia stopped outside the door; she walked to the sink, turned on the water, and washed her hands. Then, with her head lowered, she suddenly raised a hand and slapped herself across the cheek.

Smack—

Her wet palm hit her face, covering half the corner of her mouth; the sound was crisp and sharp.

“Who told you to talk nonsense? Who told you to run your mouth like that!”

She ground the words out through clenched teeth, then slapped herself over the mouth again. The anger was too much to bear, and a second later she was clutching her face and crying.

“Waaah, I’m really such a damn idiot, being so rude to her...”

Yuan Li had just stepped one foot into the restroom when she froze at the sight, then silently pulled her foot back and slipped behind the wall. She stood there with her back against it like she was being punished, awkwardly gripping her pant leg, her eyes staring blankly ahead.

The viewers who had gathered in Xu Yang’s livestream to complain about her unlikable behavior all went still for two seconds.

Then an explosive flood of comments erupted:

[Did she forget the mic doesn’t belong to Xiao Feixia...? Don’t think we won’t know just because you hid in the bathroom, hey!]

[Ahahahaha no, I can’t take it anymore, how is this so funny!]

[Found it: she really didn’t mean anything bad, she’s just got a filthy mouth and not much brain]

[Go watch Yuan Li’s livestream! I’m rolling on the bed laughing]

[Poor little Li, shocked into a blank stare and made to stand against the wall as punishment]

[When Xu Yang realizes all of this was broadcast, she’s going to be so ashamed she’ll break down, hahahaha]

Xu Yang’s regret and guilt became a joke for the wider audience, but she herself still had no idea.

She really had forgotten about the audio pickup; she’d just wanted somewhere empty to vent for a moment... In her subconscious, she didn’t count the unseen viewers as people.

After spending a few minutes pulling herself together, she splashed water on her face and washed away her tears.

Since she never wore makeup on ordinary days, she had also forgotten the makeup she’d painstakingly put on for three hours to get on the show. When she looked up and saw the mirror, she realized the water had ruined it completely.

“... ”

The cosmetics she’d spent a huge twenty yuan on from some platform were actually this low quality.

The emotions she had just managed to gather collapsed completely; she was utterly shattered.

“Ahhhhhhh!”

She raked wildly at the mirror like a maniac, making frantic, strangled noises under her breath.

The sound pierced straight through the eardrums. Yuan Li jolted back to her senses, and the same thought flashed through her mind as through the viewers’:

[What the hell was that sound?]

She hesitated, then turned around and peered over the wall into the room.

[What happened?]

[Li, don’t just look—tell us what’s going on]

“Um...” Yuan Li looked at Xu Yang, whose makeup was a complete disaster and who looked as if she were about to collapse, and the corners of her mouth twitched. Then she stepped out fully and stood at the doorway. “Do you need help?”

Xu Yang froze and snapped upright. Three full seconds of dead silence passed.

During those few seconds, who knew how many times her mind had shattered and reassembled in ways no one else could see.

“Cough.” She recovered, cleared her throat, wiped her face at random, casually rubbed the water onto her clothes, and turned around as though nothing had happened.

She even forced her usually soft voice a little deeper:

“No need. I was just washing my face and shaking the water off my hands, mm.”

“Mm...” Yuan Li dragged out the sound unconsciously, her expression hard to describe. In the end, she simply said it outright: “Your makeup’s ruined. You’d better take it all off.”

Xu Yang pressed her lips together, the corners of her mouth drooping unconsciously. “I know.”

[I’m really going to laugh myself sick. So she made that awful sound because she washed her own makeup off?]

[I hereby declare that the most idol-obsessed little girl on this show has appeared!]

[Thank you, Xu Yang, for saving my mood from getting depressed over Yu Mao]

“You go do your thing. Don’t mind me.”

Xu Yang seemed irritated as she lowered her head, her gaze wandering over the floor tiles as if she were looking for a crack to crawl into and escape the embarrassment.

She didn’t even dare ask when the other person had arrived, or how much she’d heard.

Just thinking about it made her want to die!

Yuan Li rubbed the side of her nose, suppressing laughter as she pretended nothing was wrong and walked into a stall.

The person vanished from sight, and Xu Yang immediately let out a breath of relief. She lifted a foot and sprinted out of the restroom at a hundred-meter dash pace, heading straight back to her dorm.

Once back in the dorm, she took off her makeup at once, then flung herself onto the bed and pushed her butt up in the air like a bulldozer, wriggling and burying her face in the bedding while muffling every howl into the sheets.

When Yuan Li finished using the restroom and came out, she looked at the empty bathroom and couldn’t help but smile.

As she stepped out, Xiao Feixia dutifully floated over to follow her.

She had planned to go back to the dorm to see whether Yu Mao was there, but after only a few steps she spotted a small figure at the far end of the corridor on her right.

That seemed to be the entrance to Class E’s practice room. After Yuan Li came out of the Class C practice room in the middle of the floor, she had gone straight to the restroom without looking back, so she hadn’t known when Yu Mao had appeared there.

Yuan Li narrowed her eyes. She was a little nearsighted and couldn’t see clearly what Yu Mao was doing, so she walked over.

As she drew nearer, she could no longer fool herself. Yu Mao really was peering through Class E’s door.

Her long, fluffy black hair made her look like a little ghost wrapped in a cloak. She rose slightly onto her tiptoes and peered through the transparent glass inset in the door.

Yuan Li unconsciously lightened her steps, not sure whether she felt guilty herself or guilty on Yu Mao’s behalf.

She even had the urge to turn around and leave.

Within a short time, she had witnessed two famous scenes in a row; she was exhausted.

Online, the viewer count for Yu Mao’s livestream window had already shot to first place across the entire show, pulling far ahead of second place.

But the comments in the livestream were no longer as heavy as before. Everyone’s attention had been dragged away by her outrageous behavior.

Yuan Li didn’t know this, but the viewers did. As soon as Yu Mao left the practice room, she had come straight here, sneaking around like a thief and pressing against the door. By lifting herself slightly onto her toes, just enough of her eyes could reach the lowest part of the glass window.

She stood there for more than ten minutes, not moving at all, as if frozen in place.

[Still frame—]

[Is Yu Mao really that invisible? It’s been this long and not a single person has noticed her]

[That’s reasonable, though. The captain is Nan Changgeng; who’d dare zone out]

[Bet on when the people inside will notice her]

[I want to know when she’s going to move even a little. Doesn’t standing on tiptoe like that get tiring?]

[Seriously, are all you Nan fans like this? This really does look like a pervert!]

[Sorry... if I were there, I probably wouldn’t be able to resist either. It’s been too long since I’ve seen Sister Nan, honestly]

Inside the practice room, this team was probably the most serious of all; the atmosphere was even more formal than the gradually quieting group with Wei Zhiyu.

The girls had moved chairs over and sat down, also forming a circle. After so much time, they were the only group whose initial level assessment still hadn’t ended.

Nan Changgeng was practical and straightforward. After many years immersed in music, her professional level was more than enough to give these young girls individualized guidance. She didn’t hide anything and did her utmost to point out their problems and offer solutions.

Which made the progress especially slow.

But her teammates didn’t seem the least bit impatient. Every one of them sat like an elementary school student in front of a teacher, eyes fixed on Nan Changgeng, backs straight, as though the slightest distraction would earn them a piece of chalk thrown at their foreheads.

Teacher Nan was expressionless when she taught; though her words were gentle, her earnest and conscientious manner made it feel as though missing even a single word would be letting her down.