Quiz

“Were they always abusing you?” Yirui An was stunned, and the suspicion in her heart slipped out before she could stop it.

Only after she said it did regret hit her belatedly. She was afraid she’d touched on Yu Mao’s painful past and stirred up her resistance, pushing her even farther away.

But Yu Mao barely reacted at all. Even her gaze didn’t shift as she answered faintly, “Maybe. I’ve basically forgotten.”

To her now, it wasn’t anything important.

Yirui An looked at her with sympathy, her heart aching even more. She guessed this was probably some kind of trauma response; her mind couldn’t take it, so it had simply erased the painful experience.

“Why don’t you want to try other foods?” she asked again, holding the chocolate out a little farther. “Smell it. It really does smell good. How would you know it isn’t tasty if you’ve never even tried it?”

Yu Mao instinctively avoided it again, but her brows drew together slightly as she fell into confusion over the question.

“Why..."

Her memory was fragmented and hazy. She remembered sitting at a dining table when she was little, with a woman’s face in front of her, carrying a faint hint of mockery.

Because... I’m... a picky... cat.

Suddenly, she seemed to hear a sneer, and then a woman’s voice, heavy with disgust, rang in her ears:

“So you’re a picky eater? Fine. Then don’t eat anything else after this. Just drink your formula.”

Yu Mao’s brows tightened. She clapped both hands over her ears and shook her head hard, forcing the memory out of her mind. “So noisy. So noisy.”

She reached into her pocket, took out the other earbud, and put it in. The familiar singing made her mood settle at once.

Yirui An looked surprised, wanting to say something but stopping herself. “You..."

She knew Yu Mao must have remembered something, but that memory made her uncomfortable.

Well, this was bad; now both earbuds were in. There was no way this conversation was continuing.

Was she thinking that always wearing headphones might be Yu Mao’s way of blocking out her memories?

Yirui An sighed in disappointment and sat down on the floor, bored, looking toward the spot where Yu Mao’s gaze had lingered for so long.

Nan Changgeng was listening to Chen You practice vocal exercises and offering demonstrations and guidance whenever needed.

What was there to look at, really?

Fine, she was pretty, sure...

But Yirui An wasn’t any worse. They were both mixed-race; if anything, she had more mixed blood than Nan Changgeng did. So why couldn’t Yu Mao look at her a little more?

...

The quiz was about to begin.

The five mentors gathered again, and the contestants returned to the original stage area.

The area had already been rearranged. The mentors’ seats had been moved farther back on the stage, close to and facing away from the contestants’ seats.

The original mentor area now had a long table set up as the contestants’ testing station, directly facing the mentors’ seats. There were six sets of audio equipment and headphones on it. The mentors’ long table was similar to a control panel, with six buttons that could switch between the different audio feeds at any time.

The contestants entered and, as usual, took their seats.

With an encouraging smile, Mo Lei called out the opening in a relaxed, expectant tone and read out the rules:

“Good morning, everyone. Is your heartbeat starting to race? Exams are full of challenges, but they’re also your chance to show yourselves off. In this quiz, the five contestants with the lowest individual scores will sadly have to leave us. But every experience is growth, and every challenge is an opportunity. Let’s look forward to your wonderful performances!”

There were six contestants in each group, singing the same song together; the mentors would randomly switch between the contestants’ voices and give real-time scores.

As long as you avoided making mistakes when it was your turn to sing, you could basically make sure your score wouldn’t be too low.

But for those with weak vocals and poor pitch, it was much harder.

There were sixty contestants in total. The order of the songs was decided by lottery, and the contestants for each song divided themselves into two groups for assessment.

With ten songs plus the time spent scoring and evaluating the performances, it didn’t take very long. Just over an hour later, it was over.

This time, the production team didn’t cause trouble, and Zhao Xuan didn’t deliberately sharpen his tongue either. Yu Mao’s score wasn’t dragged down on purpose; in fact, she even placed in the top three.

Yu Mao was no longer the complete civilian she had been on the first day. As the traffic king with the highest popularity in the livestream room, the production team wouldn’t dare target her even if they had bad intentions; otherwise, they’d just be waiting for furious fan mothers to tear their official account to pieces.

As for Nan Changgeng, the directors also kept their promise and gave her a fair, impartial score.

Naturally, she took first place without any suspense.

But a quiz couldn’t possibly be allowed to go by so smoothly. The production team shifted their target toward a few contestants with some popularity, but not too much.

Chen You was one of them.

The biggest thing people remembered about her was her overly anxious, tightly strung mental state, which had even resonated with many viewers from troubled family backgrounds.

In this quiz, she didn’t make any major mistakes, but there were a few places where nerves made her voice tremble. Her final score landed in the middle, slightly below average; for now, she was still safe.

During the critique, the mentors ‘incidentally’ asked why she was so nervous.

Chen Shuyun said, “Actually, your vocals are pretty good. If you’re worried about elimination, there’s really no need to be this nervous.”

“I...” Chen You looked hesitant. “It’s not just that I’m afraid of being eliminated. I’m just afraid I won’t sing well enough and... embarrass myself.”

“How could you think that?” Zhao Xuan seized on the cue and asked in a leading tone, “Are your family’s expectations very high? Have you been scolded whenever you made a mistake since you were little?”

Murmurs rose from the contestants’ seats.

“That’s way too blunt...”

“Well, it’s Zhao Xuan. What do you expect? Him being tactful?”

One contestant spoke with a Taiwan accent. “But that makes it really hard for Chen You to answer, doesn’t it? Even if that’s really the case, if she says it outright, how is she supposed to deal with her family when she goes back? Wouldn’t that just cause a huge fight..."

Chen You did look troubled. She lowered her eyes and remained silent for a long time without answering. She wasn’t the kind of slick, socially adept person who could handle things smoothly to begin with; the more anxious she got, the more her brain turned to mush.

But since she didn’t deny it, that silence was already enough to say everything.

Mo Lei stepped in to smooth things over and said with a smile, “Looks like this is someone’s private matter and not convenient to answer, so let’s not press it.”

“Yes, yes, I was just asking casually.” Having achieved his purpose, Zhao Xuan didn’t linger and moved on to the next group’s process without hesitation.

The matter was over, but when Chen You sat back down, her mood was no longer the same as before. She could already predict what kind of bloodbath it would become if this segment went viral online and her parents saw it.

A suffocating feeling rose in her instinctively.

Then a hand tapped her shoulder. Chen You turned and met Nan Changgeng’s concerned gaze.

Before she could force out an ugly smile and say she was fine against her true feelings, Nan Changgeng spoke first in a casual, conversational tone.

“You’re in college now, right? Your grades should be pretty good?”

Chen You didn’t know what was going on, but she nodded. “They’re okay.”

Nan Changgeng asked again, “How’s your financial situation? Do you still need to get living expenses from your family, or are you already financially independent?”

She hesitated, but trust in the woman made her answer honestly anyway. “I’m basically independent already. My scholarship covers most of my tuition, and I do some part-time work and things like that on the side.”

“Mm, that’s good.” Nan Changgeng looked toward the evaluation area, her attitude casual. “Actually, even if you’re not independent yet, it’s fine. After this show, you’ll definitely make enough to pay for the rest of college.”

“Mm, yes.” Chen You was a little lost and couldn’t quite tell what she was trying to say.

The next second, Nan Changgeng abruptly revealed her real point.

“So you should have plenty of confidence when dealing with your family, shouldn’t you? Why do you still care so much about whatever they say or think?”

“...” Chen You opened her mouth and froze.

The words were blunt to the point of seeming a little cold, but... yes, why?

Nan Changgeng gave her time to think.

After a long while, Chen You muttered, “They’re my family... I... I’ve never thought about it like that.”

She still didn’t say it plainly, but she was almost no longer hiding it.

Nan Changgeng wouldn’t probe further. The kinds of pain inflicted by family elders were, in the end, only a few broad categories; with a little guesswork, she could more or less tell.

She simply gave a solution in a near-indifferent tone, going straight to the heart of it:

“But they make you miserable, don’t they? The impact they’ve had on you runs deep. If you don’t have the ability to face it and fight back, at the very least you can choose to run.”

“You’re an adult now. There’s nothing left that can trap you. The only thing restraining you is your own heart.”

“If talking to them makes you unhappy, then don’t talk to them. If going home makes you uncomfortable, go back less often. When you can, keep your distance from anyone or anything that makes you feel uneasy.”

It felt as if Chen You’s head had been struck with a hammer; in a daze, she seemed to hear something crack apart.

The pain that had troubled her for so many years had suddenly become so light, as if a single breath could blow it away.

Just a few minutes ago, she had been afraid that after filming ended and she went home, if her parents yelled at her again and mocked her dream of creating music, how would she face it?

Yes; she could simply not go back at all. She could run.

It wasn’t as if leaving home meant being thrown onto the streets. She could easily hide far away, far enough that those curses would never reach her ears again.

The reason she was so anxious was because, since childhood, whenever she did anything and didn’t come in first, in her family’s eyes she was a worthless failure who wasn’t fit to be seen, better off studying properly.

So she never attended any interest classes and never mastered any skills beyond studying and exams. Only by learning nothing could she avoid being belittled for making mistakes.

If she didn’t truly love music creation, she wouldn’t even have had the courage to sign up this time. But she had never learned to sing, and in this show full of hidden talent, there was no way she could take first place.

To ease her anxiety, she had no choice but to keep practicing hard, proving she’d done everything she could so she could comfort herself a little.

But she was still somewhat hesitant.

“Wouldn’t I be... a little too ungrateful if I did that..."

Nan Changgeng smiled, unsurprised that she would think that way. After all, if she hadn’t been too kind-hearted, a child forced to this point would have long since fallen out with her family instead of constantly internalizing everything and showing no resentment at all.

As a daughter, you could never quite help softening and thinking: after all, they’re your mother and father; after all, they’re family...

But when they were hurting you so recklessly, had they ever thought of you as their own child? Or perhaps, to them, children were simply possessions, private property they could treat however they pleased.

She said carelessly, “That’s the consequence of their own actions. What does it have to do with your conscience? You raise a cat, feed it and give it water, then spend all day cursing and hitting it. If the cat learns to catch mice and runs off right away, is that because the cat has no conscience?”

That was clearly just escaping with its life.

Chen You immediately shook her head hard.

She lowered her head and covered her face. Her throat suddenly tightened, leaving her speechless; in silence, she let her tears soak into her palm.

She really had once taken in an injured stray cat. Later, because it was mischievous and kept smashing teacups, her father beat and scolded it many times.

One day, when someone opened the door and wasn’t paying attention, it slipped out on its own and never came back.

Her mother said it was an unlucky cat; it wouldn’t stay in a perfectly good house or eat the cat food, preferring to go out and live as a stray.

So it turned out she herself was that unlucky cat.