A Complete Transformation

The students farther away barely caught those words, but Qi Feng and Jiang Ying, standing right beside him, heard every word.

Jiang Ying was astonished. She had gone out of her way to secure this boy a chance. Any other kid would have been overjoyed, yet he was giving it up just like that... More importantly, his performance hadn't been bad. Why withdraw?

Curious, she asked, "Can you give me a reason?"

Ling Ke lowered his eyes. His emotions were still churning, but his reason had returned.

Because he hadn't performed well. Qi Feng had been accommodating him the entire time. Without Qi Feng, it would have been a failed performance, a one-man show serving only to vent his selfish desires.

How was he any different from the boy who had just been eliminated?

The applause from the audience grated on his ears, seeming only to underscore how much credit belonged to Qi Feng. If he needed Qi Feng's help to stay on this stage, his pride wouldn't stand for it.

But Ling Ke couldn't voice any of those reasons. He didn't want to show weakness in front of Qi Feng.

So he stood stubbornly onstage, clad in his armor of defiance, and said, "I don't really like performing onstage."

The sheer, stratospheric arrogance of that remark stunned even Qi Feng beside him.

Jiang Ying was a little speechless too. She stared at Ling Ke for two seconds, then couldn't help bursting into laughter.

Ling Ke: "..."

Watching him, Jiang Ying asked with a smile, "Then how do you know I'd pick you in the first place?"

At those words, Ling Ke's face instantly burned. He was so embarrassed he wanted to dig a hole and crawl into it!

Even Qi Feng beside him frowned, a somewhat peculiar look on his face.

Ignoring them, Jiang Ying turned straight around and signaled "eliminated" to the judges' table.

An uproar swept through the audience. Those two might look like they had connections, but their performance had won over plenty of people. Why withdraw now?

"I know that when this student was allowed to stay, many of you questioned whether this event was fair... I'd like to use his case to say a few words to you." Pacing gracefully below the stage, Jiang Ying addressed the group of adolescents. "Just now, this student couldn't find a suitable partner, so I made an exception and gave him a chance to perform. Do you think that good luck came out of nowhere?"

Their eyes involuntarily followed Jiang Ying as she moved. Cowed by her presence, they hardly dared breathe.

"It didn't. If we give any contestant here a special opportunity in the future, it can only mean that student has qualities that appeal to us." Jiang Ying paused, then continued, "That includes the boy who complained just now that the competition was unfair. You might think he had bad luck too, but was bad luck his only problem? No. He simply wasn't good enough yet."

She stopped, folded her arms, and looked at them. "Here's what I want you to understand: the stage in the performing arts is inherently unfair. Sometimes, what you call 'luck' is part of your ability too. So please keep things in perspective as you go forward, and don't single anyone out. On this stage, you have only two paths: either become strong enough, or accept the outcome with grace."

Her tone was gentle, but every word carried tremendous weight, as though she were driving each one deep into Ling Ke's heart with a hammer.

Ling Ke's head buzzed. He hadn't expected Jiang Ying to use his "withdrawal" as an opportunity to give the other contestants a pointed lesson, but at the same time, her words set the blood in his own veins boiling.

He knew nothing was fair. His parents often told him the same thing, and every time, Ling Ke found it endlessly tiresome. Though their words had sunk in somewhat over time, they had done little good.

Only now did he suddenly feel as though he had woken up!

Although Jiang Ying was speaking to everyone, to Ling Ke it felt as though she were explaining it all to him alone.

This woman was truly formidable. With a single glance, she had seen straight through all the twists and turns in his mind.

Yes, the reason he had withdrawn was precisely that he wasn't strong enough yet.

He didn't want to stand on this stage and earn applause through a lucky break, a clumsy provocation, and Qi Feng's indulgence.

He was scared. So rather than let someone eliminate him, he had chosen to withdraw first.

Jiang Ying turned back to Ling Ke, her smile gentle and her eyes encouraging. "If you perform like that again next time, I'll pick you. Once you've earned the right to choose, then you can talk to me about withdrawing."

Ling Ke felt a wave of shame and guilt, yet he was utterly in awe of Jiang Ying's guidance.

He tucked away all his prickles and obediently nodded, like a little beast that had been tamed.

When the talent performances ended, those who had advanced stayed for the next round, while those eliminated left in twos and threes.

As Ling Ke walked out of the multipurpose hall, someone suddenly darted up from behind. "Wow, Ling Ke! I had no idea you played piano so well!"

Ling Ke took a closer look and realized it was the classical singer who had come with them. The other two girls had gotten tired of waiting and left early. Only he had stayed, wandering around the television station before sneaking into the multipurpose hall just in time to catch Ling Ke's performance.

Ling Ke went over to a coin-operated vending machine and bought a can of cola.

Beside him, the classical singer kept muttering, "Man, how could they eliminate you when you played that well? I bet the whole thing's rigged!"

The corner of Ling Ke's mouth twitched. Had this guy not understood a word of what Jiang Ying had just said?

"So I got eliminated. Whatever," Ling Ke said. "There are so many talented people. How far could I get on dumb luck?"

He didn't tell him he had been the one to ask to "withdraw" first. It wasn't anything to brag about.

As they were about to leave the television station, the classical singer said he needed to use the restroom.

They went together. Ling Ke came out first and waited for him by the restroom entrance.

Two familiar-looking girls passed nearby. They had been eliminated too, and were covering their faces as they gossiped excitedly. "I heard that hot guy who just played the violin is Ms. Jiang's son!"

"Huh? Really? Oh my God, no wonder he's so handsome and so talented... But Ms. Jiang looks so young. I can't imagine her having a son our age!"

"TV hosts take really good care of themselves. Look at Yang Lan and Dong Qing. Can you tell how old they are?"

The girls' voices soon faded as they walked away.

Ling Ke gripped his can of Coke, a hundred conflicting feelings churning inside him.

Great. Now it wasn't just the Milky Way separating him from Qi Feng. There was a goddess between them too.

...Goddammit.

As he stood staring blankly down, a familiar pair of shoes suddenly appeared in front of him. Ling Ke froze. Qi Feng had come to use the restroom too.

"Hi." Probably thinking of their duet earlier, Qi Feng had meant to say hello to Ling Ke, only to find himself at a loss for how to start. After two awkward seconds, he finally asked, "What's your name?"

Hearing that question again, seeing the tentative look in his eyes along with the same curiosity as when they first met, left Ling Ke with complicated feelings.

He tossed his empty Coke bottle squarely into a nearby trash can, adjusted his shoulder bag, and strode off.

As they brushed past each other, Ling Ke tossed out a reply so quietly that only Qi Feng could hear: "Not telling you."

Qi Feng: "..."

Ling Ke silently swore that he would wait until he was capable enough to stand confidently before Qi Feng and make him take him seriously, make him remember him, instead of giving his name over and over only to have it forgotten at any moment.

After he got home, Ling Ke dug out all his sheet music and decided to keep practicing the piano.

Playing with Qi Feng seemed to have rekindled his passion for the piano. Besides, his grading exams were finally over, so there was no pressure. With his foundation, he could teach himself to play any score he got his hands on.

Over his remaining year or so of middle school, Ling Ke worked his way through collections of Chopin's and Beethoven's compositions entirely on his own initiative.

He didn't have the means to learn as many things as Qi Feng, but he wanted to take what he did have as far as he possibly could.

That included his schoolwork. After returning from the TV station, Ling Ke poured a tremendous amount of effort into his academic subjects too. Before, he had been content to coast into the top few in his class without studying particularly hard. Now he drove himself relentlessly, surging all the way to first in his grade.

If there was even one concept he hadn't thoroughly mastered, he would tear through practice books until no test could faze him.

In addition, Ling Ke went running and played ball on a regular schedule, and asked Ling Ke's mother to arrange a daily delivery of two bottles of fresh milk for him.

Between his physical efforts and his fervent desire, Ling Ke's long-overdue growth spurt finally arrived.

Over the last seven or eight months of ninth grade, he shot up more than four inches, growing from a little yellow bamboo shoot into a tall stalk of vibrant green bamboo. His features matured considerably too, shedding their childishness for the fresh, clean-cut good looks unique to a teenage boy.

Good grades, good looks, and piano skills—with all that going for him, Ling Ke found himself surrounded by any number of admirers experiencing their first stirrings of romance. Some even secretly called him their "dream guy" behind his back.

But Ling Ke was completely oblivious to how much he stood out. He just thought these girls hadn't seen much of the world.

If someone like him qualified as a "dream guy," wouldn't they go out of their minds if they ever saw Qi Feng?

As Ling Ke underwent this complete transformation, only Ling Ke's parents, for all their delight, also worried about their son's personality.

Yes, Ling Ke was far too introverted—so introverted that he seemed to have almost no need for social interaction.

Though in his classmates' eyes, that was called being "cool and aloof."

Apparently, someone with nothing better to do had even counted how many sentences Ling Ke spoke to girls at school each week. The result: fewer than ten on average.

But he didn't say much more to the guy friends he got along with either: twenty sentences a week.

Still, grades had always come first in Chinese families. As long as your grades were good, just about anything could be tolerated.

Ling Ke didn't take the high school entrance exam. He was admitted directly to the city's best elite public high school, tuition-free, making Ling Ke's parents beam with pride.

As a reward, they gave Ling Ke his very first smartphone.

After the high school entrance exams, even Ling Ke's mother changed her tune when lecturing her son. "Ke, relax a little when you have time. Chat with your friends more, or find some games to play. Don't always look so serious."

Ling Ke's response was to lift his eyelids and say nothing.

...A teenage boy's mind was just too hard to read.

Shutting his parents out of his room, Ling Ke fiddled with his new phone and downloaded QQ.

Throughout that year and more, he had still regularly visited Qi Feng's Qzone to look at his pictures.

Not long after returning from the TV station that year, Ling Ke had realized that his conflicting impulses to seek Qi Feng out and avoid him weren't simply because of their brief encounter or the other boy's sheer perfection. They were also because... he was a boy.

Yes, he had realized he liked boys.

Ling Ke had accepted that naturally, with almost no struggle at all.

Maybe he had already channeled all his fear about his sexuality into motivation to study, or worked it out through playing the piano. Whatever the reason, he hadn't questioned himself or the world the way other people did after discovering they were gay.

After following Qi Feng for two whole years, Ling Ke wasn't really sure what Qi Feng meant to him anymore.

Before, he had seen him as a goal to strive toward, someone who inspired him to improve. Gradually, though, he realized that maybe he simply liked the way Qi Feng looked and was attracted to him.

To put it in trendy terms, Ling Ke thought he might be a fan of Qi Feng's face.

He followed Qi Feng just like the girls who were infatuated with him did. A single smile could set his heart racing, and a photo of him drenched in sweat after a ball game could give him a secret thrill.

How many new things Qi Feng had learned or how accomplished he had become no longer mattered to Ling Ke, because he himself had become pretty outstanding too.

All he cared about was whether Qi Feng had posted any new photos lately, and whether those photos would let him hide under the covers in the dead of night and jerk off, utterly mortified.

Ling Ke felt deeply pathetic for letting adolescent desire rule his body and mind, yet he was completely powerless to resist Qi Feng's innate appeal.

Again and again, he succumbed, grew addicted, and sank ever deeper.

[A Little Interlude]

Qi Yu: "I met a boy at Mom's TV station today and played a piece with him. I have to say, he plays Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu way better than you do."

Qi Feng looked unconvinced. "Oh? What's his name? Did you get his QQ?"

Qi Yu: "...Don't know. Didn't ask."

Qi Feng: "Pfft, then what the hell are you talking about? I don't believe you."

Qi Yu: "..."