Brandon Long is seventeen years old. When he accompanied his friend to the North City for an interview, he was persuaded by the staff to come in and was passed on the spot.
When the judges asked, they found out that he didn't even get the registration form, but just took a blank form and stamped four stamps on it.
He told this to Ethan Huo as a joke, but his tone was very natural, not like he was showing off.
"I am a student with a specialty in arts. I originally wanted to study acting abroad. It would be nice to come here and give it a try."
Ethan Huo went with him to the next office to register his name and found that he didn't even bring a backpack.
"You're not sleeping here tonight?"
"I don't even plan to eat dinner here," Young Master Long shook his head, "My driver will come to pick me up later, do you want to come with me?"
"No," Ethan Huo paused and said, "What do you think...what will be the topic for tomorrow?"
"I can even guess the topic for the day after tomorrow." Brandon Long adjusted her hairstyle facing the glass wall, as if she was talking about the weather: "Dance, vocal music, and performance. There are only three things in total."
Dancing requires sufficient physical strength as basic support, and a five-kilometer long-distance run is just an appetizer.
Ethan Huo spent his spare time reading books and had no previous knowledge of these things.
"Are there any performances?"
"Well, it's not enough to just be able to sing and dance." Long Ji looked at him sideways, advising him like a senior: "You also need to be infectious, so that the people in the audience can follow you into the performance."
"Where did you learn this?"
"Learn..." Brandon Long thought for a moment: "Go to more concerts and sit in the front row."
After a few words, his friend had just finished skipping rope and ran over with his bag to say hello.
After saying goodbye to them, Ethan Huo walked back to the training hall, borrowed a rope from the staff and jumped until six o'clock in the evening, then followed everyone to the cafeteria.
He ate three bowls of rice in silence.
On the second day, there were only 300 people left on the field, and the screening effect was quite good.
It's not that most people don't have the physical strength to complete this task, but they think it's too boring and too long. Some people even jump until 5:30 and are almost done with the number, then they just throw away the rope and give up, cursing the company for being Fcuking crazy when they leave.
The new examiner was also the teaching assistant. After a brief self-introduction, he turned on the six large high-definition LCD screens on the training ground. The content on the left and right sides was different.
There is a musical notation on the left and audio is playing on the right.
"You can freely choose the test questions, and you can change them in the middle." The teaching assistant stood on the high platform and said in a deep and powerful voice: "Choose the left side, memorize the score and come over to recite it. If you get 95% correct, you can come over to sign and leave - but you can only recite it once."
"Choose the right side, and then find a frequency band with the same pitch from the 100 audios, and you can go there."
"The deadline is 3pm. If you don't hand in your paper, your score will be void."
The trainees dispersed immediately.
Ethan Huo stood in the middle and didn't see the little red-haired guy and the young man playing with the MP4 yesterday. He knew they had been eliminated.
He went to the right first.
A group of people have squatted next to the speakers, listening attentively.
The audio is not a musical composition, just a meaningless buzz.
"This is for measuring absolute pitch," someone muttered, "I'd better go to the left for a mortal like me."
Several people nearby nodded in agreement and followed him to retreat.
After listening for a while, Ethan Huo didn't find any pattern, so he turned around and went to the left.
When he heard the words "memorize", he felt relieved. He came to the right purely out of curiosity and wanted to see the questions.
There were already quite a few people gathered around the screen on the left, talking loudly and in a noisy manner.
"This is K330, Mozart's first movement in C major!"
"Sh!t, I haven't even learned piano yet!"
Some people are very unprofessional and stand in a good position but are completely confused.
"Brother, teach me, how do I read this musical notation? Which line is the shaking one?"
"If you don't learn the musical notation, what's the point of singing? Just stay away!"
"Hey, you can't sing if you don't know the tadpoles."
Ethan Huo stood at the edge and read the score, and an image appeared in his mind like a photocopier.
He was not in a hurry to hand in the paper, but continued to observe how different people answered the questions.
Some people really have never learned music theory and slept through music classes in middle school and high school. Now they take pictures with their mobile phones and start counting the positions and numbers of notes, comparing them line by line like drawing an engineering drawing.
There were also a few who had obviously grown up learning music. They had already started humming the melody without paying attention to the people around them. They sang it twice from the score to make sure of the details in their minds, then turned around and asked the teaching assistant for blank music scores to answer the questions.
Brandon Long was almost late today and is still teaching his friend how to memorize music.
He saw Ethan Huo here from afar and waved at him with a smile.
Ethan Huo smiled back, looked at the big screen again, put on his bag and went to the question-answering area.
"You can hum, but keep your voice down so as not to disturb the people next to you." Several staff members patrolled the table like invigilators: "Don't use your phone to check, the cameras here can clearly see you."
Ethan Huo took the musical score and found the paper somewhat unfamiliar.
He had done papers for provincial examinations and national competitions before, but he had never answered questions on musical notation.
The boy was stunned for a while, thinking that his life was like a wild dog running wild, so let it be the musical notation.
He opened his eyes, and the four pictures he had just seen were immediately spread out and enlarged in front of his eyes, with the position of each note extremely clear.
Just fill it out according to the instructions, it’s not difficult.
So when the time came to hand in the paper, he was the eleventh one.
"Full marks," the teaching assistant smiled and stamped his name, then asked casually, "How many years have you studied piano? Your basic skills are pretty good. I didn't even hear you humming a song just now."
"I haven't learned it." Ethan Huo told the truth.
"You haven't learned it?! Is that true?!"
Ethan Huo was about to speak when he saw Long Ji sitting in the distance, waving, crossing his legs and drinking freshly squeezed juice.
"That kid is first again," the teaching assistant whispered, "You can tell he's rich. He wears Chopard watches."
...Isn't Chopin a pianist?
He responded briefly, signed his name and walked away.
"You're very quick," Long Ji handed him a bottle of mango juice with a bright smile: "I just squeezed it before I went out, try it."
Ethan Huo was not good at dealing with such people, so he just drank it obediently.
As he was growing, he had an instinctive craving for fat and sugar.
"My friend will probably have to kneel down this time. He's almost crying now." Brandon Long yawned and said, "Today is the sight-singing test, so tomorrow will definitely be the performance."
Ethan Huo covered the mango juice and rubbed the smooth glass bottle with his fingertips.
"You...are planning on becoming an idol?"
The TV in his house had been broken for several years, and he felt a little confused when he said this word.
"Give it a try, it sounds fun." Brandon Long said, "If you fail, just take the TOEFL, it's no big deal."
"If you haven't learned acting, I'll teach you a very useful method." The boy approached him and lowered his voice: "You must find the most unforgettable memory and then empathize with it."
Ethan Huo didn't expect that he would take the initiative to help him, so he confirmed the details very tactfully: "Any memory is fine?"
"Yes, just keep it in your mind, and people outside won't know." Brandon Long winked and smiled: "It's guaranteed to be useful."
This young master disappeared at noon and did not return to the dormitory at night. He must have been dissatisfied with the poor conditions here.
Ethan Huo couldn't help but add an extra apple to his dinner, and his abused stomach was almost singing a hymn on the spot.
When they gathered again on the third day, there were only eighty people left.
There was a lot of screaming and howling in the training ground yesterday, even the cleaners were annoyed.
Ethan Huo didn't sleep well that night and heard the two people on the upper bunk chatting until one o'clock in the morning.
One moment he said someone's accuracy rate was just 94%, and he wanted to kneel down and ask for help to be lenient.
After a while, we talked about some people cheating in a group and were kicked out by the staff with mops.
There was constant cursing, and dialects from all regions came out.
"Today is the third day and the final round of screening."
Grace wore a neat black short top with a waistline as beautiful as a cheetah.
"The assessment content is performance, and the questions are very simple."
"I'll give you one song to cry before you finish it."
She paused, seeing that there was no sound from the audience, and added, "There are only fifty places in total, first come first served, who wants to come?"
Brandon Long was the first to raise his hand: "Me."
Everyone has become accustomed to this top student and silently made way for him.
Ethan Huo watched Brandon Long walk onto the stage confidently and heard someone spit behind him.
"It's nothing special to be rich. It's just that I hired a teacher to give me extra lessons."
As expected, it worked perfectly.
Grace was impressed by this candidate, and after recording the result in the book, she asked, "Who's next?"
Ethan Huo raised his hand.
It's already the third round, there's no need to hide anything for this kind of question.
He took the microphone and selected the song "It's Better Not to Forget" by Mei Heng, which he had sung during the previous interview, from the jukebox.
Then he waited obediently for the prelude to sound, without even a symbolic shake.
When the first line of lyrics appeared on the screen, his tears rolled down, two lines flowing straight down, as if they had been prepared long ago.
If she hadn't checked the candidate's backpack pockets beforehand, Grace would have suspected that he had used □□.
She was stunned for a long time, then raised her hand to turn off the accompaniment.
"You... have deep feelings for this song?"
Ethan Huo wiped away his tears, confirmed that the results were registered, walked out, and went straight to the bathroom to wash his face.
The boy in the mirror had a cold look in his eyes, with drops of water dripping down his nose and cheeks.
He wiped his face and didn't leave for a long time.
It's not that the feelings are deep. It's that he can cry as long as he lowers his head, without awakening any emotions.
My father started drinking four years ago and would beat people when he was drunk.
The police also came and tried to persuade me several times, but when they saw that it didn't work, they stopped trying.
In the eyes of outsiders, that person lived like a dog, and after returning home he particularly liked to see people cry.
He first beat his mother until she cried uncontrollably, and then he would not stop. After his mother died in a car accident, he started beating him with a clothes hanger.
He had no other place to do his homework under the light, and he gradually became more and more skilled at crying. In the end, he had no emotions at all. He just dealt with it calmly by crying after being hit twice. After the man left cursing, he wiped his face and continued reading.
The bathroom was empty, with only the sound of running water.
"Ethan Huo." He looked up at himself in the mirror and called out for his mother.
I heard that when I was born, my grandfather insisted on naming me Ran, hoping that I would burn like a raging fire.
When my mother talked about this, her face was full of guilt.
"Born in such a family, you are destined to suffer a lot."
"I named you Blade because you want to have a sharp edge."
"You have to sharpen your edge so that you can survive alone."
"Ethan Huo."
He looked at himself in the mirror, his eyes cold.
"This is the last time you cry."
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