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It was a day like every other in the SID Bureau, which meant the whole staff were sitting idly on their phones and waiting for the five o’clock to strike so they could go home.
Zhao Yunlan was locked in his office, having given them some or the other excuse of being very busy with work, though everyone was fully aware that it had nothing to do with his actual job, but rather with his upcoming anniversary. Not like he was subtle about it anyhow, any problem of Zhao Yunlan was a problem for the whole departament, he frequently disturbed everyone with questions about this or that restaurant, before he decided that a weekend get-away would be a better idea. Then the questions transformed into ones about the possible destinations, whether there was enough to do, were they romantic enough, so on and so forth.
The usual victim of those questions was for some reason Zhu Hong. She was unable to find any excuse to brush chief Zhao off. He was completely aware that there was nothing else for her to do, so she couldn’t point to any urgent cases or files. The only filing she was doing the whole week was her nails. Sighing heavily she went through the itinerary chief Zhao prepared, submitting to the fate of the only person working this week.
Well, one of the two only working people this week. Somehow, despite the total lack of anything to do, Guo Changcheng was flooded with work. Everyone suspected that it was not real work, just something that Zhao Yunlan came up with to keep him busy.
One such session of itinerary review they were disturbed by a loud thud coming from the office floor. Chief Zhao was ready to ignore that completely, but it was a way out for Zhu Hong.
“It may be a real emergency!” she huffed and promptly made a beeline between the desks towards the source of the noise. She stopped by the desk of Lin Jing, which was situated just below the poster of office desk ergonomy, just to highlight that usually he was breaking all the rules simultaneously. Usually, but not at this exact moment.
At this exact moment, he was lying on the floor, his legs tangled into the armrests of a fallen office chair, a living example of why the poster was exactly above his desk. Only, he didn’t seem to even register that he fell down, eyes glued to the screen of his phone, mouth gaping.
Zhu Hong nudged him with a tip of her stiletto. Maybe he got some brain damage from the fall. Or from the amount of brainrot he consumed daily.
Lin Jing looked at her with eyes wide open in shock and slowly took off his headphones. Without a word he extended his arm in her direction. Zhu Hong reluctantly put them on. It couldn’t be worse than listening to Lao-Zhao’s rambling.
At first she frowned. She endured the first minute, wondering what exactly she was listening to. After that her eyes also widened in shock.
“What is taking you so long?” came Zhao Yunlan’s irritated voice. “If someone died then they can surely wait until we’re done here.”
“Chief, you need to listen to that,” she said under her breath.
And then she watched a real time reenactment of what happened on her face, projected on Zhao Yunlan’s face.
Chief Zhao exhaled loudly and with the headphones in his hands went through the office. Lin Jing, who didn’t manage to extricate himself from the chair yet, tried to follow him anyways, which resulted in another thud. Zhao Yunlan finally found a window on which Da Qing was sunbathing in his full cat glory. Skillfully evading a cat paw swat, he put the headphone on his head. Those were human-size headphones, so they covered only one of Da Qing’s ears, the rest dangled miserably.
“Play it again!” Zhao Yunlan commanded.
Lin Jing, still on the floor, tapped his phone.
The cat, though irritated, listened for a moment, but his patience was already thin. Very quickly he began hissing, but the hiss broke in half.
Da Qing promptly transformed back into a human and gawked at Zhao Yunlan, no less shocked than the previous three.
This was the scene that met Guo Changcheng when he entered the office with a handful of files. Four people, including one on the floor, that were frozen in place, staring at each other and at the only other person in the room, who was fully ignoring them, scrolling on his own phone.
“D-did someone get hurt?” asked Guo Changcheng, startled by the situation.
“Oh, Xiao-Guo! You need to see it,” gasped Da Qing, but before he managed even one step towards him, he was stopped by Zhao Yunlan.
“No, play it on the big screen,” he gestured at the TV that was now on mute, playing some political news.
Zhao Yunlan and Da Qing both grabbed Lin Jing and, together with the chair, put him in front of his computer. Without even a noise of objection to this treatment, Lin Jing started typing.
Zhu Hong brought a chair and placed it right in front of the big screen TV, and then placed Guo Changcheng on it, as if it was his small private cinema. He didn't quite understand the situation, but he was quite accustomed to office pranks of which he was a frequent victim. Better to sit through it and let them have their laugh.
The broadcast changed, for a moment, to a static noise, where the office signal was disconnected. After a few seconds a vertical video appeared on the screen. There was a man in his mid-thirties who talked in a low voice made for radio but probably now used mostly for ASMR videos.
“Today, a song that was sent to me by many of you, my lovely followers. You say it is a hidden gem that was buried in the depths of the internet for ten years! Well, let me do a blind reaction and judge by myself. That’s Maestro Guanyin for you, vocal couch and pop music critic for you, hope you’ll enjoy!”
The man put big, fancy looking headphones on, rubbed his hands and pressed a button off screen.
A beat started playing. Zhao Yunlan grabbed a remote and frantically pressed on it, turning the volume up, so they clearly heard a second beat coming up, more aggressive yet still, weirdly catchy. Maestro Guanyin looked like he agreed, because he started to bob his head rhythmically. Then another sound was added to the mix, computer synth sound and some kind of unintelligible whisper. The man on the screen made a face showing an exaggerated shock to the camera.
Guo Changcheng’s lip trembled. He didn’t understand why he was put on the spot to listen to this song for the whole crowd to watch. The pranks he was usually subjected to were less elaborate, quickly resolving in laughs to which he could only laugh along. Now it was just confusing, he stopped his body from swaying to the beat, at least until the moment he knew what it was all about.
The sound changed, now resembling some kind of melody instead of only a beat. Maestro lifted his brows while directing his eyes to the camera.
And then the vocals hit.
It was low and raspy, but it was unmistakably the voice of… Chu Shuzhi?!
Guo Changcheng turned his head to look at the man sitting in his corner. He had his own earbuds in and was ostensibly not following the commotion in the office.
Zhao Yunlan grabbed his head and yanked it so that Guo Changcheng was looking back at the screen, at the man whose mouth now formed a perfect O. Guo Changcheng realized that he was now making the same face, only from genuine shock, not for the camera.
The song now reached a chorus. The vocal coach now grabbed his head and was shaking it in disbelief. The same disbelief was painted on all five faces in front of the TV. Chu Shuzhi’s voice now mimicked a conversation, one his own and the other mockingly distorted. The beat and melody died down and an angry cry signalized the end of the song.
Maestro took off his headphones with shaking hands and looked back to the camera.
“Wow guys… this is… I am lost for words, just wow! Chat, this is amazing, wow! It deserves much more than a short, I will release a full video analyzing that!”
The man spoke some more in awe, but no one listened to him. All five pairs of eyes were pointed at Chu-ge, who still sat calmly paying them no mind. Either he genuinely didn’t notice the commotion, or he did but decided not to pay it any mind.
Zhao Yunlan strode towards his desk and poked him. Only then the man lifted his eyes onto his boss.
“Lao-Chu! Hey, Lao-Chu! You have some explaining to do!”
Chu Shuzhi slowly removed the earbuds from his ears.
“Come again?”
He completely ignored the rest of the people all staring at him.
Zhao Yunlan huffed irritably. Only one glance towards Lin Jing sufficed for the man to tap his phone furiously. The beat played again, this time without a commentary.
For the entire duration of the song Chu Shuzhi kept an impassive face and eye contact with Zhao Yunlan, until the very moment when it ended with an angry scream. No one spoke after that either. Lin Jing played the song again.
Finally Zhao Yunlan threw his hands up.
“There is nothing you want to tell us?”
“What do you want to hear?”
Zhao Yunlan pouted.
“Like, what was that?”
“A song?”
The chief threw his hands up again and began pacing around the office. Lin Jing played the song again. Seeing that both Zhu Hong and Da Qing were now nodding together with the beat, Guo Changcheng stopped trying to force his body to stay still.
“I can hear that this is a song, but you are singing it!”
“Yes.”
Except for the song, still playing on repeat, the office went silent at this calm answer.
“And you told no one about it?”
Chu Shuzhi rolled his eyes.
“Is that a job requirement?”
Zhao Yunlan shook his head incredulously.
“No! But well, friends tell friends that kind of thing!”
“Okay? So I recorded a song.”
“It has 20 million views,” said Lin Jing, scrolling his phone. “It was at most triple digits until a week ago.”
“I figure that is a lot?” asked Chu Shuzhi with a frown.
“In a week? That is a crazy number.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Zhao Yunlan was pulling his hair. “Well, tell us more!”
“What do you want to know?” Chu Shuzhi frowned again.
Everyone spoke at once.
“Like, how did you make it?”
“Why did you make it?”
“Why this song?”
“You can sing?”
If Chu Shuzhi was overwhelmed by those questions, he didn't let it show.
“It was shortly after I came here and the concept of this… pop music was quite new to me. I had a disagreement about it, I said everyone could make something like that.” He made a disgruntled face. “If you think it's that easy, go and make one,” he said in the same mocking tone that was at the end of the song. “So I did,” he finished with a shrug.
“You made a song, just like this?” Lin Jing blinked.
“Like it's hard? You record a couple of sounds, loop it and sing on top of it,” huffed Chu Shuzhi, clearly getting irritated.
“They say in the comments, that it's impossible that someone made it ten years ago, they call you a genius, a visionary, who saw the future.”
“Yeah. Are we done with that already? Some people have work to do.”
Nobody did. They all stood there, around Chu Shuzhi’s desk, glaring at him. It was a quick moment in which the song was not playing, but Zhu Hong was already humming it, badly.
The only person who actually had work to do was Guo Changcheng. Maybe that’s why it was him who asked.
“The lyrics, about a slender reed merely swaying under a mighty gale that shatters the tallest trees, what is that?”
“It is an excerpt from an ancient Dixing poem about…”
“People in the comments think it's about drugs,” said Lin Jing, not lifting his eyes from the phone.
“And when you repeat b-war?”
“It's ‘beware’,” he enunciated.
“They say it's the name of the drug.”
Chu Shuzhi grabbed the phone from Lin Jing's hands and started scrolling furiously.
“Lin Jing!” he fumed. “I need access to this account!”
“Just log in it, you don't need my help for that,” huffed Lin Jing, yanking back his phone.
“I do. It was ten years ago and I don't remember the password,” Chu Shuzhi was still fuming. “I need to explain to those boorish swines-”
Zhao Yunlan lifted his head from his own phone.
“Shen Wei says this poem is about drugs,” he said. “But he likes how you sang it.”
In some way Zhu Hong managed to laugh while still humming the tune. It created an interesting distortion to the melody. Chu Shuzhi squinted at her with an indignant look on his face.
Lin Jing joined the laughter.
“Still need those passes?” he teased.
Zhu Hong went back to her desk, laughing and humming. Chu Shuzhi followed her with his eyes, it was visible on his face that he was thinking deeply about something.
“Actually, yeah,” he nodded after a short moment. “I think I have an idea for a new song “