Theme Song (Continued)

What was going on? Had he turned invisible?

He looked around thoughtfully. Sure enough, as he had expected, there were no cameras.

...He had such complicated feelings that he didn't know where to begin.

Lai Yudong sighed inwardly.

Although he couldn't tell whether Zeng Kai had deliberately targeted him or treated everyone that way, judging by the behavior alone, someone who already showed one face on camera and another off it before even debuting probably wasn't suited to standing in a higher position.

But that wasn't something he, who might not even make it through the first round, should worry about.

Putting the inconsequential little episode behind him, Lai Yudong took the stairs to the third floor. As expected, he wasn't the only trainee trying to get a head start. As soon as he stepped into the hallway, he spotted a Class B member's back in the distance.

He didn't need to see the person's face clearly. That fashionable milk-tea gray-brown hair alone was enough to identify him as Jiang Yangfan.

Jiang Yangfan pushed open the practice room door, and the theme song's melody spilled through the gap. He hurried inside, shutting the music away and leaving the hallway quiet again.

It seemed he wasn't the first to arrive either. There were other people inside.

That conclusion made Lai Yudong even more despondent. He walked past the practice rooms for Classes A, B, and C in turn. The three classes' representative colors were bright and vivid, but when he reached Class F, they abruptly gave way to a lifeless black letter. The contrast in colors seemed to hint at the different fates of the classes.

He took a deep breath and carefully pushed open Class F's door, afraid of disturbing any trainees learning the theme song.

"Creeeak—"

[Wow, someone's finally here!]

[I've been keeping this empty bedroom all to myself... ahem... this empty livestream room for ages]

[I bet right, Yuzu really was the first one here 233]

Lai Yudong: "..."

He had worried for nothing.

Then again, it made sense. After all, he seemed to be the only person in Class F who had eaten breakfast.

Looking at the empty practice room, with only his own figure reflected in the mirrored wall, Lai Yudong felt a sudden loneliness, as though he'd landed alone on a deserted island.

That was a bit of an exaggeration, but when he thought about how at least two members of the twenty-person Class B had already arrived next door, while he was greeted only by a screen full of bullet comments and an empty practice room, the stark contrast left him less than optimistic about the theme song evaluation.

On the bright side, this was exactly the situation he'd hoped for.

At least no one knew what he was doing.

Lai Yudong picked up the tablet lying on the seat in front of the electronic keyboard. Without showing it, he looked around to see where the cameras were, then found a safe spot and sat down against the wall.

He couldn't let anyone see how fluently he wrote.

When he'd first heard "To The Stars" in the hall, Lai Yudong had paid some attention to the lyrics. The chorus, paired with that devilishly catchy melody, was easy to remember; he'd learned it after listening once or twice. The difficult part was the rest, where the loosely connected lyrics were easy to mix up.

Theme songs all seemed to follow this sort of formula.

They took inspirational words like "dreams," "effort," "applause," "youth," and "miracles" and shuffled them into combinations. One moment it was "sweeping all before us," the next it was "giving it our all," and finally a few English lines were thrown in for a touch of international flair nobody cared about. The lyrics were hardly any better than those of viral short-video songs.

But as for how hard it was to memorize, he didn't think much of the difficulty. It was easier than having to write out the entire Memorial on the Dispatch of Troops from memory the day after studying it in high school.

As the saying went, the faintest ink was better than the best memory, and having both was like adding flowers to brocade. Lai Yudong copied the whole song into his notebook once and had already memorized most of the lyrics.

He tried humming a few lines of the chorus:

"To the stars. To the stars.

Never backing down, charging toward the summit with all our might.

To the stars. To the stars.

Never giving up, dreams shining like stars..."

[The few lines You Shu hummed sounded pretty good]

[Because he lowered the pitch, by a whole eight keys]

What? He'd lowered the pitch?

Skeptical, Lai Yudong rewound the song and listened again. The moment the original singer's voice came in, he fell silent. If there was nothing wrong with his ears, the difference really was rather large.

Looking on the bright side, at least he could hear the difference, which meant there was still hope for him... probably.

Bang—

Suddenly, someone pushed the practice room door open in one swift motion. Lai Yudong raised his head, remembering to close the notebook in his hands.

Unexpectedly, the newcomer wasn't a fellow Class F trainee, but Su Junzhe from Class A.

The king of grind whom the bullet comments hailed as career-driven.

[Little Su, you've got the wrong room! This is Class F!]

[Was Su Junzhe the first A in the initial stage evaluations?]

[A younger guy who's really good at dancing~]

Su Junzhe had a cute sort of face. His meticulous makeup was ready for a music-show performance, and his chocolate-colored Japanese-style wool curls had clearly been carefully styled, adding a touch of languid charm.

Unable to change his outfit, he'd put effort into the details instead. Silver studs glittered in his ears under the lights, while his black sneakers had one neon-orange lace and one neon-blue one, creating a visual effect where the laces caught the eye before the person wearing them.

Overall, he gave the impression of a younger boy next door who was both sweet and cool.

"Sorry, am I disturbing you?"

Lai Yudong shook his head like a rattle drum. "No."

"Great." Su Junzhe bounced over like a little lamb and crouched down in front of Lai Yudong, his curved eyes naturally smiling. "Do you mind if I practice here?"

"Here?" Lai Yudong asked, startled.

"Mm-hmm. Several people in Class A are working out the choreography and practicing the song, and with everyone learning their own way, it was too chaotic. So I slipped out to see what the other classes were like." Su Junzhe cupped his cheeks in his hands. "There are a few fewer people in Classes B and C, and you're the only one in Class F. I need a quiet place where I won't be disturbed too much, so I'd like to stay here for a while."

Lai Yudong immediately caught the key point. "Are there a lot of people in Class A?"

"Hmm, not too many." Su Junzhe counted on his fingers as he recalled them. "Yu Yizhen, Qu Junwei, Mo Li, and me. Four in total."