The civil defense passage came with its own echo, forgiving of things like vocal tone, so the woman's wildly unrestrained singing actually sounded quite good, even if it did not quite match the second verse:
"Once, I doubted that news too sad was a whip that destroyed inspiration; I opened my notes, looked over old melodies, and painstakingly pieced together fragments of memory. I heard of what you went through in the past. Please allow me to tell it by the roadside; let lovers walking arm in arm listen to the story, even if it earns puzzled laughter..."
That sense of disconnection did not fade until the chorus returned for the second time:
"The one who stopped was me; the one who went far away was you..."
As the song played, Tai Yu lost himself in thought.
Was he the one who wanted to stop? The strange daze had come from nowhere. His thoughts and emotions felt terribly blurred. He simply stood to one side, without any clear purpose, quietly listening to the song to see whether he could sort out something else from it.
The woman had already repeated the chorus twice, her voice and emotions growing ever more uninhibited:
"Night Crow, crying out to the sky is not a difficult thing;
"I am still staying here, repeating that message again and again.
"Blue star, blue star that has gone far away, hear clearly the song and melody I wrote;
"Remember... I am singing at the top of my voice. Beneath the dark sky, when we cannot see each other, that melody still echoes;
"Please catch it, take it away—the scattered feathers drifting down from the high trees;
"And also, and also, please remember: here, there will always be new stories. I will set them to music and sing