The Voice was broadcast live.

This was the final qualifying round of the preliminary stage — the format dictated a cut from seventy contestants down to forty. Each person had a single song to determine whether they advanced or were eliminated. There were no spots on hold.

For the forty contestants who successfully advanced, the four mentors would assign scores during the performance phase. Once every contestant had performed, the host would announce the final scores for those who had advanced.

The top twenty contestants ranked by score would have the right to choose their own mentor. The remaining twenty would be selected by the mentors.

The program’s format was demanding and grew harsher with each stage. This was also the first time Lin Tao and the others had watched a round in person.

Watching as some of the contestants with the highest online followings were eliminated outright, they couldn’t help but feel anxious on Hu Hanghang’s behalf.

The performance order followed the fan popularity rankings previously announced on the official account, from highest to lowest.

Following his entry into the program, Hu Hanghang’s popularity had soared, and he was the tenth performer to take the stage.

Hu Hanghang had always been a natural on stage — assured and controlled. This time, under his teacher’s guidance, he had rearranged a currently very popular folk song called Years, incorporating his own rock-influenced style while the backing harmonies drew on the distinctive sound of ancient Chinese bronze bells.

When the song ended, the audience in the venue was completely immersed in it.

The shifting stage lights ultimately converged into a single column that fell upon Hu Hanghang where he stood — and there he remained, born from the light itself.

……

After all seventy contestants had performed, Hu Hanghang advanced to the next round with a total score ranking of third, and successfully joined the mentoring team of his choice.

After the live broadcast ended, Hu Hanghang had originally hoped to go out for a late-night meal with Jiang Yan and the others — but upon returning backstage, he learned that a long list of matters still needed to be handled before he could leave, and the meal was pushed to another time.

When the six of them walked out of the recording venue, it was already past midnight. The streets of the city center were still blazing with light. The rows of tall buildings shimmered and glittered, the neon glow of the illuminated architecture making the entire city look like a place that never slept.

Night had fallen, and a cool breeze drifted down through the streets and lanes.

Lin Tao raised her hand and rubbed her bare arms. Then, the next instant, something warm and familiar landed across her shoulders — a black jacket carrying a trace of body warmth.

A familiar brand and style — almost no need to guess whose it was.

She looked up at Jiang Yan standing beside her, still in his familiar white top and black trousers, slender and upright, like a scene that belonged entirely to itself.

“Where are we going now?” Lin Tao slipped her arms into the sleeves. Her pale, slender fingers emerged from the cuffs, the extra length of sleeve bunched in folds at her wrists, the wide hem of the jacket falling straight past the top of her thighs.

Jiang Yan looked at her once and naturally reached over to roll up her sleeves for her. The night cast a shadow beneath his lower lashes.

“Let’s get something to eat first,” he said softly.

The city center was no shortage of restaurants and shops still open in the early hours of the morning. Guan Che looked up a few well-reviewed places on a food rating app.

After a brief discussion, the group decided on the nearest Haidilao — only to discover that, even at this hour, there was still a queue.

Guan Che went to find a server and collect a number. The others were led to a spot outside by the server, where two small square tables were pushed together for them to sit around.

Haidilao is renowned for its attentive service. While customers wait for a table, they are provided with a range of things to pass the time.

The most common options are folding paper stars, Chinese chess, and card games.

With a larger group, they might also offer bigger social games like Werewolf or Who’s the Spy.

All six of them had already overworked their brains enough at school, and had absolutely no interest in anything requiring real mental effort at this point. They just wanted something simple, so they split open three decks of cards and prepared to play a landlord game.

It was purely for fun — there was no set rule about numbers of players. The only agreement was that whoever lost the most rounds would foot the bill that night.

After all three decks had been dealt, Meng Xin was the declared landlord. Among the remaining five, one person had drawn the three of hearts and was the hidden ally tasked with helping the landlord win.

Lin Tao had a habit when sorting her cards: she liked to arrange them by face value from left to right, smallest to largest.

Jiang Yan was seated slightly above and to her right. With the advantage of his height, he casually scanned her hand after the round began and caught sight of the three of hearts sitting at the far right of her hand.

“……”

His gaze paused for just a moment before he quietly committed most of her cards to memory.

Through the better part of the game, Jiang Yan inconspicuously let several cards pass through to Lin Tao, and under his cover, Lin Tao had gone undetected as the hidden ally.

Meng Xin was the landlord. Her hand at the start hadn’t been too bad, but after Xu Yichuan and Song Yuan had blocked her cards a few times in a jumbled mess, she was left with a few scattered singles — a mix of high and low values, not easy to play.

She put down her lowest card — the eight of clubs — and laughed: “I have to say, wherever my ally is hiding, you really are buried deep. I’ve watched this whole round and I still can’t figure out who’s on my side.”

Lin Tao, holder of the three of hearts: “……”

As the rounds turned, Meng Xin was down to one card — the queen of hearts — while Lin Tao had, besides the three of hearts, a ten of clubs and a pair of twos.

Guan Che had been going back and forth between suspecting Lin Tao or Jiang Yan as the hidden ally, but regardless, Meng Xin only had one card left.

After deliberating for some time, he threw down a pair of aces.

At that point, only Jiang Yan and Lin Tao had cards left in their hands that could beat Guan Che’s pair — and according to the order of play, Jiang Yan should go first.

Jiang Yan glanced down at the blazing red pair of twos in his hand, quietly set it back, and said without any change of expression: “Pass.”

Guan Che: “……”

This was genuinely brutal for him.

The outcome, naturally, was that Lin Tao and the others on the commoners’ side won. Guan Che, who had been losing all night, muttered a curse under his breath, and with lightning-quick reflexes snatched up the card Jiang Yan had not yet tossed back into the pile.

Just as he had suspected.

The ace of hearts.

“I knew something was off every time the play reached you,” Guan Che flipped the card face-up and tossed it on the table, shaking his head with a rueful laugh. “So this whole time you weren’t the landlord’s ally at all — you were just Lin Tao’s ally, full stop.”

“……”

Jiang Yan, whose scheme had just been exposed, showed not the slightest embarrassment. He leaned back against his chair with a lazy smile. “I figured one beats eight.”

“……”

Guan Che still had more he wanted to say, when Xu Yichuan cut in with a grin: “Guan Che, don’t bother. Today I finally understand why Jiang Yan has a girlfriend and you don’t.”

Guan Che: “……”

By the end of the night, the bill fell not on Guan Che but on Jiang Yan.

After that evening, the group of seven drifted back into their separate routines.

Song Yuan’s target — the Hucheng Police Academy — had historically scored around five hundred in the science track for admission, but his results across the school’s mock examinations had consistently hovered around four hundred and eighty, rarely clearing five hundred.

To that end, Song Yuan’s father had hired a top-rated college entrance exam tutor for him, and he spent his evenings and weekends studying at home.

Xu Yichuan’s plans to go abroad were already settled. His parents, worried he might have trouble communicating once he got there, were using every spare moment to work on his English.

Midway through The Voice‘s run, Hu Hanghang had advanced from the open auditions through to the hundred, then the seventy, then the forty, all the way into the national top twenty.

As the exams drew near, Meng Xin’s parents reduced how often they traveled for work. Her mother found time to bring her nutritious soups, and on weekends she took her out to relax.

Guan Che’s supervisor led the team in a national robotics competition. As a new member of the lab, Guan Che spent nearly the entire summer buried in research.

From the first mock through the third, Lin Tao’s scores had held steady at around seven hundred and twenty. With regard to her studies and daily life, Lin’s father and mother had never needed to worry much.

Because no matter what problem came up, Jiang Yan had always resolved it before they even needed to.

……

One week before the college entrance examinations, Lin Tao fell seriously ill and spent three days in the hospital.

On the last night, Lin Tao woke briefly in the middle of a dream and saw Jiang Yan standing by the window. A pack of cigarettes and a lighter sat on the ledge beside him.

The moonlight was soft and full, and his silhouette looked solitary and still.

“Jiang Yan.” Her voice came out slightly hoarse.

The figure by the window stiffened for a moment, then turned and walked over to sit beside the hospital bed. His voice carried a trace of exhaustion. “What is it?”

The ward had no lights on — only a slender wash of moonlight spilling in through the window. Lin Tao’s eyes were clear and bright. “Why haven’t you gone back?”

These past few days while she was ill in the hospital, Jiang Yan had kept her company during the day. In the evenings, Fang Yisong and Lin Yongcheng would come.

Tonight, Fang Yisong had been called away by something urgent. After Lin Tao had fallen asleep, she had asked the nurses to keep a close eye on her and left the hospital ahead of the others.

Lin Tao knew Fang Yisong had gone — she just hadn’t known that Jiang Yan was still there.

Jiang Yan lowered his eyes and reached over to tuck the blanket more snugly around her. “I’ve been here the whole time,” he said softly.

From the moment Lin Tao fell ill until now, he had barely left the hospital — except to go home and change his clothes.

“Haven’t you gone without sleep for a long time now?” Lin Tao stretched out her hand and pressed her fingertips lightly beneath his eyes. “Your dark circles are very heavy.”

“I’m fine.” Jiang Yan took her hand in his, his thumb gently moving across her skin. “It’s still early. Get some more sleep.”

Lin Tao murmured in agreement and was just about to close her eyes when, as though she had remembered something, she suddenly sat up and folded back a corner of the blanket. In a soft voice she said, “Come sleep for a while too.”

Jiang Yan was about to decline. Lin Tao gave him no chance to. “If you don’t sleep, I can’t sleep either.”

He looked at her. He couldn’t find the words to refuse.

The hospital bed was a single, and with two people it was a little cramped. Lin Tao buried her face against his chest, breathed in quietly, and caught no trace of smoke.

“You didn’t smoke,” she said softly.

Jiang Yan had one arm tucked beneath her as a pillow. His fingers curled lightly through her hair. “No,” he said, his voice low. “Smoking isn’t allowed in the ward. And I don’t smoke.”

“Mm.” Lin Tao closed her eyes. She nuzzled her head into the curve of his neck — half comfort, half something like reassurance. “Don’t worry. I’m fine.”

Jiang Yan felt something stir in his chest — a faint, bittersweet ache.

He drew her closer and held her more tightly. “Sleep,” he said, his voice a little rough.

What answered him was the slow, even rhythm of Lin Tao’s breathing.

Outside, the night deepened. The moon’s shadow drifted. The cicadas sang on without ceasing.

The sky was beginning to lighten.

Those two most important days of June passed like a dream.

When the last examination — English — came to an end, the school broke open like a prison finally unshackled. Some students laughed and shouted, others broke down in tears.

Whatever the outcome, this one hellish year had at last, in this moment, been stamped with its ending.

Torn scraps of paper rained down from the upper floors of the teaching block like snowflakes. The school administrator was bellowing from below about which class had done this — but at this moment, no one had any intention of listening to another word he said.

Lin Tao was unexpectedly calm. Walking through the crowd, she was still turning over in her mind the episode of a TV show she had watched before bed the night before. It was only when a television reporter’s microphone was nearly shoved directly in front of her face that she came back to herself.

Every year, reporters from various television stations staked out positions outside exam halls, waiting to interview students with interesting things to say.

At a moment when everyone around her was highly emotional, Lin Tao’s composure gave her a certain quality — like the one sober person in a crowd of the intoxicated.

The reporter’s eyes were as sharp as radar. She immediately pushed forward with her crew. “Hi there — after eighteen years of studying hard, the dust has finally settled. Can you tell us how you’re feeling right now?”

“I don’t really feel anything.”

After saying this, Lin Tao scanned the crowd for Jiang Yan’s figure. The reporter followed her line of sight and smiled. “Has your family come to meet you at the exam hall?”

“Yes,” Lin Tao said. “My boyfriend came.”

“……”

This interview was not going to go anywhere productive. The reporter quickly shifted to another subject: a good-looking young man walking through the crowd.

Same question: “Hi there — after eighteen years of studying hard, the dust has finally settled. Can you tell us how you’re feeling right now?”

Jiang Yan looked down at the reporter who had suddenly appeared to block his path, and said calmly, “I’m not one of the examinees.”

“Then who are you?”

“A family member of an examinee.” Even as Jiang Yan spoke, he had already spotted Lin Tao’s figure in the crowd and called out her name. “Lin Tao.”

Before the reporter could react, she watched the girl she had just interviewed walk over from this direction.

“……” Truly — of all the people to encounter.

The young reporter left the scene with her camera operator, thoroughly done with her attempts.

Other television crews were still present, and the combination of Jiang Yan and Lin Tao’s appearances quickly drew attention. One reporter recognized Jiang Yan as the scholarship student who had been featured in an educational news segment some time back, and came rushing over with their own camera operator, fixing a smile on Jiang Yan. “This student — haven’t you already been admitted to Qingda University on a recommendation? What brings you here to participate in the college entrance examination today?”

Jiang Yan and Lin Tao exchanged a glance. He curved his lips into a smile. “No — I came today to accompany my girlfriend to the exam.”

“……”

This student, please be aware — this is a youth programming segment. Conduct like this requires us to activate parental controls.

This interview also failed to proceed any further. Worried that more reporters would keep coming with their questions, Jiang Yan and Lin Tao quickly left the exam hall.

The exam venue wasn’t far from School Ten — a fifteen-minute walk at most.

The summer evening air carried a breath of warmth.

“Jiang Yan.” Lin Tao walked along the long stone steps by the roadside, one hand held in Jiang Yan’s. “I think I did really well this time.”

Jiang Yan glanced at her, and smiled softly. “Is that so.”

“Of course.” Lin Tao muttered to herself, “Maybe I’ll even place first in the province.”

“Sure,” Jiang Yan said. “I’ll be here waiting for you to bring back first place.”

Lin Tao let out a bright laugh, stopped walking, and jumped onto his back, arms looped around his neck. “You have that much faith in me?”

Jiang Yan carried her forward along the road, the light falling behind them.

“Whatever you say, I believe.” He laughed.

The farewell dinner for Class Eighteen was scheduled for the evening of the day the college entrance examinations ended. Teacher Yu had reserved a large private room at Fulin Pavilion, and every member of the class was present — even Hu Hanghang had taken special leave to come.

By the time Lin Tao and Jiang Yan arrived, a good number of classmates were already seated in the room.

In this moment, it seemed as though everyone had automatically erased all the past grievances and estrangements from their memories, and they sat together laughing and joking.

Once everyone had arrived, Teacher Yu stood at the entrance to the private room, looking out at this group of young people. He was smiling — and then his eyes turned red.

A girl noticed the shift in his expression and moved to say something comforting, but before the words could leave her mouth, she choked up herself.

The laughter and noise gradually gave way to something more bittersweet.

Farewell was close at hand. After parting today, the next time they met would be no one knew when.

Lin Tao and Jiang Yan sat quietly in a corner, side by side in silence.

Teacher Yu raised a hand and wiped his eyes. “Come on, everyone sit down.”

Once the room had settled, Teacher Yu raised his glass first. “I want to start by thanking each of you for your cooperation and patience with me over these past two years.”

“No, Teacher Yu — it’s us who should be thanking you.”

“A toast to Teacher Yu!”

One drink down, and the relative quiet that had settled broke apart again, beyond anyone’s control. Girls pressed their hands to their faces as tears slipped through their fingers, boys gripped their glasses with reddened eyes.

Lin Tao looked away and breathed slowly.

Beneath the table, Jiang Yan took her hand.

Teacher Yu’s eyes were red, but he laughed just as he always had — without a trace of self-consciousness. “Today the college entrance examinations have ended, but your lives are truly beginning from this moment. Every decision you make from now on will shape every instant of your future.”

“I don’t ask much of any of you. I only hope that in the days ahead, you will each do what you want to do, become who you want to become — and shine brilliantly in the field you love most.”

……

After the farewell dinner ended, no one left. Instead, the whole group followed Teacher Yu back to Class Eighteen’s classroom.

Everything in the classroom was as it had always been: the countdown that had reached zero, the ceiling fan turning in endless slow circles, the desks and chairs covered in signatures, scattered and out of order.

Outside, the summer night was thick with stars. The cicadas sang on and on beyond the window.

All of it — every last thing — was the most beautiful memory of those years.

Teacher Yu, a little unsteady from the drinks, moved with deliberate care. He stood at the front of the classroom, drew a piece of paper from his pocket, opened it slowly, and spoke in an unhurried voice. “From now on, we’re a new class. Let me take attendance — when I call your name, come up and introduce yourself.”

Hearing Teacher Yu’s words, the memory of every person in the room was instantly pulled back to that sweltering September two years ago, still carrying the warmth of summer.

The first time they met each other felt like it was only yesterday — and yet farewell was now upon them.

“Lin Tao.” Teacher Yu called from the front, just as he had two years before.

Lin Tao, seated below, eyes red, walked slowly up to the podium. Her hand at her side clenched into a tight fist. Her voice was slightly choked: “Hello, everyone. My name is Lin Tao — Lin as in ‘forest,’ Tao with the roof radical, two dots, and the character for ‘omen’ beneath it. I’m very glad to be in the same class as all of you. Thank you.”

As her voice fell, a familiar sound rose from the corner of the classroom. “Teacher Yu, shouldn’t the introduction include something about hobbies and interests?”

Lin Tao lifted her head. Through the scattered figures, she looked toward the back of the classroom. The young man’s eyes still held a smile — and yet it was somehow different from the smile she remembered.

She smiled too. Every memory that had anything to do with him was always sharper than the rest. “I don’t really have any hobbies. The only thing I like is studying.”

Teacher Yu led the applause just as he always had. Everyone in the room was overtaken by a faint illusion that their high school life was only just beginning.

Jiang Yan was still the tenth one called to the podium.

Two years had passed. The slight fragility of youth had given way to a posture that was straight and sure.

He stood at the podium with that same unhurried ease, smiling with a kind of unruly freedom — like always — and said almost nothing unnecessary: “Jiang Yan. Interests —”

He paused for a beat, and then looked up toward the corner of the classroom, his eyes soft and quiet, and spoke two words in a low voice.

“Lin Tao.”

End.