Trainee Ch.67

Chapter 67: The Third Performance (3)

Lai Yudong’s free practice wasn’t going smoothly from the very start.

The intro was the center position’s part, yet he kept coming in off-beat several times in a row. He would rewind, restart, and sing again—only to keep making the same mistakes. It frustrated him so much he started doubting life itself.

How could he be practicing for so long and still not finish even one line?

Was the problem with him, or was there some hidden trick in the song?

Blindly hammering away at difficulties was the worst strategy. Lai Yudong decisively sought help. Even if asking for guidance on the very first line made him look like an idiot, it was better than wasting time fumbling around like a clueless newbie.

Since they’d worked together before and had a good personal relationship, Zhao Yifeng became the best candidate.

“Off-beat?” Zhao Yifeng didn’t notice any difficulty in the intro at first, but after rewinding the track and listening again, he immediately pinpointed the issue. “This is an anacrusis bar—it is a little tricky to start.”

The unfamiliar new term left Lai Yudong looking completely lost. “Is that music theory?”

“Yeah. It means the first note doesn’t begin on the strong beat but on the weak one. The first few beats are empty with no sound, so it’s an incomplete measure.” Zhao Yifeng tried to put it simply. “Music theory can get complicated—don’t worry if you don’t get it now. Just think of it as: the very first bar of the melody has fewer beats, but the rest of the bars follow normal counts.”

Lai Yudong thought for a moment. “So… I just mentally fill in the missing beats, and count a full measure in my head?”

“Bingo~.” Zhao Yifeng snapped his fingers. “Ever considered cramming some music theory? You’d probably pick it up pretty quickly.”

Lai Yudong gave a noncommittal answer. “If there’s a chance.”

What he probably needed to cram wasn’t music theory, but the broadcast voice lessons he had missed for a while.

That’s assuming he even managed to debut.

Now that he had a solution, everything else became much easier.

Zhao Yifeng divided up the beats and demonstrated once. Lai Yudong imitated him and tried again—congratulations, this time he finally came in on the right beat.

“If there’s anything else you don’t understand, come ask me.” Zhao Yifeng patted Lai Yudong on the shoulder in encouragement. “This song’s range won’t be a problem for you. It’s mainly the melody and breath control that are tricky. The first one just needs more practice; the second is your strong point, so don’t worry too much.”

Lai Yudong nodded vigorously like a pecking chick. “I’ll do my best.”

[It’s great when you’re paired with someone familiar.]

[Stage Two was like specialized training. Stage Three is an all-around training camp.]

[What about the finals then?]

[Golden Honey Pomelo(Yu), freshly in stock!]

Lai Yudong: …

That sounded exactly like an ad for a fruit shop.

With the crucial intro solved, Lai Yudong continued working through the song.

The vocal lessons Xu An had arranged were clearly paying off—he successfully noticed that his pitch was drifting all over the place, rising and falling like a kite in the sky, never quite landing on the standard line.

But that wasn’t a big problem. As long as he kept singing along with the composer’s demo again and again, adjusting his pitch over and over, he’d be able to fix it eventually.

The real headache was the melody Zhao Yifeng mentioned earlier. The early sections had a strange, ever-shifting melody that was very hard to grasp.

Lai Yudong struggled just to hit the correct pitches, then tried singing it a few more times, but the results weren’t great.

Something about it sounded off—like the dreaded “feels kind of weird” feedback that clients hate to hear from a contractor. He couldn’t find a direction, couldn’t pinpoint the reason, only felt this vague bewilderment, like drawing a sword and looking around with no clue what to do. The one thing he could be sure of was that the song definitely wasn’t meant to be sung the way he just did.

So, Lai Yudong had no choice but to seek Zhao Yifeng’s help again.

“Sorry for bothering you again,” Lai Yudong apologized awkwardly. “But I’ve tried for a long time on my own, and no matter what I do, it just doesn’t sound right.”

“Don’t mention it.” Zhao Yifeng waved his hand casually. “You’ve helped me plenty of times, no need to be so polite with me. If you really feel bad about it, just take this as me paying you back.”

He set aside the section he had been practicing and dragged the MP3 progress bar to the part in question.

[Wait, Dong-baby helped Teacher Zhao before?]

[He did, during Stage One. Yuzu explained the reason behind the first stage battle—it was directly mentioned on camera.]

[How come I don’t remember that?]

[Because it didn’t make the final cut, lol.]

[But Feng’s fans edited the full sequence together, and the views were pretty high. It kind of “cleared his name,” though honestly I don’t think Zhao Yifeng ever had much of a bad reputation to begin with.]

[Zhao Yifeng didn’t lose out by coming to Stardom. Even if he doesn’t debut, at least he salvaged his popularity with the audience.]

Lai Yudong glanced at the scrolling comments. It seemed a lot had happened outside of what he saw.

He silently looked over at Zhao Yifeng, who was wearing headphones. The other boy lazily pinched a sheet of lyrics in one hand; black hair fell by his ears as he bowed his head, and the little ponytail at the back of his head had grown longer than it was at the beginning of the show. Back then, it stuck out because it was too short; now, it lay down smoothly.

Come to think of it, he’d been dragged into this talent show by the system for… seven weeks already?

That was a long time.

Long enough that he sometimes forgot he was in a parallel world.

“All right, finished listening.” Zhao Yifeng took off his headphones and looked at the captain, who appeared calm on the surface but was actually spacing out. “Yuki, sing it once for me.”

“Huh? Oh…”

Lai Yudong snapped back to reality and quickly picked up the lyric sheet to comply.

[Not bad, I thought it would sound much worse.]

[It’s not hitting right—it feels weird.]

[This isn’t Weird Town, this is a library. Yuzu just sang me into calmness.]

[In a sense, they’re the same. If you don’t stay quiet, something bad might happen (?)]

Zhao Yifeng rubbed his chin and commented, “It’s missing a bit of groove—but that’s not the main issue.”

Lai Yudong humbly asked, “Then what is?”

“You’re singing it too flat. I don’t mean your tone is flat—I mean the atmosphere isn’t right. Singing isn’t just about hitting the notes. A sweet love song and a tragic ballad aren’t sung the same way, right? Same principle here.”

Taking into account the audience comments, Lai Yudong had a sudden realization. “So… my vocal tone and delivery don’t match the style?”

“Exactly.” Zhao Yifeng nodded in satisfaction. “These lines are setting up the background—the weird little town. Do you think it’s enough for the stage design, lyrics, and arrangement to deliver that information to the audience? The voice is part of it too.”

He gave an example: “Like when you go to a haunted house. Those NPCs use breathy growls to act creepy, or suddenly scream in your face to scare you. They’d never squeeze their voices into a Mickey Mouse falsetto and shout ‘welcome to my clubhouse,’ right?”

Lai Yudong: “…”

Got it. That was… a very vivid analogy.

The two of them discussed it in general terms, but the rest was left up to Lai Yudong. After all, he hadn’t fully figured it out yet, so he couldn’t just copy Zhao Yifeng’s personal taste—and even if he tried, he might not be able to replicate it exactly.

This was where his background in broadcasting became an advantage. Shifting vocal tone and capturing emotion were both his strong suits.

All he needed to do was turn “speaking” into “singing.”

Just like when he had carefully considered the similarities and differences between broadcasting and vocal performance while working on the theme song: resonance and diction, tone and emotion—there were connections between the two fields, but they couldn’t be applied wholesale.

Now it was time to test his ability to draw inferences.

As he practiced through to the end, Zhao Yifeng passed by with a water bottle in hand and casually remarked, “Not bad—you’ve found the right feel.”

Lai Yudong’s eyes sparkled. “So… it actually sounds okay?”

“Of course. I told you before, your singing isn’t bad.”

Zhao Yifeng used an encouraging teaching style—save the perfectionism for later, praise first for now.

He kindly reminded, “But once the rap section starts, you can’t keep singing like that. The emotion needs to build explosively—it should sound wilder, more defiant.”

“Got it, I’ll give it a try.”

Before he could try, however, there was a difficult hurdle he had to face.

—Rap.

Lai Yudong stared miserably at the English rap lyrics on the sheet. He could read every line, he understood every word, yet when it came time to actually rap, his voice seemed stuck in his throat, refusing to come out.

When it came to rap, he was an even bigger newbie than he was at dance.

At least before joining the show, he had done radio calisthenics and practiced Tai Chi. But rap? He couldn’t even pretend to have any connection with it.

He recalled the long-ago evaluation class in Stage One, and later, during Stage Two, Liang Zhisheng and Li Xu’s dorm-room complaints about the rap group. What he knew was that rap required flow and tone.

Flow—literally “to flow” in Chinese—in rap referred to arrangement, pauses, speed changes, and a whole range of abstract concepts he couldn’t fully explain. In his shallow understanding, it was basically rap’s version of melody and rhythm.

Thankfully, this song already came with flow. As long as he found the beat and rhythm, he didn’t need to invent anything from scratch.

Tone—that was another tricky word.

He thought back to the rap performances he’d heard on stage. Many people deliberately altered their natural voice, rapping in a voice like SpongeBob or Bear Brothers, and they called that “tone.”

He meant no disrespect, no mocking or slandering of rap. It was just an easy-to-understand description for a beginner. Tone obviously wasn’t limited to just the silly voices he mentioned.

So please, don’t take his misleading explanation as gospel.

Lai Yudong replayed the short rap section over and over. He decided to try it himself first—otherwise, going to ask for help without even making an attempt would be like grabbing a test paper, ignoring the questions, and immediately running to the class genius to ask how to solve them.

Though it wasn’t exactly “getting something for nothing,” the feeling of it wasn’t great.

If all else failed, he could always go find Li Xu.

And so, with nerves bundled tight, Lai Yudong embarked on his beginner’s journey into rap, determined to conquer the lines with his own strength.

First attempt.

Great—he only managed to keep up with the first word.

Second attempt.

It sounded like a fill-in-the-blank test; he only blurted out a few scattered words.

Third attempt.

A jumbled blur of mumbling, his tongue nearly tied itself in knots.

Fourth attempt…

After who knew how many tries, Lai Yudong finally managed to follow the music and recite the entire section clearly from start to finish.

The reason it was “recite” was because he was very self-aware: he knew full well that he sounded like someone speed-running a scripture reading—an English-language Bible, no less.

The only difference from a shouting chant was that his voice was quieter.

Lai Yudong sighed and hit play again.

“Brother.”

This time he didn’t rap; he wanted to listen carefully to the demo.

“Brother Yuki.”

Lai Yudong blinked in surprise. He thought that faint “brother” was directed at someone else, but it was actually calling him.

He quickly took off his headphones and glanced sideways. His gaze dipped slightly with the height difference—standing half a head shorter, a black-haired boy was tilting his head up at him. His face was round and smooth, still carrying the baby fat of youth.

It was Yin Zizhen, the youngest of the group.

“Sorry, I didn’t notice,” Lai Yudong unconsciously softened his voice, gentler than usual. “What is it?”

“It’s fine, I was the one interrupting.” Yin Zizhen gave a cool little nod. His face showed no extra expression, his eyes wide and round. “It might be rude of me to say, but rap isn’t sung like that.”

Lai Yudong choked: “I—I realized that too.”

“So… do you need my help?”

“Eh?”

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