Did Not Say Anything About My Feelings - Chapter 40. Fox Spirit

When they went to the practice room the next day, everyone had changed into their new group uniform that had their names pasted on. Lin Ye had not washed his hair yesterday, and when he woke up, he realized that his hair had been made a mess because it had been squashed under his head. Before he left, he randomly grabbed a white baseball cap that was on the table.

The few people in the classroom were sitting in a circle and eating breakfast. Jiang Lian and Ming Rang were both not there. Because Lin Ye had gone to shoot the advertisement yesterday, he had fallen behind on the learning and had specially woken up early to catch up.

He had only removed his jacket but not his hat. He grabbed the lyrics book and sat at the window sill that was facing the corridor to practice his lyrics. Jiang Lian and Ming Rang walked by the window. Ming Rang reached out a finger and lightly flicked the back of Lin Ye’s head. The moment Lin Ye turned around, Ming Rang smiled and said, “Such a hardworking didi.”

It happened that Lin Ye had a portion where the group had to sing together and he could not manage to get the correct key. He placed a hand on the window sill to support himself, holding the lyrics book and extending half his body out of the window, “Can you help me find the correct key?”

“Help him take a look,” Ming Rang took the lyrics book and put it in Jiang Lian’s hands. Then, he turned around and took a step into the classroom from the front door. As he headed straight for the people eating breakfast in the middle of the classroom, he was muttering, “What are you guys eating? Let me have a taste.”

Jiang Lian was also wearing a black baseball cap. He lowered his head to take a glance at the lyrics Lin Ye was holding. Then, he leaned against the window and lowered his chin at Lin Ye, “Come over here for a moment.”

Lin Ye then moved closer to Jiang Lian. The tips of their caps knocked against each other. Lin Ye turned his head so that the brim of his hat did not hit Jiang Lian. However, he noticed from the corner of his eyes that the right of Jiang Lian’s cap had small white words written on it.

He looked over and recognized that those were the first letters of Jiang Lian’s name.

His heart skipped a beat and he suddenly remembered that the baseball cap that he would occasionally wear out was Jiang Lian’s. He tried to recall but could not remember if there had been anything on the cap that indicated it was Jiang Lian’s.

Jiang Lian, who was outside the window, picked up the lyrics book and hit it on Lin Ye’s cap, “Did you understand what I just said?”

Lin Ye returned to his senses, “What?”

Jiang Lian raised his brow unhappily and repeated his explanation, “Do you understand now?”

Lin Ye nodded his head and said that he understood.

Jiang Lian returned the lyrics book to Lin Ye, “Sing it.”

Lin Ye lowered his voice and sang that portion of the song.

Jiang Lian frowned.

Lin Ye could clearly hear that something was wrong when he was changing keys. He was troubled as he muttered, “The changing of keys here is really difficult.”

His voice showed his lack of patience and he seemed to be complaining.

Jiang Lian smiled and raised his gaze, “Are you trying to act spoiled?”

(T/N: The spoiled here is like a spoiled child? It’s a little hard to express it in English, but it’s kind of like a specific behavior that’s like a spoiled child, but cuter)

Lin Ye’s expression was confused and he only managed to force out, “I—“

He was interrupted by Jiang Lian, “If it’s your solo part, I would help you sing it. But I can’t sing your part in a group portion,” He looked towards Lin Ye, “The others can sing this change of keys, but why can’t you? Listen to this portion more and practice, there’s still a lot of time.”

After he said that, he turned around to walk into the classroom. Lin Ye was angered by Jiang Lian’s words and jumped off the window sill and chased after Jiang Lian, calling out the other’s name, “Jiang Lian, when did I—“

He had yet to finish what he was saying when he was interrupted by Qiu Yi, who was walking in behind him. The other had his hands in his pockets, an earphone put in one ear, the other dangling in the air. Qiu Yi had been humming a song a second ago, his eyelids lowered as he concentrated, but currently, he had raised his eyelids and was looking at Lin Ye strangely, “What are the two of you doing so early in the morning? Acting out an idol drama?”

Lin Ye was instantly speechless.

Some people were completely different before and after they opened their mouths to speak, causing fans to wish they could keep their mouths closed so that they would never speak and ruin their image. This was a good representation of Qiu Yi.

After all of their teammates arrived, Qiu Yi, who was the leader started to organize singing practice for everyone. The average vocal ability of the trainees was not bad. It was just that everyone’s voice and the singing method they normally used were completely different. To have the eight people’s voices blend together perfectly was not easy.

What was quite difficult was during the group singing portion where there was a change in keys, Lin Ye’s off-tune voice was very obvious. his teammates were supporting him. In the beginning, they were giving proper advice, but the more they cheered him on, the more off-topic they went.

Someone said, “It’s still early now, good luck with practicing.”

Another person said, “If you really can’t do it, we could beg the teacher to help you set the microphone to half-on.”

(T/N: Not very sure what the correct term is, but I’m using half-on (half switched on in this TL), it basically means that the microphone can still pick up some sound, but there’ll be a backing track so he doesn’t need to sing very loud)

Someone nodded their head and agreed, “That’s right, that’s right. Let’s record this part during practice, and in the public performance, all you need to do is lip-sync.”

The teammate that was next to him hit the back of his head, “Are you dumb? Lip sync is not half-on microphone. If you turn the microphone to half-on, you still need to sing. You didn’t learn anything good, but you’ve learned all these bad things. If the editor puts this part in the episode, you’ll lose fans and no matter how you cry for your Mom, it won’t work.”

The other showed guilt and touched the back of his head as he muttered, “I’ve got to say that your tone does remind me of my Mom.”

His teammate glared, pretending to be angry, “If anything, I would be your Dad.” After he said that, he reached out to place his arm around the other teammates’ shoulders, rubbing his head and saying, “Good son, call me dad.”

The two of them started to argue over the age-old question of ‘who’s the dad’, and the others just looked on before they slowly leaped forward to stop the argument. Unexpectedly, the people that tried to stop the argument got brought into the mess.

Only Jiang Lian and Ming Rang, who were the oldest in the group sat by the side, not being brought into the argument. Lin Ye was distracted and took the opportunity to remove his hat while everyone else was arguing. He turned it to look at the right side and carefully checked the side of the hat. After confirming that the hat did not have Jiang Lian’s initials, he let out a breath of relief.

The people that were happily playing around finally stopped arguing, panting from their position in a pile on the ground. After that, they rolled off their teammates’ bodies and could not help showing a confused expression, “What were we talking about just now?”

Ming Rang answered, a smile on his face, “Lin Ye’s key change.”

(T/N: To be honest, I don’t know anything about music, so I’m not sure if this is a key change or a note change or if there’s even a difference between the two)

“That’s right, Lin Ye’s key change,” Qiu Yi had probably remembered his position as the leader and had returned his expression to normal quickly. He panted as he walked to the left of Lin Ye and sat down, cross-legged, “You guys can practice first, I’ll teach Lin Ye how to sing this key change.”

Qiu Yi was sitting very close to Lin Ye, their shoulders and arms touching. The other’s hot breath from when he was talking hit the side of Lin Ye’s face, causing Lin Ye to feel a little uncomfortable as he moved outwards slightly, the lyrics book in his hand also moving outward slightly as Lin Ye moved.

Qiu Yi, who was focused on the lyrics book did not notice and instinctively moved towards Lin Ye, following the lyrics book.

During this process, his forehead bumped against the brim of Lin Ye’s cap. He pressed his hand on his forehead and raised his head, loudly saying, “Why are both you and Jiang Lian wearing baseball caps today? Did the two of you agree to wear caps in secret and not tell us?”

The entire classroom turned silent and all their teammates turned their heads to look at Qiu Yi.

“It was just a coincidence,” Lin Ye’s expression did not change as he held the lyrics book and changed the topic, “Should I sing it once for you to hear it?”

But Qiu Yi did not make a sound.

Thinking that the other did not hear, Lin Ye asked again.

But Qiu Yi was still not answering him.

Lin Ye turned his head, expression strange. He was just about to reach his hand out to push Qiu Yi when he met the other’s confused gaze that was focused on the side of his face.

The next second, he heard Qiu Yi make a sound of confusion, before pointing at the left side of Lin Ye’s hat and asked, “Is that Jiang Lian’s initials on your hat?”

The conversation was ended with Jiang Lian saying, “The hat is mine.” If Lin Ye had secretly written his teammate’s name on the hat, it would be strange, but it was normal for close friends to borrow each other’s hats.

However, Lin Ye was still troubled by that. He had not informed Jiang Lian before keeping his hat and using it. It was quite unreasonable no matter how he thought about it.

But no one knew that the reason all of this happened was simply that he could not find the hat the production team had given to him.

Half an hour later, Lin Ye found Jiang Lian in the emergency stairway with no cameras. He tried to explain the matte with the hat, but saw that the other had wireless earphones in his ears and was sitting on the highest step in the stairwell and making a phone call. On seeing this, he turned around and left.

He waited on the corridor that was only separated from the stairwell by a door for a while but did not see Jiang Lian calling him. Finally, his patience was all used up and he pushed the door open to look for Jiang Lian again.

Jiang Lian was still wearing his earphones and sitting on the stairwell, but he was no longer calling someone and was instead looking at his phone. With no intention of invading Jiang Lian’s privacy, Lin Ye stopped two steps away and called Jiang Lian’s name.

Jiang Lian removed his earphones and turned around, his tone casual, “Do you want to watch?”

Lin Ye did not understand, “What?”

Jiang Lian said, “The highlights from the third episode.”

Lin Ye asked, “Whose highlights? Yours?”

Jiang Lian said, “There’s you too.”

Lin Ye was stunned for a moment before he sat down by Jiang Lian’s side, slightly surprised and anticipating watching the video, taking the earphone that Jiang Lian passed to him and putting it on.

But the sounds that he was hearing were very strange.

Lin Ye got closer to look at Jiang Lian’s phone. There was him and Jiang Lian on the screen, and even Ming Rang. All he needed was to take one glance and he realized that the highlights clips were from the interactions of him, Jiang Lian, and Ming Rang in the supermarket that day.

Aside from the clips, there was background music.

Lin Ye asked, “Are these the highlights of the episode?”

Jiang Lian raised his eyebrow, “The fans made a video from the clips in the highlight.”

Lin Ye was curious, “What video?”

The other paused the video and the title of the video was shown–

“[Jiang Lian x Ming Rang x Lin Ye] Fox Spirit.”

(T/N: The fox spirit here tends to be used to describe a seductive woman? Like a vixen(?) in Chinese.)

Lin Ye raised his head in shock.

Jiang Lian raised his eyelids to look at Lin Ye before smiling and saying in a low voice, “Little fox spirit.”