The blonde boy in the video peacefully celebrated birthday after birthday. He grew weaker, and his hospital stays grew longer, but he still diligently read books and did practice questions, never missing a single exam.
He loved listening to music, learned various instruments out of love and interest, and also tried writing songs, but for some reason, he never released them.
The person filming the video was perhaps one of the few listeners of these fragmented songs, but he recorded the process of the boy writing songs, presenting them on the show years later. The trainees present and the future audience of the show would all witness the boy’s music.
Quentin had sharp ears. He could tell that the music occasionally passing by in the video was not any of his past life’s works, but it felt strangely familiar to him.
Although immature, with obvious signs of exploratory learning and even showing off of skills, there was no doubt that this was his composition style.
Ever since Quentin was reborn into this world and learned that he had transmigrated into a web novel, he would occasionally use his spare time from classes and rehearsals to go to the system space and read a few web novels in order to figure out the thought process of the author.
So the concepts of “parallel world counterpart” and “another self” were not unfamiliar to him. After all, many transmigration novels had this setting, like transmigrating into the body of one’s parallel world self and so on…
He looked at the boy on the screen, who looked exactly like him. The other party had headphones hanging around his neck, one hand resting on a computer keyboard, staring intently in the direction of the camera, his eyes more dazzling than a collector’s precious gemstones.
Even though the boy’s face was expressionless, it wasn’t hard to see the confidence and anticipation in his eyes.
Everyone present understood that the boy’s anticipation was not directed at them, but at the person holding the camera recording this scene.
A boy who loved music, and treated it as the extension of his limited life, was sharing his unreleased song with someone with such expectant feelings. This person must have been very important in the boy’s heart, right?
Quentin put himself in that position and thought it over. With his personality, there was no single person in this world who could bear his expectations for music.
Sharing the fruits of his creation before releasing a song… Quentin fell into deep thought. This kind of thing had never happened to him in his previous life.
Because it was unnecessary. His confidence in his work was strong to the point of arrogance.
His creations were his own, and his inspiration was his own. Unless there was an unavoidable work arrangement, he basically never collaborated with other singers musically.
So “sharing” was meaningless to him, because he wouldn’t listen to the other person’s opinions, nor did he care if they appreciated his work.
Of course, Quentin would also have the same anticipation as the one in the eyes of the boy in the video, but that kind of anticipation wasn’t directed at a single person, it radiated towards the entire listening audience.
Quentin was sure he wouldn’t do the same things as the boy in front of him, yet he could understand the boy’s feelings.
He had to say, this feeling was inexplicable. So in this world, there was such a significant person in “Quentin’s” heart.
While Quentin was exploring the past of “the other self,” the other trainees’ reactions to this video were completely different from Quentin’s.
Other people’s age 15: Proficient in piano, drums, guitar, bass, and various other instruments. Music theory knowledge more solid than professional students who had received systematic learning. Original inspiration inexhaustible. A short ten-second fragment was catchy and unforgettable, while at the same time, not neglecting high school coursework at all…
My age 15: #￥%&*@…
Only a few people, who focused on both learning and hobbies like the Quentin in the video, felt as if they had found a kindred spirit upon watching this video. The few here specifically referred to Quentin and Xue Mingzhu.
Among the 40 trainees present, only the two of them objectively met the conditions for excellent academic performance. For the others, being able to get into a good university through art was already very outstanding. Most were underachievers with outstanding artistic skills but subpar academic grades.
And to think that the max-level boss, who was slaughtering everyone in the newbie village, was actually a sickly child who grew up in a hospital… Reality was truly surreal.
By the time Quentin came back to his senses, what awaited him were subtle looks of sympathy, concern, and admiration from all directions.
Quentin: “…”
Sigh… no need for that. His life experiences were completely different from his counterpart’s.
If his counterpart was a good child in the universally accepted sense, then Quentin had probably been a uniquely bad kid in the past.
He felt that if they saw his real past, they definitely wouldn’t be looking at him like that.
During the period after he first ran away from home, the little money he had managed to save up with difficulty, along with his phone, were stolen by an old pickpocket on the street. When he had no money for food, he even considered doing as the locals did and joining the local pickpocket organization’s grand cause.
However, he gave up. Calling those people pickpockets was an overestimation. They just robbed people openly. The probability of getting caught was too high.
More importantly, he was going to release albums and hold concerts in the future. He didn’t want a stain on his history.
Although his counterpart looked pitifully lying sick in bed, at least he could live in a clean and bright room, had plenty of food and drink, and was waited on hand and foot. He could study whenever he wanted and write songs whenever he wanted…
Quentin didn’t know what the others were sympathizing about.
Being sick? But he was sitting here perfectly fine and can sing and dance without any problems, so that meant he was alright, right?
But… was his current body his counterpart’s, or was it molded by the system? It was impossible for two Quentins to exist simultaneously in this world, right?
Quentin watched the timeline in the video reach late 2024, and saw the blonde boy prepare for surgery under the doctors’ arrangements.
It wasn’t clear what specific illness or surgery, but judging by the doctors’ serious and cautious demeanor, it probably wasn’t a simple minor surgery.
He couldn’t help but wonder, could one of the reasons for his transmigration be that “Quentin” in this world had passed away?
The moment this thought appeared, the video skipped to after the surgery had successfully ended. The boy, in his recovery period, was seated in front of a birthday cake, making wishes and blowing out candles.
Good. The tragedy of surgical failure hadn’t occurred. So, had he transmigrated into the body of a living, breathing person? “System?”
[Host!] The system hurriedly interrupted Quentin’s questioning. [You…you shouldn’t overthink—]
[I can guarantee that your body was constructed by me based on the host’s past physical data. There is no possibility of seizing someone else’s body!]
[As for these videos… Perhaps the original world view automatically filled them in, or perhaps they resulted from the butterfly effect. In any case, I would never harm the lives of the original inhabitants of this world!]
Quentin: “Your department…”
[My department wouldn’t either!] The system was so anxious it almost raised its hand to swear. [This is a rule etched into the system’s underlying code!]
Intuition told Quentin the system wasn’t lying. If he ruled out the possibility of seizing his counterpart’s body, either the videos were fake, or he was the counterpart?
He remembered the memory fragments that suddenly appeared… The same person? It didn’t seem impossible.
So Quentin’s gaze towards the boy blowing out candles became even more focused, his green eyes seemingly glowing faintly in the dim environment.
Xue Mingzhu, who had been trying to talk to him, noticed his expression, and the words that were about to leave his mouth got stuck in his throat. After a few seconds, he suddenly forgot what he wanted to say.
Meanwhile, the video that had reached 2025 had come to its end.
When the number 2025 appeared in the top right corner of the screen, the video showed only a majestic snowy mountain. The sun was rising slowly. The scenery of the sun illuminating the golden mountain suddenly brightened the entire practice room like daytime.
The shaking camera and howling wind proved that this footage was not downloaded from the internet, but filmed by someone at the scene. However, from the camera angle, the person was likely not a mountaineer, but more like someone sitting in a helicopter.
Below the number 2025, a specific date appeared: October 21st. In the previous birthday videos, this date had already been deeply etched into everyone’s memory.
And on that day, Quentin was at the “NS” filming base, preparing for the upcoming finals.
The person filming the video went to the snowy mountain. In the howling wind, no one spoke. Only lines of narration appeared in the form of subtitles at the top of the video.
[You wanted to see a snowy mountain and sunrise on your eighteenth birthday. Did you see them?]
[You wanted to fall straight from a 4000-meter sky and hear the sound of the wind. Did you hear it?]
After these subtitles appeared, the trainees couldn’t help but let out a few “wow”s. Connecting to so many years of birthday records, it wasn’t hard to guess that each birthday corresponded to a place Quentin wanted to go or something he wanted to do.
So on his eighteenth birthday, the original plan for Quentin and his guardian was to go to a snowy mountain to watch the sunrise and do a 4000-meter high-altitude skydive?
In their minds, they defined the person filming as “guardian,” not specifying a particular family relationship because the filming perspective and subtitle content didn’t seem like something a parent or elderly generation would do.
Moreover, in every birthday video, there was no shadow of what could be parents accompanying Quentin. Coupled with Quentin’s transition from living abroad to living in China, all sorts of guesses bubbled up in the trainees’ minds.
Perhaps the guardian was an older brother or sister, with the parents working abroad, and the two children living in China?
But how irresponsible would parents have to be to abandon two children on the other side of the vast ocean? The trainees couldn’t help but think, could something have happened to Quentin’s parents when he was young?
Missing parents, sickly, only a brother or sister depending on each other… The more they thought about it, the more pitiful it seemed. Was this really Quentin? They could never tell he had such an experience growing up!
Quentin couldn’t hear the speculations in the minds of those around him. His attention was completely captured by the content of the subtitles.
He didn’t know if these two sentences were “Quentin’s” original birthday plans, but he recognized them…they were the earliest version of the Chinese lyrics for “La liberté” he had written in his previous life!
The shock inside Quentin was stronger than anyone else present. His pupils trembled slightly, and his lying body suddenly tensed up.
He clearly knew that the “La liberté” he presented in the initial stage had changed dramatically compared to the version released in his previous life. Except for the song title and the core message the song conveyed, everything else, lyrics, composition, arrangement, had changed.
Moreover, the Chinese lyrics from his previous life were not a direct translation of “La liberté’s” lyrics. They were written by a fan and had unexpectedly spread widely in China afterwards.
After discussions, Quentin’s studio decided to contact this fan, pay a certain fee to buy the lyrics copyright, and then officially release the co-created Chinese version of “La liberté” on the platform jointly with that fan.
The lyrics written in his previous life appeared here, word for word. What did this mean?
— The person who had come to this world, the person from the same hometown as him, had been watching him all along.
The system didn’t know what the silent Quentin was thinking. It was still chattering on, analyzing the video before it, repeatedly confirming whether its host’s parents existed, while not forgetting to comfort its host to accept reality and not overthink.
So Quentin reached a conclusion. The system didn’t know about the existence of this person, nor did it know that this person had been by his counterpart’s side all along.
The sun had already risen, the wind grew louder, and new subtitles appeared at the top of the video.
[It’s a pity that we couldn’t spend your 18th birthday together]
[But seeing you so happy, I am just as happy as you]
“…”
“The way that’s said…” A trainee in the back row couldn’t hold back anymore and leaned in to whisper to his companion, “Just like the first two sentences…it’s so romantic. If you didn’t know better, you’d think it was a fan edit confession video.”
Companion: “Damn… don’t say that. There’s that flavor to it.”
“See! My feeling wasn’t wrong, was it! The editing style of this whole video is different from all the ones before it!” The trainee lowered his voice. “It’s like a fan’s perspective of an idol’s growth diary, and specifically the kind that girlfriend fans make!”
“The earlier clips of when Quentin was sick were like mourning a lost white moonlight, and the segments of him writing songs, playing guitar, and traveling to various places were edited like dates.”
He thought for a moment, then added, “Not the lovey-dovey kind of dates. More like the perspective of unrequited love, the particularly pure kind. Oh, just like during school days!”
“…That really is quite pure.”
After the video finished playing, the practice room was dark, but the people sitting on the floor were still immersed in the movie that had just played. Their discussions grew louder, and the topics weren’t focused on just one person.
There were complaints, second-hand embarrassment, nostalgia, laughter, noise…everything was there.
The production team sitting off to the side didn’t turn on the lights immediately, nor did they stop the trainees’ discussions.
The director was discussing work arrangements with colleagues. Other staff members not involved in the post-production editing, like the trainees, were also seeing this “growth movie” for the first time. Their love for gossip was no less than that of the people involved.
Moreover, industry professionals are more perceptive than rookie trainees. When watching the final segment of Quentin’s video, they realized even before finishing that the editor of this video was shaping a “beautiful, strong, and tragic” image for Quentin, one that could simultaneously evoke the audience’s sympathy and admiration for the strong.
The camera work and subtle hints revealed were full of the post-production editor’s deep partiality towards Quentin, something never seen before in the show.
Staff members couldn’t help but wonder, “Who edited Quentin’s video? It’s too attentive.”
They could see without thinking how much heated discussion this episode would stir up online once aired, and how many more fans Quentin would gain.
Moreover, the fans attracted this time would be different from before. The target audience wouldn’t completely overlap.
Simply put, the attention Quentin had garnered previously had been mainly from appearance fans and stage performance fans. The fans attracted by this video would be more widespread. Neutral audiences’ goodwill would also rise a level, and his original fans would be even more emotionally tormented into becoming die-hard loyal fans!
— Wuuu, my bias is already this amazing, but on top of that, he had it so hard in the past?
— He must have worked really hard along the way. The physical pain must have been so terrible, right? QAQ
— That dangerous surgery… You mean I came this close to never seeing Quentin again?
— If even being sick didn’t stop him from keeping up with his studies and music, what would he be like if he had a healthy body?
The staff secretly simulated the fans’ psychology for a moment, then recalled the young Quentin they had just seen, and couldn’t help but sigh.
Even if someone wasn’t moved by the illness and perseverance shown in the video, they would still be captivated by the beauty of the blonde-haired boy, a beauty that radiated vitality even in its sickliness.
Such a beautiful child, such an outstanding child, a child who tenaciously clung to life despite illness…Putting aside the editor’s bias, he was indeed worthy of the title, “beautiful, strong, and tragic”.
Quentin, who was slowly answering the relentless questions from the companions around him while rubbing his eyes, appeared absent-minded, as if he was sleepy. So no one suspected anything from the hesitation and vagueness in his answers.
Xue Mingzhu asked, “Who filmed the video? They filmed it really well. It’s way more conscientious than my parents!”
Quentin: “…Brother. It should be my brother.”
Wen Xinyi asked, “How’s your health now? You were waking up early and sleeping early before for the sake of your health, right? Does us staying up late for rehearsals affect your health?”
Quentin shook his head. “I’m fine. I don’t really feel anything.”
Cui Yan said firmly, “Morning runs and working out definitely help your health. Your stamina is much better than at the start. Let’s both continue keeping it up!”
Quentin nodded. “Yeah.”
Yan Qiao patted his shoulder. “After the show finishes recording, let’s all go together to a snowy mountain to watch the sunrise. Good timing, since it’ll start snowing in about two months. We’ll make up for the one you missed on your birthday.”
Xue Mingzhu raised an eyebrow. “That’s a good suggestion. Hmph, you’ve got quite a few ideas.”
Wen Xinyi readily agreed. “Yes. After the show ends, we’ll probably be busy for a while, but we’ll eventually finish everything. It might be snowing in the north by the time we are done. Ah Yang, you’ll come too then.”
Cui Yan turned his head to look at Qi Yang. “Yeah, Ah Yang, don’t even think about skipping. If you have a film shoot, that’s different. But if you don’t have work, you are absolutely not allowed to refuse our team-building activity!”
Qi Yang looked at Quentin, then at the other companions looking back at him. His lips moved, but no words of refusal could leave his mouth. Finally, he slowly nodded and said seriously, “Okay.”
Ahem! Hello everyone, I hope you’re enjoying “DYUTVOBGA” 🥰.
I just wanted to announce that the next update will be on Wednesday. I had to buy some more coins to purchase chapters on JJWXC, but card issues have caused a slight delay. I apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience!
Kak semangat ya dan jangan lupa jaga kesehatan
Thank you for the update ❤️