Alright, we’ve met sweet Toupai, thoughtful Toupai, reserved and distant Toupai, Chef Toupai… but how about CV Toupai? The revered Qiang Qing Ci, the one who has G.o.d-like status in the online voice acting world. What is he like?

Chapter 32 – Floured Beef Steamed in a Cup (2)

“Next stop…”

Inside the train, a female voice announced the name of the next station in standard Mandarin.

Some people exited and others entered. This station was a hub and was notorious for being busy and crowded. In only a moment, the train was packed with people. Fortunately, she was standing in a corner and with Mo Qingcheng on the outside protecting her, she did not need to worry about being b.u.mped and crammed by people.

But poor him…

Seeing the ma.s.s of people behind him, she tugged apologetically at the hem of his shirt and looked up at him. “Step in a little closer…” After saying this, she tried her best to shrink into the corner a little bit more.

Mo Qingcheng seemed as if he still wanted to give her some s.p.a.ce, but the people behind him really were shoving up tight against him so he moved in slightly closer to her again.

The voice of Gin was still echoing in her ears…

And his real-live person was so close to her…

Gu Sheng breathed out lightly. “Four more stops…”

“Mm.”

T.T……

Nothing else to say…

She suddenly remembered the late night girl talk she and her dormmates had had in second-year university when the other two girls in their dorm room had each started dating. One of them had said she had started liking her guy because she saw him biting his straw while he was drinking a soft drink, biting the end of his pen when he was doing homework problems, and even biting the mouth of a beverage bottle when he was having a drink, and for some unexplainable reason, she had found this very cute and it had made her heart flutter… The remaining three could only sigh over what a silly start this was to a relationship.

But now…

She had always been a voice lover and had always believed that one of the prerequisites of her future boyfriend was a nice-sounding voice with proper Mandarin p.r.o.nunciation, but… was she really… for this reason… for this reason alone going to start a relationship?

So … incredible.

It had been more than two hours since he asked her to be his girlfriend.

Girlfriend… Qiang Qing Ci’s girlfriend…

Gu Sheng’s lips unconsciously turned up in a smile. Her eyes were still focused straight ahead, her gaze crossing under his arm and fixing itself on the backpack zipper of the person behind him… just so she did not have to look at him, and he did not feel as if she was looking at him.

As for peripheral vision, that was something she honestly could not control, you know? T.T…

Station after station… More and more people entered the train car. Mo Qingcheng was getting squeezed more and more as well and had switched to using his elbows on either side of her to support himself against the wall. Of course… that meant he was a little closer to her yet again.

His skin… was honestly really nice…

T.T…… Even if she did not want to look, she would not be able to avoid it.

“In a moment, when we arrive at the stop, get off the train and head straight up. Your school is just a five minute walk from exit number two.”

“Mm.” She actually was very clear already on all of this. After all, she had been at this university for more than three years…

“If any strangers talk to you along the way, just ignore them.”

“Mm.” T.T … Are you treating me like a child? …

“I won’t be accompanying you back. I need to head over to the other side right away and take the opposite train back.”

“Mm…”

“Will you be mad?”

“Huh?” She raised her head and narrowly missed slamming into his nose. She could not move backwards at all and had no choice but to look wide-eyed up at his eyes that were right in front of her — those eyes that were so gorgeous they caused jealousy, envy, and hatred in people — and answer his question. “I won’t be mad. Why would I be mad? … You’re going to an official, public event. It won’t be good if you’re late. You really didn’t need to take me back. I could have come back myself.”

When the train was nearly at the station, they finally squeezed their way to the door while he half-shielded her from the crowd.

The two of them were practically in battle mode as they stepped out of the car. When the train pulled away, the surroundings instantly grew much quieter. Gu Sheng hugged her down jacket in her arms, said goodbye to him, and then quickly hurried onto the up escalator.

The escalator rose up slowly as Toupai stepped into the metro train heading in the return direction.

Phew…

At last… she was headed back to school.

She cast a final glance at the train and pulled out her transit card from her bag. She still felt like she was floating along and did not know what she was thinking. Actually, she was not thinking anything at all.

Back in her dormitory room, she was the only one there.

She glanced at the time. There should be another half an hour before the compet.i.tion started. She opened up her own YY and first entered the compet.i.tion’s channel, where she heard the pre-event host playing some pre-recorded music. Still another half an hour, but there were already 15,000 people online. So amazing… From her bookshelf, she randomly chose a book in her field of study and began flipping through.

Mo Qingcheng’s voice and facial expressions constantly flitted into her mind.

I like you a lot.

Will you be my girlfriend?

What if we are suitable?

If we don’t even start, we won’t know the ending, right?

No good. She could not focus at all to read T.T……

Luckily, the compet.i.tion was about to begin.

Just as she was about to search for Qiang Qing Ci, her private chat window popped up.

Qiang Qing Ci: Got home with no problems.

Gu Sheng: (⊙v⊙) Mm.

Qiang Qing Ci: You’ll have to have fun yourself. I need to start now.

Gu Sheng: Mm.

She discovered she had completely inherited Toupai’s practice and had made “mm” a habit… But for him, it was because he had just woken up and very naturally used “mm” to answer questions. As for her… it was entirely because she did not know what to say.

“Alright, folks, let’s start with introducing tonight’s four judges.” The hostess’s voice came through her headset. “They are, the video game’s designer, Teacher Shen Ming; sound designer, Teacher Zhao Tianyi; voice actor, Teacher Zhang Xiao’ou; and voice actor, Teacher Qiang Qing Ci.”

When Qiang Qing Ci’s name was announced, there were many people who immediately got excited…

However, his own home-raised fans were in a totally cool and composed state. Gu Sheng decided to check out these fans of his fan club and opened up the online name list on the left side. Rough estimate… more than a thousand. The ten top-level administrators of the club were all present and were very strictly keeping order and control of their fan group.

*rest face in palms*…

That was part of his appeal. In public, his fans absolutely would not embarra.s.s him or themselves by doing things like spamming the screen and bringing criticism ……

She began to feel an unexplainable sense of pride…

But they had no control over the random fan that did not belong to the official fan club. You had to let people get excited, right? T.T……

Fortunately, this was an impressive event, and the hostess was very capable of controlling the scene, quickly taking advantage of the current atmosphere of excitement to transition into the first segment of the compet.i.tion. “Alright, we are now officially starting the program for our compet.i.tion. Please, let’s invite our first contestant up onto the mike––”

For some reason, Gu Sheng cast a glance at Qiang Qing Ci’s ID.

And then, she sat there as a n.o.body spectator, listening to one contestant after another deliver the lines required by the panel as well as their own chosen monologue. There were nervous performances as well as self-confident, domineering ones… So fun listening to them, ah.

All of a sudden, someone threw out her name on the public comment box:

“I see Sheng Sheng Man…” “Where, where?” “She really is here. The little golden master came ah ah ah ah……”

Her chest tightened.

In her moment of bewilderment, her private chat window suddenly popped up a message from a stranger: Golden Master Daren, hurry and exit. Change to a different ID and come back in…

This line of words had just jumped out on her screen, but it was already too late. In her headset, the rapid sound of multiple alerts came in like a furious storm. No exaggeration, it was a furious storm of friend requests…… And her computer… in an instant… froze…

T.T… Computer froze…

She wanted to exit out of the YY room, but now she was not even able to. She promptly decided to do a hard reboot of her computer.

Oh no, oh no. Spamming like this in the channel… She brought trouble to Toupai for sure now… She was going crazy from anxiousness, waiting one second after another for her computer to finish restarting. Then immediately, she changed to her alternate ID and slipped back into the YY room again.

Fortunately, the whole situation had been suppressed by the event staff in charge of keeping control and order.

And fortunately, when her main user ID had exited so quickly, it had not brought about any particularly bad bout of spamming.

With a very, very guilty conscience, she sent a private message to Toupai.

Sheng Sheng Man: I’m inexperienced… Forgot to change to my alternate ID… T.T

This was completely the Toupai effect, you know? …

She had always run around with her main ID before and no one could even be bothered to notice, you know? …

Qiang Qing Ci: *pat pat* Keep calm.

T.T Not possible to keep calm… Her heart was about to leap out of her chest from being so scared…

Plus…

Staring at those few words he wrote…

Why did she have this feeling, like her heart was melting? …

She placed her hands on the keyboard and was about to send a message back to him when she heard the host suddenly make a remark:

“And now, let’s invite Teacher Qiang Qing Ci to provide some comments and critique for our contestants.”

Gu Sheng’s fingers, which had been busy typing, immediately stopped.

In her headset, his clear, composed voice came through, completely different from his responses to the joking atmosphere within his own a.s.sociation, or from the gentle, doting style he had used in the YY fan event. It was still his voice, still that trademark effect of his where the instant he opened his mouth, it would instantly steal a girl’s heart, but now, people could also sense his professionalism:

“This was tonight’s first round of contestants, and there were several whose sense of emotion in their verbal delivery was pretty good. There was a good sense of tension, and they were able to enrich the words in the script. So why, then, were high scores not given? We, the judges, all have the same opinion. Although your voices are all very good, your treatment and deliverance of the script is only really touching on the surface.” He paused briefly. “How can I properly express this? Our contest tonight is for the dubbing of a character in a video game. This character has his own feelings, his own background, and his own experiences growing up. Even when he speaks, because of his individual personality and standpoints, he has his own thought processes. He even has his own purpose for speaking.

“Of course, we may not necessarily provide you with all this background information, but this is where you have room to work with. For example…” Qiang Qing Ci explained with a smile in his voice, “Let me give you a little example. Our character has a line that goes like this. ‘Just now, when I saw you kneeling in the great hall, I suddenly felt that, in my previous life, I was a coward.’ We had a contestant who delivered the line like this– –”

Gu Sheng was listening very carefully.

At this point, there was suddenly one second of silence.

Then, Qiang Qing Ci could be heard emulating one of the contestants. His tone was forlorn and sorrowful, and in an especially embellished way, he recited the line, “Just now…when I saw you kneeling in the great hall, I suddenly felt that, in my previous life, I was a coward.”

That last word, especially, was filled with extreme grief and enunciated particularly clearly.

So similar!

She had listened to this contestant deliver his lines, and though there was a slight difference, the tone, the emotion, the pauses he took in the script, and so on were all so similar to the original…

Qiang Qing Ci reverted back to his normal voice. “It was very sorrowful, very sorrowful indeed… but the emotions were too exaggerated. You wanted too much to use the emotions that you added to the script to reach the audience. But what it lacked is the emotion that will touch us, the judges — that is, the character’s own emotions. Trust me. A normal person does not talk like he is in a stage play.”

He paused for a moment.

“This line, everyone can have their own way of interpreting it. You can choose to use a self-mocking tone, like you had despised yourself for a long time already.”

He used a self-deprecating tone to recite the lines once. His voice was flat, but cool and detached. At once, his voice painted the picture of a lonely, dejected man leaning against the wall beside the main hall of a temple. A cold, self-mocking image. You could even visualize the look in his eyes and on his face, which showed he had given up on all hope for himself and for his future…

He cleared his throat and spoke again.

“You can also choose an interpretation where the character feels guilty and regretful about the past but still carries hope inside of him.”

He spoke the same line again, but this time, it was filled with feeling.

Now, the picture conjured up was completely different: A tall man standing before the woman he loved, tenderly, yet firmly gazing deep into her eyes… Telling her the guilt and regret he felt… And also, the determination in his eyes of the promise of the future he would give her.

T.T……

Once again, he had proved himself worthy of being… the one she liked, the one she had always liked… Qiang Qing Ci.

This time, the screen spammers were not just his fans. The several tens of thousands of online audience members all exploded at once.

“This is what we call a professional, ah……” “Such a kind judge, such a kind judge (⊙o⊙)……” “DaRen, you’re being too nice to the contestants coming later ah ah ah ah! Basically on-the-spot coaching ah ah ah ah! Those poor people in the first batch ah ah ah ah!” “Toupai DaRen you are TOO attractive!!!! When you, my flower blooms, the hundreds of other flowers must wither ah, ah, ah, ah!!!!”

Gu Sheng was in complete admiration and reverence of him.

As Toupai wrapped up his comments, he finally chuckled and, using his unique low voice, he presented his concluding remarks:

“No specific character background was given because we wanted each contestant to provide his or her own interpretation. There is no wrong interpretation, as long as you are able to cause us to empathize and feel for you.”

When someone reaches a certain status or experience in a field, they are often referred to as 老師 “teacher” by layman or those less experienced.

花開後百花殺. A line taken from the Tang dynasty poem, 《不第後賦菊 》“Failing the Imperial Examination, then a Poem for the Chrysanthemum” written by Huang Chao 黃巢. This particular line in the poem says that when the chrysanthemum blooms, all other flowers must wither away under its beauty. But the online user in YY is using this to declare that Toupai’s talents overshadow all others.

Additional Comments:

Random additional little trivia.  The line the contestants had to recite is actually a line taken out of MBFB’s other novel, One Life, One Incarnation: Beautiful Bones.  (A novel completely different in style from RRMY.  Been mulling over whether I want to translate that one next… except there are so many poems in there I would probably be torturing myself!)