Chapter 362: Can You Not Go Back Tonight?

Chapter 362: Can You Not Go Back Tonight?

“An apology? For what?” Wu Chen asked, his smile faintly surprised.

“I don’t think I should have doubted your ability. You’re the most extraordinary musician I’ve ever met.”

An Menglan was now calling Wu Chen a musician outright.

When someone displayed talent on the scale of myth, age stopped mattering.

“I said some very disrespectful things to you. I apologize.”

She stepped back as she spoke, then bowed to him.

“Mr. Wu, I’m sorry.”

In that moment the respect she offered was not only for Wu Chen.

It was for music itself.

An Menglan truly was free and natural by temperament. Whatever she did, she did openly and without needless embarrassment.

“I accept,” Wu Chen said, wasting no breath on empty courtesy. Then he smiled.

It made things easier for both of them.

“Um… there’s something else.”

Once she had straightened up she hesitated again, though this time only briefly before saying it outright.

“May I look at your neck, Mr. Wu? And your cheek. The left side.”

“Hm?” Wu Chen looked surprised. “Look at what? Of course.”

In fact he knew exactly what she wanted to see.

“Just a look,” she said without explaining.

He stood up from the piano and took two steps away. He even touched his own neck and tilted his head.

“Is there something here?”

She came around to his left and examined him closely.

Nothing.

Not a trace.

It confirmed what she had suspected, and yet the shock of it was so enormous she was almost going numb.

She had been looking for a violin hickey.

The violin hickey was a rather poetic name for the calluses or darker patches violinists developed on the parts of the neck and the side of the face used to hold the instrument.

Becoming a violinist required grueling practice, and grueling practice always left marks. The only questions were how dark and how extensive. In extreme cases violinists who had practiced since childhood could develop slight asymmetry in the face, the left side becoming smaller.

An extreme example, naturally.

Ordinarily, some form of violin hickey was the rule.

Yet there was nothing at all on Wu Chen’s cheek or the side of his neck. His skin was in excellent condition, exactly what one would expect of a young man.

Which meant Wu Chen had never practiced the violin intensively.

An Menglan had never practiced it intensively either. She was no professional violinist; she was a singer. So there were no marks on her neck, and her own playing was only so-so.

Yet Wu Chen, with none of the physical signs of hard practice, possessed a master’s skill.

His piano was master level too.

At that point even calling him heaven-born seemed inadequate to his gifts.

An Menglan had begun to believe that if Wu Chen made his debut, whether as a pianist, a violinist, or a singer, he could leave his name in the history of world music, standing beside the masters found in textbooks.

And he was only twenty-two.

“What is it?” Wu Chen asked with a smile, turning his head toward her.

“Nothing. You have very good skin, Mr. Wu,” she said, smiling, half joking.

Then she glanced at her watch.

Already past three in the afternoon.

“Mr. Wu, shall we get something to eat?” she asked, smiling again. “My treat.”

“Sure.” He agreed at once.

“I need to make a few arrangements first,” she said.

A few minutes later.

In the living room of the presidential suite, Wu Chen sat in an armchair scrolling his phone.

On the other side of the coffee table, An Menglan had called in both her bodyguard and her assistant.

The bodyguard was named A-Li. Thirty-five, from Xiangjiang, more than ten years in the An family’s service. An old hand in the household, an honest man who spoke little and knew how to get things done.

Her assistant was a woman of about thirty.

She wore glasses, was slightly plump, and was named Liu Jing. Also from Xiangjiang, and she looked very sharp.

Both were An Menglan’s trusted confidants.

She first told A-Li to reserve a private room for dinner.

After he hurried out, she turned to Liu Jing and the matter of the contract.

“…print all of these out. A hundred thousand per song, eight hundred thousand in total, plus fifty percent of the earnings…”

Having gone over the details, she pointed to the laptop screen and the three handwritten pages as she gave Liu Jing her final instructions.

Liu Jing was already stunned.

The more she heard, the more shocked she became.

A hundred thousand per song was understandable.

But a straight fifty-percent revenue share?

Had they lost their minds?

An Menglan had not released a new album in a long time, and her fans were waiting for one. With her superstar standing she had both enormous popularity and the credentials of a powerhouse diva. The moment she released an album, whatever the quality of the songs, it would cause a sensation.

There was no need to look far ahead. Within a year, conservatively, the album could bring in several hundred million yuan.

And they were giving half of it away?

Liu Jing could not help glancing up at Wu Chen, who was looking at his phone. Then she turned back and said quietly, in Cantonese, “Boss, are you sure that’s right? Fifty percent? Not five? If you do this…”

She spoke Cantonese in front of him, assuming he could not understand.

“Fifty percent,” An Menglan said firmly, also in Cantonese. “Just do as I said. Have the contracts ready before I’m back.”

“But this… we’ve never written a contract like this. Boss, shouldn’t you think it over again?” Liu Jing could not help trying to talk her out of it.

“Ah-Jing, you talk too much,” An Menglan said with a smile and a reproachful look.

They were close in private, which was why they could speak to each other that way.

“That’s settled,” An Menglan said. Then she stood, looked at Wu Chen, and smiled. “Mr. Wu, we’re ready. Let’s go downstairs.”

“Hm? All right.” He looked up and agreed with a smile.

A few minutes later.

The second-floor Western restaurant. A private room.

Jiazhong Western Restaurant did have private rooms, but they were all large, long tables with chairs down both sides, big enough for ten diners at least. Ordinary guests rarely booked one.

An Menglan simply did not want to draw a crowd in the main dining room, so a private room was necessary.

They went in.

They ordered food and wine.

Then they began to talk.

The conversation stayed on music, but the way An Menglan looked at Wu Chen had changed completely from the day before. There was something distinct in her eyes now.

At last she understood why Li Ruobing had been suspicious of her.

There was nothing wrong with her.

It was Wu Chen.

He truly did have a kind of magic.

Musical talent for the ages.

And that might be only the tip of the iceberg where his extraordinariness was concerned.

That was her inference.

Otherwise there was simply no explaining why both Li Ruobing and Wu Yurong were with him.

As Wu Yurong once had, An Menglan was beginning to understand Wu Chen in almost mystical terms, drifting toward the idea that he was some kind of extraordinary man beyond ordinary measure.

They had not been talking long before the food and red wine arrived.

An Menglan liked to drink. Alcohol sparked inspiration, and her tolerance was excellent.

The glasses were filled.

“Mr. Wu, let me toast you. I’ll finish mine, and you drink as much as you like.”

She raised her glass first.

It was hard to imagine a woman of her standing saying something as casual as that.

As the saying went, when kindred spirits meet over wine, a thousand cups are too few.

An Menglan already regarded Wu Chen as a kindred spirit. Or at least, she wanted the two of them to become kindred spirits.

They clinked glasses.

She tipped her head back and drained hers.

Wu Chen did the same.

More wine was poured.

They kept talking.

It was as though they could never run out. On the subject of music they truly had no end of things to say.

She grew more and more curious about him and kept asking questions. When had he learned piano? Had he ever entered competitions? And so on.

She asked about lyrics, about composition, about the violin.

Wu Chen naturally gave rather perfunctory answers to some of them.

There was no helping it.

He could hardly tell her what he had done across a thousand years in the loop.

Before either of them noticed, they had been eating for an hour.

“Mr. Wu, may I ask you something rather presumptuous?” An Menglan asked with a soft smile. She was already tipsy, her cheeks flushed. “You… and Miss Li, and Ms. Wu… how exactly did the three of you… end up together?”

She had brought it up herself.

Without wine in her she would never have asked.

It was simply her nature. Once she was enjoying herself she dared ask almost anything. She had always been free that way.

“It’s a complicated story,” Wu Chen said with a smile.

She could feel he did not want to explain. She smiled and did not press. After pressing her lips together she asked, with a tipsy smile, “Then… do you have plans tonight, Mr. Wu? Could you… not go back?”