Chapter 168: He’s Taking a Shower!

Chapter 168: He’s Taking a Shower!

There was something badly wrong with Song Xuan’s eyes.

It frightened Wang Xiaomei.

She could not understand why Song Xuan, always gentle by nature, would look like that. There was an almost obsessive intensity in her gaze, and with it extreme regret, extreme disbelief, and frustration.

“What’s wrong, Xuanxuan?” Wang Xiaomei asked softly again.

“N—nothing… it’s nothing…”

Song Xuan seemed to come back to herself. She turned slowly toward the screen again.

Then she asked, “Xiaomei, yesterday—when did you first notice ‘Antidote for the Soul’? What time exactly? How did you find it?”

Her tone was restrained, as though she were holding something down.

“Before bed,” Wang Xiaomei said after a moment’s thought. “A little after ten, I think. I saw it on the charts. There was a ‘rapidly rising’ tag next to the title, so I clicked and listened. That song is seriously incredible. I remember it was still way down the rankings last night, and today it’s already number one on the weekly chart. I think only theme songs from hugely popular dramas have ever climbed that fast.”

Song Xuan looked at the chart and said nothing.

Her heart would not settle.

“Aren’t you going to listen to it, Xuanxuan?” Wang Xiaomei asked.

“I already did,” Song Xuan said.

She had listened to it moments ago.

At first she had suspected it was only another song with the same title, one she had somehow missed before. If it really were the “Antidote for the Soul” that Senior Wu Chen had written, that was impossible.

But when she listened—

It was the same song. Lyrics and melody, all of it. Only the vocal phrasing had been adjusted slightly to suit a male voice.

Song Xuan could even tell that the person singing it—

Was Wu Chen.

The artist name Morning Mist was another clue. In Chinese, Chenwu was simply the two syllables of Wu Chen’s name turned around.

She had checked the release time as well.

Six o’clock yesterday evening.

Only a few hours after the two of them parted.

Less than a day since it went up, and “Antidote for the Soul” had already shot to number one on the new-song weekly chart.

Its raw numbers still could not match songs that had been out for weeks or months.

But it was easy to see that given a little time its numbers would keep exploding. It would charge onto the monthly chart. It might even reach the annual overall chart and become one of the phenomenon-level songs of 2020.

It was going to explode in popularity, and fast.

“I’ve seen a lot of musicians recommending it, too,” Wang Xiaomei said beside her. “They say it’s really sophisticated—not one of those throwaway pop songs.”

Song Xuan clicked the mouse.

She opened the comment section on the page for “Antidote for the Soul.”

More than four thousand comments already. Almost all of them were praise. The handful of people suggesting the numbers had been artificially inflated were being savaged by everyone else. A few musicians’ accounts had appeared as well, posting long analyses of the techniques the song used. They might have been riding the trend for attention, but their presence proved one thing.

The song had genuinely gone viral.

At most another day or two, and “Antidote for the Soul” would be everywhere on the internet.

Snap!

Song Xuan closed the laptop.

She shut her eyes and drew a deep breath, then another. She needed to calm herself down.

Holding her coffee, Wang Xiaomei watched her with plain worry, and said carefully, “Xuanxuan, don’t be like this. You’re kind of scaring me. Aren’t you Miss Song, the girl who never admits defeat? You said it yourself—no matter how many setbacks you go through, you’ll keep going until everyone loves your music.”

“Xiaomei, let me ask you something.”

Song Xuan spoke suddenly, her eyes still closed.

“What?”

“If I sang ‘Antidote for the Soul’—do you think it would be a hit?”

“Of course!” Wang Xiaomei said. Then she thought about it. “Actually, I think the song suits a woman’s voice even better…