Chapter 31: The Future

Chapter 31: The Future

The two of them teased Xianxian for a while about rolling her eyes.

The little girl seemed to have only just learned how to do it. She was delighted with her new skill and rather proud of herself. Whenever Lu Anzhi or Zhang Suxin asked her to take a look, she would glance at whichever of them had spoken, beaming with amusement.

“Mr. Lu, your daughter is adorable,” the workers from the decorating company said when they saw Xianxian’s little face.

Lu Anzhi could not help smiling. “Isn’t she?”

He had developed a strange desire to show off—not himself, but his daughter.

Whenever someone praised Xianxian, he felt an almost absurd sense of pride, far greater than he would have felt if he had accomplished something himself and received praise for it.

Just like now, when the workers called Xianxian cute, or yesterday, when passersby had complimented her while she played at the taxi stand.

The decorating crew had already finished tidying up upstairs and were now preparing to clean up the ground floor. Once that was done, they could begin installing the cabinets and carrying out the carpentry work. So Lu Anzhi took Xianxian and Zhang Suxin upstairs and inspected the entire floor while he was at it.

He handed his phone to Zhang Suxin so she could try it out, while he went to check how well the workers had cleaned up.

Xianxian crawled over to Zhang Suxin, grunting and puffing as she climbed onto her mother’s lap. She insisted on looking too. Children were always curious about new things.

Zhang Suxin had no choice but to say, “You can only look for a little while, all right?”

Xianxian brightened at once. She tipped up her little face and smiled ingratiatingly at Zhang Suxin, then said in her babyish voice, “Got it.”

The mother and daughter settled down to look at the phone, while Lu Anzhi went through every room on the second floor.

There was not much to tidy upstairs. The workers had merely finished off a few details and cleaned everything thoroughly. Next, all that remained was to arrange the furniture. The only things Lu Anzhi could inspect were whether anything had been bumped or damaged and whether the cleaning had been done properly.

After making a circuit of the floor and finding no problems, he walked over to Zhang Suxin and Xianxian.

“What are you looking at?”

Zhang Suxin tilted the phone toward him. Lu Anzhi saw that a webpage was open.

The interface was extremely plain, but the rows of familiar text on the page made him recognize it immediately. It was the simple version of Talker.

“We’re looking at the discussions about your new book. It’s so popular. I don’t think my album got this much attention when I released it.”

Zhang Suxin spoke with some amazement.

“The internet wasn’t as developed back then,” Lu Anzhi said. “It’s normal that it didn’t attract much attention online. You were popular on television and the radio, though.” In his eyes, the internet was still far from advanced, but compared with three years ago, it had indeed come a long way.

The internet really did change from one year to the next.

“What do you think?” he asked Zhang Suxin.

“It’s pretty good, except there are no pictures, so you can’t see a lot of things.”

“If there were pictures, my mobile data wouldn’t be able to handle it. And how long do you think it would take for them to load at this connection speed?”

Zhang Suxin nodded. “Either way, you really are famous now.”

Lu Anzhi smiled. “Jealous? Want to make a comeback?”

Zhang Suxin was speechless for a moment.

She had already explained her inner conflict to him, and he understood it well. Then an idea suddenly occurred to him.

“Actually, there’s another path. If you don’t want to deal with all the turmoil in the entertainment industry but still want people to hear you sing, you could try becoming an independent musician online.”

“An independent musician online?”

Zhang Suxin blinked, not quite understanding.

She knew what an independent musician was. But as far as she knew, independent musicians in the country were still struggling at the edge of subsistence. Their work tended to be local and circulated only within small circles. Without the support of a company, it was extremely difficult for them to develop.

But the child’s father had added the word “online.” What exactly did he mean?

“Give me the phone. I’ll show you.”

Lu Anzhi took the phone from Zhang Suxin and opened a preinstalled application. It was a music app called Handsome Dog Music, one of the most commonly used music platforms in this world.

He entered the search page and typed in “Zhang Suxin.” Before long, all the songs from her album three years earlier appeared on the screen.

Lu Anzhi casually selected one. The song entered a download queue, and the phone indicated that it would take quite some time.

For someone like Lu Anzhi, who had already experienced instant streaming in his previous life, this was rather irritating. But to the people of this world, having a phone that could download any song they wanted and let them listen whenever they pleased must have seemed wonderful.

Ding-dong...

A notification interrupted Lu Anzhi’s thoughts.

“Hm? What was that sound?”

Xianxian was immediately drawn to the alert.

Zhang Suxin explained, “That was the phone.”

Xianxian nodded. “Oh, the phone made a sound.”

Zhang Suxin and Lu Anzhi both looked at the screen in his hand. Handsome Dog Music had displayed a notification:

Non-members may preview only the first thirty seconds of a song. Please purchase a membership to download the full track.

Lu Anzhi laughed. “Nothing can be done about that. You have to pay to listen to your songs.”

Then again, copyright protection in this world was truly impressive. When the internet in his previous life had reached this level of development, pirated copies were still everywhere.

Zhang Suxin gave a helpless laugh. “It’s the same for me. If I don’t pay, I can’t even listen to my own songs.”

“In any case, you’ve now seen the convenience of music apps. And you probably didn’t notice that this phone also has far more storage than the old one. That means a single phone can hold a great many songs.”

Zhang Suxin was a clever woman and immediately understood what he was getting at.

“So you think the age of online music is about to arrive?”

“Exactly.”

Lu Anzhi nodded. “So wait a little longer. With the popularity you built up as a former rising queen of pop, along with your ability, I think you’ll have no trouble becoming an independent musician on an online music platform once online music has fully matured.”

Zhang Suxin lightly bit her lip and fell into thought.

Xianxian had no idea what her parents were talking about. She looked from Lu Anzhi to Zhang Suxin and back again. When neither of them said anything more, she wandered off to play by herself.

The little girl was remarkably well behaved. She did not fuss or demand to keep looking at the phone.

Ring-ring...

A plain, unremarkable ringtone broke into Zhang Suxin’s thoughts. Her own phone was ringing.

She took it out and glanced at the screen.

“It’s Zhou Bo.”

Lu Anzhi raised an eyebrow as Zhang Suxin answered the call. She responded with a series of “Mm-hm” and “Ah,” then said, “Hold on, let me ask,” before turning to Lu Anzhi.

“Zhou Bo says he likes ‘The Sea.’ He has no problem following the terms of my contract. It’s just that something feels off when he sings it. He can’t seem to grasp the technique, and it doesn’t quite have the same feeling as your demo. He wants to ask you for some advice.”

The End of the Chapter