Amateur talent show? Top mentors are my students.

Jen put the tablet back on the table and sighed.

“I don’t know, River. I really don’t know,” she said. “There’s nothing in the file—no withdrawal application, no evaluation report, no contract termination notice. It’s just… his name is gone. Like he was never there.”

Jiang Yanbai stared at her, a sharp glint in his eyes: "Don't you find it strange?"

"Of course it's strange," Jen said. "That's why I showed it to you."

She paused, then lowered her voice: "A trainee who can achieve this level at sixteen would be a promising talent that any company would focus on developing. Yueyin was preparing for a boy group debut that year, so a trainee like him should have been on the shortlist."

But he didn't.

"Yes. Not only was he not selected, but his personnel file has also completely disappeared. If it weren't for the backup of the quiz video on Yueyin's old server, I probably wouldn't have been able to find this part."

Jiang Yanbai leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling, feeling as if all the loose ends in his head were twisting in one direction.

He recalled the few lines He Xu had written on the paper that day.

"I can do it all by myself."

He thought, someone who could dance like that in the practice room at the age of sixteen, went to South Korea alone and stayed for a year and a half, shining like the sun.

Then, on an ordinary spring day, his name disappeared from the roster.

No one told him why.

Perhaps even He Xu himself doesn't know why.

Jiang Yanbai closed his eyes, a dull, indescribable pain spreading through his chest.

He couldn't quite describe the feeling—was it out of pity for He Xu? Was it out of resentment for those wasted years? Or was it simply an unbearable urge to know the truth?

He opened his eyes and looked at Jen: "Can you find out anything more?"

Jen paused for a few seconds, then said, "I can try. But the management at Yueyin's place has changed, and the old personnel files might not still be there. Besides..."

She looked at him, her gaze carrying a hint of warning: "Even if I find out, are you sure you want to know? Some things are harder to bear knowing than not knowing."

Jiang Yanbai lowered his head and repeated in a low voice, as if speaking to himself, "...I need to know."

Jen looked at him and didn't try to persuade him further.

She put the tablet in her bag and stood up. "I'm going back to the hotel now. You—go up and keep an eye on him. If he wakes up in the middle of the night and doesn't see him, he might overthink things."

Jiang Yanbai nodded but did not get up.

He sat there, staring at the thick night outside the window, his mind replaying the image of the sixteen-year-old boy raising the corners of his mouth at the camera.

Then he stood up, turned around, and walked towards the elevator.

-

In the first week after He Xu was discharged from the hospital, life entered a different rhythm.

He wakes up promptly at seven o'clock every morning.

The wound had extended from deep in the throat outwards into a dull, increasingly faint weight.

Speaking is still not possible—the doctor said I must remain completely silent until the end of the second week before I can start trying to speak softly.

But exercise is fine, such as walking or jogging, as long as you don't raise your heart rate too high, don't make your breathing too rapid, and don't affect the healing of your throat.

Therefore, every morning after breakfast, he would put on a light jacket and jog along the path leading to the foot of the mountain.

The pace was slow, and the breathing was controlled in a shallow and even rhythm.

Sunlight filtered through the gaps in the palm tree's broad leaves, casting dappled patterns of light on the asphalt road.

He ran for about forty minutes, then walked back slowly, sat on the steps by the door for a while, and waited for the sweat to dry.

Jiang Yanbai would sometimes sit on the chair in the living room that overlooked the door, watching He Xu's back through the floor-to-ceiling window.

He doesn't look like someone who has just had surgery.

He even looked a bit lighter than before he was hospitalized—the heaviness in his movements, as if something was pressing down on him, was gradually dissipating.

But Jiang Yanbai did not relax.

Ever since Jen showed him that video that day, he's been stuck in a very delicate position.

He learned that He Xu had gone to South Korea to train as an idol at the age of fifteen, that he had spent a year and a half at Yueyin Media, and that he had looked so dazzling in the videos of his early exams, but had completely disappeared from the roster in the spring of his seventeenth year.

The information he found ended there, like a road leading to a precipice.

Every time he saw He Xu slowly jogging back in the morning light—his sweaty hair clinging to his brow bone, his eyes sparkling with the clean, bright energy of exercise—he would think:

Was this person like this in the practice room in Korea before? What exactly happened in the spring of her seventeenth year?

But he couldn't bring himself to ask.

Because He Xu is currently unable to speak, any question that requires a long sentence to answer will turn the situation into a one-sided interrogation, which is unfair.

So he could only wait.

On the afternoon of the fourth day after being discharged from the hospital, He Xu sat on the living room floor with his laptop and a notebook covered in marks in front of him.

He was looking at the arrangement files Emiko sent him, scribbling on paper, occasionally resting his chin on his hand and looking out the window, then looking down to add a few more lines.

This is the scene that Jiang Yanbai saw when he came down from the second floor.

He paused for two seconds at the corner of the stairs, then walked down and sat down at the other end of the sofa.

The coffee in his hand had gone cold. He pulled his phone out from under the coffee table, unlocked it, locked it again, and then asked, "Are you watching Emiko's arrangements?"

He Xu looked up and nodded.

Then he picked up his notebook, turned to a new page, wrote a line, and held it up: "She said the choreography plan will be finalized within two weeks. I can't dance during my recovery period, so let's build the framework first."

Jiang Yanbai looked at the line of text and nodded: "She seems to trust you quite a bit."

He Xu wrote: "She trusted my professional ethics—she offered a very high price."

Jiang Yanbai smiled, and the coffee swirled on the rim of the cup.

He took a sip, put it down, opened his mouth, then closed it again.

He Xu noticed his movement, put down his notebook, and looked at him with that silent, expectant gaze.

"...It's nothing," Jiang Yanbai said. "You go about your business."

He Xu glanced at him for a few seconds, then looked down and continued looking at the screen.

But he didn't write anything more.

In the evening, they sat for a while on a lounge chair by the pool in the backyard.

He Xu leaned back in his chair, a glass of warm water in front of him, his gaze fixed on the distant mountain range that was gradually turning orange-purple.

Jiang Yanbai sat on the chair next to him, holding his phone in his hand, the screen flashing on and off.

"He Xu," he said.

He Xu turned his head to look at him.

"...Do you think it's possible for a person, at a certain stage in their life, to suddenly erase all traces of themselves, as if they never existed?"

He Xu's expression didn't change much.

He picked up his phone, typed a message, and handed it to Jiang Yanbai: "Who are you talking about?"

Jiang Yanbai looked at the line of text and suddenly felt that he was very stupid.

Why would he bring that up, throwing out this question out of the blue, like a clumsy probe trying to make He Xu reveal some flaw?

"No, I just—I recently watched a movie, it was all over the place." He put down his phone, picked up his glass, took a sip, and said, "Never mind me."

He Xu stared at him for a long time before looking away.

After a while, he typed a new message and handed it to Jiang Yanbai: "If you have any questions for me, feel free to ask."

Jiang Yanbai's eyelashes fluttered.

He held the glass of water, his fingertips tracing the inside of the glass repeatedly, before finally speaking, "...I'll ask again when you're better."

He Xu looked at him and then nodded slightly.