Amateur talent show? Top mentors are my students.

He Xu squatted there, looking at Ian's unusually quiet little face, his mind racing with countless thoughts.

"...유치원? (...Kindergarten?)" he repeated the word, "그때몇살이었어? (How old were you then?)"

Ian tilted his head and thought for a moment, then answered hesitantly, "...다섯살? (...five years old?)"

Five years old.

That happened more than ten years ago.

He Xu slowly stood up, retreated to the mirrored wall, and leaned against the cold glass surface.

He looked down at the tips of his shoes, then looked up at Ian in the mirror—

The small, thin figure remained standing there, waiting quietly, as if the perfect performance just now was nothing more than a trivial matter.

He Xu worked as a teacher for six years.

He has taught gifted students and seen children who grasp concepts quickly and learn everything fast.

But Ian is different.

He possesses absolute talent.

That kind of fluency and control cannot be explained by "learning quickly".

This can be described as a kind of insight.

He Xu recalled when he first went to South Korea at the age of fifteen.

At that time, he didn't know anything, and he could not even do the most basic movements properly.

It took him three whole months to practice the basic rhythms to a presentable level, and half a year before his teacher even gave him a second glance.

Ian only took less than a week.

Just by looking.

He considered himself talented, but his talent seemed insignificant compared to Ian's.

He Xu knew what this talent meant.

He has been working in this industry for almost ten years and has seen too many buried geniuses—because they have no opportunities, no teachers, and no one is willing to spend time understanding them.

He himself almost became one of them.

If Ian had been born in South Korea, he would have been scouted by talent agents long ago.

If he were willing to talk and communicate with people, he would have been signed by those big companies as a trainee long ago.

But he won't—and no one will make an exception for him.

He Xu felt a slight tingling in his fingertips.

That's the signal his body gives him whenever he encounters something that truly matters to him.

Looking at Ian, He Xu suddenly felt that there was something all too familiar hidden in those overly quiet eyes.

A feeling of being left out in a corner, not knowing how to use one's own body.

Ian doesn't not want to dance.

He was never told "you can jump".

He Xu wanted to teach him.

The thought was stronger than he had anticipated.

But then, reason prevailed.

Ian doesn't seem very easy to communicate with.

The boy was standing on the floor with his head down, unconsciously picking at the loose threads on his hoodie cuffs, as if he didn't know where to go.

Looking at him like that, He Xu suddenly realized that if he wanted to take Ian as a student, he would have to face far more challenges than teaching an ordinary student.

He can't scold Ian like he used to scold Yang Sheng.

He wasn't even sure if Ian could understand the instruction to "do it again".

If he really gets angry or impatient—He Xu knows what he sounds like when he's swearing, and that tone would probably be a disaster for Ian.

He didn't know if Ian's family would agree.

It's worrying enough that a sixteen or seventeen-year-old autistic child comes to the dance studio alone every day to watch a stranger dance.

If He Xu suddenly said, "I want to teach him to dance," the other parents would probably think he was a liar or had ulterior motives.

He Xu leaned against the mirror, looking at Ian, his mind racing with these thoughts.

He hesitated.

This is rare for him.

He always makes decisions quickly—quickly deciding to participate in a talent show, quickly deciding to withdraw from the competition, quickly deciding to come to the United States to treat his voice, and quickly deciding to make a movie.

But this time is different.

Because he knew that if he took Ian in, it wouldn't be as simple as just teaching him on a whim.

That means a responsibility, a responsibility that he needs to commit to for a long time, a responsibility whose boundaries he doesn't know.

He can't treat the trainees the same way, scolding them for poor performance and then leaving.

That's not the way Ian needs.

What he needs is patience, understanding, and an attitude that won't be rejected.

He clearly cannot provide such emotional value.

He Xu stood there, his hands in his pockets, his fingertips unconsciously rubbing the fabric along the edge of his pockets.

He recalled his years at Banxing—teaching Shen Yiheng, Han Yu, Yang Sheng, Song Yingwen, and Jiang Yang.

He built those people up from scratch.

But no one ever made him feel the urgency that "if I don't teach him, he may never be discovered by anyone."

Ian is that kind of person.

If He Xu doesn't care about him, probably no one else will be willing to squat down and ask him in Korean, "Do you want to dance?"

The moment this thought popped into my head, a corner of my hesitation crumbled.

He Xu knew what he was afraid of—he was afraid of not teaching well, afraid of doing more harm than good, and afraid of discovering in the end that he was not actually suitable to be a teacher.

But what he feared even more was doing nothing, and then one day when he passed by the dance studio again, he found that Ian was no longer there.

"No," he said, his voice low and deliberately casual, "Do you come here every day?"

Ian looked up at him, thought for a moment, and said, "...올거예요. (...I will come.)"

"그럼내일도오고, 모레도오고—계속? (Then come tomorrow, come the day after tomorrow—come all the time?)"

"...응.(...Hmm.)"

He Xu nodded.

He walked to the wall, picked up his coat, draped it over his shoulder, and glanced at Ian. "나간다. 내일봐. (I'm leaving. See you tomorrow.)"

Ian stood still, his lips twitching slightly, and said softly, "...See you tomorrow."

As He Xu opened the door to the dance studio and walked out, the sunlight in the corridor fell on his shoulders, carrying the warm, languid temperature of the afternoon.

He stood in the corridor, not leaving immediately.

He looked down at his fingers resting on the doorknob, paused for a few seconds, and then muttered under his breath, "...You've fucking gotten yourself into trouble again."

-

That night, after returning to his residence, He Xu sat on the sofa in the living room and spent nearly two hours searching for information on his phone.

High-functioning autism, Asperger's syndrome, motor learning abilities in autism spectrum disorders, how to build trust with autistic adolescents, and case studies of the application of dance instruction in autism intervention.

He browsed a wide variety of pages, from professional medical websites to personal blogs to forum discussion threads, and he clicked on and read every single one of them.

He didn't quite understand some of the content, and he had to read the spelling of those English terms several times to memorize them, but he still finished reading it.

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

He Xu sat cross-legged on the sofa, holding his phone in front of him. The light from the screen shone on his face, making his eyes appear unnaturally bright.

On the coffee table sat a half-cold glass of water, its rim condensed with droplets, indicating it had been sitting there for a long time.