"Same." The boy did not refuse and let him buy another bottle of water and handed it to him as a gift in return.
The boy took the water and naturally walked beside Ou Shaowen. They walked together for a while until they reached the door of the practice room. Ou Shaowen stopped and looked over his shoulder in confusion, "Are you going to take dance lessons too?"
“…Yes.” He prepared himself for a moment, then introduced himself, “My name is Song Yijiu, I’m 25 years old, and because I sing well and am good at imitating other people’s voices, the company may send me to go with you on the talent show called “Under the Lights”.”
Ou Shaowen blinked and looked at him without saying a word.
Song Yijiu was not used to looking at others for a long time while talking. Every time, his eyes just swept across his face and then wandered away. "So, starting today, I might take dance lessons with you."
“Oh.” Ou Shaowen nodded, indicating that he understood. He was silent for a moment before realizing that he should also politely introduce himself. “My name is Ou Shaowen, and I’m 20 years old.”
In fact, this is not his real age. He himself does not know how old he is. This age was casually determined by the person who issued his certificate based on his appearance.
Song Yijiu was not a person who was good at starting a conversation naturally with strangers, and Ou Shaowen was even less so, so the two of them had almost no communication throughout the entire dance class.
For Ou Shaowen now, the company's dance courses only played the role of maintaining basic skills and strengthening muscle training, and did not improve his dance skills much. Song Yijiu was different. In terms of dance, he was really an ordinary person without any foundation. He was not as talented as Ou Shaowen, and he seemed particularly clumsy. The teacher spent a lot of energy to correct his basic posture, but the harder he tried, the more clumsy he seemed.
He walked to the side panting, turned on the mineral water, tilted his head back, poured a little on his face, and then looked at Ou Shaowen in the mist.
This morning, when he received a call from the so-called director of the company's idol department and was called to the office, he spent a lot of effort to calm himself down and accept this pie-in-the-sky arrangement. Qimeng did not have an idol department before, and he was just a supporting role in many movies and TV series. Singing was his personal hobby. But suddenly this morning, the director personally explained to him that he heard him singing when he passed by the practice room by chance. He admired him and recognized him, and felt that he might have a greater future on the road of idol.
In order to share some of the attention from ordinary audiences about Ou Shaowen's background in a large company, and more importantly, to share some of the criticism and pressure, the company made this extremely sudden decision for him less than half a month before the recording of the program began.
Finally, the minister finished explaining everything and smiled and said, "Starting today, you will take classes with Ou Shaowen. He is quite talented in dancing, so you can ask him for help as much as you want and ask him to teach you. You don't have to lose face. You should have heard of him. Having a good relationship with him can help you take many shortcuts."
"By the way, Mr. Ou seems to be coaxing his little friend recently. When you are with Ou Shaowen on weekdays, ask him to help you, thank him more, and praise him more. You should know how to coax people, just like coaxing a little child."
Song Yijiu is not a person who likes to trouble others by nature, nor is he a person who is sweet-talking, coaxing or likable, but he also cherishes this opportunity that he has finally obtained after twists and turns.
He is no longer young, but he still has dreams that he is unwilling to give up.
After taking two deep breaths, he crumpled the plastic bottle in his hand, and walked to Ou Shaowen with some hesitation. He finally mustered up the courage and said, “The teacher is leaving after class. Can you teach me those moves again?”
Ou Shaowen raised his head and looked at him. Song Yijiu held his breath, as if waiting for some kind of verdict.
After exchanging glances, he stood up and walked to the middle of the practice room. "I'll demonstrate it to you again at 0.5 times the speed."
Ou Shaowen didn't know how to teach others where to put their hands and feet. He seemed to understand it all after watching it once. His body's instinct came with it and he didn't need to think too much. So he just repeated the movements for Song Yijiu over and over again, from continuous movements to decomposed movements, from 0.5 times the speed to 0.2 times the speed. He didn't feel tired at all and didn't have the slightest impatience. He danced until Song Yijiu ran out of energy and called for a stop.
He collapsed on the ground, feeling dizzy and his heart beating so fast that it seemed like it was going to jump out of his throat.
Ou Shaowen glanced at him and reminded him, “You can’t sit down right after you’ve just finished exercising. It will put a burden on your heart.”
"Oh, thank... thank you." Song Yijiu struggled to get up again, and remembering the minister's previous instructions, he began to praise her a little embarrassedly, "Thank you for your help, you are really good at dancing, I have never seen anyone who can dance so well after practicing for such a short time. If you hadn't helped me today, I would never be able to figure out these moves correctly when I go back."
After saying this, Ou Shaowen didn't react for the time being. He felt ashamed. The purposeful praise made him feel very subtle. His cheeks were slightly hot. He wanted to quickly skip this topic as if he had completed a task.
So he quickly made an excuse, saying that he had other arrangements later, and said goodbye to him in a hurry.
Ou Shaowen stood there and watched him walk away. He soon disappeared. Only then did he realize belatedly that he was a little happy to be praised.
What good day is today? It seems like I’m being praised all day long.
After Ou Shaowen called Qi Yue and asked him to pick him up, he sat on the chair and tapped the floor with his heels, wondering if he should take advantage of this auspicious day to fulfill his promise to buy a gift for Ou Renjin.
"Buying gifts? Sure. I'll go with you." Seeing that it was still early, Qi Yue readily agreed to his suggestion and drove to a high-end shopping mall in the city where luxury goods were gathered.
There aren't many people shopping here. Some of the shop assistants are lazily sitting aside playing with their mobile phones, and only stand up to greet customers when they really come to them.
Ou Shaowen hadn't even entered many stores. He seemed to be there just to admire the signs. He kept walking forward, occasionally passing by someone's door and taking a quick glance inside.
"I haven't heard you say you wanted to buy a gift for President Ou for a long time." When Ou Shaowen brought up this topic before, Qi Yue felt quite indignant for him. However, later on, President Ou talked to him many times because of Ou Shaowen, and he gradually felt that his impression of President Ou over the years seemed to be biased. At least, when it came to arranging Ou Shaowen's acting career, he was calm, rational, and far-sighted, and did not use other people's future as a way to amuse himself.
For such a caring "boss", you should buy him a nice gift to express your gratitude.
"Little Shao Wen, we have walked around the mall for a long time. My feet are sore. What do you want to buy?"
Ou Shaowen stopped walking and said, "Ou Renjin asked me to give him something I like, but I looked for a long time and felt that there was nothing I liked here."
Hearing his answer, Qi Yue raised his eyebrows with interest, thinking that Mr. Ou's request was really interesting, "Then why don't we change places? Where can we buy the things you like?"
Ou Shaowen was a little confused. Since he left the laboratory, he had only asked for two things on his own initiative. One was the green leaves that Ou Renjin gave him, and the other was a simple remote control racing car that was not very exquisite. But to be honest, these were not his preferences. They were just obsessions that he had developed since he was a child because of a certain sentence he had heard or a certain scene he had seen.
The researcher who was in charge of his epidermal cell recovery research had a wife who loved making leaf bookmarks, so he put a few leaf bookmarks in each of his books, some of which had turned yellow or had been washed so that only the veins were left. He usually took good care of these things. He once grabbed someone's collar and yelled at them in a vicious tone because they had wrinkled his leaves when returning the book. But when he answered his wife's phone calls, he always seemed to show disgust and would complain to her softly, "I think this leaf looks best when it is still green and full of vitality on the tree. If it is flattened, it will be no different from an ordinary bookmark."
But Ou Shaowen had never seen what lush green leaves looked like on trees, nor had he ever played with the remote-controlled racing cars that a researcher's son often played with in the corridor outside the laboratory.
Later, when he actually got them, he felt that these things were just so-so, nothing special, and not worth his long wait.
After thinking about it again and again, it seems that the only thing he really likes is Ou Renjin. Apart from him, he doesn't like anything else.
So he shook his head and said, “It seems that the things I like are not available.”
“Is there anything in this world that money can’t buy?”
"Ou Renjin, he can't buy it." Isn't this very natural? He thought Qi Yue would know.
Qi Yue choked.
The corners of his eyes twitched slightly, and he took a deep breath, barely holding back his desire to complain, and seriously solved the problem for his own artist, "I definitely can't afford to buy a real person, but I can still buy a substitute. However, are you sure you want to buy a 'President Ou' for President Ou?"
It sounds a bit perverted.
Ou Shaowen's eyes were filled with doubt and expectation.
"Okay, follow me."
…
Ou Renjin was curled up on the sofa watching a newly released movie. When he was carefully looking at the list of people after the ending song, he received a call from abroad.
He was a little surprised, but didn't notice that his expression had unconsciously become serious. He picked up the phone and said "Hello" softly.
There was silence on the other end of the phone for a while. "I think I found out where the night nurse is now."
Ou Renjin's whole body began to tremble unconsciously, and his scalp felt tingling, as if the words coming from the phone instantly brought him back to the nightmare that had tormented him for many years.
The nightmare in which I couldn't sleep in the middle of the night because of the pain, so I secretly ran to my mother's ward. However, I was afraid of knocking over the large and small instruments on my mother's body, so I lay on the carpet next to the sofa, fell asleep in a daze, and was awakened by footsteps.