NOVEL WEB Ch. 13
Chapter 13
By the time everyone snapped back to their senses, Lin Zhe had vanished.
He’d simply slipped backstage, collected his phone, and quietly returned to the Third Company, First Platoon, settling into the last row of seats.
“Where’d that guy go? One more song!”
“Yeah, encore!”
With Lin Zhe gone, the girls in the front rows cupped their hands like megaphones and shouted toward the stage.
At first the performance had felt unremarkable, but once it hooked you, it stopped dead—leaving you dangling.
After “Mercury Records” ended, the entire field and the bleachers erupted. New cadets and old ones alike scrambled to their feet, craning necks in search of the singer who’d disappeared.
Ye Zi lowered her phone. “Incredible...” she breathed.
In the northwest corner, Zhao Lin sat frozen for a long moment, then elbowed Chen Zhijing beside her.
“Hey, Xiao Jing... that Lin Zhe isn’t actually your boyfriend, is he?”
Only then did Zhao Lin notice: Chen Zhijing was crouched on the grass, chin on the railing, arms hugging her knees. Her amber eyes shimmered, cheeks flushed, gaze fixed on the spot where Lin Zhe had vanished.
Zhao Lin’s jaw dropped. The look on Chen Zhijing’s face said everything.
Still—Lin Zhe had been seriously impressive. Ordinary to the point of invisible most days, yet he’d just blown the entire place away.
Back with his platoon, Lin Zhe raked the fringe off his forehead and slid the pale-blue half-rims up his nose—once again the low-key, forgettable Lin Zhe.
Even the classmates who shared his row did double-takes; the before-and-after contrast was so stark he might as well have been two different people.
Clusters of female cadets whispered, stealing glances at the guy in the last row.
Yang Zhen—who considered himself pretty familiar with Lin Zhe—was floored; he’d never seen that version of him.
One bold girl threaded through the crowd and straight-up asked for his contact info.
Lin Zhe turned her down—same as he rejected the others.
A wise man doesn’t plunge into love lightly, and he’d already waded through enough relationships.
Right now Chen Zhijing and Zhao Ge were more than enough to juggle.
By the time the freshman show wrapped up, Lin Zhe had a new nickname: “Hai University’s No. 1 Deeply Affectionate.”
His bittersweet aura and that soulful voice had burned themselves into memory.
People scrambled to find “Mercury Records,” the song none of them had heard before.
Eventually someone tracked it down on a streaming site—composer, lyricist, vocalist: all Lin Zhe.
His account held exactly one song and almost zero comments.
Everyone wondered how something that good could stay buried.
If he hadn’t sung it tonight, “Mercury Records” might have stayed lost forever.
After that performance, every act that followed felt flavorless.
The poor souls scheduled after Lin Zhe wanted to cry—how could a single song leave such a crater of longing?
The show limped on until midnight.
When the crowd finally dispersed, the field sank back into its usual night-time hush.
Back in her dorm, Chen Zhijing scooped her fluffy hair into a squirrel-tail ponytail, yanked the curtain around her bunk, and opened her digital sketchboard.
Headphones on, she dove into her own world, grinning so hard her pencil flew.
On loop: Lin Zhe’s “Mercury Records.”
Across campus, Ye Zi and the rest of the Back-Alley Cat Band trudged home to their shared flat after striking the stage.
While the others hit the shower, Ye Zi uploaded Lin Zhe’s live performance to their Bilibili channel.
The Back-Alley Cats had a few hundred thousand followers; the moment the video went live, notifications exploded.
“Grandpa, the uploader you followed finally posted!”
“Haven’t seen a vid in ages—almost unfollowed.”
“When’s the next gig? My kids can’t wait.”
“Da Ju, are you playing the festival this year?”
“So glad I go to Hai U—half a month till your next show (tears of joy).”
As comments snowballed, viewers realized the clip wasn’t the band’s set—it was some unknown guy singing an unfamiliar song.
Ye Zi pinned her own comment:
“This song, ‘Mercury Records,’ is seriously good—sharing it with you guys.”
More viewers piled in, and the play count and “like-coin-fave” triple-buttons shot up.
Ye Zi flopped on the sofa, beaming.
She tossed her laptop aside and searched the track again—composer, lyricist, vocalist: Lin Zhe, solo.
His profile still held only that one song.
When I opened the song’s homepage, the comment counter already read 999+.
The top-liked comment came from an account nicknamed Deep-Sea Fish:
“Not bad technique, but zero emotional resonance—mostly because you’re still wet behind the ears. If you seriously want to grow, DM sis. I’ll serve you a gut-wrenching romance that’ll help you write better songs.”
Reply @Deep-Sea Fish: “Shameless old woman—take a look in the mirror.”
“Your abacus beads just smacked me in the face.”
Watching Mercury Records climb the charts, Ye Zi, sprawled on the sofa, couldn’t help kicking her legs in delight.
A good song deserves to be heard; digging it out of the dirt felt like prying a gemstone from the sand, and the thrill warmed her from head to toe.
In the bathroom, Xiao Lan was also on their third consecutive loop of Lin Zhe’s Mercury Records while showering.
Back in the dorm, however, Lin Zhe had muted every notification from his artist account and reverted to the most ordinary, easily overlooked bystander.
Even Liu Xuefei and Han Xinglong circled him like biologists studying a rare specimen.
“Xiao Lin, confess and be lenient, resist and be punished—tell us, are you an alien spy sent to Earth?”
Lin Zhe answered their curiosity by lifting his eyes in silent exasperation.
Meanwhile, the class QQ group had exploded; most of the chatter came from the girls dissecting every detail about Lin Zhe.
The boys had nothing to add—after all, even they had to admit tonight’s Mercury Records was ridiculously good.