Chapter 44

Act VI: The Little Prince (6)

---------

Eleven candidates sat in the lounge room, each with a number pinned to their chest. The numbers were randomly selected before entering the venue. Each candidate would walk into the recording studio to audition according to their number, and directly leave through the back door after their audition.

Tan Yiming's luck was not good, and he got 11th.

Xiao Qing was a little bit better than him and was 10th.

Seeing that there were fewer and fewer people left, waiting for their turn, it was inevitable that they would feel a bit restless.

"Why is Blizzard Entertainment stricter than Disney?" Xiao Qing whispered. "I was so nervous last time, it was like I was outside the operating room,  waiting for my wife to give birth".

Sitting next to him, Tan Yiming was very calm. He was doing his vocal exercises to relax his vocal cords and throat.

Xiao Qing glanced sideways at him and suddenly asked, "You are not from a major, right?”

"... Not really." Tan Yiming had nothing to hide, but did not expect to be discovered so soon, "Is it obvious?"

"It's quite obvious." Xiao Qing said, "You have good talent, but you lack systematic exercises. I’m guessing you followed the online tutorials to teach yourself?"

"Yep."

Xiao Qing pulled a small card out of nowhere and stuffed it into Tan Yiming's palm.

Tan Yiming looked down at the business card: "Zeng Yinan Studio is now launching a special course for voice actors during the summer. Do you want to become a professional seiyuu?!! The 22-day training course only costs 38888 yuan, register as soon as possible!"

Xiao Qing said: "It's destiny for us to meet. I'll treat you like my brother? I'll give you a special price, wipe out those number eight!"

Tan Yiming: "..."

Xiao Qing cheered at him.

This was Xiao Qing's strategy to suppress his opponents from the ground up. The specific method was to ridicule in a calm manner, without dirty words, but with a mock sincerity caring for juniors with an old-ager attitude.

But Tan Yiming didn't even frown.

He took a pen from his pocket, turned the little card over, and wrote:

—Are you still worried about your pitiable English? Are you still ashamed that foreigners cannot understand your own Chinglish? Tan's Oral English Special Training Course is open at any time, only 9999!

Then he threw the card back into Xiao Qing's hand.

Xiao Qing: "..."

Tan Yiming thought about it and took the card back. With the pen, he added the US dollar sign before the 9999.

Tan Yiming: "With such a small business, there is hardly any profit, so I will not give you a discount."

Xiao Qing: "..."

...

Time passed minute by minute. After a long yet short wait, it was Xiao Qing's turn as the tenth person.

The middle-aged man got up, pulled at his clothes, and straightened the number on his chest, muttering, "I hope the examiner will not embarrass me."

After that, he took a deep breath, and was led by the staff to walk towards the recording studio.

Tan Yiming looked at his confident back, then looked at the number 11 on his chest, slowly closing his eyes.

Was he nervous?

Of course there was fear.

But even more, there was excitement, a fighting spirit that was pumping through his blood.

Just then, the mobile phone in his pocket shook, and Little Swan's greetings jumped in front of his eyes.

guess: Great god, great god! Is the audition over?

guess: [Little Swan wink].jpg

Yiming Qingyun: Not yet.

Yiming Qingyun: I'm waiting, it's my turn next.

guess: !!!!!

guess: Then I won't bother you!!!

Xiang Cai wanted to disappear immediately.

Yiming Qingyun: It's okay. You can talk with me, so I can relax a bit.

guess: Then ... what do you want to talk about?

Yiming Qingyun: Just idle chit chat, no specific subject is needed.

guess: Yun Da, what is the role you are auditioning for?

Yiming Qingyun: This cannot be revealed ...

guess: [Goose crying tears].jpg

guess: Then I really don't know what else to talk about.

guess: I'm sorry...I- I- I- I cannot speak well as soon as I'm nervous.

Yiming Qingyun: [Laughs] It is my audition, not your audition, what are you nervous about?

Yiming Qingyun: If you have nothing to say, sing me a song.

Yiming Qingyun: I haven't heard you sing for a long time.

Inexplicable, Tan Yiming suddenly missed Little Swan’s singing. He still remembered hearing the boy's voice through his earphones for the first time, clear and firm, with unrelenting faith and surging vitality.

He expected the shy little guy to refuse. However, after just a minute, an audio message jumped into the dialog box.

Tan Yiming tapped his finger, and the boy's moving voice wandered around him—

"Life is short and fleeting.

Some moths,

Are born to fight fires.

Captured by passion,

Flying to the sky,

Yet attached to the soil underfoot.

Life is short and fleeting,

Like dust in the desert,

Or like the flash of fireworks."

This was a tune that Tan Yiming had never heard before. Obviously, they were sad lyrics, but one could hear the passionate tone in it.

Even without the accompaniment, the boy's softly hummed lyrics were enough to make it memorable.

Tan Yiming asked him what the song was called.

Little Swan said: "This is the song that the pilot sings to the sky in the musical The Little Prince! It represents his yearning for the sky. He will fulfill his dream even if it his life got burnt by the sun.”

Little Swan said, "Great god, does your name come from ‘Yiming from now on, looking at the blue clouds’*? I have checked, and this poem means to soar straight into the sky.”

[T/N: a line from a classic poem.]

Little Swan said: "I hope you can fly to the sky from here, realize your dreams, and reap the glory you deserve. I don't know who your competitors are, but in my heart, you will always be the most powerful one."

This straightforward praise from the boy was like a refreshing glass of fruit wine. First, there was a sweetness on the tip of the tongue. After falling into the belly, it was a little tingly.

Tan Yiming suspected that he had been a little stunned.

"Cai Cai, I promise you." Tan Yiming also replied out loud, "From now on, Yimingjingren and Qingyun will be mutually fulfilled." 

[T/N: Xiang Cai thought his name came from the previous poem, but Tan Yiming says the yiming from the idiom 'yimingjingren' here, which means to have sudden excellence. Qingyun means a person of high rank.]

...

Fifteen minutes later, the staff came to tell Tan Yiming that the previous candidate had finished his audition, that was to say, Tan Yiming was the finale of the auditions.

Tan Yiming handed over all the electronic equipment on him that might interfere with the recording, and then opened the door in front of him.

Unexpectedly, the recording studio didn't have a row of examiners, only a serious-looking recording engineer and a recording assistant with a badge.

He asked subconsciously: "Examiner ..."

"There is no examiner." The assistant interrupted him and responded with a single look. "After the recording, all demos will be sent to the audio department for a blind selection tonight, and the final result will be made tomorrow morning." He looked at his watch and urged unceremoniously. "Hurry up, we have to rush to the restaurant for dinner after work."

Tan Yiming's prepared self-introduction was completely useless.

However, his mental quality was good and he had not been disturbed by the urging.

He walked into the studio, and the electrically controlled door closed slowly behind him, blocking out all the noise.

He seemed to be thrown into a vacuum, and even his breathing was infinitely amplified.

Looking at the headphones and recording microphones hanging in front of him, Tan Yiming remembered the moment he had nervously walked into the recording studio for the first time. Now he was far past that.

The ‘on air’ lightbox lit up—the recording officially began.

...

"Report to the ground command, everything in the cabin is normal. All equipment is operating normally, biological monitoring has been activated ... soon to leave the second quarter rocket."

"Call! Urgent call! Call the ground command, the monitoring shows that the Martian atmospheric data is abnormal, and a Martian storm is suspected! As soon as possible, please...Ah!"

...

"I ... finally ... returned to earth ..."

...

"Where is my daughter?! Where is my daughter?! My wife, my parents, my comrades-in-arms ... where is my home, can you tell me where my home is?!"

...

"Pick up your weapons, only cowards will try to escape the fight."

...

Tan Yiming's fingertips were pressed close to his pants, and his whole body was stretched like an iron plate. He stared at the screen in front of him closely, and followed the Chinese astronaut on the screen to act out the last role.

In the picture, the image drawn by CG was very lifelike. He looked rough, with resolute edges and corners, and a pair of dark eyes.

Who said that a "two-dimensional" role was false?

They were born in the writer's document, and formed a skeleton of words; they became plump under the painter's pen, and began to have differing physiques; eventually, the voice actors injected souls for them, weeping for them, and screaming and laughing for them.

With just ten minutes of the audition, Tan Yiming sweated like rain. Voice acting was a complete physical exercise. When he shouted just now, Tan Yiming screamed with all his strength, and even the veins on both sides of his temples jumped up.

He finished the Chinese and English dubbing with full emotion. When the last syllable was over, he stood stunned in front of the canvas, still immersed in the drama just now and unable to extricate himself.

He didn't know how the dubbing effects of the other people were, but he was very satisfied with his own performance.

He had reached his limit. He had tried his best to fly high and touch his moon.

He exhaled a deep breath and was about to take off the device, when suddenly, a sound came from the headset.

"Wait a minute, No. 11, there is another question you need to answer." It was still the recording assistant who spoke.

Tan Yiming didn't know that the little man with the assistant badge was the real boss of this audition.

He was an audio designer for the "q" project team. The audio department was a magical place. Sound effects, soundtracks, and dubbing were all covered there. Whether it was background sounds or motion effects, all the sounds that could be heard in the game came from here.

The audio designer emerged on a whim, and wanted to come to the audition scene of the voice actors, without revealing to the candidates his true identity.

The background of "q" was set in the future, where the earth was invaded by evil alien creatures, and the civilization history of human beings had been destroyed for thousands of years, with the rapid development of science and technology ... This was a cyberpunk game with the setting of a wasteland, full of tension.

Five of the six protagonists in the game were cyborgs. They pieced together and modified parts of their limbs with machinery. Only Wang Qiang from China was an ordinary human (who had been exposed to harmful cosmic radiation).

The audio designer of "q" wanted to find a voice that was one with the joy and sorrow of human emotions; a voice that portrayed that he alone bore the loneliness that spanned time, a voice that at the same time held hope for the future.

He had heard the first ten people's auditions, but none encompassed all of the above.

Some people had poor English proficiency, and they couldn’t clearly enunciate the words; some people had too much variance in English and Chinese voices, and they didn’t sound like the same person ... Some people were all round good, but there was still something missing.

After everyone's audition, he would ask them the same question—"Do you think that after Wang Qiang returned from Mars, and he saw that his family on Earth had died, he regretted his decision to go to Mars?"

This issue was also at the core of the game plot designers’ discussions.

Wang Qiang drifted alone in the universe for so many years. He almost died several times, accidentally came across a black hole, and arrived at the devastated Earth a hundred years later. At this time, there were no one he knew and loved left for him.

Had he ever regretted it?

Someone replied, "He doesn’t regret it. He is a soldier and an astronaut. It is great to execute orders to board Mars."

Someone replied, "He regrets. The person he loves has disappeared into the torrent of time, his home is gone, and his life is meaningless."

Now, the audio designer would like to hear Yiming's answer.

According to the comprehensive score of the audition, Tan Yiming's lines fit well, and his emotional grasp was in place, at least ranking in the top three. The only drawback was that there was little work experience.

Tan Yiming didn't know that his resume had been scanned three times by others. He bowed his head and pondered the question, and the lyrics his little swan had sang suddenly jumped into his mind.

He blurted out, "He doesn't regret it."

"Why?"

"Because some moths are born to fight fire." Tan Yiming's ears seemed to ring with the singing of the boy.

"...?" The designer was a little surprised. "Explain."

Tan Yiming settled down, with almost no need for time to think, the answer was on his lips. "Before, the astronaut Wang Qiang was a fighter pilot, and his every flight was actually full of danger. I think that he can choose this job, not mainly because he is a soldier, but because he loves the blue sky and the feeling of flying. When he performs the landing mission on Mars, he definitely understands how dangerous this trip can be. But it is like the moth fluttering towards the fire, even if it knows that the light will kill itself, but they can't control it, pouncing on the light ... I think Wang Qiang's love for flying is like this."

Tan Yiming continued: "He already planned for the worst, that is, if he self-sacrifices, his loved ones will bear the pain of losing him. But now the situation is reversed, he is still alive, and his loved ones left ... So he never regrets flying to Mars, only regretting that he did not see his loved ones before they died. "

"... It's an interesting point."

The audio designer with the assistant's badge was lost in thought, and turned the pen flexibly in his five fingers.

This game was still under development. Not only had the voice actors not been finalized, but the soundtrack had not been completed. His main job was to compose music. He was going to write a character song for each part, and the answer of the 11th candidate had greatly inspired him.

Originally, he wanted to use the C key to show the calmness and maturity of the astronauts. Now thinking about it, in fact, the exhilarating and ascending F-sharp key was also a very good choice ...

Seeing that the "little assistant" who had questioned him was lost in contemplation, Tan Yiming hurriedly asked, "May I leave?"

"Go, go, the door is over there, you can go!" The audio designer could not sit still for a long time. He jumped up from his seat, not able to wait to rush back to his office now, to pull out a staff and write some great bars of music.

Tan Yiming was "blasted" away.

He thought that the assistant was really rude.

...

Tan Yiming walked along the corridor. In the atrium, the other ten candidates were gathered together in pairs, exchanging the experiences of their audition.

After seeing Tan Yiming finally come out, everyone's eyes fell on him at the same time.

However, Tan Yiming's expression was calm, leaving them unable to predict whether his audition result was good or bad.

Tan Yiming casually found a seat, took out his mobile phone, and clicked on QQ.

His face was silent, but his fingers flew on the keyboard.

Yiming Qingyun: @Little Swan

Yiming Qingyun: @Cai Cai

Yiming Qingyun: @guess

Yiming Qingyun: Come out soon, let me thank you.

guess: ...?

guess: God, have you finished auditioning so soon?

guess: [meng goose shy].jpg

guess: What in the world are you thanking me for?

Tan Yiming squeezed his lips together tightly, and he tried not to expose the slightest pride in front of other rivals.

Yiming Qingyun: Thank you for letting me experience the joy of [Talking casually with classmates before entering the college entrance examination. Turns out that the last important question is actually chatting knowledge points] :)

guess: ...

guess: [black swan question mark face].jpg

***

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