Together Forever

Chapter 4.1

Those Beautiful, Little Things

To her surprise, Gu Pingsheng's experience as master of ceremonies was much better than what he had described of himself. After several rehearsals, they had already developed a good rapport with each other. On the day of the official dress rehearsal, Tong Yan and Gu Pingsheng were sitting in the waiting room backstage, and from outside their door, all sorts of cries and squeals of "Where's my costume?" "Where's my prop?" or similar were echoing up continuously. Her script in hand, she could not hold back her giggles.

Suddenly, someone charged in in a state of panic, then paused in surprise before immediately uttering sorry over and over again and hastily retreating from the room.

Both of them found this humorous and exchanged a look.

The assistant stage manager soon arrived to notify these two masters of ceremonies that the dress rehearsal was beginning.

The two of them walked onto the backstage area to stand just behind the huge curtain. Peeking out at the two or three rows of leaders and executives of the university, Tong Yan all of a sudden grew anxious.

Her heart was beating more and more rapidly, and her palms were starting to heat up... She instinctively glanced over at Gu Pingsheng. In that dim lighting, he seemed to detect her abnormal behaviour and lowered his head to gaze at her. "Nervous?"

Tong Yan nodded. So humiliating. All that talk about her being "very experienced" and that she could assist and support Gu Pingsheng in this. Why, then, was she nervous with just the first formal dress rehearsal?

Hearing the opening music begin to play, she took a deep breath. Not nervous, not nervous at all. It's just twenty or more executives of the school, right? She silently recited to herself the mental trick that worked every time: The audience members are all just a bunch of big winter melons. Just winter melons that only know how to grin at you... Suddenly, someone squeezed her hand. Not too light, nor too heavy but with just the perfect firmness.

A warm palm. A familiar feeling... She did not dare even to breathe, let alone turn to look at him.

The music in her ear had lowered slightly in volume, and soon, the hold on her hand loosened. Gu Pingsheng's voice was heard saying, "It's alright. You still have me. If you forget your lines, just look at me."

In the previous few informal rehearsals, she had established a system and understanding with him. Each time he was required to speak, she would look at him in advance while she finished saying her last couple of sentences to allow him to pick up his lines and continue.

"Tong Yan," Zhou Qingchen addressed her from within her in-ear monitor. "Go."

She immediately recovered herself. In this particular event, as master of ceremonies, she was required to be even more careful and attentive as all the programs and performances had to go through her to communicate with both the masters of ceremonies. If she made any mistake, Gu Pingsheng would not even have a chance to help her fix or cover up for it...

As a result of this pressure on her, Tong Yan's performance was completely off during this official dress rehearsal.

Every time she looked over helplessly at Gu Pingsheng, she would see an obvious smile on his face before he quickly covered up for her mistake. His voice sounded as if he had had professional training before, for what echoed out from the microphone was completely different from his voice normally when he was carrying out class lectures. It was very clean and somewhat low.

It was like pure and refreshingly sweet spring water.

Great Beauty Gu's performance was simply too good and served even more to emphasize how terrible hers was.