Voice

Chapter 1. One Million Hits

Shout out toAnythingCanFALL for the amazing cover! Without it, I wouldn't have been able to publish the book at all! Do check out her works! They're amazing too :)

Ylona

"Another faceless video?" My sister, Onika, says from behind me.

I was sprawled across my bed, editing another one of my covers. She didn't understand why my videos don't show my face.

I want it to be that way. If people see my face, no one would dare to watch my videos seeing how horrendous I look on cam. Besides, I hate the spiteful comments.

This way, no one would judge me by my looks and only give comments about my voice. They can give costructive criticism like I didn't reach the note properly or I was off key, and I'd take it knowing that they were right. It helps me improve my voice.

But if they see my face, they could comment something bad and I can't do anything about my face! I'm stuck with it for goodness sakes!

"Yup." I say popping the 'p'. Onika knew better than to lecture me about showing my face in the video.

We've had that conversation for like a million times already.

I was finally done editing and decided that the video looks decent enough to be uploaded. I didn't make mistakes and I think I sounded good. Well, hopefully.

My youtube channel has like only 100 subscribers but it's fine. I'm okay with that. Besides, I'm not really aiming for fame, I just wanna sing.

This is also one of the reasons why I don't show my face. I only want people to hear my voice. It's my passion.

I uploaded a few videos before and I didn't expect that it'd receive good feedback. Since then people have been asking me to upload more vids and that's what started everything.

"How long are you gonna keep up the Mysterious Girl Voice facade?" She asks as she sits down beside me on the bed.

"Probably forever. No one wants to see my face Oni. I'm not telegenic or whatever you can call it." I say rolling my eyes.

"You look beautiful Li. Have you seen our photos together? I look like a zombie compared to you." She chuckles. "You never have faith in yourself." She shakes her head slowly.

"You? Look like a zombie compared to me? Too much flattery coming from a model." I answer her biting back a smirk.

Onika is a model at some small, but nonetheless growing, agency. She has a body like a goddess, and a face perfect for catalogue. She's blessed with the confidence and the determination. As for me, let's say that I prefer to be at home, making music, watching Netflix.

We live separately from our parents seeing as we're already graduates. Also we're trying this thing called independence. Amazing right? For me it is. But Onika got it hard on her. She does all the work and makes the money. She pays for this apartment we're currently living in and pays the bills. She's like the father and I'm the mother. Oh, wait. More like the maid. I do the laundry, the dishes, makes dinner, and basically every household chores. I don't have a problem with it though, considering that I don't have a proper job. I'm more than happy to do it for her.

"You do know you could make it big in the music industry right?" She says as she watches the video for herself.

It was a cover of Love Yourself by Justin Bieber. "Your voice is heavenly. I could just listen to it all day." She sighs.

"Were you reading a comment or are you saying that on your own accord?" I say chuckling a little.

"I was gonna say I was saying it on my own but someone beat me to it and commented the exact words that came out of my mouth. Look." She says pointing at the screen, and indeed, someone did comment the same words.