Don’t even mention that although Henry Thompson was very familiar with and knowledgeable about this profession in his previous life, he didn’t have any achievements to prove his abilities from start to finish—even if he had been a successful singer or musician in his past life, in this life, he would still have to practice.

The hands from his previous life belonged to that life; if he doesn’t practice, can he guarantee that his hands in this life will be just as nimble?

The voice from his previous life was from that life; if he doesn’t practice, how would he know what characteristics his voice has in this life? What are its strengths and weaknesses?

So here’s the problem: normally, he has to attend classes, and when school is over, everyone else is off work too. He can stay up late at night, but once it’s past ten o’clock, no matter how beautiful the music is, it’s just noise to people who want to sleep!

So, practicing singing at home is definitely not an option. And besides home, he has nowhere else to go.

In the end, he set his sights on the rooftop of the school’s teaching building.

In this timeline’s China, there is a strong emphasis on innate human rights, and for students and teachers, that means strictly implementing the two-day weekend system and the major policy of reducing pressure and workload. So, even though the students in their second and third years of high school are about to face the college entrance exam—a decisive battle that will determine the direction of their lives—even so, weekends are still two days off, and there are never any self-study classes early in the morning or late at night. As the teachers say: If we keep you locked in the classroom at night, when will you have time to play or fall in love?

So, starting from Friday afternoon after school until Sunday night, during these two-plus days, the whole school is practically empty except for a few sports enthusiasts like James Carter and the former Henry Thompson who might go to the playground to play ball. In short: practicing singing here absolutely won’t disturb anyone!

In fact, Henry Thompson thought that even from Monday to Thursday afternoons, he could stay behind and practice for an hour—at most, he’d just get home a bit later and have a late dinner.

So, the next afternoon, he brought his guitar case to school.

For him now, he could skip playing ball, not bother with a girlfriend, and not rush to get a sports car, but singing—he had to practice every single day!

At 5:30 in the afternoon, the dismissal bell rang right on time.

In less than twenty minutes, the more than two thousand teachers and students in the school had all left.

Henry Thompson once again politely declined the invitation from James Carter and the others to play ball. After school, he sat in the classroom for a while, and when most people had left, he didn’t wait for the class monitor to chase people out—he just slung his guitar case over his back and headed upstairs.

……

Emily Harris had a habit of staying in the office after school to read novels for a while.

You’d think she’d have a better environment for reading at home, but she just liked staying in the office to read. She always felt that once she got home and faced that wall of bookshelves—her dad’s, her mom’s, her own, party constitutions and histories, educational works, philosophical theories, classical masterpieces, massive history tomes…—reading these kinds of novels would seem frivolous.

That’s right, she was reading online novels.

Nowadays, for most ordinary people, computers were still quite rare and expensive, let alone the internet. In 1995, there were at most one or two million internet users in the whole country, but everything that should be on the internet was already there. In fact, a site called Summer Chinese Web had already started experimenting with paid reading in the web novel community for the first time this year.

Of course, Emily Harris didn’t hesitate at all and immediately bought a premium VIP membership, with the ID: TheQueen.

Yep, it means “queen.”

She only read the women’s section of that site—things like “Domineering Female CEO,” “Iron-Blooded Queen,” “Cold-Blooded Overbearing Love,” “Scandal Alert: I’m a Star, Don’t Mess with Me,” “Queen of Another World”… all of these were her favorites.

When she got to an exciting part, her usually calm eyes would always light up with little sparks.

But she was very careful, never letting anyone see.

After school today, she still pretended to prepare lessons as usual. After the other teachers had left one by one, she finally put down her pen, took her laptop out of her bag, plugged it in, and then inserted the wireless network card.

The internet speed was as slow as ever, but as long as she was in a good mood, it didn’t matter.

As soon as the Summer Chinese Web page loaded, she instantly got excited, quickly found the novel she was halfway through—“I’m the Queen, Don’t Love Me”—and clicked it open.

But she had barely read a few words when the sound of a guitar drifted into her ears again.

This wasn’t the first time.

Yesterday afternoon, after school, when she was hiding in the office reading a novel, she had also heard guitar music coming from somewhere. Along with the guitar, there was a boy’s soft singing. But at that time, Emily Harris was so absorbed in her reading that she didn’t pay attention and just treated it as background music.

But this time, maybe because she had something on her mind or for some other reason, the guitar music from outside made her feel a bit irritated. She only managed to read half a chapter and couldn’t even get into the story’s mood before she found herself unable to keep reading.

The guitar music didn’t seem very far away, but it was just indistinct enough that she couldn’t hear it clearly—it floated over, making her heart itch, and as for the singing, she couldn’t make out a single line.

But the melody… seemed pretty good?