Chapter 1 (1/2)

Chapter 1: Summer Tea 1.1

It was a scorching summer day.

Xia Liang looked at the burning sun outside. It was only 8 am in the morning. She reluctantly glanced at the air condition at home, then gritted her teeth and shut the door.

Xia Liang, Xia Liang. She silently repeated her own name twice, then indignantly looked at the s.h.i.+ning sun. Why couldn’t summer be cooler just like her name?[1] Summer was really disgusting.

She took two subway lines to reach her workplace. Xia Liang blew out a long breath.

New Sound.

This was the recording studio she was currently working for. It was said that the owner was a professional voice actor. She had just finished her freshman year in college abroad and returned home for summer break in May. Her family insisted that she should “make good use of the 3 months summer break” and forced her to look for a job. She had looked around for interns.h.i.+ps in recording studios since she was a minor internet voice character. Maybe she could meet some voice character idols during her interns.h.i.+p. Luckily she was hired by this New Sound Recording Studio as a receptionist for the summer.

But reality did not always go as expected Though Xia Liang loved voice acting with great enthusiasm, a receptionist was just a receptionist. Even though her daily work was easy going, the original pa.s.sion she had started with was diminis.h.i.+ng little by little. Umm, a little bit, only a little bit. Xia Liang told herself that she was still pa.s.sionate about voice acting. It’s just whenever she saw those not so famous voice actors who perspired during recording sessions inside the soundproof studio without any air conditioning, she would quietly clench her fists --- --- it’s better to just be a voice over on the internet.

After a month had pa.s.sed aimlessly, Xia Liang hopelessly realized --- ---though there had been some good voices, her dream of meeting a handful of idols by chance hadn’t come true at all. Ah…… Xia Liang dispiritedly leaned on the small table in the break room of the studio. Her face pasted to the icy cold gla.s.s desktop. She was surfing Weibo out of boredom while thinking about the critique she received yesterday from the director of a radio drama about her voice acting in it.

【Most parts are fine. But where was your shyness when the male character was confessing to the female character, ah? ah? ah? I dare you to fake it even more?! Get on YY tomorrow night at 8PM to rehea.r.s.e!】

Xia Liang plumped up her cheeks. Umm, usually she’s pretty good at acting her part most of the time. But whenever there’s a love scene, she would always be criticized by the director as too fake and too stiff……Xia Liang was helpless. It’s not her fault that she had never fallen in love before.

Somebody knocked the desk twice. Xia Liang promptly jumped up from her seat, “Zhao Ge.”[2]

Zhao Ge was one of the recording engineers at New Sound Studio. He’s around mid-thirty. It was said that he was a professional voice actor before. But he had overused his voice and developed some problem with his vocal cord. He had to quit voice acting and switched to working behind the scene—however even voice acting itself could not be counted as being at the front of the scene.