Chapter Thirty-two: The Album's Debut

  Ji Xin'an's classmates are mostly only children, and they rarely have the opportunity to go out and play with their peers, let alone experience an outdoor picnic like this. They all had a great time and were reluctant to leave in the evening, shouting for Zou Ze to organize more events like this in the future.

  Back in school for less than two days, Yu Yao stood dazedly in front of the big ranking board. This time, she finally got back to first place, but it didn't make her happy because after searching through the entire list, she couldn't find Ji Xin An and Zou Ze, which made her feel uneasy.

  "Yao Yao, what's wrong? Didn't you do well on the exam?" Shilin came over to look at her and asked with some concern.

  "No, it's a good test." Yu Yao said lightly.

  Just as the two of them finished speaking, they heard an exclamation from the other side. "Hey, is this Ji Xin'an not the Ji Xin'an who sang in the first grade? How did he get ranked on the big board for second grade?"

  "It's really great, such good grades, didn't they make a mistake?"

  Yu Yao immediately turned around and looked in the other direction, her eyes landed on Ji Xin'an who was ranked tenth. Her instincts then led her to look further back, finding Zou Ze at around thirtieth place, which made her feel even more uneasy inside.

  "Come on, let's go back." He pulled Shilin and went back to class.

  The two returned to class and did not see the person they wanted to meet, because Ji Xin'an and Zou Ze were sitting in the principal's office at this time.

  "I didn't expect that you two sing well and study well, I really didn't think your grades would be so high." Principal Wang said with a tone of surprise while holding the report card.

  "Principal Wang, so there's no problem with skipping grades now, right?" Ji Xin'an straightened her back and sat up on the sofa.

  "No problem, no problem. You can go find the head of the sophomore class and have him assign you to a class." Principal Wang readily agreed, his eyes almost disappearing from smiling.

  After leaving the principal's office, the two went directly to find the grade director, wanting to get things done first. But as soon as they went downstairs, they ran into Yu Yao, who had not found them in the classroom and came out again.

  Yu Yao saw them coming down together and immediately asked in a tone of uncertainty, "Why aren't you two going back to class? Roll call is about to start."

  "We still have something to do, let's not go back to class yet." Zou Ze didn't think much of it and was about to leave with Ji Xin'an.

  "Wait." Yu Yao saw the two were about to leave and hastily called out to stop them.

  "What's wrong?" The two of them stopped and turned back to look at her.

  "You... it seems like your grades were written in the wrong place and were ranked on the sophomore's big list, are you going to ask about it?" Yu Yao stopped the two of them, but didn't know how to ask, so after thinking for a moment, she just said that.

  Zou Ze didn't expect her to see it so quickly, and was momentarily speechless. Ji Xin'an saw that he couldn't say anything, so she spoke up. "That... wasn't wrong, we are taking the sophomore exam."

  "Why?" Yu Yao's heart skipped a beat as she heard her words, and the unease from within reappeared.

  "It's like this, I applied to the school for skipping grades, and then the principal let us take the final exam of junior high school," Ji Xin'an glanced at Zou Ze who didn't speak.

  "Skipping grades? Zou Ze you too? Why didn't we know about it." Yu Yao was shocked upon hearing this, and her heart suddenly panicked.

  "Because things hadn't been settled at that time, I didn't want to disturb everyone with uncertain matters." Zou Ze couldn't help but speak up.

  "Has it been approved already? Did your parents agree too?" Yu Yao suddenly remembered that she had never heard his family members mention this matter before.

  "This is my own business, but I will tell them." Zou Ze's expression was somewhat unnatural when he mentioned his family.

  "Uh, if there's nothing else, we'll take our leave first, still have to report!" Ji Xin'an saw that her face didn't look too good, but he himself didn't know what to say, so he made an excuse to leave first.

  After the two left, Yu Yao's face looked unpleasant, "Yao Yao, are you okay?"

  "I'm fine, let's go back to class, attendance will be taken soon." Yu Yao forced herself to cheer up.

  Ji Xin'an and Zou Ze's album was released in June, but the company adopted a special approach. At first, only two songs' choruses were broadcast on radio and TV, attracting everyone's attention. When people went to music stores to look for it, they couldn't find it. Then, their album was fully stocked on shelves.

  When Ji Xin'an had just been on holiday, he finally heard his own voice at the entrance of an audio store near his home. Ji Xin'an originally planned to go in and buy a CD or cassette tape, but unexpectedly found that it was pirated. Only then did he realize that the piracy industry had developed so well since the 1990s.

  This matter didn't weigh heavily on Ji Xin An's mind, which is understandable. After all these years of listening to music, she hadn't bought many authentic albums herself. Given that people's incomes are so low nowadays, it's no wonder that a few bucks for pirated copies would be the first choice for most people.

  Ji Xin'an thought that since the album was out, Song Jiangliang should be looking for them soon. Sure enough, a few days later, Song Jiangliang found her at the company.

  She and Zou Ze arrived at the company, and the front desk told them that Song Jiangliang was waiting in the conference room. Ji Xin'an was still puzzled, wondering why he had gone to the conference room.

  They walked in and finally understood why, the conference room was almost full, all of them were bags or scattered letters and packages.

  "What's going on here?" Ji Xin'an stood at the door, wanting to come in but didn't know where to start.

  "These are for you." Song Jiang was already sitting in the middle of a pile of sacks, but he had no idea how he got there.

  "Are they all ours?" Zou Ze's eyes lit up when he heard this.

  Song Jiang smiled and didn't say anything else, but he had deliberately gathered all these things together to create this scene.

  Then the two of them 'crawled' in, starting to randomly take out packages and letters to open and read. Ji Xin An discovered that the packages were all kinds of gifts, but upon carefully reading the letters, she found that most of them wanted to meet them, asking them to hold a song fan meeting or go on TV for an interview, and so on. In short, they just wanted to see their true faces.

  "You've all seen that, these are your fans, this is their heartfelt words." Song Jiang saw the plan and put down the letter, no longer looking at it, and smiled at her.

  Ji Xin'an didn't expect fans to be so crazy at this time, she thought these things could open a grocery store if taken out. "This is also an unavoidable thing, if I really meet them, I'm afraid I won't have good days in the future. Besides, they listen to our songs, not our people."

  "Zou Ze, what do you think?" Song Jiangliang was very disappointed after hearing her words. He didn't expect that Ji Xin'an could remain so calm after seeing the things he had specially prepared.

  "It's fine like this, even if I go out in the future, it will be my own turn to sing. Now, I'm already very satisfied with this." Zou Ze didn't lift his head and was still looking at the letter in his hand, he was excited but not to the point of losing his calmness.

  Ji Xin'an smiled lightly after hearing his response, "Song Ge, let's not talk about that for now. How are the album sales?"

  "You should have known when you saw these fan letters, it's great, we originally thought we overestimated you, 100,000 CDs and 100,000 tapes were issued, but now it seems that's still not enough, the factory is working overtime to rush production!" Song Jiangliang was even more excited when he mentioned this.

  "Sold out so quickly?" Ji Xin'an was also quite surprised when he heard this number, let alone Zou Ze.

  "This is still because of piracy, if there was no piracy, it could have sold more." Song Jiangliang helplessly shook his head.

  "I also saw it, I went to the audio store at my doorstep a few days ago to buy CDs, but there were no genuine ones, and the pirated ones looked quite authentic, even the covers were exactly the same." As soon as she mentioned this, Ji Xin'an smiled, she didn't think it was a headache, after all, this problem could not be avoided for many years, what could she do about it.

  "What are CDs and cassette tapes like? I've never seen them before!" Zou Ze couldn't help but feel itchy listening to the two of them chatting excitedly.

  "This you didn't mention and I almost forgot, this is for you all, but they are absolutely genuine." Song Jiangliang took a cardboard box from the table and handed it over to them.

  "Is this our album?" Zou Ze took out two CDs from the box and admired the cover.

  The names of the two were written in pencil, and a beautiful design was created with running script. Except for this, the portraits of the two were drawn using sketching techniques. If you knew them, you could tell at a glance that it was them, but there were some differences, so even people who knew them wouldn't think it was the two of them.

  "This cover design is quite beautiful, Song Ge, did you guys design it?" Zou Ze looked at the portrait of the two people. Ji Xin'an was standing there in a long dress with a hint of sadness, her long hair blown back by the wind and floating in mid-air. The pure and innocent look had a hint of allure to it, making one want to keep looking, while he himself stood beside Ji Xin'an with his hands casually inserted into his pants pockets, exuding an air of nonchalance. The entire scene was natural, clean, and beautiful.

  "This is what we designed, and An'an drew it with his own hands. We thought it was pretty good too, so we just printed it directly without any processing." Song Jiangliang didn't get angry about what had just happened, thinking that there would be plenty of opportunities in the future. He didn't believe that two teenagers could resist such temptation.

  "Ah ah, didn't expect that, you have this skill? Is there anything you can't do?" Zou Ze looked at Ji Xin'an with even more surprise.

  "Don't be so exaggerated, okay? I don't know a lot of things!" Ji Xin'an was stared at by two astonished gazes, although she didn't blush, but felt somewhat embarrassed.

  "This is actually my first album, I must treasure it and show it to my grandson in the future, tell him that this is his grandfather's first record." Zou Ze held the CD with a serious expression.

  Ji Xin'an looked at him and smiled, thinking in her heart that she had done the right thing.