128: Chapter 133 Who is Rachel?

The leftover turkey from Thanksgiving had been in the fridge for two days. After Chen Mo had eaten three turkey sandwiches, he finally gnawed the last turkey leg bone clean.

The sun in Los Angeles at the end of November was still wonderful, leaking through the blinds of the recording studio and painting golden stripes across the mixing console.

He watered the pothos again; its leaves were shiny and bright, hanging down from the bay window, the longest vine nearly reaching the floor.

Scott sent a message on the morning of the 27th with only a few words: "The Grammy Awards nominations will be announced in early December. The list of performers will be warmed up before that, and your name is on it."

It wasn't Chen Mo's first time performing at the Grammy Awards, but this time, he would finally be able to win.

After reading it, Chen Mo placed his phone face down on the mixing console and continued playing the piano solo.

He had been playing this solo repeatedly for several days; it was a mashup of "Flowers" and "Closer."

The performance segment for the Grammy Awards required a brand-new arrangement that mashed these two songs together, connected by a piano solo in the middle.

There was a significant modulation between the two keys; cutting directly was too abrupt, while using a bridge to transition was too sluggish.

Chen Mo had tried several modulation schemes. Raising the key directly was too steep, using a B-flat as a transition chord was too routine, and inserting an A-flat major 7th chord caused the emotional flow to break.

Evan sat in front of the mixing console with his monitoring headphones hanging around his neck, holding a cup of cold coffee in his hand.

Evan was David's apprentice. He had been listening from the side for nearly an hour without saying a word.

Chen Mo's fingers traced the same melodic line on the keys, each time different from the last. The third pass was half a degree lighter than the second...

On the seventh pass, he paused for an instant on a certain note—a pause so slight it was almost imperceptible—but Evan knew it shouldn't have stopped there.

"You've already got it."

"It's not good enough yet." Chen Mo's fingers didn't stop.

He wasn't sure if the way he was connecting them was wrong, or if these two songs shouldn't have been mashed together in the first place.

Putting them in the same performance was more of a narrative problem; he had to find a way for them to coexist.

When Scott pushed the door open, Chen Mo happened to be finishing his countless-th pass.

He took off his coat, draped it over the sofa, and sat down next to Evan.

Chen Mo played it again.

After Scott listened, he didn't say whether it was good or bad. He simply leaned back against the chair, crossed his arms over his abdomen, and kept listening.

By the eleventh pass, Scott closed his eyes.

By the seventeenth pass, Evan took off his monitoring headphones, placed them on the mixing console, and rubbed his earlobes.

Scott's eyes remained closed, his breathing steady, as if he were asleep.

By the thirty-something pass, Scott suddenly spoke: "By the forty-something pass, it should be fine."

His eyes didn't open, and his tone was flat, but his words were certain.

Chen Mo didn't answer; he played the forty-something pass.

There was a window of space between letting go and approaching. This space shouldn't be filled, but rather allowed to exist.

As the last note fell, his fingers lifted from the keys and hovered in mid-air, and then he glanced at Scott.

Scott nodded.

"The pauses you made before were all longer than this. This time, it was just right." Evan put his monitoring headphones back on and rewound the recording waveform. "This is the moment of meditation you were looking for."

On the 29th, the official Grammy Awards account posted the first list of performers on Twitter.

The accompanying image was a side profile of Chen Mo playing the piano at last year's Grammy Awards, the lighting gilding his silhouette. In the bottom right corner was the silhouette of a Grammy gramophone trophy and a line of text—"Chen Mo performs at the 58th Grammy Awards."

When the news came out, Chen Mo was in the recording studio recording the unplugged version of his vocals.

His phone screen lit up and went dark, then lit up again. The notification bar next to the mixing console was scrolling so fast that the avatars were impossible to see.

His Instagram follower count increased by five million within twenty-four hours. The comment section was flooded with "Congratulations" in various languages—Chinese, English, Spanish, Korean, Arabic. Someone had written a long cheer in Japanese, which received over a hundred thousand likes.

Chen Mo scrolled through the screen a few times but didn't forward any of the messages. He sent a WeChat message to his mother: "Mom, I'm really going to receive an award at the Grammy Awards this time."

Xiuying replied with a voice message.

In the background, Chen Jianguo was shouting in the living room: "Turn on the speaker! Speaker! I can't hear!"

Xiuying's voice exploded from the phone speaker. Even from half a world away, one could hear the tremor in her throat: "Ah—!"

Chen Jianguo's voice squeezed into the microphone next, likely having crowded next to Xiuying's phone. His volume was so loud it was as if he were singing a folk song into a microphone.

"Is the Grammy Awards that biggest award?! Your second uncle just called and said he saw it! Your cousin posted it on his Moments!"

Then came the sound of Xiuying pushing Chen Jianguo away, the sound of slippers rapidly scuffing on the floor, and the tail end of Lao Deng shouting in the distance: "You tell him—wear that white one!"

Chen Mo listened to this voice message three times, focusing on something different each time.

The first time, he listened to Xiuying's scream; the second time, he listened to Chen Jianguo rushing to shout about wearing the white one; the third time, he noticed the potted pothos on the windowsill in the background was still in the same place, its leaves more lush than last year.

He placed his phone on the mixing console, leaned back against the chair, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly, and pressed pause.

The next morning, Chen Mo accepted a small, exclusive interview with the Grammy Awards officials in the recording studio, which would be released in batches as pre-announcement material before the nominations were revealed.

The Grammy Awards interview team only sent two people: a journalist and a photographer.

The journalist was named Max, in his forties, wearing a dark blue shirt. He had no outline in his hand, only a voice recorder.

After setting up the equipment, the photographer retreated to a corner and didn't make a sound the entire time.

Max placed the voice recorder on the mixing console. The keyboard next to it was still lit up from the string arrangement he had been editing deep into the night; the project file wasn't closed, and the screensaver hadn't triggered yet.

"Are you nervous?"

"Not nervous, excited." Chen Mo leaned back against the swivel chair, his fingers resting on his knees, revealing a calm, gentle smile.

"Nervousness comes from not knowing what you have to face. I know what I have to face. There are tens of millions of people waiting with me. What I'm doing now is the same thing I do every day: playing the piano, singing."

"And if you don't win?"

"Then I'll come back next year." He didn't hesitate, shrugged his hands, and said, his eyes devoid of that tense feeling of fear or loss.

"The Grammy Awards isn't the finish line. I've said it before: the finish line is that there is no finish line. Winning an award is others telling you that the direction you're walking in is correct, but you can't rely on others to tell you the direction to create things. If you don't win, you just keep walking and try a different direction next year."

Max pushed the voice recorder forward and asked: "Which award do you want to win the most?"

"Best New Artist." Chen Mo tapped his knee lightly and said honestly.

"Because you can only win it once in a lifetime. Other awards—Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year—if you don't get them this year, you still have next year. If you don't get them next year, you still have the year after."

"Best New Artist only has one chance. You appear in that year; after that year passes, you're no longer a new artist."

"It isn't a summary of your career; it's proof of your beginning. What I want most isn't to prove where I've arrived, but to prove where I started."

Max was silent for a moment, then asked an unexpected question.

"Who will you bring to the Grammy Awards?"

Chen Mo's fingers stopped on his knees. He thought for a moment and said: "My mom. The Grammy Awards is a huge stage, and she has always supported me, but her health isn't good, so she can't come."

"Anyone else?"

"Then I'll take Rachel," Chen Mo thought of something and suddenly said with a smile, "Rachel."

Max raised an eyebrow, seemingly having discovered a big piece of news, and asked: "Who is Rachel?"

Chen Mo crossed his hands and said: "If she's willing to come that day, I will bring her."

The expression on Chen Mo's face was calm, even carrying a hint of mischief after a successful prank.

Max wanted to ask something, but didn't. He turned off the voice recorder, said thank you to Chen Mo, and got up to pack the equipment with the photographer.

Before leaving, he looked back and said: "You said earlier that Best New Artist can only be won once in a lifetime. Among the nominated artists I've interviewed, you're the first person who explained clearly why this award is important."

Chen Mo shrugged slightly and said: "They all know; they just lack a bit of honesty."

The cameras were withdrawn, the interview team left, and the recording studio became quiet again.

Chen Mo put the coffee cup on the mixing console into the kitchen sink, moved the potted pothos from the bay window to the side of the mixing console, and then sat back in the swivel chair.

Outside the window, the Los Angeles sun was setting, and the shadows of the palm trees moved slowly across the blinds.

This interview was placed in the penultimate segment of the Grammy Awards promotional material, and then the internet exploded again.

#WhoIsRachel reached the top of the US trending topics on Twitter at lightning speed and simultaneously trended in over a hundred countries.

@BB: "WHAT?! Chen Mo has a girlfriend?! And her name is Rachel?! What did I miss?! Who is that Rachel? Is she Selena's best friend? Waiting online, urgent!"

@TaylorSwift: "Calm analysis: Rachel can't be Taylor. Could it be some up-and-coming producer? Or maybe a former classmate of his?"

@PopC: Chen Mo revealed he wants to bring "Rachel" to the Grammy Awards. The whole internet is wildly guessing her identity; some say it's his sister, some say it's a mysterious girlfriend.

Weibo in China also exploded instantly.

#ChenMoRachel (Explosive) #ChenMoMysteriousGirlfriend (Hot)

@GossipBattle: "Holy crap! Earth-shattering news! Chen Mo publicly shows love to 'Rachel'! The name sounds like a Chinese girl! Could it be his first love back in Changsha? Or a senior from when he was studying at the University of Southern California? This secrecy is too well done!"

@OnlyFansWillNeverAdmitDefeat: "Stop guessing randomly! Chen Mo is so busy, when would he have time to date? It must be a partner in the industry! Maybe a violinist or a backing vocalist! Everyone, be rational!"

@ChenMoNationalFanClub: "Please stop with the baseless speculation. We will protect Chen Mo's private life. If it's true, he will announce it. If not, then you're all overthinking."

Public opinion was completely out of control.

Scott went to the apartment in a rage, then ran to Pasadena, and finally looked at the cat on the carpet with a calm face.

"She is Rachel?"

Chen Mo spread his hands: "Obviously."

The cat was curled into a ball, sleeping soundly. Hearing someone call its name, it just lazily flicked its ears without even opening its eyes.

"Rachel, you're famous." Martha reached out and scratched the cat's chin. "That stinky boy sold you for a good price, and now the whole world is looking for you."

George laughed heartily: "Martha, look at Chen Mo's expression. He has that little bit of mischief and just can't hold it in."

"I have to sew her a dress." Martha was impulsive and immediately went to get a needle and thread.

The internet's guesses about "Rachel" had reached an absurd extreme. Someone even dug up a photo of him with a female fan on the streets of Changsha from three years ago and insisted that was Rachel.

Chen Mo opened Instagram and asked Scott to take a photo of them.

In the photo, the calico cat was in Chen Mo's arms, their faces pressed together. The caption read: "My Rachel. She doesn't talk much, but she stays. #Grammys #CatLover"

One minute later.

Bieber commented below: LOL, I thought you were dating! Also, about the collaboration we talked about last time, have you decided yet?

Chen Mo replied: Sending it to you in a bit.

Taylor commented: Wow, she's so cute, better looking than any of us. No wonder you can't get her out of your mind.

Ed reposted it with a picture [Chen Mo holding the cat]: Knew his heart was bad. [Eye roll]

Shawn posted a string of sweating emojis: Bro, you scared me.

Charlie [Rolling eyes]: I knew it was her. I've seen this Rachel before.

The whole internet: ... So we were the joke all along.

Chen Mo put his phone down, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.

Scott said speechlessly: "You kid, you're too bad."

"Just tell me if it created a buzz."