Pet King

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio  Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

In order to ensure the accuracy of the recording, Zhang Zian did not simply use his phone to record, but instead took the underwater pickup device, held up the receiving end of the device, and pointed it at Sihwa.

“Are you ready?” he asked. “When you’re ready, I will start recording.”

Sihwa was a little nervous facing such a strange instrument.

“Don’t be afraid. Just think of it as an oversized microphone. Haven’t you seen the other network anchors broadcast while using a microphone? It’s basically the same kind of thing,” Zhang Zian encouraged her.

Sihwa nodded. She had seen the other anchors using a seemingly professional microphone, and she had wanted to ask Zhang Zian for one. She was already in too much debt, though, so she felt like she couldn’t bring it up.

She relaxed a little, looked at Zian, opened her mouth, and sang slowly into the microphone.

Although she was singing, Zhang Zian couldn’t hear what she was singing. He could only see her mouth moving at a very slow speed. He didn’t even notice when she stopped.

“Wait… wait, I made a mistake. Can we start over?” she asked, embarrassed.

Zhang Zian was a step slow in reacting. “Yes, it doesn’t matter. You can sing however you want. I’ll just edit it later and save the part that’s correct.”

Sihwa nodded and began her soundless singing again. She was very focused, her looks unparalleled, and if she wasn’t singing a soundless whale song but a popular song, she could probably decimate all the other female network anchors in a split second.

Zhang Zian had been pointing the microphone of the device at Sihwa the whole time and he felt like a sound recording artist. From time to time, he would glance over at the small LCD screen of the instrument, and the screen showed a soft undulation of waves. But because he was too bored, he took the long end of the microphone and held it under his arm. He then gently put on the matching monitor headphones to isolate all the noises around him.

The sound that had been modulated by the device in real time made its way into his ears. He closed his eyes and listened.

Wu——Wu—— The sound had a rhythm like that of Scottish bagpipes, occasionally accompanied by brisk drum beats. An image of a shepherd girl guiding a flock of sheep on the endless grassland as a huge shepherd dog ran happily by her side, barking as it rushed the sheep that were falling behind back to the team, popped into his mind.

Enveloped in the whale song, Zian could hardly feel the passage of time until the sound had stopped completely. He opened his eyes and locked eyes with Sihwa, who had already finished singing.

“How… how is it?” she asked nervously. “Was there anything wrong?”

Even if she had asked Zhang Zian for his opinion, he couldn’t answer. But judging by his subjective feelings, Sihwa’s song seemed to be more melodious than the song of 52 Hertz. The former was like a bagpipe, while the latter was like a whistle…

Was it different because of their sizes? Or their gender?

He hesitated to point out the difference, but after thinking about it, he decided not to say it. If he could hear it, then Sihwa was surely able to hear it too.

As the saying went, ‘Never doubt the person you hire, and never hire the person you doubt.’ In addition, no one except Sihwa knew best about the whale language, so in that case, he chose to believe her.

“I think that it’s very good.” He smiled. “Well, I’ll go ahead and edit it. It’s the final portion right?”

“Yes!” Sihwa nodded hard and looked more relaxed now.

Pi was still racking its brain to think of a way to get out of playing hide-and-seek, so Zhang Zian took the opportunity to connect the instrument to the computer and start the sound analysis software. Messy waveforms popped up on the screen like a collection of mountains.

Although the surroundings seemed to be very quiet, like there was no noise at all, the sensitive device had still recorded a lot of sounds that the human ear couldn’t pick up or hear clearly.

Zian clicked on one of the curves at random, then he heard the voices of a couple whispering from the headphones––the customers downstairs. The male partner said that they were financially tight at the moment, and asked if they could purchase a pet in a few months. The female partner whispered to the male partner in a very low, but coquettish voice, saying she wanted to buy the cute kitten now.

Clicking on another curve, he heard a rustling sound. Initially, he thought it was the sound of the wind blowing the leaves outside the window, but he soon realized that it was actually the sound of the friction between Lu Yiyun’s pressure-sensitive pen and the drawing tablet.

Even the whirring sound of the fridge next door could be heard clearly. Terrifying…

Thinking about it, if Zian were to start the recording at night, it would probably be possible to record some sounds that shouldn’t be recorded… Zhang Zian shook his head and dispelled all the unrealistic thoughts from his mind, re-focusing his mind on the things at hand.

Because of his previous experience, he was familiar with the program. He first filtered out all the high-frequency sound waves that were obviously inconsistent, and then picked out the correct sound wave from the many waveforms according to the time he had recorded earlier.

He listened to it, and he could hear Sihwa’s song again in the earphones. He didn’t make a wrong selection. He extracted the correct portion of the audio file and imported it into the memory card.

“Pi, you don’t have to hide. Even if we’re playing hide and seek, it won’t be right now. You have to wait for Famous to have time, then we’ll surprise it.” He raised the memory card in his hand and said, “Go on and continue writing. I’m heading out, but I should be back before noon.”

“Zhi Zhi.” Pi breathed a sigh of relief and quickly jumped onto the chair to continue its novel. At least it didn’t need to participate in the terrifying game of hide and seek now.

Galaxy probably already knew that they wouldn’t be playing hide-and-seek for the time being, so it didn’t wait foolishly for it. It had already disappeared downstairs to chase the Abyssinian cats.

Zhang Zian carried the underwater speaker on his shoulder and walked to the stairway. He was about to go downstairs when he suddenly heard Sihwa’s voice coming from the bathroom.

“Aza…”

He thought that Sihwa was calling him. After all, she had always called him “A-jeoan” or “Ajeo-an.” The pronunciation was very similar to this, so he stopped.

“Fighting!” However, Sihwa said an English word.

Zhang Zian remained in the same place in a blur, and only after a few seconds did he realize that what she had said was actually, “Aza fighting!”

It was a phrase that often appeared in Korean dramas. It wasn’t purely English, but was considered a combination of half-Korean language and half-English language. Fighting, of course, meant, “You can do it” or “Buck up,” and aza was just a modal particle.

But Sihwa had added a nasally sound to the end of “a,” which made it sound like “azan.” For someone who was sensitive to her language and pronunciation, she wouldn’t have made such a low-level mistake, which indicated that it was intentional.

The pronunciation sounded more like “a-zi-an” than “a-ze-an.”

Zian recalled the time he had met Sihwa on the beach in Germany. When he introduced his name to her, she held her chin and said that she liked the name “Zian.” Did she plan on nicknaming him “Azi’an?”

She was saying, “Azian, you can do it!” It was just that she was too shy, so she was using that to cover it up. That part of her seemed like she had been influenced by Fina.

Although he couldn’t see her from the stairway, Zhang Zian still gave a thumbs up in the direction of the bathtub across the wall. He smiled and responded, “Fighting!”

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