Chapter 112: A Date with Ogura Yuko

  "Hey~~~ what are you thinking about?!" As she gazed out at the snowy Tokyo landscape, Zhou Xiao, who had been lost in thought for a moment, was suddenly startled by the coquettish voice of a girl.

  Zhou Xiaoyi turned her head after exiting a daze-like state and saw Ogura Yuzuko, who was also leaning on the balcony railing, waving at her. The 17-year-old girl wore casual clothes, perhaps due to the weather, her nose was slightly red from the cold, looking like a tender cherry blossom.

  "It's so cold outside and you're wearing so little, are you trying to catch a cold?" Zhou Xiao asked.

  "What's the big deal! I'm perfectly fine!" Ogawa Yoko said, raising her arm in a bodybuilder pose, but that matchstick-like arm of hers looked dry and scrawny, not showing any signs of being particularly healthy.

  "How could I have missed that you're in better shape? Hurry back home!" said Zhou Xiao.

  "Really? I saw you on NHK's program yesterday, it seems like you were invited to participate in the Red and White Song Festival?" the girl asked.

  "Yes, still having to perform on stage during the New Year's holiday, how boring." Zhou Xiao said.

  "Oh no, don't go spreading this around, you'll get scolded to death. That's the Red and White Song Festival we're talking about, a stage I'll never be able to set foot on for the rest of my life." said Ogura Yuko.

  "You're not even on a singer's path, what are you doing attending the Spring Festival Gala?" said Zhou Xiaodao.

  "It's not just singers who can go on stage, actually, the Red and White Song Festival isn't just about singing." The girl said.

  Actually, the girl is right. Of course, it's not just singers who can participate in the Red and White Song Festival. As a year-end live broadcast program, every edition of the Red and White has some segments that feature the most popular people of the year, such as the 2013 Red and White Song Festival, which even performed an episode of the hit morning drama "Amachan" final episode. Even the hosts of the Red and White, especially the female hosts, have changed many times over the years, with many famous actresses having hosted the show. Even Ogura Yuko, a professional gravure idol, has hosted the Red and White before.

  But can Ogura Yuko do such a thing? This silly and foolish girl is going down the cute route, as an MC? It doesn't match her style at all...

  "Then... I'll give you a song too?" Zhou Xiao asked.

  "Give me a song? No, no, no, I sing badly." Ogura Yuko was initially delighted, but then thought of her own singing voice and shook her head in refusal.

  Refuse? Zhou Xiaozai doesn't believe Ogura Yui wouldn't want to release a single.

  "Go back and get dressed, we're going out!" said Zhou Xiao.

  Recently, the relationship between the two has been slowly developing, especially when they both returned home at night and found that they hadn't eaten yet. So they simply agreed to eat together, so it's quite normal for Zhou Xiao to ask the girl out like this now.

  "Eh? Where are we going?" Ogura Yuko asked.

  "Karaoke, I want to see your level!" said Zhou Xiao.

  "Huh?????"

  Zhou Xiao had heard of Ogura Yui's songs in his previous life, but the hard drive in his brain didn't have any albums by Ogura Yui. The reason was that the songs sung by the girl were really not good. And the album's initial ranking on the O charts was... 24th place.

  In 2004, Ogura Yuko, who had already gained some fame, released an album that sold only to this extent, which is enough to show how... shabby the album was.

  The voice of Ogura Yui had almost completely disappeared from Zhou Xiao's memory. What was left in his mind was only the girl's seemingly delicate but actually ordinary voice.

  In addition, the sound in the album is a result of professional recording. It can be said that Ogura Yuko has brought out her voice to the extreme, and just by listening, it's impossible to distinguish whether someone sings well or not.

  This is why Zhou Xiao wants to take Ogura Yuuko to the karaoke. Maybe this thing can't distinguish a professional singer's good or bad, but at least for this little girl it's already more than enough.

  Zhou Xiao knocked on Yoko's door after coming out of the room, but he couldn't enter. The girl's voice came from behind the door: "Wait for me to put on makeup and change clothes."

  "There's nothing to be ashamed of, I've seen your bare face before..." Zhou Xiao muttered to herself at the door but still waited patiently. Because of their neighborly relationship, the two were more casual with each other in some ways than ordinary friends, such as Zhou Xiao having seen the girl in her pajamas and without makeup multiple times.

  Ogura Yuko's bare face is still very cute. Nowadays, she hasn't appeared on TV much and hasn't been baptized by various cameras and lights, and is at an age with the most vitality and tenderest skin. Her good skin will make those thirty-year-old women who wear heavy makeup extremely envious.

  After waiting for a while, Ogura Yuko finally came out of the room. Her outfit with white and pink as the main colors made her look like a piece of butter, making Zhou Xiao feel quite infatuated.

  "Is it cute?" Ogawa Yuko raised her hand and turned around proudly.

  "Cute, extremely cute!" Zhou Xiao's face was full of admiration.

  "How cute is it?" Ogura Yuko asked.

  "The most lovely in the whole world!" Zhou Xiao said with a heavy tone.

  "Hehe~" Although it sounds silly and cheesy, for couples in the early stages of a romantic relationship, this kind of praise is music to their ears. The girl was overjoyed when Zhou Xiao said that and took the initiative to walk up to him, linking arms with him, and the two of them walked out of the apartment building hand in hand, sweetly and lovingly.

  Twenty minutes later in the KTV room, the girl took over the microphone handed over by Zhou Xiao.

  "What should I sing?" Yoko Ogura asked.

  "What you like, simple is fine." said Zhou Xiao.

  "Then let's sing 'Tomorrow'." said Ogura Yuko, poking at the karaoke machine.

  "Tomorrow" is a very ordinary name, from ancient times to the present, from China to the West, there are not many songs with this name, but if it's a girl of this age in this era who says the song name, it can only be Yuka Okamoto's "tomorrow". This song, which was released in '95 and sold over 1 million copies, also brought Yuka Okamoto her first appearance on the Red and White Song Battle.

  In China, this person and this name may not be very familiar to everyone, but probably the melody of "Tomorrow" has been heard by most people. The Chinese version of this song is also very famous, that is Wu Pei Ci's "Shining Tears of Decision".

  Ogura Yuko's voice sounds like milk, it can't be said to be unpleasant, but it's definitely meaningless. She sings very hard, but her expressiveness is very flat and ordinary. Maybe because it was the first time she sang in front of Zhou Xiao, her voice also trembled a bit. After barely singing one song, Ogura Yuko put down the microphone and asked with some concern: "It really doesn't work after all?"

  "Not good? Who says it's not good? I think it's pretty good, wait for me to think about what kind of song I want to write for you!" said Zhou Xiao.

  Ogura Yui's singing voice is ordinary, unremarkable and not pleasant to listen to. However, there is one thing that sets her apart from Zhou Xiao, which is that when she sings... at least she doesn't go off-key, right? With the help of various equipment, she can cover up her many shortcomings. Haven't you seen how Zhao Wei's singing was so bad back in the day, yet she still managed to release an album?

  As for letting her choose a simpler song... For Zhou Xiao, there's nothing easier than that. What's in his head is mostly music like AKB and the likes, thousands of idol girls' bubblegum songs, almost none of which have any difficulty to them!

  Rummaging through the dense playlist in her mind, Zhou Xiao was momentarily dazzled.

  "What song should I find for her? Ah, it's best if it has some topical elements, and if it can just happen to be popular around the time of an upcoming event, that would be even better..." Zhou Xiao thought to himself as he pondered what was going to happen in the Japanese entertainment circle.

  "I don't recall anything big happening in '01... apart from Kimura's 'Hero' getting a 30% viewership rating every episode... but as for Kimura, his thing is too big, it's so big that it can overshadow anything related to him, even I have to be careful, let alone her, and my movie... huh? Movie?"