Chapter 40
“Hasn’t been any good songs lately?” Tom went through the top ten on B Bang , mostly rap.
People who like rap love it; those who hate it hate it, finding the music noisy—and Tom was among the latter.
He turned off B Bang and opened YouTube’s music channel.
Compared to B Bang , YouTube’s music library was far more diverse, featuring creators from around the world, though most remained obscure; still, with patience, one could find plenty of quality music.
This time, Tom clearly didn’t need to search as he once had—right on the homepage’s trending list was a new song.
He’d never seen the artist before; to top the trending list and beat so many popular stars, the track must have something extraordinary.
Tom’s interest sparked instantly—he clicked in.
The song had been released only four hours ago, yet its views had already surpassed five million—truly astonishing.
“Title: ‘Faded,’ artist… Izumi? Japanese?” Tom frowned; he remembered only Japanese singers used Romanized names.
As for Japanese music… he didn’t dislike it per se—he especially loved their instrumental pieces—but he rarely listened to pop.
Yet the song’s approval rating was a staggering 99 percent—that was terrifying. Whether he understood the lyrics or not, Tom had to listen.
He pressed play. A golden-haired girl’s profile appeared on screen, her gaze lazy, lips slightly curled—beautiful, serene, natural.
“So beautiful!” Tom’s eyes lit up. She wasn’t white, yet she was stunning—he hadn’t seen a girl in ages who could captivate him in an instant.
As Tom was still lost in her beauty, a soft piano melody drifted into his ears, followed by a dreamlike voice.
“Faded”
You were the shadow to my light
You are a shadow in the light of my life
Did you feel us
Can you feel each other’s presence
A
It’s a new beginning again
You fade away
Your figure is gradually fading
Afraid our aim is out of sight
I fear our goal will be lost from view
Wanna see us
I only hope we can
A light
The light still shines
Where are you now
Where are you now
Where are you now
Where are you now
Where are you now
Where are you now
Was it all in my fantasy
Is all of this just my imagination
…………………………
Those three and a half minutes felt like fireflies in the night—gone in a blink. When the final piano note abruptly cut off, Tom snapped awake from his daze.
That ethereal, distant voice had instantly pulled his mind into a dreamlike, boundless world—where he wandered alone across an endless plain, chasing, searching.
He didn’t know what he was chasing, yet some magical force drove him forward—he couldn’t stop!
Calmly, Tom liked, saved, and followed—all three. Then he left a comment: “I’m completely in love with this song! And the singer—her voice and her face are breathtakingly beautiful!”
After finishing that, Tom didn’t stop—he immediately called his friend to recommend the song:
“For God’s sake, Jerry, you have to listen to this song!”
……………………
“Sometimes I really want to crack open your head and see what’s different inside from normal people!” Wen Xia stared at Luo Quan, glaring, as she looped “Faded.”
That’s right—Luo Quan’s electronic track, made in three hours, had blown up again. In under four hours, it topped YouTube’s music trending chart and Twitter’s hot trends; there was no doubt this would be a viral hit, not just in Japan!
“Is the gap in talent between people really that vast?” Junko looked wounded. She’d once tried writing songs herself, but even basic sheet music was incomprehensible to her—yet Quan could effortlessly combine these complex elements into one beautiful song after another. It was beyond her understanding.
Luo Quan didn’t care: “What’s this? I’ve got even better songs in my new album. Wait a few days—they’ll really explode.”
“Look at you, showing off…” Wen Xia raised her glass and took a sip of iced lemon juice.
Luo Quan scrolled through her phone, head tilted, beaming with delight.
Just as she’d predicted, “Faded” had gone viral.
These days, she was already Japan’s top influencer—any move she made drew massive attention, let alone a track as explosive as “Faded.” Toppling every chart was just a matter of time.
But the whole process had happened even faster than she’d expected.
The timeline of this world differed slightly from her past life—for example, TikTok’s popularity had emerged earlier than before.
As a globally renowned short-video app, TikTok was mainstream in nearly every country, with over a billion users.
This short-video app loved embedding short, melodic, or rhythmically dynamic music clips into its content.
Previously, if a song went viral, people on TikTok used it as BGM. Now, if people on TikTok used a song as BGM, that song went viral.
It had become the definitive barometer of youth music taste.
Though some songs got used hundreds of millions of times, leading to aesthetic fatigue—the so-called “TikTok ruins songs.” No matter how beautiful, once something became ubiquitous, it instantly turned cheap—even if illogical, this was real.
But recently, TikTok’s trend had returned to its original form: everyone was using the top songs from the Oricon chart as BGM, especially “Lemon.”
On the Oricon chart, “Lemon” had surpassed “I Once Wanted to End It All,” now ranked number one—apparently, people still preferred upbeat melodies.
For days, TikTok had been flooded with “Lemon”—it was added to every kind of video, the ultimate BGM prince.
And this nearly overused song had recently entered China, TikTok’s homeland.
Because “Lemon” was exclusively licensed by Sony, China’s music platforms had no way to import it—but TikTok Japan had moved first, securing usage rights, and China’s parent company benefited too.
But that was old news.
When “Faded” came out, Japan’s fickle users instantly abandoned “Lemon” and embraced the new favorite.
That angelic voice captured every young listener—and they rushed to add it to their videos as BGM.
This was the market’s greatest affirmation of “Faded.”
Beyond TikTok, “Faded”’s data on YouTube, its debut platform, surged exponentially: ten million views in half a day, fifty million in three days—the fastest-growing song on YouTube in three years, without exception.
The explosive numbers had landed it on YouTube’s homepage recommendation—meaning billions of users worldwide, upon opening YouTube, would see it front and center.
The cover was, of course, Luo Quan’s own selfie—a picture so beautiful, people clicked on it even without caring about the content.
As “Faded” exploded in popularity, Luo Quan’s Twitter followers surged from just over 800,000 to 1.2 million—she’d hit two million before long.
The earlier dispute between her fans and Chris Suzuki’s fans now seemed forgotten.
China, notoriously slow to react to overseas entertainment news, finally took notice after “Faded” surpassed 100 million views on YouTube.
End of Chapter
