Captivated By You: Prologue

I’M READY TO MEET YOU OCCASIONALLY

Late at night. There were five more minutes until the 11pm train arrives, it was the last train for the night.

At the Nanjing Metro Line 2 platform, there were several people waiting for the last train of the night.

Mo Lan lowered her head, a slender white hand holding the straw, playing with the few bubbles* left from her milk tea. After a while, she felt a bit cold and couldn’t helped moving around.

(Where I’m currently living, we call them bubble tea. I’ve heard them being called milk tea or just plain boba. And the pearls could be known as pearls or bubbles.)

the black round things at the bottom are tapioca pearls also known as “bubbles”

Beside her stood Rong Xiaxia who wore a red down jacket. She was bored and was playing 2048. After a bit, uncertain as to what suddenly came into her mind, she turned sideways to look at Mo Lan, and asked quietly, “Momo, do you know any latest nice songs? Otherwise I could also just read before sleeping, I’ve been lonely and cold in bed these last few days…”

The heat that came out of Rong Xiaxia formed into a cloud of white smoke which then slowly faded away.

This year’s Nanjing winter was really cold.

Mo Lan looked up with her hand paused midway and said softly, “Your problem lies in that… you should find a boyfriend.” After a bit, she became a little embarrassed and said, “Furthermore, I don’t really listen to songs, I mostly listen to radio dramas.”

Rong Xiaxia froze for a moment, then depressingly said, “That’s right, how did I forget that you’re a voice-enthusiast terminal patient.”

Before she met Mo Lan, Rong Xiaxia would never have believed that there existed this type of person in this world. This kind of person was usually in a state of incurable love, she rarely listens to modern songs, but always wore her headphones listening to some two-dimensional internet radio drama and discussed how the voice of a certain CV in a radio drama was gorgeous and seductive.

Mo Lan chuckled, she wanted to say something, but suddenly heard the sound of the train entering the station, accompanied by the whistling sound of the wind.

The cold wind blew through, her body could not help but winced slightly, she couldn’t help but closely gripped the cup of milk tea in her hand, and tried to draw in a hint of warmth.

She followed Rong Xiaxia in, previously the train had always been overcrowded but because it was already quite late at night, at this moment, the train was rarely this quiet. As far as the eye could see, there were only a couple who were rubbing their ears, two to three students who chatted away, and a man with his head down, he looked as if he was sleeping.

Mo Lan and Rong Xiaxia were used to standing up in the train, so they didn’t bother fighting for the empty seats.

Grasping the handrail with one hand, Mo Lan sucked up a black pearl from her cup of milk tea and ate it. Then she lifted up her head, looked at Rong Xiaxia, and continued their discussion from before, “But if you want to listen to radio dramas, of course I have many to recommend.”

When Rong Xiaxia, who stood opposite her, heard her say that, she instantly opened her mouth, “Come on, every time you talk about this, you keep going on about your two-dimensional male god*, even if you’re not tired of it, I’m sick of hearing about him.”

(男神 nán shén – lit. male god – Mr Perfect/ Adonis/ Prince Charming – i like leaving it as male god somehow)

A soft smile appeared by the corner of her lips, Mo Lan lowered her head, and unconcernedly continued to shake her cup with the straw while she answered: “But Secretly Captivated*’s voice is really very nice. Listening to him, it’s just like being covered by poison, and the kind with no antidote.”

(暗裡著迷 àn lǐ zháo mí – his online name. an li means silently/secretly and zhao mi fascinated/ captivated/ enchanted.)

Rong Xiaxia sighed and helplessly looked at her: “But didn’t you say that he hasn’t been dubbing for these past three years? It has been so long, he may have forgotten about this internet voice thing. In reality he has just been getting on with his life, it’s only pure and innocent girls like you who are still continuing to support him.”

Silently eating the last pearl, Mo Lan chewed, and said with some ambiguity in her voice: “Possibly. After all, he has always hated other people raking up his third dimensional* life. His voice is so nice, but he has never really been in the voice acting business so I always think that dubbing was just a hobby for him. In his 3D life, there should be many more important things than dubbing.”

(be in the 3D world aka real life)

Upon hearing this, Rong Xiaxia frowned slightly, and couldn’t help but ask with a little doubt: “In other words, in the past three years… he really hasn’t appeared online again?”

“Well, not really.”

After swallowing the pearl, Mo Lan tilted her head as if she was thinking about it, and then softly said: “Occasionally, he does post something on Weibo* or PāPā* proving that he is still alive.” She paused for a bit, and showed another warm gentle smile, “Posting on PāPā, we benefit. Even just by listening to his previous radio dramas everyday or falling asleep to his recording, it’s also a very happy thing. Xiaxia, even though you may not really understand, but in fact for me, I could really fall in love with someone just because of a person’s voice.”

(Weibo – the Chinese Twitter)
(PāPā – Insta with soundbites)

After she finished what she wanted to say, she lowered her head and stared at the empty milk tea cup in her hand. The cup still had a bit of warmth left in it. She whispered softly as if to herself: “What he looks like, what’s his family background, all of it doesn’t really matter. If just by opening up his voice, he could capture your ears and live in your heart, he could genuinely be the real demon…”

Based on his voice alone, Secretly Captivated had obviously practised and perfected his skills as a millennium demon.

Rong Xiaxia looked at her with a sympathetic look of “you are hopeless”, and shook her head, “I don’t want to listen to that person’s radio drama, otherwise I would be as crazily addicted as you*, and I reckon I would hate myself to death even in my dreams.”

(crazily addicted as you: 魔障 mo zhang – god of temptation. this one was hard. i’m translating to what I think it means here)

Mo Lan pouted and smiled, she indifferently shook the paper cup in her hand, with no reply.

“Ding dong”, the train reminded them that they had reached Gulou Station. Because there were not many people, Mo Lan and Rong Xiaxia waited until the train stopped, then casually walked out.

One second before exiting the train, Mo Lan looked down at the gap under her feet, from the corner of her eyes, she casually glanced at the man, with a dark blue down jacket, who had been sleeping with his head lowered. He rubbed his eyes and stood up lazily from his seat.

That was good timing.

Mo Lan smiled unobtrusively, walked out of the train, turned around and looked for a rubbish bin to throw her milk tea cup away.

On the opposite side Rong Xiaxia waved at her, “Momo, don’t forget to bring back two boxes of West Lake Longjing* for me when you get to Hangzhou the day after tomorrow.”

(it doesn’t specifically mentioned tea but I googled)

what shows up when you search for西湖龍井 ie West Lake Dragon Well

“I know.” Mo Lan smiled slightly, pulled the beige scarf around her neck again, waved goodbye, turned around and walked out of the train station.

En*, this winter in Nanjing is really cold.

(嗯 en – interjection indicating approval, appreciation or agreement. A bit like a “mm”. It’s used quite a bit so I’ll just leave it as it is)

Mo Lan couldn’t help shrinking her neck into the scarf, and quickly walked towards her home.

---

Additional notes for the novel:
1. The author uses 网配圈 wǎng pèi quān (network match circle) which actually refers to 网络配音圈 wǎng luò pèi yīn quān (Internet Dubbing Circle).
2. CV = Character Voice = Voice Actor
3. Any word that was written as in the raws I will italicised. E.g. SAMA. Except for names like Xiao Lan.

Me: This was hard. I mean I knew it was going to be a long process. I’ve read various comments by the different translators on Fanatical as well as other various sites and I’ve read how much time goes into each post but boy this took a while (roughly six hours and ongoing). But because this was my first time, there was the setup of this site as well as the various formatting that I’m trying. I need to figure out how to do those subscripts and link them to the bottom. The next time should be easier and shorter. Hopefully. I know that there are already 5 translated chapters but I thought I would try to do it from the start. Just so I could get a feel and try to maintain the same terms throughout too.

Edited (15th Oct 2021): I am trying to go through the whole story again and to correct the sentences! I already found two sentences which didn’t make sense xD The prologue took longer than expected so this might take longer than I thought. But please do let me know if you spot any mistakes! Thank you so much for stopping by and sharing the story of Mo Lan and Secretly Captivated 🙂