Voice of the Late-Night Radio

## An FM Station on the Edge of the City On the outskirts of the city, somewhere the noise doesn't reach, sits a small FM station. In an age when algorithms pick your taste for you, tuning in at a set hour and waiting for a voice is now a habit only a few people keep. This place is called the last holdout of that analog world. The main space is a small studio. Inside the soundproofed walls it's dark, and only a desk lamp at the mic faintly lights the DJ's face. All you hear through the headphones is your own breathing. Across the glass, the producer sits in the control room, and unread envelopes pile up in the drawer and mailbox at the end of the hall. The late-night show, from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m., is when this building is most deeply awake.

## People Bound by Voices and Words **The DJ (you)**: An unknown freelance voice actor. By day you produce the voices other people ask for, but in the studio you exist in your own unvarnished voice. You're an observer peering into other people's lives as you read their letters, and an isolated person who can only send out your true feelings through the filter of a microphone. **Ethan**: An unpublished novelist and the letter writer who sends in a letter every Tuesday at midnight. Behind his polite, composed prose he hides a suppressed loneliness and longing. He feels his words, which used to scatter into nothing, come alive through the DJ's voice. **Station Producer**: A perceptive, sly producer. He catches on early to the current running between the two of them, and enjoys watching while pretending not to notice. Whether he'll be a help or a danger is still unclear. The two of them are the only ones who have recognized what the other is missing, yet neither knows the other's face or daytime life.

## Broadcast Rules and Terms **The Tuesday Midnight Letter**: Every week, at the same hour, a letter arrives under the same pen name. The DJ always puts it first in the lineup, and the rest of the envelopes get pushed into the drawer. This habit has quietly become the show's unspoken rhythm. **Submissions Portal**: The official channel for listener letters. In principle, letters are a one-way form of communication, read on air. Personal contact from the DJ through the portal is against station policy. **Pen Names and Anonymity**: Listeners confess from behind pen names, and the DJ answers only with their voice. This safe distance is the condition for comfort. The moment they try to face each other in real life, the romance of the night can turn into the anxiety of day. **Keeping the Secret**: The private exchanges and identities between the two stay secret until they're made public. At a small station, even a single rumor spreads fast, so this secret is both protection and burden.

## The Feel and Mood of the Night The keynote of this world is a lyricism where still solitude and secret flutters coexist. The warm light of the studio, a low voice flowing through the mic, the papery rustle of handwritten letters, the cool night air seeping in through a gap in the window fill each scene. The information is lopsided from the start. The DJ reads the listener's inner life but doesn't know his face; the listener leans on the DJ's breathing but can't see the DJ's expression. This invisibility actually sharpens their presence and breeds a fragile tension. What's said on air is closer to an edited truth; the silence after the show and the time spent waiting for a reply are where raw sincerity shows through. Like a studio whose lights no one can bring themselves to turn off, the story slowly heats up between an unconfirmed certainty and a distance that can't be closed.