The game session started with both team leaders drawing lots. The so-called “draw” was really just a formality. What game they were going to play had already been planned during the rehearsal phase.
However, for the sake of the game’s effect, both teams were indeed playing it for the first time.
“OK, the game drawn by the members of ‘Senior Sister, No’ is…”
The host watched the slowly stopping wheel. The pointer pointed squarely at the blue area that had not yet been drawn, which had a drawing of an elephant and a person blindfolded.
She smiled and turned her head to look at the bustling audience offstage, “The result is out. The final round of games is, Blind Man Feeling the Elephant!”
“I’ll trouble the props team to bring up the game props. Now, let me first explain the game rules to everyone. The rules are very simple. Each team sends one member to wear a blindfold and play the ‘blind man.’ The remaining members stand in a row behind a curtain as the two teams’ ‘elephants.'”
“The blind man can freely choose to touch a certain body part of the elephant, such as the hand, nose, hair, etc., but each elephant can only be touched on one part, and the entire session is limited to five minutes.”
“After five minutes, the team that correctly guesses more of the elephants’ identities wins. The winner will have an additional 10 votes added to their final vote count!”
The host looked at Zhang Fu and Lou Yu, “It should be noted that the two senior sisters will not participate as blind men or elephants. Instead, they will swap to the opposing team and provide interference to the opposing team’s blind man.”
“How to interfere? Very simple. The blind men from both teams can ask the senior sister five questions. The senior sister can only answer yes or no, and among the five questions, only one answer can be a lie.”
“The ‘blind men’ must use the five questions to judge their teammates’ identities. The two senior sisters must also use the timing of their lies to disrupt the opposing blind man’s thinking.”
The host smiled and looked around, “How is it? Does everyone understand the rules?”
The noise offstage grew louder. Answers of “I understand” and “I don’t quite understand” mixed together, creating a lively atmosphere.
“It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand. Now let’s do a trial round first…” The host dragged out her voice, slowly whetting their appetites, “All the trainees will be the ‘elephants’, and we will randomly select two lucky audience members on site to play the ‘blind men’ for the two teams. What does everyone think?”
“!!!”
“Holy crap! So sudden?!”
“Ahhh help, it’s so hot and my makeup is already a mess. Can you give me some time to touch it up?”
“The previous two games didn’t involve drawing audience members. What, you look down on us eliminated trainees, huh!”
“Touching any part… Can it really be that casual?”
“Touching the hair would be easier to guess, right? After all, everyone’s hairstyle is different.”
“Can one only touch body parts, not clothes?”
“Touching clothes would be a complete giveaway. This game basically tests the tacit understanding within the team, to see how familiar they are with each other privately.”
“It doesn’t have much to do with how familiar they are… You try closing your eyes and touching your good friend. Unless you prepare beforehand, you can’t really feel much difference.”
The audience, while discussing animatedly, stared intently at the rapidly changing draw numbers on the large screen. Finally, the numbers settled on two seat numbers.
The host, who had received the seat number information from the director’s team offstage, raised her hand and signaled, “Okay! Let’s welcome Ms. Liu from Row 13, Seat 15 in Section A, and Mr. Jin from Row 4, Seat 8 in Section B. Would the two lucky audience members please stand up and let me see where you are?”
The director very cooperatively switched the large screen camera to the corresponding seat numbers.
First, in the vast crowd of Section A, when the spotlight suddenly dropped, the young girl who had been chatting with her friend next to her a second earlier shrank her neck. Caught off guard, she looked up toward the light and found herself staring into the eyes of her own dazed expression on the large screen.
She instinctively gripped the banner in her hand tightly, and it was only at this moment that she realized she had been chosen.
However, on the large screen, even more eye-catching than her dazed expression was the clearly visible large words on the green banner with white text in her hand.
——[Yan-Que 99!]
The audience erupted in an uproar because of these words. Most of them were deliberately making a ruckus to enjoy the spectacle, a small part were fans of other CPs who were unhappy, and there were a few scattered solo fans muttering among themselves.
The young girl herself was having a mental breakdown. Appearing so suddenly in front of countless people, she suddenly turned bright red and frantically hid the banner, wanting to cry but having no tears.
Wuuu she never intended to meet her idols directly like this. The timing of the large screen’s camera was terrible!
However, the director, enjoying the spectacle and not thinking it was too much, very understandably switched the camera back to the faces of the trainees on stage. The audience happily observed everyone’s reactions.
“Ooh ooh ooh, look at Yan Qiao’s expression, he’s smiling so hard. What’s with that look in his eyes? He even turned his head to look at Quentin.”
“Does Quentin not understand? How come he has no reaction? Even Wen Xinyi next to him has an expression that shows he understands more than him…”
“It’s normal that he doesn’t understand, right? I heard they haven’t had their phones or internet access during these two months of recording. Unless they already expected it, who would know what Yan-Que 99 means?”
“Yan-Que is easy enough to understand, right? So many people have these two characters in their names. As for 99… well, that’s not certain. Anyway, Yan Qiao definitely understands. The key is, does he understand 99?”
Of course Quentin saw the words on the banner clearly. Not long ago in Lulin Ancient Town, he had heard Yan Qiao and Wen Xinyi discussing CPs, so he quickly understood the meaning of “Yan-Que.”
It meant he and Yan Qiao had a CP, there was nothing strange about that. CPs are extremely common in both groups.
As for 99…maybe it meant “forever”, indicating a long-lasting friendship? The symbols here shouldn’t require overthinking.
Quentin did not know that his indifferent appearance was misinterpreted as not understanding CPs, and Yan Qiao also did not think about how many layers of meaning his subconscious glance toward Quentin would be interpreted as by CP fans.
After the commotion died down, the director helped the two audience members onto the stage while the host spoke.
The other lucky audience member had already prepared well. He was wearing a low-key all-black outfit and a mask, clearly not wanting to show his face in front of the camera.
But when the camera turned to him, he cooperatively stood up and followed the staff’s guidance, walking down the aisle toward the stage.
The host livened up the atmosphere on stage, “If I’m not mistaken, Ms. Liu is a fan of Quentin and Yan Qiao, right? Mr. Jin is also a rare male audience member. Which team would you two like to go to respectively?”
As a Yan-Que CP fan, Ms. Liu of course wanted to choose Quentin’s team, but the unknown Mr. Jin, who did not want to show his face, also silently raised his hand and pointed toward the direction where Quentin and the others were standing, just like Ms. Liu.
This was awkward. Fortunately, the host reacted quickly and calmly suggested the two play rock-paper-scissors to decide who would choose first.
Whether it was because of bad luck or because the other party reacted too quickly, Ms. Liu lost three games in a row in a daze, and lost the chance to have close contact with her idols in less than ten seconds.
Ms. Liu: …Want to cry qwq
Inviting the live audience to join the game session was a common method for offline events. However, considering that the audience were basically amateurs with no on-screen experience, such segments most likely would not produce program effects and could easily fall flat.
But the production team only designed this segment to help everyone become familiar with the rules, not to create any effect, so it might as well be considered a benefit for the audience.
But thanks to her professionalism, during the brief trial play, the host still persisted in trying to liven up the atmosphere.
“Why would Mr. Jin want to choose Quentin’s team? Are you a fan of any of the trainees on stage as well?”
Mr. Jin, who was wearing a blindfold and a mask at the same time, had already made his face unseeable. If it were not for his good figure and excellent temperament, this appearance would probably be very comical.
While following the host’s guidance, he reached his hand toward the direction of the curtain and nodded, “Yes, I am a fan of Quentin.”
The host had already put the microphone to his mouth, so his voice was heard throughout the venue.
The audience’s reactions basically revolved between “wow, another fan of Quentin” and “Quentin actually has male fans.” Few people paid excessive attention to this rare male fan.
Even though his figure suggested he was handsome underneath, everyone standing on the stage was handsome. Compared to these carefully styled trainees, the overly low-key Mr. Jin really did not have much presence.
On the contrary, Quentin, who was walking toward the back of the curtain, looked at him a few more times.
He felt a bit familiar… as if he had seen him somewhere before?
Unable to see the other party’s appearance, Quentin could only distinguish a vague sense of familiarity from Jin Sui’s figure, temperament, and posture, but that small hint of feeling was not enough to make him think of the male guest he had met two weeks ago when recording “Cat and Mouse Game” at Nancheng University.
So he did not think much of it after looking.
On Quentin’s team’s side, the body parts Jin Sui chose to touch were all hands, though his actions hardly qualified as “touching”.
Compared to the lucky audience member on the other team, he was overly polite, turning the touching part of “blind man feeling the elephant” into a fan handshake session.
He also did not ask Lou Yu, who was waiting nearby, any questions. Instead, when the five minutes were up, he succinctly pointed out who Quentin was, then decisively gave up guessing the identities of the other six.
The host: “…Haha, Mr. Jin reacted very quickly. Can I ask you how you confirmed Quentin’s identity?”
Jin Sui, who had already taken off his blindfold, lowered his eyelids slightly, his expression calm and composed. The camera did not give him a close-up, but the host facing him was surprised to discover that this male fan seemed to have rather excellent looks.
He was very calm from beginning to end, and the tone of his answer was also matter of fact, “Because I am his fan. I have liked him for a very long time.”
To be honest, such a calm and composed mature man was not only out of place with the youthful, lively young girls on site, but also not the type of person as those fashionably dressed star-chasing boys.
Someone like him appearing in an office building or research institute would make more sense than at a boy group survival show public performance.
For a confession of a fan to their idol to come from his mouth… Anyway, the more you listen, the more strange it seems.
Even the experienced host did not know how to react for a moment, so she turned her head to look at the audience and interacted with them with a smile, “It seems I have underestimated how well fans know their idols. Does everyone know what their own idol’s hand looks like, and can distinguish it as accurately as Mr. Jin?”
The audience responded with a flurry of chatter.
“It’s probably no problem if I look at it in photos. Touching, I don’t know. Let me try a few more times, feel around a bit, maybe I could recognize it.”
“Don’t underestimate the bond between me and my bias, damn it! Have the guts to draw again and let me go up there. I want to hold Quentin’s hand too!”
“How come I get the feeling that everyone else on Quentin’s team has become part of their play… This male fan is so cunning, tsk tsk.”
“Actually, this guy is quite honest. A handshake is just a handshake. He didn’t hold on longer than necessary, and he didn’t touch randomly.”
“Look at Ms. Liu from the other group. She’s still looking at our Yan-Que even when leaving. Sister, your eyes are turning green!”
“What a pity, her love was snatched in the rock-paper-scissors session. Too cruel!”
“Emm… objectively speaking, does this count as a face-off between a solo fan and a CP fan?”
“Pfft, that’s a sharp angle, friend.”
