The 101 trainees walked for five minutes before arriving at a black-gray building.
A map dividing the dormitories for Classes A through F was posted at the entrance, along with the dormitory assignment rules.
“Big Tacit Understanding Test?”
Dozens of boys stared at the black and gold cardboard and read out in unison:
“In each round, one trainee from each class will enter and choose a room, the time limit is 1 minute. After entering the room, close the door tightly, and do not make any guiding sounds. Let tacit understanding and fate decide your future roommates!”
Quentin stood in a position towards the back of the crowd, with Xue Mingzhu and Yan Qiao standing on his left and right.
The three boys were all over 180 cm tall, with body proportions each better than the last. Standing there, they were like models on a runway. The photographers around always subconsciously turned their lenses towards them.
After hearing the rules, Xue Mingzhu frowned and quickly used his height advantage to peer at the dormitory map drawn on the cardboard.
He muttered gloomily:
“It’s so late already, why are they doing a tacit understanding test… Class A dorms are on the third floor, two double rooms and one triple room. How do we choose? Are there no room numbers?”
Yan Qiao, however, looked like he was in a very good mood:
“So it’s simple, if we all choose the triple room, wouldn’t that work?”
Xue Mingzhu laughed twice, once again raising his hand and putting it around Quentin’s shoulder, moving the two of them two steps aside.
He glanced at the cameras, restrained his rapper argumentative temper, and said through gritted teeth:
“You go find your teammates, don’t disturb my two-person world with Quentin.”
Yan Qiao tilted his head slightly:
“My teammates are not in Class A. We’re all so familiar now, wouldn’t it be good to live together?”
Xue Mingzhu lowered his voice:
“Who’s familiar with you? You’re just being overly familiar!”
Yan Qiao was silent for a few seconds, then he lowered his gaze and looked at Quentin:
“…I’m sincere. The three of us could collaborate in the future, and living together would be convenient too.”
‘Fuck! This guy is still pretending to be pitiful here, who was he trying to show?’
Xue Mingzhu raised his hand, using his palm to block Quentin’s line of sight, and said with a fake smile and a promise:
“Okay, then we’ll all choose the triple room and live together, satisfied?”
Yan Qiao: “…”
Did he take him for a fool? Who would believe that?
Yan Qiao tried to talk to Quentin, but every time he opened his mouth, Xue Mingzhu intercepted him.
After repeated attempts, even if he had a lot of patience, he finally got angry. Was Xue Mingzhu a mother hen? Did he have to guard Quentin like his own eyeballs, getting anxious if someone else took a look?
Moreover, for future public performance team formations, there were no restrictions like two-person or three-person groups; the minimum started at seven people. Yan Qiao couldn’t understand why he was being so resistant towards him.
He didn’t want to kick Xue Mingzhu out and team up with Quentin alone. His appreciation for Quentin as a person and his appreciation for Xue Mingzhu’s rap didn’t conflict.
Quentin bent down and slipped out from under Xue Mingzhu’s arm, the tie on his chest swinging in an arc.
The suit jacket had been returned to the program team when removing makeup. Now he was only wearing a thin silk shirt. The hem of the shirt hung down along his waist and hips, swaying gently in the early autumn evening breeze, like clouds gathering and scattering with the wind.
A trace of helplessness showed on the boy’s usually expressionless face:
“Alright, the program team is calling names. Let’s go up first and talk later.”
His voice was truly pleasant to hear, a kind of pleasantness that couldn’t be fully experienced through a screen. Such a voice was undoubtedly a special critical hit for Xue Mingzhu. And those eyes, tinged with light green in the night, also made Yan Qiao unable to say a single word of refutation.
So the two glared at each other, and continued to follow behind Quentin, one on the left and one on the right, walking towards the dormitory building.
The assistant director stood next to the cardboard and announced in a businesslike manner according to the list:
“Class A, Quentin. Class B, Yang Siyi. Class C, Qi Yang. Class F, Lu Kui.”
She looked at the four young people carrying their luggage and smiled friendly:
“One minute countdown, prepare to start!”
“One minute, what’s the rush?” Lu Kui muttered with his mouth, but his footsteps were very fast. After running into the dormitory building, he looked back at the three behind him:
“You guys are still dawdling? Only Class F dorms are on the first floor. You three have to climb stairs. If you delay further, there will be nothing left to choose!”
Yang Siyi responded with a smile:
“Anyway, we’re the first batch, we’ll have choices no matter what. Class F dorms are eight-person rooms, right? Since you’re the first to enter, isn’t it just randomly choosing a bed?”
Lu Kui shrugged:
“I made an agreement with my teammate on which room to enter. What about you guys? Are all of you leaving it to luck?”
“The program team didn’t give room numbers or clearly mark room positions. How did you agree?” Yang Siyi asked, surprised.
Lu Kui: “Are you stupid? Just all go to the innermost room. If the inner rooms are divided left and right, then choose left!”
As soon as his words fell, he turned into the corridor indicated by the arrow.
A round table was placed in the middle of the path. On the table, five cards of different colors were arranged in a row. At the same time, there was a small cardboard with the room assignment rules written on it on the table.
[Please choose one card, then follow the arrow inward. The room number corresponding to the color is the room you selected~]
Lu Kui: “…”
“….No way, is this necessary?!”
Lu Kui’s eyes widened in shock. He suddenly turned his head to look at Yang Siyi, who had not gone upstairs yet and was beside him: “For just assigning dorms, they’re doing this trick?”
Yang Siyi: “…Pfft, you should ask the program team. They’re guarding against people like you who made agreements in advance.”
“Alright, you choose slowly. I need to hurry upstairs. Quentin and Qi Yang left long ago.”
He waved at Lu Kui, turned around, and quickly walked towards the staircase.
Meanwhile, Quentin entered the stairwell first. He heard footsteps behind him but didn’t pay attention to them.
But just as he passed the second-floor stair landing, turned, and continued up a few steps, he caught sight of a figure standing still at the stair landing behind him out of the corner of his eyes.
Quentin subconsciously looked over and happened to meet a pair of dark eyes. He didn’t miss the momentary stunned daze that flashed in those eyes. The next second, the young man standing at the stair landing, with a cold and stern face, nodded towards him.
The young man was very handsome, exuding an aura of righteousness from his brows and eyes, and to his nose and lips. When focusing on one person, he seemed stubborn and serious.
Only then did Quentin remember that this person was Qi Yang, whom the system had mentioned before, who had once played the fourth male lead in an ancient idol web drama.
He glanced at the “Class C Dormitory” sign posted on the wall at the second-floor stair landing and thought:
“Class C… no wonder I didn’t have much impression.”
But Qi Yang was from Wanming Pictures, also one of the three major companies. Could he also have an important role in the original book?
Or, was there a possibility that he was one of the six main characters?
These thoughts quickly passed through Quentin’s mind. He didn’t ponder them deeply, only responding with a nod, then walked towards the third floor under Qi Yang’s gaze.
“Red, yellow, green.”
Quentin stood in front of the table in the third-floor corridor, looking down at the four cards on the table: “It doesn’t indicate which one is the triple room either…”
All the calculations were in vain; he was referring to the two downstairs.
Well, he was actually quite willing to share a dorm with Xue Mingzhu. He liked being around outgoing, cheerful people without bad intentions. He didn’t even need to speak actively; Xue Mingzhu could spontaneously make the whole place lively.
As for Yan Qiao…
Although Quentin hadn’t spoken much with the other party, in his life, besides music, what he was best at was seeing the so-called human heart through superficial appearances.
Yan Qiao was undoubtedly a good person. How could someone who had practiced dance since childhood, soaking day and night in the BKL practice room since he was 12 be bad?
Idol training companies like BKL, which specialize in digging out underage children with potential, are most skilled at shaping personalities.
Like gardeners pruning flower branches, they remove unwanted dead branches and leaves, molding kids whose worldviews have not yet fully formed and turning them into “perfect” young idols.
They hope they are both pure and good, easy to control, and also hope they each have distinctive characteristics that make them likable.
Yan Qiao was the most outstanding and the earliest signed among those five trainees from BKL Entertainment. Therefore, the traces of artificial discipline and polishing on him were the heaviest.
He was born with a charming appearance, so BKL shaped his temperament and behavior towards the flirtatious and roguish direction, letting him grow up from the age of 12 within such a persona.
Who would have thought that under the “bad boy” mask hid an idealist chasing dreams with all his heart and soul.
Ironically, such a person fit most of BKL’s requirements, and also fit most of the expectations of the vast majority of star-chasing fans.
Quentin wasn’t an X-ray machine that could only see the monotonous heart in the human chest.
The complex and unfathomable human nature in this world was like a spread-out white paper in Quentin’s eyes, every stroke writing down the schemes others racked their brains over right in front of him.
When he was young, he could see through but didn’t understand, leading to a series of mishaps, stepping into many pitfalls and making many mistakes.
Later, when he understood, he quickly gained a firm foothold in the world of fame and fortune of the capitalist society as easily as a fish in water. All human interactions and exchanges of interests were like using his own arm. Whatever he wanted, he could easily obtain.
Quentin casually picked up a red card, then followed the direction indicated by the arrow into the dormitory with the red room number.
It was a triple room.
He placed his suitcase next to the bed by the window, then opened the curtain and looked at the moonlit night sky with sparse stars.
He saw the sparsely trafficked road, and the young men and women across the road carrying “long guns and short cannons”. (Cameras)
They were the fans of the mentors, right? Why were they still here so late?
The system chose this moment to quietly pop up: “Host, the star-chasers in this world are very crazy! For example, the four mentors of [Next Stage] all have troublesome sasaeng fans, especially Yang Xu and Vinki, these two former idols from boy groups. Some of their fans are very scary!”
Quentin blinked: “For example?”
“Lower-level methods include frequent phone harassment, stalking and following. Common ones also include sending various personal items to the hotel rooms where they are staying, or disguising as cleaning staff to sneak into their rooms and install pinhole cameras, pretending to be studio assistants to hand them water with something added.”
The system picked and chose from the information it collected from forums:
“Actually, things are still considered okay now, because Yang Xu and Vinki have already terminated their contracts with BKL and no longer promote as boy group members. And if you really want to compare, the situation of girl group members is the most terrible!”
“After all, most of the fans of boy groups are female, while nearly one-third of girl group fans are male demographics.”
The system exclaimed: “Girl group members, whether working or not, always carry four or more professional bodyguards when going out! It is said that BKL equips every female idol with a set of self-defense tools, like pepper spray, a strong flashlight, an alarm, a tactical pen, etc. They even have specialized martial arts courses in private!”
Quentin was just about to say something when he suddenly heard the door behind him make a sound.
“Click.”
His new roommate had arrived.
