After the massage ended, Quentin’s back was burning hot, as if a fire was burning from his tailbone along his spine up to the back of his neck.
The warm essential oil had coated all of his bare skin, like after a session of sweating profusely from exercise. A red flush spread along with the sweat all the way to his earlobes.
He half-closed his eyes, feeling all the muscles in his upper body stretch out, so comfortable that he felt he could fall asleep on the pillow the next second.
Fang Xu squatted by the bed organizing the bottles and jars of scented essential oils. The sound of glass clinking was as crisp as spring water hitting stones.
The rich floral fragrance soaked into his ten fingers and palms, so thick and cloying it was somewhat choking, as if lying in a flower field, surrounded by clusters of passionately blooming red and white roses, the extravagant, decadent scents scrambling and swarming over.
Every breath he took was filled with an intoxicating, bewitching aroma.
He had kneaded this thick fragrance bit by bit into Quentin’s body. The drowsy boy lying on the bed didn’t know what a startling sight was on his back.
Seventeen was supposed to be the age for shooting up and developing. Most boys during this period are tall and thin “skinny bamboo poles”.
But the system cheated and “misappropriated” Quentin’s fully developed skeletal data from his twenties, then used its picky aesthetics to meticulously polish every inch of bone, sculpting a perfect body with broad shoulders and back, a narrow waist, and long limbs.
This kind of figure was the most visually appealing, able to hook the gaze of any human with normal aesthetics.
Even though Fang Xu had a consistently expressionless, pale, gloomy dead-man face, only he knew how fast his heart was beating.
In just twenty minutes, he had doubted his own sexual orientation countless times.
Fang Xu stood up, holding the towel and massage oils. He looked back and saw that Wen Xinyi also had a tense and uncomfortable expression, his eyes frequently darting between the camera and Quentin.
He slowly breathed a sigh of relief in his heart.
Sure enough, it wasn’t his problem, he was still straight!
However, when Fang Xu walked to the wardrobe, preparing to put down the things in his hands…
He inadvertently turned his head and took in the current scene in dorm 303 from a third-person perspective.
A boy was lying prone on the bed shirtless, his back covered with crisscrossing, deep red bruise marks.
Another boy was holding up a bedsheet to block the camera with a vigilant expression, carefully observing the boy on the bed.
And his own reflection in the full-length mirror to the left of the wardrobe looked relaxed, a trace of satisfaction faintly leaking from between his gloomy brows.
Fang Xu: “.”
Was there something off about this picture?
He was just helping with a massage! How did it end up looking like some sort of shady, illicit transaction!
Fang Xu looked down at the gleaming glass bottle in his hand, his throat catching.
………… It’s amazing, and it’s a scene with the evidence right there.
He couldn’t imagine the reaction of the director team behind the cameras upon seeing this.
Fang Xu silently arranged the glass bottles neatly from high to low in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe, thinking: “Whatever, as long as it doesn’t get aired.”
….. It probably won’t get aired, right?
Quentin didn’t know what his two roommates were muttering about in their hearts.
He went to the bathroom to take a simple hot shower, then wrapped himself in a bath towel and burrowed into the bed, lazily rolling back and forth a few times on the mattress.
Ah, air conditioning truly is the best invention in the history of human civilization.
He narrowed his eyes in satisfaction, his ears filled with the sound of his two roommates chatting. The content of their conversation was nothing more than about the assessment results and rankings to be announced tomorrow, and the upcoming theme song MV rehearsals.
Unlike most trainees, Wen Xinyi and Fang Xu weren’t very enthusiastic about these two topics. After casually exchanging a few words, they each finished washing up, turned off the lights, and went to bed.
In the monitoring room, the chief director working overtime happened to look up and see the suddenly blacked-out camera feed from dorm 303. His first reaction was that those three little brats were being unruly again!
Other dorm rooms were either performing skits with great enthusiasm, talking to the camera, or doing the trivial affairs of refined men like removing makeup/applying face masks/washing faces/skincare in front of the camera.
In short, everyone was striving for more screen time. Only these three guys in 303, spent their days mysteriously covering the camera, doing who knows what.
The key point was that dorm 303 housed two trainees whose popularity was among the top. Could it be that these two were completely giving up screen time in the derivative program “NS-Dorm Life”? Didn’t they know how high the viewership and fan attraction were for dorm vlogs from idol survival shows?
But the next second, the director realized that the pitch-black screen wasn’t due to the camera being blocked, but because the lights in dorm 303 had been turned off.
Director: “….”
If he remembered correctly, it was only 9:30 PM now.
Going to bed at 9:30?! What kind of elementary school student schedule was this?!
Out of all twenty-one dorm rooms, theirs was the most absurd. Should he award dorm 303 an “Early to Bed, Early to Rise Health Award”?
Seeing the chief director’s highly raised eyebrows, the assistant director next to him followed his gaze to the monitoring screen and instantly got his complex mental activity.
She cleared her throat lightly and said, “Director Wang, the program effect from 303 tonight was quite sufficient….. Here, why don’t you watch the replay?”
Director Wang slowly shifted his gaze over and saw a light gray bedsheet on the small screen: “….What the hell are they up to.”
Looking at Wen Xinyi’s posture of earnestly hanging up the bedsheet by the bed, he couldn’t understand the thought process of young people today: “Is the clothes rack on the balcony full? It’s only been a few days, why is he holding up a bedsheet for no reason?”
The assistant director silently handed over the headphone cable, blinking: “Take another look, Director.”
Director Wang put them on impatiently, muttering: “What’s there to see….”
The next second, his voice abruptly stopped, his frown tightened, and he stared intently at the small screen.
“…….Wait a moment.” The man squinted his small eyes. “Am I hallucinating?”
Why did he hear someone gasping and panting? And it sounded rather nice, but the more he listened, the more off it became.
Director Wang’s expression gradually turned strange: “……Damn it, are they watching porn? So bold?”
Wait, that didn’t seem right either. Weren’t the phones confiscated?
The assistant director looked at him with a reproachful gaze: “Director Wang, how can you say that? Fang Xu was giving Quentin a massage!”
Director Wang: “Oh…… Massage, a massage.”
So that sound was coming from Quentin? This kid had this skill? He could go directly to the platform next door and record those ASMR audio dramas!
He rubbed his earlobes with a feeling of empathy: “It indeed has a good program effect, but this segment is a bit too excessive in scale, it can’t be aired, right?”
The assistant director smiled slightly, calmly saying: “Of course, we can’t air it this long. But we can lower the volume of this audio and ‘leak’ just one or two seconds.” As she spoke, she moved the mouse and fast-forwarded twenty minutes: “Including here, the clip of Quentin walking into the bathroom with his back to the camera can also flash by as part of the background while Wen Xinyi and Fang Xu are chatting.”
If you don’t zoom in and look carefully, it’s hard to notice and hard to see clearly. But the fans, who are practically microscope-level sharp, will manually zoom in on the screen, increase the brightness, adjust the clarity, then take screenshots, record the screen, and post them on forums.
Their director team had to consider the program’s positive energy and scale, and couldn’t openly show this kind of suggestive imagery. But if the fans dug it out themselves, there was nothing to be done.
Such beautiful back muscles, fair skin tinged with red, slender and well-proportioned…it would be a real pity not to show it at all.
And besides, sometimes a fleeting glimpse leaves a deeper impression, hooking the audience, making their hearts itch but leaving them unsatisfied, only able to scold and jump around on forums, frantically @ the program team to release more detailed clips.
Wouldn’t that boost the topic popularity?
Moreover, even putting aside those few gasps and the bare back, just seeing Wen Xinyi hanging the bedsheet, Fang Xu half-kneeling at the bedside giving Quentin a massage, the three of them calmly chatting in such a state…this scene itself conveyed an absurd and amusing flavor.
The assistant director couldn’t help but sigh inwardly; these three were really well-matched as roommates.
She watched every day as Wen Xinyi called Quentin awake in a gentle voice, cared for him attentively, and worried about the cold and warmth, while Fang Xu silently took the initiative to clean the dorm, and while cleaning, casually helped Quentin fold blankets and hang clothes.
These two were slowly permeating into every aspect of Quentin’s daily life like boiling a frog in warm water.
Look, it had only been a few days, and Fang Xu was already massaging his back!
What was more interesting was that during the day in the practice room, it was always Xue Mingzhu and Yan Qiao surrounding Quentin. Wen Xinyi and Fang Xu never actively approached him at those times. So until now, the others in Class A didn’t know how close the relationship between Quentin and his two roommates was.
Assistant director: *罒▽罒*
‘Hehehe, so good to ship, I’m so full.’
Director Wang inexplicably felt that the eyes of this usually gentle and calm assistant director on his team were somewhat sinister, faintly revealing a terrifying aura that made one’s heart shudder.
He subtly shifted his gaze away: “Hmm….Good, let’s do it as you said.”
*
Late at night, Quentin sat cross-legged as usual in the recording studio of the data space. In front of him was a keyboard, and his fingers moved nimbly over the keys, music flowing out intermittently from his fingertips like running water.
He occasionally stopped playing, grabbed the pen casually thrown on the floor, and made notes and revisions on the manuscript paper. The scribbled handwriting revealed a free and sharp brushwork.
If this stack of manuscripts were from his previous life, they could definitely fetch a good price. Hmm, after his death, they might even become the finale products at a top auction house.
He put down the pen, picked up the coffee which was just the right temperature, and took a shallow sip.
His mind was clear, and inspiration was gushing like a spring.
At times like this, Quentin couldn’t help but marvel at the wonder of the data space. With the system’s help, he had almost evolved beyond the need for sleep.
Practicing during the day, creating at night, working non-stop 24 hours a day…this was practically the life he dreamed of in his previous life!
He had always suspected that his sudden death in his previous life was half due to staying up all night writing. This life was great; he no longer had to worry about staying up late affecting his health.
It was a pity that this data space could only be used by himself. Otherwise, he wouldn’t mind distributing one to each of the six main characters.
After all, they would be teammates in the same group in the future. Everyone could work nonstop together, how great would that be.
“Host!”
The system suddenly popped up: “The target individual you wanted to find has appeared!”
Quentin thought for two seconds: “…. That high school student? He replied to the message?”
“Yes! This system screened a total of 768 high school boys in Yanhai City who met the criteria you described. Among them, 313 can be confirmed as second-year high school students, the remaining 455 are pending.”
The system reported its work results from the past two days in a matter-of-fact tone: “Two days ago, as per your request, this system pretended to be Zhong Qu’s new boyfriend and sent private messages to these 768 high school students. Among them, 404 blocked this system, 128 cursed at this system and then blocked it, 102 asked this system for details, and the remaining 134 did not reply.”
“This system followed your script and continued to play the role. The 102 people that replied asking for details all seemed to be bystanders. After eliminating them one by one, just 42 seconds ago, one of the 134 who hadn’t reacted before… a second-year high school student… replied to the message.”
Quentin put down the coffee cup. The ceramic base made a dull sound as it hit the wooden floor, and the slender metal spoon resting against the rim trembled with a clinking sound.
He propped his chin with his other hand, thinking: “Oh?”
What could he have replied that made the system directly determine he was the target he was looking for?
The electronic voice in his mind fluctuated slightly, sounding somewhat confused: “He asked me if I was inviting him…”
“And he said he could accept 3p.”
For the innocent babies, 3p means a threesome.🙈
Ah daym