Under the scorching sun, a group of young men rushed to eat before the cafeteria closed.
Qiao Xue opened the glass door of the first floor of the cafeteria, wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, and sighed, “It’s October, almost autumn, why is it getting hotter by the day?”
Huo Donghua replied in a muffled voice, “If you finish eating earlier and go back to the dorm, it won’t feel hot.”
“Sigh, I want to finish early too, but I haven’t mastered the dance yet, I can’t drag my teammates down…” As he spoke, Qiao Xue lowered his head and rubbed his sore, tired arms.
Huo Donghua knew how hard Qiao Xue had been working these past few days, and he knew how desperately everyone in Qiao Xue’s team was pushing themselves. For others, it might be understandable, but he just couldn’t understand why Qiao Xue was pushing himself so hard.
They both knew that at best, they would only last through this performance round; after the second public performance, they would be eliminated and sent back to their company. It was written in black and white in their contracts…he and Qiao Xue were different from the trainees who aimed to debut. The two of them were just here to get some exposure for their upcoming dramas, nothing more.
He thought this to himself and didn’t hide his thoughts, directly asking the question.
Qiao Xue smiled awkwardly, still repeating the same line: “I can’t drag my teammates down. Anyway, it’s only the last few days. It’s tiring, but so be it.”
The two of them got their food and were about to find a random seat when they turned around and saw Qi Yang eating in a corner. They immediately changed course and carried their trays over.
Other trainees might not have noticed, but the three from Wanming were actually quite familiar with each other; they were the kind of friends who would invite each other out for late-night snacks before coming to participate in this survival show. In the entertainment industry, that already counted as very good friends.
So Qi Yang knew that Huo Donghua and Qiao Xue would be “eliminated” after surviving the second public performance, and Huo and Qiao also knew that Qi Yang had been forcibly placed into this idol survival show by his agent, who never intended to let him withdraw early from the start.
That short-sighted agent was completely unreliable, he was actually determined to make this professionally trained actor switch tracks mid-way to become a boy group idol. Leaving alone what Qi Yang himself thought, Huo Donghua and Qiao Xue felt very indignant on his behalf.
Qi Yang’s situation was different from their own lukewarm status. Nowadays, there were indeed many young actors who were handsome and had good acting skills, but those that were handsome to Qi Yang’s level were very few.
Moreover, with last year’s “Po Jun Xing” as a precedent, it was enough to prove that Qi Yang had the potential to break out and become a star. If he could get good resources, or if someone was willing to spend money promoting him, with his ability, his future was guaranteed to be at least second-tier, with a chance at first-tier.
An actor with such a promising future, how could he just be tossed into a boy group survival show to fend for himself?
“After the elimination from the second public performance, I’ll probably go to the film crew directly. It’s a script I accepted in the first half of the year, and I have to play a villain again.” Huo Donghua chewed on the bland broccoli. “What about you guys, do you have any plans?”
Qiao Xue thought for a moment: “I’ll record a variety show. It’s a small variety show our company invested in. I’ll also look for some good scripts. The scripts being offered to me now are all comedies, I want to try other genres.”
By the time the two of them sat down, Qi Yang was almost done eating. However, he looked expressionless, as if in a bad mood.
Perhaps not just bad, but very gloomy.
He was so gloomy that he couldn’t be bothered to join their conversation, only occasionally giving a brief response.
Qiao Xue asked with concern, “Ah Yang, how’s your cold? Does your throat still hurt?”
“…It’s okay.”
For some reason, Qi Yang’s expression looked even darker.
The sensitive Qiao Xue vaguely guessed the truth and asked softly with concern, “Is that person still bothering you?”
Qi Yang closed his eyes for a moment, pinched the bridge of his nose, and didn’t answer immediately.
Huo Donghua beside him knew a bit about the situation and slowly said, “I forgot, Xiao Qiao, you’ve been sleeping on a makeshift bed in the practice room these past few nights and hardly return to the dorm, so you wouldn’t know…that person found out you caught a cold.”
As soon as Qiao Xue heard this, he knew who he was talking about and immediately frowned. “How? Ah Yang only caught the cold two or three days ago. Is that person’s intel that good? Did he sneak into the production team again?”
“……Now that you mention it, it really is possible.”
Huo Donghua wore a villainous expression and lowered his voice: “Last night when Ah Yang returned to the dorm, he found a thermos cup with cold medicine by his bedside. There was a sticky note on it too, and on the paper……there was some nonsense written on it. It was that guy’s handwriting.”
Qiao Xue rubbed his arms, his face a complex expression of speechlessness and disgust. “So perverted, he even chased him here…Did you tell the director? Our dorm building has surveillance cameras, right? Can’t they catch him?”
“Telling them is useless. It’s not like we can call the police. The director would just tell us to endure it.”
Huo Donghua couldn’t help but curse: “The surveillance is even more useless. That idiot probably snuck in yesterday afternoon. Coincidentally, the surveillance cameras were malfunctioning at the time, so the entire dorm building’s system was down. I suspect that bastard might be an electrician!”
“And then he probably mixed in when the director called someone to fix the surveillance? That actually makes sense.”
Qiao Xue looked up at Qi Yang and said hesitantly, “Ah Yang…you should still go to the police after the show finishes recording. No one can guarantee that this kind of person won’t do something even worse in the future. With that kind of person, you can’t reason using normal people’s logic.”
Ever since “Po Jun Xing” aired, there has been someone constantly stalking and lurking around Qi Yang. Whether it was attending classes, recording variety shows, or promotional commercial events, this person has been haunting him from start to finish.
It was the same now. He had even followed him to the fully enclosed “NS” base and managed to slip in unnoticed among so many staff. He might even be the one who caused the surveillance cameras to malfunction.
Qi Yang’s mood was low. “That person has a problem with his brain. Calling the police wouldn’t help.”
Besides, as a public figure, no one wanted to get involved with the police station.
Even though he wasn’t famous now, he couldn’t withstand targeted rumors. It could have bad effects on him personally, on the company, and even on his future job opportunities. This was also why his agent had always disagreed with him going to the police.
“Try to settle it privately if you can. It’s just a sasaeng fan. Which celebrity hasn’t encountered one? In our line of work, you have to be prepared for this.”
“Even though this sasaeng fan isn’t quite right in the head and his behavior is a bit perverted…which sasaeng has a normal brain? If you’re a sasaeng, aren’t you inherently perverted? Try to look at it more openly.”
“Endure what you can, turn big issues into small ones, and small ones into nothing. Qi Yang, don’t argue with a little fan. What if it turns out to be a minor in the end? That would be even more troublesome.”
The above were the words Qi Yang’s agent had emphasized to him over and over.
Qi Yang let it go in one ear and out the other, only taking in the surface meaning. Although he was being manipulated by his agent, he also understood clearly that this matter would be hard to resolve anytime soon.
“Minor + mentally unstable” was the other party’s get-out-of-jail-free card. And this person was also slippery; Qi Yang couldn’t even find him or his parents to negotiate privately.
“So there’s no way? We just have to endure and let him keep doing this?”
Qiao Xue sighed deeply. “Actually, if the company was willing to cooperate, there might be a way out. But your agent…is indeed not easy to talk to.”
Huo Donghua spat out a fishbone and snorted: “Don’t be so euphemistic. It’s not about being ‘not easy to talk to’; it’s clearly about being brainless. And that person also doesn’t like Ah Yang hanging out with us.”
Just a petty person who curries favor with the powerful and despises the humble, a sycophant.
Qiao Xue gave a wry smile and was about to say something when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw two familiar figures entering the cafeteria.
That posture, one in white top and red pants, the other with an arm over his shoulder… who else could it be but Quentin and Xue Mingzhu?
Quentin saw him too. From over a dozen meters away, he nodded in greeting.
Qiao Xue raised his hand and waved. Watching Quentin turn towards the food service window, he smiled and said, “Quentin’s mood has been getting better and better these past couple of days. I’ve never seen him so happy before.”
Huo Donghua paused, withdrew his gaze looking outside, and gave Qiao Xue a strange look. “Are you serious? He always has the same expression. How can you tell if he’s happy or not?”
Qiao Xue gestured with his chopsticks: “It’s a feeling. Hmm…it’s hard to describe. You’ll understand if you talk to him more.”
The young man smiled with a teasing wink: “When Quentin is in a good mood, the magnetic field around him is relaxed and pleasant. When he’s in a bad mood…um, it might make people feel a chill down their spine, tremble with apprehension, and repeatedly wonder if they did something wrong. He’s a very domineering little friend.”
Huo Donghua: “…That’s quite impressive.”
The one who was truly in a bad mood, Qi Yang, had already set down his chopsticks two minutes ago. He leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, adopting an air of “do not disturb”.
He listened to his friends’ casual chatter, his gaze drifting towards where Quentin was sitting, his mind recalling the few interactions he had with Quentin…
“Hey, Ah Yang, so you’ve really decided to stay until the end? With your popularity, you’ll definitely debut smoothly. Have you really made up your mind to take the boy group idol path?”
Qi Yang gave an ambiguous “hmm” and said flatly, “It’s just two years. It won’t be too late to go back to acting after two years.”
*
Wednesday was the day when the spin-off program “NS-Dorm Daily” updated.
Compared to the formal, methodical, and conservative editing style of the main episodes, the scale of these spin-off programs was much more unrestrained.
Every day when the editing team opened their eyes, their job was to surf the web for hot topics and chase trends. Whatever the audience loved to watch, they would edit.
And among the hottest, most talked-about topics recently, “Quentin and his CPs” was undoubtedly an unavoidable subject.
So before the third episode aired, the editing team started racking their brains…who else could be Quentin’s cp?
Following the broadcast order of the main episodes, during the rehearsals for the first public performance, the 3A were each fighting their own battles, serving as the leader for the visual team, the dance team, and the rap team respectively.
The three were busy with their own things and barely even spoke a few words to each other. What was there to ship?
The material from the second public performance grouping couldn’t be pulled out in advance either. How could they exhaust the footage all at once? Every member of the editing team had hoarding tendencies; good material had to be released bit by bit to keep the audience’s appetite fully whetted.
This is the principle of so-called delayed gratification.
The 3A were ruled out early, and 303 had just been aired in the last episode. It would be normal to push the same cp for two consecutive episodes, but considering Quentin’s cp physique, the production team didn’t want to set an official cp for him.
Having all the cps evenly matched, a hundred flowers blooming together, was much more beneficial for sustaining topic heat than having one dominate.
So 303 was also put aside as a backup option. The three of them living together was bound to bring about many close moments. Those commonplace interactions in a boys’ dormitory, placed on three distinctive handsome boys, were simply too good not to ship.
Regarding the cp material for these three, the editing team had specially created a folder, categorized them with subtitles, and planned to release them slowly in future behind-the-scenes clips.
Those who have shipped cps know that searching frame by frame and second by second for moments where their ship appears together in a massive amount of footage is a very common thing. Although the process is troublesome and agonizing, the emotional satisfaction gained the moment you find it is incomparable.
The editing team was clearly taking advantage of this mentality, which is why they were not in a hurry to ride the wave of popularity of 303.
Food had to be eaten one bite at a time. They had to promote a new cp first, and it had to be different from the previous ones to attract more viewers…
“Take a look, what about this pair?”
The editor tapped on the paused video page on the screen: “I just dug this out from the footage. We haven’t used it before. It’s the clip from Quentin’s first time going to the upstairs gym.”
The others in the office were stunned for a moment, their eyes gathering there as they gradually realized.
“Huh? That clip… Ah, I remember now!”
“Oh, not bad! There’s been too much going on lately, I completely forgot about their thing. I remember that clip was quite impactful… Tsk, it’s mainly because just Cui Yan and Quentin standing together is enough to make one’s heart flutter…”
The editor stroked his chin, squinted, and said meaningfully, “These are the two with the best physiques in our ‘NS’, and it’s in a gym, a place where you can’t help but notice body muscles… Although they didn’t do anything particularly special, and their clothes were fully on, I bet once this segment airs, the popularity of their cp will definitely rival the previous two pairs, what do you all think?”
Everyone stared at the paused video on the computer screen. A few seconds later, they nodded one after another.
On the screen, a black-haired, fair-skinned boy was lying face-up on the bench press machine, his hands raised high, fingers lightly resting on the center of the barbell’s long rod. A tall young man with wheat-colored skin stood beside him, looking down and intently adjusting the weight on the barbell for him.
This video was taken by a camera fixed on the gym equipment, a clear bird’s-eye view that captured the boy’s slight frown and his light golden eyelashes with exceptional clarity.
Those green eyes weren’t looking at the camera’s direction but were focused intently on the barbell fixed above him.
Cui Yan beside him, perhaps due to rich experience or perhaps because he was almost finished with the adjustments, wasn’t paying attention to the weight plates. Instead, he had lowered his gaze slightly, seemingly checking if Quentin’s lying posture was correct.
In the still frame, the two had no physical contact, nor any interaction like eye contact, but it didn’t diminish the subtle atmosphere in the slightest, nor the tension slowly flowing through the air.
“Gulp.”
A girl sitting at the adjacent desk unscrewed her mineral water bottle and took a big swig.
She slapped the table and said with a serious expression: “Hey, stop spacing out. Since the final footage has been decided, let’s get to work!”
Hello everyone! Sorry I missed last week’s schedule 😓 I had to change devices and ended up losing passwords to some sites (JJWXC, KnoxT, etc.). I’ll be posting every day this week to try and catch up. Thank you for your patience.
