Leaving aside the online uproar caused by the trainees’ random dance challenge, let’s first go back to the night three days ago.
Because they had chatted so enthusiastically before bed, the group gathered in dorm 303 almost all suffered from insomnia. They stubbornly stayed awake until the light outside the window gradually brightened, then fell asleep one after another.
Due to this poor sleep quality, when the designated wake-up time arrived the next day, not a single one of the seven young men managed to wake up successfully.
The biological clocks they had worked hard to cultivate collectively went on strike. They all slept soundly and deeply in bed, only to be jolted awake by the deafening broadcast.
“Gurgle…pu!”
Xue Mingzhu stood in front of the sink, his eyes half open, absent-mindedly brushing his teeth.
Although the seven of them could squeeze into one dorm room to sleep for a night, there was no need to risk being late by queuing up for that one small bathroom.
So Xue Mingzhu returned to his own dorm early and seized the sink before Yan Qiao could get there.
As for why he moved so quickly…
The answer was perhaps that everyone else was half a beat slow, struggling desperately under their blankets, and only he, after being startled awake by the broadcast alarm, jolted awake, tumbled out of bed hugging his blanket, and landed on the floor with a thud.
Although it was a bit embarrassing, it did succeed in waking him up somewhat.
He was dizzy and disoriented at that moment, his mind filled with the image he had seen the moment he opened his eyes.
The blond-haired, green-eyed young man had his brows furrowed, his eyes slightly open a crack, his gaze seemingly unfocused. Just like that, bleary-eyed and still half asleep, he met the gaze of the equally newly-awakened and visibly irritated Xue Mingzhu.
Sunlight seeped in through the gaps in the curtains, the air carried the familiar faint scent of shampoo, a nightrobe lay disheveled, the blanket was thin, and his arm vaguely registered the sensation of skin contact…
If the genders were swapped, no matter who traded places with whom, this scene would deserve a lingering close-up slow-motion shot in a sentimental romance film!
The faint irritation dispersed like wisps of smoke, and Xue Mingzhu thought he was still dreaming. There was only one thought in his mind.
—Fuck, this dream is so absurd! He was actually lying in the same bed with such a blonde beauty. What the hell, was his xp (fetish) actually blonde hair?
The next second, he paused briefly. Uh, why did this beauty look a bit familiar?
Oh…it’s Quentin.
Half asleep and half awake, Xue Mingzhu laboriously mobilized his remaining brain cells and thought, tsk tsk, fortunately Quentin’s hair was still short and his chest was flat, otherwise he might start to suspect there was something wrong with his own thinking.
…Wait.
Xue Mingzhu spent three seconds feeling amazed by and appreciating this dream of his, then spent another three seconds realizing that this scene was a bit too real.
The increasingly noisy alarm in the background, the soft rustling sounds of blankets shifting in the dorm, and the warmth of the sun on his face…wasn’t he supposed to be waking up now?
Xue Mingzhu stared blankly as Quentin closed his eyes and opened them again. Those light green eyes didn’t hide the sullenness brought on by being woken up, like the unfathomable waters of a deep lake. The longer their eyes met, the easier it was to feel oneself sinking into them.
He was lying right next to Quentin!
His hand and his leg were both draped over Quentin!
Where was his pillow? Oh… in his own arms, so whose pillow was under his head?!
The moment he registered these many details, Xue Mingzhu jerked backward abruptly. His center of gravity shifted and he unexpectedly tumbled off the already narrow single bed.
He had no mind left to check Quentin’s reaction. His hands and feet numb, he scrambled up from the floor, hugged the blanket to his chest, and fled the room with his head down.
Even now, as he slowly brushed his teeth, Xue Mingzhu still had not come back to his senses.
He turned on the faucet with a bitter expression, rinsing his cup amidst the rushing sound of water. He looked up at the person in the mirror with the messy hair…it was clear how unsettled he was.
Xue Mingzhu knew it was not shyness, nor was it some kind of gay-ish flutter of the heart. He just felt a bit awkward.
Wasn’t it simply waking up to find himself clinging to Quentin like an octopus, and having taken over half of Quentin’s small pillow?
They were all guys, what was there to feel awkward about? He was never this fussy when interacting with classmates at school. Besides, he was always slinging an arm over Quentin’s shoulder and never thought there was anything wrong with it.
This was the first time Xue Mingzhu had become so acutely aware of the strange feeling that came with overly close physical contact with someone of the same gender.
It was not attraction, nor was it aversion. It was simply a puzzling sense of awkwardness.
This inexplicable awkwardness meant that when he faced Quentin later, he would be too embarrassed to be all handsy and touchy-feely again.
At this moment, Xue Mingzhu and Fang Xu probably had a lot in common. In fact, on the subject of “why one feels awkward and uncomfortable when facing an exceptionally good-looking person of the same gender,” Fang Xu’s feelings ran far deeper.
At least Xue Mingzhu only felt a bit strange right now, whereas Fang Xu had genuinely questioned his own sexual orientation at that time.
“…How much longer are you going to dawdle? Finish washing your face and get out, give me some space.”
Yan Qiao leaned against the bathroom doorway, yawned, and casually urged him on.
After a long moment with no response from Xue Mingzhu, he raised his eyes and glanced inside, catching the odd expression on the other’s face.
Perhaps it was due to a tiny bit of tacit understanding cultivated over the two months of sharing a dorm.…Yan Qiao instantly connected the guy’s expression to his intense reaction in the morning. He raised an eyebrow subtly. ‘Heh, it’s his bad sleeping posture that’s to blame.’
Yan Qiao was not as carefree as Xue Mingzhu. He had trouble sleeping in unfamiliar beds, and his sleep had always been light; the slightest disturbance would wake him.
As a result, he was probably the one who suffered the worst because of Xue Mingzhu’s “baring fangs and brandishing claws” style of sleeping.
This guy’s sleeping posture was really obnoxious…one hand rested on Quentin, and one leg stretched out even more arrogantly, at one point lying across the legs of both Quentin and Yan Qiao.
As if simply pressing down on them was not enough, he would also occasionally shift around a few times, like a live fish flopping on dry land.
Every time Xue Mingzhu stretched out his leg, Yan Qiao, teetering on the edge of sleep, would kick him away without any hesitation, all the while tirelessly shoving this octopus’s hand off of Quentin’s body as well.
Objectively speaking, it was not quite as exaggerated as an octopus. It was just that the single bed was too narrow for three people, and being squeezed together shoulder to shoulder too tightly created that impression.
And so, after who knows how many times this repeated, Yan Qiao only felt his dark circles growing heavier.
While silently envying how soundly Quentin slept, he inwardly cursed all eighteen generations of Xue Mingzhu’s ancestors, and finally had to swallow his irritation and compromise, forcibly ignoring a certain someone’s over-the-top sleeping posture.
When he woke up this morning, Yan Qiao did not see the sight of Xue Mingzhu staring dumbly at Quentin. But he did notice the guy’s dazed and distracted reaction after falling onto the floor.
He had not paid much attention at the time, but now, connecting the dots carefully, the whole sequence of events quickly became clear in Yan Qiao’s mind.
‘Heh heh.
Serves him right.’
Still, despite his inner grumbling, could actually understand why Xue Mingzhu felt awkward.
For example: anyone majoring in performance or dance had to learn to desensitize themselves to physical contact, and this could extend to the entire entertainment industry.
But Xue Mingzhu, who had half-stepped into the entertainment circle and then hastily retreated, was clearly not included in this.
As an artist, willing or not, one had to get used to close physical contact with different people. In a “working state” such as filming a movie or drama, or performing on stage, one had to learn to treat one’s own body as a tool.
An excellent actor could command every minute detail of the face to serve the character. An excellent dancer could likewise use every inch of muscle in the body to present a complete stage performance.
And “desensitization to physical contact” was merely one very small part of that.
In theory, this desensitization was only required to function during an artist’s working state. But in reality, how to distinguish between a working state and a private state was a challenge.
The crudest and simplest method was to judge whether one was currently “in the frame.”
Obviously, with multiple cameras all around, dorm 303 fell squarely into the category of “in the frame”.
Therefore, an excellent dancer like Yan Qiao, who had done his “desensitization training” thoroughly, naturally would not still be stuck feeling awkward over such a small matter like a certain rapper.
But he was not so kind-hearted as to offer psychological counseling to an idiot. Yan Qiao walked into the bathroom in high spirits, shooed out the dawdling Xue Mingzhu who had just finished washing his face, and unhurriedly began brushing his teeth and washing his own face.
Let him stay awkward. It’s best if he remained awkward forever and stopped clinging to Quentin all day long.
Yan Qiao had no other intentions. He simply felt that the “Xue-Que” CP should not be more popular than the “Yan-Que” CP.
Having recently gotten hold of his phone and gone online during the off-site variety show recording, Yan Qiao believed from the bottom of his heart that if that guy had not been guarding against him like a thief and keeping him away from Quentin right from the start, his CP with Quentin would definitely be more popular.
If the cameras had captured Yan Qiao at this very moment, fans would definitely have taken screenshots and started threads once the episode aired.
>Topic: [Ahhhhhhhhhh truly a heaven-sent choice for the fox persona!!! My Brother Qiao is indeed a black fox spirit who has cultivated human form. That face, that aura, both wicked and bad, just one look makes your heart feel numb and tingly. The fox tail is showing again!!!]
*
“So, how was it? Did you have a pleasant chat about the feeling of immersion in love and love songs?”
Zhang Fu looked at the people seated before her and asked with curiosity.
They paused briefly, hesitant, as if thinking about how to answer.
Pleasant? It was quite pleasant… but could it really be said that the topics they discussed had anything to do with that at all?
Zhang Fu had assumed that a group of young men chatting at night would definitely touch on some topics about dating, the kind that were not suitable for broadcasting on camera.
However, unlike most young men their age who held hopes and enthusiasm for love, these few members of Quentin’s team had, up to this point, not had much interest in that sort of thing at all.
And after last night’s chat, they had also stumbled upon a magical coincidence.
——Everyone sitting there, all of them, has been single since birth!
All seven of them had never once been in a relationship before, nor had they ever had any ambiguous interactions with the opposite sex.
Even Qi Yang, who had once played the devoted second male lead, had his most intimate scene with the female lead limited to a restrained hand at her waist during a hero-saves-beauty moment.
It sounded odd, didn’t it? After all, they were a group of young men with outstanding looks. Logically they should all have gone through restless adolescent phases, and things like puppy love should have come easily.
One or two could be understood, but all of them turning out to be life long singles seemed a bit too much.
But then, recalling that they were the main character group from a certain no-CP entertainment industry boy group novel, Quentin felt it was quite normal after all.
It was precisely because they were all lifelong singles and at the same time none of them were enthusiastic about romance, that when the topic of ideal types came up, their attitudes were casual, a picture of frank indifference, daring to say whatever came to mind.
Speaking of ideal types, there was a rather amusing trending topic in the short video section recently, called the “Hearing Your Ideal Type, Then Run Challenge.”
The general idea was that a few guys stood in front of a camera, and one person would call out keywords in turn, such as older woman, senior schoolmate, mature woman, long hair, and so on. If a keyword matched your own ideal type, you would turn around and run toward the back; the better the match, the farther you would run.
If the participants were girls, the keywords would change to things like younger schoolmate, puppy-like guy, curly hair, muscular man, etc.
To have the guys of dorm 303 talk about ideal types last night using the method of confessing one by one like they had done a few days earlier when chatting about gossip… uh, their minds went blank. There really was not much to say.
So Quentin and the others took a page from this short video challenge and tried it out.
At that time, they were all lying in bed, and the dorm room did not have enough space for them to run back and forth. Therefore they adopted the method of “counting fingers” to play this little game.
The rules were simple. Seven people each raised one hand. Each person took turns saying a keyword for an ideal type. If a player felt a bit favorable toward that trait, they would bend down one finger. The stronger the favorable feeling, the more fingers they would bend down.
Conversely, if they had no feeling toward it, they would keep their fingers still. If they felt aversion, they would raise one or more fingers.
The person who bent down all five fingers was a philanderer who liked everything, and was eliminated first!
Whoever survived to the very end, and even had to raise their other hand… ahem, was probably the legendary “doomed to a lifetime of being single” type.
