Quentin and the others did not carry empty cardboard boxes solely for diverting people’s attention. They also planned to buy more ice water and cold drinks to bring back and share with the staff and the other trainees who would be arriving soon.
After all, they did not bring their phones. The cash on them was borrowed from the production team. How could they feel comfortable buying things just to enjoy by themselves?
The seven young men left the entrance with slightly staggered times, splitting into three groups, trying to head in different directions as much as possible.
At this moment, the fans outside the venue were either busy with the tasks at hand or chattering nonstop with good friends.
From the corner of their eyes, they caught sight of the people coming out of the main gate carrying cardboard boxes, all dressed in a nondescript, all-black employee attire. Perhaps because the white-top-red-pants sportswear color scheme was too deeply ingrained in their minds, no one suspected the identities of these “staff members.”
Quentin and Yan Qiao threaded their way through the bustling crowd, heads lowered and silent, occasionally nodding in thanks when girls kindly made way for them.
Very quickly, they successfully slipped away unnoticed, just like the five teammates ahead of them. No one was exposed.
While crossing the street, Yan Qiao held the empty cardboard box with one arm and pressed down his hat brim with the other, the corner of his mouth curving up: “It’s pretty easy. No one looked at me just now. We can keep using this trick in the future.”
Back when he was a trainee, he often heard about popular seniors in the company being followed and blocked by fans, without a shred of privacy. They could not even go shopping, take a walk, or walk the dog normally. Even when occasionally traveling abroad, they would still be tracked by paparazzi…
Now it seemed, perhaps it was not that exaggerated?
The dense crowd outside the venue just now were all fans. Even if they were not his personal fans, they most likely had a deep impression of him. Yet even so, did he not still manage to sneak out right under their noses?
Moreover, he was walking together with Quentin. Even Quentin had not been recognized. The fans were not as sharp-eyed as he had imagined.
Quentin still held the box with both hands, the upper half of his face completely hidden beneath the hat brim, the corner of his eye still paying attention to the movements around him. He casually responded: “After all, it’s the first time. Just a case of the light being darkest under the lamp. No one thought we would come out again.”
Actually, they had quite a few flaws. The work vests provided by the production team could not conceal the superior physiques of the trainees.
Theoretically speaking, young men like them, tall in stature, slender in build, and with decent temperament, would make people subconsciously curious about what they looked like even without showing their faces.
And if one person paid just a little more attention, they would absolutely be exposed…Come on, handsome guys wearing baseball caps does not equal disfigurement. The brow bone may be covered, but the mouth and chin are still there!
Just looking at that sharp jawline and the proportions of a small head, small face, and long neck was not something ordinary people possessed. After three months of persistent singing, dancing, and fitness training, plus a diet structure that was nearly driving people to depression, the current trainees had evolved in the direction of cultivating immortality.
To put it plainly, any trainee, placed in front of people, was a living, breathing image of a slender immortal, emerging from the mud unstained, surrounded by an ethereal aura (from hunger).
This was where the advantage of the large, crowded space outside the venue came in. Precisely because there were so many people, most could not see their figures clearly at a glance. Coupled with the “darkness under the lamp” factor, who would have thought that the Kings Of Rolls from Class A who came early to rehearse would suddenly change clothes and sneak out?
Mm, the fans’ oversight was not unjust.
Yan Qiao looked left and right: “There are many people selling cold drinks, and some fans are giving them away for free…Those must be Wen Xinyi’s fans, right? We shouldn’t go to the free ones. There are too many people around the stalls selling water. If we linger too long, we might get recognized… From this perspective, it seems more convenient to buy water at a convenience store.”
Quentin noticed that several other teammates were all heading toward the small stalls selling water. Looking at that dense mass of people, he inexplicably had an ominous premonition.
Even Yan Qiao knew that staying in one place too long made exposure more likely. How could the others not think of that? Did they not feel they stood out like sore thumbs among a crowd of young girls?
The idol-chasing crowd was primarily female. Ninety-nine percent of those who arrived so early to wait outside the venue were young women. Wen Xinyi and the others were grown men around 180cm tall. If they lingered any longer, sooner or later people would stare at them.
Their vests were on shaky ground…
Quentin withdrew his gaze and led Yan Qiao in the opposite direction: “Let’s go see if there’s a convenience store over there. After we buy the water later, we’ll try to take the back door and make a long detour back.”
“Mm…” Yan Qiao raised an eyebrow. “You think they’ll be discovered?”
“I don’t know. Let’s assume they will be discovered first.”
“Ha, then we’d better be careful. Getting back early means we can go bring reinforcements for them.”
Convenience stores were basic infrastructure in the park. They had not walked for even a few minutes before spotting a 24h convenience store beside a tree-shaded path.
Moreover, because this store was located deeper in, requiring passing through the outer wooded area to get close to the side of the park bordering the lake, the view inside would be blocked by trees, making it impossible to see the scene over by the venue. Thus, no fans had come this way.
Apart from the store clerk, there was no one else inside.
When Quentin and Yan Qiao entered, they even startled the clerk. However, the clerk did not even look up, clearly not interested in who came in.
Yan Qiao whispered: “Let’s move fast. Just grab the drinks.”
Quentin nodded: “Mm.”
They moved quickly, not carefully selecting, but directly opening the freezer and grabbing whatever they saw.
The clerk noticed their large movements and subconsciously glanced over a few more times. Although these two young men were moving quietly and made little noise, she inexplicably felt they were sneaky and furtive, they looked very suspicious.
She looked at the side profiles of the two young men under their hat brims, blinked, and thought to herself: ‘Quite handsome. Are they locals? I haven’t seen them before.’
Yan Qiao sensed the clerk’s scrutinizing gaze, and his heart tightened slightly. He sped up his movements, placing the drinks on the counter for the clerk to scan this batch first. After the tally was recorded, he neatly arranged them back into the cardboard box.
The clerk, having just come in for her early morning shift, did not initiate conversation just because she saw handsome guys. She mechanically did the operations, habitually asking: “Need a bag?”
Quentin shook his head: “No need.”
The clerk looked up at the sound of his voice and stared at Quentin for a moment. The latter had his hat brim pulled down too low, and she could only see a section of fair chin, the pink lips pressed lightly together, looking like he was not much of a talker.
Strange… Why were these two handsome guys so jumpy? She felt that if she looked at them a couple more times, they would explode.
Just as Quentin and Yan Qiao stood frozen under the clerk’s occasionally drifting, suspicious gaze, a girl’s angry and shrill voice suddenly came from outside the convenience store door.
“You lied! I’m already here! We agreed online! I even paid you the money. You have to give me the ticket, or do you believe I’ll go to the forum and post to expose you!”
“…I don’t want you to refund the money. You give me the ticket. What use is refunding my ticket money? Didn’t I have to spend money coming to Yanhai from out of town? Isn’t my airfare money, high-speed train money, hotel money all money?!”
“No… You can’t. You can’t do this. We had an agreement… I, I’m begging you, okay…”
“Don’t hang up. You’re not allowed to hang up. This is the money I saved for over a year as a birthday present to myself. You…”
The call had already been hung up, yet the girl standing by the railing still held her phone, relentlessly venting: “It’s been so long since I liked something this much. Everything I liked before, I couldn’t get. This time is the same… I did check-ins and missions every day, entered the lottery on time every time, and still couldn’t win a ticket…”
“I gave you everything I could spare. Why does everyone have to bully me!”
She spoke louder and louder, the tearful tone in her voice growing heavier, but she did not actually cry. It just sounded thick with nasal bitterness and a sense of grievance.
Quentin stood in front of the cash register. Through the glass door on the other side of the convenience store, he could see the girl’s back. She appeared to be a female student around junior or senior high school age.
Yan Qiao also turned to look over. He leaned forward slightly, close to Quentin’s ear, and whispered: “She’s talking about… It can’t be our show, right?”
Checking in and doing missions, lottery, tickets…No matter how you looked at it, it seemed to refer to the “NS” public performance.
From the content of the girl’s call, it seemed she had bought a ticket online from someone else who won the lottery, and then got stood up by the seller at the last minute.
“NS” officially did not support this kind of ticket resale behavior. Therefore, tickets were mailed to the winner’s address, and on-site verification of both ticket and ID card was required for entry.
Normally, people selling tickets would fill in the seller’s information for the address and identity fields, exchanging money and goods simultaneously. There would be no step involving backing out at the last moment.
That girl outside… Most likely, she was young and had been fooled.
The clerk continued her work while glancing outside, muttering: “Kids these days, chasing stars until they lose their minds. Crying and sniffling over some celebrity. Is it really worth it?”
She noticed the gazes of the two young men in front of her and spoke in a tone of sharing gossip: “You guys didn’t notice on your way to buy stuff that there are way more people in the park today than usual? And they’re all young girls with makeup on. Don’t you find that odd?”
She did not wait for Quentin and Yan Qiao to answer, and continued on her own: “I heard some star is holding a concert in that venue across the way. They’ve been rehearsing this whole time. You can hear the music even standing outside. Today seems to be the official day. You didn’t see how crazy those little girls are. Tsk tsk tsk.”
The two “concert” stars-in-question did not know how to respond and could only remain silent.
The bill for the drinks was soon settled. Yan Qiao picked up the heavy cardboard box and was about to leave through the same door they had entered from, when he noticed Quentin still staring in the direction of that girl, not moving.
“What’s wrong?”
He leaned in to ask.
Quentin gestured for him to head toward the other glass door together. After they had put some distance between themselves and the cash register, he lowered his voice and said: “That girl outside doesn’t seem to be in a good state of mind.”
Yan Qiao paused briefly, then frowned and gazed over carefully: “…Now that you mention it, she does seem a bit off. Why is she just standing there motionless?”
On the other side of the railing was the expansive park lake. The morning sun was brilliant, the lake surface sparkling and shimmering, dazzling the eyes.
The girl standing before the railing held her phone loosely in one hand, extending past the railing. Her fingers appeared quite weak, as if the phone might slip from her grasp and fall at any second.
Her attire was clearly something she had put careful thought into, with a bag adorned with a bow on her back. Upon closer inspection, one could spot an acrylic cartoon charm hanging from the bag, printed with the chibi version of some star.
A teenage girl, having traveled all the way from her hometown full of hope for her idol, only to be told upon arriving at the site that the ticket she bought was no longer available.
Even if the ticket money was refunded, she still could not recover the expenses for the journey.
Judging by the things she vented during the call, her life did not seem to be particularly fulfilling either. Under multiple blows, it was indeed possible that she might not think things through for a moment…
Yan Qiao’s expression grew more and more serious as he thought about it. The relaxed, lazy smile he usually wore had long since vanished.
He turned to Quentin and asked: “What should we do? Should we call the police?”
