The two teams for “Boss” drew lots to write the “lucky wheel” slips. This game lasted about half an hour, during which audience members were called up multiple times to participate in the interaction.
Half an hour later, the VCRs of the two teams performing the second song, “Boring Love ing,” began playing on the large screen.
The following two team stages did not disappoint the audience either. The lighting and live band made the place feel like being at a nightclub party, directly igniting the atmosphere of the entire venue and making the trainees in the backstage lounge both nervous and surprised.
“Wow, so explosive? They even used DJ decks and laser lights?”
Bi Xiao, who was sitting next to Cheng Shaozi, pointed at the TV screen, “The production team put our song after theirs. Is that a mistake? When it’s our turn later, as soon as the intro plays, the atmosphere will directly go down….”
Cheng Shaozi glanced at his exaggerated gesture, “Not necessarily. After their performance, there’s still the game segment. By the time we get on stage, the atmosphere created by that song will have already passed.”
Bi Xiao did not actually think the production team’s arrangement was a problem. He was just very surprised that the two teams for “Boring Love ing” could make the stage effect so explosive, it was so much to his aesthetic taste.
And their own team’s song “Senior Sister, No”… To be honest, when this song was first decided, he felt terrible all over. This kind of pure, sweet little song only suited those sweet, soft spoken boys and girls! What did it have to do with him!
He never expected Quentin and the others to choose this song. As the PK opponent of Quentin’s team, with his teammates having no objections, Bi Xiao sighed helplessly and began a week of gruelling rehearsals.
It was both tormenting himself and tormenting his teammates.
Bi Xiao’s appearance and temperament were too incongruous in this song. It wasn’t that he couldn’t let go; he just felt awkward. Whenever his teammates saw him pretending to be good and innocent, they felt their skin crawl.
The more they rehearsed, the more curious their team became…how exactly did the Quentin team plan their entire stage?
It was normal that Bi Xiao couldn’t be “sweet,” but Xue Mingzhu, Yan Qiao, Fang Xu… including Quentin, these people should also be hard-pressed to be “sweet,” right?
Sweet idols and their style were completely two extremes!
In the end, Cheng Shaozi, as the team leader, held a meeting with the team members and decided to put effort into the styling and makeup.
White shirts, berets, suspender pants, with a few colorful little dolls hanging from the pants. In short, they tried their best to shape themselves in a cute direction.
Fortunately, their team’s guest performer, Senior Sister Lou Yu, was a sweet, cute 1.6 meters tall girl. Having her wear pigtails and a JK outfit to stand in the center could still pull their team’s skewed style back.
Thinking of this, Bi Xiao suddenly had a bad feeling, “Speaking of which, our team’s VCR won’t show those clips of me… you know, right?”
Before Cheng Shaozi could speak, a teammate sitting on the other side poked his head over with a grin, “What ‘you know’? Isn’t it just acting cute? What can’t you say? If I were the editing teacher, I would definitely put your “cutesy” content in. That’s the punchline, bro.”
Bi Xiao: “…”
Was the dark history of his life coming so soon? Who the hell messed around with making VCRs? Isn’t this purely public execution?!
No, no, no, he definitely wasn’t the only one dying of social embarrassment!
“Team leader Cheng, do you know how Quentin and his team’s rehearsal was? Our rehearsal times were all staggered. Just by looking at their team’s styling style, it’s quite different from ours.”
The people in Quentin’s group, sitting not far away, were almost all wearing Chinese-style school uniforms, the blue and white style common in campus youth dramas.
The reason they said “almost all” was because Zhang Fu and Quentin were not wearing them.
Zhang Fu’s styling was very simple. She wore her long hair down, a white skirt that reached her knees, and light makeup on her face.
In a high school campus where long hair down and makeup were forbidden, and school uniforms were mandatory, this kind of dress could be called “rebellious”.
And Quentin was even more rebellious. Aside from his eye-catching blonde hair, the band-aid on the bridge of his nose, the bandages wrapped around his wrists, and his very street-style outfit all made him stand out among the rest in school uniforms.
Cheng Shaozi guessed that Quentin, like Bi Xiao, probably corresponded to the “rebellious boy on a skateboard” in the lyrics.
But the lyrics’ description of this boy mainly focused on how passionately he liked the senior sister, yet how cautious he was on the surface, possessing a pure shyness completely opposite to his rebellious appearance…
He had not expected Quentin’s styling to closely adhere to the “rebellious” in the lyrics, nor did he expect the person playing this role to be Quentin.
Their team had previously guessed it would be Xue Mingzhu.
Yeah… who could have thought that the process of assigning roles in Quentin’s team was very simple and crude, with Quentin being chosen to play the rebellious boy simply because of his blonde hair.
However, the difference between their two teams in this song’s presentation was really big.
Except for the senior sister, no one in Cheng Shaozi’s group wore school uniforms. Even though the senior sister wore JK, in the public impression, it leaned toward trendy fashion than school uniforms worn in school.
But compared to Quentin’s team, Cheng Shaozi and his members did dress much sweeter. They had colorful stars painted on their faces, and many had curly hair styles.
They all had specially prepared gift props in their pockets, such as roses, love letters, paper cranes, etc., all serving this sweet little love song.
Conversely, Quentin’s team had almost no props, so their stage placed great emphasis on dance, with choreography being even more important.
Cheng Shaozi speculated that, according to Quentin’s leadership style, his arrangements this time would focus more on the “sense of design,” not the traditional “idol stage.”
Therefore, he chose to design the atmosphere well, focusing on singing and dancing.
Regardless of whether they won or lost the PK, after the show aired, the comparison between the two stages would not be too tragic.
In the second public performance, the stage led by Bi Xiao had gone head-to-head with Quentin in stage design and was brutally suppressed. Everyone was well aware of this lesson from the past.
But it was precisely because of this that Cheng Shaozi was not as afraid to PK with Quentin as the other trainees in the show.
Perhaps Quentin’s original songwriting ability was very strong, perhaps he had unique insights into the stage, but before participating in “NS,” Cheng Shaozi had searched and researched a lot of information about boy and girl idol groups, almost as if reading a thick chronicle of idols.
He believed that both he and Quentin did not belong to the traditional standard idol type.
Before participating in the survival show, Cheng Shaozi had always positioned himself as a dancer. He did not have such great ambitions for the entertainment industry. In the past, he was invited to participate in dance variety shows only because his appearance and awards from various competitions had caught the production team’s attention.
Of course, after deciding to participate in the boy group survival show and ultimately debut as an idol, Cheng Shaozi began to change and began to hold himself to idol standards.
On one hand, he had to seek a fuse point between contemporary dance and boy group dance. On the other hand, he had to study vocal music step by step and practice live singing and dancing.
Cheng Shaozi believed that his idol career would soon get on the right track. He had talent. The remaining gaps could be made up for by hard work. There was nothing that hard work could not achieve.
He was working hard to change, but… was Quentin changing?
Quentin’s stage was very different from the idol stages Cheng Shaozi had seen. Quentin himself was also not like the boy group seniors he knew about. Cheng Shaozi did not know whether Quentin’s style could continue successfully.
What Cheng Shaozi did not know was that in the previous two public performance stages, the main reason Quentin had downplayed his singing and dancing was that his teammates’ singing and dancing levels were mixed.
When other trainees were team leaders, they would not easily give up their own strengths in singing and dancing just because some team members could not keep up with the group’s singing and dancing.
But Quentin’s advantage lay precisely in the fact that he had enough strengths, so he could use other methods to let every member of the team show their own shining points.
And in this public performance, except for Qi Yang, everyone in Quentin’s team was a “strong” contestant in the show, so Quentin’s room to perform was much greater than in the previous two public performances.
Very quickly, it was the turn of the two teams performing the last song, “Senior Sister, No.”
As expected, the VCR video exposed Cheng Shaozi’s team’s rehearsals of the “sweet little song,” and also included Quentin’s team discussion about “love” and “immersion of love songs.”
The audience’s reaction offstage was extremely enthusiastic. After all, the most popular trainees of the entire show were all in this video.
After much anticipation, the fans who had been looking forward to their idols waited until five or six o’clock for the finale. They had really waited until the flowers had almost withered.
“Pfft hahahaha I’m dying of laughter, Bi Xiao, what are you doing!”
“Ahhhhh I don’t dare to look ahhhhh my toes are digging out a courtyard house!!”
“That’s a bit too much. Who wrote those coquettish lines? The embarrassment is explosive. My eyes have been humiliated…”
“But Xiao Cheng acting cute is quite cute hehehe, a white fox tilting his head expressionlessly, a paradise for us mom fans.”
“Love… can this kind of question be asked on a boy group survival show?”
“As expected of the senior sister, she can always easily ask questions that ordinary people dare not ask. Good question! I want to know too!”
“What?! Boys’ dorm chat? Damn it, production team, you must film it! Please make sure this part is in this week’s updated ‘Dorm Daily Life,’ okay? If it’s not there, I’ll call 12315…and report you for false marketing and deceiving consumer feelings…”
“Are you serious? This whole team has never been in love? Who would believe that…”
“Emm… I understand they can’t openly discuss past relationships on a survival show, but they can’t just lie casually either. There are so many ways to change the subject, why insist on “the whole group has never been in a relationship” path?”
“Ahem, let’s analyze rationally. I believe Brother Cui and Xiao Fang have never been in love. They both signed with a company from the third year of middle school. That small company isn’t famous, but it has quite a few rules. The trainee schedule is super packed, and they were both key artists the company focused on. The company also internally forbids trainees from dating…”
“If you say that, I also believe Quentin and Xiao Xue have never been in love! Their college entrance exam scores were very good, and their artistic professional abilities did not fall behind. I don’t believe they have such abundant energy to study, sing, dance, rap, and find time to date.”
“Wait, don’t you all have memories? How have you forgotten the circle Xue Mingzhu was in? How could he have never been in love? The hip-hop circle is so messy, it’s too normal for him to have girlfriends!”
The attention of various fans was drawn away by the “all life long singles” joke casually mentioned in the VCR. Only a few audience members were still focused on the two teams’ discussions about the stage.
“How come I feel that the two teams’ analyses of this song are completely different…?”
“Yeah, yeah, I think so too! I feel Xiao Cheng’s team is focusing on sweet songs and a youthful feel, while QT’s team is focusing on love songs.”
“I remember the theme of this public performance was ‘love,’ right? Did Cheng Shaozi’s team go off track…”
“Not necessarily. I’ve seen the MV of ‘Senior Sister, No.’ Aurora’s group also focused on sweet, girly vibes. Rather than showing love, they focused more on showing the story of ‘a girl longing for love overcoming love-brain.'”
“Uh, doesn’t that mean both teams went off track?”
The Aurora fans who were lucky enough to come to the venue had mixed feelings. Regarding their idols participating in “NS,” the fans were actually quite happy in their hearts.
That damn BKL finally let them go!! Thank goodness! As expected, the old employer is reliable! Wuuu, our Aurora hasn’t been abandoned yet!!
—This was the true feeling of the vast majority of Aurora fans.
And the fans of Zhang Fu and Lou Yu were even happier, because the trainees collaborating with their biases were the most popular debut group in the show!
However, while they were happy about this surprise collaboration opportunity, they were also worried about whether the boy group trainees could perform their Aurora’s songs well.
They did not expect these undeuted trainees to perform at the level of the original songs, but at least, please do not ruin the songs!
Although the first two songs received enthusiastic feedback from the offstage audience… to be honest, the adaptation of the songs themselves, and the performances of the trainees, could only be said to have made no major mistakes.
Damn it, their Aurora’s songs are not for shipping couples! They made it so ambiguous, as fans, it was very awkward to watch!
Although “Senior Sister, No” was not the best performing of the three songs in terms of data, it was the “first love” in the hearts of many Aurora fans.
Because during the period this song was released, it was the honeymoon phase between BKL and Aurora. At that time, BKL’s new girl group had not yet debuted, and Aurora’s future was thriving.
All members participated in the creation of “Senior Sister, No.” In a certain sense, this song was Aurora’s first and only group original song.
And Quentin, Cheng Shaozi, and the others were also the first idol group to cover “Senior Sister, No.”
Although the VCR made them uneasy, perhaps this was the production team’s ploy of suppressing first and then elevating?
Please! Dear juniors, please do not ruin the song, okay? QAQ
